DoD suits scrabbling yet again to find a workable plan

Steven Weisman
writes
in today’s NYT that un-named “administration officials” say the
Bush administration now plans to revise the plan for a handover to
self-rule in Iraq that was agreed on just last November 15.  The revision
is reportedly aimed at “responding to” the firm insistence that Ayatollah
Sistani announced Sunday that any Iraqi self-rule government be the result
of–wait for this shocking revelation!– a fully democratic process.

So does this mean that Baghdad fashion maven Jerry Bremer and his Washington
handlers are now prepared to move away from “the Rube Goldberg process”–
the incredibly unwieldy and undemocratic mechanism agreed back in November
whereby undemocratic “caucuses” and other such gatherings would generate
a new Iraqi leadership?

No, it does not.   As Weisman reports it:

The new hope in Washington, the officials said, was in effect to make
the caucus system look more democratic without changing it in a fundamental
way.

So I guess we could call the proposed new system “Rube Goldberg, II”.  That
will make it at least the fourth* of the “strategic” plans the administration
has adopted for the handover since the US forces took Baghdad last April.
 (And the pace at which the administration is falling back from one
plan to the next seems to be speeding up.)

And I have a sneaking suspicion that Sistani, who doesn’t seem to be anyone’s
fool, is not necessarily going to have the wool pulled over his eyes on this
one?

Weisman also reports another aspect of Sistani’s Sunday declaration
that I had not seen reported elsewhere, and that likewise came as a big
shock to Bremer and his backers:

Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part
of Ayatollah Sistani’s statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement
for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected
representatives.

I commented
on the key importance of this issue regarding the “Status of Forces Agreement
(SOFA)” on JWN ten days ago, though few other commentators seem to have focused
much on it.

One great Middle Eastern example of a SOFA that went horribly wrong
precisely because it was concluded with a “successor regime” that
lacked local legitimacy was the infamous “May 17 Agreement” concluded in 1983
between Israel and the Amin Gemayyel regime in Beirut.  

One year earlier, Israel had launched its “invasion with the goal of regime
change” against Lebanon, and had succeeded in installing the Gemayyel dynasty
in power in Beirut.  But by spring 1983, the Israelis were eager to
withdraw their forces as much as possible: hence the need for a handover of
more apparent power to the Gemayyel government– but a handover conditioned
on Gemayyel agreeing, in the name of all of Lebanon, to a special security
arrangement with Israel.

According to p.195 of my 1985 book “The Making of Modern Lebanon” the
May 17 Agreement

The agreement … established the existence of a special security
region covering all of Lebanon south of the Awali river and stretching inland
to link up with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.  Joint Israeli-Lebanese
supervisory teams would inspect the security measures both within the security
region, and throughout the rest of the country…

The only problem?  Though Gemayyel was the “President” of Lebanon, the
legitimacy of his presidency was hotly contested by many Lebanese– including,
crucuially, the Shi-ites who are the country’s largest single population
group.  His close ties in 1982-83 with the Israelis were one of the
main factors (but not the only one) contributing to a widespread view of
his presidency as fundamentally non-legitimate.

So the support inside the country for Gemayyel and his policy of close security
cooperation with Israel was very weak.  Then, just nine months after
the conclusion of the May 17 Agreement the Shi-ites– who made up probably
a majority of the “new” Lebanese army that was being put together by US military
advisors who were also big players back then in Lebanon–revolted unequivocally
against gemayyel’s policies.  The “new” Lebanese army fell apart.  Gemayyel,
who was a power-seeking politician much more than he was an ideologue, scurried
off to Damascus to build new ties with Syria.  And the May 17 Agreement
died.

Did I mention that in the aftermath of the Shi-ite-led revolt there, even
President Reagan’s mighty armies were forced to hurriedly “redeploy off-shore”
from Lebanon?

Sic transit gloria SOFAE, as my late father would have said.

—
*I described the latest design for a handover plan as the fourth because
I see the successive plans adopted by the Bremer’s handlers in the DoD as
the following:

1. The Chalabi-Garner plan:  This one was hatched in the DoD
   many months–or even years?– before the war was launched.  It relied
   centrally on Chalabi’s alleged “wide networks of supporters throughout Iraq”
   to exercize effective control throughout the country almost immediately after
   the fall of the Saddam regime…  For some of my previous writings on
   this plan, on Chalabi’s amazingly exaggerated claims, and on the gullibility
   of the DoD folks who bought that proven con-man’s snake-oil, type Chalabi
   into the Search box on the Main page of JWN and see what comes up…  That
   plan lasted precisely one month after “liberation”, but as I said, it had
   been the favored plan of the DoD suits for many months before that. 
2. Bremer’s “extreme makeover” plan: … So, in May 2003, fashion
   maven Jerry Bremer was sent to Iraq to give that country an “extreme makeover”
   into a free-market, free-wheeling, full-blown democracy.  That plan
   lasted less than six months till mid-November when Bremer was told to haul
   his rear end back to DC where he was given the plan for:
3. The “cut and run” strategy as brought to you by Dr. Rube Goldberg
   :  Under this plan, the idea of any “extreme makeover” was now tossed
   out.  The main goal was no longer, as previously, to be the complete
   re-making of Iraq (and while we’re about it, the whole Middle East) into
   a bastion of New-England-style market democracy.  Now, the main goal
   was to have some sort of visible (and preferably telegenic) transition
   ‘event’ in Iraq by the end of June 2004 so that in the months
   between then and next November 4 the number of US reporters still covering
   developments there would fall as low as possible.  (I think Juan Cole
   was the first to voice this supposition, which I think is spot-on).  But
   here we are, a bare two months after the DoD issued the fatwa decreeing
   that strategy; and now we have another:
4. The “cut and run” strategy, revised to give an “appearance” of democracy
   …  

Is the pace of change hotting up, or what?  Do these guys know what
they’re doing, or what?