THE FORGOTTEN WAR IN IRAQ —AND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF HISTORY REPEATED

IRAQ’S ‘BLOODY MONDAY’
Rick Moran
FrontPage, August 16, 2011

 

At least 80 people were killed and more than 350 injured when a coordinated series of bombs were set off across the length and breadth of Iraq on Monday. Believed to be the work of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQIR), the bombings have shaken the people’s confidence in the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and called into question the competence of Iraq’s security forces. The attacks also raise concerns about the US withdrawal deadline of January 1, 2012 being met, as insurgents rev up the frequency and severity of their strikes in advance of that date. As America makes plans to leave, Iraq drifts evermore into Iran’s orbit and the Shia-dominated government does little to stem the attacks on Christian churches, while Sunni on Shia violence threatens to break out once again.

Occurring in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan, authorities count at least 31 attacks that targeted seventeen cities. A similar series of attacks occurred last year at this time and were traced to AQIR. The worst attacks took place in the city of Kut, where a bomb planted in a juice machine exploded in a crowded market, killing dozens.… Iraq’s security forces were also targeted as a car bomb went off outside a police station near Karbala, killing eight, and a suicide attacker dressed as a policeman walked into a police station in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit and detonated his vest, killing three. Even the Sunni Awakening Councils—former insurgents who laid down their arms to fight AQIR in 2007—were not immune from the violence. Several gunmen dressed as policemen entered a mosque just south of Baghdad and called out seven members of the local council. They were summarily executed.

The attack on the Sunnis may be seen as an attempt to revive the sectarian violence that tore the country apart in 2006-07. The Sunnis are already suspicious of the Shia-dominated government, which snubs the religious minority in government contracts, recruitment for the army and police, and even in the treatment of Sunni holy sites. For their part, Sunni militants attack pilgrims who are coming and going from revered Shia mosques. The violence is constant and has called attention to the government’s inability to secure the country from the attacks of extremists.

Christians in Iraq say that the government doesn’t even attempt to protect them from radical Islamists—both Sunni and Shia—who have attacked several churches recently, killing worshipers and destroying centuries-old structures. A bomb blast outside of St. Ephraim Syrian Orthodox Church in Kirkuk caused severe damage, although no one was hurt. That was not the case on August 2, when a bomb detonated near Holy Family Syrian Catholic Church, injuring 15 people. On that same day, another bomb was defused before it could damage a Presbyterian church. At one time, Iraq had a large Christian minority representing several strains of Christendom, including Coptics, Russian and Greek Orthodox, as well as many protestant sects. But most have fled the country or live in fear from the increasing Islamization of the country that tolerates attacks on them, their clergy, and their churches.

The growing extremism is a consequence of Iraq’s drift into the orbit of Iran. If any evidence is required regarding how close that relationship is getting, one need look no further than the shocking statement by Prime Minister Maliki last week taking the side of Syrian President Assad against the protesters seeking to bring him down. While every other Arab government in the region has condemned Assad’s brutal crackdown, only Iran and Iraq have offered words of support. Maliki accused the protesters of trying to “sabotage” the state while hosting a Syrian government delegation. Maliki also welcomed Syria’s foreign minister last month.…

Monday’s attacks highlight the dilemma for both [Maliki] and the US government. President Obama wants out of Iraq. He has always wanted out of Iraq, only staying on when it became clear that a precipitous withdrawal would have meant that the nation would have almost certainly sunk into chaos, with Iran standing by vulture-like to move in and feast on the pieces. This would have exposed the president to critics who sensibly argued that telling the enemy when we’re leaving would be tantamount to an open invitation to ratchet up the violence as the deadline approaches—as they are doing.

