Iraq and Iran: from one screw-up to another?

1. Iraq: Ungoverned and Ungovernable
(Editorial from the good old Guardian)

Tomorrow it will be exactly four months since Iraqis went to the polls in their historic parliamentary election, but they are still waiting for a new government to be formed. The obstacle at the moment is Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the ineffectual prime minister who was once hailed by President Bush as "a strong partner for peace and freedom" - though the Americans, and many Iraqis too, now want to dump him. Mr Jaafari was nominated for a second term by the dominant Shia bloc in a narrow vote, with backing from the troublesome cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Talks aimed at forming a government of national unity have stalled because some factions refuse to accept him and Mr Jaafari is unwilling to step down.

Even if the impasse can be broken reasonably soon, none of this bodes well for the future. Once a new government is in place, the political timetable calls for four months of debate to clarify Iraq's constitution - the signal for yet another round of interminable haggling and stand-offs. All the divisive questions that were fudged in order to get the constitution approved last year will return: arguments about federalism and Kurdish autonomy, the role of Islamic law, apportionment of oil revenues, to name just a few. With politics firmly entrenched along sectarian and ethnic lines, and with little give-and-take between the factions, it is difficult to see any quick resolution.

In the meantime, and in the absence of effective national security forces, the quarrelling factions are taking matters into their own hands, through the use of militias. This, as the US ambassador in Baghdad recognises, provides the "infrastructure of civil war". Though the daily suicide bombings still attract most of the media's attention, a far more sinister trend is developing. This is the growing number of mutilated bodies that turn up - people who have been abducted and killed, simply because they belonged to the wrong sect.

The Americans say they are seeking to disband the militias, though they have tried it before without success. Iraqis themselves are not pinning hopes on that; many are applying to change their names so it will be less obvious which sect they belong to. Up to 30,000 others have left their homes in recent weeks, fleeing to areas where they feel more secure and raising echoes of the ethnic and religious "cleansing" witnessed during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Today Iraq is a country with no real government. It may be only a matter of time, though, before there is a government with no real country to govern.


2. The "Lebanonization" of Iraq: Down a Dangerous Road -- by David Hirst

Is it really civil war in Iraq? Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense, says not. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, concedes that "the potential is there." But former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is categoric: "If 60 dead a day isn't civil war, God knows what is."

Civil wars are rarely "declared"; they steal up. Not surprisingly, this was the same question that foreign correspondents — myself included — kept asking when, in 1975, intercommunal clashes began erupting in Lebanon. From sporadic, isolated beginnings, they steadily grew in scale and intensity, ever closer to the heart of the capital, Beirut.

Yet, for many months, most of us held back from concluding the worst, convinced that in the cosmopolitan, pluralistic, Levantine city we knew, this must all be an aberration and that somehow, before long, the growing madness would go into reverse.

We now know how naively optimistic we were. And perhaps, in light of it, someone like myself now inclines to an excess of pessimism when I contemplate what is happening in Iraq today: the steady rise of what in Lebanon used to be called "identity card killings"; the "flying roadblocks" improvised by militiamen across the city where, typically, these sectarian atrocities most randomly occurred; the prevalence of inter-communal slaughter in the poorer, newly developed, religiously mixed suburbs encircling the capital; the complicity of soldiers from the national, multi-sectarian army in the activities of sectarian militias.

In Iraq, not only are these things now taking place on at least the same scale, proportionally, as they did in Lebanon, and with even greater barbarity, but there are already other things — like the bombing of holy places — that rarely happened even in Lebanon's darkest days.

Ever since the U.S. invasion, Arab commentators, alarmed at where Iraq is headed, have searched for parallels — in Vietnam, Somalia, Algeria, Cyprus, the Balkans — but their favorite by far is Lebanon. And when they forecast the "Lebanonization" of Iraq, they also, as an almost automatic corollary, consider its implications for the entire Arab world. For it is all but axiomatic: Fire in one Arab country is liable to spread elsewhere.

In the end, the Lebanese fire didn't spread; it was contained, instead, and ultimately extinguished by the Arab League with help from the rest of the world.

