Iraq: the two-state solution (and other thoughts about that poor place butt-fucked by the US to little bloody pieces)

1. How to carve up a quagmire
Modest Proposal Dept.
Trying to bring peace to Iraq by dividing it along ethnic lines will only bring more trouble. The solution is a two-state partition. Welcome to New Babylon and Sistanistan
By DAVID APGAR/THE STAR

The world does not suffer from a short supply of new ideas for Iraq, but good ones are hard to come by. The military situation in Iraq has become so intractable that it, quite literally, cries out for political experimentation. That seems to be what top Pentagon generals mean when they say the only solutions for Iraq are political — as opposed to military.

About the only political alternative, other than moving toward direct talks with Iran and Syria, has been a three-way ethnic partition of Iraq. The problems of that approach, however, are glaring.

Either Kurds or Sunnis would go without the support of oil revenues, depending on which group won the struggle for the major oil fields near Kirkuk in the north of Iraq.

Turkey would probably feel compelled to invade a purely Kurdish state at some point, if only because its domestic Kurdish rebels would probably provoke a military reaction and try to use Kurdish Iraq as a refuge.

And a Shiite state could well be unstable, with the traditional, largely agrarian majority in the south pitted against the angry and desperately poor urban core of Moqtada al-Sadr's followers from the slums of east Baghdad. Signs of an internecine Shiite civil war have already emerged in fighting outside of Basra.

Finally, a three-way partition would make all the neighbours unhappy, not just Turkey. Saudi Arabia would be unsettled by a Shiite state on its border that included a populist movement like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. And Iran would be unhappy about an unapologetic Sunni state near its borders whose leadership helped Saddam prosecute his withering 10-year war against the Islamic Republic.

In spite of the problems inherent to three-way, ethnic-based partition, no one has talked much about a two-way partition. After all, at least one of the two parts of the former Iraq would mix ethnic groups, so it would not purchase the peace of ethnic homogeneity.

Still, the idea deserves a closer look. To date, the United States has tried lots of military alternatives — most recently redeploying troops to Baghdad. But it has not proposed many political alternatives to Iraqi leaders.

It is time for the United States to embrace the same kind of trial-and-error approach in its political efforts that it has used to avoid catastrophe in its thinly manned military efforts. In full recognition that such a proposal is useful only to the extent that it gets people thinking about better options, here is an outline of a two-state solution for Iraq.

The new border would run in a wavy line from southwest to northeast roughly through Baghdad's airport. The state to the northwest — let's call it New Babylon, just to keep track — would include all five million Kurds and nearly all five million Sunni.

It would include all of Baghdad and all two to three million urban and suburban Shia in its vicinity. It would also include all of the northern oil fields.

In contrast, the state to the southeast would be a purely Shiite state, including all the Shia of the rural south and Basra and all the major Shiite holy sites. Naturally, it would also include the southern oilfields. But it would include no part of metropolitan Baghdad, with the exception of access to the airport.

Let's call this southeastern state Sistanistan, for the moment. Of course, there is no way that the revered Shiite scholar and cleric Sistani would condescend to play a political role in any state, but we may as well be clear about whose influence would dominate this one.

It would be reasonable to expect a state like Sistanistan, which draws together the most traditional elements of Iraq's Shiite community — and none of Iraq's least traditional, Baghdad-based Shia — to observe a mild version of sharia law.

It would maintain cordial if not intimate relations with Iran, would become very rich from oil, and would function as a sort of Saudi-style guardian of the world's most important Shiite holy sites.

On the other hand, a polyglot state such as New Babylon, centred around the major metropolitan area of Baghdad, would probably focus on industrializing its agricultural and refining sectors and becoming a trade centre for the Middle East.

The reasons for such a partition have little to do with expectations, however, and much to do with the way it manages the incentives and fears of each of Iraq's major population groups today.

Let's turn the concept on its head and ask how the two-state solution would serve the needs of all the major ethnicities living precariously in today's Iraq. Primarily, there are four groups: the southern Shia; the Sunni community; the Kurdish community; and the metropolitan Shia most closely associated with al-Sadr.

The most traditional people in Iraq are probably the Shia who live south and east of Baghdad, perhaps reflecting their proximity to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. These are the people who arguably suffered the greatest hardship under Saddam. A homogeneous state of their own would seem to provide them the widest scope to adjust their government's jurisdiction over religious as well as civil life. It would also seem to provide them the greatest protection from any hostile coalition of less traditional groups from the north.

