'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

DoD suits scrabbling yet again to find a workable plan

Steven Weisman writes in today's NYT that un-named "administration officials" say the Bush administration now plans to revise the plan for a handover to self-rule in Iraq that was agreed on just last November 15.  The revision is reportedly aimed at "responding to" the firm insistence that Ayatollah Sistani announced Sunday that any Iraqi self-rule government be the result of--wait for this shocking revelation!-- a fully democratic process.

So does this mean that Baghdad fashion maven Jerry Bremer and his Washington handlers are now prepared to move away from "the Rube Goldberg process"-- the incredibly unwieldy and undemocratic mechanism agreed back in November whereby undemocratic "caucuses" and other such gatherings would generate a new Iraqi leadership?

No, it does not.   As Weisman reports it:

The new hope in Washington, the officials said, was in effect to make the caucus system look more democratic without changing it in a fundamental way.

So I guess we could call the proposed new system "Rube Goldberg, II".  That will make it at least the fourth* of the "strategic" plans the administration has adopted for the handover since the US forces took Baghdad last April.  (And the pace at which the administration is falling back from one plan to the next seems to be speeding up.)

And I have a sneaking suspicion that Sistani, who doesn't seem to be anyone's fool, is not necessarily going to have the wool pulled over his eyes on this one?

Weisman also reports another aspect of Sistani's Sunday declaration that I had not seen reported elsewhere, and that likewise came as a big shock to Bremer and his backers:

Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part of Ayatollah Sistani's statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives.

I commented on the key importance of this issue regarding the "Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)" on JWN ten days ago, though few other commentators seem to have focused much on it.

One great Middle Eastern example of a SOFA that went horribly wrong precisely because it was concluded with a "successor regime" that lacked local legitimacy was the infamous "May 17 Agreement" concluded in 1983 between Israel and the Amin Gemayyel regime in Beirut.  

One year earlier, Israel had launched its "invasion with the goal of regime change" against Lebanon, and had succeeded in installing the Gemayyel dynasty in power in Beirut.  But by spring 1983, the Israelis were eager to withdraw their forces as much as possible: hence the need for a handover of more apparent power to the Gemayyel government-- but a handover conditioned on Gemayyel agreeing, in the name of all of Lebanon, to a special security arrangement with Israel.

According to p.195 of my 1985 book "The Making of Modern Lebanon" the May 17 Agreement

The agreement ... established the existence of a special security region covering all of Lebanon south of the Awali river and stretching inland to link up with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.  Joint Israeli-Lebanese supervisory teams would inspect the security measures both within the security region, and throughout the rest of the country...

The only problem?  Though Gemayyel was the "President" of Lebanon, the legitimacy of his presidency was hotly contested by many Lebanese-- including, crucuially, the Shi-ites who are the country's largest single population group.  His close ties in 1982-83 with the Israelis were one of the main factors (but not the only one) contributing to a widespread view of his presidency as fundamentally non-legitimate.

So the support inside the country for Gemayyel and his policy of close security cooperation with Israel was very weak.  Then, just nine months after the conclusion of the May 17 Agreement the Shi-ites-- who made up probably a majority of the "new" Lebanese army that was being put together by US military advisors who were also big players back then in Lebanon--revolted unequivocally against gemayyel's policies.  The "new" Lebanese army fell apart.  Gemayyel, who was a power-seeking politician much more than he was an ideologue, scurried off to Damascus to build new ties with Syria.  And the May 17 Agreement died.

Did I mention that in the aftermath of the Shi-ite-led revolt there, even President Reagan's mighty armies were forced to hurriedly "redeploy off-shore" from Lebanon?

Sic transit gloria SOFAE, as my late father would have said.

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*I described the latest design for a handover plan as the fourth because I see the successive plans adopted by the Bremer's handlers in the DoD as the following:

1. The Chalabi-Garner plan:  This one was hatched in the DoD many months--or even years?-- before the war was launched.  It relied centrally on Chalabi's alleged "wide networks of supporters throughout Iraq" to exercize effective control throughout the country almost immediately after the fall of the Saddam regime...  For some of my previous writings on this plan, on Chalabi's amazingly exaggerated claims, and on the gullibility of the DoD folks who bought that proven con-man's snake-oil, type Chalabi into the Search box on the Main page of JWN and see what comes up...  That plan lasted precisely one month after "liberation", but as I said, it had been the favored plan of the DoD suits for many months before that. 
2. Bremer's "extreme makeover" plan: ... So, in May 2003, fashion maven Jerry Bremer was sent to Iraq to give that country an "extreme makeover" into a free-market, free-wheeling, full-blown democracy.  That plan lasted less than six months till mid-November when Bremer was told to haul his rear end back to DC where he was given the plan for:
3. The "cut and run" strategy as brought to you by Dr. Rube Goldberg :  Under this plan, the idea of any "extreme makeover" was now tossed out.  The main goal was no longer, as previously, to be the complete re-making of Iraq (and while we're about it, the whole Middle East) into a bastion of New-England-style market democracy.  Now, the main goal was to have some sort of visible (and preferably telegenic) transition 'event' in Iraq by the end of June 2004 so that in the months between then and next November 4 the number of US reporters still covering developments there would fall as low as possible.  (I think Juan Cole was the first to voice this supposition, which I think is spot-on).  But here we are, a bare two months after the DoD issued the fatwa decreeing that strategy; and now we have another:
4. The "cut and run" strategy, revised to give an "appearance" of democracy ...  

Is the pace of change hotting up, or what?  Do these guys know what they're doing, or what?