TheMillerCircle.org

Editor’s note: it seems almost irrelevant to be talking about Iraq, when we are in the midst of the most serious economic crisis of the century, hoping to insure that it will not become the most disastrous economic crisis in our history (I like the new moniker for GW I have been hearing–George Herbert Hoover Bush), but this note was started well before the crisis after I heard Obama on O’Reilly’s FauxNews program, so I am sending it out now, because I doubt it will be a timely topic any time soon again. Or, better yet, I hope it becomes a timely topic again very soon!

Dear Mr. Obama,
I was blown away a few days ago when I heard you, during an interview with Bill O’Reilly on FauxNews, proclaim that the surge in Iraq has “been successful beyond our wildlest dreams” or something to that effect. In that statement, as well as others you have recently made, you gave away the one issue that had you admirably separated from all other candidates and similar behavior of backtracking and right-moving on other issues have lost you significant gains you had achieved in the polls (Zogby writes about this issue and his polling figures). So Barack, hoping to get you back on track, to encourage you to grab the high ground once again about Iraq, here are the facts about the Iraq war in case you have missed them or listened too much to John McCain, who as near as I can tell, is yet to tell the truth on just about any topic.

Now, about the surge: first, let’s begin with the fact that we have killed over a million Iraqi citizens and displaced nearly 5 million Iraqis either into the countryside or into neighboring countries, where a humanitarian crisis exists, one that will persist for a very long time. Second, the civilian violence, though reduced considerably, continues at a frightening pace (August figures are 360 civilians killed, 460 wounded ; this number excludes the killed “insurgents” many of whom are likely to be citizens, so the actual number of civilian deaths could be still higher. But, even at this “reduced” level of violence, when compared to one of the most violent civil wars in the Middle East, the Lebanese civil war between 1975-1990, when 75,000 civilians were killed and then compare this to the “low” August figures adjusted for the 15 years of equivalent war in Lebanon and you have ~65,000 deaths, which is close to the accumulated death toll of one of the most violent civil wars in recent history. The Iraqi death toll in August at an annualized rate gives the conflict a much higher level of lethality than Kashmir or the war in Sri Lanka (see Juan Cole for more details on these figures). The Iraqi violences remains so severe, that when GW Bush steps down as president, we will still have 138,000 troops in Iraq, which is higher than the troop level before the surge: the surge has worked?

When Petraeus took over command in Iraq in 2007, the Iraq civil war was already imploding–the Sunni-Shia conflict was largely won by the Shia who, by then, controlled 3/4 of Baghdad; al-Qaeda had overplayed its hand by trying to establish the Iraq Islamic State in Sunni country, which had failed. It was the Sunni tribes that were responsible for most of the American military deaths and they had been squeezed by al-Qaeda, the Shias and the American forces. The two most effective methods for reducing the violence had nothing to do with “the surge.” One was the co-opting of Sunni insurgents and arming them to fight against al-Qaeda and the second was arranged by Iran. According to Patrick Cockburn, whose inside contacts in Iraq seem to be unrivaled, the Iranians do not like the American presence in Iraq, but the present government under al-Maliki, a fellow religious Shia, is about as good as it’s going to get for them. It was the Iranians who arranged for Muqtada al-Sadr to contract his operations and get his Mahdi army off the streets. Al-Sadr is not pro-Iranian, but an Iraqi nationalist. So Obama, if you had explained to Bill O’Reilly and his FauxNews colleages that the real victor in Iraq is Iran and that the reason we are still fighting there is to protect and prop up a pro-Iranian regime, you might then be in a better position to understand why the United States continuously monitors al-Maliki’s every word: they are trying to figure out how deeply al-Maliki is embedded with Iran.

Petraeus’ continued concerns about the stability of Iraq and its future is surely correct. Molly Bingham and Steve Connors, who were embedded in Iraq for several years, having spent some time in Abu Ghrab as prisoners during the invasion, have produced a film “Meeting Resistance” that describes their experiences in Iraq and shows their filming of the conflict (you can get it from Netflix or buy it at their website). When interviewed by Scott Horton of AnitWar.com, they suggested that if the Americans leave Iraq, the al-Maliki government will collapse and al-Maliki himself will leave at about the same time. We have prepared the Iraqi turf for another conflict between Iraq and Iran and if it ignites with our departure, then we are likely to see oil prices sky rocket and remain high for a very long time, to say nothing of another round of national carnage created directly by our invasion and post-invasion activities. Barack, the true answer to who has been the victor in Iraq has nothing to do with the surge and everything to do with Bush’s stupidity in forming his unknown (to him) alliance with Iran. So far the Iranians have played the Americans like a fiddle, from Chalabi to al-Maliki and if you had mentioned any part of this to O’Reilly, you could have maintained the vigor of your independence on this important issue. Perhaps your failings on the question of Iraq will be smothered by the economic crisis, which should heavily favor you if you will only stop genuflecting for the administration. If you want to see a successful model for how to bail out a US company, go back and read Ralph Nader and how we dealt with Chrysler, and start to more clearly separate yourself from your incompetent adversaries.
Over and Out
RFM