For Iraq's Sunni community, the establishment of a northern state immediately solves two problems. Instead of being a 20 per cent minority dominated by a Shiite population simmering with understandable resentment toward Sunni rule under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni would find themselves a 40 per cent plurality in New Babylon.

And instead of questionable access to oil in Shiite and Kurdish states under one possible three-way partition, the Sunni community would enjoy shared but uncompromised access to all the reserves of northern Iraq.

For Iraq's Kurdish community, New Babylon would solve two big problems. Like the Sunni, Kurds would enjoy shared but uncompromised access to all the oil reserves near Kirkuk in the north.

More important, however, is the fact that their state would be largely free from unreasonable threats from Turkey. It is true that Kurds would represent a 40 per cent plurality of the new state. Sixty per cent of that state, however, would be Arab, which simultaneously eliminates the danger of a purely Kurdish border state from the Turkish perspective and ensures political support from other Arab states.

Perhaps the most important reason to consider a two-state partition, however, derives from the needs of the urban Shia of Baghdad — and perhaps even the ambitions of Moqtada al-Sadr himself. A two-state partition arguably offers the best possible development solution for the inhabitants of places like Sadr City.

These Shia would comprise 20 per cent of the population of the northern state. They would inevitably be the kingmakers of New Babylon, supporting Kurdish and Sunni political parties depending on the attention those parties paid to the development needs of Baghdad's urban poor.

More immediately, they would no longer represent the vanguard — and an easily attacked one, at that — of a community of 15 million Shia threatening the livelihood of Iraq's Sunnis. As a minority of two to three million Shia in the northern state, they would instead be a potential political ally for both Kurds and Sunnis, and might well play a role similar to the minority Shiite population of Syria. The reasons insurgents attack them today would be gone.

Moqtada al-Sadr has repeatedly shown interest in working across sectarian lines, perhaps because he fears a purely Shiite state would marginalize him and ignore his poorer followers. He and his successors could well find themselves frequent compromise candidates for the northern state's presidency. And, in such a state, the needs of Baghdad's Shia would rarely go unheard.

Nobody can claim that two-state partition is a perfect solution. But all that is left on the table is probably to figure out what the least-bad option is for moving forward. And in that context, the two-state solution deserves a solid hearing — and testing.

(David Apgar is a contributing editor to The Globalist. He is the author of "Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don't Know")


2. America Loses Another War
Iraq: a shameful ass-whupping, or just a pathetic trouncing? Ugly disgrace? Choices, choices
By Mark Morford/ San Francisco Chronicle

The good news is, we're all back in harmony. All back on the same page. No more divisiveness and no more silly bickering and no more nasty and indignant red state/blue state rock throwing because we're finally all back in cozy let's-hug-it-out agreement: The "war" in Iraq is over. And what's more, we lost. Very, very badly.

Sure, you already knew. Sure, you sort of sensed from the beginning that we couldn't possibly win a bogus war launched by a nasty slew of corrupt pseudo-cowboys against both a bitterly contorted Islamic nation and a vague and ill-defined concept that has no center and no boundaries and that feeds on the very thing that tries to destroy it. It was sort of obvious, even if half the nation was just terrifically blinded by Bush administration lies and false shrieks of impending terror.

But now it's official. Or rather, more official. Now it's pretty much agreed upon on both sides of the aisle and in every Iraq Study Group and by every top-ranking general and newly minted defense secretary and in every facet of American culture save some of the gun-totin' flag-lickin' South. We lost. And what's more, we have no real clue what to do about it.

After all, it's not easy to accept. It's the thing we do not, cannot easily hear, the thing most Americans, no matter what their political stripe, just can't quite fathom because we're so damned strong and righteous and handy with a gun and we are the superpower and the God among men and the bringer of light to the world and therefore we never lose. Except, you know, when we do.

It's not like we were overpowered. We weren't outmanned or outgunned or outstrategized and hence we weren't defeated in any "traditional" kick-ass take-names sign-the-peace-accord way.

Nor was it because our beloved, undefeatable, can't-lose military doesn't have the latest and greatest killing tools of all time, the biggest budget, the most heroic of baffled and misled young soldiers sort of but not really willing to go off and fight and die for a cause no one could adequately explain or justify to them.

We still have the coolest, fastest planes. We still have the meanest billion-dollar technology. We still have the most imposing tanks and the most incredible weaponry and the badass night-vision goggles with the laser sights and the thermal heat-seeking readouts and the ability to track targets from two miles away in a dust storm. It doesn't matter.

