So what do we do now?

[phil]

The worst in Iraq is still to come

Simon Tisdall
Monday October 16, 2006
The Guardian


In its external aspects, Iraq remains a live, occasionally explosive issue in the US and Britain, as last week's row over General Sir Richard Dannatt's thoughts on a British withdrawal showed. But the deepening chaos inside the country attracts less and less attention. Like sailors long missing at sea, the fate of ordinary Iraqis three years after the country was driven on to the rocks grows increasingly remote from those who precipitated the disaster.

In the US, Iraq is now primarily an electoral rather than a nation-building, humanitarian or counter-terrorism issue. With the Republicans fighting to retain control of Congress in next month's midterm polls, George Bush's Middle East freedom mission has become a hard-nosed numbers game.

The Lancet's politically damaging report that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 was swiftly dismissed by the White House. But the fact that October is proving the cruellest month for American soldiers, with an average 3.5 deaths a day so far, is deadlier domestic ammunition for the Democrats.

On related fronts, both American conservatives and Arab reformers worry that, burned by its Iraq experience, the Bush administration is reverting to old thinking - containment, deterrence, and maintenance of the Middle East status quo. And in Britain as in the US, Iraq is now a handy tool in the nuclear proliferation debate. Tony Blair is derided for seeing weapons in Baghdad when, actually, they were in North Korea all along. So who, his opponents ask, can trust him on Iran?

Such political and strategic games reflect a changed state of mind. Although the troops are still there, much of European and US opinion now seems to feel it has entered the "post-Iraq" period. The world has moved on to other issues, it is argued. Relatively soon, both Mr Bush and Mr Blair will be gone. And media interest has diminished, partly because of the evident dangers to reporters but also because the "story" has grown repetitive.

But inside Iraq, the picture appears very different to those who still care to look. As daily sectarian bloodshed, militia anarchy and political incompetence reach unprecedented levels, it seems likely that the worst is yet to come.

One sign came last week when the Shia parliamentary majority rejected Sunni opposition and passed a law allowing partition into autonomous federal regions. It is but a small step from there to national disintegration.

Another grim omen was the indefinite postponement at the weekend of a long-awaited "national reconciliation conference", an initiative central to the prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts for a new start. Almost simultaneously, Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaida, announced the formation of an Iraqi Islamic state.

Policymakers agree the US approach has to change. The argument is about how, and to what end. The focus of the former secretary of state James Baker's Iraq Study Group, currently examining the issue at Mr Bush's behest, is not how to make Iraq a glowing success but how to prevent it becoming a permanent failure endangering US interests. Options under discussion include asking Iran and Syria for help and containment via a phased withdrawal to friendly neighbouring countries.

"The starting point is to recognise that Iraq is not going to be a democratic, unified country that serves as a model for the region," Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's Middle East negotiator, told the Washington Post. Whatever happened, the US should set a withdrawal timetable, he said. That sounds very much like Gen Dannatt's "lowered ambitions".

In a report for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman takes a more holistic approach reflecting Washington's responsibilities as well as its self-interest. He discusses a wide range of measures, including international military and economic incentives to facilitate Iraqi reconciliation. And he warns that new remedies are urgently required.

"Iraq is already in a state of serious civil war and current efforts at political compromise and improving security at best are buying time," he says. "There is a critical risk that Iraq will drift into a major civil conflict over the coming months ... The US cannot simply 'stay the course' and rely on existing actions and strategy. It needs new options."

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It needs a new US administration !!

[phil]

The courts are starting to accept that the war against Iraq is a crime

In Britain and Ireland, protesters who have deliberately damaged military equipment are walking from the dock

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 17, 2006
The Guardian


In the early hours, two days before the attack on Iraq began, two men in their 30s, Phil Pritchard and Toby Olditch, cut through the fence surrounding the air base at Fairford in Gloucestershire and made their way towards the B52 bombers which were stationed there. The planes belonged to the US air force. The trespassers were caught by guards and found to be carrying tools and paint. They confessed that they were seeking to disable the planes, in order to prevent war crimes from being committed. This year they were tried on charges of conspiracy to commit criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Last week, after long deliberations, the jury failed to reach a verdict.

