MIKE WHITNEY
Counterpunch
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Even a cursory review of Bush's speech shows that the president
is less concerned with "security" in Baghdad than he
is with plans to attack Iran. Paul Craig Roberts was correct in
his article yesterday when he questioned whether all the hoopla
over a surge was just "an orchestrated distraction"
to draw attention away from the real war plan. ("Troop Escalation
and Iran")
Apparently, it is.
As Roberts noted, "The US Congress and the media are focused
on President Bush's proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops
in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies
prepare an assault on Iran."
Roberts' analysis is further supported by today's news that American
troops stormed the "Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi
city of Abril and arrested 5 employees." (Reuters)
Iran had set up the embassy at the request of the Kurdish Governor-General
who was not informed of US intentions to raid the facility and
kidnap its employees. The American soldiers confiscated computers
and documents just 5 hours after Bush had threatened Iran in his
address to the nation.
Clearly, Bush is looking for a way to provoke a military confrontation
with Iran. Now he has 5 Iranian hostages at his disposal to help
him achieve that goal.
Will the Mullahs overreact or will they show restraint and spare
the region greater fragmentation?
Bush's hostility towards Iran was evident in comments he made
in last night's speech:
"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial
integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist
challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These
two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their
territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material
support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks
on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran
and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing
advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
"Seek and destroy"? Is that the plan?
A region-wide conflagration with results as uncertain as they
are in Iraq?
So far, there's no solid evidence that Iran is "providing
material support for attacks on American troops." All the
same, the administration has consistently used "material
support" as the basis for preemptive war. In fact, the so-called
Bush Doctrine is predicated on the assumption that the US is free
to attack whoever it chooses if it perceives a threat to its national
security. The normal rules of self defense or "imminent danger"
no longer apply.
Bush knows that if Iran was seriously involved in arming the
Iraqi resistance, we'd be seeing the Russian-made, armor-piercing
rocket launchers that were used so effectively by Hezbollah during
their 34 day war with Israel. That hasn't been the case. Iran
is undoubtedly active in Iraq, but in ways that are much subtler
that Bush claims. In fact, Bush's new buddy, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim,
the "death squad" thug who runs the feared Badr Brigade
out of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, has strong ties to Iran (having
lived there for 20 years.) He is probably using the US military
to snuff-out his enemies (the Sunni-backed resistance and al Sadr's
Mehdi Army) before he turns his attention to his US benefactors.
Iran clearly has interests in Iraq, but it is the Bush administration's
reckless war that has assured that Iran will be the default superpower
in the entire region. Bush has shattered the fragile balance of
power between Sunnis and Shiites and eliminated Iran's main adversaries
in Afghanistan (Sunni-Taliban) and Iraq. (Saddam-Ba'athist Party)
Bush now seems to think that the only way he can challenge Tehran's
ascendancy, is by launching a Lebanon-type assault on military
and civilian infrastructure in Iran.
If Iran is set back 20 years, Bush assumes, then our trusted-friend
Israel will be the prevailing power in the Middle East. That,
of course, was the plan from the get-go.
To that end, Bush averred:
"We're taking steps to bolster the security of Iraq and
protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered
the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.
We will expand intelligence sharing and deploy Patriot Air Defense
Systems to reassure our friends and alliesAnd we will work with
others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating
the region."
All the pieces are being put in place for a much larger and more
destructive conflict.
It's an ambitious plan, but it has no chance of succeeding. The
United States is hopelessly bogged down in Iraq and its actions
in Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine have only ensured
that the US' days in the Middle East are quickly drawing to a
close.
As for Iraq, Bush's speech provided few details of how the miniscule
and incremental increase in troop-strength (only 17,000 to Baghdad
over a 4 month period) was expected to quell the raging violence
which has gripped the capital since the last major operation in
August. Operation "Forward Together" turned out to be
a complete disaster precipitating a sharp boost in attacks on
US troops as well as an increase in sectarian violence.
