Bush
Administration Elaborates
Plans For Bloodbath In Iraq
By Bill Van Auken
19 December 2006
World
Socialist Web
Reports
on the Bush administration’s discussions on a change of course
in Iraq indicate that Washington is preparing a major new bloodbath
as part of a desperate attempt to salvage its nearly four-year-old bid
to conquer the oil-rich country.
The New York Times Sunday
carried an article entitled “The Capital Awaits a Masterstroke
on Iraq,” which indicated that the options under discussion include
what amounts to support for a genocidal war against Iraq’s Sunni
population as well as the deliberate unleashing of a region-wide sectarian
conflict between the predominantly Sunni Arab countries and the Shia
majorities in Iran and Iraq.
This proposal—known
widely in Washington as the “80 percent solution,” the percentage
of the Iraqi population comprising Shia and Kurds—the Times writes,
“basically says that Washington should stop trying to get Sunnis
and Shiites to get along and instead just back the Shiites, since there
are more of them anyway and they’re likely to win in a fight to
the death. After all, the proposal goes, Iraq is 65 percent Shiite and
only 20 percent Sunni.”
The plan reportedly has been
promoted by Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the principal architects
of the Iraq war from the beginning.
A key consideration, the
article adds, is control of Iraq’s oil fields. “The longer
America tries to woo the Sunnis, the more it risks alienating the Shiites
and Kurds, and they’re the ones with the oil,” the Times
states. “A handful of administration officials have argued that
Iraq is not going to hold to together and will splinter along sectarian
lines. If so, they say, American interests dictate backing the groups
who control the oil-rich areas.”
An off-shoot of the plan,
which the Times cynically describes as something “some hawks have
tossed out in meetings,” is a suggestion that the US could reap
the benefits of a region-wide sectarian conflagration. “America
could actually hurt Iran by backing Iraq’s Shiites; that could
deepen the Shiite-Sunni split and eventually lead to a regional Shiite-Sunni
war,” the Times writes. “And in that, the Shiites—and
Iran—lose because, while there are more Shiites than Sunnis in
Iraq and Iran, there are more Sunnis than Shiites almost everywhere
else.”
At the same time, there are
growing indications that a proposed “surge” of tens of thousands
more American combat troops into Iraq will have as its first objective
taking on the militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, meaning
a brutal assault on the impoverished Shia masses of Baghdad.
The formulation of such mutually
contradictory policies appears to be less the product of diplomatic
and military calculation than political insanity. Underlying what seems
like madness is the desperation and disorientation at all levels of
the American state over the deep crisis that its policy has produced.
What predominates is the
conception that provided it carries out a sufficient level of killing—whether
in a genocidal slaughter of Sunnis, a bloodletting against the Shia,
or a combination of the two—US imperialism can somehow extricate
itself from a humiliating defeat in Iraq.
The leaks concerning the
strategies now under consideration only underscore the abject criminality
of the war as well as the desperate crisis that is gripping the American
political establishment, which remains deeply divided over how to confront
the political and military debacle confronting the US occupation.
Less than two weeks after
the release of the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, the Bush
administration has repudiated the panel’s prescriptions for reducing
the US military role in Iraq and pursuing diplomatic initiatives aimed
at winning cooperation from the neighboring countries of Iran and Syria.
The White House, backed by
the Republican right and the most ruthless sections of the American
ruling elite, is instead preparing what amounts to a re-invasion of
the ravaged country and the pursuit of a broader regional war, ultimately
aimed at toppling both the Iranian and the Syrian regimes.
It was reported late last
week that the Pentagon has already ordered the 3,500 troops of the Second
Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, currently based at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, to prepare for deployment to Kuwait next month. This
would be the first contingent for what is anticipated to be a “surge”
of between 30,000 and 50,000 additional troops.
Not only is the political
establishment deeply divided over the way forward in Iraq, but the US
military command as well. Some, such as Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the
Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, the top commander in
Iraq, and Gen. John Abizaid, the senior commander of US forces in the
Middle East, have questioned the value of a “surge” of American
troops into Iraq, noting that such an increased deployment could not
be sustained and warning that it could serve to further delay Iraqi
forces taking over security operations.
