Iraq's Key: Strength From Within

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

(The Nation) 
Most (but not all) of the support for those votes came from deputies associated with the Sunnis (55 seats), Sadr (30 seats), Fadhila (30 seats) and Allawi (25 seats). Theoretically, those four parties control 140 seats in Parliament, a bare majority — and one that could be bolstered by independent Shiite and even some dissident Dawa party members, according to Iraqi sources.

For Americans concerned about what Iraq might look like after a U.S. withdrawal, it's important to note that the nationalist bloc is united by more than its opposition to the U.S. occupation. They are also strongly opposed both to the terrorist forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and to the growing influence of Iran in Iraq. Lately, Sunni Iraqis, including tribal militias and several armed insurgent groups — such as the Islamic Army in Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades — have been battling AQI throughout Anbar and other provinces, notably Diyala and Salahuddin to the north and east of Baghdad, as well as in some Baghdad neighborhoods. The Sunnis, who are also bitterly opposed to Iran's influence in Iraq, have gotten support from Sadr and Fadhila in trying to limit Iranian meddling. (Iran operates in Iraq primarily through SICI, whose Badr Brigade militia was created in Tehran in 1982 and has been armed, trained and advised by Iranian intelligence ever since.) In Basra, Nasiriyah and other Iraqi cities, both Sadr's and Fadhila's forces have been waging pitched battles against the militia and death squads of SICI.

Although Iran is reported to have influence or control over some of Sadr's Mahdi Army commanders, in recent weeks Sadr has been reasserting control of the Mahdi Army, purging extremists and reaching out to Sunni resistance leaders and clerics. And when U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker met with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad on May 28 — a meeting widely reviled by Iraqi nationalists, who saw it as the start of a U.S.-Iranian plot to carve up Iraq — Sadr issued a striking denunciation of Iran. "It is most regrettable that they [the Iranians] are inadvertently or deliberately forgetting, in such negotiations, to demand that the occupier depart," said Sadr.

The most active Iraqi politician working to assemble the nationalist bloc in Iraq is Saleh Mutlaq, the former Baathist and leader of the National Dialogue Front. "We have been engaged in constructive talks to create this powerful bloc to save Iraq," he said earlier this month. "Maliki's government should go because it has brought untold suffering to the Iraqi people." Mutlaq and others, including Allawi, have spoken about a "National Salvation Government" that could replace Maliki.

Of course, achieving that is a tall order. There is enormous suspicion among many of the potential players in the opposition. And with each passing day, as more Iraqis are killed, as sectarian atrocities pile up and as attitudes harden and fears grow, it becomes more difficult to bridge those divides. On top of all that, opposition leaders have to deal with the heavy-handed influence of the United States in all aspects of Iraqi civil affairs. According to U.S. sources, Washington is using its vast influence in Iraq to prevent the emergence of a nationalist opposition and to preserve Maliki's regime.

Last month, when I asked David Satterfield, the State Department's chief Iraq person, if the United States could see itself supporting an alternative to Maliki, he shot down the suggestion in the strongest terms. "We strongly, explicitly support the government of Prime Minister Maliki," he said, through a clenched jaw, and looking me in the eye. "It is not helpful to talk about alternatives."

Similarly, two weeks ago, at a conference in New York, I asked Amar Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, son of SICI leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, about the National Salvation Government idea. "It represents a kind of conspiracy against the political process that is taking place right now," he said. Hakim is widely expected to become the leader of SICI if his father, who has lung cancer, dies or is incapacitated. Maliki, too, has begun warning darkly of conspiracies and military coups d'etat, even though his political opponents are operating openly and according to parliamentary rules.

What's important about all this is that perhaps the best chance to end the war in Iraq will come not from the U.S. Congress, hamstrung by presidential veto and limited by the more timid instincts of its most conservative members, and not from the White House, which seems committed to preserving current U.S. policy in Iraq into 2009, but from the Iraqis themselves. With or without Maliki, Iraqi opposition to the U.S. occupation could force a timetable for withdrawal even before the end of 2007.

The United States, meanwhile, is flailing. The "surge" isn't working. The new U.S. policy of arming Sunni tribes and even some resistance groups against Al Qaeda in Iraq is not a strategy; instead, having spent billions of dollars to arm and train the Shiite-led government's army and police, the United States is now arming the other side in Iraq's civil war, as well. Perhaps it makes too much sense for the delusional Bush administration, but rather than arm both sides in the civil war it ought to arm neither and begin its withdrawal. Long before that realization dawns on U.S. policy-makers, perhaps the Iraqis themselves with force the issue.

[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...