Another Fine Mess

Crossposted from My Left Wing I just read Jeff Huber's recent post Neocon Nation: Ignoring Sun Tzu and weeping for brunnhilde's Iraq's Impending Bloodbath -- and there is clearly no military solution to the Iraq Crisis. We cannot win this war. We cannot win this war for innumerable reasons. Among those innumerable reasons: this isn't a war anymore. We know war when we see it. We've seen wars of conquest and wars of independence; we've seen wars to end all wars; we've played chess -- or checkers, or Risk, or Battleship -- enough to know that a "war" takes place between two (or more) nations. There's no USA vs. Iraq here. Heck, there's no "us" vs. "them." Our unprovoked invasion of Iraq wiped out that "nation" as the world knew it. We won; let us declare victory and go home. No war remains for us to win. There is no battleground for which it is worth fighting and dying. There remains only chaos and anarchy. The "insurgents" and "terrorists" have brought thousand-year-old feuds to life in the streets of Baghdad and Basra. Theirs is not a global war for world domination (unlike ours), but a turf war at the most basic level - street by street; neighborhood by neighborhood; the Hatfields and McCoys; the Capulets and Montagues; the Jets and the Sharks. To paraphrase Booker T. Jones and William Bell "If it wasn't for bad blood, these guys wouldn't have no blood at all." Our presence makes it worse. We are an ineffective, foreign, military occupation force. We are not peacekeepers. We are salt in the wound; we are fuel on the fire. People are dying because we are there; so we must leave. People will die when we leave, and that hurts, so we must find a way to save as many lives as possible. But our staying long enough to regain some semblance of "control" over the situation (to become an effective, foreign, military occupation force), as per Lieutenant General Raymond T. Ordierno, cited by Jeff Huber,can be expected to last at leasttwo or three more years -- and cost, presumably -- predictably, probably, CERTAINLY -- thousands more lives. And, of course, there's the money. On the other hand, if we get out, maybe, just maybe, the gang warfare might lose some of its impetus, and Iraqis might start talking to Iraqis. We must leave so the people of Iraq can reclaim their lives. It would be nice if they could reclaim their land, their government, their future, their hopes and their dreams too -- but that's almost certainly a little much to ask, under the circumstances. Put bluntly, the "state of Iraq" will simply not exist in another 2, or 5, or 10 years. We're going to see either: 1) a balkanization of the former Iraq and the creation of three separate nations, a la the former Yugoslavia (remember little Scottie Hamilton at the Sarajevo Olympics before the whole country was blown to bits?): or 2) the occupation and absorption of the former Iraq into its neighbors - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey (I'm drowning in mixed metaphors here - carving up the turkey's remains of the day, vultures devouring the carcasses of . . . , pick your own gruesome image). See Frontline's interactive ethnic map for a more detailed breakdown of the distribution of ethnic groups in Iraq. So, let's pool our diplomatic resources with those of the rest of the world to devise a plan that will skip over the next twenty years of bloodshed and go directly to the New Middle East Order that would be best for us, for the Iraqis, and for BP. I'm voting for the Post World War II Germany model with armed occupation forces from the US, the UK, Russia, and, of course, France. Here, for the first time, the new Iraq of the future: See how the map almost looks like Iraq, and that little spot where Berlin is kinda matches up with Baghdad? I can think of an appropriation for a 700 mile long fence just waiting to be re-deployed. If we can sell the Iraqi government on the idea of self-dissolution (let's see, I think I had my copy of the Iraq Constitution here somewhere), and replace the whole concept of the nation-state with a subsidiary of Halliburton, I think we could sell Dubya as the next Nobel Piece Prize wiener. But seriously, folks, we know a military solution is unacceptable to most Americans and (probably) most of the Iraqis who are both still alive and living in Iraq. We have an abundance of unemployed diplomats who have had a modicum of success in moderating seemingly impossible conflicts, such as short term negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. If we (and by "we" I guess I mean the UN, or Amnesty International, or the European Ryder Cup team - anybody but "we" the US government) can come up with a neutral team of diplomats equivalent to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson, we'll be halfway to Paris before you know it and all those newly minted IED experts can put their new-found skills to work for the oil companies. A 21st Century Marshall Plan for the Middle East just might convince the Shia and Sunni leaders, and Fatah and Hamas, and BP and Sunoco to lay down their arms long enough for the spoils of war to trickle down to the Iraqi on the street.