Op-Ed Commentary

 

 

Our view : Who lost Iraq War?

Richard Perle, and Ken Adelman are losing the war in Iraq.
They have led US forces into an Iranian ambush in Iraq, and have no viable
plan for extracting US forces. Even as Iran sets up this trap for US
forces, Richard Perle's guru on Iraq Ahmed Chalabi is calling for further US
appeasement of Iran. AP carries a new story that Chalabi now wants
accelerated US-Iran collaboration on Iraq and the Middle East (AP Interview:
"Chalabi prods U.S. on Iran," October 28, 2006). This is like calling for
US-German collaboration in 1940! Does Perle still agree with Chalabi?

Iran is now in position to block a US troop withdrawal from Iraq, The US,
very unwisely, is beginning to concentrate its deployment in Iraq into
Baghdad, which is just what Iran wants (see my attached op-ed, "Baghdad is a
Trap for US Forces," Iran-Watch.com, 10/26/06). Iran will attempt to
destroy the bulk of US military forces as they are redeployed into Baghdad
by provoking civil war in Baghdad, using the Badr Brigades to this end. US
Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, who along with Perle and Chalabi is
also a good friend to Iran, formulated this redeployment of US forces within
Iraq to Baghdad, where they will be entirely at the mercy of Iran.

In other words, if you want to understand the position of the 140,000 troops
in Iraq today, think of the Bay of Pigs fiasco! Then, Cuban-American
volunteers were at the mercy of Castro, whereas today 140,000 US troops are
at the mercy of Ahmadinejad, who is moving to cut their supply lines by
taking Basra, and with the encouragement of US Ambassador Khalilzad, who
openly favors Iran as a US partner in Iraq (see attached Iran-watch op-ed).

The new Congress should immediately undertake hearings on the pro-Iranian
policies of Perle, Chalabi and Khalilzad and how this group is losing in
Iraq. We are confident that congressional interest will intensify as
awareness grows that this pro-Iran group has essentially abandoned 140,000
US troops in Iraq, at the mercy of Iran and al-Qaeda, and does not have a
clue about how to bring these troops home.

Iran-Watch.com
Baghdad is a Trap for US Forces

The Bush administration has buried the US public in a tidal wave of words
justifying the US policy in Iraq. Yet despite the verbal onslaught, public
confidence in Bush's war is waning. This is because Americans have little
faith in "benchmarks and milestones," long recognized as the first line of
defense for bureaucrats covering their backsides when there is no progress
to report.

Moreover, what little confidence the public has in such measurements was
further undermined when the new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Maliki
immediately repudiated the entire exercise and said it would not be bound by
the US findings.

So where does that leave US policy? The US and the Maliki government are now
discussing timelines for negotiating timelines (I kid you not. This nonsense
is enough to make a cat laugh, as they say in the South).

One fixed objective seems to be looming up through the fog -- the defense of
Baghdad. All other objectives once featured in the news in recent months
seem to be going by the wayside such as Fallujah, Najaf, and Mosul.

Talk about lowered expectations! In the days of Paul Wolfowitz the US goal
was to democratize the entire region via Iraq. Then Iraq became the sole
policy focus, now reduced to Baghdad and its environs.

Of course a good case can be made that if Baghdad is lost, so is Iraq.
However, an equally good case can be made that if Anbar Province (home to
al-Qaeda), Basra (home to the Mahdi Army), and Kirkuk (home to the Kurdish
secessionists) are lost, you can also wave goodbye to Iraq and Baghdad as
well.

In fact, by focusing on Baghdad, the US could be walking into a trap set by
Tehran. Two possible tests exist as to the truth of this assertion. The
first is to ascertain if Tehran, SCIRI, and Abdul Azizz al-Hakim have been
pushing for a Baghdad-first strategy. It is safe to assume this is the case
because a Baghdad-first security plan would not have been adopted over their
objections in view of their dominant position in Iraq's new army and police
force.

The second test is to define Tehran's objectives in Iraq and identify the
ways in which a Baghdad-first strategy meets those objectives. It is best to
begin with what Iran does not want. Iran does not Iraq to remain intact as a
centralized state that is ruled from Baghdad. Iran has no desire to
establish political control over or provide assistance to the Kurds and the
Sunnis via a Baghdad government. Any Iranian attempt to enforce a regime via
Baghdad would be met with stiff local resistance that could have severe
political repercussions in Tehran.

If so, what is Iran's alternative? Iran wants what Ambassador Khalilzad -- a
long time advocate of partitioning multi-ethnic states into ethnic enclaves
-- has always advocated for Iraq, and that is the disintegration of the
Iraqi state and the establishment of three autonomous republics, one
Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shia, which Iran would soon absorb.

This Iranian strategy for Iraq is the basis for Iran's tactical alliance
with al-Qaeda and the Kurdish secessionists. Much can be said about the
significant downsides of this Iranian plan for the region. It is enough to
say that an optimal scenario for Tehran is more likely than not a nightmare
for everyone else.

This brings us back to the original question - why does Iran prefer a
Baghdad-first strategy? Iran does so for four excellent reasons. First,
while the US is preoccupied with the fighting in Baghdad, Kurdistan followed
by Sunnistan and Shiastan can all break away from Baghdad.

Second, by focusing combat mainly in Baghdad, Iran is in the enviable
position of watching its primary long term adversaries - the US, the Sunnis,
and the Kurds -- fight each other while Iran for the most part remains
safely on the sidelines. Among other precipitating events, any attempt by
the Kurds to take Kirkuk away from Iraq's Sunnis, which Iran encourages and
the US does not oppose, would immediately ignite a civil war in Baghdad.

Third, when US forces are concentrated in Bahhdad, they will be hundreds of
kilometers away from Basra and other Iraqi exit points. All supplies for US
forces would come through territory that increasingly would come under
Iranian control. In a word, US forces would be trapped in Baghdad with no
clear exit strategy. Baghdad is not Beirut, where US forces could be picked
up on the beaches.

Fourth, and finally, the US would take a huge number of casualties in
sustained urban combat in Baghdad, to Iran's delight. Yet despite this US
sacrifice in blood, the US would have no chance of prevailing in Baghdad and
preserving Baghdad intact as Iraq's capital, given the potential for all out
war between al-Qaeda's Sunnis, Muqtada al-Sadr's Shia, and the Kurds. This
is because the Battle of Baghdad would soon become an exact replica of the
Battle of Algiers, and we all know how that movie ended. France lost.

- 11 06 2006

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Petroleumworld 11/07/06

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