April 12, 2008

Iraq: A sinkhole, not a quagmire


Posted by Helena Cobban at April 12, 2008 02:30 PM

For too long, I and many others in the commentatoriat have been describing the war in Iraq as a Vietnam-like "quagmire" for the US.  It is now clear that's a poor analogy.  It implies, after all, an area through which one slogs with great difficulty and perhaps great losses-- but that there is, potentially, a solid piece of land on the far side of the quagmire at which, through doing enough tough slogging, one can arrive.

Not true.  It now seems clear-- and the events and decisions of the past week have confirmed this-- that there is no solid "far side" of this troublesome terrain that the US can reach simply by doing more slogging.  Instead, the sticky mud that we thought was just a quagmire has in fact been a temporary cap sitting atop a massive sinkhole, and the sinkhole is now poised to swallow up the whole of the US's until-now little questioned position of hegemony in the Middle East, as well as, on a longer but linked time-scale, the position of unipolar military hegemony the US has held over the last 17 years at the global level.

Here are the relevant facts as I see them:

1. In a situation in which there are already clear strains on the US military's worldwide force-planning system, President Bush this week announced unequivocally that his decision has been to prioritize the Iraqi theater over the Afghan theater or planning for any other potential military contingencies around the world. 

Bush did this by hiding behind the skirts of his top field commander in Iraq and saying "Whatever Gen. Petraeus wants for Iraq, Gen. Petraeus gets."  But we should all be quite clear about what the broad implications of what Bush was saying there: he was simply blowing off the requests from the Afghan government and the NATO allies that the US considerably beef up the contribution it makes to the US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan.

We could call this Bush's "anti-Dannatt moment."

He was also blowing off the concerns that the highest members of the US military have expressed about the strain the US force planners are already under, as a result of the overstretch in Iraq. On Wednesday, the Army's vice of staff, Gen. Richard Cody told the House Armed Services Committee quite explicitly that, "The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies."

The strain on the US force planners will be all the more acute, because Bush also sought to appease his critics from within the US military by announcing the reduction of the "standard tour" that service members are sent on in Iraq or Afghanistan from 15 months to 12 months.

In terms of force planning and the ability of the US military to confidently prepare for any number of contingencies around the world-- Taiwan Straits? renewed problems with North Korea? turmoil in Egypt? Haiti? Somalia? etc-- Bush is certainly now "planning" to bequeath to his successor a system in complete disarray.

(As a convinced pacifist, I don't view the prospect of the end of the US's worldwide military empire as a bad thing.  But this empire could end in a large number of different ways, many of which could end up inflicting considerable harm and suffering on citizens of the world's most vulnerable countries.  Hence, all of us-- Americans and non-Americans, alike-- now have a considerable responsibility to try to ensure the shift away from a US-dominated unipolar world is negotiated in such way that it occurs in as orderly, equitable, and sustainable a way as possible.)

2.  Though Bush has given Gen. Petraeus broad latitude to cherry-pick whatever he wants out of the US force-planning system, the US budget, etc., in fact there is no way Petraeus or any other commander can "win" in Iraq. Indeed-- as we saw demonstrated very clearly during last week's hearings-- there is not even any publicly announced definition of what "winning" would mean there.

 This is the "sinkhole" aspect of the problem.  You pour in money and service-members, and they just get gobbled up.

Sen. Barack Obama's questioning of Petraeus in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spoke directly to the issue of "What would it mean to 'win' in Iraq?"  Petraeus was quite unable to provide a clear answer.

3.  There are, meanwhile many clear-- and extremely worrying-- signs that Bush and Cheney have decided that the current best way to "justify" the US military presence/engagement in Iraq is by linking it more clearly than ever to the administration's anti-Iran campaign.

We could make a very long list indeed of the many "justifications" the Bushites have adduced for their military engagement in Iraq over the years...  None of these justifications has proved sturdily convincing over the long haul, or even the medium haul.  Hence the need constantly to generate new ones.

