Iraq's Key: Strength From Within

The Nation: Nationalist Forces Are Iraq's Best Hope For Centralization And Stability

(The Nation)  This column was written by Robert Dreyfuss.

---

Last week, a fierce critic of the Bush administration's war in Iraq went, perhaps, a bridge too far. Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, flatly predicted that there is no hope for Iraq, other than its collapse and fragmentation. Upon issuing a report that described Iraq as the second most unstable "failed state" after Sudan, Baker told the Washington Post, "We have recommended ... that the administration face up to the reality that the only choices for Iraq are how and how violently it will break up."

And she's not the only one. Many opponents of Bush's adventure in Iraq, from left to center-right, have thrown up their hands. Most notorious, Senator Joe Biden, Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Ambassador Peter Galbraith have written off Iraq, either predicting or encouraging its breakup into mini-states. Countless others have concluded that ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq have hardened into permanent hatreds. And there are those who — sadly or gleefully, depending on their point of view — declare definitively that Iraq was never really a nation. Instead, they say, it is an artificial creation that never existed except in the minds of British imperialists like Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell .

Such sentiments are being challenged by a nascent bloc of Iraqi nationalists who, against all odds, are working to put together a pan-Iraqi coalition that would topple the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki's ruling alliance includes separatist Kurdish warlords and Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists, both of whom want to carve out semi or wholly independent statelets. Although it has not yet jelled, Maliki's opposition — which includes Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, as well as Christians, Turkmen and others — is within striking distance of creating a functioning parliamentary majority.

More important, outside Parliament the nationalists represent an overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Iraqis. Among the Sunnis, who have 55 seats in the 275-member Parliament, there is broad support for maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity not only among its deputies but throughout the armed Iraqi resistance, a diverse group that includes Baathists, Sunni tribal leaders, former military officers and the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious organization that claims to be the political arm of the resistance.

Among the Shiites, most Iraqi observers believe that if new elections were held, the big winners would be Muqtada al-Sadr's party, which controls much of eastern Baghdad and wields great power in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and the Fadhila party, a quasi-Sadrist party with great strength in Iraq's south, particularly Basra. The big losers would be the ruling Dawa party, which has little or no remaining support, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an Iranian-backed paramilitary party that now calls itself the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (SICI).

Add to those forces the dwindling but still significant influence of secular nonsectarian Iraqis, whose titular leader is Iyad Allawi. Allawi's party, which has friends in the Arab Gulf and good connections to the CIA and MI-6, controls twenty-five deputies in Parliament. Its strength is ebbing as Iraq's middle class flees the civil war at an accelerating rate. But Allawi, who also has strong ties to Iraq's military officer class, could be a power broker in the emerging nationalist coalition.

Almost unnoticed in the American media, these nationalist forces have been groping toward an accommodation that could oust Maliki. In fits and starts, and under the worst possible conditions — literally under fire — they are looking for a way out of the ethnic and sectarian crisis. It is an effort that has been under way for nearly a year. But they are doing so not only without American support but with determined opposition from the Bush Administration.

Even though the nationalists represent what is probably Iraq's last chance to avoid civil war, collapse and fragmentation, the Bush administration continues to support the Maliki government, the Kurdish warlords — America's closest allies in Iraq — and, most inexplicably, the Shiite fundamentalists in SICI. According to recent reports, Washington may be toying with the idea of replacing Maliki with Adel Abdul Mahdi, currently the Iraqi vice president and a leader of SICI. Last week Abdul Mahdi threatened to resign his post, and he appears to be angling for Maliki's job. (In 2006, during the prolonged negotiations following the December 2005 elections, the U.S. Embassy quietly backed Mahdi over Maliki, but Maliki triumphed — by one vote — with the support of Muqtada al-Sadr.)

Why isn't Washington backing the nationalists, despite its growing frustration with Maliki's inability to meet the so-called "benchmarks" of political reconciliation that the United States wants? Because what holds together the emerging nationalist coalition, more than anything else, is militant opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Over the past two months, the nationalists in Parliament have won two landmark votes: the first in support of a bill calling for the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal and the second in a vote demanding that the Iraqi government submit any plan to extend the U.S. occupation past 2007 to Parliament.

[jegibbons]

What you get when you have a nation of HATERS but who are pi** poor at: 1) recognizing who their REAL enemy is and 2) gaining any real ability to neutralize that enemy.

