Iraq -- A Surge Of Confusion

July 24, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Matt Duss

IRAQ

A Surge of Confusion

In an interview on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asserted that the 2007 troop surge in Iraq "began the Anbar awakening," the process by which Sunni tribal leaders allied with U.S. force and turned against al Qaeda in Iraq. McCain also suggested that to disagree with his version of history "does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed" in Iraq. In fact, it is McCain himself who has done a disservice to history. The Anbar awakening began in the late summer and early fall of 2006, months before the surge was announced in January 2007. While the Anbar awakening is an important contributor to the drop in violence in Iraq, it is only one of several factors. Meanwhile, the stated goal of the surge -- Iraqi political reconciliation -- remains unmet.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The awakening began in the town of Ramadi in Anbar province in September 2006, under the command of Army Col. Sean MacFarland. MacFarland sought to build ties to local leaders to draw their support away from the insurgency. In his account of the events in Ramadi, MacFarland wrote: "A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made those younger leaders open to our overtures." Eventually U.S. forces were able to establish credibility with local leaders, who turned against the insurgents. The new approach eventually spread outward to other Iraqi provinces. A second important factor in the decreased violence was the decision by Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to declare a "freeze" of his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia in the wake of violent clashes in the shrine city of Karbala in late August 2007. The Jaysh al-Mahdi had been regarded by the U.S. military as a threat equal to, if not greater than, al Qaeda in Iraq by virtue of their being an indigenous, nationalist movement with strong political support among poor Iraqis. Gen. David Petraeus himself recognized Sadr's cooperation as an essential component in the drop in violence in and around Baghdad. A third factor was the separation of Sunni and Shi'a Iraqis into protected enclaves as a result of a massive and terrifying campaign of sectarian cleansing by Sunni and Shi'a militias in Baghdad, and the construction of concrete barriers around these enclaves. The addition of 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq encouraged, supported, and consolidated each of these phenomena, but very likely could not have worked without them.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG: While Gen. Petraeus is credited with reviving the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine, the Anbar strategy that is the center-piece of the surge violates a central tenet of that doctrine in that it does not redirect political authority toward the central government. The deals that have been made are between Sunni tribal militias and U.S. forces, not the Iraqi government. The Sunni militias have not been incorporated into the Iraq Security forces in any substantial numbers, and questions remain as to their loyalties and intentions. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made clear that he views these militias as a threat to the authority of the central government. In a February 2008 report from the Center for American Progress on the Awakenings movement, Brian Katulis and others wrote that "what has been extolled as a central 'success' of the surge has also exacerbated existing political divisions and fomented new political cleavages in an already fractured and fragile Iraqi body politic. [The Sunni militias] are challenging each other, traditional Sunni Arab political parties, and the Iraqi government." Echoing this, Steven Simon wrote in Foreign Affairs that "the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq." Simon also wrote that the lack of accommodation between the Iraqi government and the Sunni militias "will impede Iraq's political development for years to come unless specific steps are taken in the near term to bring the Sunni army the surge created under the rubric of the state." Simon concludes, "These steps are not being taken."

GOAL OF THE SURGE REMAINS UNMET: When President Bush announced the surge in January 2007, he declared that the goal of greater security was to "help make reconciliation possible." More than a year and a half after that speech, this reconciliation has not occurred in any meaningful way. Though some benchmark legislation has been passed, most of these laws have been worded so vaguely as to make their implementation extremely problematic. On Wednesday, after months of intense negotiating, Iraqi President Jalal Talibani "rejected the recently passed provincial elections law...a move that appears to doom what has been touted as all-important legislation for the country." This is one of many indicators that, as Matthew Duss wrote in the Guardian, "no real consensus yet exists among Iraqis as to what the new Iraq will be." As evidenced by numerous statements from Iraqi government officials over the last months, "consensus does exist...around the belief that no genuine, sustainable Iraqi unity can develop while the Iraqi government continues to be underwritten by a foreign military presence."

GOOD NEWS

"The House yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to slow the steepest slide in house prices in a generation" and rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure. The bill is expected to pass the Senate and be signed by President Bush.

AFGHANISTAN -- IRAQI OFFICIAL SAYS AL-QAIDA IN IRAQ HEADING TO AFGHANISTAN: Yesterday, Iraq's ambassador to the United States said that "al-Qaida's foreign fighters who have for years bedeviled Iraq are increasingly going to Afghanistan to fight instead." Citing the success of the so-called "Anbar Awakening," ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said "we have heard reports recently that many of the foreign fighters that were in Iraq have left, either back to their homeland or going to fight in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now seeming to be more suitable for al-Qaida fighters." Meanwhile, the New York Times reports today that "the Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country's aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border." Some members of Congress have indicated they will try to block the move, arguing that "F-16s do not help the counterterrorism campaign and defy the administration's urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal areas."

