Let’s face the facts on the ground in Iraq:
1. Nobody knows what to do about Iraq. Bush doesn’t. Cheney doesn’t. The Iraq Study Group of James Baker and Lee Hamilton doesn’t. The Democratic Party doesn’t. Kissinger doesn’t. The American people don’t. Not even the Iraqis do.
2. No amount of training of the Iraq Army can do anything to solve any Iraq problem. Fighting the insurgency is not the problem. The Shiite/Sunni civil war is the problem. Shiites in the army will not attack Shiites in the militias who are fighting the civil war. A trained Iraqi Army can do nothing about the civil war except join it and help the Shiites finish off the Sunnis sooner.
3. The central government of Iraq has no power. Iraq is run by warlords and their militias, not the government. If US forces pull out tomorrow, the Iraqi government will fall within 24 hours. Most of them will flee the country with our taxpayer money that they’ve managed to milk from our authorities in the Green Zone.
4. The strongest force in Iraq is the Mahdi Army, whose leader is Moqtada Al-Sadr. If the US forces leave, chances are he might become the strongman of Iraq – the next Saddam. He will ethnically cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis, and run an oil-rich Shiite region in alliance with Iran in the south, while the Kurds will take Kirkuk and run an oil-rich north. The former rulers of Iraq, the Sunnis, will prevail over a zero-oil Sunni region and enjoy a very impoverished irony of history.
Given these facts on the ground, what can the US contribute to the situation besides money, of which we have wasted far too much already — much of it on no-bid contracts to Halliburton and Bechtel?
We can help speed the outcome of the civil war by helping the Shiites kill the Sunnis. But we won’t do that. After all, the leading Shiite is our enemy Moqtada Al-Sadr, whom we tried to defeat in Najaf and failed.
Therefore, given that there’s nothing we can do, here’s what we should do.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Adam, this is one of the first comment I wrote at Blogcritics, in October, 2005. It is as timely now as it was then.
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I live in the "neighborhood" - Jerusalem is only 17 hours away by tank - so I do have some interest in this conflict in what was once known as Mesopotamia.
After all, we had to put plastic on our windows here to protect against the possibility of chemical attack when your armies invaded and unhorsed Uncle Saddam, and that possibility of chemical attack still exists, though not from Mesopotamia.
Note, that I use the older name for this country. Unlike Israel and Egypt, "Iraq" is an artificial construct of Winston Churchill. It has all the reality of a cigarette commercial. The three vilayets of the Ottoman Empire stitched together to create this "nation" have nothing to do with each other and it is only the probability that Iran would swallow up the three like a snack that argues for the vilayets remaining together at all.
The large number of bodybags going back to your land shows just how eager Arabs are to have Americans improving their future.
Arabs want your technology, but they don't want YOU, just like they want our technology, but most assuredly don't want US. Your government wastes both blood and treasure attempting to bring "democracy" to "Iraq" and "peace" here. The truth of the matter is that we Israelis need you here as much as the residents of Mosul, Baghdad or Basra do.
We don't.
It is my considered opinion that your nation ought to leave "Iraq" to split into its natural parts and leave us a free hand to destroy the nuclear capability of Iran and Syria. In addition, your nation ought to withdraw from its military presence here - (five bases) - and stop trying to force us out of OUR ancestral homelands. Your own interests are most effectively served by ousting the Wahhabi pigs in Arabia and undoing the damage the Union Bank and Prescott Bush did 80 years ago.
While I don't personally welcome the presence of your soldiers in this region, they would be far more effectively used occupying oil fields and forcing a cut in oil prices to a reasonable level - $15 a barrel.
Once that was done, and an enforcement mechanism was in place to make sure that never again would your or anyone else's economies be hijacked by "oil barons", your boys could go home and be with their wives and children - where they would be happiest and most productive.
2 - Dave Nalle
Adam, are you off your meds or something? This is one of the most sensible things I've ever seen you write. It's not only a good idea, it's one which might actually be feasible and one which the government of the US might even consider.
I question whether maintaining a disengaged but ongoing presence is practical, but I think it's certainly well worth considering.
Oh, and I have a GREAT name for the operation - Sword of Damocles.
