Car Bomb in Green Zone
Parliamentarians Trade Accusations
The intrepid Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that a car bomb targetting the Iraqi speaker of parliament, Mahmud Mashhadani [Sunni], was detonated inside the Green Zone on Tuesday. The Green Zone is a 4 square mile area of downtown Baghdad behind concrete walls, with a heavy US military guard. It houses the main political institutions of the new Iraq, and many parliamentarians live there. Likewise the US embassy and other Coalition institutions are based there. This is the most serious incident inside the Green Zone for some time.
The United Nations counts 3700 Iraqi civilian deaths in October.
MP Jalal al-Din Saghir of the [Shiite] Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq got into a shouting match on the floor of parliament with Adnan Dulaimi, a Sunni fundamentalist. Saghir condemned Sunni attacks on Shiites in two districts of Baghdad and said that they were encouraging Shiites to turn to militias. Dulaimi angrily retorted that Sunni Arabs were the ones being targeted by Shiite militias, and were being treated like "Jews and Iranians" in Iraq.
The Iraqi government is paralyzed, argues Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times, by the system of government by consensus imposed by the United States. Thus, the US forced a "national unity government" on the country last spring, which involved giving cabinet ministries to the parties that joined the government. But then if they are incompetent or corrupt or dangerous, the ministers cannot be fired because that would cause his or her party to withdraw from the government.
The real problem is that politics has been arranged on a sectarian basis. If al-Maliki, the elected prime minister, attempted to rule with a heavy hand, it would be rejected by the Kurds, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs, because his Shiite coalition does not represent them. There is no party that is truly a national party.
Tom Hayden tries to piece together what he sees as a secret set of US negotiations with Sunni Arab guerrilla groups that might position Washington for a withdrawal from Iraq. It is a valuable piece. But it does not reckon with the weight of the Shiites and the Kurds, who would not put up with talking to violent Baathists.
The sick, the old, women and children are suffering most from the breakdown in Iraqi society. They are disproportionately likely to be forced out of their homes, and, once displaced, to be left destitute and even hungry.
I am glad to report that Senator Barack Obama has adopted a position on a phased withdrawal from Iraq that is very similar to the one that I hold. He has it absolutely right. Pressure the government and pressure the factions to compromise by getting our guys out of the line of fire among them.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/22/2006 12:33:00 AM
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4 Comments:
"Phased Withdrawal" --
(1) An Orwellian euphemism designed to beguile the American population into buying a discredited "stay the curse" occupation of a foreign country long past the point then the American population has unequivocally demanded that it end immediately.
(2) Vietnam Redux Deja Vu All Over Again One More Time -- only faster because of substituting the Worst and the Dullest for the Best and the Brightest.
(3) A slippery synonym for "watching the grass grow," meaning an imperceptible interlude of inconclusive indecision indefinitely infringing on the infinitesimal intellect of the easily intimidated.
(4) The operative adjective, "phased," implies but does not actually specify "measured" (meaning, subliminally "non-hasty" -- after almost four years) movement meandering mindlessly toward some vaguely alluded-to noun, "withdrawal," itself a tortured tautology coined carefully to avoid the only understandable antonym anyone actually wants to hear: i.e., "leaving by yesterday."
(5) A whipped-dog, whimpering waffle of an attempt by Democratic Party politicians to AVOID THE BLAME for a Republican-defined "retreat" instead of aggressively TAKING CREDIT for an expeditious, Democratic-defined "redeployment" in complete compliance with the recently expressed demands of the exasperated American electorate.
(6) Glacier Race. Somewhat akin to cutting the ballooning budget deficit in half or landing an astronaut on Mars two decades after the current spendthrift gambler of a "national leader" absconds from office with his get-out-of-jail-free card and no forwarding addresses for the offshore banks in Switzerland and the Bahamas where all the loot landed.
(7) Irrelevant non-sequitur ironically, leisurely -- and fatally -- neglecting the obvious encirclement of America's Foreign Legion marooned at the precarious end of a fragile supply line stretching halfway around the globe. Think Germans at Salingrad; the French at Dien Bien Phu; or the British "phasing" their way through the Khyber Pass -- never (except for one wounded doctor) to arrive at their destination.
(8) Callow, conventional catch-phrase for still-wet-behind-the-ears Democratic politicians like Barack Obama (the Fallacy of the Mean personified) who sounds like he has as much occupational combat experience or "stand-em-up" advisory duty time as my five-year-old grandson.
Barack Obama???? Really, professor. I know more about this Parkinson's Law, Peter Principle, Just-Get-Dubya-Barack-and-You-Know-Her-Past-2008 Vietnamization of the Iraqis than Barack Obama will -- or could -- ever know. And I don't agree with either him or you or You-Know-Her on this Buy Time Brigade rendition of my old Fig Leaf Contingent. That ought to tell you something.
My Historicaly Tested and Approved Plan: The same as the one that finally ended our previous humiliating national disaster in Southeast Asia thirty-five years ago. (1) Revoke the ludicrous "Authorization of Force;" (2) Cut off the money for any US military operations in and over Iraq other than withdrawal of our forces within 4 months (if not 4 weeks); and (3) Force the resignations of the corrupt Vice President and law-breaking President who perpetrated this needless tragedy.
We did it before and we can do it again. We have to. Full speed ahead. No prevaricating or procrastinating or dragging-our-feet or stalling or "phasing" required or allowed. Too many more innocents will die while we dither.
Dear Professor Cole
Nadim Shehadi has stated that he does not think yesterday's assasination will lead to civil war on BBC Today. You can catch it on BBC listen again.
Nadim knows what he is talking about.
I was in conatct with someone in Iraq to talk about planning for reconstruction after the Occupation and the private contractors leave and was told that it is too early to talk about reconstruction.
What is actually required at the moment is blankets for the displaced, who can't get out now the borders are closed and medecine for the winter ills. The nightime temperatures are now dropping to zero C.
Professor Cole,
I'm much more sanguine about Sen. Obama's remarks. His proposals and any "redeployment" in the region proposal somehow assumes that the US military is a force for good in the region. He amazingly identifies only Iran, North Korea, and Syria as problems in the region -- not a peep about Israel's militancy and agression (or even the absolute need to help resolve Israel/Palestine). I see his proposal as keeping the US military permanently based in the region in high numbers.
He also reinterprets the Nov. 7th vote as a demand for "reasonable strategy" and "defined goals," not to mention a desire for bipartisanship! What about WITHDRAWAL. There is nothing in his speech holding the US to account for its horrid behavior (politically and militarily).
As an Illinois voter who gladly voted for Obama, I'm really disgusted with his performance. His foreign policy is kind of like Bush with a Brain or polite neoconservatism.
The UN reported 3700 deaths in October. If you take this horrific number and multiply it out over the three and half years of the war, you get about 150,000 deaths, which is far lower than the 654,000 deaths reported in last month's Johns Hopkins study. I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been much written on this discrepancy. The UN report appears to rely on morgue statistics, while the Hopkins group did a more general survey. I realize that many victims never make it to a morgue, but is this sufficient to explain this such a large difference?
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