Just World News with Helena Cobban

Yesterday’s fierce battles near Najaf saw the tumultuous emergence and apparent defeat of what most sources now agree was a fervent, well-armed group of some 300-plus supporters of Ahmad al-Hasan, a man who claimed to be the “true” deputy of the Shiite twelfth Imam, the long-awaited Mahdi.
Note that adherence to, and longing for, the Mahdi is a common theme in Shite belief and practice. These latest Mahdists are not the same as Moqtada al-Sadr’s “Jaish al-Mahdi.” (Also, Mahdism transcends the Shiite-Sunni divide. It was also a powerful force in the anti-British movement in Sudan in the 19th century, where its adherents were mainly Sunnis with a Sufi flavor. Go figure.)
Haider al-Kaabi of Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq) yesterday published this fairly full account of the Najaf/Zarqaa events. And today, Aswat al-Iraq carries this update:

More than 250 gunmen were killed in military operations in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, 160 km south of the capital Baghdad, Iraqi police sources said.
“Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. tanks and helicopters, killed 250-300 gunmen in fierce battles on Sunday in the area of al-Zarga in northeastern Najaf with members of the self-styled Ahmed al-Hassan Group,” an official police source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
Clashes had erupted when an Iraqi police and National Guard force raided at the early hours of Sunday a headquarters of the group of Ahmed al-Hassan, who claims to be the successor of Imam al-Mahdi, the 12th Imam (religious leader) highly revered by the Shiites.
Meanwhile, the U.S. army announced that two U.S. soldiers were killed when their helicopter gunship crashed in the violent clashes that continued for a whole day.
The U.S. army, in a statement, did not say why the chopper went down but it crashed in the same area that witnessed Sunday’s clashes.
A media spokesman for security forces in Najaf told reporters that the battle is over and fighters of Ahmed al-Hassan group were beaten after U.S. troops and Iraqi Scorpion Brigade took part in the clashes.
“The forces took control of the armed group camp and troops were combing the area,” the spokesman said, adding “the battle is over and calm will be restored to the area.”
“The raid was meant to arrest the group leader Ahmed al-Hassan but the strong resistance led the Iraqi forces to ask for support from the U.S. troops,” he said.
According to the agreement that transferred the security responsibility to the Iraqi army in Najaf on December 25, the Iraqi security forces may ask for support from the U.S. forces.
“Ahmed al-Hassan Supporters” is an extremist Shiite armed group that sought leadership over other Shiite groups after its leader claimed to be a deputy of the Shiite twelfth Imam, the Awaited Mahdi.
Al-Zarga area, the stronghold of Ahmed al-Hassan Supporters, is a rural area that is located outside Najaf.
Only last week, Iraqi security forces launched a wide-scale campaign to stem this extremist group.

The account also notes that many thousands of Shiite pilgrims are in the area for the observances of Ashura.
We are all also lucky that Reidar Visser has given us some additional background on Ahmad al-Has(s)an:

