Iraq: Preparing For The Worst

Robert Dreyfuss

February 28, 2006

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of  Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com

With 1,300 dead Iraqis— and counting — since the bombing of the Golden Dome last week, Iraq remains poised at the precipice of destruction. It's anyone's guess as to whether the crisis will revert to its previous state of mere insurgency and grinding daily violence, or plunge into a multi-sided religious civil war. If the latter, a thousand more dead Iraqis each week — or more— might be a routine occurrence. Either way, however, one thing is clear. Already dead is the Bush administration's hope for a neat drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq as Election 2006 approaches. Voters who go to the polls in the United States in November will be staring directly into the face of the catastrophe of the Bush-Cheney Iraq policy.

Bush and Cheney had hoped to rescue their failure in Iraq by four interlocking measures: first, the creation of an independent Iraqi military and police force that could take on the insurgents; second, a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq to placate U.S. domestic opposition to the war; third, the establishment of a modicum of security in Iraq, enough to allow economic reconstruction to proceed; and finally, the cobbling together of some sort of credible Iraqi government. Let's take those four, one by one.

First, late last week, in the midst of the Golden Dome explosion, the U.S. military quietly announced that the number of fully trained Iraqi army battalions capable of fighting independently had fallen from one to a grand total of zero—  yes, zero — over the past three months. Said Army Col. Jeffrey Snow, seemingly without irony nearly three full years after the U.S. invasion: "The growth of a new army cannot be instantly realized."

Second, as 900 more Marines left Hawaii over the weekend for Iraq, and 7,000 more U.S. soldiers began preparing to head for Iraq soon, various U.S. military spokesmen began to drop broad hints that more, not less, U.S. forces might be needed in Iraq. According to Gen. Mark Kimmitt, "There might be a need for more American forces." According to the Army Times , Gen. George Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is deciding whether or not to ask for more troops. The 56-page quarterly report by the Pentagon dated February 17 said: "Coalition force levels will increase, if necessary, to defeat the enemy." It also noted that (even before the post-Golden Dome violence) that attacks on U.S. forces had risen to an all-time high of 550 per week since October.

Third, the security environment in Baghdad and surrounding provinces is worse, and more terrifying, than it has ever been. On SundayThe Washington Post  reported :

The streets of the capital feel as unsafe as at any time since the 2003 invasion. As one U.S. major put it, Baghdad now resembles a pure Hobbesian state where all are at war against all others and any security is self-provided.

It's a Mad Max world. It's rule by mob, by militia, by gangs and warlords and renegade mosque leaders. The Independent , the British daily, says that as many as 1,000 Iraqis are being tortured to death or executed, largely by Shiite militia forces and rogue police, army and Interior Ministry units, citing as its source the United Nations' former human rights chief in Iraq.

And fourth, a stable government of national unity, if it ever was a possibility, is now nearly an impossibility. The Golden Dome bomb attack came nearly 10 weeks after the Dec. 15 election, and even then little or no progress had been made toward creating a government. The new parliament has yet to meet even once, missing its statutory deadline.

Inside Iraq, all sides are preparing for war. Ominously, the mainstream Sunni Arab bloc, not the resistance per se but the provincial, tribal and mosque leaders of western Iraq, are reportedly forming their own militia forces, called the Anbar Revolutionaries, to defend Sunni territory against marauding Shiite militiamen associated with Muqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army. The Post says that Sunnis are forming "local defense forces and conducting their own attacks." Ayatollah Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, is shedding his peaceful pose, calling on Shiites to defend themselves, and he is asking tribal leaders to consider raising their own militias. Sadr's forces are now openly admitting that they have attacked Sunni mosques, sometimes just to kill Sunnis and damage the mosques, sometimes to occupy them and "re-flag" the mosques as Shiite. All of this is happening under the eerie calm of a three-day curfew and vastly stepped up U.S. military patrols.

Outside Iraq, meanwhile, there are dire signs that the conflict might spread to involve Iran and Arab countries. Harith Al Dari, a leading Sunni Arab cleric in Iraq, issued a call on Arab nations to intervene in Iraq to defend Sunnis against attacks by Shiite militias. There have been recent signs of instability in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In Saudi Arabia, oil prices spiked after an almost unprecedented attack by a three-car motorcade of car bombs against the huge Abqaiq oil facility, which by itself pumps 8 percent of the world's oil, and in response a major security alert was declared in Kuwait over the weekend. Iran is also flexing its regional muscle: one week after demanding that the Anglo-American forces withdraw from the city of Basra, an Iraqi city that sits just over the border from Kuwait and which is now in the hands of militiamen loyal to Iran, Iranian President Ahmadinejad made a stunning visit to Kuwait, where he delivered a speech that denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The reality is that an incipient civil war in Iraq, along with fears that the war could become a regional conflagration, means that Bush cannot possibly pretend any longer that Iraq is a work-in-progress in the Middle East democracy showcase. Last fall, you will recall, as the president's poll numbers tanked and American public opinion turned decisively against the war, the White House launched an all-out political offensive on Iraq. Last December, the president gave a series of five major speeches on Iraq, released a strategy paper, held press conferences, and worked hard to convince Americans that the four-point exit plan outlined above might work. Now, all that work is lost. The facts on the ground in Iraq have shattered the rhetoric from the White House.

The only thing holding Iraq back from tipping into civil war now is that most of its imported, formerly exiled leaders, its Kurdish warlords, and its Iranian-backed Shiite religious leaders don't want to lose their access to corrupt payoffs, patronage, and nepotism. They don't want to let the Golden Dome kill the golden goose. That's the ace in the hole that U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad is playing now, counting on Iraq's faction leaders to settle their differences and agree to take part in a national unity government. That, and direct pressure from Bush—who called the seven major Iraqi politicians over the weekend to beg them to avoid civil war—is all that is holding Iraq together. It's an open question whether that will work for another few days, for a few weeks, or until the next act of violence ignites the powder keg.