Why We Can NEVER "Win" In Iraq

We can't "win" in Iraq.

Why? Because ever since World War Two ended, the United States Military has refused to assume the role of government administration of occupied territory. In Vietnam, in Somalia, and now in Iraq, we see a repeating pattern: the United States won't assume control of the country and therefore can't enforce its will.

In 2003, the State Department recommended this exact plan before the war, but Bush is ideologically opposed to taking the advice of the State Department. Before the war, he refused to take State's advice against invading Iraq, directly after the war, he ignored State's existing occupation plan which was based on Nato's experiences in Bosnia. Now he ignores State's advice about regional negotiation.

Instead, Bush's answer was to hold a premature election (something that still hasn't been done to this day in the former Yugoslavia) and award rule of the entire country to the winners, which by sheer dint of numbers was very predictably the majority Shiite tribe. Bush talks a lot of game about going after both Sunni Insurgents and Shiite Death Squads, but in reality, the government of Iraq seems capable of going after only one of those parties... because the Shiites in the Iraqi Government are unwilling to kill their partners.

Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki is the leader of the Dawa Party which was founded by Moqtada Al-Sadr's father, his party's version of George Washington. Expecting for al-Maliki to suddenly turn on the party he's been a member of his entire life, and to betray and attack the son of the man who founded that party, is ridiculous.

As far as America's military force being capable of destroying the insurgency, that's impossible unless they CHOOSE to identify themselves and fight us openly. They did that once in Fallujah and learned their lesson. After America had killed several hundred of them, the rest of the insurgency realized the futility of open combat, laid down their weapons, mingled with the civilians and spread out across the country to concentrate on terror and guerrilla war. The Iraqi population cooperates with the Insurgency, either through ignoring them, collaborating with them, or just not telling the police and Americans where to find them. Why? Because they know that if caught helping the Americans, they or their families will be murdered.

If we wanted to, we could end the insurgency in Iraq tomorrow... history gives us brilliant object lessons in how to do so. The Roman Legions controlled Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa with only 300,000 troops (of which only 100,000 were profession full-time troops). How? By razing entire villages and killing everyone within whenever locals struck out against Roman rule. The Nazis controlled all of Europe with a minimum number of troops because they used the same method. If any German soldier was killed by local partisans, the Nazis would retaliate by killing 10, 20 or 40 locals until all resistance stopped. Despite the scenes from romanticized films, there was very little in the way of open attack on the Nazis by "resistance" forces because of the Nazis' vicious deterrence tactics. As a Democracy, America should not and must not take up these methods

We do not have the patience to govern Iraq ourselves, we don't have the stomach to terrorize the population into turning over the insurgents and terrorists among them, we won't engage with Iraq's neighbors to bring about a political solution, and because of these facts, we cannot win in Iraq.

What a Flaming Turd

I had just finished blogging about my suspicion that Bush has a pathological inability to admit mistakes, when I strolled over to Salon.com where Sidney Blumenthal confirmed my thoughts:

Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the report "a flaming turd," but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection.

Cheney galvanized his neoconservative allies inside and outside the administration to counter the Iraq Study Group. In order to have their own proposal they put Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff and longtime neocon fellow traveler, in touch with Frederick Kagan, an analyst at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, who urged a massive "surge" of troops into Iraq. Kagan and Keane and a team of neocons at AEI whipped up a PowerPoint presentation, and one week after the ISG report release, on Dec. 11, they were ushered into Bush's presence.

The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report. "Although the president was publicly polite," the Washington Post reported, "few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new 'way forward' in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme. As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton."

Donald Rumsfeld had been sacrificed as the secretary of defense, but his replacement, Robert Gates, a former director of the CIA and member of the ISG, turned from skeptic into team player. The Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command; and Gen. George Casey, commander in Iraq, all opposed the "surge" as no answer. Cheney and the neocons saw their opposition as the opening for purging and blaming them. The Joint Chiefs were ignored and sidelined, and Abizaid and Casey forced into retirement. Their dissent, leaked to the Washington Post for appearance in the paper on the day of Bush's "surge" speech, was an extraordinary gesture by the senior military leaders to distance themselves from impending failure.

So, because the Iraq Study Group's report didn't have any mention of a Surge™, Bush and his lackies seized upon a Surge™ as a way to differentiate themselves from the Baker-Hamilton commission?

That's pretty much what I would expect from a man unwilling to admit that he's made mistakes or that other people might have good ideas for fixing the problems he's made. The simple phrase "The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report" speaks volumes about the mindset of this man... petty, vindictive, angry at anyone with the temerity to speak out against him.

What a flaming turd.

That article also contains this brilliant summary of Bush's Surge™ Logic:

When the U.S. military commanders in Iraq and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein, Condoleeza Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed.