If … reports concerning the involvement of Ahmad al-Hasan of Basra are correct, this would mean a qualitative change in the situation. In contrast to [Moqtada] Sadr, [Muhammad] Yaqubi and [Mahmud] Hasani, Hasan represents full-blown Mahdism. His message is that he is the representative of the Mahdi – the Messiah-like figure whose appearance all Shiites yearn for, as a sign of the start of the apocalypse. Hasan believes that he possesses “divine authority” (wilaya ilahiyya) and is in a position to overrule the traditional Shiite clergy in any issue of jurisprudence. In another divergence from Sadr, Yaqubi and Hasani, he completely dismisses the concept of legal interpretation (ijtihad) and demands that in legal questions where the Koran is ambiguous, the faithful should refer to him as the sole source of emulation. In contrast to the Sadrist radicals, he uses his lack of scholarly training as decisive proof of his divine status (“How would I, a person without religious education, otherwise be able to disseminate Islamic knowledge?”)
To back up his claims to religious authority Hasan employs several Shiite traditions concerning the coming of the Mahdi – among them prophecies that an “Ahmad from Basra” will appear shortly before the Mahdi himself. Ahmad al-Hasan also says he is “the Yemenite” (al-yamani) described by many Islamic sources as a sign of the Mahdi’s imminent emergence, and resolves the apparent contradiction as regards his own Basra origins by claiming that Yemen extends into Hijaz and that all Arabs are in fact “Yemenis”. And to prove his point that the apocalypse is near, he refers to the appearance of the forces of evil in the shape of Dajjal – the deceiver – whose incarnations he identifies as the US military forces in Iraq as well as the leading establishment of the Shiite clergy (Hasan has been particularly critical of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani).
Hasan has been active in the south of Iraq, around Basra, Amara and Nasiriyya, since 2003, when he first declared his “revolt”. He has since been conspicuous in several clashes and disputations with small Sadrist splinter groups in that area. The traditional clergy have reportedly even accused him of links to the former regime. If it is indeed his followers that are currently fighting in such large numbers outside Najaf, this would mean that Mahdism has now entered Iraqi politics on a larger scale – with the inevitable evocation of past schismatic movements in Shiism similarly inspired at least to some extent by Mahdism, like Shaykhism and Babism, which for long periods during the nineteenth century created civil-war like conditions in Persia and the Ottoman provinces of Iraq.

I’ll just close by noting that the death in battle of such large numbers of people is a terrible, terrible tragedy. Would there not have been a better, less violent way to contain and end any threat this group might have posed to the surrounding society?
Any time of deep social and political and existential strife can incubate a large number of apocalyptic visions and end-time-ist groups. (The period of the Civil War in 17th century England that incubated the Quakers and tens of other new religious-social groupings of varying degrees of radicalism was a time of very similar religious and political turmoil. The main difference between that epoch and today’s Iraq is the horrendous lethality of today’s armaments— plus, of course, the looming presence and divide-and-rule interventions of a massively well-armed external power.)
If Iraq’s present turmoil continues, we should certainly expect more such groups to emerge… Also, despite the Iraqi officials’ present claims of total victory, it is possible that this group itself might re-emerge.
It is a tragedy for the people of Iraq that the leaders of their weak, powerless, and very widely distrusted “government” felt they could not deal with this Mahdist emergence without calling in the American forces.
How many of those killed in the date groves of Zarqaa were mown down from US helicopters, I wonder?
Update, Monday, 11:30 a.m.:
Reuters’ Khaled Farhan is reporting this:

The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq’s national security minister said on Monday.
Women and children who joined 600-700 of his “Soldiers of Heaven” on the outskirts of the Shi’ite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those people not killed were in detention, many of them wounded…

When I wrote this post last night, I did not say anything as to whether I believed that Iranian or pro-Iranian agents were involved. That was by intention. I’m not at all in a position to know.
I have heard, however, from usually reliably sources, that some serious, reality-based people in the US administration believe this to be the case. At one level, for the whole of the narrative of that JWN post to hang together, that’s all that’s required. At another level, it is undoubtedly true that:

(1) The assault on the PJCC in Karbala was an operation of great sophistication and complexity, and had some of the same m.o.’s as, for example, Lebanese Hizbullah ops in Lebanon. There is considerable learning and experience-pooling among all the anti-US, anti-Israel fighting forces across the region, including directly between some Iraqi organizations to Lebanese Hizbullah, and between L.H. and some actors inside Iran;
(2) The “response” of the US-“Iraqi” forces was quite pathetic– they can’t even tell us for sure how many large SUVs were involved in the original attack!
(3) This attack must have scared the bejeesus out of everyone trying to do operational planning for the US forces in Iraq… Where was, at a very minimum, their ground forces IFF or secure communications system?? The idea that a large, multi-SUV convoy of anti-US forces, with the people in it wearing the new US-style camo fatigues and speaking English, can be careening far and wide throughout the country must be pretty terrifying for them. Maybe there are ten more convoys like that one? Who knows?
(4) Also, did the attackers manage to take some communications or other sensitive US equipment with them as they fled? Quite likely…
(5) In sum, the US military planners now need to be worrying not just– as I mentioned in this January 22 post– about the very live possibility that some of the Iraqi forces with whom they intend to “coordinate” during the upcoming phase are giving real-time info to the insurgents/opposition forces, but also about the possibility/probability that much of the terrain of Iraq, including terrain across which their vital supply lines run, is completely out of their control, and they may now have no idea who’s careening around in it. (For which outcome, they could perhaps thank in large part their earlier encouragement of the proliferation ofall kinds of mercenary forces inside the country.)

