In Iraq and In Washington, Reality Bites
The closer we get to the end of the Bush administration, the more honest the assessments of where we are in Iraq and where we’re going have become, at least from some key players.
Consider these comments by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, at this week’s hearings on Capitol Hill:
- There is progress, but it’s “fragile”.
- There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
- The end is not in sight.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the ranking American civilian in Baghdad, added in his own testimony that everything about Iraq is hard, but he said that hard doesn’t mean impossible.
A hearty dose of caution and reality was about Petraeus’s and Crocker’s only option, though, arriving as they did in Washington after two weeks of internecine warfare among Shiite Muslims in southern oil port of Basra and Baghdad and a staggering public display of the shortcomings of Iraq’s security forces and police.
With U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki on scene to command his government’s hasty and ill-conceived operation against the street fighters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, the world was treated to the sight of more than 1,000 of Maliki’s soldiers and officers surrendering themselves, their weapons and their armored vehicles to their Shiite brothers on the other side.
Sadr’s forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City promptly launched rocket and mortar barrages on the heavily fortified Green Zone, the headquarters of the U.S. military and civilian bosses in Iraq, and of Maliki’s government and parliament.
Iraqi and U.S. forces then pushed into Sadr City but were met with fierce resistance and a rising casualty toll.
All of this underscored the fragility of the gains in security from the so-called “surge” of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops, an escalation that will be over by the end of July, much to the relief of Pentagon officials who warn that the Army and the Marine Corps are nearing the breaking point.
The latest outbreak of fighting also should draw fresh attention to the nature and quality of those gains and to the failure of the Maliki government to take advantage of the breathing room bought at the cost of American blood and American treasure to make more than modest political progress in a deeply divided nation of warring sects and tribes.
The images that flowed out of Basra and Sadr City answered any lingering questions about whether the Iraqi Army and police are competent and capable of stepping into any vacuum left by withdrawing American security forces. If the government sends its security forces against their co-religionists, their will to fight seems to evaporate.
Given that sad reality, Petraeus sensibly proposed and President Bush accepted a plan to continue the planned drawdown of the additional American troops until all are gone by mid-summer, and then to hold off on any further withdrawals for 45 days of assessment.
The president said he’d be comfortable with an even longer pause. Right. That way he can kick the can down the road to January 20, 2009, and hand his war over to whoever wins the election.
Bush followed the Petraeus and Crocker appearances with more talk about the fruits of victory in Iraq and the need to hang in there. He said that Iraq was a difficult situation, but that the war wouldn’t be endless.
In other words, his predictable prediction was for more of the same until he makes his getaway and rides off into the sunset.
Rather than face up to the shortcomings of his Iraqi allies _ and of his own policies _ the president is now blaming Iran for all that’s wrong in Iraq. (Six months ago, it was all the fault of Sunni extremists, whom the administration now claims are on the run.)
It’s true that Iran is happily backing virtually every major Shiite group in Iraq _ including U.S. ally Maliki’s Dawa Party. Unfortunately for Bush, however, Iranian meddling also helped end the fighting in Basra. Specifically, as McClatchy Baghdad Bureau Chief Leila Fadel revealed, the head of the Islamic Republican Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force brokered the ceasefire between the Iraqi security forces and Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
It was easy to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. Easy, too, to let the genie of sectarian violence out of the bottle. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their neo-conservative cheerleaders predicted that our troops would be greeted as conquering heroes, that the war would cost only $50 billion, last only three or four months and implant Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East.
Now it’s harder than Chinese algebra to get out after five long years of war, an American death toll of more than 4,000, an Iraqi death toll numbered in the hundreds of thousands and a cost to the United States estimated at as much as $3 trillion if the war ended tomorrow.
How much more American and Iraqi blood must be spilled between now and January 20, 2009, so George W. Bush can boast that Iraq wasn’t lost on his watch, that he never cut and ran and that - never mind - it wasn’t al Qaida or Iran that defeated us in Iraq, it was the Democrats?
Joseph L. Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, is the co-author, with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” a story of the first large-scale ground battle of the Vietnam War.
© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers
“BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.”
How much money did George Neo-Con our Neo-Congress to train and equip these 1300 Iraqis for al-Sadr? We get the war debt but who gets the warbucks?
And what did theses 1300 Iraqi dismisees do with their US supplied and paid for weapons?
Just wondering…
THIS IS GREAT NEWS ! now those 1300 men are free to fight for the other side… against us and maliki….HOW SMART WAS THAT !
