In Iraq, It Is All Over But The Killing

The reality is as follows: In Iraq the occupiers have been politically defeated and are looking to withdraw because the local population have shown their thanks for the removal of the Baath dictatorship by the mettle of their resistance. The military situation is a standoff in an irregular, low intensity conflict along multiple fluid fronts involving a loose coalition of autonomous sectarian guerrilla units engaging in a protracted struggle against the conventional forces of the rapidly diminishing Coalition of the Willing. As asymmetric warfare specialists know, military standoffs favour the weaker actor, especially when it is fighting on its home soil with popular support against a stronger opponent whose civilian support base is unenthused about its foreign military adventurism.

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Why should the US think that only it could bring security and stability to Iraq? Why should it feel that it has to take the lead against perceived Shiia/Persian extremism? What happened to concern with Sunni Whahabbist terrorism, of which al-Qaeda is an integral part and in which Iran and Shiia Muslims play little if any role? What makes the US think that it is part of the solution rather than the source of the problem (at least with regards to the radicalization of both Islamic schools of thought)? Other than rhetorical bluster, border skirmishes around its territorial sea and the seizing of the US embassy and staff during the 1979 revolution, when has Iran attacked the US or its neighbors?
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Given these questions, why does the US feel the need to prolong its presence in a war of attrition that it has already lost politically at home and abroad, much less ratchet up the saber-rattling against an emerging regional power that will be much harder to defeat than Saddam’s Iraq? Expanding the conflict into Iran, whatever the pretense, is a recipe for disaster in what some are already calling the US’s worst foreign policy misadventure in history.

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It is delusional for the Bush administration to insist that only the US can “fix” Iraq. The fixing of Iraq has to be done by Iraqis with the encouragement but non-interference of the international community, and for that to happen the occupation must end.

Entire article at http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0702/S00100.htm

well put, your thread title

where to begin? on an emotional level, it is overwhelming to think of the carnage and destruction being done in our name ; death is seared into the memory, and it's the memory of this disaster, the invasion and occupation, that will feed for generations arab/muslim animosity towards the usa

is this on purpose, a self-fulfilling policy that simultaneously pursues war and conveniently generates endless 'enemies' ?

intellectually, why is this happening ? doesn't the history of european colonialism reveal the folly of empire in the middle east ? haven't our political classes learned anything from the past ; most of these people seem to come from the corporate world or radical rightwing 'think' tanks ; both are blinded by ideology

and why the fuck are the republicans so keen on the DAWA party who rule iraq ? these guys are shia extremists, long clients of iran...not to mention the reactionary adoption of sharia law. something that even hussein did not do

this is a shell game based on the misguided belief that force alone can 'fix' iraq, surely this show the decadence and decline of our ruling class

The mettle of Iraqi resistance has, indeed, been proven by their continuing attacks on our conventional forces. In a historical context, once the occupiers have been forced out, the resistance puts down their arms and gets down to the task of governing.

This could work in Iraq, as well, although that is less certain due to the civil war underway there. It seems to me that the continuing attacks on civilians, as opposed to those directed at our forces, could present a problem for our withdrawal. One possibility is that the attackers could be "resistance fighters" resisting American occupation by attacking civilians, thereby creating chaos and prompting a troop withdrawal. (That would be bloodthirsty strategy, but perhaps a successful one in the end. At least if the attackers are of this mind, there is hope that the slaughter would stop once we withdraw.

The other possibility it is just the Sunni side of the civil war killing as many Shia, and vice versa, as possible as fast as possible. (We saw much the same killing in the Balkans in the 1990's.) If that is the case and the level of mutual violence is at such a high level, pulling out security forces of any kind (unless you replace them with some from another source) will likely not help the killing. (The lid was only put on the violence in the Balkans when NATO went in and stayed.)

Of course, one last wonderful option is the the violence against civilians is a combination of the two. The "patriotic resistance" to an American occupation is able to "kill two birds with one stone", so to speak, by creating the chaos mentioned in the first possibility and killing some Shiites (or Sunnis) as a bonus to further their civil war objectives.

If one accepts the first option, we should get out as soon as possible. The Iraqis can handle the rest, since the violence should decline when the reason for it is gone. To the extent that the mass killing of civilians is the result of a civil war, in whole or in part, which we helped create through an illegal invasion and incompetent occupation, we should do all we can to be sure that some security force replaces us to provide some protection for the civilians.

...about this article is that I found the link on the National Institute of Military Justice web site.

i was against this war ; when the towers fell, it was clear to me (due to paranoia alone, not smarts) that we could not have asked for a worse group of people to address this horror and that the event would be used irresponsibly

but to step back, there was perhaps a moment when the invasion/occupation might have avoided this calamity, but the sheer incompetence of the administation doomed the affair

it is not really our fight