What we don't have is, well, any idea what the hell we're doing, not anymore, not on the global stage. We lost this "war" and we lost it before we even began because we went in for all the wrong reasons and with all the wrong planning and with all the wrong leadership who had all the wrong motives based on all the wrong greedy self-serving insular faux-cowboy BS that your kids and your grandkids will be paying for until about the year 2056.

Maybe you don't agree. Maybe you say wait wait wait, it's not over at all, and we haven't lost yet. Isn't the fighting still raging? Can't we still "win" even though we're still losing soldiers by the truckload and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being brutally slaughtered every month and isn't Dubya still standing there, brow scrunched and confounded as a monkey clinging onto a shiny razor blade, refusing to let go and free us from the deadly trap, ignoring the Iraq Study Group and trying to figure out a way to stay the course and never give in and "mission accomplished" even as every single human around him, from the top generals to crusty old James Baker to the new and shockingly honest secretary of defense, says we are royally screwed and Iraq is now a vicious and chaotic civil war and it's officially one of the worst disasters in American history? Oh wait, you just answered your own question.

Yes, technically, the "war" is still on. The fighting is not over. And yes, you can even say we (brutally, tactlessly) installed ourselves with sufficient ego to give us a modicum of violent, volatile control over the Gulf region's remaining petroleum reserves -- which was, of course, much of the point in the first place.

But the nasty us-versus-them, good-versus-evil ideology is over. Ditto the numb sense of Bush's brutally simpleminded American "justice." Any lingering hint of anything resembling a truly valid and lucid and deeply patriotic reason for wasting a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and roughly an entire generation's worth of international respect? Gone.

What's left is one lingering, looming question: How do we accept defeat? How do we deal with the awkward, identity-mauling, ego-stomping idea that, once again, America didn't "win" a war it really had no right to launch in the first place? After all, isn't this the American slogan: "We may not always be right, but we are never wrong"?

It's still our most favorite idea, the thing our own childlike president loves to talk most about , burned into our national consciousness like a bad tattoo: We always win. We're the good guys. We're the chosen ones. We're the goddamn cavalry, flying the flag of truth, wrapped in strip malls and Ford pickups and McDonald's franchises. Right?

Wrong. If Vietnam's aftermath proved anything, it's that we are incredibly crappy losers. We deny, we reject, we evade and ignore and refuse responsibility until it becomes so silly and surreal even the staunchest warmonger has to cringe in embarrassment. At this point, it seems nearly impossible for America to accept defeat with anything resembling perspective and dignity and the understanding that maybe, just maybe, we ain't all that saintly and ain't all that perfect and maybe God really isn't necessarily on our side after all, because if God took sides she wouldn't actually be, you know, God.

But what happens to a country if they lose the thing that supposedly defines them most? If we don't have our bogus "victory," if we don't always win, if we don't have a sense of righteousness so strong and so inflated and so utterly impenetrable that even when it seems like we've lost, we still stumble through some sort of offensive end zone victory dance, well, what's left?

What, conscience? Humility? Humanitarianism? Or how about the realization that we could maybe, just maybe learn to be defined by something other than rogue aggressiveness and the vicious need to win? Something like, say, a mindful, flawed, difficult but oh-so-incredibly-essential move toward that most challenging and rewarding of human ideals, peace ?

Yeah, right. Who the hell wants that?

(Mark Morford is a columnist for sfgate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle.)


3. Our 'Messianic Impulse' -- by Robert Kagan

As Americans struggle to find an answer to the serious problems in Iraq, larger and broader questions beckon. How did we wind up in Iraq in the first place? Some argue that we were too aggressive and self-righteous in promoting our principles, too meddlesome, too arrogant in seeking to transform the world, too quick to intervene militarily in crises far from our shores and remote from our interests. If the United States would only change its approach to the world, if it understood the virtues of limits, modesty and humility, we could avoid foreign policy debacles and the world would be a safer place.

This is actually a very old debate, which Americans have thrashed out in every generation. The expansive, idealistic, interventionist approach to the world has deep roots in the American character, going back to the nation's founding and the universal principles of liberalism embedded in the Declaration of Independence. As George Will once put it, the "messianic impulse" has been "a constant of America's national character, and a component of American patriotism."

But no less constant has been opposition to this grand vision, which critics since the nation's founding era have regarded as a recipe for endless war abroad and the undoing of American democracy at home.

