Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

[don]

A dictatorship without a dictator
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - News of the United States' formal withdrawal from Iraq is receiving mediocre coverage in mainstream Arab media. On the popular al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera television networks, for example, Iraqi news come forth on the list, after Syria, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

In popular pan-Arab dailies, like Asharq Alawsat, Syria rather than Iraq was the main headline. Although glad to see the Americans leave after nearly nine years - ending a very long and unwelcomed stay - the Arab masses feel that they have too much on their plates in countries experiencing the Arab Spring to mind about Iraqi affairs any longer.

The same applies to anything related to the Palestinians, who for over 60 years were the Arab world’s main - and only - obsession. Too much effort, time, money and tears have been shed for Iraq during the years 2003-2011 and on Palestine since 1948.

Now it is time to look elsewhere, the Arab street is saying, arguing that Iraq will only rise from the ashes once it is surrounded by democracies in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Iran. For Iraq to succeed, the Arab Spring needs to succeed throughout the Arab world, and at one point reach Iraq as well.

Only then will Iraq enjoy real democracy. Anti-regime protests did take place in Iraq in March this year, prompting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to announce that he would not seek re-election for a third term in 2014.

Some Sunni provinces like Salahudine, once a hotbed for the insurgency, are already planning for a Sunni uprising - or a "Sunni Spring" - aimed at toppling Iran's proxies in Baghdad, in early 2012. A democratic Iraq in a neighborhood riddled with military dictatorships would simply not work, because Arab and Iranian dictatorships will always try to bring it down, as they did with Lebanon for more than 40 years.

United States Defense Secretary Leon Panetta flew into Baghdad on Thursday to participate in a ceremony that officially ended the war. The US flag has been lowered and folded away, declaring an end to the US occupation that has lasted for eight years, eight months and 25 days.

The last commander of US forces in Iraq, General Lloyd J Austin III, has flown out with the last few members of his staff.

There were no bold statements like that of president George W Bush's 2003 "Mission accomplished", which proved so premature. It has been a quiet withdrawal, dwarfed no doubt by the Arab Spring.

Speaking from Afghanistan before landing in Baghdad, Panetta pondered on his country's war in Iraq:

In many ways, I think we can all take some satisfaction, regardless of whether you are for or against how we got into Iraq. We are giving Iraq an opportunity to be able to govern itself and to secure itself into the future, and to enjoy, hopefully, the benefits of a democracy. It won't be easy. There will be challenges. They'll face the challenges of terrorism. They'll face the challenges of those that would want to divide that country. They'll face the challenges, the test of democracy.

President Barack Obama, who campaigned for office three years ago pledging to bring US troops back home, echoed a similar argument, saying that the US leaves behind a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq".

Although some Republicans have criticized the move, the majority of Americans support it. Speaking to troops that just returned from Iraq this week, Obama hailed the "extraordinary achievement" of US troops, saying that they were returning home "with heads held high". He added, "The war in Iraq will soon belong to history, and your service belongs to the ages."

Obama failed to say anything serious about the 4,487 American lives lost in Iraq, and the more than a trillion dollars in taxpayers' money spent on military operations.

Obama ignored the fundamental fact that when the Americans went into Iraq almost nine years ago, their purpose was to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, topple the Iraq dictator and make the Arab world a safer place for democracy.

Although democracy is ripping through the Arab world today, Iraq has had nothing to do with it and the desired domino effect never happened. Saddam was indeed toppled, but post-Saddam politicians have failed to establish themselves as real democrats.

In fact, the Iraq of today looks and sounds like a democracy, but it is a sugar-coated dictatorship of religiously-driven politicians, yet with no dictator.

Seculars are persecuted in today's Iraq, Christians have been forced to become refugees, Ba'athists are banned from holding public office, and in some places like the Shi'ite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, a mini-theocracy prevails, based on the Iranian model.

The economy is a shambles, armed men roam the streets at night seeking trouble with traditional enemies. No accountability has taken place for Iraqis who killed fellow Iraqis since downfall of Saddam in 2003. Not a single official from Maliki's Dawa Party, for example, has been brought to court. The number of Iraqi deaths, according to the Americans, "exceeds 100,000", whereas Iraqis put the number at over a million. No democracy can be taken seriously in such horrific conditions.

The date for full withdrawal was supposed to be December 31, as stated by a 2008 agreement between Bush and Maliki. That agreement was signed exactly two years ago, when as the world so famously remembers, Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi threw both his shoes at Bush during a Baghdad press conference on December 14, saying: "This is a farewell kiss from the people of Iraq, you dog!"

