Iraq burning, Nero(ponte) fiddling?

It is now 26 days since I wrote this about Iraq:

    It is 24 days already since the election. It took the authorities an inordinately long length of time to certify the election. And now, where is the presidential council?

Since then, I’ve increasingly been wondering– what with Neroponte first of all preparing to leave Iraq, and then leaving for his big new intel-management job in Washington… And what with the continued failure of the Iraqi parties to reach agreement on forming a government…
So I’ve been wondering: who the heck, on the US side, has been responsible for shepherding along the political process there?
Look, we might not like the fact, but under the international law of military occupation the US does have overall responsibility for the good governance (hah!) of Iraq, pending conclusion of a final peace agreement between Washington and a representative Iraqi government.
And hey, it’s not just that Neroponte was up and leaving the place, but don’t you remember, some time back, we were all assured that National Security Advisor Condi Rice was going to be “in charge of running Iraqi affairs from Washington”?? But since then she too has been given new responsibilities and now she’s off tooling around various parts of the world in her dominatrix jackboots…
So who is in charge of the Iraq “file”? Maybe just Rumsfeld? Maybe purely the military?
Or how about…nobody?
Yesterday, Steve Wesiman had an intriguing piece in Sunday’s NYT titled U.S. Avoids Role of Mediator as Iraqis Remain Deadlocked.
Here’s what he wrote:

    Senior Bush administration officials said this week that the administration was avoiding direct intervention to break the deadlock among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions, still trying to form a government in Iraq six weeks after national elections.
    The officials said they had concluded that despite the bitter wrangling over how much power to distribute among the factions, particularly Shiites and Kurds, any attempt by the United States to mediate would be likely to backfire.
    “So far, we’re letting it happen,” a senior administration official said, referring to the Kurdish-Shiite dispute. “That’s really by design.”

This official gives the excuse that, “If we try to impose a solution, then anyone who gets the short end of the stick will hold a grudge, not only against us, but against the deal that was reached. It could lead to instability down the road.”
Well, maybe that’s the reason… Or maybe, given the horrendous levels of internal fighting (Sunni vs. Shiite) in the country in the 50 days since the election, Washington’s “non-intervention” in helping to resolve the government-formation problem has more to do with letting those two ethnic-Arab communities continue fighting among themselves while the Iraqi Kurdish parties sit pretty and gain in relative political strength as the other two communities mutually attrite each other?
Weisman– who was reporting from Washington– wrote that a second official he spoke to last week,

    said that Kurds, Shiites and some of Iraq’s Arab neighbors want the United States to play a facilitating role in forming a new government, but that Washington is resisting. “There’s pressure from the players out there, but not here,” he said. “We are comfortable exactly where we are.”

Oh, how fine and ducky for them, all those Bush administration officials sitting pretty in DC while the public-security situation in Iraq continues to be quite nightmarish. But where is “responsibility” in all this?

11 thoughts on “Iraq burning, Nero(ponte) fiddling?”

  2. I am a bit mystified by the notion that there should be somebody in Washington trying to “shepherd” the political process in Iraq. Given the utter lack of skill with which Washington has dealt with political matters in Iraq thusfar, should we not be rejoicing that they have decided to sit this one out? What positive contributions to the situation could we possibly expect them to make?

  3. All this apparent non intervention reflect a clear politic IMO. If the US was officially intervening in the debate, then they should back the Shiites and pressure the Kurds for more flexibility (after all, they have only about 75 seats, while the Shiites got approximately twice that. But the US prefers the secularist Kurds to the more theocratic and Iran friendly Shiites. So they allow the Kurds to play their game. This is another perfect example of the divide and rule game.
    I can’t help making a connection with Rummies’ last remark, that if the Sunni resistance was so strong it was because of Turkey’s refusal to let the US attack from North. IMO this means that the US is right now in a tighter alliance with the Kurds and supports their demands for Kirkuk and for greater autonomy. All things they had promised Turkey not to allow.
    IMO, they are supporting the Kurds behind the scene. Meanwhile, officially, they are not intervening (thus apparently respecting the sovereignity of the Iraqis and avoiding critiques of the international community). They have contribute to the creation of the gridlock with the TAL. After the gridlock leads to chaos, they will come as the only possible rescuers.

