Bush is ostensibly concerned that the US withdrawal would cause massive civilian deaths. That’s unavoidable because the American politicians without the least idea of local situation broke the existing power arrangements. New political orders are built on blood. Saddam oppressed fundamentalists and Kurds to stop insurrection. The civil war will proceed, either now or in a few years after the US troops withdrew.
Pacifying Baghdad area, as Bush suggests, is futile: guerrillas will turn elsewhere for new battleground. Passive defense is a short-term solution. Ultimately, the guerrillas need to be destroyed (impossible because of the stream of volunteers) or dealt a discouraging blow regardless of civilian casualties. Even then, the US simply lacks political replacement for the popular fundamentalists: it is either sectarianism or dictatorship. Puppet government will continue to provoke resistance and certainly fail. Denouncing “sectarian intervention” means abandoning the sectarian electorate.
Bush laments that the US troops were insufficient to secure the neighborhoods cleared from the guerrillas. How does he imagine “securing a neighborhood”? Cordoning it off so that new guerrillas won’t enter? For how long? Preventing local mullahs from indoctrinating new volunteers? How does one ascertain that a neighborhood is cleared? Even unrealistically assuming that all houses could be searched for weapons, how would one identify the guerrillas? By beards? Pacification is police work; Sharon pacified Gaza at one time with huge network of collaborators, Arab-speaking Jews posing as locals, and frightening raids. Iraq enjoys many advantages over Gaza: larger size and population, porous borders, and virtually unlimited financing. American officials in Iraq do not match younger Sharon in knowledge and determination, and don’t have a free hand like he did. Loosening the restrictions on troops, as Bush wants it, translates into civilian casualties from infidel aggressors. Muslim public opinion won’t tolerate the deaths. The only option is to destroy the neighborhoods infected by insurrection, and intern the inhabitants. Saddam got hanged for that.
Goebbels expressed the opinion that population takes often-repeated lies for truth. Apparently subscribing to that view, Bush repeats the mantra about the common people of the Middle East supporting the US military effort in Iraq. They don’t. They hate America.
The troops increase is intended to buy time, perhaps until the next presidential elections. Adding 16% to the existing force is militarily insignificant, and would change nothing. Redeployment of the existing troops offers the same tactical capabilities. PR, not military realities, determine the disposition of new troops: 17,500 to Baghdad and only 4,000 to the entire Anbar province. The US kept more troops in Iraq during much quieter periods.
Bush claims his plan to be approved by military commanders. That title does not signify wisdom. Most top-ranking military bureaucrats are poor strategists eager for bloodthirsty actions. It was the ostensibly competent military commanders who got 400,000 Entente soldiers killed to push the Germans five miles back at Ypres. The latest fight in Baghdad between the US troops and Iraqi guerrillas proved the tactics inadequate: an assault by regular troops, fighter jets, and helicopters has killed only eighty people, claimed to be guerrillas. That’s Pyrrhic war. $400bn spent so far amount to $100,000 per head of the Baghdad population. Locals would have committed suicide for half that much.
The new plan relies on PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams), military units masquerading as contractors. If a certain village cooperates with the occupiers, a company of GIs builds a school there at the cost of small airplane; civilian contractors, though charging outrageously for their services, won’t enter the remote areas due to security concerns (soldiers are also cheaper than civilians in terms of insurance: $500,000 per head as opposed to $1-2mln commercial insurance). PRTs are extensively used in Afghanistan to the outcry of humanitarian organizations which point to the immense waste of aid funds and utter (necessary) immorality of buying collaboration with humanitarian aid. PRTs reportedly endangered the real aid workers by associating aid with the occupiers. Afghani warlords often feed PRTs disinformation to manipulate the US troops into attacking the warlords’ opponents. Villagers routinely settle their accounts by reporting their foes to PRTs who seek the guerrilla’s supporters.
Bush’s plan laudably rejects James Baker’s (Iranian Study Group) recommendations on rapprochement with Iran and Syria. Immorality is good tactics at war, but counterproductive in politics. Terrorist regimes should be contained rather than cuddled for help. Bush, burdened with two pointless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, cannot however deal with the more pertinent enemies like Iran and Syria.
In the democracies with dwindling participation, citizens dissociate themselves from the government. The government of America, not the American nation wages the war. People who don’t support the war, support “our soldiers.” That is morally wrong. Citizens - voters, inhabitants, and taxpayers - share the full responsibility for their government’s actions. Or so the Islamic world sees it.
Maliki staked a lot on his ultimatum to Shiite guerrillas to disarm. Certainly, they won’t. Maliki had no choice because the US pushed him for decisive, if futile action. Maliki is not sufficiently popular among the military to rely exclusively on the army, and the confrontation with Shiite clerics won’t strengthen him. He attempts to avoid responsibility by sending Kurds into the Sadr City to fight Shiites. That could open a new, Kurd-Shiite front in addition to the Shiite-Sunni war, but won’t pacify the country. With foreign Sunnis joining the war against Shiites in Iraq, and Arab countries supporting the Sunnis against the Shiite Iran, Maliki’s chances are worse than doubtful.
