HOW WE'RE FIGHTING IRAQ'S CIVIL WAR; WHY MORE TROOPS WON'T HELP NOW

The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

"Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off," the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car's owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task--trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time it was a Sunni politician--vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie--but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

"I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America's war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting," Major Voorhies said.

…For the American soldiers, it was just another morning in Baghdad, where Americans are trying to protect people on both sides while being attacked by people on both sides, trying not to take a side themselves.

…"Sometimes I feel like I work for the Iraqi government," Voorhies said.
--"Sectarian Ties Weaken Duty's Call for Iraqi Forces," Marc Santora, New York Times, December 28, 2006



The Great Decider should have gotten a clue, a couple of months ago, when a joint American-Iraqi task force captured two high-ranking Death Squad perpetrators in Sadr City, who had been personally responsible for possibly hundreds of torture-murders of innocent Sunnis who lived in adjoining neighborhoods of Baghdad.

This was a big capture and made all the news announcements.

Two days later, the prime minister of Iraq let the men go.

This should have been a red-letter CLUE that no matter how many American troops we send in to "secure" Baghdad--and hence, Iraq--the war is completely out of our hands now. It is a civil war, and right now, the Shiites have the power and they are perpetrating ethnic cleansing on the Sunnis, who are retaliating with massive car bombs in Shiite areas.

The second clue to the Great Decider should have come when, after three months of keeping army brigades past their home-deployment dates and funneling desperately needed Marines out of the Anbar into Baghdad to buck up Green Zone security, the killings were not only WORSE, but ground commanders made a point of saying that the insurgents and militias had adjusted their tactics to what the Americans were doing and thus, getting away with murder.

The third clue to the Great Decider should have come when the Shi'ite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is known to be beholden to and loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, whose militias control most of the death squads and a third of government ministries, submitted his own plan to newly-minted secretary of defense, Robert Gates, in which more American troops would be welcomed, all right, but only if they remained on the outskirts of Baghdad, where it would be their job to root out and kill Sunni insurgents, while Iraqi "security forces" would be free to roam unmolested around inner Baghdad, rooting out and killing more Sunnis.

Which means, of course, that we would be siding with the Shiites against the Sunnis in their civil war.

Make no mistake about it. All this time that White House press releases state that the president and his closest advisors are seriously considering a new strategy for Iraq, what it really means is that they are, once again, digging up justifications and rationalizations for a disastrous course they have already made up their minds to follow.

This is about presidential ego and the administration's obsession with proving themselves to be right, at any cost, not just to the American and Iraqi people, but to the soldiers and Marines who are being forced to stay in that hellhole past their time to go home because that's how you "surge" troops.

As we speak, the fifth and seventh Marine Corps regiments have already been notified that there is a very good chance that, should the "surge" option be used by the Great Decider, they will not be going home in February when their deployment time has ended, and the army's Third Brigade, Third Infantry, scheduled to deploy this spring, will likely be sent much sooner than originally planned.

There is no such thing as a "surge" of new troops.

I don't know about the army troops, but the combat unit Marines I have been familiar with in my family, do not get to stay in the kinds of facilities you see on TV, with separate trailers and air conditioning and big mess halls and PX's and daily e-mail and access to videophones to call home.

They sleep in abandoned houses, go weeks without a shower, live on MRE's for months, and have no access to e-mail. They don't wait in line to call home at nice bases. They pass around a satellite phone from a rooftop vantage point where they're watching for snipers, or around a campfire out in the desert.

What I'm trying to say is that for the Marines at least, these deployments are extremely difficult with much privation, and every single day, they are exposed to the highest levels of violence and bloodshed and combat conditions possible.

So extending the deployments of the Marines for longer than they are supposed to stay, means keeping them in terrible danger and forcing them to live in primitive conditions that is nothing like what you see on the evening news. For the Marines in Ramadi, they can't even walk on patrol, they have to run, because the snipers are so bad. When they try to duck into a relatively safe building where they've set up an F.O.B., or Forward Operating Base, they have to throw down smoke bombs to cover themselves before they can even cross the street.