Anti-Americanism was high, both back then and now, but no shoe-throwing is taking place. Only in Fallujah, once a hotbed for the Sunni insurgency, were American flags burned by angry Iraqis honoring their dead. Most Iraqis are just glad to see an end to the US occupation, relieved that the region is too worked up with its own mess to send proxy messages to the Americans, via Iraq.

In different times, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would all have been tremendously busy with Iraq, planning for "the day after" scenario. These countries believe that a vacuum will emerge now that the Americans have left. Maliki cannot run the country on his own, and his ministers, police, army and security services are too weak to deliver when it comes to nation-building.

The vacuum can only be filled by Iran or Saudi Arabia, which respectively control the Shi'ite and Sunni streets. Iran cannot venture into Sunni territory, and Saudi Arabia has no influence whatsoever with heavyweight Iraqi Shi'ites like Ammar al-Hakim, Muqtada al-Sadr and Maliki.

The only country that has inter-community influence among both sects is Syria. It has the ear of Muqtada, yet it can also strongly influence Tarek al-Hashemi of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

But Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran are all busy with their own problems, explaining why incendiary rhetoric is at an all-time low in Iraq, as are suicide bombings and targeted assassinations.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is ill, Prince Nayef is slowly adapting to the new job as crown prince and busy getting the House of Saud in order, preparing for his own ascent to the throne. Unprecedented disturbances were recorded in November in al-Qateef, an oil-rich district inhabited almost completely by Shi'ites, where 10 people were killed.

Syria is immersed with its own bloody uprising, which is now entering its tenth month, and its government is facing increased isolation and sanctions by the US, the European Union and the Arab League.

Iran is entangled in its own power struggle, between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

As the Arabs and Iranians look the other way, Iraqis are finally getting the chance to sort out their differences without outside interference, funds and dictates.

Unlike Saudi Arabia and Syria, however, Iran will not let Iraq slip out of its control anytime soon. The toppling of Saddam was a blessing for the Iranians, ushering in a wide array of Iran-backed politicians to senior office in Baghdad. Never in his wildest dreams would Khamenei have imagined that one day trusted Iranian proteges like Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Maliki would become consecutive prime ministers in Iraq.

Their presence perpetuates Iranian influence in Iraqi politics, and so does the heavyweight presence of powerful players like the Fadila Party, the Da'wa Party, the Sadrists, the Badr Brigade and the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council.

The Iranians are even trying to install Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahroudi, a former Iranian judiciary chief, in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf. If they succeed, they will gain control of the religious Shi'ite establishments in Iraq, just as they have control of the political establishments through Maliki.

Shahroudi is very close to Khamenei and would serve as his eyes and ears.

As Iran prepares to re-flex its muscles in Iraq, and the US heads for the exit, ordinary Iraqis are asking themselves plenty of questions. One is: "Had it not been for the 2003 war, is there the slightest chance in a million that we would have rid ourselves of Saddam Hussein?" The answer is no. Probably had there been no war, Iraqis would have been stuck with Saddam, although he might have bequeathed power to his son Uday.

The second question is: "Looking back, was it worth it?" Again, the obvious answer - from an Iraqi perspective - is no. Human life was wasted under Saddam and equally wasted under the Americans. The current leaders of Iraq are mini-dictators, lacking Saddam's brutality no doubt, but they are as arrogant, stubborn and selfish as the former strongman.

Pro-Saddam Iraqis argue that it's different when an occupying force is killing Iraqis. Yet murder is murder; there are no double standards for it, whether committed under the watch of Saddam, Bush or Maliki.

The past nine years mark a very interesting chapter in Iraqi history. Living with the dictator was a nightmare and getting rid of him in such a manner was also a nightmare.

The price has been too high for day-to-day Iraqis, and it will take an entire generation for memories of the atrocities to be erased

But at least Iraqis can now hold their heads high - they are done with both Saddam and the Americans. One day, not too far from now, they will get rid of Maliki as well. Only then - and when outside meddling stops - will Iraqis say: "Mission accomplished."

Sami Moubayed is a university professor, political analyst and Editor-in-Chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML17Ak03.html

Intervention ends with scarcely a whimper
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - When the United States formally ended its eight-and-a-half year military adventure in Iraq on Thursday with a flag-lowering ceremony presided over by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Baghdad, hardly anyone here seemed to notice, let alone mark the occasion in a special manner.

Similarly, earlier this week, when US President Barack Obama hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at the White House to discuss - apparently rather inconclusively - the future strategic relationship between the two countries, hardly anyone paid attention.

Perhaps people here would just as soon forget as a bad dream what the former head of the National Security Agency, the late Lieutenant General William Odom, called in 2005 - just two-and-a-half years after the US invasion - "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history".

