Turmoil in Baghdad and Washington
No relief from the Iraq Study Group
By
John Catalinotto
Published Dec 7, 2006 1:40 AM
The Iraqi resistance continues handing setbacks to U.S.
occupation and Iraqi puppet forces. With 10 GIs reported killed
on Dec. 3, including deaths from a helicopter crash the Pentagon
claims was “mechanical,” official U.S. troop deaths
are over 2,900. Car bombings leave Baghdad in turmoil. U.S.
forces in Anbar Province once again are striking residential
areas with bombs, rockets and artillery, killing children and
other civilians although they allege their targets are
fighters.
U.S. aggression in Iraq has led to disaster. Most of all,
disaster for the Iraqi people. How bad it is was hinted at by
outgoing United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who broke a
taboo by telling the BBC on Dec. 4 that it is worse now for
ordinary Iraqis than under Saddam Hussein. Annan added that U.N.
inspectors sent to Iraq could have avoided the war “if they
had more time,” that is, if the Bush administration had not
been hell-bent to carry out a criminal invasion.
But it is also a disaster for the Bush administration’s
original scheme to conquer an entire region, monopolize its
resources and use it as a base of expansion. Instead, the
invasion and occupation have exposed U.S. political and military
weaknesses to the world, in what former President Jimmy Carter
calls “one of the greatest blunders that [U.S.] American
presidents have ever made.”
Washington has its own kind of turmoil these days as ruling
circles there battle over how to cut U.S. losses. Attention is
now focused on the upcoming Dec. 6 report from the Iraq Study
Group, set up by Congress last March to study ways to change U.S.
fortunes in Baghdad.
Led by former Secretary of State James Baker, who is now an
adviser to former President George H.W. Bush, and made up of five
Republicans and five Democrats, the ISG has become a point of
reference for all Washington. According to leaks—which have
been frequent in Washington lately—the ISG will offer some
compromise programs that add up to a gradual drawback of U.S.
combat forces from Iraq, replacing them with U.S. military
advisers to the Iraqi puppet troops.
These programs include the possibility of negotiating with Iran
and Syria, but also allow U.S. military commanders flexibility to
keep U.S. troops in Iraq, as determined by conditions there. It
is also unclear how the ISG will impose its program on the
administration. But already the news from Iraq is that more U.S.
advisers—even though they are not specially trained for the
job—are now attached to Iraqi units. (New York Times, Dec.
5)
Iraq out of U.S. control
Revealing U.S. weaknesses are recent statements by U.S. diplomats
and officials regarding the bleak prospects that ISG
“solutions” will lead anywhere. One of the harshest
critiques came from Richard C. Holbrooke, the former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. Holbrooke is a hard-nosed
imperialist diplomat. In 1995 he brokered the Dayton Accords by
using threats of continued NATO bombing to force the Yugoslav
government to make serious concessions to Washington’s
ongoing attempt to break up that country.
Of Iraq, Holbrooke said: “For all the excitement in
Washington, this will be decided on the ground in Baghdad. The
United States has lost its capacity to shape the events on the
ground, regardless of what’s recommended by the commission,
regardless of what’s done by the U.S. military and the
president.” (Washington Post, Dec. 1)
Strangely enough, one of the warlords who finally realized his
Iraq policy had ended in shambles is recently fired Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In a classified memo written to the
White House on Nov. 6, two days before he was
dismissed—this one leaked to the New York
Times—Rumsfeld noted: “In my view it is time for a
major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing
in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”
Rumsfeld’s memo is a list of often contradictory proposals
that create an illusion that he was being flexible, but also
indicate how desperate the U.S. position is. Some of the media
report that Rumsfeld’s memo was growing closer to the
Democratic Party position.
Even Bush had to pay lip service to his problems in Iraq in his
Dec. 2 Saturday radio address. “I recognize that the recent
violence in Iraq has been unsettling,” he said. “Many
people in our country are wondering about the way
forward.”
But while Bush talks of more flexibility, his stance is to keep
stalling. His public position is that as long as the U.S. has the
will to stay, it can “win” in Iraq.
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), an ex-Marine officer with close ties
to the Pentagon who first raised objections to the Iraq
occupation a year ago, called the Iraq Study Group’s plan
“unacceptable to me” because it would not begin to
withdraw troops immediately. “If it depends on
circumstances on the ground, it’s not a lot different than
what President Bush is saying,” he told CNN on Nov. 30.
Murtha, who earlier asked the U.S. to pull its forces out of Iraq
and into neighboring countries from where it can use air power,
is one of the few Democrats in Congress to criticize the ISG. Now
in control of Congress, most Democratic Party leaders have
avoided taking a strong stand. They deny even thinking about
withholding funds from the military—their only lever of
power—or of demanding anything more than a lengthy
timetable for pulling out troops.
No one can expect quick relief for Iraqis or even for U.S. troops
to come from a decision by the Bush administration. The debates
playing out in Washington are among forces that are all
representatives of U.S. imperialist interests. They can’t
find any tactical measures that can be guaranteed to protect
those interests, which points to a continuation of the
occupation. Only the exhaustion of U.S. forces or a popular
upheaval at home against the war can hasten its end.
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