All you have to know to answer the question about whether the ’surge’ is working is that the ‘Green Zone’, the relatively tiny American walled crusader castle/fortress-of-occupiers in the center of the counry, aka Fort Apache, is being rocketed! There isn’t one inch of real safety or stability in the whole country!
They are rocketing the Green Zone! Five years on! That says it all. The stupid Bush war is lost, and it and the occupation are a multi-trillion-dollar failure. And, as this article indicates, Bush wants to wash his hands of the debacle, and blame someone else. And Cheney wants to start another war, with Iran, in part to distract attention from the fiasco they created in Iraq, and to have an air-war ‘victory’ somewhere. Even with Iraq in shambles, they may just start it up with Iran, anyway.
It’s the occupation, stupid.
What is odd about the picture of al-Maliki going after Sadr’s militia? The militia run by the Kurds is okey-dokey, the militia that Petreyus pays to keep the peace in Sunni areas? No problemo! When it comes to Sadr’s men, who were the glue that held the south and much od Baghdad together after the invasion, they are the enemy and in the next elections in this rising democracy Sadr’s party will be disqualified. Why is he singled out in a country of militia’s? Because he is powerful and more popular than the government and Bushco doesn’t like him. They all know that he would be the big winner in the elections, simply for the fact that unlike the al-Maliki “government”, he has real power. He and his brigades could actually bring stability to Iraq, if given the chance, but it would come with the assistance of Iran and an even closer relationship with Iran. Eventually it will happen, but the neo-cons couldn’t predict this outcome that so many saw coming - a strong Iraq/Iran partnership that would be more powerful than Israel/America in the region. Sort of makes the Saddam option a long ago dream that would have saved 4,000 lives and a trillion tax dollars.
Bush the failed oilman and Cheney the oil company exec took office with oil at $15 per barrel; now it’s pushing $115 - a 600% increase. Mission Accomplished!
The wrong dictator was hanged!
Cut and run? That’s what all the US military have done. A lot of Iraqis have done so too, but not most.
Why is it that Iraqi civilians are so much tougher and braver than the “proud” members of the US military?
Memo to George II: The “war” was lost the moment you decided to invade. No amount of fancy footwork can ever change that reality. If humanity survives long enough to recover from this dangerous time, honest histories will point the blame right at you.
Re:whatfools…”How much money did George Neo-Con our Neo-Congress to train and equip these 1300 Iraqis for al-Sadr?”
I don’t know, but I can bet you a lot of American defence contractors found the whole exercise to be quite profitable. Democracy or building up Iraqi security forces is never what it is all about. It is about finding excuses to funnel middle class tax dollars to a few, Republican friendly, corporations.
“Why is it that Iraqi civilians are so much tougher and braver than the “proud” members of the US military?”
What a piece of dirt. How the hell would you know anything about how tough and brave anyone is? Time to stop the disrespect for people that keep you from being drafted.
Thomas More:
Compare time in Iraq for Iraqi civilians versus US soldiers. Most Iraqis survive in situ, while US soldiers all take long breaks out of country. Compare casualty rates: Iraqi civilians endure much higher rates than US soldiers. Iraqi civilians are tougher and braver than US forces because they are forced to be. Nobody wants to have to be that tough and brave, and US forces are rarely required to be, although a few are.
Smedley Butler compared the US Marines to gangsters. If we compare the present day US military to US street gangs like MS-13, Bloods, Crips, etc., it is the latter who endure much higher casualty rates, and they also do a far better job of IFFN.
Nobody in the US military keeps me or anybody else from being drafted. No draft is needed to fill the relatively small number of jobs in the US military associated with national defense. The US military has retention and recruitment problems because too many of its jobs are killing people overseas to fatten the pockets of the already wealthy.
Lies, Lies, and Damned Lies, someone said. Isn’t it a travesty MoveOn.org got conspiratorialy chastised in the corp controlled BushCo cowed media for telling the truth with “Petraeus Betray-US”? What we need is some really brave cats to come on board (our seriously listing ship) before all these neo-CON rats get away, by this I mean members of the military who have figured out their mission was based on, and their buddies died for, a LIE.
Another sadness is the sympathy rightfully felt for victims of the Holocaust has now turned into rage against Isreal because of the actions of a relatively small cabal of Zionist terrorists.
RE: gde April 14th, 2008 1:16 pm said:
“Nobody in the US military keeps me or anybody else from being drafted.”
While I certainly agree with most of your post I think you are missing the point that a draft would have quickly ended this illegal invasion. The American people would have been more apt to question why we dropped the ball in persuit of Bin Laden to go after Iraq, who had done us no injury except perhaps verbal abuse for a screwed up vicious foreign policy.