Some serious questions about Iraq for the serious people …

Posted by Joshua Holland at 10:25 AM on January 8, 2007.

Let's pause for a moment to reflect on just how damn good the White House still is at steering the nation's political discourse. Following the elections, the conventional wisdom was that Rove and Co. had lost their mojo, but in just 8 short weeks since they've managed to shift the conversation from how and when Washington will be forced to respond to Americans' demand that the occupation of Iraq come to a conclusion to a heated debate about whether escalating the war with 30,000 more troops is just an honest case of wishful thinking or a profoundly stupid and transparent ploy to buy enough time to lay the disaster off on another president in 2008 (it's the latter).

It's worked out great; as Glenn Greenwald points out, the Washington Post editorial board thinks that the idea of "surging" more troops is based on a "serious argument," and that John McCain and Holy Joe Lieberman are "principled and even courageous in making it."

[Deep sigh]

But the great unanswered -- and largely unasked -- question remains: what do we hope to achieve by delaying the inevitable withdrawal?

The answer offered by the White House and the Bidens and McCains is that we'll surge temporarily and at the same time build up the Iraqi army so that it, eventually, can take the lead in fighting the insurgency. But the problem is quite obvious: a majority of the violence in Iraq is being perpetrated by the country's warring militias; about half of the governing United Iraqi Alliance's 140 seats in the Iraqi Parliament are controlled by parties whose power derives from the militias -- you could as accurately say "are controlled by militias" -- the army and security forces, as well as the Interior and Defense ministries are completely infiltrated by Shite militias and it's clear that Iraqi troops' loyalties are not with the central government. Maliki can't go against the militias without toppling his own governing coalition, regardless of what he may or may not wish to do in his heart of hearts.

The serious people should explain what they believe will change in that equation and how. Otherwise, whether we're in Iraq for six more months or six more years, we're effectively training and equipping a lot of soldiers whose loyalty is with the militias, and we're supporting a government that has an abundance of people who are more dedicated to slaughtering Sunnis than to protecting their minority rights. What's going to change that -- more time and a renewed dedication to "Iraqifying" the conflict certainly won't.

On a related note, Joe Biden has said that he believes the administration knows Iraq is lost and that the Bushies are trying to stall until they can hand off the mess to the next president. If that person happens to be a Dem, they'll then have to carry the burden of having conceded defeat.

On one of the Sunday gab-fests, Biden also said that the surge is pointless because a political solution is the only hope for the country -- that there is no military solution. But Biden knows full well that the only option for the U.S. to encourage a political solution would be to engage in a regional diplomatic strategy, and that's been flatly rejected by the administration.

So, Joe Biden: If you know they're not going to do the work that might -- might -- bring about a political settlement, and you know the administration is just trying to foist off their disaster on the next bunch of patsies, then why do you oppose withdrawal? The only logical answer -- given that he's acknowledging that staying can't work under the circumstances -- is that Biden thinks the Dems would fare well running once again in 2008 against an unpopular war that has "Republicans" written all over it. Is that why he's saying that the Congress has no Constitutional authority to stop the war (which any 8th-grade civics student can tell you is nonsense)?

Another question: given that there is something approaching a consensus that invading Iraq came at a cost to the success of operations in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, why is the fact that a battalion of U.S. troops is being transferred from Afghanistan to Iraq at the worst possible time getting such short shrift? The Baltimore sun reports:

Radical Islamist Taliban forces, shattered and ejected from Afghanistan by the U.S. military five years ago, are poised for a major offensive against U.S. troops and undermanned NATO forces, prompting American commanders here to issue an urgent appeal for a new Marine Corps battalion to reinforce the American positions.

NATO's 30,000 troops in Afghanistan are supposed to have taken responsibility for security operations across the country. But Taliban attacks have risen sharply, and senior U.S. officers here describe the NATO operation as weak, hobbled by a shortage of manpower and equipment and by restrictions put on the troops by their home capitals.

The accelerating war here and the critical need for troops vastly complicate the crumbling security picture across the region - from Afghanistan, where the United States chose to strike back after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, to Iraq, where American troops have been unable in almost four years of fighting to establish basic security and quell a bloody sectarian war.

As a last-ditch effort, President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure, an order that Pentagon officials say would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they struggle to man both wars.

Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.

According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar …

Shouldn't that be getting some attention?

Another question about the media. John Kerry never flip-flopped on the war, and yet the charge stuck. Yet, for three years -- and again and again during the 2004 elections -- Bush promised to "listen to his generals'" advice on troops levels. In July, Bush said:

General Casey will make the decisions as to how, as to, as to how many troops we have there. He'll decide how best to achieve victory and the troop levels necessary to do so. I spent a lot of time talking to him about troop levels, and I told him this, I said, "You decide, general."

General Abizaid then said the following in testimony before Congress in November:

I've met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.

So the preznit has adopted a "strategy" cooked up by a couple of clowns at the American Enterprise Institute and, lo and behold, Casey and Abizaid are told to hit the bricks after arguing that such a strategy has no chance of working. If that isn't one of the great flip-flops in history, it's hard to know what is. But few seem prepared to call the administration on it.

Tagged as: iraq, withdrawal, surge, biden, generals

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