  4. And then there’s the old incompetence hypothesis. They’ve farfed up everything up until now, and continue to farf things up elsewhere globally… I can’t imagine a sudden burst of ruthless, Machiavellian efficiency here. It strikes me as similar to their non-policy on North Korea — they just don’t know what to do.

  5. I think I agree w/ some combination of Christiane and Vivion… Non-Americans would be truly amazed to understand just how much political energy at our national level here is getting eaten up by having congressional hearings on the use of steroids by baseball players and now by the case of this one very tragic family in Flordia struggling with end-of-life issues…
    Talk about “fiddling”, politically, while the whole 24-million-person nation of Iraq burns!

  6. I would love to ask Rumsfeld: It seems that the situation is a total and complete mess there in Iraq, and now it seems you are trying to pin the blame on Turkey instead of accepting responsibilty for your failures… is that correct?
    yeah, they are doing it on purpose.
    I am so angry that my tax dollars are used to fund war and stupid hearings on baseball, and now to fly all kinds of people to DC to try to influence the fate of one women who has been brain-dead for 15 years.
    Meanwhile, our abortion rate and infant mortality rate continue to go up, and dirt-poor Cuba is doing better than we are on both these issues.
    I think we should put Castro in power. I think he has way more sense than the people in DC today.
    Can you tell I am angry???????

  7. I can’t imagine these jokers doing anything positive in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. What have they even done positve for the U.S.? In any case, as you write, this deadlock probably suits them; they want to “divide and conquer”. I think Iraq’s problems will have to be resolved without the U.S. Some people have suggested the U.S. mismanagement of Iraq has been deliberate.
    I think in the long run the Kurds are playing a very dangerous game. Some day the U.S. will be gone but the Kurds will still have to co-exist with their neighbors. Post-colonial antagonisms that have been created when imperialists play ethnic groups off against each other don’t seem to die very quickly.

  8. Coalition building is part and parcel of the political process. The actors may be slow and rusty due to their lack of practice. If the matter is so urgent as the chronic complainers on this board write, wouldn’t the Iraqi parties involved also sense the urgency and accelerate the process?
    Are they less patriotic than outsiders?
    By the way, there is nothing wrong in welcoming the Kurds newfound power, even if it upsets some Turks and Arabs. It was time the Kurds get the upper hand in something. You can’t equally please everybody.
    E. Bilpe

  9. Helena, I’m not inclined to cut much slack for the US in Iraq. However, in this case it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I could see the US maintaining a hands-off policy on principle. I agree with vivion about our demonstrated incompetence and Christiane about out dubious intentions, so the truth could be different, but it’s hard to say.

  10. “I could see the US maintaining a hands-off policy on principle.”
    NP, I can see the U.S. maintaining a hands-off policy for several different reasons, but principle from that unprincipled lot is not among them.