Fed up with it all. It's time to go, we did our best. The inferior mind set of these sand dwellers is inconquerable. Let them loose to kill each other; Allah be praised!

[sjc_1]

Once we leave Al Qaeda leaves and they are left to divide up the allowance that the world's oil companies give them for the next 30 years.

The whole reason Bush was put into the White House in the first place was to raise the price of oil and gain control of Iraqi oil.

It has taking almost 8 years, $800 billion, 4000 soldiers, 60,000 wounded and 150,000 Iraqis killed to do it, but they did it.

[sjc_1]

If anyone believes the VP when he said that the invasion of Iraq was not about oil, we have some marsh land there we would like to sell you.

They wanted to get Iraqi oil back on the market, but NOT with Saddam in power. He would just buy more weapons and invade his neighbors again.

Look at this item that states how important Iraqi oil is to world markets and you will see the motive.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2721

[emtak1]

We must find a way, or we will make one.--Carthaginian general (247 BC - 183 BC)

[ajmarine1]

Were you ever on Amphibs? Which ones?

Posted by IOWEIGN

I was a crew chief on LVTP5.

[ioweign]

AJMarine1,

Were you ever on Amphibs? Which ones?

[ajmarine1]

"If one is - 'Always Faithful' - to this 10-Point Marine credo, it is therefore impossible to be an "ex" Marine,"

%u201CThe title of Marine is an earned title and never goes away.%u201D %u201COnce you go through the trails and tribulations, it stays with you forever and cannot be taken away.%u201D

Contrary to calling a retired Marine or a Marine who got out of service an ex-Marine, they should be referred to as %u201Cformer enlisted%u201D or %u201Cformer commissioned officers.%u201D

"We could see a marine from the Vietnam War or a marine from four years ago, and they would be equal in our eyes."

Part 2

[ajmarine1]

To all former Marines:

Retired Marines Should Be Called 'Former Enlisted' or 'Former Commissioned Officers'

Once a marine, always a marine %u2013 even if you%u2019re 80 years old, live in a senior living community and enlisted back when %u201CI Love Lucy%u201D hit the airwaves.

That%u2019s the general point of view shared amongst Marines past and present, all of which firmly believe that while police officers can be ex-cops and firefighters ex-firefighters, a Marine is always a Marine, regardless of the calendar year.

"The expression "once a Marine - always a Marine" is hammered into every recruit who makes it through boot camp at either Parris Island or San Diego.," "It is an expression derived from the Marine Corps motto "Semper Fidelis" which means "Always Faithful" in Latin.

Passing boot camp requires recruits to embody 10 major attributes of dependability, courage, decisiveness, endurance, initiative, integrity, judgement, proficiency, selflesness and loyalty.

Part 1

[clestes-2009]

I agree that Iraq's salvation must come from themselves, but that is a LOOOOOONG way off. Years off. Right now sectarian views hold the upper hand and they would rather kill each other than stand up united for Iraq. They are Sunni/Shiite first Iraqi second.

The real problem here is that Iraq was created in 1920 by European powers that just drew a boundary on a map without any regard to the people populating the land.

These people have been Shiite/Sunni much long than they have been Iraqi. Most don't even reconize they are Iraqi.

[tomar0317]

Sounds as if there may be a way for Iragis to be better off. All we need to do is get out of their way, and their country.

[fredgrad2000]

This article is fundamentally flawed in a few respects: first, Sadr is Iran's man in Iraq; not Hakim of SICI; its Sadr's death squads that permeate Baghdad; not SICI's. Sadr is a wanna-be Nasrallah and for all his nationalist rhetoric he supports a unified Iraq only because he believes he, with Iranian support, can become its master if they prevent an American triumph in strategy long enough that we then withdraw and leave Iraq to the armed groups already there. That would surely result in a Sadr-run state, imposing Iranian-style theocracy on the nation, while Al Qaeda and other Sunni fiefdoms remained semi-automous (and full of terror) in the west and northwest, and the Kurds hunkered back down as they did in Saddam's time in the far north. That Maliki may need to go is a distinct possibility, but that the groups aligning against him, especially if that includes Sadr, are a solution for "national salvation" is ludicrous.

[bluestardad]

ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE WANTING AMERICA TO STAY IN IRAQ ARE THE ISRAELI LOBBY GROUPS, AIPAC, PNAC, AEI AND THEIR NEOCON SUPPORTERS WHO HAVE BOUGHT OFF AMERICAN POLITICIANS...