So long Lily Pads . .

The war's official price tag of approximately one trillion dollars over the eight years ignores the far greater indirect costs.

Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, has estimated total costs of the Iraq war on the US economy, including the costs of health care for veterans, at more than three trillion dollars, a significant amount given the difficult economic straits in which this country finds itself.

In addition, the US suffered an immeasurable loss in international credibility. The stated justifications for going to war - Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction, a rapidly developing nuclear weapons program - proved utterly unfounded, while the mightiest, highest-tech war machine in history failed to suppress a variety of rag-tag insurgencies.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML17Ak04.html

[GRG55]

Re: Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

Ahh, but we can all take satisfaction in the knowledge that America did it all for the oil... [sarcasm on]

[don]

Re: Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

Ahh, but we can all take satisfaction in the knowledge that America did it all for the oil... [sarcasm on]

I believe it was for the dollar. We had the oil.

[c1ue]

Re: Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

A different take on Iraq

http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd...ho-stayed-out/

This article was first published in The eXile on May 4, 2007. We are reprinting it to commemorate today’s alleged “last day of the Iraq war.”

FRESNO, CA — A funny thing happened on the floor of the Senate last week. Somebody asked a serious question: “If the war in Iraq is lost, then who won?”

Of course Sen. Lindsay Graham, the guy who asked the question, didn’t mean it to be serious. He was just scoring points off Harry Reid, the world’s only Democratic Mormon. Reid had made a “gaffe” by saying in public what everybody already knows: “The war in Iraq is lost.” When you say something obviously true in politics, it’s called a “gaffe.”

So Graham, McCain’s bitch, jumps in to embarrass Reid with his question.
But let’s take the question seriously for a second here: who won in Iraq? To answer it, you have to start with a close-up of the region, then change magnification to look at the world picture. At a regional level the big winner is obvious: Iran. In fact, Iran wins so big in this war that I’ve already said that Dick Cheney’s DNA should be checked out by a reputable lab, because he has to be a Persian mole. My theory is that they took a fiery young Revolutionary Guard from the slums of Tehran, dipped him in a vat of lye to get that pale, pasty Anglo skin, zapped his scalp for that authentic bald CEO look, squirted a quart of cholesterol into his arteries so he’d develop classic American cardiac disease, and parachuted him into the outskirts of some Wyoming town. And that’s how our VP was born again, a half-frozen zombie with sagebrush twigs in his jumpsuit, stumbling into the first all-night coffee shop in Casper talking American with a Persian accent: “Hello my friends! Er, I mean, hello my fellow Americans! Coffee? I will have coffee at once, indeed, and is not free enterprise a glorious thing? Say, O brethren of the frosty tundra, what do you say we finish our donuts and march on Baghdad now, this very moment, to remove the Baathist abomination Saddam?”

It took a couple years for Cheney-ajad to get his American accent right and chew his way into Bush Jr.’s head, but he made it like one of Khan’s earwigs, got us to do the Ayatollahs’ dirty work for them by taking out Iraq, their only rival for regional power. Iraq is destroyed, and Tehran hasn’t lost a single soldier in the process. Our invasion put their natural allies, the Shia, in power; gave their natural enemies, the Iraqi Sunni, a blood-draining feud that will never end; and provided them with a risk-free laboratory to spy on American forces in action. If they feel like trying out a new weapon or tactic to deal with U.S. armor, all they have to do is feed the supplies or diagrams to one of their puppet Shia groups, or even one of the Sunni suicide-commando clans.

Rare photo of Dick Cheney relaxing without his American disguise on

All these claims that Iran is helping the insurgents really make my head spin. Of course they’re helping. They’d be insane if they weren’t. If somebody invades the country next door, any state worth mentioning has to act. If Mexico got invaded by China, you better believe the U.S. would react. We’d lynch any president who didn’t.

What really amazes me is how patient Iran has been about it, how quiet and careful. They’ve covered their tracks carefully and kept their intervention to R&D level: just enough to keep Iraq burning, and patiently test out news IEDs.

But that’s the Persian way: behind all the yelling, they’re sly, clever people. If Iranian intelligence really wanted to flood Iraq with weaponry that would turn our APCs into well-insulated BBQs, they could have done it long ago. It’s clear they’re not doing that. They’re smart enough to follow Napoleon’s advice not to interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself – and stockpiling the new IED designs on their side of the border in case we’re stupid enough to invade.