The same thing happened a month ago. Two other activists, Margaret Jones and Paul Milling, had entered the same RAF base and smashed up more than 20 of the vehicles used to load bombs on to the B52s. The charges were the same, and again the jury failed to agree. In both cases the defendants claimed to be putting the state on trial. If I were in government, I would be starting to feel uneasy.

The defendants had tried to argue in court that the entire war against Iraq was a crime of aggression. But in March this year the law lords ruled that they could not use this defence: while aggression by the state is a crime under international law, it is not a crime under domestic law. But they were allowed to show that they were seeking to prevent specific war crimes from being committed - principally, the release by the B52s of cluster bombs and munitions tipped with depleted uranium.

They cited section 5 of the 1971 Criminal Damage Act, which provides lawful excuse for damaging property if that action prevents property belonging to other people from being damaged, and section 3 of the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which states that "a person may use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of a crime". In summing up, the judge told the jurors that using weapons "with an adverse effect on civilian populations which is disproportionate to the need to achieve the military objective" is a war crime. The defendants are likely to be tried again next year.

While these non-verdicts are as far as the defence of lawful excuse for impeding the Iraq war has progressed in the UK, in Ireland and Germany the courts have made decisions - scarcely reported over here - whose implications are momentous. Last year, five peace campaigners were acquitted after using an axe and hammers to cause $2.5m worth of damage to a plane belonging to the US navy. When they attacked it, in February 2003, it had been refuelling at Shannon airport on its way to Kuwait, where it would deliver supplies to be used in the impending war. The jury decided that the five saboteurs were acting lawfully.

This summer, the German federal administrative court threw out the charge of insubordination against a major in the German army. He had refused to obey an order which, he believed, would implicate him in the invasion of Iraq. The judges determined that the UN charter permits a state to go to war in only two circumstances: in self-defence, and when it has been authorised to do so by the UN security council. The states attacking Iraq, they ruled, had no such licence. Resolution 1441, which was used by the British and US governments to justify the invasion, contained no authorisation. The war could be considered an act of aggression.

There is no prospect that the British prime minister could be put on trial for war crimes in this country (although, as the international lawyer Philippe Sands points out, there is a chance that he could be arrested and tried elsewhere). Even so, the government appears to find these legal processes profoundly threatening.

When the Fairford protesters took their request to challenge the legality of the war to the court of appeal, Sir Michael Jay, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, submitted a witness statement which seems to contain a note of official panic.

"It would be prejudicial to the national interest and to the conduct of the government's foreign policy if the English courts were to express opinions on questions of international law concerning the use of force ... which might differ from those expressed by the government," he wrote. Such an opinion "would inevitably weaken the government's hand in its negotiations with other states. Allied states, which have agreed with and supported the United Kingdom's views on the legality of the use of force, could regard such a step as tending to undermine their own position."

It doesn't seem to matter how many journalists, protesters or even lawyers point out that the British government had no legal case for attacking Iraq, that the attorney general's official justification was risible and that Blair's arguments were mendacious. As long as the government has a majority in parliament, the support of much of the press and an army of spin doctors constantly weaving and reweaving its story, it can shrug off these attacks. It can insist, with some success, that we "move on" from Iraq. But an official verdict, handed down by a court, is another matter. If a ruling like that of the German federal administrative court were made over here, it could be devastating for Blair and his ministers.

[phil]

America has finally taken on the grim reality of Iraq

The US is radically rethinking its exit strategy, while Britain waits zombie-like for new instructions

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday October 18, 2006
The Guardian


The Baker report on an exit strategy from Iraq, leaked this week in the US, is as sensible as it is sensational. It rejects "staying the course" as no longer plausible and purports to seek alternatives to just "cutting and running". Stripped of political sweetening, it concludes that there is none. America must leave Iraq without preconditions and hope that its neighbours, hated Syria and Iran, can clear up the mess. This advice comes not from some anti-war coalition but from the Iraq study group under the former Republican secretary of state, James Baker, set up by Congress with President George Bush's endorsement. Students of Iraq studies should at this point sit down and steady their nerves. Kissinger is in Paris. The Vietnam moment is at hand.
Earlier this week Bush telephoned the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to reassure him about rumours swirling through Washington that the Pentagon was about to topple him for being useless. It was reported that Maliki had just two months to get both his army and the escalating violence - running at some 100 deaths a day - under control. Washington was allegedly searching for a new "strong man" to pull the militias into line and assert the power of central government over Iraq's catatonic insecurity.

