Iraq is in a civil war and Bush is in fantasyland

[ProSense]

"There is no military solution to the political crisis in Iraq," Kerry said in a statement. "A 'troop build-up' or sending more troops into harms way to referee a civil war isn't an answer, its more of the same." -- John Kerry

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

To listen to Bush's speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

The answer to "al-Qaeda's" occupation of neighborhoods in Baghdad and the cities of al-Anbar is then, Bush says, to send in more US troops to "clear and hold" these neighborhoods.

But is that really the big problem in Iraq? Bush is thinking in terms of a conventional war, where armies fight to hold territory. But if a nimble guerrilla group can come out at night and set off a bomb at the base of a large tenement building in a Shiite neighborhood, they can keep the sectarian civil war going. They work by provoking reprisals. They like to hold territory if they can. But as we saw with Fallujah and Tal Afar, if they cannot they just scatter and blow things up elsewhere.

And the main problem is not "al-Qaeda," which is small and probably not that important, and anyway is not really Bin Laden's al-Qaeda. They are just Salafi jihadis who appropriated the name. When their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed, it didn't cause the insurgency to miss a beat. Conclusion: "al-Qaeda" is not central to the struggle. Izzat Ibrahim Duri and the Baath Party are probably the center of gravity of the resistance.

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Bush could not help taking swipes at Iran and Syria. But the geography of his deployments gives the lie to his singling them out as mischief makers. Why send 4,000 extra troops to al-Anbar province? Why ignore Diyala Province near Iran, which is in flames, or Babel Province southwest of Baghdad? Diyala borders Iran, so isn't that the threat? But wait. Where is al-Anbar? Between Jordan and Baghdad. In other words, al-Anbar opens out into the vast Sunni Arab hinterland that supports the guerrilla movement with money and volunteers, coming in from Jordan. If Syria was the big problem, you would put the extra 4,000 troops up north along the border. If Iran was the big problem, you'd occupy Diyala. But little Jordan is an ally of the US, and Bush would not want to insult it by admitting that it is a major infiltration root for jihadis heading to Iraq.

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Sectarian violence continues across Iraq

Unprecedented violence targets Iraqi civilians: HRW

October 2006:

KERRY: It has to be completely redefined, what it's going to be. And then you have John McCain, of all people, saying what you got to do is put 100,000 more troops in, which is a fantasy, when you look at the fact that, in the last few days, they put more troops in, 15,000. They brought more troops from Kuwait. They concentrated the troops in Baghdad, and they have failed miserably.

Successive US plans fail to quell Iraq violence

Wed Jan 10, 10:44 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush has presided over repeated plans and troop surges in Iraq, which pre-dated Wednesday's prime time rollout of a new strategy sending thousands more soldiers into battle.

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June 2006

After the Iraqi government is finally installed, Bush flies to Iraq for a briefing on the Baghdad government's new plan for improving security, national reconciliation and economic reform. A new plan called "Operation Together Forward" is designed to increase Iraqi Security Forces in Baghdad.

July 2006

Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki preview yet another new security plan, which calls for embedding more US military police in Iraqi units and a redeployment of US troops from elsewhere in Iraq into Baghdad after the previous plan failed after only six weeks. The US military admits in October the operation failed.

January 10, 2007

As US combat deaths hit 3,000, Bush unveils a new 6.8-billion-dollar plan for Iraq that includes sending more than 20,000 more US soldiers, in addition to the 132,000 currently in the country. More than one billion dollars of the money is aimed at shoring up Iraq's battered economy, civil society, infrastructure and judicial system.

Some 4,000 US marines will head to restive al-Anbar province and most of the rest to Baghdad.

Bush also said the Iraqi government planned to take control of security nationwide by November 2007.

John Kerry's response to Bush's speech on Iraq: NPR audio and http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/release.html?id=55">statement