 | The Politics Blog No-holds-barred commentary on the political arena. |
Between the horror in Virginia, the hideous decision of the Supreme Court, the ongoing outrage over the US attorneys, and half a dozen other scandals underway, it’s understandable that Americans are a bit distracted today. It may not be making the top of today’s news, but Baghdad is exploding.
Suspected Sunni insurgents penetrated the Baghdad security net Wednesday, hitting Shiite targets with four bomb attacks that killed 183 people — the bloodiest day since the U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago…. Nationwide the number of people killed or found dead was 233, which was second only to a total of 281 killed or found dead on Nov. 23, 2006. Those figures are according to AP record-keeping, which began in May 2005.
For the last few weeks, the Bush administration has twisted every possible statistic to try and extract some shadow of “progress,” but today’s violence should put to rest any theory that the massive escalation of US forces is the solution.
U.S. officials have reported a decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks in the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River. The number of bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad also has risen significantly.
We’re seeing a surge all right — a surge in the rate of US forces dying, a surge in number of Iraqis dying, a surge in the speed with which the US-backed government is crumbling.
You think this is what Bush intended?
We’re finding out right now. First, from this report by Michael Ware on CNN last night. Here he discusses the violence:
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it’s easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.
This is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.
We’re having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We’re seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We’re seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.
I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don’t want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn’t one.
And the political situation:
Maliki has no popular base. He lacks the currency of political power in this country, which is an armed militia. So he’s had to beg and borrow for political capital.
He found that the U.S. military desperate to put any kind of reasonable face on this apparition that they call the Iraqi government. And meanwhile, in real political terms, he’s had to draw on Muqtada’s militia and its political faction to actually put him into place.
So this is a man in a terrible predicament, who is unable to deliver. And yet, we have Muqtada in this time of crisis just turning that screw.
He has threatened to withdraw — well, his people have threatened to withdraw participation in the parliament and the government if he meets with what they call the criminal Bush. Nonetheless, he is so acute, his political advisers and Muqtada himself. This was a statement made by his leading parliamentarian. It didn’t come from his mouth himself. So he can use this as very convenient leverage this week in the leadup to the Maliki-Bush meeting, and at the last minute, he can pull away from it. And nonetheless, he still wins.
We’re not only losing Iraq militarily and politically, but more significantly, we’re losing the larger war on terrorism in the ground on Iraq. The New York Times has obtained a classified government report completed in June on the financing of the insurgency, and the conclusions are grim:
The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says that $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials….
The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take measures the report says will be necessary to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.
“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”
The situation is too far gone for a positive ending in Iraq itself, but it might not be too late to find a way to at least stop the flow of money to the insurgency, or out of Iraq to other terrorist groups. This war has not made us safer, and saying so doesn’t embolden the terrorists. It would seem the primary thing that has emboldened the terrorists–and strengthened their hand–since 9/11 has been the disastrous incomptenence and adventurism of the Bush administration.
The point of terrorism is, as the name suggests, to terrorize. Not simply to kill and destroy, but to frighten the broader population. It puzzles me why the RNC has found common cause with terrorists in their new ad campaign, and it puzzles me more why they want to highlight the fact that over 5 years after 9/11 George Bush has failed to catch the guy responsible.
In wartime El Salvador, people showed their resolve against the terror of their times (from both the insurgents and the government) by going about their lives, refusing to cower in fear. I remember (aged 7-8) shopping at a street market with my grandmother when a couple of shots rang out. My grandmother quickly ushered me inside a store, but most people kept up as if nothing had happened. Few even looked up to see what the commotion was all about. They shrugged it off.
Yet here is our great nation, supposedly the strongest, and we can’t handle a little adversity? We’re playing right into the terrorists aims, which is to terrorize. And the GOP is right there helping them do it. Apparently, they both benefit from a terrorized American populace.
This isn’t complicated. Terrorists want to terrorize. Republicans are helping them do so.
What would Al Qaida and Republicans do without each other?