But will we be so lucky again, in the case of so weighty and pivotal a country as Iraq?

"Iraq," wrote Ghassan Charbel in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat, "resides in the Arabs' very conscience and in their calculations for the future. Its very veins are interlinked with the Arabs'. Its pains and hopes cross borders on the map. Many factors prevent Iraq from being able to commit suicide on its own."

Lebanon didn't spread, in part, because it was not a typical Arab state. In its main axis, the Lebanese civil war was fought between traditionally militant Maronite Christians and other sects in turn — Sunnis, Druzes, Shiites. But there are so few Christians (and hardly any Maronites) in the Arab world at large that it was never going to trigger a similar confrontation there.

By contrast, both in its ruling system and the identity of the protagonists, Iraq is — or was — far more representative of the wider Arab world. Saddam Hussein was the very model of the Arab tyrant, with sectarianism, in the shape of Sunni domination, as his chief instrument. At bloody loggerheads with itself, Iraq would become the model of Arab anarchy, embodying the two most disruptive, retrogressive yet popularly mobilizing forces in the Middle East today — sectarianism and ideologically driven Islamism.

It is now becoming a commonplace of Arab discourse that Iraq's agony is likely, ultimately, to equal in scale the post-World War I Middle East settlement that was the last great upheaval of its kind. Shaped chiefly by the Sykes-Picot agreement — the secret Anglo-French understanding of 1916 about how to divide territory between the colonial powers — the postwar settlement drew arbitrary, colonial-style frontiers across the more natural ethnic, sectarian, tribal and commercial lines that preceded it.

For some in the region at least, the new upheaval will "correct" what went wrong then.

How, then, will the fire spread? Syria — once the contentious nub of Sykes-Picot and the closest in recent historical experience to Iraq — will be most severely at risk. For, alone among Iraq's neighbors, it is exposed to both the ethnic and sectarian dimensions of the Iraqi contagion.

Syrian Kurds sense a weakness in their own, deeply troubled Baathist regime similar to that which ended in the downfall of its Iraq counterpart. If it finally does collapse amid general chaos, many will push for secession and amalgamation with their brethren in northern Iraq.

Syria has very few Shiites. But if sectarian identity is now to become the organizing principle of Arab polities, then Syria is vulnerable: A small religious minority, the Alawites, have effectively run it for more than 40 years. In a predominantly Sunni society, that Alawite rule historically represents an even greater anomaly than was Sunni minority rule in Iraq.

A Sunni majority restoration in Syria would become especially unstoppable if Iraq's increasingly disempowered Sunnis turn to Syria — where, but for Sykes-Picot, a great many would long have been citizens anyway.

The next most vulnerable region is the Persian Gulf, where Shiite minorities (or majorities, as in Bahrain), have long been discriminated against in varying degrees by Sunni establishments. Already excited by the dramatic emancipation of their co-religionists in Iraq, civil war there would only encourage Gulf Shiites to press their claims with greater vigor.

Nor is Jordan, with neither Kurdish nor Shiite minorities, any less alarmed. Jordan's King Abdullah was the first Arab leader to make public reference to an Iranian-sponsored "Shiite crescent," in effect labeling Shiites everywhere as a kind of "fifth column" challenging the traditional Sunni dominance of the Arab world.

Jordanian politicians even speak of building a "Sunni wall" through Iraq to contain the peril from the east. Because it is so small a country, because its loyalty to the U.S. and the peace treaty with Israel are so unpopular, and because its relatively benign autocracy depends on discrimination of a kind — favoring a conservative, tribal-minded Transjordanian minority over the more advanced and dynamic Palestinian majority — Jordan is peculiarly sensitive to political upheavals in its neighbors.

The "Lebanonization" of the Arab world would, of course, be most appalling for the inhabitants of that region themselves. But it would be pretty bad too for the U.S., which, with its invasion, precipitated it, and for its regional protege, Israel, which urged it on. Who knows what might arise out of the ruins of their grandiose ambitions to "reshape" the entire region in their favor?

(David Hirst, the Guardian's/UK Middle East correspondent from 1963 to 1997, lives in Beirut. He is the author of " The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East .”)