The fight began at the beginning, in the ratification debates over the Constitution. Supporters such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison insisted that a strong central government was vital if the United States was to become a world power capable of shouldering its international responsibilities. The young United States was the "embryo of a great empire," Hamilton proclaimed. Patrick Henry, in turn, accused supporters of the Constitution of trying to "convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire," thereby betraying the nation's purpose. "When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object."

John Quincy Adams took both sides of the struggle, warning in 1821 against idealistic ventures abroad "in search of monsters to destroy" but a few years later insisting Americans had a duty "to take a conspicuous and leading" role in the world on behalf of their "principles and morals."

In the last decades of the 19th century, Lincoln's Republican Party widened this expansive and interventionist view, celebrating "the future greatness and destiny of the United States" and its pivotal role "in the improvement of the world." Democrat Grover Cleveland's secretary of state, Walter Q. Gresham, in response, warned against the nation's natural "impulse to rush into difficulties that do not concern it, except in a highly imaginary way." To restrain this "indulgence" was "a duty we owe to the world as an example of the strength, the moderation, and the beneficence of popular government."

Robert A. Taft continued the battle against the ambitious, world-transforming policies of FDR, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson. "We should not undertake to defend the ideals of democracy in foreign countries," the influential Republican senator cautioned, lest the United States become a "meddlesome Mattie" with "our fingers in every pie." He warned against the arrogance and temptations of dominant power, for such power "over other nations, however benevolent its purpose, leads inevitably to imperialism." Truman and Acheson rejected this advice and instead pursued a preponderance of global power, "situations of strength" around the globe, and an ideology-laden strategy of containment that theoretically could lead America to war anywhere on the planet, as it did in Vietnam.

Today Taft is in bad odor in polite society, but his arguments against American overseas adventurism have been picked up again by the latest critics of our expansive foreign policy tradition. The old argument continues.

The problem for those who have tried to steer the United States away from its long history of expansiveness, then and now, is that Americans' belief in the possibility of global transformation -- the "messianic" impulse -- is and always has been the more dominant strain in the nation's character. It is rooted in the nation's founding principles and is the hearty offspring of the marriage between Americans' driving ambitions and their overpowering sense of righteousness.

Critics have occasionally succeeded in checking these tendencies, temporarily. Failures of world-transforming efforts overseas have also had their effect, but only briefly. Five years after the end of the Vietnam War, which seemed to many to presage the rejection of Achesonian principles of power and ideological triumphalism, Americans elected Ronald Reagan, who took up those principles again with a vengeance.

Today many hope and believe that the difficulties in Iraq will turn Americans once and for all against ambition and messianism in the world. History is not on their side.

Robert Kagan writes a monthly column for The Post. His most recent book is "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy.


4. Why Withdrawal Is Unmentionable
Staying the Course with James Baker and the Iraq Study Group
By Michael Schwartz/ TomDispatch.com

The report of James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group has already become a benchmark for Iraq policy, dominating the print and electronic media for several days after its release, and generating excited commentary by all manner of leadership types from Washington to London to Baghdad. Even if most of the commentary continues to be negative , we can nevertheless look forward to highly publicized policy changes in the near future that rely for their justification on this report, or on one of the several others recently released, or on those currently being prepared by the Pentagon, the White House, and the National Security Council.

This is not, however, good news for those of us who want the U.S. to end its war of conquest in Iraq. Quite the contrary: The ISG report is not an "exit strategy;" it is a new plan for achieving the Bush administration's imperial goals in the Middle East.

The ISG report stands out among the present flurry of re-evaluations as the sole evaluation of the war by a group not beholden to the President; as the only report containing an unadorned negative evaluation of the current situation (vividly captured in the oft-quoted phrase "dire and deteriorating"); and as the only public document with unremitting criticism of the Bush administration's conduct of the war.

It is this very negativity that brings into focus the severely constrained nature of the debate now underway in Washington -- most importantly, the fact that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (immediate or otherwise) is simply not going to be part of the discussion. Besides explicitly stating that withdrawal is a terrible idea -- "our leaving would make [the situation] worse" -- the Baker report is built around the idea that the United States will remain in Iraq for a very long time.

To put it bluntly, the ISG is not calling on the Bush administration to abandon its goal of creating a client regime that was supposed to be the key to establishing the U.S. as the dominant power in the Middle East. Quite the contrary. As its report states: "We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq." If you ignore the text sprinkled with sugar-coated words like "representative government," the report essentially demands that the Iraqi government pursue policies shaped to serve "America's interest and values in the years ahead."