Anyway, the above observations deal mainly with operational issues. With, of course, inevitable political consequences. In yesterday’s post I addressed the broader political-strategic dimensions of the affair. Regarding whether I think it possible that some Iranian government-backed formation undertook the attack on PJCC Karbala, I’d say Yes. If there was an Iranian hand in the affair, then it would most likely have beenundertaken as a response to the “arrests” of civilian Iranian diplomatic personnel in Arbil as well as, perhaps, a sort of “shot across the bows” of the US, as a warning to them not to heat things up too much for the pro-Iranian forces in Iraq…
But as I say, I’m in no position to put a probability figure on that scenario. If anyone with good access to real info, including from the presumably US investigation into the whole affair, would care to add something to our knowledge base here, that would be great.

TheJanuary 20 raid on the joint US-Iraqi security “coordination” center in Karbala was even more operationally complex and sophisticated, and therefore worrying for the US commanders in Iraq, than I had understood it to be when I blogged about it on January 22nd.
Today (Friday), AP’s Steven Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra wrote, and the US occupation force’s press office later confirmed, that instead of all five of the US army’s fatal casualties having been killed during the attack on the coordination center itself, only one of them was killed at that time, while the other four were captured from the center, driven away by the assailants, and discovered only later, with fatal gunshot wounds in their heads, at the point some 25 miles away to the east where all or some of the American-style SUV’s used in the assault were abandoned by the assailants, who got away undetected.
The sophistication and scale of the attack has left some people guessing that Iranian or pro-Iranian operatives were involved. If so, the operation may well have started out as an attempt to capture and hold some US soldiers “in response to” the US forces’ capture/arrest of five Iranian government employees in Arbil/Erbil, northern Iraq, on January 11.
If that was the plan, wouldn’t it have made more sense for the assailants to have kept the captured US soldiers alive? (And the question then would be: where? In a “liberated zone” within Iraq, or in Iran?) But anyway, something evidently caused the assailants not to proceed with such a plan, if indeed that had been their first option. What they apparently did succeed in doing was getting away safely from the place in Al-Mahawil District where they abandoned five of their black SUVs along with the bodies of three of the murdered soldiers and the soon-to-be-dead body of the fourth one.
Today, before I saw that AP story on this, I had read this article in the WaPo, which seems to give some relevant background to the whole story of the Arbil “arrests” and the Karbala assault. In it, Dafna Linzer writes,

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

Linzer dates the decision to adopt the new, tougher policy to,

Last summer, [when] senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran’s regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing…

These officials described the previous policy used towards Iranian agents identified in Iraq as one of “catch and release”, which was, “designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries.”
She wrote:

Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said.
But, for three years, the Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering operational training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni factions…

However, she also writes this:

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.

But the new, more confrontational policy has evidently sparked some serious disagreements within the administration.
Linzer wrote:

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Officials [unidentified] said [CIA head Michael] Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq.

