IRAQ: THE PRESIDENT GOES ON THE OFFENSIVE AND

...THE "WHAT WENT WRONG IN IRAQ" INTELLECTSHITUALS BACKPEDAL--INTO SHRUBS FULL OF RACOONS, PRAY TO GOD.

third rough draft

“What’s shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90% of the cluster bombs strikes [by Israel] occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution.”

JAN EGELAND, U.N. UNDER-SECRETARY GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS.

STAY THE COURSE AND THE “WHAT WENT WRONG” SONG-AND-DANCE

The White House and its tentacles once again have gone on the offensive to stay the course in Iraq. It has recruited poli. sci. sophomores to write up speeches for the President and his Vice about appeasement of Islamic fascists. What are they hiding? Besides the fact that Iraq is a disaster–the Iraqi people’s and ours, more the Iraqi people’s--the two are as worried about their base, the Jewish/Christian right, our version of Islamic fascism, as they are about the fate of America’s troops in Iraq. The audiences they're addressing are exactly those who they want to persuade that it was not President Bush and Vice President Cheney who led America to defeat in Iraq. It’ll be the Democrat who will withdraw the troops.

In the meanwhile, the dishonest pushers of the Iraq invasion, with various hidden agendas, who have filled to overflow Iraqi orphanages, having snatched the fathers away from their children in an unnecessary war, are backpedaling with breathless speed.

(A Note from Anthropology. You may wonder why those dishonest ones who led the nation astray on Iraq are so shameless, and why the media still gives them time. If you look at this phenomenon with the eye of an anthropologist, you would conclude that the ants appreciate these other ants for having created work. Since all real work practically has gone to China, a war now-and-then gives the illusion of a working nation that is getting something done. So, in essence, even dishonest ones who create misery and orphan little children are appreciated by the ant colony for the employment their dishonesty creates–-in the absence of non-war-oriented work. Crazy, huh?)

Here are some points about the false debate launched by those with hidden agendas:

1. DEFEAT TOOK PLACE WHEN THE IDEA OF INVADING IRAQ WON OUT. EVERYTHING ELSE (“MISTAKES”) THAT TOOK PLACE AFTER...WAS OF THE NATURE OF INVASION AND OCCUPATION–ANY INVASION, ANY OCCUPATION.

The very idea of invading Iraq was mediocrity itself and concealed within it an array of hidden agendas, even at the highest level of government.

(Mediocrity is/was a function of a want of independence of analysis and perspective; it bespeaks to such phenomena as advice from ethnically- biased advisers, arrogant advisers, Uncle Tom advisers/academicians, Israel-obsessed right-wing advisers, Israel-obsessed liberal adorers of the Israel-obsessed right wing advisers, Iraqi snake oil salesmen.)

The Sunni establishment in Iraq was bound to start a civil war sooner or later to fail an invasion/occupation that the harmful idiots had planned with Shiite agents of Shiite Iran. (Please refer to “Flashback...")

My assessment then was that the Sunni establishment would start the civil war on the eve of the invasion, or even before the ivasion began, and would beget retaliation from the Shiites. But it waited. (I’ve been accused by many past mentors, chief among them was Professor Glenn Snyder, of being too efficient.) Civil war was the Sunni establishment’s only way of averting total political annihilation by the harmful idiots’ armies and their Iraqi double-agents.

Accordingly, the proponents of the invasion (Uncle Toms, Paul Wolfowitzs, Douglas Feiths, Tom Friedmans, various men with erection problems, delusional triple-agents, narcissistic-delusional advisers, sadistic hatefuls of Arabs and Muslims), who are now back-pedaling, are being...oh well, self-serving. They were right, you see, but their rarified ideas about ruthless and unnecessary killing of the fathers of little children were carried out the wrong way. Darn! They will bring out various elements that allegedly failed the invasion, such as the harmful idiot’s disbanding of the Iraqi army, the campaign against the Baathists and all Sunni men, and so on.

Once and for all: The occupier could not but disband the Iraqi army. If it hadn’t, it would’ve had to deal with a Shiite insurgency first, and possibly two insurgencies running at the same time The Sunni officer corps waited to start the civil war probably in the hope that the harmful idiots would have an appreciation of the role the army played in the stability of Iraq. But the officer corps proved wrong since the harmul idiots could not but disband that army, lest the harful idiots ended up with a Shiite insurgency. You see, once again, one needs to remember that the harmful idiots are both: harmful and idiotic, not only harmful and not only idotic. Both.)