Lending force to these rumours, Republican Senator John Warner has spoken of a deadline for withdrawal and some version of a "three-state" solution. The Kurds are already autonomous. Let the same apply to the Sunnis and Shia. In the west of the country a Sunni body, the Mujahedin Shura, has come out for a six province western region under Prince Abu Omar Baghdadi. In the south the Iranians are watching as the British cede control and a possible eight-province "confederacy" slides effortlessly under their de facto aegis. Every US thinktank is now busying itself (at last) with alternative futures for Iraq.

Since accurate reporting is near impossible, the scale of that country's collapse under three years of US and UK occupation is hard to measure. Civil war is normally indicated by death rates and population movements. Whether the figure of civilian deaths is 50,000 or ten times that number is immaterial; either is a horrific comment on the impotence of the occupation. The UNHCR estimates 365,000 internal refuges in Iraq this year alone. More are seeking asylum abroad than from any other nation.

A third of Iraq's professional class is reported to have fled to Jordan, a flight of skills worse than under Saddam. UN monitors now report 2,000 people a day are crossing the Syrian border. Over a hundred lecturers at Baghdad university alone have been murdered, mostly for teaching women. There are few places in Iraq where women can go about unattended or unveiled. Gunmen arrived earlier this month at a Baghdad television station and massacred a dozen of the staff, an incident barely thought worth reporting. The national museum is walled up. Electricity supply is down to four hours a day. No police uniform can be trusted. The arrival anywhere of an army unit can be prelude to a mass killing and makes a mockery of the American policy of "security transfer". All intelligence out of Iraq suggests this is no longer a functioning state.

For all the abuse which Europeans regularly heap on the American political process, it has one strength, its capacity for course-correction. A constitution heavy with checks and balances enables it to respond to new circumstances with brutal pluralism. Three years ago America went to war on a lie, a wing and a prayer. That war has clearly failed and consensus is disintegrating. Congress subjects serving and retired generals to searing cross-examination. Senior figures go to Baghdad and, when they break free of their minders, report independently. There is none of the executive deference of Britain's parliamentary committees and tongue-tied "loyal opposition". America's debate on Iraq is now a grim, grinding encounter with reality.

The debate must contemplate the painful but not unfamiliar experience of imperial retreat. As in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia the moment is delayed but the deed will be efficient. The Baker commission, appearing in full after November's congressional election, realises the senselessness of the present bloodbath. It reportedly accepts that the continued presence of foreign forces does not prevent but adds to the chaos. American troops are in occupation but not in control. Their departure can hardly undermine security, except possibly that of Baghdad's green zone, and that is largely privatised.

A measure of the collapse is the astonishing suggestion that America find a new regime in consultation with Iran and Syria. This can only mean accepting some degree of confederacy, looking to the shadowy militias, warlords and sheikhs for provincial and regional leadership. Last year's Iraq constitution negotiated by the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zelmay Khalilzad, remains the best template for this. It is significant that Maliki, in a recent interview with US Today, referred to the possibility of giving Sunnis and Shia muslims some of the autonomy enjoyed by the Kurds. Given the sheer scale of civil violence rife in and around Baghdad the price of such autonomy may be population migration, but that is happening on a massive scale already: Iraq is partitioning itself. It might at least presage a sort of political reconstruction, without which peace and prosperity are inconceivable.

What is humiliating for Britons is that not a whisper of such lateral thinking can be heard from the government. Downing Street is intellectually numb, like a forgotten outpost of a crumbling Roman empire. It can see the barbarians at the gates yet it dare not respond as it knows it should because no new instructions have arrived from Rome. As for parliament, the opposition, academics, thinktanks and most of the media, a zombie-like inertia is all. Last week's row over controversial remarks by the army chief, Sir Richard Dannatt, was concerned not with what he said but whether he should have said it. Every one is waiting for the US to move.

Blair's last comment on Iraq was that any withdrawal would be "craven surrender" and would endanger British security. This is mad. Even Bush can admit to be "open to new ideas on Iraq". Blair has clearly not heard of Baker's report. Perhaps he should hurry to Washington for new instructions from the boss.