Aha! So now do we see a reason for the timing of some of these leaks to Dafna Linzer??? It certainly looks to me like people in Hayden’s camp– having seen what happened in Karbala last Saturday– were in effect saying to the hot-dogs within the administration: “Told you so!”
By the way, in case you’re interested in knowing which way Condi Rice swung on the hot-dog vs. the relative doves on this issue, Linzer’s reporting indicates clearly that Condi was sitting firmly on the fence there, while trying to keep her rear end well covered…
And if you read further down in her article you can discover some interesting background about the policy shift, including the fact that it was undertaken in connection with the Israel-Hizbullah war of last summer:

Officials said a group of senior Bush administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level counterterrorism meetings agreed that the conflict provided an opening to portray Iran as a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the death squads in Iraq.
Among those involved in the discussions, beginning in August, were deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism adviser Juan Zarate, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, representatives from the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, and outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief Henry A. Crumpton.

Linzer quoted an un-named “senior counterterrorism official” as having told her in a recent interview that,

“Our goal is to change the dynamic with the Iranians, to change the way the Iranians perceive us and perceive themselves. They need to understand that they cannot be a party to endangering U.S. soldiers’ lives and American interests, as they have before. That is going to end.”
A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy.
“This has little to do with Iraq. It’s all about pushing Iran’s buttons. It is purely political,” the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States’ increasing inability to stanch the violence there.

Linzer also noted this:

In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the “SS.” They also referred to Guard members as “terrorists.” Such a formal designation could turn Iran’s military into a target of what Bush calls a “war on terror,” with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

… Meanwhile, if you want to see the substance of the news release that the US military people in Iraq put out today about the Karbala incident, here it is:

At approximately 5 p.m., a convoy consisting of at least five sport utility vehicles entered the Karbala compound. The armed militants wore American-looking uniforms and carried U.S.-type weapons convincing Iraqi checkpoints to allow their passage.
Once inside the compound, an estimated nine to 12 armed militants engaged the American troops with rifle fire and hand grenades.
While defending the command post, one Soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a hand grenade thrown into the center’s main office which contains the provincial police chief’s office on an upper floor.
During the attack in the main building, Soldiers defending it reported hearing a series of explosions in the compound causing the Soldiers to seek cover. Three U.S. military Humvees were damaged from the explosions.
The attackers broke off the assault withdrawing from the compound with four captured U.S. Soldiers.
The insurgents then drove out of the Karbala province and into neighboring Babil province, encountering an Iraqi police checkpoint. The sport utility vehicles passed through the checkpoint, but the Iraqi police trailed the vehicles, suspicious of the group.
After proceeding further east and crossing the Euphrates River, the assailants drove north toward Hillah, abandoning five SUVs, U.S. Army-type combat uniforms, boots, radios and a non-U.S. made rifle.
Iraqi police in pursuit found the abandoned vehicles and equipment near the Iraqi town of Al Mahawil. [AP says this is about 25 miles from Karbala.]
Two Soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of one of the SUVs. Both had suffered gunshot wounds and were dead. A third Soldier was found shot and dead on the ground. Nearby, the fourth Soldier was still alive, despite a gunshot wound to the head. The Iraqi police rushed the severely wounded Soldier to a nearby hospital, but the Soldier died enroute.
“The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution,” said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
“The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, by-passing the Iraqi police in the compound,” said Bleichwehl. “We are looking at all the evidence to determine who or what was responsible for the breakdown in security at the compound and the perpetration of the assault.”

As I had noted earlier, the US military’s January 21 press release about the incident stated– as it turns out, quite incorrectly– that “Five U.S. Soldiers were killed and three wounded while repelling the attack.”

The latest English-language post that Faiza al-Araji has on her blog is extremely powerful. Earlier, I “Delicioused” it, to put it onto the sidebar here. But there are more things that Faiza writes there that are worth pointing to. Hence this post.
Faiza writes from Amman, where she’s been living for I guess around a year now– ever since she was just able to get her son Khaled out of a very ugly and sectarian detention situation inside Iraq.
So in this most recent post she writes:

