Groundhog Day in Purple Heart Boulevard
50 Dead in Clashes, 46 Bodies Found
US and Iraqi forces fought a significant street battle at Haifa Street in the Karkh section of Baghdad on Tuesday. Ground forces were supported by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships. The fighting left 50 persons dead, which the US said were Sunni Arab insurgents. The Shiite government of Iraq announced the discovery of several terrorist storehouses in the course of the operation.
Courtesy al-Zaman.
In contrast, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious association, described the operation as a "bloody sectarian massacre." The Sunni Arab narrative, enunciated over the weekend by MP Adnan Dulaimi, is that the Shiite militias are attempting to drive Sunni Arabs from their neighborhoods in the capital, and that the Mahdi Army had attacked Haifa Street Sunday and been driven back. Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that locals say a (Shiite) militia invaded the quarter on Sunday and captured and killed 15 residents, then threw their bodies in the street. In this context, some Sunni Arabs see the US as having been duped by the Shiites to join in the ethnic cleansing of the Karkh district.
Haifa Street has been an important thread in the saga of Iraq's civil war. In In July of 2004 we saw the huge "Operation Haifa Street," involving 3000 US troops. There was the massive carbombing there of a police station in 2004, which doesn't seem to show that "Operation Haifa Street" was exactly a success. Even at that time, the US GIs called it "Grenade Alley" and "Purple Heart Boulevard" and fought constantly with locally based guerilla groups. It has been radicalized and supposedly pacified over and over again. By March 2005, the NYT found that the tide was turning on Haifa Street. CSM reported that it had calmed down under Iraqi army supervision by May of 2005. A year and a half later, and it is still a "terrorist stronghold" and we have yet another pacification effort. Or maybe by now it is just being levelled by airstrikes. Or maybe we really have been duped into ethnically cleansing it on behalf of the Mahdi Army. Bush's Iraq War is like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray science fiction film about the guy doomed to live the same day over and over again. How is 2007 different on Haifa Street from 2004?
The Americans keep putting their eggs in the basket of "standing up" the Iraqi army. Nancy Yousself reports on how difficult that is, given sectarian divisions. The problem with using armies to settle civil conflicts is that the army inevitably becomes infected by the same sectarian or ethnic passions that inflame the general population, so then it cannot be the solution.
Carl Conetta of the Project for Defense Alternatives doesn't think this surge thing is going to work out very well. He gives his reasons.
Another US soldier died Tuesday of wounds inflicted on him by guerrillas.
Police found 40 bodies on Tuesday in Baghdad and another 6 in Mosul. Mosul is now Iraq's second largest city, and a major Sunni Arab center. That it is beginning to generate dead bodies in the street is a very bad sign, since security forces are likely to be withdrawn from there for duty in Baghdad in coming months. Reuters reports other bombings and killings around the country.
Militiamen kidnapped Sunni pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia. Sunni MPs are accusing the special police commandos of the Interior Ministry in the kidnappings. The police commandos have been heavily infiltrated by Shiite militiamen of the Badr Corps (the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and, it is alleged, from spring 2006 by elements of the Mahdi Army. (Some rogue networks inside Badr are alleged to collaborate with the JAM).
An Iraqi judge is alleging that elements of the Mahdi Army have infiltrated the Green Zone, the area behind concrete barriers where the Iraqi government offices are. Sunni Arab guerrillas have long been said to be trying to figure out a way to get into the Green Zone and conduct a major operation there. So far they have failed, but was the truly credible threat from a different quarter?
A UNICEF staffer was shot in his car in Baghdad on Tuesday.
Iraq is too dangerous for some children even just to go to school.
Trudy Rubin of the Inquirer on Gen. David Petraeus's past successes and present challenges.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/10/2007 06:30:00 AM
16 Comments:
re. "Who are mere historians to have an opinion?"
Today, as often, the scholar is a Cassandra. Cursed by Apollo she sees her people's fate imminent, her vision exquisitely clear, her prophecy babble to the ear of her fellow citizen.
Why? Because words like "historian" induce unconsciousness in those whose political awareness is already liminal. Confronted with authentic inquiry, the apathetic will reach for the remote. Meanwhile, the politico-thug reaches for his proverbial Browning (uncontaminated inquiry is the apex of culture).
Such reactions are a good part of the reason senior US officials have not, traditionally, been held to account for abuses of power. Now the twenty-first century will give America a crash course in civics. In rushed and unnatural sequence, we have as lesson one the constitutional crisis. Because accountability is no longer expected, the three branches of government are no longer co-equal; the Executive has become first among equals, and gorging on power it continues to swell. The Chief of the Judiciary was recently appointed by the Executive and will not forget his gratitude for so magnificent an honor. Congress has begun to assert its power, but because that power is derived from the Constitution, it is contingent on Executive recognition of that document as the supreme source of civil law and legitimacy. The Bush Administration recognizes nothing but opportunities for pillage and obstacles to rapine. Why should it care for duty, when the worst insults against the most fundamental laws are pardoned as though capital felonies were no worse than the charming mischief of adolescents?
American politicians are not morally infallible, and when high crimes go unpunished injustice infects the body of the state and it becomes ill. Some of the greatest states in history have died from precisely this strain of sepsis. The scholar and the legislator are doctors who know how to treat a sick state, but the patient’s co-operation is indispensable. America’s current Executive officers are freakish sociopaths, people who have treated their fellow human beings, foreigners and citizens, with an esteem both novel and perverse. They are those who, treasonous, and with a contempt as casual as it is profound, have violated their oaths to defend the Constitution. America will be cured when by public demand they are dismissed from their offices and criminally prosecuted. It is ironic that President Ford has been eulogized for healing America when he pardoned his personal friend Richard Nixon - the Republic lies dying on the operating table because of just such malpractice.
So - who’s the historian? Just the one who’s been saying all this, mutatis mutandis, for the past twenty-five hundred years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/09/wiraq09.xml
Shia hostages hanged in streets in revenge for Saddam's execution By
Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Damien McElroy
Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 10/01/2007
[I didn't recognise this linque/story at your site. Nevertheless, it's not surprising that the vigilantes are out taking their revenge on whoever they find suitable targets therefore. For those who have had any experience with Middle Eastern religions, the designating of Saddam Hussein as a martyr should also come as no surprise. For the ultrareligious in the WH, this should have been expected considering their devotion to another martyr of Middle Eastern origins. Pictures of Hussein held aloft by persons with gloved hands is telling enough. As I wrote to PC Roberts recently, we have to also wonder if there might be something on the order of Islamic "end-times," noting (I did) the similarity between "nuke Iran" and "new Quran." While Hussein might have been an s.o.b., he was not only the Iraqis' but the Sunnis' s.o.b. as well. I don't wonder that there might be concern about the shifting influence of the Shi'a in the last four years, worrying the Saudis and others who might find it convenient to rein in Iran. Of course, the antiZionists are placing the onus on the "Israelis" while there might be something to an all-around political advantage for anyone to knock out Tehran's efforts to knucklee-uhrise themselves.]
Petraeus The American Superhero reminds me of the elevation of Bremmer and Khalilzad to such status before him.
Bremmer amazed the embeds with his boots-n-suit, squatting next to tribal sheiks and showing the utter stability of Baghdad by attending a concert and visiting an art gallery: "..there is talk on the Hill that he will be the next Secretary of State..." they used to say.
Khalilzad openly boasted about running Iraq, writing the Constitution, and bringing in The Sunnis (not some Turbans who happened to be Sunnis, but The Sunnis.) Now violence is at its peak, and his Constitution is cited as a big contributor.
Trudy Rubin says in the article which you kindly referred to:
"Sunni tribal leaders in Mosul were effusive in praising Petraeus' policies when I visited in 2003."
Mosul is one of the oldest major cities in the world, and "tribal leaders" mean little to the urban population. Of course they would be very pleased: he gave them money and power in a city whose population looks down them because they are tribal to start with. He appointed them in the Provincial Council to pretend it is a democracy and made them happy to buy pro-American leadership! The embeds were wowed but the population disgusted by a practice Saddam tried when his power waned.
"He used funds captured from Baath Party sources to revive factories and jobs" according to Rubin.
The Ba'ath funds where "captured" in Banks in the Republic of Iraq accounts
including: $1.7B in the US, $600M in the UK, $1B in cash and $1.5B in bullion in the Iraqi Central Bank, $200M brought by Central Bank officials to Palestine Hotel to escape Chalabi's gangsters who wanted to steal it. How does that make the money "Ba'ath party's" and how do you "capture" money from major Banks? The American President issued an order condfiscating all the cash and bullion of the Republic of Iraq and it became US property: an act of pure International piracy.
The factories Rubin says Petraeus opened are some of the factories the USA wants to open now! They did not produce because there was no electricity, raw material, or replacement for the looted equipement!
As for giving money to the Iraqis and creating jobs: where are the numbers? Here are some numbers which prove the opposite (from Iraq Today 2.Sep.2003):
"Adding the necessary services costs money, which is something that al-Bassu [Governor] doesn't have much of. Mosul, population 2 million, itself has seen a notable population rise in recent months as Kurds and other minorities long barred by the former regime of living in the city, have moved in. That only served to put pressure on city services, which the governor's $19 million budget for the rest of the year could barely cover. Al-Bassu recently submitted a 2004 budget that he claims is intended to amply cover most municipal services, though he was unwilling to disclose the actual figure. Still to be determined is whether he will be able to get the necessary dollars for his new initiatives."
The Americans kidding themselves, for another while, does not change the facts. and the Iraqis know what is going on because they see it for themselves in Iraq itself.
From what I've read in recent days
The Americans keep putting their eggs in the basket of "standing up" the Iraqi army. Nancy Youssef reports on how difficult that is, given sectarian divisions. The problem with using armies to settle civil conflicts is that the army inevitably becomes infected by the same sectarian or ethnic passions that inflame the general population, so then it cannot be the solution.
Is that where the Crawfordites' eggs are, then? Isn't Rear-Colonel Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute very insistent that The Surge is not to be about training more native troops?
Training Iraqi units takes too long—violence is accelerating beyond the ability of the Iraqi military to control [page 8] Also, on page 5,
Security First
•Securing the population is the prerequisite for:
–Ending the insurgency and sectarian killing
–National reconciliation
–Recruiting a balanced Iraqi Army
–Effectively training the ISF
–Economic development and reconstruction
–Free and effective national Iraqi government
–Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of Iraqi militias
Recent leaks make it look as if Kagan will get as many troops as he bellows for in that document, but probably whatever he does get will be used more or less his way, which amounts to making them the Baghdad Police Department. There is also a timing problem, the whole show is beginning to look like a dribble rather than a surge, and it would only delay things further to have to train the reinforcements to be trainers, whereas they can presumably be adequate cops already.
Ms. Youssef is generally admirable, but so far The Surge is a Crawford TX story and she's at Muqdadiya. (al-Miqdádiyya?) When it comes to what she actual saw and heard for herself, the thing I'd single out is the resentment of American officers against the government of M. al-Málikí -- the colonels and generals in Iraq, that is, not the Pentagon brass. Is the consensus at the Green Zone Officers Club that Casey and Abizaid were all wrong and that now they're going to start doing things right? If so, is that how Mr. Kagan and Mr. Bush see it also?
Above all, does "security first" and playing cops include or exclude marching into Sadr City and cleaning the joint out?
Maybe we'll find out tonight.
Happy days.
They're kidnapping and killing pilgrims coming back from Hajj? That's terrible beyond words. The Hajj is something all Iraqis can agree on as being a Good Thing. May God give those killers what they deserve.
It is almost eerie to comtemplate GWB's speech tonight and Nixon's speech on 11/03/1969. This speech has always been the watershed of the Vietnam War for me, as almost half the casualties happened after this speech as Nixon, in preparing for peace and listening to Kissenger, actually accelerated the war in the short term with the view of forcing the North Vietnamese to concede at the bargaining table.
37 years later and another president has, remarkably, turned to Kissenger for advice. Compare GWB's speech tonight to Nixon's speech and consider the cost in man and material that came after November 3, 1969 and consider what cost will come after GWB's speech.
