Iraq fantasyland

Posted by Joshua Holland at 9:06 AM on December 6, 2006.

In a letter accompanying the Iraq Study group's report, James Baker and Lee Hamilton offer this bit of wishful thinking:

Our country deserves a debate that prizes substance over rhetoric, and a policy that is adequately funded and sustainable… Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people in order to win their support.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Major General William Caldwell (the fourth), the Pentagon's chief press flack in Iraq, explains "Why We Perservere" -- an homage to the classic WWII propganda film "Why We Fight" -- that is anything but candid and forthright …

I don't see a civil war in Iraq. I don't see a constituency for civil war. The vast majority of the people want hope for their families, not to massacre their neighbors or divide their country. A poll conducted in June by the International Republican Institute, a nonpartisan group that promotes democracy, found 89 percent of Iraqis supporting a unity government representing all sects and ethnic communities.

That's some cherry-picking. Download the study (PowerPoint) and you'll see that while "most Iraqis" wanted a unity government, many -- especially Arabs in the North and in Sunni areas -- didn't think that's what they got. Iraqis also said that things were getting worse in just about every area -- and this was back in June before things got noticeably worse still.

No wonder no "rebel army" steps forward to claim credit for vicious car bombs and cowardly executions of civilians.

I see debates among Iraqis -- often angry and sometimes divisive -- but arguments characteristic of political discourse, not political breakdown.

The debates this guy sees among Iraqis in the Green Zone aren't the signs of breakdown -- it's the 3,000 tortured bodies that show up each month that are the tip-off.

The Council of Representatives meets here in Baghdad as the sole legitimate sovereign representative of the people, 12 million of whom braved bombs and threats last December to vote. No party has seceded or claimed independent territory.

I see a representative government exercising control over the sole legitimate armed authority in Iraq, the Iraqi Security Force. After decades in which the armed services were tools of oppression, Iraq is taking time to build an army and national police force loyal to all. There have been setbacks, but also great successes.

I don't see terrorist and criminal elements mounting campaigns for territory. Al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't use roadside bombs, suicidal mass murderers and rocket barrages to gain and hold ground.

I studied civil wars at West Point and at the Army Command and Staff College. I respect the credentials and opinions of those who want to hang that label here. But I respectfully -- and strongly -- disagree. I see the Iraqi people suffering from overlapping terrorist campaigns by extremist groups combined with the mass criminality that too often accompanies the sudden toppling of a dictatorship. This poses a different military challenge than does a civil war.

I won't unpack all of that -- the denial here is so thick. The one thing I'll comment on is the idea that only when there's a uniformed "rebel army" attempting to hold ground can we call a civil war a civil war. It's a definition of civil war invented wholly in the last few years and specifically in order to spin what's going on in Iraq as something it isn't. I never studied ay West Point, but my degree is in international relations with a focus on security studies, and we learned that civil wars are intra-state conflicts that may on the surface be about ethnic or religious identity but ultimately come down to substate actors contesting the authority of a central government -- a civil war is ultimately about power and the chaos in Iraq fits that to a tee.

Maybe if the various militias and insurgent groups in Iraq wore gray uniforms, marched in columns and whistled Dixie, these guys would be able to acknowledge what's so obvious to everyone else, but until then I can only say, again, that good policy can't flow from bad analysis, and op-eds like Caldwell's tell us a lot about why a constructive policy in Iraq has been and will continue to be so elusive.

Tagged as: iraq, civil war

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.