BAGHDAD – The American soldier sitting next to me flipped open his Zippo lighter and gloomily lit a cigarette. “Do you know why this base isn’t attacked by insurgents?” he said.
I assumed it was because his area of operations, in the Graya’at neighborhood of northern Baghdad out of Coalition Outpost War Eagle, had been cleared of insurgents. Many American military bases and outposts in Iraq are attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists and Mahdi Army militiamen with mortars and rockets. War Eagle was quiet and had not been bombarded for months.
“We aren’t being attacked because the Mahdi Army is in the next building,” he said. “They don’t want to hit their own people.”
American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division shared the small outpost with Iraqi Army soldiers who lived, worked, and slept in the building next door.
“You mean the Iraqi Army unit here has been infiltrated?” I said.
He nodded grimly and took a pull from his cigarette.
“That’s a bad reason for us not to be mortared,” I said.
…Those infiltrators in the Iraqi Army are trained every day by the Americans.
“They act like our friends,” said Master Sergeant Tyler. “It is a façade to an extent, yes. They get benefits from having a good relationship with us and will do and say anything to keep us on their side.”
…Nothing makes me more pessimistic about Iraq’s future prospects than this. The Mahdi Army is Iran’s major proxy in Iraq. It is, in effect, the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah.
The Iranians know what they’re doing. Lebanon was their proving ground. The Revolutionary Guards built Hezbollah from scratch along the border with Israel and in the suburbs south of Beirut during the chaos of civil war and Israeli occupation. In Iraq they’re simply repeating the formula, only this time more violently.
Here’s the deal. You Iranians and your proxy leave us alone, we leave you alone. You let us declare “mission accomplished” and withdraw with our political ass intact, we let you keep your power base intact so you end up in charge of the place:
Neighborhoods all over Baghdad are being cleared of terrorists and insurgents as part of the surge. American soldiers are pushing them out of the city and moving into small houses and stations themselves in the neighborhoods where they can maintain security 24 hours a day. But Sadr City is still a no-go zone for American troops. I asked several high-ranking officers why, but they either don’t know or they don’t want to tell me.
Who is going to stop al Sadr — the Iraqi army?
The Bush administration is certainly prepared to live up to its part of the Grand Bargain with Iran:
The top American commander in Iraq said Wednesday he was preparing recommendations on troop cuts before he returns to Washington next month for a report to Congress, and believes the U.S. footprint in Iraq will have to be “a good bit smaller” by next summer.
But (Gen. David Petraeus) cautioned against a quick or significant U.S. withdrawal that could surrender “the gains we have fought so hard to achieve.”
…”We know that the surge has to come to an end, there’s no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we’ve got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now.
Fighting hard? Really? Not in Anbar, not in the south, not in the north, not against al Sadr in Baghdad or anywhere, and absolutely not against our negotiating partners-for-peace in Iran. Conveniently for Baker, Rice, Bush and the rest of our dealmakers, a drawdown will comfort the mullahs because it means the US won’t have the manpower to support airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities by launching the ground invasion necessary to clear Iranian forces from the southern coast. (Unless the Israelis force Bush’s hand early, that is, but if White House sock puppet Olmert can hang on he doesn’t have to stand for election until 2010.)
Next Petraeus sounds like he wants Tony Snow’s job:
Petraeus said the shift in loyalty among many Sunni insurgents in Iraq’s western Anbar province, Baghdad’s Amariyah district and a similar hotspot in the city called Ghazaliyah was “a pretty big deal.”
“You have to pinch yourself a little to make sure that is real because that is a very significant development in this kind of operation in counterinsurgency,” he said. “It’s all about the local people. When all the sudden the local people are on the side of the new Iraq instead of on the side of the insurgents or even Al Qaeda, that’s a very significant change.”
Yeah buddy, the Sunni insurgents and terrorists who sent you and your Commander-In-Chief scampering out of Anbar — and who you are now arming, funding, training and sanctioning as an autonomous sub-state — have decided you were right all along.
Sounds more like Petraus and his boss decided the enemy was right all along, and surrendered.
As per DP post “Federalism” Grows In Baghdad, Petraeus is working both sides of the street by also setting up Sunni militias inside Baghdad. That ought to keep the Arab League and the UN happy enough to shut up while the Best and Brightest try to put a neat little bow on their historic triumph of multilateral diplomacy.
PAST POSTS:
I’ve written so many posts about George Bush’s premeditated abdication in Iraq that I hardly know where to begin a list. For anyone who is new around here, I’ll limit it to a sampler:
Capitulation In Iraq: The Brass Hats Show Up
George Bush’s “Peace Plan” For Western Iraq
– also –
Recent post on al Sadr: Letting Al Sadr Off The Hook — Again
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
What does that mean?
This assessment is so far off the mark, I don’t know where to begin. The tribes stopped fighting us. The Sunni nationalist insurgents stopped fighting us. Because …
1. Al Qaeda became a bigger problem than the Americans. The Baathists screwed up after inviting them in, and now regret the decision, along with their missing fingers and beheaded family members.