In this latest campaign of linking what the US military is doing in Iraq to the continuing campaign against Iran they contort human rationality and logic in a way that would be hilariously funny were it not so deeply tragic and depressing.  Here are some examples:
  • Administration officials accuse Iran of providing various forms of support to Moqtada al-Sadr's movement and militia, which engaged in some tough battles against the Iraqi government's security forces in the past two weeks.  Well, this is probably true.  But the Iranian government has also, more stably and over a period of many years, been giving continuing support to the Badr Brigades militia that is allied with the current Iraqi government.  (Do we still need to remind anyone of the fulsome welcome that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got from Iraq's PM and President on during his recent state visit to Baghdad?)
  • They make no mention at all of the fact that Iran's powerful Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani recently called on Iraq's current oppositionists to stop shelling the Green Zone in Baghdad. Oops, that development just didn't fit into the Bushists' narrative of Iran playing a big spoiler role inside Iraq. 
  • They made scant mention, too, of the fact that it was the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps who negotiated the key ceasefire that interrupted the recent fighting between the Sadrists and the ISF in Basra.
  • The Bushists are now trying to rush around the Arab world trying to tout the "Arab-ness" of the regime in Iraq-- this, in contrast to the "Iranian-ness" of the regime in Iran.  This new "Arab-ness" narrative may well have been introduced after it became clear for various reasons that the "anti-Shiite" narrative with which they had previously tried to mobilize the Arab regimes against Iran had failed.  But to see them touting the present Baghdad regime for its notably "Arab" qualities is particularly amusing after having seen them spend the first four years or so of the occupation of Iraq deliberately trying to erase the Arab identity and affiliation of Iraq's government and as many of its people as possible.  That included installing Kurdish Iraqis as both the government's president and Foreign Minister, as well as systematic efforts to start describing all Iraqis as either "Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds" rather than building on the identities of being either "Iraqi" or "Arab."
  • Meanwhile, actually, within the Iraqi Shiite community, the Sadrists are considerably more "Arab nationalist" in their outlook and positions than pro-government groups like Badr/ISCI, which have a much more closely pro-Iranian orientation.
4.  This new ramping up of the "anti-Iranian" justification for the US troop presence in Iraq is worrying at a number of levels.  I ask myself: Is this just a "justification" for whatever it is they're hoping to achieve in Iraq, or are they actually trying to prepare the ground for some kind of  real military action against Iran in the nine months that George W. Bush has left in office?

Personally, I still find this latter prospect extremely unlikely.  After all, in the event of any form of US military attack against Iran, the US troops deployed in Iraq are sitting ducks and hostages to fortune-- and these risks outweigh by a factor of tens or hundreds the contribution that these troops could as a potential "advance guard" or "supporting force" for this attack.  I have considerable confidence that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the serious, battle-tested men in charge of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff all understand these realities.

On the other hand, as we know, George W. Bush prides himself on being "the Decider."  Well, given the huge cognitive constraints on Bush being able to "decide" anything, make that Vice-President Cheney.

5.  Jim Hoagland, whose work on Iraq I have frequently criticized in the past, actually has a good piece in tomorrow's WaPo that tends to confirm my general confidence in the judgment of the JCS, but raises some worrying questions about Gates's role. He writes:

The most intense arguments over U.S. involvement in Iraq do not flare at this point on Capitol Hill or on the campaign trail. Those rhetorical battles pale in comparison to the high-stakes struggle being waged behind closed doors at the Pentagon.

On one side are the "fight-win guys," as some describe themselves. They are led by Gen. David Petraeus and other commanders who argue that the counterinsurgency struggle in Iraq must be pursued as the military's top priority and ultimately resolved on U.S. terms.

In this view, the Middle East is the most likely arena for future conflicts, and Iraq is the prototype of the war that U.S. forces must be trained and equipped to win.

Arrayed against them are the uniformed chiefs of the military services who foresee a "broken army" emerging from an all-out commitment to Iraq that neglects other needs and potential conflicts. It is time to rebuild Army tank battalions, Marine amphibious forces and other traditional instruments of big-nation warfare -- while muddling through in Iraq.

