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Greetings, all, As always, Karen, many thanks for staying abreast of current
political developments. Re. Iraq and the US invasion/occupation. Regardless of
whether it hurts or helps the US, the US continued presence in Iraq does and
will do nothing but further harm the Iraqis. So, if our goal is to help the
Iraqis, we should withdraw immediately. If our goal is to help ourselves, we
should withdraw immediately, as things will only get worse for the US there. Lawry From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole James Fallows article, Why Iraq has no Army, in this
issue of the Atlantic Monthly has gotten more media/pundit coverage, but this
one has very useful firsthand perspective that too many Americans need to see
and understand. Or maybe I should say, Pres. Bush and his advisors need to
understand. It sustains the conclusions Gen. Odom et al have admitted is in the best interest of everyone. Leaving Iraq is not to abandon it, there will be an
international effort to hopefully short circuit the civil war underway and
prevent further genocide, but to remain is to keep the insurgency alive, and no
amount of wounded pride or historical visions of victory and success will fix
this now, as we learned in Vietnam. Even the most optimistic experts say with
our current strategy and bloody occupation history with Iraqis we could at best
possibly have another Korean conflict, years of war and a divided nation in the
end. Iraq has cost us an arm and a leg, and much goodwill.
We have one sane choice: we should redeploy before we are fully amputated and
completely without credibility to achieve any progress towards more open
government in the Middle East. - kwc If America Left Iraq Nir
Rosen, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 2005 Nir Rosen, a fellow at
the New America Foundation, spent sixteen months reporting from Iraq after the
American invasion. At some point - whether sooner or later - U.S.
troops will leave Iraq. I have spent much of the occupation reporting from
Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, Fallujah, and elsewhere in the country, and I can tell
you that a growing majority of Iraqis would like it to be sooner. As the
occupation wears on, more and more Iraqis chafe at its failure to provide
stability or even electricity, and they have grown to hate the explosions,
gunfire, and constant war, and also the daily annoyances: having to wait hours
in traffic because the Americans have closed off half the city; having to sit
in that traffic behind a U.S. military vehicle pointing its weapons at them;
having to endure constant searches and arrests. Before the January 30 elections
this year the Association of Muslim Scholars—Iraq's most important Sunni
Arab body, and one closely tied to the indigenous majority of the
insurgency—called for a commitment to a timely U.S. withdrawal as a
condition for its participation in the vote. (In exchange the association
promised to rein in the resistance.) It's not just Sunnis who have demanded a
withdrawal: the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is immensely popular among
the young and the poor, has made a similar demand. So has the mainstream leader
of the Shiites' Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdel Aziz
al-Hakim, who made his first call for U.S. withdrawal as early as April 23,
2003. If the people the U.S. military is ostensibly
protecting want it to go, why do the soldiers stay? The most common answer is
that it would be irresponsible for the US to depart before some measure of
peace has been assured. The American presence, this argument goes, is the only
thing keeping Iraq from an all-out civil war that could take millions of lives
and would profoundly destabilize the region. But is that really the case? Let's
consider the key questions surrounding the prospect of an imminent American
withdrawal. Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a
civil war between Sunnis and Shiites? No. That civil war is already under way—in
large part because of the American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more it fuels Sunni
hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were America not in Iraq,
Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate without fear that they themselves
would be branded traitors and collaborators by their constituents. Sunni
leaders have said this in official public statements; leaders of the resistance
have told me the same thing in private. The
Iraqi government, which is currently dominated by Shiites, would lose its
quisling stigma. Iraq's security forces, also primarily Shiite, would no longer
be working on behalf of foreign infidels against fellow Iraqis, but would be
able to function independently and recruit Sunnis to a truly national force. The mere announcement of an intended U.S. withdrawal would allow
Sunnis to come to the table and participate in defining the new Iraq. But if American troops aren't in Baghdad, what's
to stop the Sunnis from launching an assault and seizing control of the city? Sunni forces could not mount such an assault.
The preponderance of power now lies with the majority Shiites and the Kurds,
and the Sunnis know this. Sunni fighters wield only small arms and explosives,
not Saddam's tanks and helicopters, and are very weak compared with the
cohesive, better armed, and numerically superior Shiite and Kurdish militias. Most important, Iraqi nationalism—not intramural rivalry—is
the chief motivator for both Shiites and Sunnis. Most insurgency groups view
themselves as waging a muqawama—a
resistance—rather than a jihad. This is
evident in their names and in their propaganda. For instance, the units commanded by the Association of Muslim
Scholars are named after the 1920 revolt against the British. Others have names
such as Iraqi Islamic Army and Flame of Iraq. They display the Iraqi flag
rather than a flag of jihad. Insurgent attacks are meant primarily to punish those who have
collaborated with the Americans and to deter future collaboration. Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the
insurgency? No. If the occupation were to end, so, too,
would the insurgency. After all, what the resistance movement has been
resisting is the occupation. Who would the insurgents fight if the enemy left?
When I asked Sunni Arab fighters and the clerics who support them why they were
fighting, they all gave me the same one-word answer: intiqaam—revenge.