On the other hand, a number
of recently retired senior commanders have advocated the escalation,
and the scheme is reportedly supported by Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno,
who assumed command of combat troops in Iraq last week. Odierno commanded
the Army’s 4th Infantry Division in Anbar Province in 2003 and
2004, gaining a reputation for heavy-handed counterinsurgency operations
and repression that is credited by many with generating much of the
popular support for the Iraqi resistance.
“We are going to go
after any—any—individual who attacks the government, who
attacks the security forces and who attacks coalition forces no matter
who they are and no matter who they are associated with,” he said
at a ceremony in Baghdad last Thursday.
The remark appeared to be
a warning that the immediate target of the new offensive now being prepared
will be the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr. According
to press reports, the Pentagon’s uniformed command has been unanimous
on its insistence that any increased deployment in Baghdad be accompanied
by unrestricted rules of engagement for US forces going after Sadr’s
followers.
Such an offensive would signal
not only a US-engineered coup against the current Iraqi government,
in which Sadr’s movement holds substantial power, but also a massive
loss of civilian life, as an all-out war would be waged in the crowded
Shia slums of Baghdad’s Sadr City.
Barely six weeks after growing
popular opposition to the war in Iraq produced a stunning defeat for
the Bush administration at the polls, there is every indication that
the White House intends not only to continue the war, but to escalate
it substantially.
The Democratic leadership,
meanwhile, exhibits no such conviction or determination as it prepares
to assume the leadership next month of both houses of the US Congress.
On Sunday, incoming Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid declared in a television interview that he
is prepared to support the proposed “surge” in Iraqi troop
deployment if it served as part of a broader strategy to achieve the
Baker-Hamilton commission’s proposal for reducing the number of
troops in Iraq by early 2008.
“If the commanders
on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we’ll
go along with that,” Reid said, adding that an escalation for
two to three months would be acceptable, but not one that dragged on
for 18 months or 24 months.
The Democratic Senate leader’s
qualms were dismissed by one of the prominent advocates of the “surge,”
former Army vice chief of staff Gen. Jack Keane, who pointed out, “It
will take a couple of months just to get forces in.” Keane said
that it would take at least one and half years for an expanded force
to suppress Iraqi resistance.
Meanwhile, Senator Edward
Kennedy of Massachusetts, considered the most liberal Democrat in the
US Senate, appearing on the Fox News channel, voiced opposition to the
increased troop deployment, but rejected any move to cut off funding
for the war—the only means, short of impeachment, that the Democrats
have to rein in the escalating militarism of the Bush administration.
“One thing about the
Democrats is we will support the troops,” Kennedy declared, adding,
“We are not going to pull the line, in terms of the troops.”
Pressed by interviewer Chris
Wallace as to why he was unprepared to support a vote to defund the
war in Iraq, when Democrats had pursued just such a course during the
Vietnam War, Kennedy stressed that “This is a different situation
than Vietnam” and “we are not at this point at this time.”
What is different is that
in Iraq, decisive sections of America’s ruling elite remain determined
to pursue the goal of establishing US domination over one of the largest
reserves of petroleum in the world by means of military force and colonial-style
domination.
While there are intense divisions
over how this goal is to be pursued, the defense of the geo-strategic
interests of American capitalism is upheld by every faction of the political
establishment. It is for this reason that the Democrats have served
as the Bush administration’s accomplice in this war since voting
to authorize an unprovoked invasion more than four years ago.
The growing threats to escalate
the assault against the Iraqi people and potentially unleash a conflagration
that could spread throughout the Middle East and worldwide demonstrate
that the popular opposition to the war cannot find expression through
the present two-party political set up in America.
Even before the new Congress
convenes, it has become starkly apparent that the struggle to end the
war in Iraq and to hold those who are responsible for launching this
war politically and criminally responsible can be advanced only through
the emergence of a new independent political movement of working people
in opposition to the American financial oligarchy and both of its parties.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights