Joe Conason's plan for Iraq

[Mass]

Interesting and thought provoking.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/12/03/iraq_plans/


The only way out

All the plans the Democrats have offered on Iraq rely on wishful thinking. Here's one that might actually work.

By Joe Conason

Dec. 3, 2005 | OpinionHouse Democrats want a "timetable" for American withdrawal from Iraq. Senate Democrats want a "year of progress" on Iraq. Senate Republicans want quarterly progress reports about Iraq. The White House offers a glossy brochure and a Web site as the U.S. "plan for victory" in Iraq.

No wonder the American people -- who know that the president has lied to them repeatedly about this costly bloodshed -- have lost faith in George W. Bush, his party and his war, without gaining confidence in the opposition. Both sides are squandering the opportunity for a decent, honorable and constructive conclusion to the war because they will not face the realities honestly.



...

What both the president and his hapless critics have refused to acknowledge is that we are in a bind. We cannot provide enough troops to pacify Iraq -- indeed, we can scarcely maintain the current level of troop strength for an additional year. We cannot train the Iraqi army and security forces quickly and thoroughly enough to pacify their country before we will be forced to reduce our own commitment. And we cannot leave abruptly without an unacceptable risk of civil war that eventually widens into a dangerous regional conflict involving Iran, Jordan, Turkey and possibly Israel.

There is a decent and honorable way out that has been addressed by the Iraqis themselves but that no American politician, not even the brave Murtha, is willing to mention: negotiations with the Sunni insurgents. The elected Iraqi government, representing a population eager for us to leave, should begin talks with rebels who are willing to discuss laying down their arms, in exchange for an orderly and scheduled American departure. That is the only way to transform the U.S. occupation from a stick into a carrot -- and to extract some kind of victory from what is becoming a strategic disaster.

[sandnsea]

1. Yes, it requires a political solution

I thought I heard that flying in the wind somewhere. The real struggle in Iraq – Sunni versus Shiia – will only be settled by a political solution, and no political solution can be achieved when the antagonists can rely on the indefinite large scale presence of occupying American combat troops.

[tocqueville]

2. negotiation with the Sunni insurgents is not enough

why should they lay down their arms to be massacred by the Shiites when the US leaves ? They are not that stupid.

But Conason is on the right track

For me the solution is a political package deal with the Iranians, the Syrians and the Kurds. The outside powers have to guarantee that no split will occur, by protecting their own groups. The US departs (including bases), and to have the deal plays down the criticism of Iran and Syria.

I bet Kissinger did such a deal to end the Vietnam war. The south was lost anyway. Vietnam was okeyed to play the role of the local peacekeeper (they did it in Laos and Cambodia), but Thailand, Malaysia etc where left in peace. Their guerillas disapeared very rapidly. And of course Russia and China kept an eye over everybody.

Besides such a peacekeeping in Iraq with backed security from Syria and Iran for both Sunnis and Shiites would be a deadly blow to Al Quaeda. The Shiites and Sunnis would throw them out back to Saudi Arabia within one week. Their tolerated role of "useful idiots" wouldn't be necessary anymore.

This doesn't have to mean Syrian troops or Iranians inside Iraq. Maybe some external like North-Africans and Egypt. Europe could back up with with logistics, to avoid further US interference.

The only way is political negotiation. But the US have to stop threatening Iran in Syria as a counter measure. A peace conference could signal an ordely departure and not end up in a forced withdrawal, which would be the only other solution.

Besides the US could always have a rapid reaction force in Quatar, as Murtha proposed.

[K-W]

3. We need to get parties to the negotiating table,

and move this into the diplomatic sphere.

But why would Washington ever want to do that?

[newswolf56]

4. Conason's error is his arrogant assumption Bush is a blundering fool:

Too entrapped by the reflexive denial purposefully built into the Republicans-Are-Morons shibboleth, Conason (like so many other Democrats) cannot bear to acknowledge the probability the chaos in Iraq is deliberate: the carefully structured expression of methodically crafted policy -- as I have long argued, as an increasing number of Europeans (and a growing handful of Americans too) now believe:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/12/02/120.html

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis based on information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.

We first reported here in August 2003 that the United States was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and reopening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias -- including religious extremists armed and trained by Iran -- were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.

Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs -- who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports -- with U.S. advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

Among this excellent article's many footnoted references, see particularly "Robert Dreyfus on Bush's Deadly Dance with Islamic Theocrats":

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=39971

...American forces in Iraq, (Dreyfus) writes below, are now "the Praetorian Guard" for a radical right-wing Iraqi theocratic government in Baghdad, one deeply indebted to that full member of the "axis of evil," Iran. Dreyfuss is the author of a remarkable new book, The Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. It's a striking history of how, for the last half century, successive American administrations have bedded down with right-wing Islamic movements.

The increasingly absurd notion that Bush is merely a "stupid blunderer" not only excuses his alleged mistakes but minimizes the magnitude of the savagely fascist threat Bush, his administration and his corporate sponsors pose to American liberty and global wellbeing. Conason by his arrogant blindness is thus turned into an inadvertent administration propagandist, disseminating the doctrinal spawn of the Bush/Goebbels/Rove/Norquist tactic obviously derived from a Fundamentalist Christian notion: "the smartest move the Devil ever made was to convince people he doesn't exist."