December 10, 2006
The World
Iraq’s Biggest Failing: There Is No Iraq

By ROGER COHEN
WAR spews words. They make up its fog. Washington was awash in them last week as the damage control exercise called the Iraq Study Group culminated with a proposal to extract all American combat brigades by early 2008, leaving a few tens of thousands of troops to train the Iraqi Army or protect the trainers. As befits a bipartisan report on what looks like a lose-lose situation, it was a fudge.

But beyond the words — from President Bush’s chagrin at “the pace of success” to the report’s “grave and deteriorating” situation — lie people, the millions of Iraqis who have to get their kids up in the morning, those dimly discernible objects of the myriad political contortions. One of them, a 32-year-old Iraqi engineer encountered earlier this year in Baghdad, had this to say in a desperate e-mail message:

“I am facing the most difficult times of my life here in Baghdad. Since I am a Sunni, I became a target to be killed. You know that our army and police are Shia, so every checkpoint represents a serious threat to Sunnis. During the last three weeks, two of my friends were killed at check points belonging to the police. They first asked to show IDs and when they saw the Sunni family name, they killed them.”

There, in plain enough English, you have it. The Iraqi Army and police whose proposed reinforcement lies at the center of the Iraq Study Group’s plan for American extraction are often less neutral institutions supporting the nation than a flimsy camouflage for Shia to settle accounts with Sunnis, while the Kurds bide their time and hope the child of chaos will be an independent Kurdistan.

The Iraqi Army and police are indeed overwhelmingly — but not exclusively — Shia. Most recruitment took place at a time when Sunnis had opted out of the new Iraq. Much has been made of the American error in disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army. More might have been made of the errors committed in creating the new force.

Contacted in Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, who commands American forces in Iraq, described the Iraqi Army as “fragile.” He said Sunni officers and soldiers “have to believe the government is using force in a fair and evenhanded manner.” As for the police, he said, “it is clear there are some sectarian elements,” but “forceful action” by the Interior Ministry was now addressing the problem.

Are these the bulwarks of an Iraq that can “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself” within 15 months, letting the bulk of American troops go home? Perhaps, the report seems to say, as it urges Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to get with the program — through rapid provincial elections, fairer distribution of oil revenue, the reintegration of Baathists and constitutional reform.

But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the report treats Iraq as an existing country needing a quick fix in the name of resurgent American realism, rather than a still-to-be-born country that needs to be ushered into being in the name of American idealism.

Iraq, in short, needs Iraqis — citizens of a nation rather than of a tribe — and that, after decades of disorienting dictatorship, is a generational undertaking scarcely amenable to American electoral timetables.

Right now, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds see “freedom” more as the opportunity to be free of one another than to forge a liberal democracy. That’s how subjugated peoples, from the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia, tend to react to the lifting of tyranny. Iraqi behavior is not especially strange.

But it has been hugely destructive — an estimated 3,000 Iraqi civilians are dying every month — and it presents President Bush with a choice between the stick-with-it idealism that has been the mainstay of his narrative of Iraqi freedom catalyzing a Middle Eastern transformation, and the ease-out realism thrust in his face by his father’s secretary of state, James A. Baker III.

“The report is a devastating critique and an official certification of a failed policy, but its recommendations are a weak compromise,” said Richard Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations. “So the question remains: what will the president do? Most people want an exit timetable, a few want a troop increase and Bush appears unready for either. He seems likely to pass this mess on to his successor.”

Certainly Mr. Bush’s instincts, and his post-report language, suggest he will not embrace a 15-month timetable for large-scale withdrawal, even as a figure weakened by his party’s midterm electoral defeat. The realists, and the angry left, would then be further incensed. There’s no doubt that the administration’s ideology and scant planning, sold as idealism, have done great damage in Iraq. But realism too has its limits.

It was realism, Mr. Baker would say, that made him urge Yugoslavia to stick together days before its disintegration, and realism that later led him to wave away the Balkans with the lapidary phrase: “We don’t have a dog in that fight.” That was before the avenging dog of Bosnian mass killing finally outraged American moral principles and drew the country in.

