THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ’S ARMY

third draft with some terrific additions. Find them if you can.

REVISITING THE LARGER GOALS: MILITARY BASES, BUSTING OPEC, AND CHOKING CHINA AND EUROPE.

It’s difficult without visiting Iraq to outline the contours of the Iraqi army the harmful idiots are assembling. Likely the harmful idiots are assembling an army with the idea that it’d possess a nucleus that’s ancillary to their occupation army. In other words, it’ll not be an army that can balance the power of the Iranian, or the Israeli, or the Syrian. It’ll be an army which function would be to assist the harmful idiots in controlling Iraq as a regional base for the US military. (It’s another matter whether or not they can succeed at this colonial project; but hope, dreams, and plans do spring eternal for the harmful idiots.)

The ancillary army, the nucleus of the wider Iraqi, should help the harmful idiots achieve another goal : the control of Iraq’s oil. Why control Iraq's oil? For one, to bust OPEC, once and for all, so Iraq would become the swing producer to replace Saudi Arabia. The latter either cannot produce that much more oil ( and doesn’t want the world to know it, lest it loses influence;) or doesn’t want to be a swing producer any longer. Not after its own son Bandar, his Christian Zionist brother at the White House, Bald Samson, at the White House, too, and no-it-wasn’t-me-I’m-telling-you-I’ve-been-promoted-so-it-couldn’t-be-me September 11 Queen, did for Iran what Iran couldn’t do for itself. Meaning: the Saudis likely are seething. Likely both: they can’t produce more oil to be swing producers any longer and they’re seething.

The harmful idiots’ other goal, using the key words “Israel’s security,” (Israel is more secure than we, but the words are important to mobilize the American Jewish community many of whose members are willing to drink poison for Israel) was to gain the ability to choke China and Europe, should the strategic need arise. (Instead Taiwan, sensing that the harmful idiots' Iraqi adventure had turned us into a paper tiger, have opened up to the People's Republic. The harmful idiots are retaliating by dragging their feet on the delivery of F-16s and other weapons to Taiwan.) To achieve dominance in the twenty-first century without having to effect any changes at home, like taxing oil consumption or otherwise tending to our garden. Besides, there's such a disconnect between on the one hand those who make foreign policy their business and those who make the financial world -- the state of the economy, the not-so-obvious trade wars, the wars among central banks, including the Federal Reserve -- on the other. It is this newsletter's position that you cannot conduct foreign policy if you don't have a leg in both worlds. Not to mention the fact that ideologues (mostly on the right, but the left will have its chance, and it could be soon) and those so obsessed with "Israel's security," -- that these people can create so much obfuscation. At any rate, there’s such a huge gap between foreign policy ideologues and public policy people; between those whose brains are brimming with sophomoric wishful thinking and biased ideas about America’s role and Israel’s pre-eminence, and the world of public policy, finance, and international trade. The foreign policy ideologues don’t’ want to invest the time to understand the public policy world. The result is tragic: it’s Iraq.

I’ve tried to research the Iraqi army using Google-Arabic. (My notes are all over the place.) It was a tedious process and I didn’t get much. What I did get confirmed my impressions (outlined below). Google-English didn’t reveal anything so particular either. The reason why I’ve pursued he subject is that I can see the harmful idiots focus so much of their effort and hopes on building an Iraqi army on which they can rely to pacify the country for them. In other words, it seems to me that in their heart of heart, the harmful idiots have given up on the politicians in Iraq and the political system their invasion has produced. (They did that quite a while ago.) That this political system (democracy) favors Iran; that it set off the sort of pluralism, sectarian (Sunni-Shia) and ethnic (Arab-Kurd) which manipulation made it easy for them to invade and still makes it easy for them as occupiers. But the same forces they’ve unleashed (Democracy and pluralism) stand in the way of their strategic goals: to turn Iraq into an American military base to bust OPEC and choke China and Europe if the need arises. That they don’t have a monopoly over the manipulation of pluralism; that other countries and domestic forces are also capable of manipulating that dreadful force. Disappointed with the forces they’ve unleashed, the harmful idiots went back to the drawing board. (They did that way before the recent controversy about the Treaty.) All they could come up with was the idea of building an army that’s allied to them and that would be capable of re-taking the south from Iran and its allies. The new confrontation in Iraq therefore should be about its army. Hence this attempt at understanding its contours.

AN ARMY MADE UP OF THREE ARMIES

My assessment/speculation is that the Iraqi army is more than one entity.

1. THE ARMY OF THE NORTH: THE KURDISH PESHMERGAS.

The Army of the North is made up mostly of Peshmergas donning Iraqi army uniforms. The allegiance of these is to Kurdistan. The search results of both, Google-Arabic and Google-English, though meager, nonetheless described an army that responds only to the Kurdish leaders. Theirs is an army which is part of the long march to form an independent Kurdistan, to declare that state when the time and balance of power permit it, as when sadistic idiots make it to the White House and disturb yet again the balance of power. Kirkuk and at least half of Mosul would be part of that Kurdistan. The Army of the North should be expected to fight for that project. If the Iraqi Army Command asks for more, that Command would have to go through Talabani and Barazani, or their family heirs.