Don't be fooled by this often quoted passage from the Report: "By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq." The ebullient interpretations of this statement by the media have been misleading in three different ways. First, the combat brigades mentioned in this passage represent far less than half of all the troops in Iraq. The military police, the air force, the troops that move the equipment, those assigned to the Green Zone, the soldiers that order, store, and move supplies, medical personnel, intelligence personnel, and so on, are not combat personnel; and they add up to considerably more than 70,000 of the approximately 140,000 troops in Iraq at the moment. They will all have to stay -- as well as actual combat forces to protect them and to protect the new American advisors who are going to flood into the Iraqi army -- because the Iraqi army has none of these units and isn't going to develop them for several years, if ever.

Second, the ISG wants those "withdrawn" American troops "redeployed," either inside or outside Iraq. In all likelihood, this will mean that at least some of them will be stationed in the five permanent bases inside Iraq that the Bush administration has already spent billions constructing, and which are small American towns, replete with fast food restaurants, bus lines, and recreation facilities. There is no other place to put these redeployed troops in the region, except bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, none of which are really suited to, or perhaps eager to, host a large influx of American troops (guaranteed to be locally unpopular and a magnet for terrorist attacks).

Third, it's important not to ignore those two modest passages: "subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground" and "not necessary for force protection." In other words, if the Iraqi troops meant to replace the redeployed American ones are failures, then some or all of the troops might never be redeployed. In addition, even if Iraqi troops did perform well, Americans might still be deemed necessary to protect the remaining (non-combat) troops from attack by insurgents and other forces. Given that American troops have not been able to subdue the Sunni rebellion, which is still on a growth curve, it is highly unlikely that their Iraqi substitutes will do any better. In other words, even if the "withdrawal" parts of the Baker report were accepted by the President, which looks increasingly unlikely, its plan has more holes and qualifications than Swiss cheese.

Put another way, no proposal at present on the table in Washington is likely to result in significant reductions even in the portion of American troops defined as "combat brigades." That is why this statement says that the combat troops " could be out of Iraq," not " will be out of Iraq" in the first quarter of 2008.

So, the ISG report contemplates -- best case scenario -- "a considerable military presence in the region, with our still significant [at least 70,000 strong] force in Iraq, and with our powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar…" Given a less-than-optimum scenario, the American presence in Iraq would assumedly remain much higher, perhaps even approaching current levels. As if this isn't bad news enough, the report is laced with qualifiers indicating that the ISG members fear their new strategy might not work, that "there is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq" -- a theme that will certainly be picked up this week as the right-wing of the Republican Party and angry neocons continue to blast at the report.

Danger to Empire

Why was the Iraq Study Group so reluctant to advocate the withdrawal of American troops and the abandonment of the Bush administration's goal of pacifying Iraq? The likely explanation is: Its all-establishment membership (and the teams of experts that gave it advice) understood that withdrawing from Iraq would be an imperially momentous decision. It would, in fact, mean the abandonment of over two decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East. To grasp this, it's helpful to compare the way most Americans look at the war in Iraq to the way those in power view it.

Most Americans initially believed that the U.S. went into Iraq to shut down Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and/or simply to topple a dangerous dictator (or even a dictator somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks). Of course, had that really been the case, the Bush administration should have withdrawn almost immediately. Even today, it could, at least theoretically, withdraw and declare victory the day after Saddam Hussein is executed, since the WMDs and the 9/11 connection were evanescent. In this scenario, the dismal post-invasion military failure would represent nothing but the defeat of Bush's personal crusade -- articulated only after the Hussein regime was toppled -- to bring American-style democracy to a benighted land.

Because of this, most people, whether supporters or opponents of the war, expect each new round of policy debates to at least consider the option of withdrawal; and many hold out the hope that Bush will finally decide to give up his democratization pipe dream. Even if Bush is incapable of reading the handwriting on the Iraqi wall, this analysis encourages us to hope that outside advisers like the ISG will be "pragmatic" enough to bring the message home to him, before the war severely undermines our country economically and in terms of how people around the world think about us.

However, a more realistic look at the original goals of the invasion makes clear why withdrawal cannot be so easily embraced by anyone loyal to the grandiose foreign policy goals adopted by the U.S. right after the fall of the Soviet Union. The real goals of the war in Iraq add up to an extreme version of this larger vision of a "unipolar world" orbiting around the United States.

