Sidney Blumenthal: The American politics of Iraqi war

[babylonsister]

The American politics of Iraqi war
by Sidney Blumenthal | Sep 18 2007 - 9:52am |
article tools: email | print | read more Sidney Blumenthal

Two years ago the Sunni sheiks leading the insurgency in Iraq's Anbar province approached the United States, offering to end the violence in exchange for a timetable establishing that US forces would withdraw from the country, a senior official at the highest level of the British government told me. Without some sort of negotiated deal that the Sunni leaders could brandish, they explained, they would not have the essential political justification for quelling the conflict. The British believed that the Sunni offer was being made in good faith and urged that it be accepted

But according to the senior British source, President Bush rejected it out of hand, still certain that he could achieve a military victory. He saw any agreement with the Sunnis as tantamount to defeat, the British official said. And yet, even as the Sunnis were rebuffed, Bush continued to invest trust in the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi government to forge a political conciliation.

A contradiction evaded

On 13 September 2007, in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, billed officially as "The Return on Success", President Bush announced the withdrawal of 5,700 troops by Christmas and an additional 21,700 by July 2008, leaving the US force at the level it was before the "surge", through the presidential-election year, proving "sustainable security", according to Bush. As General David Petraeus did in his congressional testimony, Bush pointed to the turning of Sunni tribes against al-Qaida in Iraq in Anbar province as the key evidence of the surge's triumph, "a good example of how our strategy is working." But he did not discuss how he discarded the earlier Sunni offer to negotiate and dismissed the advice of the British government as he pursued the chimera of "victory."

He also carefully neglected to observe that the Sunni action against al-Qaida in Iraq began independently before the surge, that it was never foreseen as part of the surge, that the Sunnis politically are more estranged than ever from the Shi'a-run government of Nouri al-Maliki, or that the US arming of the Sunnis may be a perverse preparation for the next phase of the Iraqi sectarian civil war in the likely absence of political power-sharing. Yet the assassination of the Sunni sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha on the day of Bush's speech compelled him to acknowledge it: "Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheikhs who helped lead the revolt against al-Qaida was murdered."

Bush's progress report, moreover, contradicted other realities. He claimed, "Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done", such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces", and allowing "former Ba'athists to rejoin Iraq's military or receive government pensions." But these assertions were wishful thinking; neither of these events has happened. In fact, the deal on sharing oil revenue had collapsed that week. Bush went on to praise "the thirty-six nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq", despite the state department's most recent weekly report on Iraq observing that the remnant of the "coalition of the willing" consists of twenty-five countries supplying 11,685 troops - about a 7% augmentation of the US force. Bush also simply glided over the contradiction between his withdrawal of these 30,000 troops and his doomsday scenarios that withdrawing US forces will presage genocide on the scale of Cambodia.

A performance prepared

The appearance of General Petraeus was staged to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Yet the emotional impact of the memorials has been overshadowed by the fresh casualty lists from Iraq. The day before this 11 September, two US soldiers from the 82nd airborne, who had joined five others in writing an op-ed article for the New York Times saying that the surge was not working, were killed in action. Yet Bush still sought to wring political gain out of the tragic memories of 9/11 as though his paradise lost - the national unity after 9/11 - could be regained.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9991