But Obama is also sensitive to the strategic threat posed by even a weak Iraq joining the Iranian-Syrian-Turkish axis, so it is probable that if Maliki asks some troops to stay on, he will reluctantly agree to such a proposal. Thus, the Maliki government is in the process of negotiating. And despite fierce resistance from the radical Shia faction headed up by the Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who promises to hold mass demonstrations and attack American troops after the deadline, Maliki appears to be out of options.…

 

IRAQ’S SIDEWAYS DRIFT
Sean Kane
National Interest, August 4, 2011

 

The standard account of the Iraq war breaks the conflict into two periods: pre-surge and post-surge. While the surge certainly wasn’t a cure-all, sectarian violence dropped sharply and Iraq stepped back from the abyss while it was taking place. Some American officials have gone on to say that the country has now progressed all the way to a metaphorical two-yard line, requiring just one last push to get into the end zone.

This narrative needs updating. The 2007 surge was a turning point, but it did not leave Iraq on the cusp of Jeffersonian democracy. What it accomplished was overcoming the security vacuum brought on by the invasion’s earliest and most consequential mistakes and purchas[ed] breathing room for Iraqis to undertake a political reset. The momentum was always understood to be finite, and it began to dissipate in mid-2009. Iraq has drifted sideways since then, preserving hard-won security gains but not pressing forward decisively politically.

This period of drift is dominated by the sectarian power struggle around the inconclusive March 2010 national elections. Even after a record nine-month government-formation odyssey that returned Prime Minister Maliki to office in December, disagreement continues over leadership of Iraq’s all-important security ministries, as well as finding a role for Maliki’s chief rival, Iraqiyya leader Ayad Allawi. Given that political jockeying for the vote started twelve months ahead of time, there is now a full two-year period where Iraq’s leaders have been primarily consumed with the distribution of top posts as opposed to improving governance or consolidating the country’s democratic institutions. Most critical though was the missed opportunity to transition away from toxic identity-based politics.

While it is simplistic to identify a single turning point, the massive August 2009 “Black Wednesday” bombings of Iraq’s Foreign and Finance Ministries stands out as one moment where momentum from the surge began to sputter. The surge’s security improvements may not have enabled irreversible political progress, but they did presage a greater willingness among Iraqis to use politics to settle disputes, as shown in the country’s January 2009 provincial elections. While Iraq’s previous provincial polls were marred by a Sunni Arab boycott, the 2009 vote saw energetic participation from new Sunni actors such as anti-al-Qaeda tribal councils in Anbar and the al-Hadba Gathering in Ninewa. Equally importantly, Prime Minister Maliki’s party ran successfully on a nationalist, law-and-order image rather than standard appeals to Shiite solidarity.

Based on these developments, the emergence of cross-sectarian alliances to contest the 2010 national elections seemed genuinely possible. In the early summer of 2009, cautious negotiations were underway to form ambitious “second generation” alliances. Only days before the ministry bombings, Iraq’s former national security advisor said the country had a window of opportunity to move beyond the “religious-sectarian boundary.” Likewise, Osama Najaefi, a rising Sunni politician, contended that mixed electoral alliances were now required because the provincial elections had shown that Iraqis wouldn’t vote for sectarian lists. Maliki himself had boldly decided to run separately from other Shiite parties and was courting prominent Sunni leaders to join him.

Beyond the tragic loss of life, Black Wednesday severely complicated these efforts to bridge the sectarian divide. In the bombing’s aftermath, no Shiite politician could afford to be seen as soft on Sunni Ba’athists accused of organizing this symbolic attack on key institutions of the Shiite-led government. Indeed, Maliki’s pointed accusations towards Ba’athists and Sunni Arab countries for organizing the attack likely cost him the chance to form a grand alliance. When a subsequent (and likely Iranian-backed) effort led to the barring of hundreds of mostly Sunni and secularist figures from running in the elections based on alleged Ba’athist ties, no Shiite leaders stoop up against lack of due process in the decision and the tone was set. The vote and government-formation negotiations were to be a no-holds-barred sectarian affair, with Iran ultimately inducing the Shiite Islamist parties to reunite behind Maliki and Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf Arab states backing Allawi’s mostly Sunni Iraqiyya list.…

The meta-problem facing Iraq’s democracy is the primacy of zero-sum sectarian and ethnic identity politics as compared to a competition of ideas as to how the new Iraq should look and function. American efforts to bridge differences over power distribution between mutually suspicious communities are important, but by themselves they are not reversing Iraq’s troubling post-surge drift.…

 

IF WE RETREAT FROM IRAQ, WILL IRAN TAKE OVER?
Jackson Diehl
Washington Post, July 17, 2011

 

One of the most curious features of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is the contrast between the silky, non-confrontational public diplomacy it employs when dealing with dictatorships and adversaries, such as Russia, China and Venezuela—and the brusqueness with which it often addresses U.S. clients and allies.

