Guerrillas Kill 25
Sistani supports Gradual US Withdrawal
Bombings and assassinations left some 25 persons dead in Iraq on Saturday, including 17 who just showed up in the street dead, with some showing signs of torture.
70 GIs have been killed in Iraq in the past month, and over 2400 have been killed since the war began.
Turkish military action against the Kurdish Workers' Party along the border with Iraq has heated up, with Turkish mortars falling on the Iraqi city of Zakho, according to this report. That's what we needed, more mortars falling on an Iraqi city from yet another quarter.
The curfew has been lifted in Baqubah, allowing the city to slump back toward semi-normalcy (Baqubah is a dangerous place). It was the site of an unusually large attack on checkpoints by 100 guerrillas.
Trudy Rubin, who knows a thing or two about Shi'ite politics from firsthand interviews, profiles the new PM-designate, Nouri al-Maliki.
The Iraqi Accord Front [Ar.], according to al-Hayat, has suggested the creation of a new ministerial position, the ministry of state for Arab foreign affairs. The sggestion comes as an attempt to end the deadlock over apportioning cabinet posts. The Sunni Arabs want the foreign ministry, held in the outgoing government by the Kurds, who won't give it up. The Sunni Arabs say you should have a Sunni Arab to deal with the Arab League states.
Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of two vice presidents, went to see Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,and he says that the ayatollah said that he agreed with the idea of ending the US troop presence in Iraq gradually.
The Bush administration used to boast that Iraqis were more optimistic about their future than Americans. I'm afraid his policies have led to a surge in pessimism in both places. A new poll in Iraq shows that a majority of Iraqis thinks their economy is bad and getting worse. 3/4s say that security is bad.
For a wounded soldier with brain damage to later get a bill from the Bush administration for the cost of the weapon he left in Iraq's sands is just about the worse thing I have ever heard.
The LA Times reports that "An American initiative to use private security companies to protect Iraq's oil and power infrastructure collapsed amid reports of possible fraud, missing weapons and destroyed documents . . ."
Nearly half of the Japanese are afraid that events are moving toward a war with North Korea or China. I hope they are wrong. The US would get involved i such a thing, but doessn't currently have an army available for it.
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/30/2006 12:30:00 AM
Click to join Infoco
9 Comments:
I'm sorry, but I just cannot abide by Japan's insistence on gloryfying its war dead, including those who were directly involved in wartime atrocities. I have to believe that were Japan to change this policy, they would see a rapid and significant improvement in their relations with China and with the rest of Asia (except North Korea, which is an entirely different story.
corporate transparency
Concerning this paragraph of your last blog entry :
"Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of two vice presidents, went to see Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,and he says that the ayatollah said that he agreed with the idea of ending the US troop presence in Iraq gradually"
Both Reidar Visser and Helena Cobban have recetnly written interesting comments about this meeting and more generally about how Sistani's attitude recently changed (aka he seems more willing to intervene in Iraqi politic than he ever did since november 2004).
Does Condi "Get It?"
The question is, what role does she perceive herself as playing? She seems to be casting herself as the neocon's neocon, with her rather pre-judged statement that the Iranians are playing games. Not the sort of nuanced stance that most foreign ministers would seek, particularly if they wished to engage the named party in any sort of serious negotiation. ("You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," etc.) But such subtleties seem to involve more thinking than this crowd feels comfortable with. If our dominatrix in high boots doesn't feel she can stand up to the WH on an issue like this involving her own turf, what sort of signal is she sending to other foreign ministers about her own standing?
One area she and the EU could do something positive right now about would be to send a strong, coordinated message to the strongmen in Kurdistan to come down hard on the PKK they've been harboring and allowing to sanctuary. This might be hard for the Kurds to do, but a couple of decades of not rattling the cages of all their neighbor states would probably do wonders for the well-being of the Kurdish people.
Of course, if the US strategy is to welcome the growing waves of unrest that are lapping across the region, as sometimes seems to be the case, perhaps unfairly, then letting things come to a boil along the Kurdish/Turkish border could be just the thing.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if there is some Dark Lord strategy guiding US in/actions, or if it's just the normal lack of adult supervision.
