Is It Too Late For Iraq?

I've been feeling damn pessimistic this last few days as I watched the Iraqi constitution go down the drain. I think, for all their bluster, conservatives must have a sinking feeling too because a quick look at memeorandum.com will show three major opinion pieces attempting to spin the current debacle as a good thing and none have the sound of people convincing even themselves. There is David Brooks in the New York Times, the Opinion column of the Wall Street Journal which argues that the constitution is an enlightened one and USNews.com blog by Michael Barone which references...David Brooks and Opinion Journal. Each has its coterie of conservative bloggers parroting the points therein.

Every single one of them misses the big point: that Sunni voter registration is through the roof in the last week. The Sunnis have realised that they can sink this constitution in October by simply voting it down in three of the four provinces they provide the overwhelming number of potential voters in. The wording of the current constitution is a null point if that happens. After that, the government becomes a caretaker one while new elections to a new parliament are held - and then that parliament must draft a new constitution, accept it and put it to another referendum! Can you imagine what that will do to peace and security in Iraq?

I’ve tried to stay hopeful about goings-on in Iraq and Afghanistan, truly I have. I even spent a big chunk of time putting together all my thoughts of the last years on the subject into the Twin Wars series in an attempt to make someone (anyone) notice things could be done differently and better.

But while the jury is still out in Afghanistan (I am waiting to see what the British Army manages when they take over leadership of the NATO contingent there) I think the last few days have put the final nail in the coffin of my optimism for Iraq. The whole thing is SNAFU - both the US and Iraqi administrations have managed to engineer "damned if we do, damned if we don’t" situations for themselves with heedless aplomb.

I don’t see it going any other way than a three (or maybe 4 with a Shia split along Badr/Sadr lines) civil war that leads to balkanisation. Then we will get the conservative war-pundits "domino theory" just not in a good way.

Next on the destabilisation list are Turkey and Iran. In Iran especially they are already experiencing Sunni minority/Al Qaida insurrections in localised areas and now there is news that violent unrest in Iran’s predominantly Kurdish northwest where it borders Iraq and Turkey is on the rise.Does anyone really believe the Kurdish agenda is other than to carve their own state out of three different nations, by force if necessary?

Add to this the Bush administrations blinkered view of Iran’s nuclear program and the recipe is one for another disaster. At the same time as the US is saying it doesn’t accept the IAEA’s reports on enrichment because the United States had other "unresolved concerns outside of the issue of the contaminated centrifuges," including Iran’s dealings with "clandestine nuclear procurement networks" news comes that Pakistan gave both North Korea and Iran their enrichment centrifuges - and the guy who did it has been given a Presidential pardon and is being kept away from IAEA investigators!

If the US has problems with "clandestine nuclear procurement networks" wouldn’t it make more sense to target the seller than the buyer? But no, Pakistan is an ally and wil remain so despite having the highest concentration of Taliban and Al Qaida trained terrorists on the planet, a duplicitous program to sell nuclear weapons technology and a policy of misdirection on every aspect of curbing its own extremists - all backed by its own military intelligence’s efforts.

Yet again, the rhetoric and the intelligence is being "fixed" around the policy.

I begin to believe that Bush’s strategy in the Middle East is to make it less of a threat to the US by ensuring that it is entirely involved in intercine fueds - the old British "divide and conquer" that kicked this whole mess off in the first place.

Yeah, I’m worried as hell.

But then comes a voice of hope and I begin to wonder again.

Wesley Clark, retired Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and a guy who knows a thing or two about these matters, thinks it is not too late in Iraq but says we urgently need a strategy which is the one thing the Bush administration singularly has failed to do.

From the outset of the U.S. post-invasion efforts, we needed a three-pronged strategy: diplomatic, political and military. Iraq sits geographically on the fault line between Shiite and Sunni Islam; for the mission to succeed we will have to be the catalyst for regional cooperation, not regional conflict.

And a lot of what General Clark has to say I agree with - I should, because a lot of it sounds like my Twin Wars essays. It's worth quoting at length.

on the military track, security on the ground remains poor at best. U.S. armed forces still haven't received resources, restructuring and guidance adequate for the magnitude of the task. Only in June, over two years into the mission of training Iraqi forces, did the president announce such "new steps" as partnering with Iraqi units, establishing "transition teams" to work with Iraqi units and training Iraqi ministries to conduct antiterrorist operations. But there is nothing new about any of this; it is the same nation-building doctrine that we used in Vietnam. Where are the thousands of trained linguists? Where are the flexible, well-resourced, military-led infrastructure development programs to win "hearts and minds?" Where are the smart operations and adequate numbers of forces -- U.S., coalition or Iraqi -- to strengthen control over the borders?

With each passing month the difficulties are compounded and the chances for a successful outcome are reduced. Urgent modification of the strategy is required before it is too late to do anything other than simply withdraw our forces.

There's more, on all three tracks - political, diplomatic and military and its all good stuff, all in the category of "I want it done a year ago" urgent. All the kind of thing that conservative but non-Bushite experts like William Lind and the British Army have been advocating for a long while too. General Clark, it is a great pity you were not President on 9/11...or even now, having gained the Democratic nomination instead of John not-Bush.

But suddenly I realise - Bush and his cabinet won't do any of it. And as the General says "If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home." And that would be the coup-de-grace for Iraq.

So I'm still worried as hell. And yes, I think it is too late.