As usual, Billmon has pointed out the sad yet obvious truth that no mainstream politician in the US wants to admit. Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, Josh Marshall asked Joe Wilson what he thought of the situation. Wilson’s response deserves immortality, both because of its pithiness and its painful prescience: “We’re fucked.”
Billmon has explained precisely how and why we (the US, and indirectly the whole world except maybe Iran) are fucked. US politicians desperately want to believe this isn’t so. They want to think that intelligent policies, wisely promulgated and consistently implemented, can somehow save the situation. Gen. Wesley Clark, for whom I have great respect, demonstrated exactly this sentiment in an op-ed today in the Washington Post. Clark described a coherent, thoughtful approach that has absolutely no chance of ever happening. The maintsream Democrats refuse to realize two inescapable facts. The first is that, as long as Chimparino is President, none of their plans has any chance whatsoever of happening. There’s no point in suggesting policies when the Republicans aren’t going to listen. All it does is give the Republicans a target.
The second inescapable fact is, it’s not going to work. The fact is, the United States (or at least its policy makers, military, and media) have absolutely no idea how the Iraqis think, what they care about, or what they want. I certainly don’t have any idea. What we do know is that right now they seem pretty intent on killing each other, and our ability to stop them is severely limited. If the US abandons Iraq, the country will degenerate into anarchy, chaos, and civil war. If the US stays, Iraq will degenerate into anarchy, chaos, and civil war, with US troops in the middle.
There is in fact one simple solution to the problem. Don’t invade Iraq. Unfortunately, that one might not be possible any more. Like Joe Wilson said. Sometimes you’re just fucked.

Posted by: Aigin | Aug 26 2005 21:01 utc | 3

I’m reading the rest of Larry Johnson’s article. There’s a lot of good stuff which Billmon didn’t quote. Go read it, it’s worth your time!

Most of the trained and deployed Iraqi police and military forces are Shia. Most of their operations are directed against Sunni targets. The Sunnis do not feel that they have a legitimate voice in the political process. As a result they have decided to fight.
The Shia majority, long oppressed in Iraq, are not willing, nor likely, to relinquish their new status as the tops dogs.
The Shia also are well positioned to control a significant portion of Iraq’s vast oil resources. They are not likely to share this wealth with the Sunnis.
There is no effective national government in Iraq. The current group meeting inside the Green Zone to draft the constitution has no real clout. True power is held by tribal chieftains and religious leaders scattered around country. Those leaders are playing both sides of the fence—keeping a toe in the political negotiations in Baghdad while providing money and protection to insurgents.
The insurgency in Iraq is comprised of at least 20 groups. Some of these are Baathists, some are Sunni Islamic extremists, and a few are Shia. They agree on one thing—the United States is an invader and must be expelled. While there is no single leader who can claim the status or mandate as did Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam days, the insurgents in Iraq are as firm and serious as those we faced in Vietnam.

Apparently nobody feels liberated…

Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Aug 26 2005 21:27 utc | 5

Brilliant post Billmon; who do you think is paying for the sunni to attack the Kurds? Both Iran and Turkey probably are. This is the clusterfuck beyond what the war naysayers predicted.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 26 2005 22:04 utc | 7

I completely agree, Bill: We are indeed fucked. There is also the question of Israel. I can now see that if and when we do vacate Iraq, those Haliburton-built bases will go up in Jordan and Kuwait. Cheney and his corporate-government cronies are so rabid about a ‘strategic presence’ in the Middle East that they look like East India traders frothing over boatloads of saffron and tea–only worse.
The strategic economic factor regarding oil really is the main issue. I can see the arctic ice cracking apart with pipelines already. And soon, after the Rio Grande wall is built along the border with Mexico, the immigrants will simply be able to hop from one off-shore platform to the next all the way to Galveston.
Time to move to Montana and raise a crop of dental floss. I’m outta here…