The situation in Iraq right now is optimum for Iran. Iraq is like a nuclear reactor that they can control by inserting and removing control rods. If Shia/Sunni violence looks like cooling off, Tehran’s agents, who’ve penetrated both sides of the fight, play the hothead in their assigned Sunni or Shia gangs and lobby for a spectacular attack on enemy civvies or shrines – whatever gets the locals’ blood up. Then, if things get too hot, which would mean the U.S. getting fed up and leaving, they drop a control rod into the reactor core by telling Sadr to call off his militia or letting the Maliki regime stage some ceremony for the TV crews, the kind that keeps the Bushies back in Ohio convinced it’s all going to come out fine.

They need to keep us there, because – makes me sick to say it but it’s true – our troops are now the biggest, strongest control rod the Persians are using to set the temperature of this war. They want us there as long as possible, stoking the feuds and making sure nobody wins. That’s what we just did under Petraeus: switched sides, Shia to Sunni, because the Shia were getting too strong. Yeah, God forbid we should be unfair to the Sunnis, God forbid we should do anything to let somebody win. Let’s just make Tehran happy by keeping the feud going another few centuries.

One thing Iran is pretty clearly not scared of is every American amateur’s dream: A punitive U.S. invasion of Iran. In fact, like North Korea, their partner in the Axis of Evil, Iran is all but begging us to invade. Guys in junior high used to hold their chins out, tap them with a finger and say, “Come on, fucker, come on, hit me!” That’s Iran now, chin out and begging for a right hook. Because with all the anti-armor know-how they’ve gained by now, they have traps waiting for us that would make Lara Croft’s cave expeditions look like a backyard tea party. Even Cheney’s team knows that, which is why they’re talking about air raids on Iran these days, not invasion.

Another way countries can win in a regional war like this is from the money flooding in. The big winners of the Vietnam War were Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Thailand went from a failed state with a half-dozen insurgencies everywhere outside its central valley to a rich, happy tourist paradise during Nam. Modern Thailand is a country built on the backs and, uh, other body parts of its bar girls. Every time a GI spent his pay at the ping-pong shows in Bangkok, Thailand gained foreign exchange. The neon got brighter, the huts went split-level, and the Commie rebels swatting mosquitoes out there in the elephant grass started to feel a little foolish. Finally they said the Hell with it, bought suits and went Yuppie.

That’s one way to beat an insurgency: bribe it. Unfortunately, the two neighboring states likely to benefit from the Iraq war are…yup, those twin towers of evil, Syria and Iran. Just imagine how much money is flowing into their border provinces right now. Need any U.S.-issue supplies, weapons, toilet paper, or GPS units cheap? Just ask at any bazaar in Damascus or Tehran. Uncle Sam’s guarantee of quality – fell off the back of a two-and-a-half ton truck.

See, this is why I keep thinking Cheney’s got to be an Iranian mole. How could he not see that a war in Iraq benefits noncombatant neighboring states? He had to know. He can’t be that stup — Wait, I withdraw the comment.

Some paranoids want to list Israel among the winners, but I don’t see it. Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz thought invading Iraq would help Israel, or rather Likud, but like everything else these geniuses predicted, it didn’t happen. Iraq was never a threat to Israel. Iran is. And Iran is much stronger now. Last summer’s war with Hezbollah was one the Israelis didn’t really want to fight, but Cheney insisted. That was the deal, I guess: the U.S. takes out Saddam, then you take out Hezbollah. Instead, the IDF looked scared and weak in South Lebanon, so now Hezbollah and Iran are the poster-boys of every red-blooded Muslim kid on the planet.

Turkey, America’s one real ally in the Middle East, is a huge loser in this war. We slapped them in the face, gave the Kurds a base to destabilize southeastern Turkey, and helped elect the first Islamist president in what used to be a proudly secular country. Happy now, Cheney, you Khomeini-loving, anti-American mole?

When you zoom farther out to look at the global picture, the question “Who won Iraq?” doesn’t have such an obvious answer. It’s much easier to see who lost: Us, and anybody who backed us. We looked invincible after taking out the Taliban. Not no more. If you use armored columns as stationary cops in enemy neighborhoods, you give the locals plenty of time to figure out their weak spots. That’s what we did: gave the Arabs a trillion-dollar, multi-year seminar in how to defeat U.S. forces. Another lesson in the Brecher Doctrine: Nuke ‘em, bribe ‘em or leave ‘em alone.

To find a winner in this war means looking outside the box, like they say — or rather outside the theater of war. Because the winners are the countries smart enough to stay out of it.