If it were a government loved by the people, why would they need an occupation force to support them?
If it were really a government wanted by the Iraqis, then it is not necessary for the occupation to remain; let the occupation withdraw, and the people along with the government will cooperate to eliminate that bunch of rebellious rioters…
But the actual fact is that this government is isolated, not trusted by the Iraqis. This is a government which the Iraqis feel regretful for having elected, after its credibility has fallen in front of them, after its stupidity, partiality, sectarianism and foolish acts became evident to the people, its slackness in defending the Iraqis and protecting them, its surrender and submission to Bush’s decisions and instructions…
If the elections were to be repeated now, the Iraqis would not choose those faces again. They destroyed our lives; they lied to us, and did not fulfill any of the things they promised… they spread chaos, hatred, segregation and injustice among people…
This government didn’t provide the minimum level of security and protection to the Iraqis… every Iraqi house is a target to them; meaning- they are ready to storm any Iraqi house, to arrest any Iraqis citizen, to torture any citizen, or kill him…whatever…

And this:

President Bush is sending more troops…
Are they supposed to empty Iraq of its people, and send more American soldiers?
We await going back to our country and houses, await the return of Iraq to us, await the scheduling of the foreign troops withdrawal, not the opposite…
Here in Amman; there are hundreds of engineers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, pilots, university professors from all specializations, and PhD Degrees carriers…
Most of them sit here without a job, for they are not permitted to work in Jordan. And if they happen to find employment, it would be a half-wages job, not enough to keep them barely alive…
When we meet them, the talk is usually about Iraq; lamentation and sadness about what happened to the homeland and the people, wondering why the Iraqis are being driven outside their country to live half a life without a homeland, while foreign armies and foreign contractors come to live in Iraq and plunder its wealth?
These excellent qualifications sit around here frustrated, smashed, being devoured by emptiness, loss and anxiety, looking at Iraq, with nothing in their power to improve things?
In whose hands the fate of the country lies now?
In the hands of foreign troops, a weak government controlled by Bush, and outlaw criminal militias? While hundreds and thousands of Iraqis, civilians and military, well qualified, who can solve the country’s problems, were removed from deciding the fate of Iraq?
Iraq will be all right, when the decision goes back into the hands of its men and women, not those who obey the orders of Bush and his administration, but those who carry the love of Iraq, its independence and dignity, in their hearts….
Who carry love for its people, its history and civilization…
Who believe they are one people, with one past, and one future…
Those are the ones who will achieve settlement and justice for Iraq…
They do exist; waiting for the chance to save the country from the catastrophes that has befallen it…
I always hear the question: what will happen to Iraq if the armies withdraw from it?
And the answer, which I heard from most Iraqis, and made me smile: when the occupation leaves, all the mercenary agents will leave with it, for no one will protect them…
And Iraq will go back to its people, those who love Iraq and want what is best for it…
Bush knows this, and that is why he insists upon remaining in Iraq by flimsy excuses, because, if he withdraws his army, his dream and project will be smashed immediately, at once…
But he will get out of Iraq…
He will get out, in spite of his nose…
For neither the Iraqi people want him there, nor the American people…
I pray to God to defeat him, and to make victorious the will of the people who love life, freedom, and peace….

Regarding this last sentence, I personally am very opposed to the idea of seeking to “defeat” a person, as such, however lethal and harmful his actions… Rather, I’d say that first of all this person’s bad actions need to be stopped, and their effects as far as possible reversed; and then– hopefully– the perpetrator would be held accountable in some way for those actions…
Regarding Bush and his criminally reckless decision to invade and occupy Iraq, of course the hundreds of thousands who died cannot be brought back to life; and the maimed can’t be made whole. But the occupation can– and must!– be ended… And then, regarding accountability, I think many of the world’s peoples would vie to have the right to undertake such a process. Realistically, though, it is very unlikely indeed to happen…
Regarding Faiza’s wish for the victory of the will of the people who love life, freedom, and peace, I certainly say “Amen” to that.

General Barry McCaffrey, a distinguished career Army officer who was Commander of the US Armed Forces’ Southern Command from 1994 through 1996, and then Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under Pres. Clinton, has apparently sent an email to his contacts in the armed services saying

You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out…
The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
We actually will only have three years.