The latest example of this came last week in Iraq, where the United States is engaged in a complex and high-stakes competition with Iran. At immediate issue is whether Iraq’s Shiite-led government will ask Washington to leave behind 10,000 or so soldiers of the 47,000 troops now there, instead of completing a full withdrawal by the end of this year.

The larger question is whether Iraq will be forced by a full U.S. pullout to become an Iranian satellite, a development that would undo a huge and painful investment of American blood and treasure and deal a potentially devastating blow to the larger U.S. position in the Middle East.

The administration has made it fairly clear that it is willing to make a deal to leave behind some troops. But coaxing the fragmented and prickly Iraqi leadership into making the right choice would require subtlety, patience and high-level engagement—like that the Bush administration employed when it negotiated a strategic framework with Iraq before leaving office in 2008, or that Vice President Biden used in helping to broker an agreement on a new Iraqi government last year.

So it was startling to hear Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offer, in Baghdad, the following description of his message to Iraqi leaders: “Dammit, make a decision.”

The tone of that remark, like other administration rhetoric on the potential deal, suggests that Obama and his top aides believe they are offering Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a favor by inviting a request to leave troops behind, and don’t think a stay-on force is a vital U.S. interest.

Others see it quite differently. Maliki, like U.S. commanders in the Middle East, understands very well that without an American military presence, Iraq will be unable to defend itself against its Persian neighbor. Iranian-backed militias are already stepping up attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces with sophisticated rockets and roadside bombs; without U.S. help, Iraqi forces cannot easily counter them. Moreover, Iraq’s conventional forces are no match for those of Iran.

Consequently, argues Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, Maliki and his government face a fateful choice. “If Maliki allows the United States to leave Iraq,” Kagan wrote in a recent report, “he is effectively declaring his intent to fall in line with Tehran’s wishes, to subordinate Iraq’s foreign policy to the Persians, and possibly, to consolidate his own power as a sort of modern Persian satrap in Baghdad.…”

Most Iraq watchers believe Maliki wants to ask for U.S. troops. But the problems—in addition to the chronic Iraqi practice of putting off hard decisions until the last minute—are formidable. Perhaps the most serious is Maliki’s political dependence on the Shiite party of Moqtada al-Sadr, an Iranian client. Sadr is threatening armed resistance if U.S. troops stay, and the offensive already underway by Iranian-sponsored militias shows that Tehran is ready to fight.…

The only Obama administration official who has publicly made the case for a continued U.S. military presence is former defense secretary Robert M. Gates. In a speech in May, he said it would send “a powerful signal to the region that we’re not leaving, that we will continue to play a part.” He added: “I think it would be reassuring to the Gulf states. I think it would not be reassuring to Iran, and that’s a good thing.”

Gates publicly urged Iraq to keep U.S. troops. Now he is gone, and the message is “dammit, make a decision.” Whether or not Iran is prepared to seize hold of Iraq, those aren’t the right words to keep an ally.

 

A HISTORY DANGEROUS TO REPEAT
Bruce Thornton
FrontPage, August 10, 2011

 

The recently passed Budget Control Act calls for automatic across the board budget cuts of $1.2 trillion if the Congressional “super-committee” cannot agree on targeted reductions. About half of this amount would come from the defense budget, which already is slated for $350-400 billion in cuts over the next decade under the debt-ceiling legislation. In all, the Pentagon could lose $1 trillion in funding, on top of the $430 billion lost so far under President Obama. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, such “disastrous” cuts “would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our ability to protect the nation.”

