Withdrawal timeline = national reconciliation = Iraq solution

Both General Pettraus in his closed session address to congress today and former Iraq interim Prime Minister has said in Doha this week that the solution in Iraq is a political solution.

The keys to this political solution according to Iyad Allawi and many who follow the Iraq issue lies in national reconciliation but it is the very lack of a withdrawal time line that has seen every effort to gain real consensus and commitment to National Reconciliation fail. More pointedly the lack of a withdrawal time line was the primary cause for the departure of the Sadrist block from government and a still looming threat of Sunni members to abandon government also.

It's time for George and Cheney to abandon the tired message discipline of "stay the course" and demonstrate they have a genuine interest in the welfare of their own troops and that of Iraqi's in general and announce a withdrawal time line.

Iraq: Deja vu all over again

I think if we want a crystal ball into US/Iraq troubles we should be looking a the Soviet/Afghanistan experience before, during and after the Soviet invasion--the parallels are disturbing.

Svetlana Savranskaya detailed the Soviet experience in Afghanistan over at the National Security Archives in 2001. In the following quotations you can just swap the words 'Afghanistan' for 'Iraq' and 'Soviet' for 'U.S.' and strangely you feel you're reading about the U.S. troubles in Iraq. She noted:

"Afghanistan did not fit into the mental maps and ideological constructs of the Soviet leaders. Their analysis of internal social processes in Afghanistan was done through the conceptual lens of [of their own political doctrine], which blinded the leadership to the realities of traditional tribal society. Believing that there was no single country in the world, which was not ripe for socialism"

In much the same way that Wolfowitz et al believed that the Iraqi's were ripe for democracy and discounting the "realities of traditional tribal society" lying below the surface just waiting to be unleashed under the right conditions.

She goes on to describe how the Afghan communist government was never a unified party and that

"...it was split along ethnic and tribal lines. The infighting between the 'Khalq' and the 'Parcham' factions made the tasks of controlling the situation much more challenging for Moscow... [including] ...underestimation of ethnic tensions within Afghan society was one of the reasons of the unsuccessful policy of national reconciliation."

As we have seen over recent weeks the crumbling of National Reconciliation in Iraq with the departure of the Sadrist's from government and the threat of of the Sunni block to also leave due to their long term concerns about the absence of a withdrawal time line.

Svetlana goes on to say:

"The Soviet Army also quickly realized the inadequacy of its preparation and planning for the mission in Afghanistan. The initial mission—to guard cities and installations—was soon expanded to combat, and kept growing over time. [and] While the formal mission of the troops was to protect the civilians from the anti-government forces, in reality, Soviet soldiers often found themselves fighting against the civilians they intended to protect, which sometimes led to indiscriminate killing of local people. ...while the regular Afghan army was often unreliable because of the desertions and lack of discipline."

Again one of the things noted is the constantly evolving mission creep for troops who I imagine have no clear understanding of what the mission is from one month to the next as well as the same complaints regarding Iraqi army unreliability due to desertions and lack of discipline .

What is more telling is that the Soviets knew there was no military solution six years before they pulled out of Afghanistan. Some thirty years after the Soviet invasion Afghanistan is still racked by symptoms of a civil war and is considered by many to be a failed state. More pointedly the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan is seen as playing a central role in the rapid rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Asian republics and the delegitimization of Communist Party rule ultimately leading to its collapse.

What is that saying? Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it :)

Bolton & Bremmer: kings of callous indifference

I don't suppose anyone ever expected the likes of Paul Bremmer or John Bolton to be Iraq Invasion apologists but it is telling to hear their views when questioned on some of the crucial failures surrounding America's involvement in Iraq.

When Paul Bremer, former U.S. Administrator of Iraq was asked at the close of a paid speech at Clark University in 2005 on his opinion of the $9 billion missing from the funds to rebuild Iraq he replied:

"I suggest you not worry, as that $9 billion was Iraqi money, not US money."

Disturbingly, this cavalier indifference reflects the callousness and contempt of one of the principle architects and catalysts or Iraq's ongoing failure.

More recently former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was interviewed by the BBC's Jeremy Paxman in Iraq 4 years on where John Bolton said:

"I don't think there is an American interest in what kind of Iraq emerges from the present circumstances. I think the American strategic interest is that no part of Iraq be used as a terrorist base against us."

Jeremy Paxman then details the contradiction in this by quoting a statement previously made by former U.N. Ambassador Bolton:

"So when you said the United States remained committed to a democratic, unified and prosperous Iraq you were just spouting the party line were you?"

Incredibly, a red faced Bolton admits to Paxman that he was simply following White House policy when he made that statement. A somewhat exasperated Paxman continued:

"What do you say to people who say Ok, Saddam Hussein was a Dictator but [Iraq] wasn't then a failed state and it wasn't a haven for terrorists and that's precisely what you've created in Iraq"

John Bolton then proceeds to tell Paxman about how he would rather live in a failed state than a dictatorship.

John Bolton should be careful what he wishes for. The problem with human indifference is that it makes everything it touches meaningless.