Ah! If only the generals had done this; if only the chief harmful idiot in Iraq (Paul Bremer)had done that.
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Bullshit. All of these “what went wrong” items were part-and-parcel of occupation, any occupation.

CASE STUDY: THE LEBANESE UNDER OCCUPATION

Ask the Lebanese about how many times Syrian troops shot people by mistake or ran them over with their humongous Russian trucks. There’s an entire family in my childhood neighborhood in Beirut who were all maimed by one such Russian truck. And that’s one out of endless many. Or, ask the Lebanese of the south and the Beqaa about their children being blown up by Israeli cluster bombs, the pride of America’s manufacturing and the gift of its liberal democracy. Ask J. A/H, my older sister’s best friend, how Syrian troops murdered her first husband in cold blood, and his brother, in the Cedars area of Lebanon, and threw the bodies in a ditch. (Just learned from my father that they ran over one of them with a tank.) Ask her how her second husband stepped onto an Israeli (American-made) cluster bomb in a potato field in the Beqaa, to widow her a second time and orphan the two children.

Occupation forces will sooner or later commit the same mistakes whoever they are and wherever they are. One only needed to look at Syria’s occupation of Lebanon and Israel’s occupation of Palestine (let’s murder a poor family picnicking at the beach in Gaza and say it was a mistake) to come to terms with that.

CASE STUDY: OCCUPATION AND OUR MILITARY HARMFUL IDIOTS

Pathetic for our military harmful idiots: One needed only look at Israel’s defeat in south Lebanon (1982-2000) to learn that there was something called IED–the infamous road-side bomb--and there were suicide bombings, and that these defeated the valiant troops of that morally-superior and faultless Jewish state, which massacres children from the air with American cluster bombs. Oh yeah, like you don’t think other cultures are capable of improving on these IEDs? They're inferior, aren’t they, and their minds don’t have our engineering skills. Well, go visit any department of engineering at a U.S. campus and report back to me that the majority of the advanced students there are American. Not.

So, the very idea of invading spelled defeat.

(To be fair: There are generals who knew better and "resigned" so not to take part in a plan hatched by idiots who were harmful.)




2. SHED THE MEDIOCRE WHO TOOK US TO DEFEAT. HA, HA, HA. STOP IT, PLEASE!

A priori, the imperial state had accepted advice from the biased and mediocre sources described above, and will need to shed these.

I’m laughing–-in tears, really. As a wise public policy friend of mine had always reminded me: It’s about jobs and jobs and more jobs and juicy contracts–-dollar signs all over. Got nothing to do with carrying out a solidly thought-out plan. The mediocre shall seek the mediocre. But they are all working and making money; and that’s what really matters.


The public policy friend couldn’t be more right. For instance, one buddy, smart, who meant well and understood the limitations of his mission, left the status of under-employed to work in Iraq, and was able to retire after his years there, doing next-to-nothing since the security situation had pre-empted real work. (I told you he was smart.) An acquaintance, having never stuffed envelopes for a political campaign, who would otherwise be unemployed, a pathological sex maniac, did it for the oral sex (he reported about) on his escapades to Jordan and Lebanon–-and a lot of money in his pocket to boot. He maintained that he could help the Iraqis turn to democracy.

War: Such a capitalist celebration!


3. A DIVIDED STATE THAT WILL EXPLODE

The state that the United States is building in Iraq is, by definition, a divided one. A recent event illustrates this division. One seemingly cunning move was the recent anti-Sadr raid on Diwaniyyah. The US assigned it to the Ministry of Defense and not to the Interior Ministry–-the entity to which that duty primarily belonged. Why? I suspect the Ministry defense (of war, really) is once again controlled by the Sunni Baath and its men wouldn’t mind going after Shiites.
So, in essence, the American occupier thinks it can manipulate the country’s divisions and have Sunni eliminate one of their most energetic foes–-Muqtadha.

And herein lies the problem:

Should the US retreat from Iraq, which will happen sooner than later, Iraq will have two armies: a Sunni army (Ministry of Defense) and a Shiite one (Ministry of the Interior and tens of thousands of armed protective services men.) This probably explains why the US occupier is reluctant to give either advanced weapons, in spite of criticism by one former general. (I didn’t get his name; he was quoted by NPR on the morning of 8/31/06.)

