Iraq lost?

[ScottSA]

Wait a second...what's really happening in Iraq? Unmitigated failure, or a tide change? No doubt there will be all sorts of attacks on the source...after all, the left loves to hate Krauthammer, but what about the facts that he's presenting?

Iraq’s 20 percent solution

Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post Writers Group

WASHINGTON — Amid the Senate’s all-night pillow fight and other Iraq grandstanding, real things are happening on the ground in Iraq. They consist of more than just a surge of U.S. troop levels. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have engaged us in a far-reaching and fundamental political shift. Call it the 20 percent solution.

Ever since the December 2005 Iraqi elections, the United States has been waiting for the central government in Baghdad to pass grand national accords on oil, federalism and de-Baathification to unify and pacify the country. The Maliki government has proved too sectarian, too weak and perhaps too disposed to Iranian interests to rise to the task.

The Democrats cite this incapacity as a reason to give up and get out. A tempting thought, but ultimately self-destructive to our interests. Accordingly, Petraeus and Crocker have found a Plan B: pacify the country region by region, principally by getting Sunnis to join the fight against al-Qaida.

This has begun to happen in Anbar and Diyala...

http://www.buffalonews.com/248/story/123235.html

[M.Dancer]

It's sort of light on facts and heavy on hope...we hope we can peel the sunnis away.....we hope the sunnis want a deal.....we hope the shia can be reasoned with...we hope the shia hate enough to fight (sunni) Al Qaeda but not so much they will fight the Sunnia proper.....

Almost 1400 civilians killed so far this month, mainly by terrorists of both stripes.

[jdobbin]

It's sort of light on facts and heavy on hope...we hope we can peel the sunnis away.....we hope the sunnis want a deal.....we hope the shia can be reasoned with...we hope the shia hate enough to fight (sunni) Al Qaeda but not so much they will fight the Sunnia proper......

That is the way of this particular journalist's work.

This is what he said last year:

Far from calling it an unqualified success, virtual or otherwise, I said quite bluntly that 'it may be a bridge too far'.

So was he wrong then or wrong now?

[JerrySeinfeld]

It's sort of light on facts and heavy on hope...we hope we can peel the sunnis away.....we hope the sunnis want a deal.....we hope the shia can be reasoned with...we hope the shia hate enough to fight (sunni) Al Qaeda but not so much they will fight the Sunnia proper......

That is the way of this particular journalist's work.

This is what he said last year:

Far from calling it an unqualified success, virtual or otherwise, I said quite bluntly that 'it may be a bridge too far'.

So was he wrong then or wrong now?

wrong then

[jdobbin]

wrong then

Ah, yes, He was mistaken. Iraq is a great victory.

[ScottSA]

Dobbin, did you read the article? He's talking bout a new policy that was not in place when he wrote the previous article. Duh.

Here's Dan Simmon's take on it. Dan is a rather well known author who has made it his business to become an expert on this Iraq thing:

Dan Simmons comments --

I have the Democratic Party's Talking Points (advice for candidates and boilerplate for party spokespeople) in front of me and they stress two things --

1) Say "the surge is not working" (even though the actual full complement of troops has been in place only a few weeks)

2) When someone points out that the surge IS working and HAS been working in Anbar and now in Diyala Province, say immediately -- "It's irrelevant what is happening militarily. Only a POLITICAL solution is possible in Iraq. And the Iraqis have failed utterly on the political front."

Now, stepping aside from these Democratic Party talking points -- which we've all heard from a variety of faces on TV -- we have to ask the question: When, in any conflict, was a POLITICAL solution ever separated from MILITARY victory (or defeat or even stalemate?)

A shift in U.S. military fortunes in Iraq (by applying ruthless -- to al-Qaeda -- and successful tactics of allying our troops with Sunni groups willing and able to fight, even while U.S. forces go after both Sunni and Shiite extremists) would profoundly change the political equation in Iraq. El-Maliki and the Shiite majority that we helped put into power can now afford to delay forever on legislation, reunification, allocation of oil moneys, deBaathification -- every piece of legislation the nation needs and which the U.S. Congress has demanded -- because the Shiites know that every day that the U.S. fights their battle for them there means another bit of advantage in the civil war, and possibly the war of genocide, they plan for after the U.S. leaves. The ultimate Shiite alliance is with Iran, not with the U.S.