A little historical perspective first. Who won the Thirty Years War? France and England, the European powers that stayed out or just dabbled. France played that war a lot like Iran has played this one: tinkered around, tampered, spied and whispered to all the contenders, but never risked a big chunk of money or force. Every country that took part lost, and the Germans, who had what you might call the home field disadvantage, lost most of all, up to a third of their population. So if you cared about the Iraqis, which I don’t and neither do you, then they’d win the Oscar for biggest losers here. But then they had that one locked up already.

So the likely winner of a war like this is an up-n-coming world economic power that has been investing in its own economy while we blow a trillion — yep, a trillion — dollars on nothing. Not hard to figure out who the likely suspects are here.

The answer to “Who won Iraq?” is Iran in the short run, and in the long run, China and India.

Taking their “Iraq War Victory” laps

While we flounder around in the Dust Bowl, they’ve been running up their reserves, putting the money into infrastructure and bullion. The moment you wait for in a setup like this is the inevitable alliance between the regional winner and the global winners. And voila, it’s already happened: In February Iran and India signed a pipeline deal sending Iranian oil to the exploding Indian market, bypassing Bush’s Saudi/U.S. petro-outpost. If it weren’t for Pakistan, the pipeline would already be in place. And as you might have guessed, Iran and India are talking about how easily the pipeline can be looped over the Himalayas to China — an overland route invulnerable to U.S. sea power.

Luckily Pakistan lies right across the route and Pakistan is so hopelessly messed up that the CIA and ISI between them should be able to keep the black smoke pouring out of any section of line the Asiatics manage to finish.

But even that’s bad news: we’re reduced to a spoiler role, conspiring with the nastiest creeps in the world, the ISI, to keep our blood enemy Iran from forming a natural, inevitable market relationship with the two rising powers that have spent their money smart while we pissed it down the Tigris. A country as big and resilient as America can afford to lose a war now and then, especially when it’s in a place like Nam, way off the trade routes. But a war like this… I don’t know.

What’s worst is that the war’s made us dumber. When Sen. Graham asked his question, “Who won Iraq?” he thought he was being clever. He thought we’re too dumb and soft to face that question and its answers. Because there are answers, pretty grim ones. I just hope people are tough enough to start thinking about them.


Anyway, for those of you collecting War Nerd guidelines, here’s what I think are some general rules for “Who wins wars?”

1) In a big bloodbath like the Thirty Years War or WWI, the winner is usually the powers that don’t fight, but dabble in spycraft and wet ops, meanwhile consolidating their own economic power.

2) The biggest loser is almost always the country on whose territory the war is fought. (Note: You could argue that America entered WWII fairly early and still came out ahead, but on the European Front up to D-Day our role was supplying materiel to the Russians and letting them do all the bleeding for us. On both fronts we were far away from the action and that allowed us to pick where and when to commit money and troops, so the generalization still holds: the further away you are, the better.)

3) In a regional war, the big winner will be any neighboring states that can stay out of the war and work out supply contracts with the richer combatant (Thailand during Nam, Argentina in WWI, Switzerland in every war since Ur took on Ur South).

4) However, if there’s an ethnic spillover, like Turkey has with the Kurds, this relationship can backfire.

5) The worst thing a major power can do is go to war alone for “moral” reasons. This is how medieval France wasted its huge advantages on pointless Middle Eastern crusades that did nothing but revitalize the Muslims and drive down the price of white slaves in the Cairo market.

Damn, another unbelievably infuriating deja vu deal: we end up wasting our armies in the deserts of the Middle East, just like the French. Except even the French were too smart to fall for it this time around.

[lektrode]

Re: Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

A different take on Iraq

http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd...ho-stayed-out/

"...Harry Reid, the world’s only Democratic Mormon. "

now THERES something you dont see every day.... dont believe eye've ever, either.
not that i have anything against them (mormons), and as one who spends quite a bit of (vacation, winter) time in the beehive state, methinks they keep the place pretty civilized, clean, relatively low crime, with Great Public Transport and Highways/airport system (and who wouldnt like a state thats made, or is about to, make silver coinage LEGAL tender) - but is the first time have ever noted harry reid, democrat and mormon all in the same sentence ?
(while the lamestream media is constantly linking republican, morman and just about everything rightwing/capitalist)

other than that, sorry to digress...

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Iraq: the End of Mission Impossible

Cheney is no mole. Making Iran stronger wasn't a secret objective, it was THE objective. The neocons saw military invasion of Iraq as a "no brainer". If WMDs were there, they'd be heroes and would quiet the American anti-war crowd for generations --- allowing his primary sponsors, the military-industrial complex, to reap huge profits. If not, they'd embolden Iran which would only justify further military action. Just look at Cheney today, recommending we bomb Iran over the downed drone. What more proof do we need to know that perpetual war is the real objective?