War on Iraq – Page 6 – Wis[s]e Words

Battle for Basra: what might be going on

Published on March 27, 2008

a montage of scenes for the battles in Basra

Over at Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies thinks the battle for Basra is good news because:

So if the al-Maliki government is really having a big push on Basra with 15,000 of its own troops, then that is actually a very positive sign indeed in terms of the government’s subjective assessment of its own stability. On the other hand, this is assuming that they are actually going to win — if they don’t it’s a disaster.

But that doesn’t explain why this push is happening now. As is widely known by now though rarely acknowledged, much of the succes of The Surge ™ was due to a ceasefire between the occupiers/Iraqi government, the main nationalist Sunni groups and the Sadrist movement. During this ceasefire everybody’s number one enemy, “Al Queda in Iraq”, was attacked and almost completely destroyed but with this destruction new opportunities arouse for the SCIRI and Dawa factions in the Iraqi government to take care of their other enemies as well. Chief one of which is the Sadrist movement, led by Muqtade al-Sadr, which is neither tied to the American occupation nor Iran and hence could make a reasonable claim to being the legitamite Iraqi resistance. It’s the Fadilha faction of this movement, big in Basra, who have been the main target of this governmental offensive.

Why? Because Basra is of course the key to control of the southern Iraqi oil fields; having control of its harbour means you control oil export from it, either officially or through smuggling. That’s a big prize to aim for. Lenny thinks that behind this offensive might also be pressure from the US government on behalf of their oil industry, made more plausible by the timing of it, just after Cheney’s visit…

But it’s not just a struggle for dinar, there’s also a political motive. This is not just that SIDRI and Dawa want the Sadrist movement to be weakened in time for the coming provincial elections. There’s something else going on I think. When The Surge got started early last year, it was always known to be a bit of a desperate measure, another throw of the dice that might just stabilise Iraq long enough for the Americans to be able to withdraw a significant number of troops and scale down their involvement there without making it seem like another Vietnam. It was also clear that if that would happen, it was likely that the Maliki government and especially its SCIRI and Dawa factions, could get in serious problems afterwards. Now might this somewhat halfbaked offensive just be a cynical measure on Maliki’s part to draw the Americans and Brits back into the war?

In which case, they may have misjudged the Sadrist response and the ability of the targeted groups in Basra to defend themselves…

4,000 US invaders dead – who cares?

Published on March 25, 2008

The entire western news media it seems, with the New York Times calling it a “sad Iraq milestone”. But it’s not just the American news media who treat it this way; the same language is also used in Dutch or British news sources. It’s all very touching, if not for the fact that the same media have paid little attention to far sadder milestones: that of an estimated million Iraqi deaths.

All the various mortality studies done in Iraq –the two Lancet studies, Iraq Living Conditions Survey, the ORB polls and the Iraq Family Health Survey– have either been largely ignored or ridiculed in the press. Even the Iraqi Bodycount Project’s estimates were disbelieved until more pessimistic studies appeared. I need not tell you that from that point, any study with higher estimates (that is, all of them) was attacked for not being in line with the Iraqi Bodycount figures.

I dislike seeing those crocodile tears for people who are fighting on the wrong side in the War on Iraq. Yes, to a certain extent the American (and British, and Dutch) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are victims of this war too, pawns sacrifised in illegal wars, but my sympathy lies more with the innocent civilians living in the country they invaded. The soldiers had a choice to be there; their Iraqi or Afghanistani victims did not. They could’ve had the courage to resist and refused to serve in this war.

Not that I’m glad to see American (or British, or Dutch, or…) soldiers killed or wounded in these wars; that’s why we should bring them home. I just wish that for once the real victims of this war, the untold millions of Iraqis and Afghanistanis who were killed or wounded, who lost their house or their family, who were made refugee, were remembered as well.

Five years on and nothing’s changed

Published on March 19, 2008

Despite the sheer inevitability of the coming war, I felt quite optimistic five years ago, in that short period between February 15th, the day the war protests went global and over 15 million people marched against a war on Iraq and March 19th, the day we learned all those protests had achieved nothing. At the time we were all working hard in the day to day organising of protests, as documented here and this left us without too much time to feel pessimistic in. The mood on the ground, even in such a traditional queen, county and navy town like Plymouth was overwhelmingly antiwar and it seemed absurd that it would happen, until it did happen.

Now, five years and a million dead or more later, it’s hard not to feel disillusioned. None of the criminals responsible for the war have had to pay for their crimes. Bush and Blair both got re-elected, a few of the more obvious culprits got to retire early, but nobody above the level of a Lynne England has had to go to prison for warcrimes yet. We’ve failed and I can’t see the situation improving quickly. Like Lebanon in the eighties, Iraq has become a regular staple of our television news, but not something that seems to have much to do with ourselves anymore…

June 2002!

Published on March 17, 2008

More evidence, if any was needed, that the War on Iraq was planned long before the “WMD crisis” erupted:

Col. John Agoglia, who served as a war planner for Gen. Tommy Franks at the United States Central Command, said the idea of using the Iraqi Army had long been an element of the invasion strategy.

“Starting in June 2002 we conducted targeted psychological operations using pamphlet drops, broadcasts and all sort of means to get the message to the regular army troops that they should surrender or desert and that if they did we would bring them back as part of a new Iraq without Saddam,” said Colonel Agoglia, who serves as the director of the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute of the Army.

Once the war got under way and many members of the Iraqi Army began to desert their posts, a different vision on how to proceed began to emerge at the Defense Department.

We knew that everything was in readiness for war in mid-2002, but “you don’t launch a new product in August”. This account seems to confirm that. (via Atrios).