www.juancole.com/2005/08/ten-things-congress-could-demand-from.html
The Washington Post notes that the Democratic Party is deeply divided between those who want US troops out now and those who fear the conseque nces and think it best to stay the course. The article might as well hav e noted that the Republicans are also divided on Iraq policy. Personally, I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean , unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebano n in 1975-76, eg People often allege that the US military isn't doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have nev er actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US milita ry is keeping on what could be a volcano. All it would take would be for Sunni Arab guerrillas to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Sistani. If there is a civil war now that kills a million people, with ethnic cleansing and millions of displaced persons, it will be our fault, or at least the fault of the 75% of Americans who supported the war. It was a similar-sized country with similar ethnic and ideologi cal divisions. One million died 1979-1992, and five million were displac ed. Can we really live with ourselves if we cast Iraqis into such a maelstr om deliberately? And as I have argued before, an Iraq civil war will likely become a regio nal war, drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. If a r egional guerrilla war breaks out among Kurds, Turks, Shiites and Sunni A rabs, the guerrillas could well apply the technique of oil pipeline sabo tage to Iran and Saudi Arabia, just as they do now to the Kirkuk pipelin e in Iraq. If 20% of the world's petroleum production were taken off-lin e by such sabotage, the poor of the world would be badly hurt, and the w hole world would risk another Great Depression. People on the left often don't like it when I bring this scenario up, bec ause they dislike oil; they read it as a variant of the "war for oil" th esis and reject it. But working people, whom we on the left are supposed to be supporting, get to work on buses, and buses burn gasoline. If the bus ticket doubles or triples, people who make $10,000 a year feel it. Moreover, if there is a depression, the janitors and other workers will be the first to be fired. As for the poor of the global South, this scen ario would mean they are stuck in dire poverty for an extra generation. Do you know how expensive everything would be for Jamaicans, who import much of what they use and therefore are sensitive to the price of shippi ng fuel? It would be highly irresponsible to walk away from Iraq and let it fall into a genocidal civil war that left the Oil Gulf in flames. On the other hand, the gradual radicalization of the entire Sunni Arab he artland of Iraq stands as testimony to the miserable failure of US milit ary counter-insurgency tactics. It seems to me indisputable that US tact ics have progressively made things worse in that part of Iraq, contribut ing to the destabilization of the country. So here is what I would suggest as a responsible stance toward Iraq. Othe rs, including Iraqi politicians, have already suggested most of these th ings, but I think the below hang together and could avert a tragedy whil e allowing us to get out. If local militias take over, that is the Iraqi government's problem. The prime minister will have to either compromise with the militia lead ers or send in other Iraqi militias to take them on. Who runs Iraqi citi es can no longer be a primary concern of the US military. This way o f proceeding, which was opened up by the Afghanistan War of 2001-2002, a nd which depends on smart weapons and having allies on the ground, is th e major difference between today and the Vietnam era, when dumb bombs (a nd even carpet bombing) couldn't have been deployed effectively to ensur e the enemy did not take or hold substantial territory. I am not advoca ting bombing civilian neighborhoods of cities; I am talking about interv ening in set-piece battles of the sort that will become possible in the absence of US ground troops. Such large units of militiamen attempting to march from Anbar on Baghdad, eg, would be destroyed by AC-130s and other US air weaponry suitable to this purpose. This tactic cannot prevent the curren t campaign of car bombings, but it can stop a full-scale Lebanon or Afgh anistan-style civil war from erupting. It wou ld help protect key political figures from assassination, and it would g ive the Iraqi government help in preventing pipeline sabotage so as to i ncrease Iraqi petroleum revenues and strengthen the new government. The new Iraqi mi litary's lack of tanks is almost certainly because the US is afraid they might be turned on US troops in a crisis. Once US ground troops are out , there is no reason not to let the Iraqi military just import a lot of tanks and train the new Iraqi army in using them. This step is necessary if there is to be any hope of drawing the Sunni Arab politica l elites into the new government. Former Baathists who have been fired from the schools and c ivil bureaucracy must be reinstated, and no further firings are to take place. All of the reconstruction money should go directly t o Iraqi firms, so as to help jump-start the economy. This ste p will require that the Bush administration cease threatening regularly to bomb Tehran or to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. For th e sake of getting out of Iraq without a world-class economic disaster, t he US will just have to deal with the real world, which contains Iran an d Syria. The US is now a Middle Eastern Power, not just a New World one, and as such it needs to use Iraq's neighbors to calm their clients with in Iraq. This goal cannot be achieved through simple intimidation, more especially since, with half of all fighting units bogged down in Iraq, t he US is in no position to follow through on its threats and everyone kn ows it. I can't guarantee that these steps will resolve the crisis in the short o r even medium term. But I do think that, if taken together, they would a llow us to get the ground troops out without risking a big civil war or a destabilization of the Middle East. Once Iraq can stand on its own fee t, I am quite sure that the Grand Ayatollah in Najaf will just give a fa twa for complete US withdrawal, and the US will have to acquiesce, as it did in similar circumstances in the Philippines.
|
http://csua.com/feed/