Feature This
Come down to it, civil war has been America’s Iraq strategy since at least early 2004. Nobody ever put it in those terms. Nobody probably even thought that’s what they were doing. But what do you think “As they stand up, we’ll stand down,” means, anyway? It means and meant getting Iraqis to fight other Iraqis. We’ve taught Shiites and Kurds – in Iraqi Security Force uniforms – to attack Sunnis. Increasingly we enjoin Shiites to attack other Shiites (ISF vs Mahdi Army) and Sunnis to attack other Sunnis (tribal alliances versus Al-Qaeda in Iraq). By the way, does anyone believe that the Anbar Awakening team focuses all its efforts purely on jihadists, with none left over for Sunnis who may be an inconvenience to the Anbar Awakening team for other reasons? Or do you think the poor state of journalism in Iraq means we just don’t hear about everything AA gets up to?
No, I don’t think the US intended grand-scale ethnic cleansing and mass-casualty sectarian bombings. I think that even so reptilian an overlord as Dick Cheney regrets that part, at least reflexively. But it’s a spiraling dynamic we set in motion. Want to bring armed elements of Iraqi society to heel using Iraqi forces? Do those armed elements have a level of popular support? Congratulations: you want an Iraqi civil war. A nice tiny one, maybe. But a civil war. The thing is, you don’t get to choose how big it will be or how quickly it will end or how people will end up fighting it. These things take on a life of their own.
Comment by Ultima Ratio —
August 15, 2007 @ 7:54 am
Brilliant stuff.
This is how you can tell the imperialist machine is running like clockwork – when the naked evil of what the White House / Congress has planned is fully obvious (i.e., Iraqis killing each other at the behest of Washington) and no one seriously objects. There’s plenty of debate over trivia (”how effective is this at stopping terrorist attacks?”) but no prima facie argument.
Comment by JP —
August 15, 2007 @ 8:05 am
“These are new tricks and I am an old dog. An Arab, be thanked. I’ll tell thee what though. Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!”
Comment by Thoreau —
August 15, 2007 @ 8:22 am
And because these things take on a life (death?) of their own, that’s one more reason for us to leave ASAP. We can’t control these events, we can’t make it better, so staying will accomplish nothing.
Comment by Brian —
August 15, 2007 @ 9:59 am
It accomplishes a lot of profits, though, for the “defense” industries connected most directly (but not exclusively) to the GOP. That’s a lot of money!
Comment by Ishikawa —
August 15, 2007 @ 10:34 am
Auda: What is it? Is it this? I tell you, this is nothing. Is it the blood? The desert has dried up more blood than you could think of.
Lawrence: I pray that I may never see the desert again. Hear me God.
Auda: You will come. There is only the desert for you.
Comment by JP —
August 15, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
“Take your hand away, Howeitat!”
“Oh, so you are not yet entirely politician.”
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
August 15, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
I think the key premise here.. what else can as they stand up, we will stand down, mean other than civil war.. is
incorrect.
For example, I don’t think the U.S. governments suppression of violent leftism (like the Weatherman) amounted to a civil war. Nor was waco a civil war.
I do think that there is a civil war in Iraq. And I think it was predictable. And I would think that if one wanted to be rid of Saddam, then supporting the Shia and Kurds in the inevitable civil war against the Sunnis would be the only sensible approach.
The fact that victory by that side might have a result worse that Saddam, is a reason not to do the overthrow to begin with. Which, of course, was the dominant view after the first gulf war.
As best I can tell, we have been trying instead to force some kind of unification government on them. Further, we have been trying to build a nonsectarian mility. (And I still think the dream is that it will be like the military of Turkey… using force to force a pro-western government on the Iraqi people when they vote the wrong way.)
What’s up with the fighting among the Sunnis? Between Al Quaeda and others?
Saudi support for the non-Al Quaeda Sunnis? Recognition that suicide bombings against Shia arabs are counterproductive and the Al Quaeda kooks can’t be persuaded?
Even though this involves Iraqis killing other Iraqis (and nonIraqui Al Queada
volunteers,) I am not sure that this amounts to a civil war. Supposedly, the Al Quaeda fighters are a minority.
Comment by Bruce Wilder —
August 15, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
At the heart of every policy is a goal or objective. “Civil war” was the policy, but what was the objective?
The objective was an Iraqi state weak enough to want the U.S. to stay, to consent to a permanent U.S. military presence, and to acquiesce in domination of Iraqi oil production by American interests.
Unfortunately, an Iraqi state, which is that weak, cannot hold Iraq together.
It may well be that there were some naive, neo-con idealists that envisioned a democratic, prosperous Iraq, which would love the U.S., Israel and Wal-Mart, but, ultimately, I think the realists like Cheney just wanted to make Iraq safe for Halliburton and the Gulf States Council, and thought American hegemony based in Iraq was the way to go. The way to a permanent American military base in Iraq was a weak Iraq, dependent on the U.S., militarily and economically.
Iraqi weakness was a means to an end, but it had predictable consequences of its own.