Dave
3 - Adam Ash
Why, thank you, Dave. And I LOVE your name for the operation.
Adam
4 - Deano
Hmmm.. I prefer the old standby: "Look! What's that over there!"
.....and we sidle on out the back.
5 - Nancy
Adam's plan is a good one. I would add only that hopefully we would have the brains to clean up our stuff (vehicles, weapons caches, supplies, etc.) & not leave it lying around as gifties for the raghead recidivists, but given the profligate mentality of our military, who regard money as well as materiel as growing on trees somewhere back home here, I doubt this will happen.
6 - SFC SKI
Well,l I don't agree with several of your arguments, but this is the first article you have written that did not make me lose my composure.
As for Moqtada al Sadr, we dithered and ddanced around him for far too long, trusting in the Iraqis and hoped for the best, rahter than either arresting him or taking him out of the equation altogether, and not one positive things has come from it. You don't win a war by half measures.
7 - Lumpy
This article was a revelation for me. Who would have thought that Adam was not a complete idiot. Apparently when he gets away from his Bush obsession he thinks a lot more clearly.
8 - Peter J
Adam,
Many good points, too bad you don't have an ear in Wash. who will acknowledge a civil war between the Shiites'and the Sunnis' rather than a worr on terr-orr.
The American people can sit and speculate til the WMD's come home but if the new Democratic regime doesn't step up soon and get the generals involved in the decision making mechanics it's just gonna be more of the same
9 - Dave Nalle
On thinking about this a bit more, I think a variant of Adam's idea might be better.
What we ought to do is pull our troops out of Kurdistan (and give them all the financial and material support they need) and pull them out of the Shia dominated areas. Concentrate them in the Sunni areas, expell anyone troublesome, including all shia in Baghdad. Give the Sunni the center and west, give all the south to the Shia and keep them separate. Put ALL of the US forces in the Baghdad area. Let the Iranians deal with the Shia in southern Iraq and we'll take care of the Sunnis. Fortify the border to keep Shia out of the Sunni area.
Sort of like Adam's idea, but maybe more practical.
Dave
10 - STM
Dave, what's going on old boy? We can feel the love. Did you get a bit?
11 - Bliffle
If Iraq is divided on sectarian lines there will be interstate warfare instead of civil war, for soveriegnty and oil. Same battles, different words. Do we propose to take sides? If so, which one?
12 - STM
Of course, Adam, the one big problem with this is that the majority of Iraqis ... the ones you don't hear about because they're not out popping off AK-47s or letting off IEDs or cutting off people's heads ... are a) not unhappy that the US is there, or that b) the coalition removed a hated despot.
These are the people who want jobs, a place in the modern world and their children to go to school without being blown up.
To leave the 90 per cent of Iraqis who want a single country with a mixing of its disparate national and religious groups as part of its identity would be an obscenity.
All it means is that, having begun this process we now visit even more suffering upon them by leaving them to the whims and vagaries of people given to mass murder and mayhem.
13 - G.Oren
Since I haven't posted to this list in awhile it was a shock to me to see Dave say he agreed? with Adam on anything - nevertheless - I think the hunkerdown mode has a lot of plusses, it allows us to avoid the cop role, that we've never been good at, and keep an eye on the big picture of say border interdiction (maybe we can protect Iraq's borders better than we do our own), and therefore project our firepower to maximum effect.
An alternative would be to officially recognize a balkanized Iraq and quickly move to establish zones of authority that would limit confrontation between Shiites and Sunnis. This alternative would also have the advantage of allowing us to claim that we were trying to "give the Iraqis what they wanted" when the inevitable breakdown and civil war accelerates anyway, thus avoiding one of the reactions that occur from the hunkerdown approach - the criticism that we are cynically allowing sectarian violence to take place. The balkanization plan would be even better if we could get other muslim countries to send troops to maintain peacekeeping lines between the zones. If Arabs, Kurds ands Persians want peace, whether they are Sunnis or Shiites, let them trust their fellow Muslims to help them keep the peace rather than the U.S. devils.