Posted by: Hood | Aug 26 2005 22:39 utc | 9

You know the ultimate Gotterdamrung climax is upon us when ex-NSA analyst WAYNE MADSEN under threat of Assassination….FLEES WASHINGTON, D.C., and contrary to many this Drip, drip, drip, that is nows promising to break the levy, is going to be Gargantuan. Ya think the mass psychosis, is bad now wait till, the Cheney admin is backed into a corner. Ever sit on a trash can with a pit bull inside? The Shadow of Apokolips is upon us my friends. Further, the people who are gleeful of the coming birth/death are not going to like being in the maternity ward.
The origins of New Genesis and Apokolips can be traced to the deaths of the “Old Gods,” after which an indescribable burst of energy split the planet into two molten bodies. These bodies cooled and brought forth new life—and new gods—which developed into two worlds that exist as the antithesis of the other.
Look out your window, baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch,
The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched.
Could be the Fuhrer
Could be the local priest.
You know sometimes
Satan comes as a man of peace.
– Bob Dylan
Robertson sez that he’s the one,
oh he shore is if Armageddon,
is your idea of family fun,
An’ he’s got some planned for you! (arf, arf)
(now, tell me that ain’t true)
– Frank Zappa
R.I.P. Frank…And FUCK-YOU PAT!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 26 2005 23:34 utc | 11

What about Turkey? Don’t I remember some commentary along the way saying Turkey would never allow the Kurds to establish their own country in northern Iraq? Doesn’t Turkey have its own Kurdish minority that it fears will want to succeed from Turkey and join with the Kurds of Iraq to form a single Kurdish state from parts of Iraq and parts of Turnkey?
Why haven’t we heard anything out of Turkey recently?

Posted by: GlennS | Aug 26 2005 23:48 utc | 13

Does a clown show really rise to the level of opera bouffe? I’m speaking of the theatre, of course.
Just curious.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 27 2005 1:13 utc | 15

The architects of our doom
Around their tables sit
And in their thrones of power
Condemn those they’ve cast adrift
Echoes down the city street
Their harpies laughter rings
Waiting for the curtain call
Oblivious in the wings
The casket is empty
Abandon ye all hope
They ran off with the money
And left us with the rope

The Pogues
Wake of the Medusa

Posted by: Jimmy Jazz | Aug 27 2005 1:52 utc | 17

“I am Saddam Hussein, I’m the president of Iraq, and I’m willing to negotiate.”

Posted by: ~ | Aug 27 2005 2:41 utc | 19

man Billmon, you posted quite a mouthfull. Digesting the whole come down to what was said above. Iraq is a clusterfuck. The Shia have no mercy for the Sunni and I amagine a little revenge is involved. Same with the Kurds. The Sunnis are reaping what they sowed. But the kind of country the Shia want is not secular and the Kurds will bide their time before breaking away, especially with a republic. It will be an Confederate breakaway like the American south.
One point that will never happen is the draft. They are always rigged and the current system is rigged.
Everyone should listen to the rebellion now from the bands “Green Day” and “System of the Down.”(My 15 year old son listens to the bands) These bands are really popular and basically the younger generation will nip this Iraq war bullshit in the bud before it gets out of hand. Further, all the rebelious baby boom moms and dads will encourage the rebellion against the war machine. The American people will condone war if its for security and a good cause, but the lie has been reveiled and I cannot wait to watch the further unravelling.

Posted by: jdp | Aug 27 2005 2:53 utc | 21

Perhaps the US should let the 5 million Sunnis emigrate to the US a la the Hmong. Utah comes to mind.

Posted by: biklett | Aug 27 2005 3:11 utc | 23

bvb09,
But why did the British empire go into decline?
“Towards the end of the century, the policies of New Imperialism led to increasing colonial conflicts and eventually the Boer War.”
wikipedia
“The term ‘New Imperialism’ refers to the policy and ideology of imperial colonial expansion adopted by Europe’s powers and later the United States and Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; approximately from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I (c. 1871–1914). The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed ’empire for empire’s sake,’aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonizing countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.”
Does that sound a lot like neo-con?

Posted by: GlennS | Aug 27 2005 3:39 utc | 25

Besides his pithy comment “Sometimes you’re just fucked” Juan Cole pointed out today ‘It is a 21st century irony that a virtual magazine reflects the realities of Iraq, whereas many “real” magazines and newspapers carry Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld fantasies’. Billmon’s Whiskey Bar reflects this reality.
The Dark Side, David Brooks, pointed out tonight on NewsHour that the US learned how to fight insurgencies at the end of the Vietnam War. It is just the US hasn’t put the knowledge to work in Iraq. True. The only way to pacify the Sunni Arabs is with 500,000 to a million troops, concentration camps and ethnic cleansing. The same tools the British used successful in the Boer War and Malayan Emergency.
The only way to get this number of troops is to start the draft in the USA. The only rational alternative is to negotiate a turn over to the UN, EU, China and the Arab League and get US troops the hell out of the Middle East forever and pray the oil shock is not too severe. Staying the coarse is waste of money and lives ultimately leading to imperial ruin.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 27 2005 3:54 utc | 27

Yeah, its that bad. But don’t right off hope for the Iraquis.

