Gates of Hell

September 15, 2004

The lead story in today’s Wall Street Journal is the latest to report that the Iraqi resistance is getting, well, serious:

Iraq’s once highly fragmented insurgent groups are increasingly cooperating to attack U.S. and Iraqi government targets, and steadily gaining control of more areas of the country. Iraqi government officials are especially concerned that the violence in Baghdad in the past week may be fueled in part by growing support for the insurgents in the capital and growing contact with rebel groups active in the countryside to Baghdad’s north. … “The insurgents are no longer operating in isolated pockets of their own. They are well-connected and cooperating,” said Sabah Kadhim, a senior adviser to Iraq’s Interior Ministry.

It’s the same point made in Dextin Filkins’ New York Times report on Tuesday, that the resistance is growing, and that it has reached the point where efforts to kill it only make it stronger. At a conference on Monday organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, a big topic was the Financial Times' call for the withdrawal of U.S. and U.K. troops on a fixed and urgent schedule—but few of the intelligent people there, either from the podium or in talks that I had in the corridors, seemed ready to agree. There is a reluctance among the U.S. establishment to consider pulling out of Iraq, but no one seems to have a workable solution. War is hell, Abu Musa, secretary general of the Arab League, tell us. He is urging Arab states to get involved  in support of the failing Iraqi government:

"The gates of hell are open in Iraq," Musa said while expressing hope that Arab countries can "help Iraq through this crisis, re-establish sovereignty throughout the country and end the American occupation".

The U.S.-appointed government of Iraqistan could use Arab assistance, but that would doom the ambitions of the Shiites—tacitly backed by Iran, and to a lesser extent by Israel—for a Shiite-run Baghdad. That’s because the Sunni Arabs aren’t going to allow the Shiites to take over.

The Bush administration is AWOL. All they want is to get to the election without having to cut this Gordian Knot. And Kerry? Well, the hero of the Swift boats continues to be AWOL on Iraq, too. With each passing day, Kerry’s inexplicable inability to articulate a position on Iraq becomes ever more painful.