Needlenose

I can’t believe the unmitigated gall of Paul Bremer to suggest that the U.S. should continue to occupy Iraq until it becomes democratic.  WTF?  Seriously, dude, weren’t you the one who fucking disbanded the Iraqi army, releasing 200K well-trained, angry Sunni soldiers into a jobless economy with ready access to Saddam’s old weapon caches?

This line from the linked article made me chuckle:

“The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers…”

Yeah, well I regarded it as a spectacularly dumbass idea the moment Bremer made in in May 2003.  Also, in case you’ve forgotten, Bremer was the dumbass who kept telling us that things were turning a corner in Iraq, and stability was always “just 6 months away.”  Well asshole, it’s now 2010, and the Sunnis are going all “Hurt Locker” on Shi’ite ass, and the corner sure as hell isn’t in sight.

Frankly, I was surprised to hear from Bremer at all – it’s hard to believe he is really either that stupid or delusional.  My guess is this is just the first of a series of salvos from the reactionaries trying to blame the Democrats for the inevitable failure of Shrubya’s Iraqi Fiasco, just like the wrong-wing blow-hards already do about Vietnam (“we won every battle…if only we had nuked Hanoi…blah blah blah”).

Juan Cole discusses some of the fall-out from the latest blast in Mess-o-potamia.  Given that the blast wounded some members of the Iraqi parliament, Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament rightly asks:

“We’ve heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front,” he said. “Where are these successes?”

Good question.  Seems like things are heading South again, with increasingly brazen attacks reminiscent of the Groundhog Days of ’04 and ’05.

In the same post, Juan Cole discusses how affairs between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq are heating up around the flashpoint Kirkuk.  Those of you who aren’t afflicted with American Amnesia might remember how we called Kirkuk out as a flashpoint way back when, and how the Kurds have been continuously working to reclaim demographics and control on the ground in this oil-rich city.

I guess with Obama shifting his focus on our other failing occupation, and with our gradual troop removal the Petreus plan to stabilize the Iraqi Civil War is slowly and painfully coming off, like a band-aid on a hairy leg.

Unpleasant signs of what Iraq’s future holds continue to pop up in the supposedly “quiet” areas of the country. Reuters reports this from Kurdistan in the north:

At least five Iraqis were killed and more than 20 wounded Wednesday when gunfire erupted during a demonstration in Kirkuk, where Kurds are bidding for more control of the oil-rich northern city.

Several thousand Arab and Turkmen protesters marched on the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two main Kurdish factions, and surrounded the building, chanting “No to federalism, Kirkuk is Iraqi.”

Kirkuk’s chief of police said two people were killed in a burst of gunfire. Doctors said three more people died later at a nearby hospital and at least 20 were wounded.

Meanwhile, another Reuters article describes the plight of minority Christians in the Shiite south:

Since the war that toppled Saddam, armed groups have looted and set ablaze several liquor stores in the once freewheeling city, where Shi’ite religious parties now wield power and seek to impose strict moral regulations, similar to Iran’s.

More than 400 liquor stores run by Christians, the only community allowed to sell alcohol under the former Baathist government, were forced to close in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

. . . Iraqi Christians are terrified of armed Shi’ite groups, which have names like God’s Vengeance, God’s Party and the Islamic Bases Organization.

Their members roam the streets to chase mobsters, drug addicts and prostitutes, exacting their brand of what they call God’s law.

The common thread in these stories is ethnic majorities seeking to impose their political and social will by force, with virtually no resistance from the U.S. (which is too busy trying to keep its own troops from being blown up to bother with protecting Iraqi minorities).

Juan Cole has a more extensive roundup of recent news from Basra, including uncontrolled smuggling of oil and illegal drugs that the British openly confess they don’t have the troops to deal with.

I’ve touched on this topic in recent blogs, but I thought it would be useful to summarize why this war is unwinnable. Although the original causus belli changed weekly and our win conditions were never really spelled out, we can infer the final objectives based upon White House pronouncements and consider their attainability.

