The war in Iraq is now called: “Operation New Dawn”!
The Pentagon thinks this better reflects our evolving relationship with the Iraqi government.
Operation Civil War would be a more appropriate monicker, now that the Sunnis are off the payroll and bombing again, while the Shiites send in the army to keep their guys in power.
Gorilla says: “Or Operation Waste Of Time And Treasure, whichever you like!”
Today’s bombings: in Pakistan and in Iraq…
These were aimed at Shiites attending religious festivals, and were presumably detonated by or at the behest of Sunnis.
In Pakistan, Sunnis are the majority, in Iraq, the Shiites hold sway.
These religion-based civil wars appear to be beyond our control, and certainly beyond the control of the local governments.
It’s difficult to square our national security strategy in these regions, which is essentially to keep Islamic terrorists from attacking in the West, with the reality on the ground in places where terrorists live: there aren’t any jobs, village life is more or less medieval, and the populations are easy targets for the ravings and the bombs of religious fanatics.
No amount of soldiers will change the situation, and it’s very unlikely that weak and corrupt governments can do anything more than pursue containment in those regions they tenuously control.
What’s frustrating and depressing about all this is that these problems don’t get discussed by our political leaders.
They seem stuck on either fear (“they’ll be attacking by July!”) or on anger (“we’ll show these ragwearers a thing or two!”).
And they certainly want to do anything to avoid admitting that we don’t have a clue about what’s going on in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or that the threat a few thousand fifth-rate terrorists pose to our way of life is extremely minimal.
We’re not winning anything, we’re not nation building, and we’re not promoting democracy: we’re essentially a marginal player in a religious civil war.
Gorilla says: “It’s their fight, not ours, and so far they want to keep fighting!”
It’s bombs away again in Iraq!
Elections are scheduled for March, and there’s little doubt that some coalition of Shiites will win.
Whether the Sunnis accept this is of course another story.
As they’re weaned off the US payroll, and the ethnic cleansing continues, Sunni leaders may decide to give civil war another go.
The numbers are against them, but suicidal nationalism has never been a deal breaker in Iraq.
The Administration naturally wants out by 2011. Iraq has been a disaster from the beginning and has zero strategic signficance.
Whether they also get a civil war in the midst of Obama’s reelection campaign is a bit less predictable.
Gorilla says: “It won’t be Sunni delight!”
These were the events that mattered in Gorilla’s world this week:
Health care reform: Farewell, public option, hello, Medicare buy-in! All very minor league stuff. Single payer is the way to go, and Gorilla believes that’s where we’ll be by 2025.
Nobel Peace Prize: An interesting speech from President Obama on the rationale for “just” war. War apparently is peace by other means. The difficulty with all this nuanced rhetoric is that it doesn’t match up with actual policy. The Administration is still defending the right of government officials to spy on Americans and to commit crimes with impunity. The Administration is all for nuclear non-proliferation, but conventional proliferation remains big business. Gorilla thinks that all this pragmatism is fine, but wishes there would be an occasional foray into non-opinion poll-based foreign policy.
Human Rights Day: A reminder of how little can be done to address major problems. Nobody’s going to war, justly or unjustly, for Darfur, the Congo, Guinea, or Zimbabwe. The plight of women and children in most countries remains appalling. Gorilla suggests that progress can be made, at the grassroots and at the margins, if there’s a willingness to see it through with political and economic capital.
Climate change: Copenhagen peters away like a deflated gas bag. There’s no political support anywhere in the developed world for doing anything that requires big money, big sacrifice, or big risks. We’re waiting for the Chinese and Indians to do something, they’re waiting for us, and it’s convenient for everyone that nothing much gets done. Gorilla predicts that serious climate change policy will come only when climate change is a serious threat, roughly 20 years from now.
US Economy: The figures remain dire. We need to be adding 300,000 jobs/month just to stay even with population and trendline growth; last month we lost another 11,000. Retail sales are barely above inflation. The mortgage modification program has been a total failure. The hoarding by banks goes on, while credit tightens further. There’s no real leadership coming from Washington as everyone gears up for the 2010 elections. Gorilla thinks the Democrats will get a severe and deserved kicking at the polls next November.