Revenge for the destruction of their homes, for the shame they felt when
Americans forced them to the ground and stepped on them, for the killing of
their friends and relatives by U.S. soldiers either in combat or during raids. But what about the foreign jihadi element of the
resistance? Wouldn't it be empowered by a U.S. withdrawal? The foreign jihadi element—commanded by
the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—is numerically insignificant; the bulk
of the resistance has no connection to al-Qaeda or its offshoots. (Zarqawi and
his followers have benefited greatly from U.S. propaganda blaming him for all
attacks in Iraq, because he is now seen by Arabs around the world as more
powerful than he is; we have been his best recruiting tool.) It is true that
the Sunni resistance welcomed the foreign fighters (and to some extent still
do), because they were far more willing to die than indigenous Iraqis were. But what Zarqawi wants fundamentally conflicts with what Iraqi
Sunnis want: Zarqawi seeks
re-establishment of the Muslim caliphate and a Manichean confrontation with
infidels around the world, to last until Judgment Day; the mainstream Iraqi resistance just wants the Americans out. If U.S. forces were to leave, the foreigners in Zarqawi's movement
would find little support—and perhaps significant animosity—among Iraqi Sunnis, who want wealth and power, not jihad until death. They have already lost much of their support: many Iraqis have
begun turning on them. In the heavily Shia Sadr City foreign jihadis had
burning tires placed around their necks. The foreigners have not managed to
establish themselves decisively in any large cities. Even at the height of
their power in Fallujah they could control only one neighborhood, the Julan,
and they were hated by the city's resistance council. Today foreign fighters hide
in small villages and are used opportunistically by the nationalist resistance. When the Americans depart and Sunnis join the
Iraqi government, some of the foreign jihadis in Iraq may try to continue the
struggle—but they will have committed enemies in both Baghdad and the
Shiite south, and the entire Sunni triangle will be against them. They will
have nowhere to hide. Nor can they merely take their battle to the West. The
jihadis need a failed state like Iraq in which to operate. When they leave
Iraq, they will be hounded by Arab and Western security agencies. What about the Kurds? Won't they secede if the
US leaves? Yes, but that's
going to happen anyway. All Iraqi Kurds want an independent Kurdistan. They do not feel
Iraqi. They've effectively had more than a
decade of autonomy, thanks to the UN-imposed no-fly zone; they want nothing to
do with the chaos that is Iraq. Kurdish
independence is inevitable—and positive. (Few peoples on earth deserve a state more than the Kurds.) For
the moment the Kurdish government in the north is officially participating in
the federalist plan—but the Kurds are preparing for secession. They have
their own troops, the peshmerga, thought to contain 50,000 to 100,000 fighters.
They essentially control the oil city of Kirkuk. They also happen to be the
most America-loving people I have ever met; their leaders openly seek to become, like Israel, a proxy for American interests. If what the United States wants is long-term bases in the
region, the Kurds are its partners. Would Turkey invade in response to a Kurdish
secession? For the moment Turkey is more concerned with EU
membership than with Iraq's Kurds—who in any event have expressed no
ambitions to expand into Turkey. Iraq's Kurds speak a dialect different from
Turkey's, and, in fact, have a history of animosity toward Turkish Kurds.
Besides, Turkey, as a member of NATO, would be reluctant to attack in defiance
of the United States. Turkey would be satisfied with guarantees that it would
have continued access to Kurdish oil and trade and that Iraqi Kurds would not
incite rebellion in Turkey. Would Iran effectively take over Iraq? No. Iraqis are fiercely nationalist—even
the country's Shiites resent Iranian meddling. (It is true that some Iraqi
Shiites view Iran as an ally, because many of their leaders found safe haven
there when exiled by Saddam—but thousands of other Iraqi Shiites
experienced years of misery as prisoners of war in Iran.) Even in southeastern
towns near the border I encountered only hostility toward Iran. What about the goal of creating a secular
democracy in Iraq that respects the rights of women and non-Muslims? Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart
from the Kurds, who revel in their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a
Muslim state. Although Iraq may have been officially secular during the 1970s
and 1980s, Saddam encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and the difficulties of
the past decades have strengthened the resurgence of Islam. In the absence of any other social institutions, the mosques and
the clergy assumed the dominant role in Iraq following the invasion. Even Baathist resistance leaders told me they have returned to
Islam to atone for their sins under Saddam. Most Shiites, too, follow one
cleric or another. Ayatollah al-Sistani—supposedly a moderate—wants
Islam to be the source of law. The invasion of Iraq has led to a theocracy, which can only
grow more hostile to America as long as U.S. soldiers are present. Does Iraqi history offer any lessons? The British occupation of Iraq, in the first
half of the 20th century, may be instructive. The British faced several
uprisings and coups. The Iraqi government, then as now, was unable to suppress
the rebels on its own and relied on the occupying military. In 1958, when the
government the British helped install finally fell, those who had collaborated
with them could find no popular support; some, including the former prime
minister Nuri Said, were murdered and mutilated. Said had once been a respected
figure, but he became tainted by his collaboration with the British. That year,
when revolutionary officers overthrew the government, Said disguised himself as
a woman and tried to escape. He was discovered, shot in the head, and buried.
The next day a mob dug up his corpse and dragged it through the street—an
act that would be repeated so often in Iraq that it earned its own word: sahil.
With the British-sponsored government gone, both Sunni and Shiite Arabs
embraced the Iraqi identity. The Kurds still resent the British perfidy that
made them part of Iraq. What can the United States do to repair Iraq? There is no panacea. Iraq is a destroyed and
fissiparous country. Iranians and Saudis I've spoken to worry that it might be
impossible to keep Iraq from disintegrating. But they agree that the best hope of avoiding this scenario is if the
United States leaves; perhaps then Iraqi nationalism will keep at least the
Arabs united. The sooner America
withdraws and allows Iraqis to assume control of their own country, the better
the chances that Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari won't face sahil. It may be
decades before Iraq recovers from the current maelstrom. By then its borders
may be different, its vaunted secularism a distant relic. But a continued U.S.
occupation can only get in the way. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal |
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