How is 2007 different on Haifa Street from 2004?
In one attack in September 2004, a TV reporter was shot live on air by a US gunship. His last report was "I'm dying, I'm dying." This was collaborated by other press on scene and by lots of photos. US forces killed a total of 16 unarmed civilians that day, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Didn't get that report this time around, since it is too dangerous now for Iraqis to cover things like this.
So, that's how it is different: much more deadly for Iraqis.
Any more questions, anybody?
Groundhog Day ended when the Murray character finally cared more about someone else than himself.
Alas, America's long endless nightmare will not end while Bush is president, since he will always care more about himself and his "legacy" than anyone else. And he doesn't see that his only lasting legacy is death and disaster.
Carl Conetta's analysis is spot on. I also heard an interview this morning with senator Webb of Va. He was saying much the same; i.e., the Bush Admin never had a strategy; just a bunch of tactics.
Make The Pyre Higher?
Just Say NO to the Surging in Bush's Loins!
Find a MoveOn Event Near You
About Mr. Conetta's essay: does somebody know who first proved that a ratio of one armed occupier per fifty occupyees is required? Does this magic number come out of Indochina somehow?
Didn't the French achieve a much "better" ratio than that in Algeria, even not counting the _pieds noirs_, and get pushed out anyway?
Can it really not matter at all how much territory the population is distributed over and what sort of territory it is?
some Sunni Arabs see the US as having been duped by the Shiites
Only "duped"? I thought this was part of the so-called unleash the Shiites plan, whereby the Shia govt signs the oil deal, the US helps the Shia ethnically cleanse Baghdad, and then they all declare victory and go home. Mission accomplished.
There is no discussion regarding the terminology and language being used in the media to describe the violence in Baghdad, such as "ethnic killings", "ethnic cleansing" "ethnic tensions". What do they reference/say/imply and how appropriately?
Politicians, media sources, bloggers, etc...are referring to the escalating violence in terms of deaths and demarcation lines, i.e. sunni neighborhood, shiite neighborhood, without truly appreciating or highlighting the far more sinister ramifications unfolding.
Political posturing, political analysis, and common war jargon aside, the reality of Baghdad's culture of violence(specifically) is only appreciated when one applies the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948.
The General Assembly unanimously accepted the terms and vowed to NEVER permit genocide again. Well, thanks for the kind and reassuring words international community, but coupled with treacherous and malicious political and economic interests, genocide has invariably occurred 4, yes 4, times since the adoption of the Charter.
My question for individuals reading this with the capacity to further the discussion, or lack there of, is as follows:
-as defined in the Charter (Provided Below) are we not reporting genocide (negligence)?????
-is the "targeted" violence in baghdad not genocidal by definition and motivation?
Under Article 2 of Resolution 260 defines genocide as:
(a)killing members of a group;
(b)causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c)deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d)imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e)forcibly transfering children of the group to another group..
And then, Article 4 lists the punishable acts:
(a)Genocide;
(B)Conspiracy to committ genocide
(c)Direct and public incitement to committ genocide
(D)Attempt to committ genocide
(E)Complicity to commit genocide
If you feel the terminology used in relating "incidents" from Iraq are grossly misrepresenting the culture of violence, please share your opinions.
If the terminology is accurate and the language fits, freely maintain the popular discourse; at least Cambodians, Rwandans, Serbians, and Sudanese can appreciate the global communities consistency.
"Or maybe by now it is just being levelled by airstrikes. Or maybe we really have been duped into ethnically cleansing it on behalf of the Mahdi Army."
"Who's we, white man?"
(Tonto said to the Lone Ranger)
In his speech, Bush said "And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale."
Well, the last two appear to be happening already. But if all three happen subsequent to the surge, we will have evidence of its failure.
Also, note that one again Bush could not get through a speech on Iraq without bringing up 9/11. Looks like we don't have a new strategy after all.
Donna, thanks for the Groundhog Day insight. Slipped right past me.
Rob Price - if you are not strenuously working to end the war, then it is being fought in your name.
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