The fact is Iraq was unmade while Mr. Baker was back in Texas, unmade in pursuit of a new Middle Eastern beginning. A state that had known only despotic rule, inhabited by disoriented victims of terror, was asked to govern itself through some form of democracy.

Remaking the unmade, in this case the fragmenting state of Iraq, is time-consuming, and, as Miroslav Hroch, the Czech political theorist, has observed, ethnic or religious nationalism easily becomes the “substitute for factors of integration in a disintegrating society.”

Adel is the name of the young engineer who has been writing to me; to give his full name would put his life and that of his family at risk. He knows all about the death of the old Iraq and the agony of the new.

In 2004 he got a job with Washington Group International, a building contractor.

“Now,” he writes, “I am working at a WGI site and live there because it is safe inside but when I go to my home the danger surrounds me. The police sometimes search the houses, and now the Shia militia force the Sunnis to leave their houses. The majority of the area is Shia. They want it to be completely Shia.”

He concedes that the same abuses “took place in the Sunni areas too.” But, he says, “the Sunnis are 20 percent only while the Shia are 70 percent and the police and army are Shia, so they are able to carry weapons officially.”

The study group lists all sorts of things the Iraqi Army lacks — leadership, equipment, personnel, logistical support. But it does not identify the most fundamental: absence of sufficient belief in the nation.

It seems highly improbable that this can be forged in 15 months. An American officer, Col. Mark Meadows, told me earlier this year in Baghdad that the Iraqi brigade he was training was overwhelmingly Shia, which was a problem.

“They’re where we were in early World War II,” Colonel Meadows said. “We went from the black-only units of that time to Truman’s integrated Army of the 1950s. The Army led the way in the breakthrough from a divided society. That has to happen here, too.”

But, the colonel added, “If we try to go too fast, if we take a short-sighted view, if we expect instant gratification, it won’t work.”

As for the police, it is, in the view of General Chiarelli, in far worse shape than the army. “The year of the police,” as 2006 was billed, has turned into the year of police abuse. The report suggests transferring a large part of the police from the Interior Ministry control to the Defense Ministry to improve discipline.

Quite what that would achieve is unclear. Both ministries have been infested with sectarianism and corruption. The Interior Ministry is now led by a Shiite, Defense by a Sunni, but both forces, police and military are still overwhelmingly Shiite, which is where the fundamental difficulty lies.

Adel, as a Sunni, has suffered directly from that. Now, even as he seeks ways to leave, he believes “that we are not completely lost.”

“If the invasion was the only solution to make Saddam quit,” he writes, “so it was the right choice.”

The problem, he adds, is “not with the invasion itself” but with “how to select the suitable men to take the responsibility of ruling Iraq, because most of those we have now are not devoted to this country.”

Iraq has to survive, not because it’s lovely, or within sight of peace, but because it’s the least bad solution. Its breakup would entail unfathomable horror: one quarter of the population is in mixed Baghdad, and Sunni Anbar province is an oil-free desert suitable only for Al Qaeda central. To have a future, Iraq almost certainly needs a broad federalism of a kind not endorsed in the report, and it needs the likes of Adel.

He’s scared, but not without a frail hope: the hope that Iraq can inspire love of itself in its citizens, beyond religious and ethnic lines. To that lingering aspiration, after the loss of almost 3,000 American lives and the spending of $400 billion in treasure, the United States appears to have an enduring responsibility.

Saddam Hussein's nephew escapes prison
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press WriterSat Dec 9, 4:35 PM ET
A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for financing insurgents and possessing bombs escaped from prison Saturday in northern Iraq with the help of a police officer, authorities said.

Sectarian attacks killed at least 20 people, including five who died in a suicide car bombing outside a Shiite shrine in Karbala, police said. Officers also found 39 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad that apparently were victims of revenge killings by Sunni Arabs and Shiites.

The escape by Saddam's nephew underlined one of the problems facing the U.S. military as it tries to train enough Iraqi security personnel so U.S. troops can go home: the ability of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militiamen to infiltrate Iraqi police forces.

Ayman Sabawi, son of Saddam's half brother Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, escaped from a prison 45 miles west of the northern city of Mosul in the afternoon with the help of a policeman, said a local police commander, Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, confirmed the escape but declined to discuss any details.

