Failure is an option

Clearly, the Bush Administration has little clue about what is really going on in Iraq. Another Congressman or GOP puppet, escorted by once and future Delta troopers, passes through some safe area, looks at a few schools and talks about "good news". The delusion of this can be seen if you read the translated reports of Nazi visitors to the East or the reports from Rand about Vietnam. How can anyone assume the occupied would tell the occupiers the truth about anything? What can a GOP Congressman do for an Iraqi that is going to liberate him from the Americans?

Congress, in it's own way, is just as guilty as the White House for delusional thinking. Europe is not going to bail us out. The Turkish offer of help, which cost $8B, is a trojan horse and may be the trick that unites Baathist and Islamic fundamentalist, Kurd, Sunni and Shia in a united front to oppose the CPA. Turks are deeply unpopular in Iraq and their motives are dark. Many in Congress, in both parties, believe if we can adjust the policy, support will come flooding along. That isn't the case. There's no popular support for doing anything but getting Americans out of Iraq. No European politician wants to say this to their American allies, but their citizens hope we fail in the most spectacular way possible. Years of high handed exceptionalism has made us enemies. A chastened US, driven from Iraq, its plans in tatters, Bush and Rumsfeld facing charges, is a dream among our allies. Privately, quietly, they want Iraq to change us into team players. It's not just the French, but the Germans, the Russians, everyone. They want the US to stop tossing its weight around on minor issues. It's time to play footie, just like everyone else does and get on the pitch.

Iraq is speeding towards civil war. When the US says things have improved, you need to know what matters and what doesn't.

First, schools and water and light are what sane people call basics. They should have existed without interruption. The scandal is that it took Saddam weeks and the US months to do the same thing.

Second, as long as security is a joke and the US plan to only support 1/10th of the size of the former Iraqi Army, it will remain a joke, nothing else can happen. It's only a matter of time, given the near open hatred between the US soldiers, who long to be anywhere else, and the Iraqi police, start to turn on each other. One night, the Iraqis will fade away and a police precinct will be blown sky high with only Americans inside.

Third, unemployment is rampant. Without jobs, the only employment for young men is guerrilla or criminal or both. Until people can work, they're gonna blow things up and steal.

Real improvement is work, security and 24 hour services. Anything less is a joke.

Bush's pathological inability to admit error means we will wake up one day and find Bremer either dead like Chinese Gordon, as his bodyguards lay crumpled beside him or surrounded by 100,000 Shia men, armed to the teeth.

Why?

What are the triggers to the civil war?

I think there are three:

1) The Turks move south.

The Kurds, fearing genocide like the residents of Haifa would seeing the 2nd SS Das Reich Division land on their beach, mine the roads, and start killing Turks as they cross through Kurdistan. Some small skirmishes, other large ones, but there's fighting and Turks are dying and then react in their usual subtle village burning and peasant raping ways. This draws the SCIRI (Hakim's boys) into the fight with the Kurds and the Sunnis join in as well. So you have the Turks facing a real fight and endangered supply lines and they react with force. So instead of the mythical Sunni triangle, you have all of Iraq, north of Baghdad resisting the Turks.

Once that happens, the US has to decide which ally to protect. If they protect the Turks, all Iraq turns on them. If they leave the Turks to hang, they violate the NATO treaty. And you never know how the Greeks, Russians or Iranians will play their hands.

The fighting expands across the country as an uprising against the CPA. Shia are not going to let more genocide happen to them and if the US can't prevent it, they will

2) The US arrests Sadr

If the US moves to arrest or kill Sadr as a "terrorist", East Baghdad erupts in rage. They flood out of East Baghdad and everyone goes for their guns. Sunnis fear a Shia takeover, Kurds go after the Turkmen for their final solution and everyone is at everyone. Sistani, sitting in Najaf, has to protect Sadr, so does Hakim. So they declare a fatwa, say that the IGC are tools of the infidels and everyone is off to the races. The mass, 1979-style protests start, flooding the streets with everyone and US troopers freak and kill everyone they see and then everyone finds their guns and the war is on for real.

3)Sadr decides to move

This is the riskiest of the scenarios. Sadr thinks he has the bodies and figures he'll present a fait accompli to Sistani and Bremer. So he and his 100,000-200,000 fans show up outside CPA HQ and decide to conduct an eviction. They say it's time to go and if you get stupid about it, we'll block all access to the building. The resulting stanoff freaks everyone out and power struggles erupt all over the country. The US troopers shoot, instant martyrs and you have a wave of human bombs going after checkpoints. All pretense of neutrality ends and Sistani says the US has to go.

The degree of control and violence is different, but all three mean the end of US control of Iraq. There are too many guns and RPG's and too few employed people for the US to survive any mass uprising without killing thousands of Iraqis in street massacres. There is no center, no Iraqi figure with enough respect to aid the US and those that are respected want the US gone.

Someone said unless there is a miracle in Iraq, Bush is in trouble. The real issue will be how great will the coming disaster be. Will we run like the Chosin Reservoir, walk away like Suez or have some kind of mad collapse like Vietnam. We won't be in Iraq for years. We haven't got enough troops to enforce our will. The only reason we're still there is the patience of the Shia and that will end, oh, starting next with with the start of Ramadan.

posted by Steve @ 1:51:00 AM