March 8, 2007
RESISTANCE IS EASIER AGAINST A FOE WHO ISN'T EVEN TRYING TO KILL YOU:
The predictable slaughter: "Shock and Awe" killed very few Iraqis, but the inept implementation of regime change has let loose a terrible war between Sunnis and Shias. Tim Lambon witnesses the escalation in Baghdad (Tim Lambon, 12 March 2007, New Statesman)
[T]he evil genie unleashed by an inept execution of regime change in Iraq has been horrifying to watch. Since I was last here in December, the Shia-dominated government has rushed Saddam Hussein to his ignominious end and the place now seems somehow hollow.I would never mourn the old killer, but it seems obvious that he and his Ba'ath Party thugs held this secularised Arab nation together, as well as in thrall. Now the nastiness is barefaced, the bitterness of the oppressed is expressed in their revenge, and criminality is given free rein.
As is now commonly acknowledged, the invaders have found themselves in something of a quandary. Resistance to the "liberation", initially laid at the door of the former Ba'athists and al-Qaeda, changed subtly after the White House forced Iraq into an election that returned a Shia majority. The newly legitimised authority of the majority has since allowed the age-old fight between Sunnis and Shias to flare up - to the point where a death toll of "only" 1,531 in February this year is seen as an improvement on the monthly figures for the second half of 2006.
As the incident last Saturday showed, increasingly, most Sunnis need the US to stay so that the democracy the Bush administration bequeathed the country doesn't turn out to be a death sentence for them.
Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolas, commander of the 2nd Battalion, says the Baghdad security plan designates Shula as a quiet neigh bourhood requiring only an "economy of force" to police it. But then it is not run by the US troops who patrol there daily, nor by the INP, nor by the Kurdish Iraqi army battalion stationed there. Shula is run by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia, who, for the moment, have hidden their weapons and changed out of their black fatigues while the Baghdad security plan proceeds.
Time is on their side. They need the plan to give the US the sense that things have calmed down. They also need the US to beat the Sunni groups, such as al-Qaeda, which fight both of them, while they consolidate their turf. Then, when the US begins to withdraw, they can finish the job of making sure that the Sunnis are completely broken.
Two points here seem germane: (1) while the humanitarian impulse behind Shock and Awe is admirable, it was a mistake not to kill far more supporters of the regime before we toppled Saddam; and (2) note the contempt that the author demonstrates for the Shi'a generally, and Ayatollah Sistani particularly, with his assertion that they were forced into elections. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2007 8:00 AM
Yes. Notwithstanding the disclaimer of not mourning Saddam, the writer seems like another one of those who weren't particularly bothered when the Sunnis killing Shia and Kurds. No doubt a month, when only 1,531 of them would have been murdered, would have been considered good considering the hundreds of thousands slaughtered over the last decades.
Posted by: Rick T at March 8, 2007 10:31 AMinept implementation of regime change
Just once I'd like to hear from the people who make such sweeping statements as if they were facts tell me how or what they'd have done better.
Gotta agree that, anything, the so-called, self-proclaimed "humanitarians" are at fault, because they would never have allowed the destruction and killing necessary to make the current factions understand that they'd lost. Look at how even a slight "surge" has largely pacified things (for now, at least).
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 8, 2007 11:09 AMBut if we had killed a substantial percentage of Saddam supporters, the ranks of numerous liberal institutions would have been decimated. Wait ...
Posted by: ghostcat at March 8, 2007 1:45 PMRight and right.
Notince that the article never indicates what, if the present course of action had been a "mistake" of a "fiasco," what is is that would have been better.
It is obvious, and the article does not deny this, that when the Saddam Hussein Regime fell, the Sunni mob faction which had theretofore enjoyed a privileged position as enforcers and prison guards was in trouble.
This result was not a result of liberation; it was the natural, foreseeable, and, I believe, foreseen result of liberation. At the end of the American Revolution, our tories had to bail out for places like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, or, of course, England.
Posted by: Lou Gots at March 8, 2007 1:46 PM