2. The sheiks threw in behind the Americans, many of the insurgents threw in behind the Americans (and possibly soon behind the govt, in provincial elections), because they realized the Americans may be leaving, and they need to grasp at a share of the pie before they are forever consigned to an independent western state with absolutely no oil revenue.
And you call this “defeat?” What? They’ve sensed their impending loss and are trying to salvage something political, with the alternate plan - in the event of drastic American withdrawal - of readying for a possible civil war.
By your definition, crushing the Sunni insurgency militarily, rather than having them engage in the official security and political process, is the only victory. Good luck with that. The Marines would have had to kill every adult male in Anbar between the ages of 15 and 50.
Read this.
Climb down off it, Ardolino. Nobody’s feeding you holy writ on Iraq, either. As far as “the marines,” of course, hooey - but it’s your hooey. And why use them at all, when shortly after we invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam, we had seventy percent of the nation under Sistani ready and willing to eliminate the Saddamist holdovers and Sunni combatants for us? And heck, they could have gotten the job done without owing the Mullahs and their surrogate, al-Sadr, for it.
Go ahead and keep rooting for your “democracy in Iraq.” It ain’t happening, and as soon as we take a hike, the Shia will do what they wanted to do three years and several thousand US deaths ago. And what we should have permitted them to do, by the way. If we had, we might even have a friendly Shia government in the region actually grateful to us, and willing to support us.
Instead of the Iranian surrogate we’re going to end up with.
But hey, keep on playing that sweet, sweet tune about democracy and the Sunni lions lying down with the Shia and Kurdish lambs. Apparently it makes you feel good.
Even Mike Ledeen eventually figured out how much of an appetite GWB really had for honest battle against the Islamofascists. Let me put it to you bluntly:
We are not going to stay in Iraq. It is politically impossible, and we will leave sooner, rather than later.
As soon as we do leave, the Shia will have their civil war, and their religious cleansing. And they’ll have all the help they need from the theocracy in charge of Iran. You think those guys won’t be able to seal the borders against “reinforcements” from Saudi Arabia?
And none of what is going on in Iraq today is going to change that outcome one little bit - including GWB’s not very well concealed efforts to declare peace and victory and get the hell out.
Off what?
Again, I don’t understand what you’re attacking here.
In locations where the populations were mixed, easier. In the homogenous western part of the country, not as easy as you think. The Shia would have to marshal an army and conduct a war, essentially. It would not have been a pushover.
As I’ve previously written, my hopes for “democracy in Iraq” are very dim. I’ve lowered my best expectations to stability via an autocratic form of federalism. I’m not sure what portion of my comment above led you to believe that was my argument.
Again, not sure what you are talking about. My comment above talks about the Sunni motivation for grabbing power, not what I predict will happen. And I do note that they are also prepping for civil war.
This is silly.
I’m not arguing that GWB has a rock-solid appetite for battle against Islamofascists. I’m arguing that you can’t “lose to” or further “defeat” an enemy who will not fight. The Sunni nationalists in al-Anbar are NOT islamofascists. They enjoy cable tv, smoking and porn, lots of porn. This has caused them a great deal of conflict with the folks who are Islamofascists in al-Anbar.
Agreed, by if by “leave” you mean “withdraw most of the troops while leaving a significant regional presence in Kurdistan.”
Quite possibly.
No, not a chance they can seal off the borders. Look at the length of the border, look at the inability of the US to do it, with far greater aerial capability.
The thing is, I don’t vehemently disagree with you. But what I am saying is that calling Anbar defeat misses the point. We can’t beat them on your terms, unless we would have invaded, toppled Saddam and bugged out, and let nature take its course.
Now you can argue that that would have been a better course of action, but that’s not the same as telling me how America could have wiped out the Sunni insurgency with continued intervention. We don’t have the political capital to use the methods that 15 million pissed off Shia would use.
Finally, I’ll stress again: my hopes for liberal democracy taking place in Iraq - at least in the short to mid-term - were very naive. I haven’t held out such hope in quite a long time, especially since going to Iraq. But something a bit more possible, even if it does not look very good, is some sort of stability. If an oil-sharing accord can pass, then some sort of federalism or soft partition is possible. If not, civil war, or detente abetted by foreign powers using the major players in Iraq as proxies, looks likely.
Bluntly, it is not possible, and it ceased to be possible quite some time ago, when GWB made the conscious decision to wage “democracy” rather than war. And at the moment, the only “major” power with significant presence in Iraq is Iran. It certainly won’t be us, even if we somehow manage to keep a token force in Kurdistan. The minute we try to do something with them that results in the deaths of soldiers, they will be pulled out, too.
As for the borders, sure, the Shia could seal them. They don’t have to watch over “thousands” of miles, just over the places they know as well, or better, than the invaders.
As I said elsewhere, though, I’m going to put up something more thorough that addresses as many of our disagreements as I can.