Any ideas about this:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American troops will probably be gone from Iraq by mid-2008 as the Iraqi forces they are training take over from them, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Friday.
He said he expected the roughly 133,000 U.S. troops to be cut to less than 100,000 by year's end and an "overwhelming majority" of them to have left by the end of 2007 under a U.S.-Iraqi plan for progressively handing over security.
"We have a roadmap, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000," he told Reuters in an interview.
"By the end of next year the overwhelming majority of coalition forces would have left the country and probably by the middle of 2008 there will be no foreign soldiers in the country."
I don't perceive there even being the slightest chance that it is true that the US agrees to a voluntary full withdrawal by a certain date under any circumstances.
I am very confused by the report, by the relative lack of coverage and by the fact that Rubaie, Iraq's National Security Advisor seems to believe it.
BBC had nothing about Turkish attacks on Kurds but was featuring this story: "Iraq accused Iranian forces of entering Iraqi territory and shelling Kurdish 'rebel' positions in the north."
(emphasis on 'rebel' mine).
It seems that when Turks are involved the PKK are "terrorists" but if Iran moves against them they're "rebels".
This accusation against Iran has pretext written all over it.
John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, has a most worthy analysis of the causes and effects of Bush's hyper-kenetic foreign policy and the disastrous end to which he is leading this country. He calls it a America's Security Trap.
George Bush is hard at work even now building us an even better one.
What Bush sows, we all reap
Military and Security Expers Weigh Merits of Partitioning Iraq or Allowing Civil War at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Apr 30
Anyone want to roll into another of his Security Traps?
Hosea 8:7
For they sow the wind,
and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads,
it shall yield no meal;
if it were to yield,
foreigners would devour it.
I wouldnt put much stock in that poll from Japan Professor, The Japanese are extremely un-informed and very sceptible to collectily accepting the 'conventional wisdom' that is issued to them from the Govt. controlled newspapers.
IMHO the analysis of Professor John Ikenberry 'America's Security Trap' has a minor flaw by taking a hegemonial US role in a post-Bush world for granted. US dependence on foreign purchases of US treasuries and the implications of peak-oil are rather the symptoms of a multipolar world.
As to the 'merits of allowing civil war' argument I tip my hat to the 03 Nov 2005 bar conversation of legendary blogger Billmon with Professor Juan Cole: http://billmon.org/archives/002331.html
For those short on time (or whiskey) I'll happy to quote this argument for sanity in a mad hatter's world:
"Both the insurgency and the government are signaling that their objectives are political, not existential. They each want to rule Iraq, not exterminate the other side -- although both sides have their eliminationist wings.
This creates the hope that in Iraq, as in Clausewitz's doctrine, civil war is the continuation of politics by other means, not the opening salvo of the war of the all against the all. And this at least holds out the possibility (hope would be too strong a word) that the various sides will eventually realize they have to compromise -- just as the warring factions in Lebanon brokered a workable peace once the leaders of the major factions decided it was no longer in their interests to keep fighting."
I think it has been apparent for at least six weeks, maybe more, that the British and American general staffs are petrified that Bush the Sherriff will attack Iran. As Juan's discussion makes clear, the Usual Suspects are in the Lobby lining up.
But the Revolt of the Generals is no longer limited to retired brass. You wouldn't know this from reading major US papers. For the truth of the matter, we must go the Daily WarMongerer (aka Telegraph UK) which ran a lengthy piece based on an interview with Lt. Gen Renuart, Director of Planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff....
I when I mean no US Coverage - I mean ZERO!!! (Yahoo News Search today)
US General Says Iran Strikes Too Riskey
Military action against Iran would be fraught with risk and would have repercussions across the region, a leading American general conceded.
"Any action militarily is very complicated," Lt Gen Victor Renuart, the director of planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Daily Telegraph.
"And any action by any country will have second-order effects, and that is a strong case to continue the diplomatic process and make it work."
His comments are a rare public statement from the US military on what is the most contentious international issue of the day.
The warning was seen as recognition of the threat Teheran poses to shipping in the Gulf and also to America and its allies in Iraq in the event of an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities
Post a Comment
<< Home