3. If You Liked the Iraq War, You'll Love the Iran War -- by Cenk Uygur

If you liked gas at three dollars a gallon, you'll love it at five dollars or more. If you liked fighting 26 million people in Iraq, you'll love fighting 68 million in Iran. If you liked turning Sunni Muslims against us, you'll love turning Sunni and Shiite Muslims against us. If you liked war in the Persian Gulf, you'll love war all over the Middle East.

If you thought things were bad now, wait till Iran retaliates against our air strikes by bombing Israel. When Israel strikes back, the whole Middle East will have to get sucked into the war. And then the fun really starts.

Do any of you have any confidence that George W. Bush knows what he's doing when he contemplates starting a war with Iran? Do any of you believe he has carefully thought out all the possibilities and has a plan for every contingency?

I don't care how Republican you are, that is an inconceivable thought. No one could believe that's true. The man who lost New Orleans and accidentally started a civil war in Iraq is going to have a sound strategy for Iran?

Besides which, there is a very real reason why they actively don't plan for these wars. They don't want word of the worst case scenarios (or even realistic scenarios) leaking out and providing a disincentive to go to war. They think if they can convince people it will be easy, everyone will go along.

If there is a discussion of realistic contingencies, it will be harder to drive people into war. That is why they so fastidiously avoided making plans for "post-war" Iraq (I love that term, did anyone let the Iraqis know we're in the "post-war" stage?). If people realized how hard it would be to occupy Iraq and build that nation from scratch, do you think they would have been as eager to go in the first place?

The Rumsfeld strategy is to start a war with no planning and then complain that you have the war you have, not the one you wish you had. It's ironic because they do no planning specifically because they want the war they wish to have.

Why do you think every retired general is screaming at the top of their lungs to fire Rumsfeld ? The generals have seen the mess we made in Iraq up close and it isn't pretty. They realize these guys in the administration have no idea what they're doing.

Right now, they're just getting a volunteer army and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, but if we have to fight the whole Middle East, it's all of us who are going to be dying for their arrogant, foolhardy mistakes.

By the way, is there anything more vile than a Republican telling you that the kids who signed up for our volunteer army knew what they were getting into, so they have no compunction about sending them into war? Yeah, I guess they had it coming.

Bush is a proven liar. Whether he's lying about biological weapons labs, leaks from his administration or warrantless spying, one thing is for sure, he cannot be trusted. He has no shame in continually and aggressively lying to the American people.

No one could have anticipated the breach of the levees? Please. Remember he said that after he sat through a long and extensive warning about how the levees might be breached. The man has no shame.

Would you trust George Bush to baby-sit your kids? How sure are you that he wouldn't fall asleep, or accidentally drop them on their head or forget to feed them? How sure are you that when he screwed something up he wouldn't lie to you about it afterward?

I wouldn't let him within a three state perimeter of my kids (and I don't even have any). And this is the guy we are going to trust to orchestrate a war against a much bigger, savvier, more organized enemy?

What I find really laughable is that in his own head, George Bush thinks he is chosen by God to lead America in perilous times, to bring freedom to the world and to "save" Iran.

He reminds me of a kid who is convinced he is Superman. He makes a cape out of napkins and jumps off the couch thinking he can fly. He crashes and cuts his head open. But little Georgy is so dense he doesn't get the memo. The next day, he's ready to jump again. He's sure it'll work this time.

Bush is the amalgamation of all the hideous and sad parts of the Republican Party. He is a Republican Frankenstein. He has the temperament of Barry Goldwater, the integrity of Richard Nixon, and the brains of Dan Quayle.

And we trust this guy with his finger on the button?

God help us all if he bombs Iran. And if you think he's not that stupid, you haven't been paying attention.

He says the idea of bombing Iran is "wild speculation." He also said we weren't wiretapping anybody without a court order. He says we're trying diplomacy first. That's exactly what he said about Iraq when we found out he was planning for the war all along. He says Iran is a gathering threat ...

