Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Marshall/ Cole interview on Iraq

I am interviewed on al-Anbar province at Veracifier by Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.

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posted by Juan Cole @ 9/18/2007 06:42:00 PM

4 Comments:

At 12:17 AM, Blogger opposition radio said...

Great comment by both you guys. How likely do you feel the strike on Iran is? Do you feel that Bush and the rest of the junta are making deals with the Sunni in advance of a strike on Iran? It would seem that behind the scenes deals are being made to divide Iraq (Kurds in the north, Sunni in the center, Sadr/Shia in the south) and then move on to Iran and then Syria (did anyone catch the WAPO article about alleged Syrian/Korean nuclear ties last week?)

Robert Greenwald is all over the FOX news/Iran hype at:

www.robertgreenwald.com powerful stuff

 
At 4:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

.....I believe you indicated in the first couple of minutes that David Petraeus was a terrific innovator,
and was the first US military commander in Iraq to think of exploiting or leveraging or bribing tribal shaykhs to stabilize al-Anbar and reduce attacks on Coalition forces.

.....I want to offer that he was not the first, that George Casey beat him to this in November 2005.

General Casey met with a group of tribal leaders from the al-Anbar in November [in Amman, I think] and again in December and the deal they offered was:

if you will leave us alone, withdraw your soldiers and let us govern our own communities,
then
we will guarantee safe passage for your convoys and eliminate al-Qaeda in our areas.

This was briefly reported in December 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201339.html


There were two big hurdles to this truce:

1) After the Iraqi Government said that they may grant amnesty to Resistance fighters who had not killed innocent civilians,
the US Congress declared that there would be no amnesty for anyone who had killed Americans;
and
2) General Casey had direct orders from President Bush that the local leaders would have to swear loyalty to the central Baghdad government, and allow the Iraqi Army and Iraqi National Police to move in and set up shop as the legitimate security forces in the area.

....Well, to these tribal leaders, this was tantamount to replacing foreign occupation by US forces
with
foreign occupation by Kurdish or Shi'a forces.

The deal fell through.

You suggest that it is the brilliance of Petraeus to understand the fundamentals of Arab tribal politics that led to the breakthrough in al-Anbar.

Another possible explanation is that President Bush and the Congress flip-flopped on the two earlier obstacles.

your avid student
/

 
At 4:26 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dr. Cole,

.....have General Petraeus and his brain trust impressed you with their ability to chart a new strategy ?

This brain trust depends largely on
HR McMaster, who oversaw the ethnic cleansing of Tall Afar, and
Dave Kilcullen, whose main contribution has been to plagiarize parts of my "Model Communities" approach.

.....They simply display a pedestrian ability to recognize the obvious, 3 years late.

These are the guys who have given us the current "Return on Success."

Which translates roughly to "promise withdrawals but stay the course."
/

 
At 4:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have been following the conflict in Iraq closely. Has anyone else noticed the uptick in "non-hostile" casualties in Iraq just as "hostile" casualties seem to be tapering off. Anyone have any idea why this might be so?

 

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