This "ruthless" -- and so far amazingly successful -- policy of arming Sunni groups to join with crack U.S. troops to defeat al-Qaeda throughout the country serves the Shiite do-nothing leadership not at all. No wonder they're alarmed.

It is, as Krauthammer points out, something being done by American strategists IN American interests, and FOR the long-range stability of Iraq, and the current el-Maliki regime be damned. Under this strategy, if it takes another ten years for the recalcitrant Shiite government to "train up" Iraqi national army and police forces to the point they might be trusted with security, so be it. The U.S. forces, fighting hard (with almost zero American media coverage of the most ferocious and successful military operations since March of 2003) will have destroyed al-Qaeda in Iraq and provided a stable, albeit decentralized, Sunni- and Peshmerga-backed security throughout most of the country.

I would suggest that by the time we left Vietnam, the United States had no alternative but to leave. Not only was the situation there untenable and the rift to American society approaching the irreparable, but the geopolitical situation did not justify further American presence there. It was a disaster, but perhaps an unavoidable one.

But we're in a strange situation here where the disaster looming now -- a major al-Qaeda and jihadist victory that will reverberate around the world and endanger American lives and interests and policies everywhere -- IS avoidable. Yet, as Krauthammer points out, we seem to be rushing toward it, even embracing it, even as a way to military advantage (and possibly real military victory in terms of our goals of defeating Baathists hardliners, jihdadists, and al-Qaeda while providing security in the vast majority of the country) is within our grasp. Political realities in Iraq would then HAVE to conform to realities in the provinces, in the secured cities, and on the ground. An Iraqi national government and parliament that has done NOTHING of value for its people in two years would have to either give way to a real representative government or begin performing.

There is no reason, despite facile Democratic Party talking points to the contrary, that the security and amazing turnaround that U.S. fighting forces and Sunni alliances have brought to Rimadi, all of Anbar Province, and now to Diyala Province -- and driving north and south with the U.S. offensive -- can not, within a year or less, provide an entirely new basis for political accomodation. Providing the American public's will to tolerate more fighting can be revived.

The obvious question is -- if President Bush is not eloquent enough, or trusted enough, to explain this new reality to Americans, can General Petreaus or others do so?

And to respond to an earlier poster -- OF COURSE democracy can "be imposed." That is precisely what happened in postwar Japan and Germany. Those previously fascist and military-imperialist regimes were given no choice. Americans, British, and other democratic nations watched over their shoulders as they wrote their constitutions -- correcting them when they wandered from democratic institutions and principles, even though none had ever truly existed in those nations before. We then insured, through our occupying armies, that they implemented those policies. They seem to have done well enough after the occupying nations removed the training wheels and left. In fact, I wonder if one young German or Japanese in ten remembers that democracy was not the idea of their grandparents.

But when General Petreaus submits his comprehensive report in September and if, as it now seems probably, he lists the gains made by this new strategy of provincial alliances after military victories (allowed by the surge in U.S. troops), we all know that the Democrats will erupt in opposition, obstruction, and demands for immediate withdrawal (and consequences be damned.)

One has to wonder if this might be the single greatest self-imposed case in American history of literally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

-- DS

http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/sho...20502#Post20541

[jdobbin]

Dobbin, did you read the article? He's talking bout a new policy that was not in place when he wrote the previous article. Duh.

Here's Dan Simmon's take on it. Dan is a rather well known author who has made it his business to become an expert on this Iraq thing:

Simmons is an excellent sci-fi writer.

I read the article. I simply don't think that Iraq is going to be pacified. They are itching for civil war and no matter how many troops are in place, the U.S. won't be able to stop it unless the Iraqis themselves want to stop it. I've seen very little evidence that they do.

They keep postponing how long it will take to understand if the surge is working. Somehow, I don't think the American public is going to stand for...just wait till 2009 like we are hearing now in Washington.

Edited July 27, 2007 by jdobbin

[M.Dancer]

They keep postponing how long it will take to understand if the surge is working.

I believe the target date was and is September. But I doubt that it will make much difference in the long run. You are right, the Iraqis want civil war, and the only thing the US is accomplishing is keeping them from full scale genocide.

[jdobbin]

I believe the target date was and is September. But I doubt that it will make much difference in the long run. You are right, the Iraqis want civil war, and the only thing the US is accomplishing is keeping them from full scale genocide.

