White Noise Insanity

It appears to many that the surge of troops expected from Bush this week is part of a push for "ethnic cleansing" of Baghdad and other places around Iraq. The Government of Iraq is dominated by the Shiites and in combination with their militias controlled by al Sadr the fighting to force the Sunnis out of Baghdad has been going on all summer, but this time it seems that George W bush is going to put 20,000 US soldiers at the disposal of the Iraqi President to make his move to "clean up Baghdad" much easier.


One last push and that’s you finished in Iraq, Mr President

Simon Jenkins

This is the week, we are told, when George Bush will announce positively the last military assault on insurgency in Iraq before he finally loses patience and quits. The so-called surge will supposedly correct the mistake of last year’s Operation Together Forward. Without law and order in the capital the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq is impossible. But since that order cannot, after all, be assigned to Iraqi forces, the Americans must throw another 20,000-30,000 troops into the conflict instead.

I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.

American puppets in Baghdad’s green zone will do as they are told, but the only real enthusiasts are neocon diehards and Tony Blair. They were represented on this page two weeks ago by Frederick Kagan, in a fantasy revival of the 2003 “clear and hold” strategy, which amounts to telling American soldiers to commit suicide.

and this piece on Taylor Marsh's blog

Prelude to a Massacre

As President Bush puts the "final touches" on his "new" Iraq policy this weekend, Washington waits with bated breath for the fight to come. Having called up his Surgin' General, David Petraeus, Mr. Bush is ready to embark on his Iraq escalation against the will of the American public and its elected Congress.

It is time to consider the consequences of Mr. Bush's policy of escalation in Iraq.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Bush's policy is based on the ideological fantasies of the neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute. The neo-conservative of the moment is AEI's Fred Kagan. In his report, entitled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq", he lays out the "new way forward".

Throughout history, when small minds have attempted to think big, the results have been catastrophic for the world. This period of history is proving no different.

(snip)

Fred Kagan's plan is a strategy for ethnic cleansing. If implemented, the Bush Administration will actively participate in a policy of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. They will make the American military and the American people complicit in their policy.

Mr. Kagan's plan focuses on Baghdad as the center of operations. His plan is to clear, or "ethnically cleanse" if you will, the Sunni parts of Baghdad:

We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient. These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.

(snip)

Mr. Maliki and Mr. Kagan are in complete agreement. The way to secure peace is to decrease the violence by ethnically cleansing Baghdad of Sunnis. Then, the Shia militias will make nice and peace will reign. Call me biased, but having lived through such a plan of "pacification" in my own life, I can smell ethnic cleansing better than most.

Baghdad is important. It is important because the sectarian fault lines of Iraq run through it. Throughout the American occupation, Baghdad has been coming apart along sectarian lines. Once mixed neighborhoods are being slowly ethnically cleansed into Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Now Mr. Kagan is advocating helping the Shia eliminate the remaining Sunni neighborhoods west of the Tigris River. When Iraqi forces and militias go into Sunni neighborhoods they will go in to settle sectarian scores, not to hunt "terrorists". The United States government should take no part in this.

The path to national reconciliation in Iraq does not go through Baghdad - only the path to Iraq's disintegration goes through Baghdad. The path to a stable Iraq goes through Iraq's oil fields in the South and in Kirkuk, appeals to shared Arab nationalism, and access to the Persian Gulf through the Shatt al-Arab. A smarter man than Mr. Kagan would consider how oil revenue sharing, pipelines to the Gulf, and interests of Iraq's neighbors such as Iran in said access to Gulf can be weaved together into a way forward that does not lead down a path of further violence. Instead, a small mind has come up with a recipe for ethnic cleansing - and Mr. Bush is set to endorse it.

It is up to the newly muscular United States Congress to prevent American complicity in the ethnic cleansing and massacres to come. A massacre of Iraq's Sunnis will push us toward that regional war that everyone claims they fear. It is time for Congress to step up and prevent any further loss of American and Iraqi lives in the service of ideological midgets.

Ah but the oil is being saved for the US and British OIL companies to develop there is NO reason to waste it on the Sunni's at all. (snark off)