Expect both Ministries to be passing information (“intelligence”) to their respective guerrillas, the Defense to the Sunni and Interior to the Shiites.

This intelligence should make it easier on the various guerrillas to target for assassination those who are responsible for this or that act. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me that Interior already knows who at Defense spearheaded the Diwaniyyah raid and has passed on this information to Muqtadha as-Sadr’s men who could target those who had spearheaded that raid. Worse, they could target their families. Accordingly, the US occupier should have INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents at the ready in Kuwait to grant these people refugee status in the United States.


3.a. IN A PUPPET STATE, THE TROOPS’ ALLEGIANCE WILL REMAIN TO THEIR SECT.

To dispatch Interior Ministry troops against Sunni guerrillas and Defense Ministry troops against Shiite guerrillas is a game that’s bound to backfire. Each set of guerrillas could find it convenient to carry out nerve-wreaking sectarian killings that should assure that the balance of these troops’ allegiance will be to their respective sect and hardly to the puppet “state.”

In other words, the much bigger explosion in Iraq is coming, sooner or later.


3b. THE SHIITES WILL NOT SHED IRAN

When I had told my conservative father about the snooping by right wing Israel-obsessed and connected pseudo-friends on me (I’ve covered most--but not all-- of these in the series “Chance Encounters,”) he became worried. His face reddened. But knowing that intimidation will not stop me (it really is biological), he went pensive and said that he would rather that I don’t write about politics. Then he said, “Look, every Sunni at heart is al-Qaeda, every Jew at heart is Israel, and every Shiite at heart is Iran. I apologize for simplifying and stereotyping; but you need to come to terms with this when you hang out with people.” There’s nothing like a Lebanese Maronite Catholic, from a country that recognizes eighteen official sects, whose heart still is there, to give you a different perspective. What he forgot: A number of fellow Lebanese Christians are at heart and in fact Israeli agents.)


In Iraq, that means that there’s no way under the sun, now that the Americans have brought the sectarian genie out of the bottle, that the Shiites will join forces with the United States against Iran. SCIRI’s head, Abdel Aziz Hakim, recently (on or about August 30) rejected U.S. accusations that Iran was intervening in Iraq’s affairs. He could see that the U.S. had been tilting in favor of the old Baath. He ain’t gonna take it lying down. (SCIRI: Supreme Council of the Islamic Revoution in Iraq.)

The Iraqi Shiites once fought valiantly against the Iranian armies; but that was then, when their secular Arab identity had trumped petty sectarianism. But the harmful idiots’ invasion put an end to that, and I don’t see it reviving, not with the current conditions. Though the Iraqi Shiites are Arab in every way, Iran --for now--is their reference, if only because there's a cultural vacuum, the result of the harmful idiots' elimination of the Baathist government. And this reference is made stronger by Iran’s focus on Israel, its occupation of Arab lands, and beastly treatment of the Palestinians.

The Sunni could--join forces with the U.S. But that’s not as easy as it had been when Arab nationalism had been dominant under the toppled President of Iraq. The Baath ruled not exclusively with repression; it offered a carrot, too : You become an Arab nationalist of the Baathist variety, and most doors would open for you. And that applied to women! But now, to recall my father’s warning to me: Every Sunni in Iraq is at heart an al-Qaeda.

And that’s what the invasion did in Iraq: It turned nearly all Sunni there into al-Qaeda sympathizers. That was, and is, an act of self-defense to meet a horrific and unprovoked aggression by the United States, one which looked as if made in Israel. As this newsletter had covered before, the Islamists had taken over the Sunni Street in Iraq. Some in the old Baath travel to Jordan and receives hefty payments from the Jordanians–-U.S. money-–but I don’t see them being able to reclaim the Sunni Street.

And they may not want to reclaim it, anyway. The Arab Sunni Islamists are their sons, their brothers, their sisters, and their cousins, and they will be needed for an eventual bigger show off with the Shiites and/or with the Kurds. I suspect they are (now, not when they did it) disturbed by the sectarian killings done by the takfiris, and that these are (very likely) financed by people in Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of their state, no two ways about it, and our harmful idiots. (An intelligence service passes money on to a merchant who in turn passes it on to another merchant...to the takfiris.) But the old Baath is putting up with these massacres against the Shiites for various reasons:

1. Saudi Arabia probably has promised them that its ally, the United States, will return the Sunni to power;

2. As strategies go, killing Shiite civilians could eventually bring Iranian troops into Iraq (unlikely) which would be one mistake the harmful idiots are waiting for to mobilize the American public into a full-fledged war against Iran, and which would place the Sunni squarely into the American camp and return them to power.

3. They are afraid to oppose the takfiris lest they be murdered and since they will need them in case of a major confrontation with the Shiites or the Kurds.

4. The takfiris have the money–-Saudi, most likely. Lots of it. (Saudi Arabia is bringing in about $220 billion per year.) And they probably have placed so many of the unemployed Sunni youth (and the old) on the payroll.

Ominous for our troops: The takfiris, so well financed, will never come to terms with the United States and will turn their guns against our troops--fully--, and away from the Shiites, should alternative financing become available.

Note: The arrest or assassination by occupation forces of Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq may have something to do with an increasing awareness by the the Iraqi Arab Sunni leaders of the insurgency, the natives, that the takfiris' massacres against the Shiites have gone too far. Credit this awareness in good part to the retaliatory massacres by the Shiites, especially after the Askariyyah bombing. It's possible therefore that information about the leaders of the takfiris (al-Qaeda) is being passed along by Sunni inusrgents to the Americans. In addition, be mindful that some groupings within the Arab Sunni insurgency probably receive money from Iran and should be reluctant to support massacres against the Muqadha as-Sadr people, who themselves are now very close to Iran and Syria. These Arab Sunni groupings are probably the most likely source of information about the takfiris.



4. HISTORIC SHIITE-SUNNI ENTENTE, DIFFICULT, BUT YOU NEVER KNOW

The Sunni Street in Iraq and Muqtadha as-Sadr’s Shiites could eventually reach an understanding. Difficult but it could happen. The Saudis (probably) are building obstacles to that by financing the takfiris, generously, to keep the Sunni-Shiite rift as wide as possible. But one catalyst for this understanding always will be Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah. The political entrepreneurs on both sides will find that war convenient to re-build a consensus--as a means for them to come out of their destructive isolation. In other words, America’s war on the Arabs and Muslims, and Israel’s war on its Palestinians, could provide a way to rebuild Iraqi nationalism. It’ll be an Islamist Arab one, not an Islamist solely, nor an Arab.

To be clear, the evolution of this brand of nationalism faces the terrific obstacles of sectarian killings and of the takfiris, who are apparently hugely well-financed. A dangerous game for those financing them (my guess: the Saudis), since these things tend to backfire and run amok. Ominously, the only plausible way for the Shiite Arab Islamists (e.g., as-Sadr) to handle this would be to risk another wide confrontation with the Americans. But that would entail a huge cost to him. Still, if he gets a commitment from some Sunni to participate in his insurgency, he could initiate it. Hence probably the pre-emptive targeting of his lieutenants by the American occupation forces.

4a. OUTSMARTING THE HARMFUL IDIOTS

Hezbollah’s war with Israel should have done a lot to push along this eventual reconciliation. (I don’t believe for a moment Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s words that he hadn’t expected Israel’s horrific wholesale slaughter of civilians as a reaction to his men’s operation against Israel’s military. Reading al-Manar, I believe these people understand Israeli politics and the American-Israeli relationship very well. Mr. Nasrallah probably was playing Lebanese politics when he said what he said.)

Israel’s massacre of Lebanon’s civilians and its destruction of its economy have brought the Shiite and Sunni Streets together as never before. More importantly, it had opened the Sunni Islamists’ eyes to the possibility of reconciling. One could see this in the editorial on August 31 by Abdel-Bari Atwan of Al-Quds al-Arabi. A terrifically perceptive political observer, and one who had been right on nearly everything that related to Iraq’s invasion---not that difficult since the other view was being offered by dishonest blabber heads-, con artists with hidden agendas, and allied Uncle Tom intelligence services---wrote a passionate defense of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Opportunist proxies of the harmful idiots in Lebanon had rushed to use Nasrallah’s admission that he had not expected Israel’s over-reaction as a rallying cry against him. Atwan, an Arab-Islamist and Palestinian nationalist (my categorization), a Sunni, unleashed against those, as eloquently as only he can.

Atwan’s defense of Shiite Nasrallah showed the possible course the Sunni Islamists will take. The cluster bombs which the Israelis rained on south Lebanon in the last 72 hours of fighting, knowing full well that the fighting was to stop soon (the U.N. has identified 405 bomb strike areas with up to 100,000 unexploded bomblets ) should be fodder for the possible entente between the Sunni Islamists and the as-Sadr people–-an anti-American entente, since the cluster bombs were made in the United States, or their technology transferred from the U.S. to Israel.

I maintain that Iran put up Hezbollah to sooner-or-later carry out the operation against the Israeli military knowing full well that it would bring about the Israeli over-reaction. This over-reaction against civilians (a cold-blooded massacre of about 1300 civilians) to an operation by Hezbollah on Israeli troops, was direly needed to achieve that very entente and trump the ceaseless attempts by the harmful idiots and their Saudi, Jordanian, and Gulf proxies to drive a wedge between Shiites and Sunni, in their laughable project to create an Israel-led Arab anti-Iran camp. (It’s really hilarious–to do this while Palestinian and Syrian lands are occupied. Hello!)

Another factor that should prod the new Iraqi nationalism along is the all-but-done secession of the Kurdish part of the country. Masoud Barazani, the president of Iraq Kurdistan, recently (@8/30) ordered the elimination of the Iraqi national flag from all governent buildings and checkpoints. That should make the blood boil in each and every Arab in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni.


5. THE REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT IS NOT FAVORABLE TO THE U.S. IN IRAQ

The regional environment is not conducive to a result in Iraq that is not favorable to the United States.

The US went to Turkey to seek help and was able to persuade it to send troops to Lebanon. But Turkey is no longer a country which is so beholden to the U.S. It has a thriving tourist industry and high hopes to become member of the European community. (These European bastards: All they do is vacation and all we do is work. What went wrong?) I suspect that the latter factor and not U.S. cajoling, as much as anything, eased it into its decision to dispatch troops. How better to soften French opposition to its membership than to have its troops (and generals and foreign minister) work together with French troops, and Italian (and generals and foreign ministers.)

Turkey would not have gone in without Iranian consent. Why? Turkey knows that, for example, Iranian intelligence would gladly dispatch E50,000 Euros (that's soon--next week--to be around $4.5 million--that's what happens when you enrich Halliburton and Bechtel by going to war without raising taxes) to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) each month to make life hell for Turkey, should the latter make a move against Hezbollah. It’d add weapons seized after the Iraqi army was let go and chaos had reined in. If anything, Turkey and Iran are cooperating against the PKK, both shelling the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, and Turkey conducting air raids.

In this environment of cooperation between Iran and Turkey, it’s highly unlikely that Turkey would move into Iraq to boost those among the Sunni who are perceived as pro-American. The Turks, with a thriving tourist industry, and so much Gulf Arab money heading their way after the harmful idiots destroyed Lebanon’s economy, would be fools to go into Iraq.

(The multinational force which the Israelis have clamored for after failing to weaken Hezbollah, let alone disarm it, and after they had massacred 1300 defenseless civilians in frustration at their army's failings--this multinational U.N. force is actually a double-edged sword. It could prove to be more useful to Iran and Syria than to Israel. Think about the U.S. troops in Iraq. Aren’t they useful to Iran? You bet.)


CONCLUSION

The Iraq war, a very expensive affair, is over for the U.S., regardless of what the President and his Vice say or do. Defeat and failure happened when the idea of invading won out. Everything that came after (of the “what went wrong in Iraq” variety) was NOT what led to defeat. The very idea of invading signaled defeat. What went wrong after always goes wrong when one country occupies another.

Goes to show that the nation needs smart and discriminating leaders, first and foremost, a la Clinton. (Isn't Clinton now laughing? The right wing would have killed him if he had gone ahead with his idea to rehabilitate Iraqi President Hussein. What a trap he set up for them! And what a trap the right wing set up for his not-as-smart wife, who hoorayed the war. Can't blame her, politically: She needed to cater to her Jewish constituency, a majority of whom had followed Thomas Friedman's brillant lead. My public policy friend has added that she was as scared of the right as most Democrats.)

Then again, the nation seems to be accepting of those who caused the murder of its and Iraq's children, orphaned thousands of innocent children, destabilized a country and a region and cost us (eventually) a couple of trillions of dollars without any bit of return!

It is a forgiving Christian nation. Or maybe it simply appreciates those who create employment and move capital, however dishonest and moronic they are. (Morons can't be dishonest. Discuss.)

(For ideas on how to handle Iraq, please refer to earlier articles in this blog. I'm in tears: like anyone in government is reading this newsletter! They're all on the internet, shopping.)