Unfortunately, democracies have a bad habit of shortsighted reductions in defense spending in order to finance other priorities, leaving them vulnerable to aggressors. In 4^th-Century B.C. Athens, a fund called the theorikon distributed public monies to citizens so that they could attend religious and theatrical festivals. A law directed that budget surpluses go into this fund rather than into the stratiotikon, the military fund. Indeed, other legislation made any attempt to direct surpluses into the military fund a capital crime. This prioritizing of income redistribution over defense took place at the same time that the autocrat Philip II of Macedon was aggressively moving against the free Greek states, which he would defeat at the battle of Chaeronea in 338, destroying their political freedom. The historian Theopompus linked that defeat to such entitlement spending, castigating the Athenians for becoming “less courageous and more lax” because of the state-distributed dole and funding of festivals, upon which “the Athenian people thoroughly squandered their resources.” Corrupted by these state-funded entitlements, Theopompus observes, “the entire citizenry spent more on public festivals and sacrifices than on the management of war.”

England repeated Athens’ mistake after World War I. Between 1918 and 1920 England reduced its forces by three million men––“the Army had melted away,” as Churchill put it. Between 1919 and 1921, the military budget was reduced by four-fifths, and continued to decline until 1933. The government rationalized these reductions by arbitrarily formulating the “Ten Year Rule,” which assumed that England would not be called upon to fight a major war, and thus would not need an expeditionary force. The arms industry languished as well, falling behind in investment and technological development.… Meanwhile, Germany had been secretly rearming and developing its arms industries since 1920, with the result that by 1938, it was spending five times as much on its military than England, and manufacturing twice the munitions of England and France put together.

Like Athens, one of the reasons England pursued this disastrous policy was the need to spend more money on social welfare programs, which meant spending less on defense. As Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan write in their indispensable study of such feckless disarmament, to many in England, the reliance on the League of Nations to keep global order would allow the British government and people “to turn their attention inward, to correct the failures and flaws in the British body politic, to mend the holes in Britain’s social fabric.” Germany’s devastating aggression, which it had been preparing for nearly two decades, graphically illustrated once again the folly of stinting on defense spending while an aggressor is on the loose.

Just as England believed that postwar international institutions could keep the peace, so too America in the 1990s thought it could reap the “peace dividend” delivered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Defense spending in the decade between 1990 and 2000 remained virtually static, which taking inflation into account meant nearly a $100 billion reduction. For many, the justification of such reductions included the need to redirect revenues from defense to social welfare programs: as one Congressman put it in 1990, “Our Nation’s strength depends not only on a sturdy defense, but in meeting the needs of our people so that they can contribute to the growth of a healthy society and a robust economy.” Unfortunately, throughout this same decade a new aggressor was attacking our interests and security in the series of terrorist attacks that culminated on 9/11. That devastating attack laid bare the folly of thinking that we could minimize the jihadist threat on the cheap with police work and cruise missiles, in a region of the world vital to our security and economy.

And so we come to the present, when the same mistakes are being made. Ten years after 9/11, the threat[s are] still potent: Al Qaeda has not been neutralized, the outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is still in doubt, Iran continues to nurture terrorism and pursue nuclear weapons, and revolutions are roiling most of the Middle East, their outcomes uncertain. And let’s not forget China and its drive to increase its military power and dominate the Far East.…

Yet facing a debt crisis brought on not by excessive defense spending, but by run-away entitlement costs, Obama and the Democrats would rather weaken our security than alienate their political clients by reforming Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, even though those programs, along with Obamacare, if unreformed will devour all tax revenues by 2049. Indeed, according to The Heritage Foundation, completely eliminating defense spending would not prevent those entitlements from bankrupting the country.…

As history shows, cutting back on defense spending to fund expanding domestic social welfare programs is a luxury a global power can’t afford. In the next few years we’ll see if American democracy can avoid going down the same dangerous road previous democracies have trod.