Now, who do you trust more -- George Bush or General Anthony Zinni? General Zinni is the former head of US Central Command. He said he saw no evidence of Iraqi WMD before the war . He thought we didn't have enough troops to get the job done right. And now he thinks going into Iran is an even worse idea. Is there a single American who really believes George Bush knows better than General Zinni?

George Bush is the kid who was born on third and thinks he kicked a field goal. The slow kid on the short bus wants to drive us into Iran. Do you really want to go for that ride?

(Cenk Uygur is co-host of The Young Turks, the first liberal radio show to air nationwide. The Young Turks began as Sirius Satellite Radio’s first original program, and, while still on Sirius, is now nationally syndicated and available on itunes and online at www.theyoungturks.com and www.radiopower.org)


4. No Military Solution -- by William D. Hartung

Some members of the Bush administration never learn. Despite the debacle in Iraq, several administration officials have suggested publicly that regime change and military strikes may be the best way to deal with Iran's nascent nuclear enrichment program.

The furor over what course the United States should take toward Iran escalated this week with the publication in The New Yorker of an article by Seymour M. Hersh in which he quotes current and former defense and intelligence officials and sources close to the administration to the effect that the U.S. military is preparing concrete plans for a major bombing campaign against Iran, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.

Pressed to respond to these assertions, President Bush dismissed them as "wild speculation." But he acknowledged that planning for air strikes against Iran is under way and restated his opinion that Iran is part of an "axis of evil."

Tensions fueled by these revelations rose further when Iranian officials announced Tuesday that they have mastered the process of enriching uranium.

A high-ranking foreign policy adviser said this week that "the problem is that our policy has been all carrots and no sticks." Another senior administration official said that the debate over the use of force serves as a useful reminder to Iran "of where this could all go one day."

This is not the first time that Bush administration officials have implied the need for military action. In early March, Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that "the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct" of the Iranian regime. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has said a nuclear-armed Iran would be "just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time." And the Bush administration's recent national security strategy document identifies Iran as the greatest immediate threat to the United States, arguing that "we can't stand idly by as grave dangers materialize."

With the bulk of the Army tied down in Iraq, a "boots on the ground" version of regime change in Iran is out of the question.

A 2005 study by the U.S. Army War College suggests that bombing Iraq's nuclear facilities may be equally unworkable: "As for eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities militarily, the United States and Israel lack sufficient targeting intelligence to do this. ... Compounding these difficulties is what Iran might do in response to an attack. After being struck, Tehran could declare that it must acquire nuclear weapons as a matter of self-defense, withdraw from the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and accelerate its nuclear endeavors."

A military action with so little prospect of success is generating considerable opposition, even within the Bush camp. The Joint Chiefs of Staff opposes the nuclear option in Iran, and its views are likely to be decisive.

Some military planners believe that a conventional bombing campaign could lead the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. This is wishful thinking, akin to the thought process that persuaded the Kennedy administration to engage in the Bay of Pigs fiasco against Cuba that started 45 years ago tomorrow.

The impracticality of military options suggests that a diplomatic approach is still the most promising avenue for persuading Iran to forswear development of nuclear weapons. Luckily, there is time to give diplomacy a chance.

Even accounting for Iran's announcement that it can enrich uranium to the level needed to run a nuclear power plant, its current effort is still a small pilot program that would need to be radically expanded before it would be capable of manufacturing enough uranium to build a bomb. Most experts put the timeline on an Iranian bomb at least five to 10 years away.

There is considerable disagreement about the best diplomatic course to follow. The Bush administration is pushing for U.N. sanctions. Russia and China would prefer to leave the matter up to monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Some nongovernmental experts have suggested allowing Iran to have a modest uranium enrichment capability under strict IAEA surveillance. Others have suggested stronger safeguards on Iran and other potential nuclear powers, including steps to make inspections mandatory.

As former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has suggested, one thing is clear: Iran will be unlikely to compromise on its nuclear program while it is being threatened with destruction. Those administration officials who see bombing Iran as a prelude to regime change should step back and make room for pragmatic anti-nuclear diplomacy.

(William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School and the author of "Tangled Web II: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies." E -mail to: hartung@newschool.edu)