Sabawi, who was arrested in May 2005 by U.S. and Iraqi forces near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, was convicted of illegally crossing the border from Syria and sentenced to 15 years in prison late last year by an Iraqi court. He was sentenced to life in prison in an earlier case for possession of illegal weapons and manufacture of bombs.

He "played a particularly active role in sustaining the terrorism by providing financial support, weapons and explosives to terrorist groups," Iraq's government said.

In July 2005, the United States froze Sabawi's assets along with those of five other Saddam nephews, accusing them of providing funds to Iraq's Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.

Sabawi's father was captured in February 2005. Formerly the head of Saddam's intelligence service, al-Tikriti was No. 36 on a U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's ousted regime.

The suicide bomb attack occurred near the Al-Abbas shrine in Karbala, a Shiite holy city 50 miles south of Baghdad.

The shrine's golden dome and minarets didn't appear damaged in video shown on Iraqi state TV, but the blast set many parked cars on fire in a nearby street. Two men with bloody faces could be seen running through heavy black smoke past the body of another victim.

A main goal of Sunni Arab insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq has been to spark sectarian violence by attacking sites revered by the country's Shiite majority.

In Baghdad, some of the worst violence was in a Sunni pocket of Hurriyah, a mixed neighborhood. Witnesses said Shiite militiamen entered the area after Sunnis warned the few Shiites living there to leave or be killed. Heavy machine gun fire was heard and three columns of black smoke rose into the sky, the witnesses said on condition of anonymity out of concern for their own safety.

Mohamed al-Askeri, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said some people were chased from their homes, but Iraqi security forces drove off the attackers, handed out food to displaced people and persuaded most to return to their homes. But "others are still frightened," he said.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, who heads a large Sunni bloc in Parliament, went on a Sunni-run TV station to demand protection for the district's Sunnis. "We appeal to the government and U.S. forces to rescue Sunni families in Hurriyah who are facing killings and displacement by militias."

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced that two Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province, raising to 42 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq this month. At least 2,930 have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, on Saturday condemned a deadly U.S. military attack the previous day in al-Ishaqi village in volatile Salahuddin province.

The U.S. command said a ground raid and airstrike killed 20 insurgents, but local officials claimed at least 19 civilians died, including seven women and eight children.

About 1,000 residents of the predominantly Sunni village of al-Ishaqi held a funeral for the 19 dead Saturday, shouting "Down with the occupiers," "Long live the resistance," and "There is no God but Allah."

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of hard-line Sunnis that opposes the coalition, issued a statement alleging U.S. soldiers entered two Iraqi houses, shot 32 civilians to death, including women and children, and then blew up the buildings to make it look as if the victims died in a U.S. airstrike targeting insurgents.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, part of a Sunni bloc that controls 44 of parliament's 275 seats, made a similar claim, calling the attack "a new massacre by the American occupiers."

Last spring, a U.S. investigation cleared American soldiers of misconduct during a March 15 raid in al-Ishaqi in which Air Force planes destroyed a building believed to be hiding al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents. Villagers claimed soldiers killed 11 civilians before ordering for the airstrike.

Iraq and Syria to reopen embassies



Iraq, Syria agree to restore full ties
Violence as Syria offers Iraq support

Dec 10, 2006
Iraq and Syria will re-open their respective embassies on Monday after decades of diplomatic deep freeze, Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi said on Saturday following talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem.

Iraq and neighbouring Syria agreed to restore full diplomatic relations last month during a visit to Iraq from Moualem, the first by a Syrian minister since the 2003 US-led invasion which toppled former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"Mr Moualem told me that the flags will be raised on the embassies on Monday to be followed soon by an exchange of ambassadors," Chalabi told Reuters.

Chalabi, who is in Damascus for a three-day visit said, that Syria was also studying joint patrols with Iraqi forces along the desert border between the two countries.

US and Iraqi officials accuse Syria of supporting Sunni insurgents and have long complained that Syria has done too little to seal its border to foreign Islamist fighters.

Chalabi was asked if Syria has taken any practical steps to implement recently signed protocols between the two countries aimed at helping stabilise Iraq.

