David T. Beito on Liberty & Power questions the critical thinking of people who believe that once Sunnis “pick-up the ballot they will cast aside the bullet.”
“Strangely, few advocates of this view ever consider the possibility that the insurgents can deploy both the ballot and the bullet at the same time.”
Just as strangely, permanent war supporters say they’d “rather be fighting the terrorists over there than here,” as if an invading army, not a cell of 19, flew planes into the Pentagon and the WTC and killed “in total…at least 2,986 people.” The insurgency is not a front for al Qaeda – the invasion and occupation is a recruiting dream for an “ever-morphing” al Qaeda yet the percentage of jihadists fighting in Iraq is small – so spare me defence of the same sort of straw men erected to gain support for the illegal war in the first place, as Daniel Benjamin argues in Jihadist Iraq just won’t happen [ November 24, 2005 LA Times ]. It’s not only counterproductive to peace in Iraq but to America’s overall security.
There is no question that the jihadists would like to seize a country as a base for wider operations. But they have nowhere near the capacity to achieve this in Iraq. Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq and other radical Islamist groups have bloodied U.S. forces, the fledgling Iraqi government and the Shiite population. The jihadist organizations lack the heavy weapons and the manpower that would be required to seize control of Baghdad, to capture and hold large tracts of territory that are occupied by hostile Shiites and Kurds who outnumber Sunnis four to one, or to run the country.
The insurgents might remain a formidable force by evading those who tried to hunt them down — as they have done with U.S. and Iraqi forces — but they could not conceivably prevail in the full-scale battles that the takeover of Iraq would entail. Only with the rapid influx of tens of thousands of fighters from outside Iraq could jihadists win control of the country. That scenario is farfetched.
Of course an apologist for the Clinton administration cannot hope to convince loyal Republicans that their defence for this war is an insanity plea, only Bush can do that, and that’s as likely as the Democrats coming clean about the intractable role they play in the prosecution of this unholy terror upon the Iraqi people. The core of the argument for “staying the course” as put forth by a leftist gone mad is to support “Iraqi and Kurdish democrats and secularists. Not only are these people looking at death every day, from the hysterical campaign of murder and sabotage that Baathists and Bin Ladenists mount every day, but they also have to fight a war within the war, against clerical factions and eager foreign-based forces from Turkey or Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia.”
Bush & Co. Must Stop Their Pouting
Will the US Seize the Opportunity for Troop Withdrawal?
By RAY McGOVERN
November 25, 2005, Counterpunch
The surprising degree of consensus reached by the main Iraqi factions at the Arab-League orchestrated Reconciliation Conference in Cairo last weekend sharply undercuts the unilateral, guns-and-puppets approach of the Bush administration to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. The common demand, by Shia and Kurds as well as Sunnis, for a timetable for withdrawal of occupation forces demolishes the administration’s argument that setting such a timetable would be a huge mistake. Who would know better-the Iraqis or the ideologues advising Bush?
[…]
By shunning the conference, administration officials missed the beginning of a process that has within it the seeds of real progress toward peace. In addition to over 100 Shia, Sunni and Kurdish participants, the conference was attended by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran, but no US officials. The gathering was strongly supported not only by the Arab League but also by the UN, EU, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The US Plans a Long, Long Stay in Iraq
by Eric Margolis
September 06, 2005
The US reportedly offered the 15 Sunni convention delegates $5 million each to vote for the constitution – but was turned down. No mention was made that a US “guided” constitution for Iraq clearly violates the Geneva Conventions.
Chinese Taoists say you become what you hate. In a zesty irony, the US now finds itself in a similar position as demonized Saddam Hussein. Saddam had to use his Sunni-dominated army to hold Iraq together by fighting Kurdish and Shia rebels. His brutal police jailed tens of thousands and routinely used torture.
Today, Iraq’s new ruler, the US, is battling Sunni insurgents, (“al-Qaida terrorists,” in the latest Pentagon double-speak), rebuilding Saddam’s dreaded secret police, holding 15,000 prisoners and torturing captives, as the Abu Ghraib outrage showed.
I can only imagine where Hitchens will go next.