These are the headlines in an email, titled “From: BARRY MCCAFFREY / Subject: Re: Iraq” that got passed on to me today. The person who sent it to me is someone I trust a lot; and that person says that s/he has no reason to doubt the provenance or the veracity of the text of this message.
I don’t know how to contact Gen. McCaffrey to request confirmation of its authenticity, but might figure out a way to do this tomorrow.
The end of the email says this:

Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
Barry

So I’m sharing it.
The email is pretty hard-hitting in its criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. At one point it says:

I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.

This seems to me to be consonant with– though more forcefully stated than– other comments McCaffrey has made recently. For example, this article published today says,

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey calls the surge and those plans “a fool’s errand” that almost certainly will produce many more American casualties and no great chance of success.

Here is the whole text of the email as I received it:

From: BARRY MCCAFFREY
Subject: Re: Iraq
Good news that both Ryan Crocker and Dave Petreus will take the helm.
Dave is the most talented person in uniform I ever met. Ryan Crocker is the best Ambassador I have ever seen. They have a losing hand. If anyone can sort this out–they will. I will bet that by next June we will have very public expression by the two of them of the situation on the ground—-and what will be required to save our position.
————————————————————————
———–
Some thoughts. You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out.
It has nothing to do with achieving or not achieving our objectives.
The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
We actually will only have three years.
The human and resource costs of the war are huge…the Administration rhetoric suggested it would be easy…. and then denied reality…Rumsfeld kept a mindless spin on the issue. Now, the expectations are saturated.
Important we get this. The political system (the voters) are not going to accept 500-1000 killed and wounded and $8 billion per month.
Again–it has to look dramatically better in 24 months or the next President begins to pull the plug.
Yes…we are losing at this point. That is what the majority of the active Armed Forces now believe, that is what the American people believe, that is what the new Sec Def said at confirmation. That is actually my own view. The glide path is down –not up. Unless there is a surge of economic reconstruction aid from Congress and the Administration, unless there is a surge of equipment that gives Iraqi Forces a major advantage over the militias/insurgents/criminals, unless the Maliki Government can present a competent face to the Iraqi people as well as the American people—then I expect that we will suffer a disaster and be out totally by early 2009.
Yes—essentially only the Armed Forces and the CIA are at war. (I understand and am grateful for the courage and dedication of all those other agencies who actually have volunteered to serve in these war zones). There is no engagement of the American people with the conflict. There is no sacrifice except for the families of those engaged. There is no tax to pay for the war. The government is bleeding money…the equipment of the Armed Forces is totally coming apart for lack of funding…the military manpower is inadequate to support the current strategy and Rumsfeld refused to support the funding to increase the numbers. No other branch of government is ORDERING employees into these combat zones to include the Foreign Service. Were it not for the brave 35,000 contractors —much of the support functions would have ground to a halt. There are few sons or daughters of senior figures in our government or Congress serving in these war zones.
(The uniformed children of the Armed Forces are being killed and wounded in record numbers).
The bottom line…we are not in Iraq to fight against Islamic extremism.
We are there to take down the Saddam Regime, stand up a government and security forces that can control Iraq and not threaten us or their neighbors, jump start the economy, and then get out. We are foreigners and infidels…we gave these people a huge gift by saving them from Saddam. Now it has gone very badly wrong. We have a very short period of time to turn it around and then exit.
You are still in service and you have committed your life to this struggle.
I have great respect for all of you. Remember my generation started life with combat tours in a war that consumed 58,000 dead and 303,000 wounded.
We did not lose the war because of the weakness of the American people or the lack of courage of our American soldiers—we lost because we had arrogant and unwise political leadership who never leveled with the American people—-and obedient and strategically incompetent senior military leadership. We also had a South Vietnamese government that was corrupt, incompetent, and lacked the dedication of their adversaries. At the end of the day—the Congress read the mood of the electorate— mandated a withdrawal —and then pulled the plug on resources for the war. (The war we were fighting was not actually against a Viet Cong insurgency…this was a civil war against a nationalistic, revolutionary movement that was fighting to unite the Vietnamese people and expel the French and American foreigners.
We lacked the political will to seriously confront the North Vietnamese Armed Forces on the ground. They suffered a million dead but were NEVER seriously threatened enough to even consider giving up their struggle.) At this point in Iraq, we are not considering seriously any strategy to confront and defeat the Mahdi Army, the Rahmadi rebellion, the Iranian cross-border support to the Shia, the Syrian or other support for the El Anbar Sunnis, etc.
So—I remain committed to supporting those in uniform, believe strongly that we must provide Iraq the resources to achieve our objectives, I am hopeful that we can turn this around, and grateful that Gen Petreus and Amb Crocker will take up the banner from Abizaid/Casey and Khalilzad. ( John Abizaid has been a national treasure who understood this whole thing from the start.)
I will maintain an objective, non-partisan focus on the struggle and publicly argue for issues which I believe will help. I am not running for public office. However, I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.
If we and the Iraqi government cannot achieve stability and a military US withdrawal in the coming very few years…the region and US interests are going to be severely menaced for the next 10 years or more. The Mid-East is vital to our international interests…Vietnam was not.
Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
Barry

