April 28, 2007
"Let me of my heart take counsel:
War is not of life the sum;
Who shall stay and reap the harvest
When the autumn days shall come?
But the drum
Echoed, ‘Come!
Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum."David Sanger reported today in the NYT that despite the Bush administration's claims of "success" in Iraq, the White House and Pentagon expect that, when September arrives, any progress they hope to accomplish behind their escalation will be "limited." Despite that expectation of limited progress, Sanger reports that Bush doesn't plan to make any significant assessment of any success or failure of his escalation until autumn. By the time Bush's generals do their assessment of progress in September, he says Bush officials are hoping that Iraqis will have completed action on the long-promised reconciliation legislation.
In the article, Sanger outlines administration goals, which have, until now, been loosely defined in terms of a defense of the new Iraqi regime. U.S. officials, writes Sanger, are focusing on the Maliki regime's ability to manage legislation through the Iraqi parliament which would address the division of oil revenues, and would also effect a reversal of the disenfranchising de-Baathification which Bush and Rumsfeld ordered through the interim government they installed at the beginning of the occupation.
In effect, Bush has our soldiers waiting in Iraq for the completion of some political agenda by Iraqis. Certainly the need for a solution to the issue of the division of Iraq's oil revenues isn't an insignificant goal for the Iraqi regime. The matter of allowing banished Batthists to participate in the new government is a worthy goal as well. Yet, neither of these goals, if actually accomplished by Iraqis, would seem to be well-served at all behind the heavy hand of Bush's "surge" of troops into the sovereign nation.
In 2004, Bush changed the mission in Iraq from defense of whatever threat he had fraudulently conjured out of intelligence reports to justify the invasion, to an exercise in nation-building which he claimed would represent the advance of democracy in the region.
"There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom," Bush outlined in a 2004 speech at the U.S. Army War College. "We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people," he said.
Here we are, years after the Iraqi elections the Bush regime uses as evidence of Iraqi support for their military muckraking . . . the Iraqi elections which were carried out under another increased occupation; another "surge" of U.S. forces into Iraq. The elections which were supposed to herald in the "success" of the military operation. The results of that election did not bring the reduction in sectarian tensions Bush and his minions promised would follow the establishment of the Iraqi government and the ratification of their new constitution.
The faltering of the new regime is no surprise to the Iraqis in the Sunni communities whose neighborhoods were subjected to search and destroy raids and bombing strikes in the weeks before the elections were held; their residents denied free movement throughout Iraq as fellow countrymen (majority Shia) traveled uninhibited and protected by the invading army as they were allowed to vote.
Now the Bush administration has our soldiers in another increased occupation, expecting that the Iraqi regime will be able to manage these issues of reconciliation through their parliament behind the increased protection of our troops, even as our soldiers are being actively directed to muckrake through the opposition communities; intimidating with the force of our occupying army.
After meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan earlier in the month, Defense Secretary Gates welcomed the exit of ministers from the Iraqi parliament who associated themselves with Shiite leader, al-Sadr. "There is an opportunity to turn what might seem like a negative potential into a positive development," he said. "The impact these resignations have will depend in some measure on who is selected to replace those ministers . . . and whether those vacancies are used in a way that could further advance the reconciliation process"
What Gates (and Bush) expects - and what Maliki is counting on with his own support for the Sadr coalition's exit - is that the new Iraqi regime will now be able to consolidate their manufactured authority by replacing the Shiite ministers with members who would be more compliant than those who had openly resisted and protested the government's closeness with the U.S. occupiers.
In the meantime, Bush is content to leave our soldiers in Iraq fighting and dying in defense of one side (the Shia-dominated Maliki regime) of a multi-fronted civil war as his puppets muscle their already-compromised legislation through the Iraqi parliament. Democracy and freedom are what Bush claimed our troops are in Iraq fighting for. But, there hasn't been any democracy or freedom in Iraq for the people there to recognize, much less embrace. All that's been accomplished is an incredibly destructive overthrow of a sovereign government under false pretenses; the establishment of a standard-issue junta, complete with an increasingly intimidated and compliant parliament; and a deepening repression with our military forces of the very Iraqis Bush heralds for their "courageous" votes which enabled the new regime into power.
There's no need to wait until autumn to assess the effect of Bush's escalation on the "success" or "progress" of the Maliki regime. We have evidence enough of the destabilizing effect of the original imposition of the new regime on Iraqis behind the intimidation of the American occupying forces to judge the likely outcome of even more of the same repressive militarism cosseting new edicts handed down to Iraqis from Maliki's puppet authority.
There will be predictable waves of resistance from Iraqis who have, unfortunately, taken on the moniker of Bush's most successful nemesis, al-Qaeda. There will be even more resistance from unaffiliated Iraqis who will look to settle their differences outside of the corrupt and compromised government. We won't need Bush to make an autumn assessment of the progress of his escalation in Iraq. The awful failure of his increased and continuing militarism will be as evident as the increase in casualties which he admits will be a direct result of his pressing our troops forward; and he knows this.
Bush is trying to run out the clock and pass his failure off to the next presidential bunch who will inherit the messes he's made abroad. Despite his vain attempts to define his fiasco, this far, as some progress towards democracy -- and despite Bush's last ditch attempt to intimidate Iraqis enough for the new regime to demonstrate their predominance over them -- Iraq's propped-up regime will only have as much authority and influence as there is a ready force of soldiers whose lives some zealous leader is determined to put on the line to defend. Bush is more than satisfied -- he's anxious -- to sacrifice the 80-plus U.S. soldiers losing their lives each month in Iraq for his cause.
He's satisfied to sacrifice those troops; acting above and beyond the will of the American people and Congress expressed in the November elections, and in the withdrawal legislation heading to his desk for the bother of his fickle signature. Those troops who fall in Iraq will be the 'benchmarks' most Americans will use to measure the effect of Bush's cynical occupation, not some coerced legislative machinations of Iraqi politicians. As far as most Americans are concerned, Bush has already passed over 3300 'benchmarks' which should have directed him to bring our beleaguered troops back home a long, long time ago; many autumns ago.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree
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