  11. Helena, please consider this comment in light of how the House of Commons declared US violence in Iraq excessive today– 4/5/05. It strikes me that we are making BOTH victims and perpetrators of our volunteer patriotic soldiers but don’t care because “there ain’t no draft and my son don’t gotta go!”
    The deadly fate of the Italian intel operative, saving
    an Italian journalist, when they came upon a makeshift
    check-point in Iraq, bespeaks the worrisome state of
    stress our forces suffer (1) rather than any of the
    conspiracy theories thus far advanced (2). Now that
    Israel is working out a peace with the Palestinians
    by, for the most part, dismantling, one by one, its
    oppressive and cruel population control practices of
    the past half century in order to entice and reward
    Palestinians moving towards a peaceful solution,
    Americans seem to learn very little from this 180
    degrees shift on the part of their tutors(3), for US
    Command is still driving American troops to stress
    induced pathologies(4); thus impaired, they have been
    killing many innocent Iraqis in their aggressive aping
    of Israeli techniques of the past(5). Is it little
    wonder then, that, according to a poll done by the
    American CPA: 92% of Iraqis consider US an occupier,
    not liberator; 86% of Iraqis would like the US to
    withdraw its forces immediately(6)?
    The aping of *past* Israeli occupations not only puts
    the lie to the “liberation” characterization of the
    Iraq venture by the Bush Administration, but it also
    has provoked determination by many of “the coalition
    of willing” to abandon the “occupation” with tactics
    that feed so much the insurgency; most recent is
    Italy(7). According to personal contacts within
    European forces in Iraq, it makes no sense for them to
    become “sitting ducks” while America provokes and
    enlarges the resistance through its indiscriminant
    dragnets(8) and maltreatment of civilians, per a
    report by Gen. Donald Ryder(9), obtained by the NY
    Times, and others.
    Most upsetting is that US Command fails to properly
    apply population control lessons learned from
    WWII(10), Vietnam(11) and the Balkans(12). From the
    very beginning, the Iraq War, was to be a confirmation
    of Rumsfeld’s “transition” ideology for the
    Pentagon(13). Yet, despite the sycophancy of Gen.
    Franks and others, the civilian Pentagon leaders have
    outraged the military with their KNOW NOTHING
    intervention at the tactical level. According to P.J.
    Crowley, a noted military analyst: “Iraq is having a
    devastating effect on the military. There is a breach
    of trust between the military and its civilian
    leadership, including genuine hostility between
    Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the top military brass.
    Individual soldiers, even as they do their jobs in
    Iraq to the best of their ability, feel betrayed – by
    their leaders’ shifting rationale for the invasion;
    failure to plan or provide protective gear, and by
    repeated and sudden deployment extensions.”(14)
    Not only have a president and Sec. of Defense with no
    combat experience again imposed themselves as the
    tactical level in Iraq (as did LBJ and McNamara during
    the Vietnam War, with tragic consequences), creating
    desperate shortages in a war pre-planned “on the
    cheap,” but much of that task has been passed to
    Douglas Feith (15), one of the neocon Vietnam draft
    evaders, thus oblivious to the existential side of
    military affairs.
    Thus, we find DoD priority placed on Israeli methods
    of
    occupation(16), reminiscent of German occupation of
    Europe in WWII(17), instead of applying the hard
    learned lessons of successful pacification in Vietnam
    , for example, where urbanization, employment,
    construction, electrification and local self-defense
    destroyed the Viet Cong Infrastructure (I personally
    observed this evolving over a decade). Deliberately,
    all these lessons were set aside so that Cheney, Feith
    and Rumsfeld could– each for reasons of his own–
    impose a cruel and counter-production application of
    force(18). That is why, after we leave, no gratitude
    will ever be expressed, no matter how successful the
    democratic future of Iraq– the price in innocent
    lives simply was not worth it. Mr. Feith will go down
    in history as the mild mannered and fragile architect
    of a two-ways massacre, copying a style of dealing
    with Arabs born of radical Zionist Revisionist
    Jabotinsky(19), circa 1930s, at a time of assumed
    Jewish weakness and much hate for the Arabs. While
    hate of Arabs may characterize Feith and the neocons,
    it is something clearly not at all characteristic of
    the American soldiers who serve in Iraq.
    Daniel E. Teodoru
    references:
    1. USA TODAY, Feb. 28, 2005
    2. IL MANIFESTO, Mar. 9, 2005
    3. D. Remnick, NEWYORKER, Feb. 7, 2005
    4. NEJM Jul. 1, 2004
    5. NY TIMES, Dec. 7, 2003; AP Dec. 13, 2003; GUARDIAN,
    Dec. 9, 2003
    6. M. Hirsh, WASHINGTON MONTHLY, Nov. 2004
    7. WASHINGTON POST, mar. 16, 2005
    8. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, May, 31, 2004
    9. NY TIMES, May, 30, 2004
    10. D. Benjamin, SLATE, Aug. 29, 2003; J. Dobins et.
    al. “America’s Role in Nation Building,” RAND MAGAZINE
    2003
    11. M. Moyar, PHOENIX AND THE BIRDS OF PREY. Naval
    Inst.Press,1997
    12. D. Priest, THE MISSION, WWNorton, 2003.
    13. P. Boyer. NEWYORKER, Jun 9, 2003.
    14. http://www.americanprogress.org
    15. W. Patrick Lang. J. OF MIDDLE EAST POLICY, vol.2,
    No.2, Summer 2004
    16. NY TIMES, DEC. 7, 2003
    17. HA’ARETZ, Jan. 25, 2002
    18. C. Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead,” Project for
    Defense Alternatives, Monograph #9, Feb.18,2004
    19. a. Shlaim, THE IRON WALL, WWNorton, 2001

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