Bush has enlisted some support for his "escalation"
plan by committing to the "clear-hold-build" strategy
promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR has been
pushing their "model for counterinsurgency" for 3 years,
but have been largely ignored by the Bush administration.
Despite Bush's feeble defense of the policy, he has no intention
of putting it into practice. He is merely pacifying other members
of the political establishment who are demanding that their voices
be heard.
The reality of the present strategy is manifest in military operations
currently underway in Baghdad. These operations are being conducted
in a way that is reminiscent of Rumsfeld's brutal reprisals in
Falluja 2 years ago. The attacks on alleged "insurgent strongholds"
on Haifa Street, (which is just a few hundred yards from the Green
Zone) show that the military has returned to the policy of using
overwhelming force to subdue the resistance. In this case, the
US pounded the residential area with helicopter gun-ships and
F-16s, while ground troops went rampaging door to door. The civilian
casualties in these scattershot operations invariably skyrocket
and further alienate the local population. In one day alone, US
forces killed an estimated 50 Iraqis in the predominantly Sunni
area.
Sunni leaders are now accusing the US military of carrying out
ethnic cleansing operations at the request of the Shiite militias.
Is that the plan; purging Baghdad of the Sunnis?
Certainly, the lynching of Saddam was intended to send a message
to the Ba'athist-led resistance that there would be no more attempts
at negotiations or compromise. The US is now pursuing Cheney's
"80-20" plan; a strategy to throw their support behind
the Shiites while eradicating the Sunnis (20% of the pop.). Bush
hints at this new approach in his speech when he says:
"Our efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principle
reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure
the neighborhoods that have been cleared of terrorists and insurgents
AND THERE WERE TOO MANY RESTRICTIONS ON THE TROOPS WE DID HAVE."
"Too many restrictions"? (The respected British medical
journal Lancet reported 650,000 casualties in the conflict so
far with over 2 million Iraqi refugees. Is that "Too many
restrictions"? )
Bush's comments suggest that the "gloves are coming off"
and the military is resuming its scorched earth policy that was
used in Falluja and other parts of the "Triangle of Death".
Bush also intimated that he would strike out at other "armed
militias" in Iraq; an indication that US forces are planning
an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. The Shiite
cleric, al Sadr, is despised by the Washington Warlords and is
described by the Pentagon as "the biggest threat to Iraq's
security." Even so, al-Sadr has operatives placed strategically
throughout the al-Maliki government (and within the Green Zone)
and attacking him now would only make the occupation more perilous.
In fact, an attack on the Mehdi Army could create a situation
where Shiite militias cut off vital supply lines from the south
making occupation virtually untenable.
Bush has decided to abandon all sense of caution and blunder
ahead taking on all adversaries without concern for the consequences.
It is a prescription for disaster.
Bush's "Victory Strategy"; more force, but no political
solution
Bush's speech invoked none of the flashy slogans that he typically
uses and which normally appear in headlines the next day. Nor
did he make any attempt to elicit support for his planned "escalation"
of troops. That idea has already been thoroughly rejected by the
Iraq Study Group, the Congress, and the American people. Instead,
he reiterated the same worn bromides (of "ideological"
warfare, 9-11, and terrorism) which have long since lost their
power to move public opinion.
The Bush administration has run out of gas. They have no plan
for pacification, security, reconstruction, or regional stability.
Their "one-size-fits-all" solution requires ever-increasing
levels of violence for an intractable Iraqi Resistance which is
now fated to spread mayhem throughout the entire Middle East.
Karl von Clausewitz said, "War is not a mere act of policy,
but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity
by other means."
Bush and his fellow-neocons are incapable of thinking politically,
so America's decline in Iraq is likely to be precipitous. The
crackdown in Baghdad and the anticipated bombing of Iran will
have no significant affect on the war's outcome. America has lost
its ability to influence events positively or to arbitrarily assert
its will. We're now facing a "death by a thousand cuts";
the steady erosion of US power.
Brute force alone will not produce a political solution in Iraq.
Those who think it will are bound to fail.
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