The invasion of 2003 reflected the Bush administration's ambition to establish Iraq as the hub of American imperial dominance in the oil heartlands of the planet. Unsurprisingly, then, the U.S. military entered Iraq with plans already in hand to construct and settle into at least four massive military bases that would become nerve centers for our military presence in the "arc of instability" extending from Central Asia all the way into Africa -- an "arc" that just happened to contain the bulk of the world's exportable oil.

The original plan included wresting control of Iraqi oil from Saddam's hostile Baathist government and delivering it into the hands of the large oil companies through the privatization of new oil fields and various other special agreements. It was hoped that privatized Iraqi oil might then break OPEC's hold on the global oil spigot. In the Iraq of the Bush administration's dreams, the U.S. would be the key player in determining both the amount of oil pumped and the favored destinations for it. (This ambition was implicitly seconded by the Baker Commission when it recommended that the U.S. "should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise")

All of this, of course, was contingent upon establishing an Iraqi government that would be a junior partner in American Middle Eastern policy; that, under the rule of an Ahmed Chalabi or Iyad Allawi, would, for instance, be guaranteed to support administration campaigns against Iran and Syria. Bush administration officials have repeatedly underscored this urge, even in the present circumstances, by attempting, however ineffectively, to limit the ties of the present Shia-dominated Iraqi government to Iran.

Withdrawal from Iraq would signal the ruin of all these hopes. Without a powerful American presence, permanent bases would not be welcomed by any regime that might emerge from the current cauldron in Baghdad; every faction except the Kurds is adamantly against them. U.S. oil ambitions would prove similarly unviable. Though J. Paul Bremer, John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, our three ambassador-viceroys in Baghdad, have all pushed through legislation mandating the privatization of oil (even embedding this policy in the new constitution), only a handful of top Iraqi politicians have actually embraced the idea. The religious leaders who control the Sunni militias oppose it, as do the Sadrists, who are now the dominant faction in the Shia areas. The current Iraqi government is already making economic treaties with Iran and even sought to sign a military alliance with that country that the Americans aborted.

Still Staying the Course

Added to all this, from Lebanon to Pakistan, the administration's political agenda for the "arc of instability" is now visibly in a state of collapse. This agenda, of course, predated Bush, going back to the moment in 1991 when the Soviet Union simply evaporated, leaving an impoverished Russia and a set of wobbly independent states in its place. While the elder George Bush and Bill Clinton did not embrace the use of the military as the primary instrument of foreign policy, they fully supported the goal of American preeminence in the Middle East and worked very hard to achieve it -- through the isolation of Iran, sanctions against Iraq, various unpublicized military actions against Saddam's forces, and a ratcheting upward of permanent basing policies throughout the Gulf region and Central Asia.

This is the context for the peculiar stance taken by the Iraq Study Group towards the administration's disaster in Iraq. Coverage has focused on the way the report labeled the situation as "grave and deteriorating" and on its call for negotiations with the previously pariah states of Iran and Syria. In itself, the negotiation proposal is perfectly reasonable and has the side effect of lessening the possibility that the Bush administration will launch an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future.

But no one should imagine that the "new" military strategy proposed by Baker and his colleagues includes dismissing the original goals of the war. In their letter of transmittal, ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton declared:

"All options have not been exhausted. We believe it is still possible to pursue different policies that can give Iraq an opportunity for a better future, combat terrorism, stabilize a critical region of the world and protect America's credibility, interests and values."

This statement, couched in typical Washington-speak, reiterates those original ambitious goals and commits the ISG to a continuing effort to achieve them. The corpus of the report does nothing to dispel that assertion. Its military strategy calls for a (certainly quixotic) effort to use Iraqi troops to bring about the military victory American troops have failed for three years to achieve. The diplomatic initiatives call for a (certainly quixotic) effort to enlist the aid of Syria and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and other neighbors, in defeating the insurgency. And the centerpiece of the economic initiatives seeks to accelerate the process of privatizing oil, the clearest sign of all that Baker and Hamilton -- like Bush and his circle -- remain committed to the grand scheme of maintaining the United States as the dominant force in the region.

