Checking In On Iraq

I don't know if you've been following events in Iraq... oh wait, actually if you're 99.9% of America you haven't. Because there's an election and Britney Spears is all crazy and your favorite shows might come back soon and Amy Winehouse got a Grammy. So you're getting most of your news about Iraq from John McCain speeches and dog-eared National Review copies on your loony uncle's coffee table. It's beyond time for someone other than them to get in the game and weigh in, because events are starting to overtake the United States' ability to control them.

We know that dozens are still dying every day in an increasing series of car bombs and suicide attacks. Even the Secretary of Defense, who has wanted more flexibility with his forces, is acknowledging that there will be 130,000-plus troops in Iraq on the next President's first day in office. The pitfalls of Turkish warplanes bombing northern Iraq, Sunni militants evading American forces and terrorizing towns in the Diyala River Valley, and Shiite extremists murdering women who violate Islamic teachings still exist. Meanwhile, today we saw a new development returning ominously to the region:

Two CBS News journalists have been kidnapped in the southern city of Basra and remain missing, Iraqi officials said Monday.

The journalists, a British citizen and an Iraqi, were taken from their hotel late Sunday night by about 20 armed men wearing the uniforms of Iraq's security services, according to Brig. Gen. Jalil Khahlaf, the provincial police chief. He said authorities did not know the condition of the journalists and had not been contacted by the kidnappers, whose identities were unknown.

"All efforts are underway to find them," CBS News said in a three-sentence statement. A network spokeswoman said she would not comment on the account given by Iraqi police and asked news outlets not to report the missing journalists' names or jobs.

This is starting to look like 2005 again. And the security "gains" made by the concerned local citizens groups in Anbar province (now called the Sons of Iraq) are starting to break down in surprising and frightening ways.

Hundreds of members of an anti-Al-Qaeda front in Iraq's central city of Baquba on Friday donned keffiyeh headdresses and took to the streets demanding the police chief be sacked, witnesses said.

Fighters ran militia-style through two neighbourhoods in the capital of Diyala province, ordering shops to shut and people to stay indoors, prompting police to declare a curfew, an AFP correspondent said.

The action came after demands by the group earlier in the week that police chief Major General Ghanim al-Quraishi be sacked were ignored.

"Despite our efforts and the blood we shed in order to expel Al-Qaeda members from Diyala, we received no help from the government or the police," said Haji Basim al-Karkhi, who is in charge of the "popular committees."

"The police chief committed violations such as abducting Sunnis in front of the Diyala police headquarters," said Karkhi. "He also does not accept Sunni recruits."

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

This, by the way, is the biggest victory of the "surge" (even though it had nothing to do with the surge).

Then you have Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire nearing its end, and a resumption of violence by his forces, whether he calls for it or not, would lead to a near-total breakdown in civil order. And paradoxically, continuing to arrest Sadrist forces could lead to more violence and not less:

Among Sadrist rank and file, impatience with the ceasefire is high and growing. They equate it with a loss of power and resources, believe the U.S. and ISCI are conspiring to weaken the movement and eagerly await Muqtada’s permission to resume the fight. The Sadrist leadership has resisted the pressure, but this may not last. Critics accuse Muqtada of passivity or worse, and he soon may conclude that the costs of his current strategy outweigh its benefits. In early February 2008, senior Sadrist officials called upon their leader not to prolong the ceasefire, due to expire later in the month.

The U.S. response – to continue attacking and arresting Sadrist militants, including some who are not militia members; arm a Shiite tribal counterforce in the south to roll back Sadrist territorial gains; and throw its lot in with Muqtada’s nemesis, ISCI – is understandable but short-sighted. The Sadrist movement, its present difficulties aside, remains a deeply entrenched, popular mass movement of young, poor and disenfranchised Shiites. It still controls key areas of the capital, as well as several southern cities; even now, its principal strongholds are virtually unassailable. Despite intensified U.S. military operations and stepped up Iraqi involvement, it is fanciful to expect the Mahdi Army’s defeat. Instead, heightened pressure is likely to trigger both fierce Sadrist resistance in Baghdad and an escalating intra-Shiite civil war in the south.

I don't really know if there's a whole lot we can do about this at this point, but clearly stating that the surge has failed, as the Democratic leadership has pretty well done but not nearly loudly enough, is a start. The consequences of us sinking further in the quicksand are too great to simply sit on the sidelines until there's a new President. I don't agree with everything in this Matt Taibbi story, particularly the parts about antiwar movement organizing and dovetailing with a partisan strategy to elect more Democrats (that's the words of a national reporter who never checked in with the local organizing on the ground), but it's completely clear that the Democrats can't wait for 2009 to come so they can stop keeping their heads in the sand on the occupation.

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party's energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn't fit Iraq into his busy schedule. "We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed."

There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. "We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it." [...]

An honest attempt to end the war, say Democrats like Woolsey and Lee, would have involved forcing Bush to execute his veto and allowing the Republicans to filibuster all they wanted. Force a showdown, in other words, and use any means necessary to get the bloodshed ended.

"Can you imagine Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert taking no for an answer the way Reid and Pelosi did on Iraq?" asks the House aide in the expletive-filled office. "They'd find a way to get the votes. They'd get it done somehow."

It's especially craven when you consider that just token pressure from Democrats, particularly the Presidentials, got the White House to back down on at least part of this "long-term security guarantee" with the Iraqi government. While Clinton and Obama failing on Iraq in the eyes of Michael O'Hanlon is a step forward, the real failure would be spending the next 11 months digging an even bigger hole over there, with no political or social progress, with the factions at each other's throats, while both chambers of Congress go silent on the issue. Now is the time for honest men to pick a fight, not cower from one.