Maliki's management and subsequent defense of the gruesome circus surrounding Saddam's execution disabused any illusion that he could act in the larger Iraqi national interest rather than as a political representative of Shiite sectarianism. He is to his marrow a creature of the Dawa Party, founded by Muqtada al-Sadr's father, and his alliance with al-Sadr. While the intent of the surge is to revitalize the Maliki government, that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn't permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn't allow repudiation -- all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one.

Bush's "surge," therefore, is a military plan that cannot produce its stated political outcome and will instead further unleash the forces he claims will be controlled. His offensive to subdue the Sunni insurgents, for example, is already accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad by the Shiite militias, which, rather than being contained, are further empowered.

Yeah... like he said.

Bush has chosen to aid the Shiite militias in their endgoal: the complete elimination of the Sunni minority. I find it highly interesting that this lasst violent two days in Iraq were spent hunting and killing Sunni "insurgents" (which, y'know, some people call old men, women & children) when the Shiite Death Squads outnumber the Sunni Insurgents by a factor of 4 to 1.

Once those Sunni Insurgents are all dead, yes, it WILL be quite peaceful in Iraq... because Iraq will be a graveyard which shames anything that Saddam Hussein could dream up in his most feverish nightmares.

And we will have helped.

Wanna Watch Saddam Die?

Psst: wanna watch Saddam die?

Cell-phone video of Saddam's Execution Murder

Saddam Hussein was a brutal murdering scumbag, but I'll give him this: he went to the gallows like a man, and he was the only guy in his dank, squalid execution shed with a single shred of dignity.

I especially love how the hangmen all chant the name of Shiite Fundamentalist Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Because, you know, that's what professionals do. The best part is when Saddam sneers back "Feh. Moqtada" right before they hang him. You can hear the "Blow Me" in his voice.

Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!

Once more, WHY THE FUCK ARE WE BOTHERING? WHY? Why are we bothering? Nothing can fix this country. The people running it are Iranian puppets. We need to get the fuck out RIGHT NOW.

Did U.S. officials know that the designated "executioners" would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army"—the same group of thugs who killed several American troops after the liberation, the same thugs who murdered Moqtada's moderate religious opposition, and the same murderous thugs who engage in extra-judicial executions and beheadings of innocent Iraqis every day (and night)? Did our government or military ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions?

I ask, because from watching this video, it seems clear that Bush just helped carry out a crude Shiite coup d'état.

The timing —isn't anyone in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid to notice this kind of thing?— was explicitly designed to rub every kind of humiliation into Iraqi Sunnis. It profaned their observance of the Sunni Eid ul-Adha holiday (the day of forgiveness, incidentally) while gratifying the Shiite fundamentalists whose ceremonies begin one day later.

To have made Saddam The Butcher into a martyr, to have gratified one religious sect at the expense of another, to have short-changed all modern notions of judicial review, to have forever given up any attempts to retrieve billions of dollars in stolen money that only Saddam knew the whereabouts of, and to have cheated millions of Iraqis and Kurds of the chance for a full accounting of ALL of Saddam's crimes—what a fine day's work for the Bush Administration. Why could they ever have been eager to kill Saddam so quickly? Oh, RIGHT, now I remember...

We HELPED Saddam gas the Kurds and all the other shit he did in the 80's... and a real trial would have shown exactly how much George W. Bush's daddy had to do with all of that. Can't have that, nossirre! Bring in the men with the pleather coats and black ski-masks!

The government America set up in Iraq has been infiltrated by Religious Theocrat Nutjobs who just hung the only guy in the Middle East to ever stand in their way. And we helped them. Far from bringing anything like "closure," this grotesque hanging ensures that the death of Saddam Hussein will serve as a clarion signal that Iraq is fucked. Fucked beyond recovery. For the Sunnis, they now see exactly how "fair" their Judicial System is, and exactly how deeply infiltrated by the Shiite Militias it is, and exactly how little America gives a shit about it. Expect the sectarian violence to continue and expand... not because the Sunnis want to "revenge" Saddam (though there will be a few), but rather because what these black-hooded, leather-coated thugs just did to Saddam happens every night on the streets of Baghdad to innocent Sunnis, and now there's no disguising it.

The shabby, tawdry scene of Moqtada Al-Sadr's riffraff taunting their defenseless former tyrant as he stands silently in his noose is pathetic. While Saddam Hussein was alive, they cringed. Now, they find their lost courage, and meanwhile take the drill and the razor blade and the blowtorch to their fellow Iraqis. To watch this abysmal spectacle is bad enough. To know that the U.S. government had even a silent, shamefaced part in it is to feel something well beyond embarrassment.

Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!