Even as the group called on the President to declare that the U.S. "does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq" once the country is secure, it immediately hedged this intention by pointing out that we "could consider" temporary bases, "if the Iraqi government were to request it." Of course, if the Bush administration were somehow to succeed in stabilizing a compliant client regime, such a regime would surely request that American troops remain in their "temporary" bases on a more-or-less permanent basis, since its survival would depend on them.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the ISG report is its embrace of the Bush administration's imperial attitude toward the Iraqi government. Although the report repeatedly calls for American "respect" for Iraqi "sovereignty" (an implicit criticism of the last three years of Iraq policy), it also offers a series of what are essentially non-negotiable demands that would take an already weak and less-than-sovereign government and strip it of control over anything that makes governments into governments.

As a start, the "Iraqi" military would be flooded with 10,000-20,000 new American "advisors," ensuring that it would continue to be an American-controlled military, even if a desperately poor and recalcitrant one, into the distant future. In addition, the ISG offered a detailed program for how oil should be extracted (and the profits distributed) as well as specific prescriptions for handling a number of pressing problems, including fiscal policy, militias, the city of Kirkuk, sectarianism, de-Baathification, and a host of other issues that normally would be decisions for an Iraqi government, not an American advisory panel in Washington. It is hardly surprising, then, that Iraqi leaders almost immediately began complaining that the report, for all its bows to "respect," completely lacked it.

Most striking is the report's twenty-first (of seventy-nine) recommendations, aimed at describing what the United States should do if the Iraqis fail to satisfactorily fulfill the many tasks that the ISG has set for them.

"If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government."

This could be interpreted as a threat that the United States will withdraw -- and the mainstream media has chosen to interpret it just that way. But why then did Baker and his colleagues not word this statement differently? ("… the United States should reduce, and ultimately withdraw, its forces from Iraq.") The phrase "reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government" is probably better interpreted literally: that if that government fails to satisfy ISG demands, the U.S. should transfer its "political, military, or economic support" to a new leadership within Iraq that it feels would be more capable of making "substantial progress toward" the milestones it has set. In other words, this passage is more likely a threat of a coup d'état than a withdrawal strategy -- a threat that the façade of democracy would be stripped away and a "strong man" (or a government of "national salvation") installed, one that the Bush administration or the ISG believes could bring the Sunni rebellion to heel.

Here is the unfortunate thing. Evidently, the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq has not yet deteriorated enough to convince even establishment American policymakers, who have been on the outside these last years, to follow the lead of the public (as reflected in the latest opinion polls ) and abandon their soaring ambitions of Middle East domination. If they haven't done so, imagine where George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are in policy terms. So far, it seems everyone of power or influence in Washington remains committed to "staying the course."

(Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, as well as on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet websites, including Tomdispatch.com, Asia Times, Mother Jones.com, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure , and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net)


5. To Stem Iraqi Violence, U.S. Aims to Create Jobs -- by Josh White and Griff Witte/Washington Post

As Iraq descends further into violence and disarray, the Pentagon is turning to a weapon some believe should have been used years ago: jobs.

Members of a small Pentagon task force have gone to the most dangerous areas of Iraq over the past six months to bring life to nearly 200 state-owned factories abandoned by the Coalition Provisional Authority after the U.S. -led invasion in 2003. Their goal is to employ tens of thousands of Iraqis in coming months, part of a plan to reduce soaring unemployment and lessen the violence that has crippled progress.

Defense officials and military commanders say that festering unemployment -- at 70 percent in some areas -- is leading Iraqi men to take cash from insurgents to place bombs on roads or take shots at U.S. troops. Other Iraqis are joining sectarian attacks because their quality of life has slipped dramatically, officials say.

Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli , the top U.S. field commander in Iraq, said that tackling unemployment could do far more good than adding U.S. combat troops or more aggressively pursuing an elusive enemy. He said the project to open the factories and stimulate local economies is long overdue and was born "of desperation."

"We need to put the angry young men to work," Chiarelli said in a phone interview from Baghdad . "One of the key hindrances to us establishing stability in Iraq is the failure to get the economy going. A relatively small decrease in unemployment would have a very serious effect on the level of sectarian killing going on."

The CPA initially hoped private investors would buy or lease the state factories, but that did not happen as security faltered and much of Iraq became inaccessible. As privatization hopes failed, the factories languished; some were in pristine form and others had been looted when the Pentagon task force examined them this fall. The tens of thousands of Iraqis who used to make them run -- the country's second-largest employment group, after the army -- remained out of work.

Pentagon officials say the vast majority of former Iraqi factory workers are still unemployed and are bringing in no pay. A small portion of the workforce receives government stipends, akin to welfare, but the pay system is badly flawed and provides about 20 percent of what the workers would make if fully employed, the officials said.