Comment by Nell —
August 15, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
Bill, you seem to be missing the most civil-war-like part of the conflict by putting a disproportionate focus on foreign fighters.
U.S. troops went after Sunnis for the first three years of the war, while “standing up” Iraqi security forces (police, facilities protection services, and to some extent the military) that were dominated by or heavily infiltrated by Shia militias loyal to Shia parties. This process picked up speed in 2005 after the elections and the new government, in which the militias’ sponsoring parties took power.
The analogy with U.S. government repression against the Weather Underground ior David Koresh’s compound is just plain inapt. The FBI and police operations against the Black Panthers comes slightly closer, but there’s no useful analogy in recent U.S. history (I’d argue none in the whole length of it) for the situation in Iraq.
Sunni insurgents had popular support from the beginning, which increased with U.S. military assaults on their communities as well as the intensifying miseries of the occupation (including checkpoint shootings, detentions, abuse and torture as well as deterioration of basic services).
Already in 2004, the U.S. was de facto weighing in on two sides of a three-way civil war — with Shias against Sunnis in mixed-population areas of central, south, and west Iraq; with Kurds against Arabs in the north.
The lone exception was the campaign against Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, with spikes in April and August 2004. But in 2005 and 2006, once Sadr’s people were in the government, the U.S. military did nothing to stop their part in “cleansing” Baghdad neighborhoods.
Comment by bajsa —
August 15, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
#4 Brian is right on target. Even if it’s not a conspiracy, the defense industry guys are the friends of the administration, of course they want them to make money.
Comment by r€nato —
August 15, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
Imperialism is always a dirty business, isn’t it?
Comment by Enoch Root —
August 15, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
It’s been fairly obvious to me from the moment they set up the Provisional Authority that the goal was gameable chaos. You get the billable ancillaries from the war, you get an excuse to strike at Iran, you get your military hovering over the oil, you get to stay forever.
I tell people about this and they say, “We would never do that…” But of course *we’re* not the ones doing it.
Comment by josephdietrich —
August 15, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
I’d just like to second what Bruce said. Although I don’t think it’s all about oil production, it is certainly clear that what many proponents were aiming for was either a “free” puppet state (where the installed regime would be able to take care of itself but would do everything we wanted them to) or, failing that, a state that wasn’t strong enough to survive on it’s own and thus depended on American largess (and American military power) for its survival.
Comment by Cakesniffer —
August 15, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
No, I don’t think the US intended grand-scale ethnic cleansing and mass-casualty sectarian bombings. I think that even so reptilian an overlord as Dick Cheney regrets that part, at least reflexively.
Oh, I’m quite certain he doesn’t give a fuck.
Comment by Sal —
August 15, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
Only Israel benefits from these endless Middle East wars. Iraq is the beginning. As we commit war-crimes in Baghdad, the US gov’t commits treason at home by opening mail, eliminating habeas corpus, using the judiciary to steal private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, conducting warrantless wiretaps and engaging in illegal wars on behalf of AIPAC’s ‘money-men’. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier by Mossad) and the US will invade Iran.. Then we’ll invade Syria, then Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon (again) then ….
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov’t demands and censors the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Comment by Boronx —
August 15, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
Remember how the Marines’ siege of Sunni Falluja was broken by a civilian convoy including Shi’ites?
Civil war is not an unconscious policy, it’s a conscious policy. It’s the only reason we have for staying in Iraq, and it’s the only reason the Iraqis haven’t been able to kick us out.
Comment by r€nato —
August 15, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
I just heard a report on NPR, a statement from some general asserting that we will need to be in Iraq for decades because otherwise things will fall apart.
So chaos is in our interest, isn’t it? Especially if we want to get our hands on all that lovely crude oil…
Comment by MonkeyBoy —
August 15, 2007 @ 9:04 pm
I’ve often wondered if the US policy in Iraq has just been to create violent chaos and demonstrate that those people can’t govern themselves so as to require a continued US presence as the only stable force in the region.
Early on in the occupation, at least 2 enormous ammo dumps were left unguarded – Al-Qaqaa and Ukhaider. Explosives from these places are in many of the IED used today.
Could be that the ammo dumps were intentionally not secured so that Iraq would become more chaotic?
Comment by DrBB —
August 15, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Enoch and Bruce get my vote for most perceptive comments on a very high-quality thread. I’d only add that years ago, when I first started reading TPM, Josh was first in favor of, then ambivalent about the war. He did gradually tilt over to “anti-war,” though, and one of the first articles that really marked him as a guy to watch, in my book, was when he suggested that controlled chaos, not “democracy” or civil order, was the outcome the Cheneyists really desired for Iraq. He argued that eternal need for U.S. presence there was not a regrettable side effect of a bungled war, it was the unstated but quite deliberate goal of the enterprise. I’ve seen nothing so far to suggest he was not absolutely correct.
Comment by Chris Quinones —
August 16, 2007 @ 8:54 am
DrBB: Here’s that article.