This is what your SURGE is. It's keeping our brave men and women in the worse possible conditions, and dooming many to mangling and death, for a policy decision that is absolutely USELESS.


The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight…

Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, says Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad. "These politicians are connected with either militias or Sunni insurgents…It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding an area they control."

…Col. Miska noted just how many forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

"Who would design this mess?" he said. "It is like an orchestra where everybody is playing a different song."
--ibid


The Iraqi police and military answer to different ministries, who are often controlled by leaders of warring tribes or sects, and the bureaucracy is divided even further between regular police and national police, and a protection detail 140,000 strong assigned to protect mosques, but is much better known for being particularly savage and bloody in its ethnic cleansing.

The American forces are caught in the middle of this tangled mess, which is further complicated by the complicity and direct participation of government ministries.

It is not uncommon for American forces to find, and rescue, say, a hundred or so hapless Sunni's who've been slated for torture and murder by Shiite death squads, only to face those same men the next day when they fight insurgents.

Or, as I pointed out earlier, to arrest vicious ringleaders of violence and bloodshed, only to be ordered to set them free by the Iraqi government.

And let's be clear about one more thing. This "surge" is not going to last for a month or two. More and more, I'm hearing numbers like eighteen months to two years, which sounds suspiciously close to the elections of 2008.

Sending more troops into Baghdad may--POSSIBLY--cause a temporary dip in the sheer numbers of dead Iraqis, while, at the same time, killing and maiming more Americans, but no matter when we pull out, whether it's tomorrow or ten years from now, you can bet that chaos will ensue because you can't force democracy and freedom on people who don't want it for themselves.

Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware and now chairman of the powerful armed services committee, has made it clear that if the president insists on this troop surge as his big "new" strategy, that the senator will hold hearings in the Senate on that plan.

On the surface, that may sound lame. Hearings? Who cares? What difference could more blathering talking heads possibly make?

I'll tell you what difference it makes: PUBLICITY. You have a running string of military spokesmen and administration hacks sitting down in front of the TV cameras being grilled by skeptical senators and sweating under the lights, you have soundbites for the evening news, and you draw attention away from the bully pulpit of the White House and its iron will to stay the course right over the cliff.

You show the American people, up close and personal, what this White House won't admit even to itself: that enough American men and women have died for a people who never wanted us there in the first place, and who want only to be left alone so that they can destroy themselves.

Putting our troops into this boiling cauldron of a civil war does nothing but force them to choose sides each and every day and then pay for those choices the next day, when whichever side they had to choose the day before avenges itself on the Americans.


"I fully understand it's important to have both Republicans and Democrats understanding the importance of this mission," Mr. Bush said, speaking to reporters after a three-hour meeting. "It's important for the American people to understand success in Iraq is vital for our own security."
--"Bush Considers Up to 20,000 More Troops for Iraq," David S. Cloud and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, December 29, 2006


Ahhh, yes, that old bugaboo. The idea that al-Qaeda will set up a stronghold in Iraq from which to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Funny story. They've already done that--over in a corner of Pakistan that is protected by the Pakistani government. All they have to do is cross over into Afghanistan and blow up as many people as they want, and fan out wherever they want--London, Madrid, wherever.

As far as al Qaeda terrorists setting up shop in Iraq, well, al Qaeda is Sunni. The Shiites of Iraq hate al Qaeda. Don't count on a Shiite government to tolerate a Pakistani-type arrangement with Sunni terrorists responsible for the destruction of the holiest Shiite religious site in Iraq, not to mention the deaths of countless Shiite people. The only reason they haven't destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq yet is the presence of the Americans, who protect innocent Sunni citizens when they go out looking for terrorists. The Iraqis would not be so merciful.

I'm just saying. Educate yourself into the realities of Iraqi culture and society before accepting any blanket statements out of this White House as they continue to pursue a failed course in a war they started and mismanaged from the beginning. Iraq did not have to be invaded, but since it was, it did not have to be lost. This administration has nobody to blame but themselves and their own disastrous policies.

Don't expect anything new from them any time soon.