Page 3 of 3 The myth of more in
Iraq By Michael Schwartz
damaging. They not only immobilize the
local defense forces, but almost always involve
the introduction of Iraqi Army units, made up
mainly of Shi'ite soldiers (since the army being
stood up by the Americans is largely a Shi'ite
one). What results is violence in the form of
battles between a Shi'ite military (as well as
militia-infiltrated Shi'ite police forces) and
Sunni resistance fighters defending their
communities.
These attacks generate
immense bitterness among Sunni, who
see
them as part of a Shi'ite attempt to use the
American military to conquer and pacify Sunni
cities. The result is a wealth of new jihadists
anxious to retaliate by sacrificing their lives in
terrorist or death-squad-style attacks on Shi'ite
communities - which, in their turn, energize the
Shi'ite death squads in an escalating cycle of
brutalizing violence.
The agonizing
reality is that the American occupation and its
military forces stand at the beginning and the end
of this cycle of violence. Brutal American
invasions of largely Sunni cities - aided by ever
larger forces of Shi'ite soldiers - generate
retaliatory car bombings and murders by Sunni
jihadists.
Their terrorist attacks in
Shi'ite neighborhoods motivate the Shi'ite death
squads - utilizing government equipment and
personnel - to invade Sunni neighborhoods and
execute those suspected of planning or mounting
terrorist attacks (along with increasing numbers
of uninvolved and innocent locals). Then, in an
ironic final act, the American military reenters
these warring neighborhoods, demobilizing each
community's defense system, and so making it just
that much vulnerable to further attack.
Proposals that envision larger contingents
of American or Iraqi troops as the antidote to
sectarian violence in Baghdad or elsewhere simply
miss the point by misunderstanding George W Bush
administration military policy. American military
action does not suppress sectarian violence; it
is, instead its animating force, and a catalyst
for its diffusion into new areas.
The most
recent crescendo of sectarian violence in Baghdad
is a consequence of Operation Together Forward,
and as long as American troops and their Iraqi
allies attempt to pacify Baghdad neighborhoods,
they will generate and amplify sectarian attacks.
The most discouraging element of the
soaring mayhem in Baghdad is the growing
conviction within the Bush administration that
sectarian violence may be a way to rescue the
American mission in Iraq. Commenting on the fact
that Shi'ite militiamen were killing Sunni
insurgents and vice versa, an anonymous former
intelligence official told investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh in his latest piece in the New
Yorker: "The White House [now] believes that if
American troops stay in Iraq long enough - with
enough troops - the bad guys will end up killing
each other."
Opposing the myth of more
Nir Rosen, one of the most insightful
journalists writing about Iraq today, recently
summed up the current situation this way:
I think both Bush and [Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-] Maliki are absolutely
irrelevant in Iraq. Neither one of them has any
power. Maliki has no militia to speak of. Bush
has a militia, the American army, one of the
many militias operating in Iraq. But the
American Army is lost in Iraq, as it has been
since it arrived. Striking at Sunnis, striking
at Shi'ites, striking at mostly innocent people.
Unable to distinguish between anybody, certainly
unable to wield any power, except on the
immediate street corner where it's located. So,
it just doesn't matter ...
At present
Iraq is divided into about 10 or 12 city states:
Mosul, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra, Amara, Ramadi,
each one is disconnected from the others, each
one controlled by its own militias. You could
put anybody you wanted in Baghdad, it just
wouldn't make a difference outside of Baghdad.
And the guy you put in Baghdad would have to
have power in Baghdad, which means street power,
which means Muqtada al-Sadr.
Every
version of American policy in Iraq now being
suggested in Washington (which created the present
crisis of violence) is ostensibly designed to
reverse this very situation and they all, in some
way or other, envision the smashing of the
militias, which would, in effect, allow American
power to remain in place in a largely pacified
country. None of the current proposals abandon the
essential Bush administration goal of dominating
Iraq; and each in its own fashion, even when
togged out as some kind of "withdrawal" scheme,
embraces the myth of more.
We have seen
that more Iraqi troops are supposedly needed to
help conquer the rebellious city states; and more
US troops in Baghdad are supposedly needed to
recapture the capital from Muqtada al-Sadr and his
Mehdi Army, as well as from Sunni jihadists and
insurgents. Advocates of a change in Iraqi
leadership argue that a more powerful figure, a
"strong man", could help the US achieve more
"security" around the country. Redeploying
American troops to secure bases inside Iraq or in
neighboring countries would provide a safe
launching area for more successful offensives in
support of the Iraqi government and against
militia strongholds when they were needed.
Negotiations with neighboring countries
would be aimed at generating more (diplomatic,
economic and/or military) pressure on rebellious
militias and insurgent factions to come to terms
with the American presence. And more Congressional
oversight on Iraq would insure against further
strategic blunders that undermine the effort to
pacify the country.
There is more at stake
here than a battle of wills over who will rule
various cities in Iraq. The ferocious resistance
against American rule derives from the original
goals of the American-led invasion: installing a
regime in Iraq that, minimally, would embrace a
military alliance with the United States, a
foreign policy actively hostile to Iran (and
Syria), and an economic policy that replaced
state-delivered food and oil subsidies with a
"free market" dominated by American multinational
companies.
From the beginning, the various
factions that are contending for control of
Iraq-on-the-ground have resisted elements of this
program. The Shi'ites detested the American
insistence on antagonism to Iran; the Sunni
rebelled against the de-Ba'athification policies
instituted by our viceroy in Baghdad, L Paul
Bremer III, the dismantling of state-run
enterprises, and the disbanding of the military;
the oil workers struck against the contracts that
allowed American oil companies to dominate the
marketing of Iraqi oil; and virtually everyone
resisted the elimination of fuel and food
subsidies.
More of anything that the US is
doing is bound to prove just another effort to win
a war of conquest and occupation whose goals are
antithetical to just about every Iraqi desire.
What more ensures is only more death, more
destruction, and more violence. Instead, the US
should discontinue its efforts to militarily
dominate the oil heartlands of the Middle East and
withdraw its troops from Iraq.
Michael Schwartz, professor of
sociology and faculty director of the
undergraduate college of global studies at Stony
Brook University, has written extensively on
popular protest and insurgency, as well as on
American business and government dynamics. His
email address is Ms42@optonline.net.