[phil]

How Iraq came home to haunt America

For months doubts over Iraq have risen along with the death toll. Last week a tipping point was reached as political leaders in Washington and London began openly to think the unthinkable: that the war was lost

Peter Beaumont, Edward Helmore and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer


Colonel Tom Vail is planning a road trip around the United States. It is his last, sad duty before returning to his family from eastern Baghdad. For when the commander of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne arrives back in the States, it will be with videos of the memorial services held in Baghdad for each of his fallen soldiers to give to the families of the dead men.
He knows that some of the families will not want to see him, and he understands. Grief works in different ways, he says. For others, however, it will be an opportunity to talk, to learn something, he hopes, of the inexplicable nature of their children's deaths.

So, when he has a moment, when he is not driving round the battlefield that is eastern Baghdad, Vail examines the map and plans his flights and his car hire. And he wonders at the reception he will receive - a messenger of death, bringing the war back from Iraq to the home front.

For when Vail and his soldiers return, it will be in the knowledge that the United States that they are going home to is not the one that they left. That in their year-long absence a seismic shift has occurred in support for the war in Iraq. And that the deaths that Colonel Vail must carry back with him to grieving families - deaths that once seemed to Americans to be a necessary cost - now seem to the majority a dreadful and pointless waste.

It will also be in the knowledge that the battle that they began with such confidence barely four months ago, to secure and then rebuild some of the most dangerous areas of the Iraqi capital, like the campaigns before, has failed.

...

observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1928616,00.html

...

Ending the Iraq nightmare - the key points

A Partition

What it means
One of the options being looked at by James Baker and his team - asked by Bush to study the exit alternatives. Lines would be drawn across a map of Iraq dividing it into three autonomous regions - Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the middle and Shia in the south.

Consequences
Dividing Iraq along sectarian lines would exacerbate sectarian violence and lead to ethnic cleansing. It would also unequally split up Iraq's oil resources - and leave the Sunnis with little arable land - which would give opposing sides an economic reason to fight each other. Partition would be far from straightforward in heavily mixed communities, holy cities would be contested and Baghdad would probably explode.

Support
Outside powers such as Iran would find it easy to dominate the new entities. The militias are already creating a partition and more and more people are becoming displaced.

B Regional help

What it means
Sub-contracting problem - asking Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to step in.

Consequences
Risks drawing the regional players into a wider conflict that could engulf the Arab world. It could mean Bush facing demands from countries he regards as enemies in exchange for help. It's also debatable whether any of those countries would have influence to curb sectarian killings.

Support
It looks good on paper, Baker is very keen, but not popular in Washington. White House press secretary Tony Snow said it unlikely Bush administration would consider ending its ban on talks with Iran and Syria. 'We'd be very happy for them not to foment terror,' Snow said. 'But it certainly doesn't change our diplomatic stance towards either.'

C Immediate withdrawal

What it means
The cut-and-run option where the US-led coalition troops simply pull out overnight.

Consequences
Could worsen the chaos and enfeeble the struggling Iraq government and military. Danger of full-scale civil war and carnage, destabilising the region and leaving a failed state open to use by al-Qaeda. But it would stop UK and US soldiers dying.

Support
Bush will never be persuaded it is the right thing to do. The aim has always been to leave an Iraq that could govern itself. It would mean utter humiliation for his war on terror. The US would forever be blamed for the mess it left behind and could even be forced to intervene again in the future. Bush has been listening to Henry Kissenger who has told him cut and run is not an option and 'victory is the only meaningful exit strategy'.

D Phased withdrawal

What it means
'We notify the Iraqis that we're going to be drawing down a reasonable but careful percentage of our troops over a reasonable interval of months - for example 5 per cent every three months,' said Richard L Armitage, former presidential adviser. US General George W Casey has suggested Iraqi security forces would be ready to take over in 12-18 months. Views of whether it takes weeks or years vary but the pressure is on Bush - and Tony Blair - to produce a timetable.

Consequences
If the weak Iraqi government makes no progress in disarming the militias and death squads then the same results as immediate withdrawal. Insurgents would perceive it as a victory and move into the vacuum.

Support
Democrats winning control of one of the Houses of Congress would increase pressure for an end date to be set. Favoured by Britain and the subject of the row earlier this month engulfing General Sir Richard Dannatt's comments when he called for a swift pull-out of UK troops. Blair has also stressed a desire to leave but only when 'the job is done.'