They said November in newscasts earlier this week and then said that if the surge continues to add troops, they might not know until 2009. I think this is just trying to foist it on the next President.

[ScottSA]

Clearly neither one of you read the article.

[Sulaco]

They keep postponing how long it will take to understand if the surge is working.

I believe the target date was and is September. But I doubt that it will make much difference in the long run. You are right, the Iraqis want civil war, and the only thing the US is accomplishing is keeping them from full scale genocide.

At this point - same thing we did in Kosovo, and arguably once we pushed Nato involvement, in Bosnia.

That might be a goal in itself. As we saw in Bosnia and in Kosovo the energies kicked up in ethnic war can spend themselves.

[jdobbin]

Clearly neither one of you read the article.

I read the article. I also read this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7072701282.html

The Shiite-led Iraqi government issued a sharp response Friday to a Sunni political bloc that is threatening to pull out of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration, saying the group's "threatening, pressuring and blackmail" cannot impede Iraq's progress.

And this:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07...q.shiite.south/

The fight between U.S.-led forces and militants in and near Baghdad and the sectarian civil war raging in the capital has overshadowed another grim wartime reality -- the factional strife in Iraq's southern Shiite heartland.

And this:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news...7/0727iraq.html

The U.S. military announced the deaths of seven American troops Thursday, hours after the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said a decline in the number of fatalities this month is an indication that an increase in American forces was having a positive effect.

And this:

http://www.latimes.com/la-na-iraqpower27ju...=la-home-center

s the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

And this:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5004410.html

During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest Iraq's prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Sadr's militia. Another document purported to offer proof that al-Maliki was an agent of Iran.

I think that each plan that comes up is one where the U.S. public is asked to be patient. This latest one says this patience needs to last till September, November or 2009 depending on who is asked in the Pentagon.

[Black Dog]

That’s why so many Sunnis have accepted Petraeus’ bargain — they join our fight against al-Qaida and we give them weaponry and military support. With that, they can rid themselves of the al-Qaida cancer now. And later, when the Americans inevitably leave, they’ll be better positioned to defend themselves against the 80 percent Shiite-Kurd majority they are beginning to realize they may have unwisely taken on.

So let me get this straight: in a country already wracked by sectarian violence (of which "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is a bit player at best), the "solution" from Krauthammer's standpoint is to back the faction guaranteed to lose the civil war without external support, thus guaranteeing the civil war will be long and blood.

If this article is accurate in it's basic facts (and given the source, there's plenty of reason to harbour doubts about that), then what we're really seeing is a shift by the U.S. towards the Sunnis, not as a means of eliminating "Al Qaeda" but to restore the status quo ante bellum: a secular, Sunni minority regime ruling the fragments of Iraq (the Iranian-backed Shhites and troublesome Kurds) with an iron-fist. It won't work, though. The genie is out of the bottle, no matter what some sci-fi writers have to say.

[August1991]

I have to agree with BD on this.

From Krauthammer's column:

For an interminable 18 months we waited for the 80 percent solution — for Maliki’s Shiite-Kurdish coalition to reach out to the Sunnis. The Petraeus-Crocker plan is the 20 percent solution: peel the Sunnis away from the insurgency by giving them the security and weaponry to fight the new common enemy — al-Qaida in Iraq.

The 20% solution is like backing Maronite Christians in Lebanon.

----

FWIW, I'm inclined to see the Iraq war in light of the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1992 when the Christians came to teh realization that they were a numeric minority and could no longer could dictate to majority. It took them almost 20 years to understand this and many Lebanese Christians chose to leave the country.

I reckon that the Americans are playing a role in Iraq similar to the Syrians in Lebanon. Neophyte, rural folk mixed up in the machinations of cosmopolitan urbanites.

[jdobbin]

Looks like Iraq won something.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20022030/

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Defying orders from authorities, revelers fired celebratory gunshots and poured into the streets after Iraq beat Saudi Arabia to clinch its first Asian Cup soccer championship on Sunday.

Mosques broadcast calls for the shooting to stop, and security forces enforced a vehicle ban in an effort to prevent a repeat of car bombings that killed dozens celebrating Iraq’s progress to the finals Wednesday.

I saw one truck driving down our street just a few minutes ago with the Iraqi flag flying and kids jumping up and down.

Alas, there was no gunfire.

[M.Dancer]

Clearly neither one of you read the article.

Clearly (*yawn*) I did.