Posted by: RAZOR | Aug 27 2005 4:08 utc | 29

I expect Sadr to join the Sunnis in a fight for a national Iraq. This isn´t over yet. Also expect the Turks to clamp down on the Kurds, if not by weapons, than by taking away the water (the have the Atatürk dam system can can close the tap to Iraq for a year without problems) or the oil revenues (the pipeline runs through Turkey. Saudi Arabia will pay billions to keep the Persians away.
The whole mess just starts.

Posted by: b | Aug 27 2005 5:57 utc | 31

I expect Sadr to join the Sunnis in a fight for a national Iraq.
They’re going to vote down the constitution. Then the present governmen will disband, and the official meltdown will start. We still ain’t seen nothing yet.

Posted by: folkers | Aug 27 2005 11:32 utc | 33

What do you call it when the solution is more threatening than the problem you intended to solve? What do you call it when your new “regime” is more threatening to world security than the old regime? What do you call your policy of going in to prevent a break up of Iraq when the country breaks up after you go in?
This is all getting to be so surreal that it almost makes me wonder if there is not some design to all this madness or at least some fate predetermined by Iraq’s position in the world.
A hydraulic civilization arose in the fertile river valleys of Iraq. Hydraulic in the sense of irrigation. Organizing an irrigated civilization required the evolving codependent roles of theocratic king, a priestly system with a monopoly on the god power (monotheism), and warriors.
Now, dependent upon another river of sorts, oil, the entire world is a hydraulic system dependent on the head pressure of oil in the middle east. At a time when we need to open the valves wider to allow more flow, we find that Iraq is lowering the head all as a by product of the very same forces that nourished the start of civilization.
Did our beginnings fate us? What kind of revision of the world view do we need to break out of this trap of living in a hydraulic civilizaton? We will never be really free as long as we are all dependent on oil.

Posted by: lou | Aug 27 2005 11:59 utc | 35

Mark Levine echos and fleshes out our friend Max’s thesis a couple of cycles ago at “in These Times” Echos of Oslo

The violence and the role of the U.S. presence in it raise another fundamental question barely touched upon by the discussions surrounding the constitution: What if the violence and chaos that have taken over Iraq (and which has become a similarly powerful dynamic in Palestine) are not merely the result of massive U.S. incompetence and ill-planning, but actually a structural necessity for the achievement of U.S. strategic aims in the country—that is, the retention of permanent military bases and the wholesale liberalization of the Iraqi economy?
The idea of “sponsored” or “managed” chaos as a defining characteristic of contemporary neoliberal globalization has already been demonstrated by scholars working on Africa, the former Soviet Union, and other locations along the “arc of instability” that happens to contain some of the world’s most resource petroleum rich and politically unstable countries. The main thrust of this argument is that the coming “Age of Peak Oil” makes it strategically necessary for the United States to maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq, and thus have unrestricted influence over its vast oil. In an environment where the vast majority of Iraqis do not want either of these things, creating a situation of violence and instability becomes a logical, and perhaps the only feasible way, to secure them.
Ironically, this dynamic interacts with the constitutional negotiations precisely by being largely absent from the discussions and debates over it. Lost in most of the public discussions around the constitution is whether it will prohibit or allow any foreign country (in this case, the United States) to have permanent bases, which is clearly opposed by the vast majority of Arab Iraqis. But as long as the violent insurgency continues, the Shi’i majority government cannot risk asking the United States to leave. Therefore, a serious but manageable insurgency becomes the most viable way to ensure that by the time the Iraqis work out their differences, the United States has half a dozen or more permanent bases constructed and has ensured that legal impediments to their presence are no longer an issue.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 27 2005 13:28 utc | 37

hydraulic?
some here read DUNE.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 27 2005 19:34 utc | 39

Forgive my spelling and grammar, it is late and I had a bit too much to drink with dinner.
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 28 2005 7:41 utc | 41

@John; a nuclear attack on Iran also has significant political cost associated with it, response in Europe and the larger Muslim world from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia is going to be highly negative. It is much cheaper, and beneficial, to exploit Iran as a rogue nation than to actually try and resolve the situation. Plus Iran’s influence in Afghanistan, Azebaijan, Uzbekistan, and Iraq itself will be a deterence. But you could be right, I just don’t think that they want chaos on this large a scale. That will be “unmanageable chaos.”
Max

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 28 2005 8:08 utc | 43