If anyone is in a position to provide additional information about the provenance or authenticity of this email, please contribute that information in a comment here or send me an email. Thanks!

In today’s NYT Sabrina Tavernise has a really interesting article about the mayor of Sadr City, Rahim al-Daraji, who says he is authorized to speak on behalf of field commanders for the Sadrist Jaish al-Mahdi. Daraji, she writes,

has approached Western military officials and laid out a plan to avoid armed confrontation…

Daraji reportedly forwarded the proposal to the Americans through Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, a British officer who is the deputy commanding general in Iraq, with whom he’s met twice in the past couple of weeks.
Tavernise writes:

Mr. Daraji said in an interview that [Jaish al-Mahdi] field commanders would forbid their foot soldiers to carry guns in public if the American military and the Iraqi government met several basic demands, mostly involving ways to ensure better security for Sadr City. He is communicating with the commanders through a Shiite politician who is close to them.
“The task is to eliminate the armed presence in Sadr City,” he said. “To confiscate illegal weapons,” carried openly by militia members in public places.
The talks appeared to have been the first between an intermediary for the Mahdi militia and a senior commander from the American effort…
Even so, it was far from clear whether Mr. Daraji, who said he was not related to Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, the former spokesman for Mr. Sadr who was arrested on murder charges last week, was even able to speak for the sprawling, grass-roots militia, which, according to American military estimates, numbers at least 7,000 in Baghdad alone.
Saleh al-Agheli, a member of Parliament from Mr. Sadr’s political bloc, said the bloc’s political committee had “blessed and supported” the effort by Mr. Daraji.

She added this:

The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed that meetings had taken place and said that Mr. Daraji had told representatives from the American Embassy and from the military that local residents would not challenge weapons searches by American soldiers.
“He said all the right things at this point,” Mr. Khalilzad said, but added that it was too soon to tell if the offer would lead to anything more concrete.

Back to Daraji, Tavernise wrote that he:

said he represented 14 political and military groups in Sadr City. He said local residents, including Mahdi Army commanders, wanted to find ways to work with the Americans to avoid any large-scale confrontation. Commanders would tell militiamen to keep their weapons off the streets, he said, if Americans agreed to certain demands.
Some of the actions Mr. Daraji said he had requested in exchange for the promises from the militias seemed likely to draw stony stares from American military officials, namely to stop conducting raids in Sadr City and to release a number of those who had been arrested.
But other demands — to provide jobs for Sadr City residents, to bring in new construction projects and to triple the number of police stations there — seemed more realistic.
[An unnamed source of hers who’s a] government official, who works as an aide to Mr. Maliki, said he trusted Mr. Daraji.
“There is an honesty with this man,” said the official. “The chances for success are higher than before.”