2. THE ARMY OF THE SOUTH: THE SHIA BADR BRIGADE/CORPS.

Second, there’s the Badr Brigade AKA Iraqi army – the Army of the South. These Shia soldiers and officers may or may not accept to execute the orders of Army Command if these orders contravene their primordial and sectarian attachment. Yes to suppressing SCIRI’s political rival, the Mahdi Army; no to attacking Iran. No to attacking any of a dozen armed Shia militias in the south, in Basra, since these do not threaten the political power of Badr/SCIRI within the wider Shia community.

3. THE ARMY OF THE CENTER: THE NUCLEUS OF THE WIDER IRAQI ARMY AND THE HARMFUL IDIOTS’ ANCILLARY .

Ayad Allawi, the CIA man favored by the Saudi secret state, a Shia but secular, recently affirmed in a television interview from London that, when Prime Minister, he had returned quite a number of former Baathist officers to service. But he had since seen the Dawa/Badr double-agent state re-dismiss these. (almalaf.net ,6/12/08. Arabic. Likely Jordanian intelligence e-newspaper -- be mindful that the CIA is Jordan's cargo-getter -- which consistently pokes fun at Iran’s proxies. Hates Hasan Nasrallah, in particular. The Jordanian Uncle Toms are trying to declare victories with words of condescension, unable to achieve any other, to regain the Arab Street as Sunni. Oh well. Beware what you wish for.) Allawi continues to flirt with the Baathists and had met with a bunch of them in Cairo a few weeks ago.

The harmful idiots in part through through Allawi are trying to bring back a version of the Baathist state. Sunnis and former Baathists form, I suspect , the American-bred nucleus of he wider Iraqi army. That nucleus is the ancillary state I’ve referred to for such a long time. The double-agent Badr/Dawa state can dismiss the officers who Allawi had re-hired, but the harmful idiots can re-hire them back again. My suspicion is that these likely are joined to the nucleus, the ancillary army, the Army of the Center or with the Sahwas. (The Sahwas are the extension of the ancillary army.) They don’t have to don uniforms; they can be “intelligence” operatives; they can explode a car bomb now-and-then here and there.


To the harmful idiots these would be reliable troops; they would gladly move against Shias, against Kurds, even against Sunnis who refuse to be on the harmful idiots’ payroll. If you ever wondered why the Sunnis stopped their resistance, likely it’s because the ancillary army, the Army of the Center, the revived Baath, had put out the word. We’re back. It’s a matter of time. That time will come when , while the harmful idiots deter Iran, we shall stage a coup d’etat and re-capture the south. (And hope certainly does spring eternal.)

NOT THAT DIFFERENT FROM LEBANON, PRE-CIVIL WAR.

The Army of the Center, aided by the Sahwas, recalls the harmful idiots’ experience in Lebanon. The nucleus of the wider Iraqi army, the Army of the Center, is similar to the Maronite officer corps and the Maronite troops drawn in their majority from a few Maronite towns in pre-civil war Lebanon. The harmful idiots’ plan then was to use that army, supplanted by Christian militias, trained and armed by Army intelligence, to rein in the PLO – a state within a state, financed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf oil countries and Libya. The idea was (and still is) to avoid for Israel the formation of a Palestinian state. The harmful idiots’ plan went awry; the harmful idiots and their adjutants, the Jordanian Uncle Toms, miscalculated egregiously, as the harmful idiots later did in Iraq. This brought about thirty years of misery to Lebanon, and we’re still counting. Ever since then, the harmful idiots’s meddling in Lebanon, on their own or invited by those Lebanese who are politically passe (and bitter about it), has focused on bringing back one ancien regime or the other. It seems the harmful idiots are trying to do the same thing in Iraq, and are using Saddam’s army to re-constitute what already has been lost.

BY WAY OF CONCLUDING

I don’t know where the harmful idiots are going with this. Iran’s alertness, especially following its failures (outlined in the prior post), in particular its surprise about the Treaty, is such that it should be expected to engage politically more actively in Iraq, to a level unseen before. Iran can’t afford to let the ancillary army become so competent that it’d be able to neutralize the Badr people within the wider army. Or, as an alternative, that the ancillary army would become so competent that it would give room to the Badr double-agents to shed Iran once and for all. Either way, the ancillary army would be used to re-take the south for the nouveau Baathist state.

The manipulation of pluralism is a weapon for all those who want to dominate. Pluralism, sectarian and ethnic, as a divide-and-conquer playing field, does make occupation easy, but it doesn’t lend itself to more than that. In other words, the harmful idiots can use pluralism to divide and conquer, to remain in Iraq as occupiers. But the same force –- pluralism –- will not let them turn Iraq into a base in the region. Unavoidably, they will be seen as closer to this group or that within that pluralism, allowing the other groups to ignite sectarian and/or ethnic tension to fail the harmful idiots’ colonial projects. Chaos in the form of civil wars should result. It’d be Iraq’s best defense against becoming a banana republic. And it’d be Iran’s best defense, too. At any rate, whatever critical mass the ancillary troops give the harmful idiots, this mass will face stiff and fierce opposition by the Shias should a coup d’etat ever be tried.