About Gates, however, what Hoagie writes is not so encouraging.  He writes that Gates, "has in fact encouraged the spirited debate between the Petraeus and Fallon-Cody camps without tipping his own hand."  Interestingly, though, he writes that when Centcom chief Adm. William Fallon was suddenly ousted from his post last month, the cause was not any differences between him and Gates over the prospect of attacking Iran (or over the big debate over force configurations).  Rather, it was, "Fallon's rigid, overbearing style and a refusal to listen to others [that] gradually cost him Gates's confidence, according to military and civilian officials who worked with Fallon." 

That leaves open the possibility that Gates still agrees with what Fallon has said about the patent folly of the US launching a military attack on Iran.

6.  So, back to this sinkhole theory of Iraq.  How bad is it?  What will it leade to over the next nine months?  And how can the next president minimize the damage caused around the world by the latest series of disastrous decisions made by Bush/Cheney?

I think for now, I prefer to leave this blog post where it is and come back to these important big questions later.  All I can sketch out right now is that

  • The Iraqi sinkhole will almost certainly, within the time-frame of the next 3-5 years, draw in (and bring to an end) the US's hegemonic position in the Persian Gulf region;
  • Alongside the sinkhole effect of Iraq, we certainly need to consider the effects on the US's worldwide power of the current and continuing crisis in the US-led world financial system, recognizing that the diminution of the US's relative economic power in the world has itself been considerably hastened and exacerbated by the financial "sinkhole" the Iraq war has become for the US;
  • The Iraq sinkhole will certainly-- along with the crisis of US economic power and Middle Eastern developments including those in Egypt and Palestine-- lead to a considerable diminution/dilution of the near-hegemonic role the US has exercized for the past 30 years throughout the broader Middle East;
  • The effects of the Iraq sinkhole on the situation in Afghanistan and the rest of the crucial "Great Game Board" within Central Asia will become increasingly significant for the standing within the world power balance of NATO (aka the "West Militant") -- and for the standings of the other major parties rerepresented on the Great Game Board: Russia, China, Iran, and militant Sunnism;
  • The next Prez will have to work extremely hard, and in an inclusive and creative manner if he (she?) is to minimize the damage to the US ctizienry and the world-- and of course, to Iraq's oh-so-suffering people-- caused by this sinkhole.
... Well, my bottom line for now is mainly to urge you to remember this: Iraq is a sinkhole, not a quagmire.  There is no firm "bank" we can just slog through to on the other side of this one.



Comments

what the US military is doing in Iraq to the continuing campaign against Iran

Just to chill things down, There is no attack or war with Iran, it's a psychological war.


"But does this world view raise more questions than it answers? A Los Angeles Times editorial pointed out that the U.S. invasion itself emboldened Iran and Al Qaeda in Iraq, and that Crocker and Petraeus were arguing that the Americans should stay in Iraq because forces unleashed by the invasion itself and describes the predicament Washington has gotten itself into."

"Here's an excerpt from David Fromkin’s 1989 book "A Peace to End all Peace," about the British attempts to control a rebellious Iraq during a troubled British occupation:"


The British were confused as to the origins of the revolt. [British Army Col.] Arnold Wilson submitted a list of thirteen contributing factors, stressing, above all, the involvement of [King] Feisal's supporters and Kemal [Ataturk's] Turkey, perhaps supported he claimed, by American Standard Oil interests. An intelligence officer attached to the India Office produced a chart outlining a conspiracy, implicating Feisal but, even more so, the Turks, who (he asserted) continued to take orders via Moscow and Switzerland from Berlin.


…there was strikingly large body of opinion that held that what had occurred was by outsiders, and that the disorders throughout the east were somehow linked with one another. Certain names continued to recur in the course of British speculations as to the origins of the disorders: Enver Pasha, Mustapha Kamal, Feisal, Pan-Islam, the Germans, Standard Oil, the Jews, and the Bolsheviks.

