Well, it didn’t take long for the latest Iraq fantasy to start falling apart. The so-called “Anbar Awakening”, trumpeted by General David Petraeus as such an amazing success, is every bit the fraud you might have expected by this point. It took some intrepid reporting by people like Big Noise Films (featured on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!) to get a closer look at what is actually happening in that unhappy province, and it isn’t pretty. But then, ethnic cleansing never is. It seems some of the enlightened tribal leaders with whom we are now “allied” led an effort to drive more than 14,000 Shi’ite families out of Anbar and into some pretty miserable looking shantytowns on the outskirts of Baghdad – maybe 130,000 people in all expelled from their homes by the very people we’re glad-handing. Did our people know of this? A little hard to imagine they didn’t, since in one of the communities featured in the Big Noise report, the U.S. military group was headquartered in an abandoned Shi’a family household.

Here are the reports…

Part one

Part two

I must admit, I felt a little more than suspicious (irony) when the U.S. commander on the ground in the Big Noise piece referred to some of these ex-insurgents as “freedom fighters.” Last time we used that terminology was in reference to our terrorist armies in Afghanistan and Central America during the Reagan years. Of course, the reality of Iraq is much more complex than our government is willing to admit. Many of the people in Anbar played both sides of the conflict from the very beginning, alternately working for the U.S. occupation and fighting with the insurgents. (Patrick Graham’s report in the June 2004 Harper’s is enlightening on this point.) When the situation deteriorated into the current hell-disaster, it likely became a harder fence to cross over. The “Anbar Awakening” is something like a return to what was happening in those early days. Still plenty of killing going on – it’s just distributed a bit differently. And, of course, the poorest Iraqis are taking the biggest hits.

From Bush’s perspective – and that of a good many other people in American political culture – that in itself wouldn’t keep Iraq from being a success of sorts. Leaders of both the Republicans and the Democrats claim to be looking for signs of “progress”, meaning the emergence of effective leadership in Iraq that is both hostile to neighboring Iran and more generally compliant with our priorities in the region. Note that I didn’t say “popular” – that’s never really been the standard for success. They only reluctantly agreed to elections in 2004 when Ayatollah Sistani insisted upon it. In his own ham-fisted way, Bush underlined this fact at his news conference the other day, complaining that everyone is asking “Where is Mandela?” Aside from the peculiar fact that junior appears to think Nelson Mandela is dead, Bush is telegraphing his administration’s lack of enthusiasm for the emergence of a truly popular Iraqi leader, as well as its skepticism that such a person exists. (Let’s also forget the fact that, remarkable as he is, Mandela was kept alive by a massive popular movement that was itself the catalyst for change, and not always in a peaceful way.)

In any case, the Bush team (and Harry Reid) would really prefer Saddam – that is, pre-Kuwait Saddam, friend to the west, hated by his own people. That’s what puts the “suck” in success.

luv u,

jp

Dubya Bush likely received a valuable political lesson from his father, but may have been only half listening. “War will make you popular,” I can imagine the old man saying, “…so long as it’s short and successful.” Junior probably wandered off about when he heard the “so long.” As a result, the younger Bush shares his father’s love of bombing and invading other countries, but lacks George Senior’s horse-sense about picking the right fights – namely, easily winnable ones. Hence Operation Iraqi Fiefdom and, in effect, the war in Afghanistan as well, which by any reasonable standard is also a dismal failure in achieving the original stated objective (i.e. destroying al Qaeda and capturing/killing Bin Laden). So… how do you finesse such spectacular under-achievements? Well, if you’re none too subtle and you have a very low opinion of the masses, you move the goal posts. And you do it again and again. That’s certainly the modus operandi in both of these wars, but particularly in Iraq, where six month strategies stretch into 18 months with barely a word from the president on the last set of “benchmarks” left unmet.

Perhaps it’s just Dubya himself, the substandard student, the frat-boy drunkard, never making the grade but expecting promotion nonetheless (and seldom encountering disappointment in that regard). It could be that he simply doesn’t understand what objectives are. But I think the problem goes far beyond this one man. We have to confront the likelihood that if this war had gone successfully and ended quickly, it would have been popular even with the same odious goals and bogus rationales. Sure, I know… that’s like saying, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.” But this war would have been wrong even if it had been short and easy. It would also have been enthusiastically supported by something like a majority of Americans, and maybe a far greater proportion. Remember Panama, Grenada, and “Desert Storm.” Kill a few thousand locals and we’re standing tall. Everybody waving their little flags.

That makes me wonder about us, quite frankly. Do we really need to be directly connected to suffering before we recognize it for what it is and act accordingly? Does the dead person have to be a relative or a friend or a close neighbor for us to give a shit? Perhaps. I remain convinced that the American people have the power to stop the Iraq war if we insist upon it. It just hasn’t hit most of us yet, so we ignore it. We are so quiet about our distaste for the war that the Bush administration has actually felt bold enough to abandon the fiction that our presence in Iraq is a short-term necessity. Indeed, they have started talking in terms of a permanent military presence in that country. Now… this, of course, was manifestly obvious from the beginning, and they have been building permanent bases there for four years, but until now they’ve at least softly denied that there was an intention to stay permanently. Not anymore, apparently. Likely we’ll be presented with the mirage-like possibility of troop reductions – Petraeus’s announcement of next spring’s drawdown like it’s something new; Gate’s vague suggestion of further reductions by the end of next year.

Question is, when do we get to zero? Answer: never. They didn’t take Iraq just to leave it later. They want to stay, and only the American people can derail that policy.

luv u,

jp