"Syria is ready to exchange security data and co-operate on the ground," he said. "Iraq is also ready to facilitate an economic exchange with Syria and resume exports of oil through the pipeline to Partous. But this of course is tied to the security situation on the Iraqi side."

As part of the deal to restore diplomatic relations Syria agreed on the need for US-led forces to stay in Iraq until they were no longer needed, after which they would be gradually withdrawn.

We Must Not Leave Iraq


By Michael Rubin
Posted: Friday, December 8, 2006

ARTICLES
Dziennik (Warsaw)
Publication Date: December 8, 2006

After months of deliberations, on December 6, 2006, the Baker-Hamilton Commission released its report arguing that the United States and, by extension, its Coalition partners, should change course on Iraq. The Congressionally-mandated study group, stacked with realists hostile to the idea that enabling freedom should be a foreign policy priority, recommended both a gradual pull-back of U.S. troops and a regional conference. Several experts who testified before the Commission said that, at any mention of democracy, former Secretary of State James Baker rolled his eyes.


Resident Scholar Michael Rubin

The Baker-Hamilton Commission, though, is not the only Commission mulling Iraq strategy in Washington. The National Security Council is conducting its own review and the Pentagon is re-evaluating its own approach. The multiple commissions symbolize the lack of coordination and unity of mission that has plagued U.S. strategy and its execution since the months before the war began. While the White House was sincere in his call for freedom and liberty in the Middle East, much of the military and civilian establishment have both resisted his goals and worked at cross purposes to them. The old guard foreign policy establishment has resisted at every step. The result has been a muddle, as the U.S. shifts from one strategy to another. U.S. adversaries feed on Washington’s uncertainty.

Presidents and prime ministers make decisions with the information at hand. The nature of intelligence is that it is seldom complete when it is time for a decision. The decision to use military force against Iraq was taken only after 13 years of failed diplomacy and a collapsing international sanctions regime. There was near universal belief that Saddam still possessed weapons of mass destruction. He had shown willingness to use them. He may have bluffed, but decisions must be made with the intelligence available. Presidents and Prime Ministers do not have the luxury of hindsight.

President George W. Bush was correct to believe that if, military force was inevitable, then it should be coupled with a goal to establish democracy.

Was it a fool’s dream to believe it possible to establish democracy in the heart of the Middle East? No. One-in-six Iraqis had fled their country under Saddam’s rule. Those that settled in the West thrived. There was no cultural impediment to democracy.

But the need for democracy is was not all about altruism. While dictatorships might promise short-term stability, with democracy comes long-term security. Much as they do with Bush, critics called Harry S Truman stupid and naïve for embroiling the U.S. in a brutal, open-ended war in Korea. After all, Korea had a culture of authoritarianism with no history of democracy. Celebrity-seeking generals and cabinet members sought to undermine their commander-in-chief, and the press criticized him for his obstinacy. While Truman left office with the lowest popularity rankings in history, six decades later, historians rank him among the top five presidents. Any juxtaposition of democratic South Korea with totalitarian North Korea today demonstrates his wisdom.

Still, after almost 3,000 deaths and many more wounded, the U.S. public has lost its will. The U.S. commitment to Iraq has lasted longer than its participation in World War II. Politicians of both major U.S. parties seek to cut-a-deal, declare victory, and withdrawal.

Bush remains obstinate, though, and with reason. The Middle East has long been bifurcated between autocrats and theocrats. Dictators argue to Western governments that their regimes provide the only bulkhead against radicalism, all the while crushing any emerging liberalism which might undermine the argument. Radicals blame the West for propping up their oppressors. While their hatred is constant, globalization had enabled them to act upon it. It is a no-win situation for the West. Bush, with his allies in London, Warsaw, and Canberra, sought to break the cycle.

And they might still do so, if they are willing to stand firm for their principles. Increasingly, though, it looks like Washington will not stand firm. Strategy in Washington prioritizes the next election rather than national or international security. Realists live in a short-term world of deals and deferred consequences. They have little use for freedom, morality, and commitment.

