Iraq: Pushing String

What's going on in Iraq? It looks as if the US is directly involved in trying to manipulate its government, while Maliki is figuring out ways to use the additional GI's to his best advantage.

Administration officials have discussed among themselves whether they might need to withdraw support for Mr. Maliki if he doesn't perform, notably by building a new coalition in the Iraqi Parliament. Mr. Gates's statement was the first mention of the subject in public by a senior administration official…. [Mr Gates] acknowledged that Mr. Maliki initially had wanted to carry out the intensified military effort in Baghdad without more American troops. …American military commanders feared that, without American forces monitoring their operations, there could be even worse sectarian bloodshed.

"There's no question in my mind that Prime Minister Maliki wanted to do this operation on his own," Mr. Gates said…. Republicans on Panel… David S. Cloud and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times 1/13/07 Iraq So, the US is attempting to maneuver within Iraq's "sovereign" parliament to find someone more malleable than Maliki. But Maliki, after first proposing to "clear Baghdad" on his own, now is figuring out ways to use the unwanted additional US troops to carry out his supporters' objectives: you can be sure that disarming the Mahdi army, or the death squads, is not among them.

Given the position of US commanders that the additional troops are needed not for clearing Baghdad, but for minimizing sectarian bloodshed, the goals of Shiite PM Maliki stand revealed: to cleanse the capital of Sunnis, or to isolate them and drive them into undefended enclaves.

The US military and the Iraqi "government" are each attempting to use the other. The US military knows that its "Iraq project" is in ruins unless it can force the Iraqis into a true "unity" government, but forcing unity is a bit like pushing string.

The factions in control of most of the Baghdad government (security and defense ministries, security services, and parliament) are Shiite political leaders dependent on the Shiite militias, especially Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army. Their goal is not unity, but domination and revenge.

The Sunnis dominated Shiites for centuries, after all, and the Shiites have a long list of abominations for which they now demand retribution--those tens and hundreds of mutilated bodies showing up every day outside Baghdad's morgues.

In the fifth century this kind of political confusion reigned. In 405 an ally, Alaric the Goth, spun out of control and 5 years later ended up sacking Rome. For context, click here. In 430 the Vandal, Geiseric, was ferried from Spain to Africa by Roman ships, to aid one Roman faction against another. He conquered North Africa, instead, by 435 and sacked Rome in 455. Rome fell only 21 years later.

The US empowering the Iranian-allied Shiites in Iraq is about as counterproductive as the Romans bringing Geiseric to North Africa. Both were based on ignorance of "the barbarians" they were trying to control.