14 - G.Oren
Dave: I see that while I was too slowly typing my thoughts you placed a good variant in as #9 - yours is also a very workable plan, except it still allows the Sunni insurgents to pepper us if we venture away from the green zone.
15 - Dave Nalle
I think we'd have to make a deal with the Sunni insurgents, which they're already talking about doing anyway. The Sunni insurgents are only insurgents because they want a role in running the country. Give them one and they stop causing trouble. Their objectives are much more managable and acceptable than those of the Shia who just want to have a holy war and kill anyone who stands in their way.
Having a single area to defend would also be a lot more feasible logistically. Splitting your forces is never a good idea.
I'm sympathetic to the plight of the 'good' shiites who would be left to the mercy of Iran, but to be truthful, aside from an excessively religious legal system and some curtailing of free speech, the Iranians are far from the most oppressive rulers in the region, and they'd create a local Shiite puppet state anyway.
Dave
16 - S.T.M
Dave Nalle said: "the Iranians are far from the most oppressive rulers in the region."
Now Im convinced you're a bloody spook Dave ... not too many people anywhere know that to be the truth, let alone in America,
That bloody font business is just a cover ....
17 - j sass
this is a good plan. One consideration is that the Iraqi people (insurgents and otherwise) may like us even less as the impartial referee. Especially since the Sunni's are out-numbered and it is almost a given that the Shiite faction will run the country. It could mean continued IEDs and continued hostilities. Is it right to start and civil war and then become spectators? What then?
This war was based on the assumption that Iraqi's like freedom and would fight for it. They have shown neither. Somehow, we expected these people to turn into the John Hancock's and George Washington's of the Arab world and that expectation was off by miles. I keep hearing these numbers about 90% of Iraqis really want freedom. Who says? Where are they? What are they doing about it? surely 90% can control 10%. It's because 10% want freedom and 10% are insurgents and the remaining 80% don't care- at least not about freedom or democracy. Have you heard of a freedom insurgency in Iraq? We should put Saddam back and leave. They deserve each other.
18 - Georgio
Adam..what a great article it should be sent to Washington...
What great comments from all the bloggers and good ideas too..I especially like Dave's additions and Ruvy's idea about the oil fields and letting Israel take out Iran's nukes..
Good God this is the first time I have seen Republican and Democrat bloggers all agree on a sensible plan ..Someone PLEASE send it to congress..
19 - Dave Nalle
Now Im convinced you're a bloody spook Dave ... not too many people anywhere know that to be the truth, let alone in America,
I was born in Beirut, lived in Syria, Iran and Jordan and my dad headed up the middle east desk of USIA for a number of years, so I've got some idea what's going on there.
The evil of Iran is obviously overstated. Not that the country isn't severely fucked up and our deadly enemy, but the forms which repression takes there are mainly of their own choosing and with the acceptance of the people. They have created a functioning and democratic theocracy and implemented Islamic law with all the inequities which that entails. From a western perspective it's hateful, but IMO it's a legitimate form of government. In fact, it may be one of the most functional and sensible governments in the region.
Dave
20 - Bliffle
Here's a Primer: Everything You Need To Know About Iraq.
21 - Dave Nalle
Well, Bliffle. You certainly managed to find something truly moronic to link to. Congrats.
If you want a more realistic assessment of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan as a bonus, read the most recent CIA briefing summary.
22 - STM
Dave wrote: "In fact, it may be one of the most functional and sensible governments in the region."
I think you might be right ... it's just a shame about the silly president and his sabre-rattling.
23 - Clavos
... it's just a shame about the silly president and his sabre-rattling.
And who, by most accounts, isn't even the real power in Iran.
24 - STM
No, of course not Clav ... it's the Shi'ite religious authorities. But he's their man, old boy
25 - STM
Stinkey wrote: "Dirty diaper headed camel fucking pigs."
Thanks so much for your reasoned input. Always nice to have a well-thought out point of view. But shouldn't you be at school mate?
While you're there, get them to teach you how to spell stinky.
[STM: "Stinkey" is one of the names used by that cranky old "sr" and his racist drivel has been deleted. Please don't engage with him. He's old and apparently often drunk when he comes on here writing such offensive stuff. Comments Editor]