Regime Change/Iraqi Freedom
Bush demanded loudly and repeatedly for the removal of Saddam and the Baath party; in fact, this was his final ultimatum before the invasion. Now that Saddam and his cronies are nowhere to be found, and U.S. troops are occupying his palaces, we’ve won, right?

Well the problem lies in the ‘change’ part of the objective. Dubya promised a rapid handover to a democratically elected Iraqi goverment within 6 months (conveniently timed around the November elections!), with a total occupation of 18 months. Now the White House is grudgingly admitting that setting up an alternative regime might take a bit longer than 6 months, presumably pushing out the 18-month milestone as well.

But questions of timing aside, the real devil lies in the details – what constitutes an acceptable alternative regime? Dubya has promised to “ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another,” a caveat later expanded by Rumsfeld to preclude either a pro-Iranian regime or an Iran-style Islamic Republic. The difficulty is that the overwhelming majority of the country are deeply religious Shiites (who are already consolidating their power without U.S. help) who have made it abundantly clear in huge, angry focus groups (Bush-speak for demonstrations) that they want an Islamic brand of democracy and will reject any goverment supported by the U.S. This sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Territorial Integrity
Last year, Bush committed to preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity, in an attempt to get buy-in from the U.N. and to avoid antagonizing fellow NATO member Turkey. Sure to disrupt Bush’s plans is the fact that the Kurds have other ideas. With little opposition from the few U.S. troops in the region, the heavily armed and organized Kurds have been ethnically cleansing Arabs from Kurdish territory. They will probably content themselves with pay-back reprisals against Arabs and Turks until such time as a new target presents itself in the form of troops from a new, Arab-dominated regime intent on asserting authority in the region. At that point, they’ll stop paying lip-service to ‘regional autonomy’ and will launch a full-blown civil war against Baghdad and any occupation troops that might stand in their way.

Disarming Saddam/Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
The rapid breakup of the Iraqi army has left vast amounts of guerilla war-ready arms and munitions in the hands of the populace, including suspected Baath loyalists. As far as the supposed WMD, what possible motive could Saddam have for destroying them on the eve of a U.S. invasion as Dubya recently asserted (he must think Americans are really dumb)? best case, they never existed outside the delusions of the wrong-wing, worst case, they’re now in the hands of terrorists. Smooth move, Dubya!

Winning the ‘Hearts & Minds’ of the Iraqi people & the ‘Arab Street’
First impressions are hard to shake. How seriously can they take American rhetoric after the abject failure of Jay Garner and the occupation to date? My bet is Humpty Dumpty has already had his great fall, and there’s nothing Viceroy Bremer can do to ‘put him back together again.’

Striking a Blow Against Terrorism
Give me a break!

Conclusion?

Get ready for the long haul, boys and girls, looks like we’ve now officially stepped into the quicksand – the Pentagon has decided that the war isn’t actually over and our 200,000 troops will need to hang around for awhile. Said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan:

“The war has not ended,” McKiernan said. “Decisive combat operations against military formations has ended, but these contacts we’re having right now are in a combat zone, and it is war, and they are members of (Saddam’s) regime that must be removed.”

Holdouts from the Saddam regime? Well it’s certainly true that there are now about 400,000 more unemployed Iraqis with military training hanging around with nothing to do and easy access to weapons, many of whom, when denied backpay, vowed to attack American forces. But this is just another typical, delusional wrong-wing simplification of the situation on the ground, given the growing power of the Shiites, who have opposed U.S. occupation from the beginning. As Abdel-Amir Ahmed, a civilian, non-Baath participating in a recent anti-American protest said:

““This is an occupation, and we don’t accept it,” said Abdel-Amir Ahmed, 49. “After a week, after a month, there will be armed resistance against the Americans. This land is sacred.”

Given this growing resistance, and the evident vulnerability of our soldiers in trying to fulfill their impossible mission, how much longer will it be before we see this Administration asking for more troops?