As a citizen, I am appalled at the irresponsible and feckless behavior of the Congress concerning the war in Iraq. Each time it tries to stop the war, the president bamboozles and confuses it so that it does not act to reverse his disastrous policy.

He is now demanding more money to misuse in Iraq, namely to train its new army and police and also for arming Sunni insurgent groups, allegedly to fight on our side.  At least three things are wrong with this policy.

First, there are no historical examples where the United States has armed its enemies in a client state facing an insurgency and achieved a desirable outcome. Both the Sunni insurgents and the government’s forces are our enemies. Why doesn’t Congress confront the administration with these facts?

Second, the implications for political consolidation in Iraq, the very thing that General David Petraeus and others say is essential for success, are adverse. Those Sunnis who are accepting the offer to fight al Qaeda in return for weapons and ammunition do so because they mistrust the present government in Baghdad. Most say so openly.  In other words, they will fight on the U.S. side precisely because they do not trust their own government. That tells us that we are arming the enemies of the government whose election and legitimacy we sponsored. Perhaps the president can explain why he favors such a strange policy. 

Does it mean that Prime Minister Maliki’s government is now our enemy? And does it mean that the Baathists and other Sunni elements are now our choice to replace the present government in Iraq? Bush’s policy implies a “yes” answer to both questions.

Third, the historical record holds no example where stable states were created by diffusing weapons and power to local and regional groups. On the contrary, it has led to civil war, chaos, and sometimes the disappearance of states.

Petraeus, the commander of our forces in Iraq, is to testify on Capitol Hill next week. We’ll have to wait and see if any hard questions are directed at him regarding Bush’s new policy, or only softballs. The muddled, contradictory, and ludicrous nature of this policy would deserve a horse laugh if it were not so tragic. The Congress shames itself by merely considering the legislation, much less by passing it.

There is, however, a way to give such a policy a coherent rationale. That is to admit that we need a Saddam to govern today, and therefore, we must support the Baathists in the ongoing civil war. If they win, Iran’s influence will be reduced and our Arab friends in the Persian Gulf states will be delighted. Our present policy has them in a state of fright and desperation. To take this rational approach, of course, would be to admit that the invasion of Iraq was a strategic disaster in the first place. If we only want rid of al Qaeda in Iraq, the easiest way to do that is to withdraw. Now that the Sunnis are turning against it, it has no other allies in Iraqi. Only our presence has kept it alive this long.

Our policy in El Salvador in the 1980s essentially did the same thing as supporting only the Baathists would do in Iraq. It put the old political elites back in power in San Salvador under different names, and today they rule, using death squads that we pretended were closed down. The government prevailed against the insurgents there because Gorbachev cut off their supplies, not because the government was effective.

This is the most likely outcome in Iraq in any case unless it breaks up beforehand. Our choices are to withdraw and refuse to preside over such an outcome. Or to take sides in the civil war and reap the moral responsibility for all of the bloodshed that results.

In all events, the road to political stability in Iraq is civil war, not counterinsurgency and a governance policy of US colonialism by ventriloquism.

[Click here for a listing of other NiemanWatchdog contributions by Gen. Odom.]

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), a frequent contributor to NiemanWatchdog, died May 30, 2008, apparently of a heart attack. Odom in recent years had been an aggressive critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and was one of the first to call for removing American troops from Iraq. For many years a highly popular professor at Yale, he had been director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan from 1985 to 1988.

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Why would the Democrats want Iraq of the table? Posted by Errin Familia - 09/06/2007, 06:22 PM The Iraq war has been a boon to the Democrats and a bane to the Republicans when it comes to recent elections/ Why would the Democratic Congress want to take the Iraq war issue off the table when 2008 is just around the corner? Rahm Emmanual and Chuck Shumer have not been shy in detailing that the Iraq war won them the Congress last year, and can win the Dems more of the Congress as well as the White House next year. Bush, as usual, is his own worst enemy, and will drag down the GOP even more with the quagmire in Iraq come 2008. Just you watch... Lt. General Odom may be on the money, but he seems to be blind to the political machinations of the parties who can actually effect an end to the Iraq war. Hilary Clinton explains the position rather well to the American people... the only way we will start withdrawing from Iraq is if she is president come January 2008. How blatant can you be? The Democratic strategy involving Iraq and next year's election should be rather obvious now. Just watch this month as the Dems 'have' to give Bush more funding when they actually don't have to give him anything. What they really want to give Bush is more rope to hang himself with. Their plan is working beautifully so far...

Don't expect the Democrats to save the day in Iraq any time soon Posted by Errin Familia - 09/07/2007, 03:05 PM The Democratic position on Iraq is very clear right now: Vote more of us into office in 2008, put one of us in the White House in 2008, and we will end the war in 2009. I believe that's even one of HIlary's platforms, or at least one of her talking points. What's sad is that the Democrats do have the leverage to end the war in Iraq, but won't do it because it would be giving up a political advantage in 2008. There is no impotus for them to end a war that is destroying their opposition party. When it comes to Iraq, the Democrats don't have to be the good guys... they just have to be the lesser of two evils. As long as Bush and the GOP propogate the war, the Dems can remain that lesser of two evils. That's what ends up winning elections: Voters reluctantly voting for you because the other guy is worse. That's the way of the two party system the American people have settled for.

Petraeus Eats a Booger on National TV Posted by Jacob Freeze - 09/14/2007, 08:51 AM On September 6, 2007, the Washington Post explained all the statistics about Iraq and the Occupation and the Surge in one sentence. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal." General Petraeus claims the Surge is reducing sectarian violence because lots and lots of Iraqis have been shot in the face instead of the back of the head. Barack Obama and Joe Biden were so stupefied by this insane gobbledegook that they calmly continued asking the ass-monkey Petraeus pointless questions while he pulled a booger the size of a small apple out of his nose and began eating it on national television. Shoot in face, good! Shoot in back of head, bad! This demented gibberish toasted the brain of everyone who heard it! Only the heroic hairdo of Senator John Warner maintained its composure in the raging nightmare, and Senator Warner asked Petraeus the only intelligent question of the day. "Is the war in Iraq making America safer?" "It isn't my job to know that," Petraeus replied. "My job is eating boogers on national TV." At least that's what I think he said, but the last wave of discombobolating baloney about Iraq has apparently fricasséed the only functioning cell in my brain-pan, smoke is pouring out of my ears, and all I want to eat is boogers. ... (Editor X notes: The diarist apparently intended to justify his booger-eating metaphor in terms of the Lacanian agalma, the precious object in a worthless wrapper, which Žižek sees as "a hole at the center of the symbolic order." The edible (oedipal) booger negates the "thing that thinks" at the point where thinking collapses into the "abject Real." In this interpretation, Iraq is identified as "the Sublime Object of Ideology," and the booger is a desperate re-actualization of vérité-agalma, symbolically consumed by Petraeus under the wrapper of "inverted speech.") (Editor Y dissents: Petraeus is simply a MacGuffin, a cliché-object introduced to "advance the story," as in Hitchcock's joke about two men on a train. "One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!'"

American Colonialism Posted by Edward Rykowski - 09/15/2007, 01:41 AM Iraq is becoming the clearest instance of a colonialist American foreign policy since the Spanish-American War and its aftermath. Submit a comment - Jump to top of list