From The Christian Science Monitor, 7/25/05:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0725/dailyUpdate.html
Can US, Britain 'win' in Iraq?
Expanding insurgency, signs of civil war have some experts asking the
question out loud.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
As the number of suicide bombings in Iraq has risen dramatically, and
as insurgents return to areas from which they had been driven by
coalition forces in previous months, more terrorism and security
experts are asking if Iraq has become an "unwinnable war" for the US
and its coalition partners.
John Burns writes in Sunday's New York Times that "events are pointing
ever more the the possibility" that Iraq is entering a period of civil
war.
Mr. Burns points out that the number of killings in the past week and
a half in Iraq has quickened at such a pace that many Iraqis now
believe that a civil war has already started.
Recent weeks have seen the insurgency reach new heights of sustained
brutality.
The violence is ever more centered on sectarian killings, with Sunni
insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians in
suicide bombings.
There are reports of Shiite death squads, some with links to the
interior ministry, retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics
and community leaders.
The Times also reported last week that insurgents in Iraq "just keep
getting stronger."
Recent kidnappings of foreign diplomats, the murder of moderate Sunni
policitians, and events like the bombing in a town near Baghdad last
week that killed more than 100 people have many Iraqis believing that
"the democratic process that has been unfolding since the Americans
restored Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004 has failed to isolate the
insurgents and, indeed, has become the target itself."
While the number of attacks has remained the same -- about 65 a day
according to US military officials -- American commanders say that the
attacks are increasingly sophisticated, and that the insurgents seem
to replenish their ranks as fast as they are depleted.
Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, who advised
the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January to April
2004 writes on Slate.com that, while "the fate of Iraq's transition is
yet to be determined," and that "it is strongly in the American
interest, morally and strategically, to help Iraq build a democracy,"
the Bush administration has made it very difficult for these
objectives to be decided in the US's favor.
There is another way we could fail in Iraq.
That would be for the pro-Iranian Islamic fundamentalists (the most
militant among the ruling Shiite alliance) to conquer power through
political force, intimidation, and intrigue, like the Leninists of a
previous era.
That has begun to happen in Iraq, with the steadily rising power of
SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq--so
named for a reason) and its 15,000-man militia, the Badr Organization
(trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guards).
Adding to the danger is the growing mobilization of other militant
Islamist militias.
Perhaps that was one reason why the administration tried covertly to
rescue Allawi's campaign [as reported by Seymour Hersh in the most
recent New Yorker.].
It is another sign of this administration's incompetence and duplicity
that the very prospect it has most feared has been advanced by its
bungling.
But James Jay Carafano, senior research fellow for defense and
homeland security at The Heritage Foundation, says the idea that
increased terrorist attacks on civilians "will inevitably collapse
Iraq's fledgling democracy is utterly wrongheaded."
He writes in The Washington Times that, as a rule, terrorism fails in
the long run because "as a strategy, it lacks a theory of victory, a
means to convert the desire to change the political order into
reality."
Lacking a certain means to victory, the terrorists likely will
continue doing what they're doing: killing innocents and lacing their
Web sites with the usual propaganda about being in the eternal
struggle, with victory bound to come eventually.
Most Iraqis know better.
Eventually, even the terrorist supporters will wake up and realize
they're wasting money and recruits only to incite Muslims to kill
Muslims.
Meanwhile, the best thing the Iraqis can do is to continue to nurse
their fledgling democracy and make it as inclusive as possible, keep
on increasing the ranks and quality of its security forces, expand the
rule of law, and grow the economy.
Sooner or later, the terrorists will wind up like most of their
predecessors -- dead or defeated.
British journalist and longtime opponent of the war in Iraq Patrick
Cockburn writes in the Independent, however, that not only is 'winning
the war' in Iraq a questionable outcome, but the battles there have
"inspired a worldwide" insurgency.
He says that Iraq is now joining the Boer War of 1899 and the Suez
Canal Crisis of 1956 as "ill-considered ventures that have done
Britain more harm than good."
For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock
example of the truth of [the Duke of] Wellington's dictum about small
wars escalating into big ones.
Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in 2003 that Saddam [Hussein]
ruled a powerful state capable of menacing his neighbours.
Secretly they believed this was untrue and expected an easy victory.
Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq
more truly dangerous than Saddam [Hussein], and they are mired in an
un-winnable conflict.
An editorial Sunday in the Louisville [Kentucky] Courier-Journal says
that for Americans to "even kid themselves" that they can leave Iraq
having accomplished "something worthwhile," two things must happen:
Iraq must have a new constitution and a new government that is
recognized by all three major groups in the country, Sunnis, Shiites
and Kurds; and a reliable Iraq security force must be in place.
But, the editorial argues, the "political news is bad and the security
news is worse," raising serious questions about US involvement.
It would be unconscionable to abandon Iraq before it is capable of
averting a descent into civil war and of defending innocent civilians
from rebel violence.
But advances are few.
What Americans, and Iraqis, need to hear from the President is what
changes he intends to make to achieve his goals.
At the moment, he offers little beyond pep talks to stay the course.
That has a Vietnam-era ring to it, and it is unacceptable leadership.
A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll released Sunday shows that a
majority of Americans now believes that the Iraq war has made the US
more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
The poll found that 49 percent of those surveyed felt the US was more
vulnerable, 36 percent felt the US was more secure, and nine percent
were undecided.
As well, more than 66 percent felt that Prsident Bush has "no clear,
well-thought out plan" to get US troops out of Iraq.
And a new poll published today in Britain shows that 85 percent of
Britons believe that the Iraq war contributed to, or was directly
responsible for, the July 7th attacks on London.
The survey, conducted by the British paper The Daily Mirror and GMTV
found that 23 percent of Britons believe British involvement in Iraq
was directly responsible for the attacks, while 62 percent believe it
was a contributing factor.
The Scotsman reports that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has
backed off earlier statements that there was no connection between the
two, now saying that he "cannot rule out a connection."
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What exactly was it that Bush/Blair said we were "winning"?
Harry
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