Posted by: Salah at April 12, 2008 02:54 PM

"Iraq: A sinkhole, not a quagmire"

More accurate nickname that given by US is:

"Iraq: A Spiderhole, not a quagmire"

There were very famos cartoon during 1980 Iraq/Iran war that US media published wildly a bout Iraq at that time.

The cartoon shown Saddam in his military dress with his boot stack in Khomeini's "a.....", it's unfortunate to seen that cartoon have some validity with today US invasion of Iraq

Posted by: Salah at April 12, 2008 03:02 PM

Greetings from Beirut. Today is my last day of a 3.5 day stay here - much too brief - and I will head for Damascus by car tomorrow for a stay of about three weeks.

My internet access depends on my hosts' typically very slow and not-always-reliable dial-up connection, as will probably also be the case in Damascus. Courtesy and a desire not to waste too much of the little time I have for these travels demand that I not spend my accustomed several hours a day on the net. Today I am out on my own wandering and exploring, and am using this internet cafe to give my aching muscles a rest! So, at the moment I do not really have time to fully read and consider what you have put on this page. Tonight I am going to an event in a series regarding the civil war, so don't know how much time I will have later. But, I wanted to say something quickly in the way of a first impression. In the meantime, I will try to print it out when I get back to the house, and perhaps read it later tonight.

Sink hole is very apt, Helena! This is, I think, the image I have been searching for for some time. Quagmire is too easy, and there is hope for return from a quagmire, as you said. Or, is it something even more vast than a sink hole? Is it a black hole, perhaps?

"the sinkhole is now poised to swallow up the whole of the US's until-now little questioned position of hegemony in the Middle East, as well as, on a longer but linked time-scale, the position of unipolar military hegemony the US has held over the last 17 years at the global level."

This looks to me like the silver lining around he cloud of the Iraqi situation. I only hope that as the US loses its stranglehold there is not even more suffering and destruction as a result!

But the biggest question on my mind is whether the USA will take Iraq along with it into this sink hole or black hole? And what else will disappear with it?

I still believe, very firmly (and by the way, this is also the opinion of everyone I have spoken to on this trip so far - Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian, you name it) that the only hope for Iraq is, as you have stated, a quick, rapid, and complete withdrawal of the US. Interestingly, General Odom said the same thing in front of Congress.

May it be so!


Posted by: Shirin at April 13, 2008 09:28 AM

One aspect that you have raised is the US-led world financial system. The real problem with the US leadership in that area is the particularly American folly of using trade as a weapon. (A mistake the British never made). What is happening is that starting with the Cuban embargo and now the Palestine and Iran sanctions trade is moving from dollars to euros. If the Iranians are unable to deal with their trading partners using US dollar L/Cs then trade will be transacted in euros using SWIFT.

Posted by: Advanced Calcu.lus at April 13, 2008 12:15 PM

General Odom, a retired three-star, is an all-star in my book. His testimony Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a serious strategic analysis of our shockingly awful quicksand war in Iraq. The former Army Assistant Chief Of Staff for Intelligence spoke truth to power, just in case power was listening.

As far as I can tell, Petraeus is more a devil than a divinity,
As I pointed out in my November 2007 essay, Mosul Dam: Engineering a Water WMD, last fall General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker issued a warning that Mosul Dam was in imminent danger of collapsing and killing some 500,000 Iraqis from Mosul to Baghdad. Call me a cynic, but I thought it worth considering that such a disaster would be a very convenient way to drown the east side of the Sunni triangle. A couple of months after the collapsing dam warning, a brand-new terrifying scenario began to take shape: Muslim extremists, sometimes named as Al Qaeda, were going to blow up the dam. It all seemed like an agreed-upon catastrophe searching around for an agreeable cause, particularly when one of the chief sources pushing the story is Daniel Pipes, the Neocon neo-Nazi:

"King David," as the residence of Mosul call Petraeus, may be just the man to manufacture a biblical disaster to drown Eden. That would make a fine finale in The Tragedy of Iraq, or King George's Genocide. No doubt it would lead to rave reviews by Pipes and his ilk gushing "now that was a real surge!" For those who find the prospect of genocidal mass murder remote, kindly refer to the Old Testament, or to the recent declaration of Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman that, in the event of war with Egypt, Israel should to blow up Egypt's Aswan Dam. It can't be genocide if it's Jewish, the Neocons argue. Whenever Israel does is an "existential necessity" -- it's all part of a kosherkampf, so to speak.

