It Could Be Worse...

One point Kevin Drum has taken to making recently is that we shouldn't complacently accept the idea that things are so terrible in Iraq right now that they currently really get worse and therefore we can afford to just keep drifting around, hoping things will miraculously improve and leaving the opportunity to cut our losses in the future. How could things get worse? Well, give Bing West a read. "When I spoked with Chiarelli, he was insistent that the armed Shiite militia must be dealt with," he writes, "Prime Minister Maliki protests that he must take a political course to resolve the matter, especially with the radical Moktada Sadr and his Mahdi army. But the issue of Sadr is going to come to a head. Our military is not going to back off."

But with more advisers to provide confidence and to approve key positions, the army—Shiite and Sunni—may hold the country together. General John P. Abizaid, who has commanded the Central Command throughout the insurgency, has assured the Congress that Prime Minister Maliki will move against the Shiite militias by February, and will emerge as a real leader, backing his army. Currently, the army has more allegiance to their advisers than to their government. The advisers are the ones who drive to Baghdad and wrest pay and food provisions from recalcitrant government ministries.
So where are we headed? Down two tracks: the one is the development under American advisers of the Iraqi security forces; the other is the emergence of a responsible Iraqi government. It may be that Abizaid is correct that Maliki is on the verge of a character-altering epiphany. But if Maliki is incapable of moving against the militias or offering reasonable terms for reconciliation, President Bush will face the choice of sticking with a failed democracy the U.S. created, or tolerating a behind-the-scenes power play by a fed-up Iraqi military.

West, demonstrating a rather blinkered perspective, thinks this is all to the good. The no-goodnik Maliki will be sidelined by a ~~behind-the-scenes power play~~ coup, and the awesome New Iraqi Army with its awesome American embeds and backed by the might of the American military will take care of business. I am, shall we say, less optimistic that that replacing Maliki is going to accomplish anything. But his point about divergent perspectives and the possibility of a coup is a sound one. After all, there's something intrinsically odd about the idea of trying to bolster a fragile democracy by building incredibly effective domestic security forces. Historically, such forces are the main risk to democracy. Of course, in light of the insurgency a heavy emphasis on the domestic security service is understandable. But the combination of that focus with persistent policy disputes implies that a coup is likely.

And what of our general political position in Iraq then? Well, we'd have completely descended into playing a neo-colonial role with no fig leaf whatsoever. And we'd be fighting armed Shiite and Sunni groups simultaneously, along with a very thin layer of allies in the Iraqi Army. It would be, I think, a recipe for even more total disaster than what we have now. And this is what the elements of the US Army who haven't given up are hoping will happen.

12/10/06 2:05PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

There is also the consideration that American weapons have been turning up on the black market in Iraq in large numbers. And now we're planning on giving the domestic security forces greater firepower? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Posted by: 14All on December 10, 2006 03:16 PM

We can't expect the militias in Iraq to disband until we can provide security to the people the militias are currently protecting.

The militias do seem to be causing much of the violence, but their strategy is no different than our...better to fight them there than here.

Posted by: alphie on December 10, 2006 03:54 PM

I think the odds are about 100% that there is a 21'st century version of the Free Officers Corp going within what exists of the Iraqi army. That's who is feeling, really, really "fed-up" right now and they are not sympathetic to the U.S. position and without a doubt they outnumber quislings and will actually be followed by enlisted men.

Posted by: Ed Marshall on December 10, 2006 04:30 PM

Well, we'd have completely descended into playing a neo-colonial role with no fig leaf whatsoever.

Maliki is more like a grape-leaf. The fig-leaf was traded in when the U.S. semi-publicly vetoed the Iraqi parliament's first choice for prime minister.

Posted by: David Tomlin on December 10, 2006 04:37 PM

And what of our general political position in Iraq then? Well, we'd have completely descended into playing a neo-colonial role with no fig leaf whatsoever.

I think the only people who even think there's still a fig leaf there are GWB and his followers--and of course they'll convince themselves that neocolonialism is just what was needed all along. To the rest of the world, the empire has had no clothes for some time now.