Economic development is a departure from the military's usual missions, but officials think the Defense Department 's heft as a consumer of goods and services can boost the effort. The department has been reaching out to U.S. companies that can place large orders for products from Iraq.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England set the task force in motion in June after Paul A. Brinkley , deputy undersecretary of defense, returned from a visit to Iraq the month before.

Brinkley, who returned last night from a trip to Iraq with his team, said thousands of Iraqis lost their jobs and the ability to support their families when CPA projections dimmed. Unrest followed the absence of work.

"After three years of unemployment in excess of 50 percent, there are no people in the world that wouldn't be undergoing violence and militias," Brinkley said. "That's human nature. And I think we have to do whatever we have to do to alleviate that problem if we are going to create stability."

So far, members of the task force have visited 26 factories in some of the worst areas of the country, traveling to Baghdad, Fallujah ,Mosul ,Najaf and Ramadi to inspect facilities that make cement, tile, rubber and textiles. They have identified 10 factories -- their "hot list" of facilities in both Sunni and Shiite areas -- that they think could be open and employing more than 11,000 Iraqis within the next month.

The task force hopes to have a rolling system of factory openings spanning 2007. Part of that effort, its members said, is to reevaluate how the Defense Department spends nearly $4 billion each year to support troops in Iraq.

Brinkley said he hopes that at least 25 percent of that total -- about $1 billion -- could be spent on orders from Iraqi companies that previously have gone to firms in neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Kuwait . "We're not seeking to invest in Iraq, but to buy from Iraq," Brinkley said.

Stuart W. Bowen Jr. , the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office has been critical of the rebuilding effort, said that defense officials are "right on target in pushing this."

"It's about stimulating interest and getting contracts going between U.S. firms and Iraqi firms. That's the goal," he said. "The solution in Iraq is not primarily a military one. It is primarily an economic and political solution."

Bowen said defense officials recently met with about two dozen key business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to gauge private industry's interest in the program. He acknowledged that corruption and lack of security remain major obstacles to U.S. commercial investment in Iraq but said he is impressed that business leaders "recognize that and are still interested in moving forward."

Caterpillar Inc. , a $36 billion construction equipment firm, is one of the first U.S. companies to show interest. Gerald L. Shaheen, a Caterpillar group president and chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said he probably would be looking for low-tech supplies, such as hinges, but said the program dovetails with the company's interest in expanding opportunities in the Middle East .

"But I can't look at this solely as a business proposition. I've already got suppliers," Shaheen said. "I'm doing this because I think there's a social responsibility not only to the Iraqi people but to our troops."

Dow Chemical Co. , a $46 billion firm that sells plastics and other products in more than 175 countries, is also considering what supplies it can purchase from Iraq.

"We see this as a positive initiative and very much hope that we can find the appropriate opportunities to support business activity in the country," a Dow spokesman said.

U.S. businesses were looking at Iraq as a significant opportunity before the war began. With vast oil resources, an underserved population and a strategic location, that nation had all the markings of a place for U.S firms to expand. But few have found success there.

Major American companies that went into Iraq on U.S. government contracts, including Bechtel , Parsons and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, had hoped reconstruction work would serve as a natural bridge to private-sector deals in Iraq. Instead, they found rampant violence, with many U.S.-funded projects coming under attack and workers being targeted. The firms also received bad publicity when projects did not go as planned.

Now, with their contracts expiring, Parsons and Bechtel are closing up shop in Iraq and returning home. KBR is doing the same with its reconstruction work, though it continues to hold a major contract supporting the U.S. Army .

"We're pleading with the companies to give Iraq a second or third look," said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Christman, senior vice president for international affairs at the Chamber of Commerce. "This is very different from asking that they go into Fallujah and build a plant. That's not the intent."

Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass .), incoming chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee , said part of the CPA "disaster" was that obvious ideas, such as creating employment for Iraqis, were ignored.

"It's a concept that common sense would dictate to pursue," Delahunt said. "I think the key question is: Is it too late?"

Chiarelli said unemployment is daunting because many working Iraqis support up to 13 family members, meaning unemployment has exponential effects on the country.

"There's no doubt in my mind that it has the potential to turn the tide," he said. "I find it unbelievable after four years that we haven't come to that realization. . . . To me, it's huge. It's as important as just about any other part of the campaign plan."