International press: what they are saying around the world

Los Angeles Times
Tim Rutten, yesterday

The Bush administration's problems in Iraq have nothing to do with public relations and everything to do with the facts. American voters - a substantial majority of whom now recognise the war in Iraq as a mistake - will make their own decisions in November, but the real lesson concerning the American failure in south east Asia that the news media ought to hold in mind over and against all criticism - no matter how adroitly it's spun - can be summed up in one word: quagmire.

New York Sun
Daniel Freedman

Iraq is not like Vietnam, as the anti-war movement likes to say - ie, a failure The reality is America only lost [in south east Asia] because the political leadership lost the resolve to back the troops The crucial part now is to ensure American troops aren't abandoned as in Vietnam.

El Pais
'Impossible Victory', yesterday

All the alternatives Bush has put on the table to solve an increasingly deteriorating situation in Iraq are terrible. This war - and above all its bad management, even more so than at the beginning of the war- has finally turned into the focus of the campaign for the American Congress elections on 7 November. Even the president has now recognised its resemblance to the Vietnam war.

At this stage, the Bush administration is looking for a political escapade. But if the option were clear, they would have already opted for one.

Le Monde
'The strategy in Iraq puts the Congress elections at stake', 18 October

Will James Baker succeed in finding an exit strategy in Iraq's dead end for president George Bush? Three weeks before the Congress elections that some observers see as the 'referendum on Iraq', the former Secretary of State is omnipresent in the media, accrediting the idea that the change of policies in Iraq is perhaps less distant, as opposed to Bush's denials of change.

Mr Baker promotes this idea specially in his book, an autobiography where he shares his emotions as well as revealing his discovery of African-American cousins and his taste for hunting, a pastime he shares with the father of the current president.

Sydney Morning Herald
Leader, yesterday

The debate over Iraq policy in the US, Britain and Australia is being driven by bad news from Baghdad and increasingly hostile public opinion at home. It is good that this is forcing political leaders to review and adjust their strategies. It will be even better if it leads them to stop reviling their critics as traitors or cowards and instead explain the moral, political and military complexities of the Iraq situation. The case against a premature withdrawal should not rest on defence of an invasion that was launched partly on false pretences but, rather, on the new realities created by that invasion and its bungled aftermath. So dire are those realities that pulling out now would not only expose the Iraqis to the danger of even worse bloodshed in an outright civil war, but also present violent jihadists with a victory that would embolden them to further atrocities.

Washington Post
Colbert King, yesterday

There is a new Iraq emerging before our eyes. It is an Iraq that torments Christians, that indulges in unrelenting sectarian bloodbaths, that cheers for Hizbollah, that is no more a friend to Israel than is Iran, all despite the lies sold to the White House and Pentagon by self-serving, power-hungry Iraqi expatriates. The new Iraq is not what George W. Bush talks about. But that's the Iraq he's got. And, worst of all, that's the Iraq we are in.'

The Economist, London
Leader, yesterday

The only honest alternative is indeed probably just to go and let one side win. America did that in Vietnam and Britain did it in Palestine ... Vietnam turned out well enough, regional dominoes did not all fall and America went on to win the cold war anyway ... Maybe something similar will happen in Iraq, not least because the rival versions of theocracy on offer from Iran and al-Qaeda are nonsensical too. But just going would be a fantastic gamble, not only with America's global power and prestige but also with other people's lives. Better, still, to stay.

[phil]

-30-

[strat-0]

After the news Thursday, I said, "Well, I guess you can call it a 'civil war' now." Low and behold, today they are beginning to jump on the band wagon (starting with NBC). I mean, what else can you call it at this point?

[rockysigman]

I think it's been a civil war for quite a while now.

Thankfully, Fox News was already asking the important questions months ago.

[Kensterberg]

admin said:

After the news Thursday, I said, "Well, I guess you can call it a 'civil war' now." Low and behold, today they are beginning to jump on the band wagon (starting with NBC). I mean, what else can you call it at this point?

An uncivilized war?

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Um, dude, what war has ever been civil?

[kmc]

Fox News fucking disgusts me.

[rockysigman]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

Um, dude, what war has ever been civil?

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Dude.....that's because it there were on Brokeback Mountain together.........
it should read "ten classic love connections between"....