Posted by: Uncle Kvetch on December 10, 2006 04:49 PM

What is this "Iraq Gov't" they keep talking about? If they did the Readers Digest "Word Power" exercise each month, they would know what "reification" means.

The folks in the Green zone are, as I said in the article, mostly a combination of colonial lackeys, pretenders, and representatives of local leaders. Calling them a Government does not give them any of its attributes: sovereignty, authority and legitimacy. They do not levy & collect taxes, control military force, make & enforce laws, etc.

There is a government of Kurdistan (boundaries uncertain). The rest of Iraq is run by local militia, controlled by local ethnic and religious leaders. They are now the establishment, not insurgents.

Also, why do "our" Iraq forces need years of training while the "enemy" Iraq forces get along just fine with mostly OJT. Esp. since "our" guys have such an advantage in hardware (except, of course, for all "our" hardware that "they" now have).

For more analysis, see
"What should we do in Iraq?"
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_iraq_series_2006_part_II.htm

Posted by: Fabius Maximus on December 10, 2006 06:27 PM

I think these references to Maliki having a "change of heart" are beneath you, Matthew. Obviously what's constraining Maliki from "really taking on the militias" isn't his "character". It's political reality. We see this same situation developing wherever the US intervenes and installs a preferred government: within a few years, when the new leader is unable to pursue whatever policies we've decided he ought to pursue, we decide he is "indecisive" or has a problematic "character". (See Diem, Karzai, various Bosnians, various Palestinians, also in a sense Yeltsin and Kofi Annan.) We seem incapable of understanding that maybe he is a POLITICIAN who understands political reality, and that it is political reality which makes him incapable of doing whatever the United States would like him to do at the moment. The "is Maliki the right guy?" question needs to disappear; it's crap. The question is, "Are the things we want Maliki to do the 'right' (or 'possible') things?"

Posted by: brooksfoe on December 10, 2006 08:24 PM

Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, commander of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Teams in Iraq, last October: "I have no idea what the number [of militia loyalists in his department] is."

"Obviously", he says. How is this guy, or any other American advisor, supposed to shut down the militias that more or less have the run the units he's advising? Giving them more American guns and training just makes them more deadly. All that's left to salvage Iraq, for Iraqis at least, is Maliki's politics, without the Administration vetoing his withdrawal timetables and amnesties like it did last spring.

Posted by: buermann on December 10, 2006 09:16 PM

Come on, you're wasting too much time on this. To put it bluntly, Fabius is right - there IS no Iraqi government. There IS no Iraqi Arny. I'm sure our embeds have some favorite Iraqi officers and have persuaded themselves that all their hard work is going to produce something, but what evidence is there? Have you ever read of an actual Iraqi Army unit performing effectively in actual combat? The LA Times had a story a couple of weeks ago about a largely-Shiite battalion falling apart under fire about five minutes into an operation - in a largely SUNNI neighborhood of Baghdad!

These guys have obviously joined for the paycheck, and are not interested in fighting or, worse, getting killed for the Maliki "government". The ones who ARE interested in fighting, and ARE willing to die for a cause, are doing so in one of Iraq's many ethnic and sectarian militias. Even the "government" is mostly divided up, Ministry by Ministry, into Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni fiefdoms, with militias more or less openly attached.

Even Cheney's office is apparently realistic enough to understand that our only plausible military option at this point is to pick a side in the fighting. We are told that he favors backing the Shiites - presumably on the principle that the friend of my enemy is the enemy of my cousin's lukewarm supporter, or some such arcane Middle Eastern truism.

Two, maybe three seconds consideration should make any sane person choose withdrawal over this kind of Plan B. The Baker Commission has given Bush and the Republican Party all the cover they need to do just that. If they want to carry on fighting regardless, so be it and on their heads be all the consequences. In the meantime, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by turning the page whenever you see the words "Iraqi government" used without irony.

Posted by: Dave L on December 11, 2006 09:23 AM

Rest assured that had it not been for al Sadr et al the Pentagon would have long ago handed the government reins to its chosen few. Would this have resulted in a better outcome? Krauthammer himself said it best in his 11/7 column, "In retrospect, I think we made several serious mistakes -- not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004 -- that greatly compromised the occupation."

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