Oh, Here’s Another Crisis You Might Want to Notice (3): Iraq

The "crisis" tag might be a bit surprising, given that the end-of-year media line is how swimmingly everything is going in Iraq. There has been a lot of attention to a report from Iraq Body Count putting civilian casualties in 2008 at between 8315 and 9028, a reduction of 2/3 from the death tolls in 2006 and 2007 (though, unnoted by almost all accounts, only slightly below civilian casualties for 2003 and 2004).

CNN has joined in the feel-good celebrations today with the story that US military deaths in Iraq are down from 906 to 309 this year. The news service recites the official line, ""The people of Iraq are tired of violence, and they are assisting the security forces; the government is improving its ability to govern and to apply the rule of law."

While any decrease in deaths is to be welcomed, the attachment of these figures to the emergence of Iraq under the wise occupation of the US military needs to be recognised as an ongoing public-relations gambit. We've recited the political, economic, and security complications on many occasions, so let's leave it to Juan Cole to put the case in a superb end-of-year column:



Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, a million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.

5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.

6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.

7. John McCain alleged that if the US left Iraq, it would be promptly taken over by al-Qaeda. In fact, there are few followers of Usamah Bin Laden in Iraq. The fundamentalist extremists, if that is what McCain meant, are not supported by most Sunni Arabs. They are supported by no Shiites (60% of Iraq) or Kurds (20% of Iraq), and are hated by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, who would never allow such a takeover.

8. The Iraq War made the world safer from terrorism. In fact, Iraq has become a major training ground for extremists and is implicated in the major bombings in Madrid, London, and Glasgow.

9. Bush went to war in Iraq because he was given bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In fact, the State Department's Intelligence & Research (I & R) division cast doubt on the alarmist WMD stories that Bush/Cheney put about. The CIA refused to sign off on the inclusion of the Niger uranium lie in the State of the Union address, which made Bush source it to the British MI6 instead. The Downing Street Memo revealed that Bush fixed the intelligence around the policy. Bush sought to get up a provocation such as a false flag attack on UN planes so as to blame it on Iraq. And UN weapons inspectors in Feb.-Mar. of 2003 examined 100 of 600 suspected weapons sites and found nothing; Bush's response was to pull them out and go to war.

10. Douglas Feith and other Neoconservatives didn't really want a war with Iraq (!). Yeah, that was why they demanded war on Iraq with their 1996 white paper for Bibi Netanyahu and again in their 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton, where they explicitly called for military action. The Neoconservatives are notorious liars and by the time they get through with rewriting history, they will be a combination of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Iraq War will be Bill Clinton's fault. The only thing is, I think people are wise to them by now. Being a liar can actually get you somewhere. Being a notorious liar is a disadvantage if what you want to is get people to listen to you and act on your advice. I say, Never Again.

Non-Story of the Day: 30,000 More US Troops in Afghanistan

Most newspapers run the statement of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the US will be deploying another 30,000 troops in Afghanistan over the next year. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a separate statement, confirmed that 3000 were already on their way.

It's a non-story because, as we reported last week, the Pentagon have been steadily leaking this information. More significant is Mullen's red-meat warning, "When we get additional troops here, I think the violence level is going to go up. The fight will be tougher."

In other words, get ready for the long haul, folks. And forget any namby-pamby talk about a political approach or, heaven help us, a negotiated way out of this mess. This is a head-on military confrontation.



That in turn points to a US strategy being led, not by the politicians --- even an Obama --- but by the generals taking advantage of the "transition" period. David Petraeus has pretty much gotten his wish, without having to go through the difficulty of running for elected office, to be top dog in Washington.

The point is made this morning, inadvertently, by a puff-piece editorial --- "a stable, safe and free Iraq is emerging" --- by stay-the-course hawk Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham. Noting that Barack Obama has bolstered Gates with the appointment of a military man, James Jones, as National Security Advisor, the trio go further with their call for a "a responsible redeployment from Iraq, based on the new and improved realities on the ground". How best to do that?

Of course, it's by "seek[ing] the counsel of Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of coalition forces in Iraq". (No one seems to mention anymore, despite Thomas Ricks' excellent account in his book Fiasco, that Odierno's heavy-handed methods in 2003/4 in Iraq gave a big boost to the insurgency.)

But, if you want the really significant dimension of the story, note Mullen's statement that most of the US troops will be deployed to Helmand province, where Britain currently has the military lead. Then match that up to a report in The Times that "Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and senior commanders are concerned that the British government lacks the 'political will' for the fight".

In other words, "London, put up or stand aside". But, either because of political concerns or (more likely) the strains on Britain's armed forces, the Brown Government isn't willing or able to step up the military game in Afghanistan, at least in the short turn. And that in turn means the US is taking over in another section of the country.

Get ready. It's going to be a very tough fight, indeed.