MILITARY -- ANTI-GAY ACTIVIST CRITICIZED BY BOTH PARTIES AT DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL HEARING: A "crusader against gays in the military torpedoed her own ship" yesterday, during the first congressional hearings on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in 15 years. The House Armed Services Committee invited four veterans and right-wing activist Elaine Donnelly of the Center of American Readiness, a group devoted to opposing gays in the military, to testify. In what the Washington Post's Dana Milbank called "an extraordinary exhibition of rage," Donnelly -- who apparently never served in the military herself -- attacked the "San Francisco left" and issued dire warnings of "exotic forms of sexual expression," giving as evidence a claim that "a group of black lesbians" assaulted another soldier in 1974. Other witnesses were stunned: retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, "rolled her eyes in disbelief" and retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, "ooked as if he would explode." Members of both parties on the panel seemed united against Donnelly. Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR) called Donnelly’s statements "just bonkers" and "dumb," while Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) told Donnelly, "You're saying [a lesbian] has no right to serve her country because she happens to have a different sexual orientation than you."

ETHICS -- DAVIS: PRESSURE TO RUSH HICKS' TRIAL CAME DAY AFTER AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR MEEETING: In March 2007, Australian native David Hicks, who was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, became the first person to be sentenced by a military commission convened under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Last February, Col. Morris Davis, the lead prosecutor in Hicks' trial, told the Australian that the Pentagon "leaned on" him to rush Hicks' trial, even though at the time he "had no regulations for trial by military commissions." In an interview with WAMU's Diane Rehm on Tuesday, Morris added details of how "political influence" was involved in Hicks' trial. On January 9, 2007, Davis says the Defense Department's General Counsel, William Haynes, called him up "the day after there was a meeting with the Australian ambassador" and asked, "how quickly can you charge David Hicks?" Bush administration political appointees appear to have meddled in Hicks' case in order to help their key conservative ally, Australian Prime Minister John Howard. In early 2007, Howard was facing a serious electoral challenge from Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who eventually went on to defeat him. Hicks' incarceration at Guantanamo Bay was a contentious issue in Australian politics at the time. In February 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney visited Howard in Australia, where the PM lobbied for the trial to "be brought on as soon as humanly possible and with no further delay." A month later, Hicks was sentenced and released back to Australia with critics airing suspicions that Cheney had interceded.

Conservatives are losing the new-media war, the Politico notes. As the 2008 campaign progresses, "it’s becoming increasingly clear that the absence of any websites on the right devoted to reporting -- as opposed to just commenting on the news -- is proving politically costly to Republicans."

Iraq's Ambassador to the U.S. warns that al-Qaeda's foreign fighters "are increasingly going to Afghanistan to fight." Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said "al-Qaeda is finding it now increasingly difficult to operate in Iraq, beginning with the rebellion of the largely Sunni tribes in Anbar Province."

Pentagon auditors "were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on major defense contractors to make them look more favorable instead of exposing wrongdoing and charges of overbilling," a new Government Accountability Office report found. Supervisors at the auditing agency "attempted to intimidate auditors, prevented them from speaking with GAO investigators and created a ‘generally abusive work environment,' the report said."

"About 2 million Americans get a raise Thursday as the federal minimum wage rises 70 cents. ... The increase, from $5.85 to $6.55 per hour, is the second of three annual increases required by a 2007 law." Higher gas and food prices, however, "are swallowing it up."

FEMA "asked a federal judge yesterday for immunity from lawsuits over potentially dangerous fumes in government-issued trailers that have housed tens of thousands of Gulf Coast hurricane victims." A government lawyer argued that "FEMA's decisions in responding to a disaster, including its use of travel trailers after Katrina, are legally protected from 'judicial second-guessing.'"

And finally: Some senators are still proud to associate themselves with President Bush. In "an examination of the wall decorations of all 100 Senate offices," Politico recently found that "more than a quarter” of the public waiting rooms, 27 in total, feature a picture of Bush. In all, 22 Republicans, four Democrats and one independent display their fondness for Bush on their walls.

"The House yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to slow the steepest slide in house prices in a generation" and rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure. The bill is expected to pass the Senate and be signed by President Bush.

THINK PROGRESS: Max Boot: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's timeline endorsement was "ambiguous," Iraqi government isn't asking the U.S. to leave.

WONK ROOM: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) on the Emmett Till Bill: "They're playing games."

HUFFINGTON POST: Former Centcom Commander ret. Gen. John Abizaid: "We can't be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there."

DEMOCRACY ARSENAL: Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has a plan to hunt wildebeest in order to feed refugees, but wildebeests are an endangered species.

OHIO: "Ohio should require every resident to buy health insurance and require every insurer to accept anyone who applies, according to a recommendation presented Wednesday to Gov. Ted Strickland.."

ECONOMY: "The stumbling U.S. economy is forcing states to slash spending and cut jobs in order to close a projected $40 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year."

ENVIRONMENT: "Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces to propose a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions through use of a 'cap and trade' system."

"Sir, perhaps the best that can be said is that the vice president belongs neither to the executive nor to the legislative branch, but is attached by the constitution to the latter."
-- Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, 6/26/08

VERSUS

"It's my own belief that the Vice President is a member of the executive branch."
-- Attorney General Michael Mukasey, 7/23/08

Think Progress

A Surge of Confusion

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