Staying the Course...With Iran
Iran.
Both President Bush and Iran are intent upon preventing internationalization of the Iraq crisis.
President Bush doesn’t want to talk to Iran and Syria about stabilizing Iraq because that would mean admitting that our self-created problems ahem challenges in Iraq are too big for us to handle ourselves, and the Decider in Chief would have to bargain for help in the Middle East souk with the local leaders who despise him, and whom he has villified for so long.
Iran doesn’t want to internationalize Iraq because, well, Iran’s doing great right now and why let the Saudis and the Egyptians and Jordanians try to use some international conference to limit or even roll back the gains that the Shi’ites and Iran have made in Iraq?
As Juan Cole wrote:
AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have all rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani said, "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation . . ."
If Talabani can decide the fate of Iraq, he should please go ahead and do it. It looks pretty out of control to the rest of us, and we don't think he's in a position to turn down Annan's offer of help. In fact there is something sinister about the top Kurdish and Shiite leaders rejecting an international conference that might help stop the Night of the Living Dead. Basically, they seem to be saying that they've come out on top and are happy with the status quo, and aren't interested in compromise or negotiation.
Per the AP, Hakim reiterated the point in his meeting with the President:
Bush met at the White House with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader of the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament.
Al-Hakim said that he "vehemently" opposes any regional or international effort to solve Iraq's problems that goes around the unity government in Baghdad.
In fact, Hakim stated:
Al-Hakim, after what he called a "very clear" meeting earlier with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters in Arabic that "we have asked for the American forces to stay in Iraq" to enable Iraqi security to deal with terrorists.
This is a big deal, considering that the Baker Commission recommendations are supposed to be announced tomorrow.
Bush and Cheney want to make sure they’re DOA.
Bush probably brought Hakim to Washington to deliver these nuggets condemning internationalization and withdrawal in order to drive a stake in the heart of the Baker plan to negotiate with the regional powers for a way to extract America from Iraq and leave some semblance of stable, representative government in its wake.
If the Baker commission is successfully torpedoed, the way is clear for chaos and bloodshed to persist in Iraq, unchecked by paternal, international, or Democratic do-gooders.
“Mission Accomplished” in Bush-speak.
Hakim’s visit is also a pretty good indication that the so-called “Shi’ite tilt” is a done deal and the Bush administration is going to give the Shi’ite central government a chance to consolidate its gains and give it a free hand in crushing the Sunni insurgency a.k.a. the terrorists.
The payoff that the Bush administration dreams of — the destruction of Iraq’s Sunni minority as a military and political force—is probably asking for too much.
The central government forces have not demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm for slugging it out toe-to-toe with Sunni insurgents.
An article by Solomon Moore in the Dec. 4 LA Times described the failure of units of an elite Iraqi division to hold together during a botched raid in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.
_"Fear took over" among the Iraqis, Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter said. _
"They refused to move. We were yelling at them to move," he said. "I grabbed one guy and shoved him into a building. I was saying, 'God get me out of this, because these guys are going to get me killed.' "
The offensive was initially billed by U.S. officials in Baghdad as an Iraqi-led success...
And Saudi Arabia and Jordan are not going to stand idly by as their co-religionists in Iraq are slaughtered for the sake of Shi’a ascendancy.
But there’s another process that may deliver an outcome well short of victory, but still politically spinnable.
Inside the Beltway, it also has a name: the Salvador option. Laura Rozen has described it.
It’s supposed to be gloves-off counterinsurgency, none of that hearts-and-minds crap. It’s indigenous death squads on the front lines, with US advisors and logistics in the rear echelons. It’s also got that convenient “I wash my hands of the matter/plague on both their houses” moral detachment and ethical abdication that’s necessary when you’re encouraging people to kill and be killed in the service of a cause you’re unwilling to fight for yourself.
The hope is that brutal measures that have been beyond the United States but are presumably well within the comfort range of the Iraq government will turn the focus of the insurgency away from the United States’ forces and focus its attention on a life-and-death struggle against its implacable Shi’ite foe.
Reality will be a little less glamorous.
The Salvador option will probably evolve into little more than a dirty war against soft Sunni civilian and political targets.
That’s way easier than the dangerous business of identifying, isolating, and neutralizing elements of an armed insurgency.
And that’s a war that the Shi’ites are itching to fight. In fact, they’re fighting it already with death squads, power drills, and kerosene.
No wonder they’re turning handsprings over Brother Bush’s willingness to unleash them, unchecked either by US policy or regional pressure.
And when the Shi’ite government has used our military and financial support to eradicate the Sunnis from Iraq’s national political life and consolidated Shi'a rule in Baghdad (even as the insurgency festers in the oil-free boondocks of Anbar), they’ll be happy to ask us to leave.
That’s a win/win! Kinda.
And only if one has the incredulity to believe whatever vigorous hand-jobbing Hakim has administered to the beleaguered Bushmen on the subjects of eternal friendship and permanent bases.
Two years from now, with Iraq firmly in the Iran camp, we might wish that Iraq was a democracy with a Sunni opposition that could moderate the government’s pro-Teheran tilt.
Or at least that Iraq was under a heel of a Saddam-style Sunni autocrat with the intestinal fortidude to engage in an all-out war land war with Iran as a proxy for the world's anti-Shi'a forces.
And things in Iraq often have a way of not working out the way we want them. So instead of a bloody triumph for the Shi’as, we might get a full-bore civil war mushrooming into a regional war after all, with the Saudis backing the Sunnis and the Iranians piling on to advance Shi’a interests in Iraq.
That might be the most desirable outcome for Bush, since he has been thirsting for a confrontation with Iran from Day One.
But for the rest of us, after hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, we could wish for something better.
Like a plan that has some slim hope of success, instead of serving as a bloody and lasting memorial to our failure.
