Dick Cheney's "final solution" for Iraq (also: Muqtada madness!)

Posted by Joshua Holland at 6:46 AM on December 14, 2006.

So, Dick Cheney is reportedly pushing for the U.S. to side with Iraq's Shiites to a much greater degree than we already have and give up on any squishy attempts to reach out to the Sunni minority [ht: Steve Benen]. Some are calling it the "80 percent solution" -- Shiites and Kurds are believed to make up about 80 percent of the Iraqi population.

That probably has something to do with Cheney being summoned to meet with the Saudis earlier this month, and perhaps with the sudden departure of Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. this week.

For the likes of Cheney, the idea has some obvious appeal. Join the Shiites in wiping out a good chunk of the Sunni population, and you take the wind out of the Sunni insurgency and also lose the major Shiites parties' justification for their militias.

The problem is that it's a policy that would veer dangerously close to genocide, and it would likely spark the regional war that many of us have feared for some time. The Saudis announced that they would, if need be, intervene to defend Iraq's Shiite Sunni population. According to reports, Saudi actors -- if not the government -- are already supporting the Sunni insurgency with financial aid. If they intervened in a more direct way, the Iranians would have no choice but to respond.

At the same time, as my friend Peter at The Thinker points out, the DoD is mulling over a major offensive against the Mahdi army:

…strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Actually, he's impeding the development of a pro-U.S. or pro-Iranian government, not an Iraqi one. Al Sadr controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament officially, and another eight or so informally. Going after him aggressively would effectively end the occupation -- making Iraq ungovernable for the occupation forces and the government they established.

Meanwhile, while we won't talk to Iran, the administration appears to be favoring its proxies in Iraq.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Jordan, and here are some excerpts from comments he gave on the House floor last week:

While the President is unwilling to talk to Iran, his policies in Iraq - in reality - are allowing Iran to take over Iraq.

And, if we don't recognize and act on this soon, Iran will succeed.

This is real, not rhetorical. Actions by the President through his appointed surrogate to run Iraq--- Paul Bremmer--- that date back to the first days of the U.S. invasion --- have created a situation today that makes Iraq a prime candidate for what Iran could never accomplish on its own, militarily. That is--- taking over Iraq, its oil, its infrastructure, even its existence as a separate nation.

Iran couldn't successfully invade Iraq, but we did, and we are playing right into the hands of the Iranians by not acting on what Iraqis see happening.

The media portrays an overly simplistic picture of the sectarian struggle. We hear a lot about Shite and Sunni Iraqis, but we don't hear about Persian Arabs ---- that is Iran. And Persian versus Arab is where the real battle for Iraq will be won or lost.

Every time the President meets with Iranian Shia clerics, he confirms in the Iraqi Arab minds, both Sunni and Arab [he meant Shiite], that he is ceding control to Iranians.

It began with Bremmer's decision to give the Shia the majority on the Governing Council. Then, his decision to disband the Iraqi Army and the Baathist technocratic government further confirmed the Arab feeling that the US, despite its protests to the contrary, was opening up Iraq to an Iranian takeover.

This is not my speculation. This is what moderate Mideast leaders told me in face-to-face meetings I attended in Amman, Jordan, recently.

Moderate leaders desperately want the American people to understand what is really going on, because they see that as perhaps their last hope for getting this President to get it.

To the Iraqi Arabs, there are only two explanations to account for Paul Bremmer's actions: a blunder based on ignorance of the history of the region; or, a deliberate decision to neutralize Iraq as a strong Arab secular nation, thereby making it more susceptible to U.S. influence in the future.

As moderates in the region see it, the President- and, therefore, America, continue to openly act in ways that enable an Iranian takeover.

Just the other day, the President met with the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim, in the White House. [snip]

Much more on that from Juan Cole, here.

Moderates in the region told me the resistance in Iraq is based on the U.S. occupation and a power grab by Persian controlled clerics. Blaming it all on Sunni-Shia tensions is not just incorrect, they say, it is exactly what Iran hopes, because it leaves them out.

[snip]

Failure by the President to understand it's Persian versus Arab --- Iran versus Iraq--- has produced one disastrous decision after another. The solution, they believe, is obvious: strategically re-deploy US troops out of harm's way to close the Iranian border and stop the infiltration of Iranian agents into Iraq.

Arab leaders told me they estimate that as many as 14,000 Persians have infiltrated to run death squads who kill Arab Sunnis and incite a civil war ---- as cover for the real war--- Iran versus Iraq.

Unless we change course, the day will come when the only banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished will be flown by Iran. We can't let that happen.

What's important here is that much of what we hear about "sectarian violence" is overly simplistic; there are overlapping conflicts in Iraq, and significant tension within both the Sunni and Shiite communities. Rifts between Shiite nationalists -- represented primarily by Muqtada al Sadr -- and the pro-Iranian Shiites represented in parliament by SCIRI and on the streets by its armed wing, the Badr Brigade, led to violence in the South not long ago.

What McDermott can't say is that Iran's 'mission accomplished' banner has been flying high for some time now, and it's unlikely they'll end up looking stupid photographed beneath it like some Commander-in-Chiefs I could name. It's hard to over-estimate the degree to which Bush's "War on terror" has put Iran in the cat-bird's seat -- after all, Iran's most significant adversaries on September 10, 2001 were A) Saddam Hussein's Iraq, B) the U.S. and C) the Taliban in Afghanistan -- two are now gone and the third is tied up, isolated politically from its allies and facing a potential disaster for its troops if it were to move against Tehran.

Anyway, there's a fine-line to be navigated here. It's important to highlight the dangers inherent in taking sides with Iraq's Shiites against the Sunnis. At the same time, one must be careful not to play into the hands of the 'bomb Iraq' crew by focusing too much on Tehran's cross-border shenanigans -- talk about it, but be cautious about portraying Iran as a direct security threat to the United States.

Tagged as: iraq, cheney, mcdermott

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