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The Bush Strategy
Kissinger is a trusted Bush advisor. Naturally, he compliments Bush's surge, but when he says things less flattering, we should listen.
American forces are in Iraq to prevent Iranian imperialism from dominating the energy supplies of the industrial democracies. —Kissinger
, Jan 19, 2007.
That's a huge shift. (1) We are now in Iraq primarily to fight Iran!
The Iraq war has destabilized and realigned the Middle East. These are the sides:
| Sunni | Shiite |
| US | Iran |
| Iraqi insurgents | Iraqi government |
| Saudi Arabia | al Sadr |
| al Fatah | Iraq's SCIRI |
| Israel | Hezbollah |
| Syria | Saudi Shiites |
The US and Saudis are now funding al Fatah--unimaginable a year ago. The Saudis are backing the Iraqi Sunnis and in part insurgents who are the two groups fighting the Iraqi Shiites. But neither side is unified. Sadr is fighting SCIRI, the biggest Shiite party, and the US and Iraqi insurgents are fighting. Al Qaeda, although sunni, is fighting everyone.
This lineup explains the strangest part of the Bush "surge." His speech focussed on attacking Sadr in Iraq, who has been avoiding attacks on the US. Only 4000 troops out of 21,500 are being sent to Anbar--the Sunni/al Qaeda/insurgent stronghold.
(2) The surge focuses on Sadr and Iranians in Iraq—not those attacking us.
Bush may hope that threatening Iran will calm down Iraq, but this makes no sense and it is not his focus. He's after Iran—the neocon's goal.
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Jan 6, '07. An Israeli interpretation of Bush strategy: If the "surge" ends in victory, he will end his presidency on a high note. If not, Bush will be in the same position as he is today, the American president who lost the Iraq war and the struggle against terror. He has nothing to lose.
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"We will stay in Iraq, fight in Iraq, and win in Iraq" —Bush, Oct. 20, 2006. ZFacts predicted then that Bush would reject the bipartisan study group, based on an analysis of Baker's ties to Bush senior and Bush's ties to Cheney and the neocons. This is still the controlling dynamic. Cheney is still heading Bush for disaster, and the Baker Group is still the only politically plausible option.
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Jan. 10, '07. Bush declares war on Al Sadr. The 4,000 troops sent to Anbar will not even replace those removed in July. The 17,500 going to Baghdad will target Al Sadr. Keep in mind, (1) Sadr started out being anti Iran. (2) Our previous clashes with him pushed him to cooperate more with Iran. (3) The Shiite party with the most votes, and Sadr's foe, is the pro-Iranian "Badr Brigade / Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq." (4) Sadr's #1 enemy is Al Qaeda and his #2 Enemy is the pro-Saddam insurgency.
Yet again, Bush and the neocons do not know what they are doing.
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Previous Troop "Surge" Failed as of Oct. 19, 2006
A two month "surge" of 12,000 additional US troops in Baghdad, resulted in a 22% "surge" of Iragi violence and was deemed a failure. The current surge of 20,000 will be split between Baghdad and Anbar, so it will be essentially the same size. (Article)
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Bush will change only under extreme pressure
Baker is Bush Senior's fixit-man, and Bush Junior is none too keen on being told what to do in public. Bush vs Baker. The neocons hated Bush senior and Baker for not going to Baghdad in the first Iraq war. Now they hate him more because he's been proved right.
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Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate From Baker Group's
November 15, 2006. Washington Post, By Robin Wright.
President Bush formally launched a sweeping internal review of Iraq policy yesterday, pulling together studies underway by various government agencies, according to U.S. officials.
The initiative parallels the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to salvage U.S. policy in Iraq. The White House wants to complete the process before mid-December, about the time the Iraq Study Group's final report is expected. In a measure of the suddenness and importance of the review, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week postponed a long-planned trip to an Asia-Pacific conference in Vietnam to take part in discussions about Iraq. Rice's trip to Baghdad last month was a turning point in her thinking, officials said. [So now, instead of "turning points" for Iraq, we have turning points for the administration. But they kept that secret till after the election.]
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Does Bush now agree he must "change course"?
After years of a "stay the course" mantra, on October 11, 2006 Bush appeared to accepted at least some change. But a closer look and his further clarifications reveal he only accepte a "Federalist" approach that was already part of the Iraq constitution.
In April all US intelligence agencies told him that the Iraq war has helped the terrorists in six ways. They also said that if he lost then the damage would be magnified. In June and July he saw Maliki fail. His last chance to "stay the course" toward a unified Iraq was Operation Forward Together, announced July 25.
At the time the generals told him they needed to turn things around in two to three months. It has now (Oct. 12) been two and a half months, and rather than getting much better, the violence has gotten worse. The neighborhood they focused on first just launched a mortar attack, blowing up a US ammo dump. Killings of Iraqis and Americans are up. There is no sign of progress.
There are a number of forces leading Bush to back away from the unification goal: (1) the Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that a change might well be needed as Iraq was moving sideways. (2) Baker, the Bush family's political fix-it man, and the co-chair of Congress's Iraq Study Group, lumped "stay-the-course" with "cut-and-run" as not the only options. This level of public dissent from top Republican leaders is an extremely strong signal, and Bush needs to appear to be responding. But will he actually change course at all? Don't bet on it.
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Is this good news or bad news?
The present course leads to certain disaster. So a change of course should be good news. But a new course has almost no chance of real success. Too much damage has been done with nearly four years of too-little-too-late incompetence.
It is nearly impossible to divide Iraq because half the population is in the four biggest cities and three are very mixed. If the fight were just over oil revenues there might be a chance. But tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have now been murdered and so hundreds of thousands want revenge for their relatives. This cannot be stopped by moving people a few blocks to another district.
The Administration's new dilemma is this: It must
1. partition the Sunnis from the Kurds and Shi'ites.
2. assure a moderately fair division of oil revenues.
3. prevent Sunnis from falling under the sway of Syria or Al Qaeda.
4. prevent the Kurds from antagonizing Turkey.
5. prevent Iran from dominating the Shi'ite region
6. convince the Shi'ites to adopt a non-extremist government.
And it must do all this under the guidance of the fools who got us into this mess. This is a much harder task than we faced three years ago. The chances of success appear to be dismal.
The one bright spot is that the Army has learned a great deal, and General Abizaid is brilliant. If Bush is sent a strong enough message to dump the neocons and other extremists in his coalition, Abizaid might have a chance.
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http://zfacts.com/p/515.html | 01/18/12 07:17 GMT
Modified: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:58:51 GMT
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