Rather than recognize the benefits commitment to freedom, diplomats see only inconvenience. Pleasing Berlin and Moscow becomes more important than successful completion of mission. While Ronald Reagan once stood firm behind the striking shipyard workers in Gdansk, the inheritors of his mantle have reverted to the age of his predecessors, the men who celebrated compromise at Yalta, turned a blind eye to freedom-seekers in Budapest and Prague, and sought to turn their back on Jews imprisoned in the Gulag. To these Realists, dissidents and democrats, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, or Iran, are expendable.

Another casualty of this realist wind is Washington’s commitment to its allies. Poland knows this well with promises of visa-waivers long since forgotten. The stakes are even higher if the U.S. abandons Iraq, its mission unaccomplished. Across the Middle East, in Taiwan, and on the Korean Peninsula, liberals and democrats will be right to question Washington’s commitments.

So what does this mean in the short-term? Rather than admit abandonment, U.S. and European foreign policy elites will counsel diplomacy and a regional conference. Their recommendation is based on the assumption that both Syria and Iran seek a stable Iraq. If this were the case, though, Damascus and Tehran would not train insurgents and militias, or supply them with high explosives

When faced with a hornet’s nest, the two best options are to leave it alone or to get rid of it. The worst decision is to stir up the hornets and walk away. However politicians spin withdrawal, if under fire, it will be perceived in Iraq as defeat. Across the Middle East, dictators and their proxies will conclude that violence pays. Dictators will crush liberals and Islamists will grow emboldened to take their fight to new battlefields. Believing the West to lack will, governments from Tehran to Pyongyang will grow bolder in defiance.

Leadership is not about polls and popularity, and strategies which shift with the public mood do not win security. If the Coalition is to win in Iraq and in the larger war against terrorism and dictatorship, it must not walk away from the fight. If the problem in Iraq is rule-of-law, then Coalition militaries must aim to fight terrorists and disarm militias. If these adversaries get support from outside powers, then the Coalition must be willing to interrupt and intercept such assistance.

Sometimes the fight for freedom suffers setbacks. Martial law followed the rise of Solidarity. But Washington should heed the lesson of Poland: abandonment and surrender are not policy. It is the long-term result that matters.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

The First Amendment Is Not a Suicide Pact
Print Mail

By Newt Gingrich
Posted: Friday, December 8, 2006

ARTICLES
Union Leader (New Hampshire)
Publication Date: December 7, 2006

I must have hit a nerve.

In New Hampshire last week, at a dinner hosted by the Nackey Loeb School honoring our First Amendment rights, I called for a serious debate about the First Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights--using them as they once used passenger jets--to threaten and kill Americans.


Senior Fellow Newt Gingrich

Here's part of what I said: "Either before we lose a city, or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up (terrorists') capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech [protections] and to go after people who want to kill us--to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us."

Since I made those remarks, I've heard from many Americans who understand the seriousness of the threat that faces us, Americans who believe as I do that free speech should not be an acceptable cover for people who are planning to kill other people who have inalienable rights of their own.

A small number of others have been quick to demagogue my remarks. Missing from the debate? Any reference to the very real threats that face Americans.

There was no mention of last week's letter from Iranian leader Ahmadinejad that threatens to kill Americans in large numbers if we don't submit to his demands.

There has been little attention drawn to any of the many websites dedicated to training and recruiting terrorists, including a recent one that promises to train terrorists "to use the Internet for the sake of jihad."

No mention of efforts by terrorist groups like Hezbollah to build "franchises" among leftist, anti-globalization groups worldwide, especially in Latin America.

The fact is not all speech is permitted under the Constitution. The First Amendment does not protect lewd and libelous speech, and it should not--and cannot in 2006--be used as a shield for murderers.

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy put it best: "With an enemy committed to terrorism, the advocacy of terrorism--the threats, the words--are not mere dogma, or even calls to 'action.' They are themselves weapons--weapons of incitement and intimidation, often as effective in achieving their ends as would be firearms and explosives brandished openly."

We need a serious dialogue--not knee-jerk hysteria--about the First Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect. Here are a few baseline principles to consider.

We should be allowed to close down websites that recruit suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill civilians by suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the destruction of Western civilization;

We should propose a Geneva-like convention for fighting terrorism that makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. A subset of this convention should define the international rules of engagement on what activities will not be protected by free speech claims; and

We need an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the First Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents.

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.

Related Links

More Short Publications