A General Debate on Iraq: Odom Vs. Petraeus

Posted by: Salah at April 13, 2008 02:26 PM

In April, Congress will vote to give George W. Bush and Dick Cheney another $102 billion for Iraq - unless we finally persuade our Representatives to Just Say No.

One of the best ways to persuade a Representative is to hold a town hall meeting and fill the hall with people who care and are willing to speak passionately. (Another way is to turn out a crowd for a town hall that your Representative is already scheduled to attend.)

So we're asking YOU and the 500,000 members of Democrats.com to organize Iraq Town Halls in all 435 Congressional districts on any day in April.

Posted by: Salah at April 13, 2008 02:56 PM

Shirin, enjoy your trip!

Posted by: Mark Pyruz at April 13, 2008 05:19 PM

One person's "sinkhole" is another's "goldmine." Many Americans have prospered big-time from the blood-money "GWOT goldmine." Two examples: Vice President Cheney was able to purchase a $2.9m house with Halliburton war dividends and Senator Diane Feinstein moved into a sumptuous San Francisco mansion bought with proceeds from her husband's war contracts. And from a recent news report: "Members of the U.S. Congress have as much as $196 million collectively invested in companies doing business with the Defense[sic] Department, earning millions since the start of the Iraq war, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group."

"War is a racket . . the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"--MajGen Smedley D. Butler, USMC, 1935.

Posted by: Don Bacon at April 14, 2008 01:35 PM

Iran - the new motivation for US war in Iraq


Last week I joined more than 40 other Minnesota Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to attend the Vets For Freedom, Vets on the Hill event in Washington. There, we joined more than 400 other Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from around the country to tell our political leaders that not only is victory in Iraq possible, it is necessary. All we ask is that the our political leaders not pull the rug out from under us and, more importantly, out from under the Iraqi people now that real progress is finally being made.

Michael Honeycutt: We must not leave the Iraqis vulnerable


From above the US long stay in “A sinkhole” or “a quagmire” was the goal before the war in 2003.
If some goes back and read and review what was behind the curtains the evidence there is US long stay in a quagmire land.

So US is divided in two directions one against the war and one with the war, Michael Honeycutt don’t know if he is solder or commander advising the his leader to stay in Iraq. These guys who went to “sinkhole” came back indorsing their view.

If your argument based on human suffering and human tragedy of this war motivated you to oppose it , sorry this will not find ears to hear your voices as those who run the war they have no attentions whatsoever of human tragedy on “a quagmire land”.

So now the we staying in Iraq because of Iran, and the war lasting for more years to come as Iran its permanent neighbour to Iraq unless somehow Iran vanish from the map?

Posted by: Salah at April 14, 2008 03:08 PM

In one post Helena Cobban summarizes our situation in Iraq and its likely outcome. Not an untypical performance for her.

This comment will probably be lost in what is now a stale thread, but I say "Helena for Congress"! You would be a candidate we could vote for with enthusiasm rather than as the best of two not so great choices. You'd be a great Congressperson. It would probably have to be from somewhere other than Virginia, though.

Shirin, hope you keep those reports from the Middle East coming.

Posted by: No Preference at April 14, 2008 05:03 PM

The "Vets For Freedom" is a group of opportunists allied with the Republican Party and Senator Lieberman.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Vets_for_Freedom_Action_Fund

Posted by: Don Bacon at April 14, 2008 05:54 PM
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