Iraq: The bombers are back, or rather they never went away. Despite all the surging, 7 Iraqis die violently every day. Gorilla thinks the civil war will resume in 2012.
Afghanistan and Pakistan: The denial dance goes on. President Karzai still hasn’t named a cabinet. Pakistan still hasn’t done anything about Baluchistan. America still hasn’t captured any top al-Qaeda leaders. Gorilla has moved his withdrawal timetable from late 2010 to mid 2011, and still believes we’ll be mostly out by 2015.
It’s too early to tell whether this is election-related (an election law was finally passed yesterday and a date is to be announced) or just a continuing part of the civil war that’s been going on before, during, and after the “surge”.
What is clear is that the messes we’ve made in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are not likely to be cleaned up for decades, regardless of whether we stay or go. These are not stable countries and haven’t been throughout most of their histories. Civilians continue to die every week in Iraq, but our media lost interest months ago.
Gorilla says: “At least we won’t be hearing the Petraeus in 2012 groundswell!”
These were the events in Gorilla’s world that mattered this week:
Climate Change: Another week of faintly ridiculous posturing. The President proposes a pollution reduction he hasn’t got the votes for, while the Chinese advance a crafty formula that won’t cut pollution at all. There just isn’t the political will anywhere to do something about a problem that’s not coming around the corner for a couple of decades. Gorilla thinks there will be progress only when progress is necessary, roughly sometime after 2030.
Economy: The economy’s anemic growth continues. While there was good news in the form of reduced unemployment claims, the fact remains that unemployment will remain sky high until the economy grows a lot more than 2%. Gorilla still believes it will take a decade to get unemployment down below 7%.
Iraq: Stalled out on its way to an election in January. The underlying differences among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds have not been addressed, but for the US that’s no longer a problem. Gorilla suggests we’ll be out as planned by 2011, and Iraq will start the next round of civil war in 2012.
Iran: Still lots of posturing, but the outlines of a deal are in sight. This will be some combination of inspections in Iran and the Russians helping out with nuclear technology. The Israelis will not be happy, but will not do anything. Why the US is not seizing the opportunity to make a buck on developing Iran’s nuclear industry, a la India, remains a mystery. Gorilla says a deal will be completed in 2010, and Obama will visit Iran in 2013.
Dubai: Real estate bubbles don’t work any better in the Middle East than they do in the US. Perhaps this time the creditors will actually take a haircut. Gorilla puts forth the theory that creditors may use this default to get more guarantees from the government, particularly with massive CRE losses on the horizon and another round of the residential housing bust occurring simultaneously. Spoons therefore should be locked away.
Thanksgiving: Americans have little to be thankful for in terms of political leadership, but Gorilla observes that fecklessness is next to bloggedness in the world he inhabits.
Back in Iraq, a snag has developed.
Seems the parliament can’t muster enough votes to override a Vice Presidential veto (and how’d we manage to advise the Iraqis to set up a constitution with a vice presidential veto?), so the election may have to be postponed beyond January.
Still plenty of reassuring noises from our generals that this won’t interfere with the “waterfall” aka the beginning of our orderly withdrawal from Iraq.
Less certain is what this says about the Iraqis’ ability to manage their country, when it’s clear the nationalistic and religious divides still lurk beneath the surface. These really aren’t our problem, they just illustrate what a huge mistake it was to invade in the first place.
Gorilla is a bit confused by all this electioneering: “What happens when the Sunnis come off the payroll? Should we ask Karzai’s brother to pick up the tab?”
Of course, we’ll be long gone by then. The whole purpose of the “surge” in Iraq was to declare victory and get out, as fast as we possibly could.
This strategy hasn’t quite dawned yet on our head general in Afghanistan, who seems to think that another surge and several more years of army training will make Afghanistan something other than a collection of warring tribes.
So, the score so far: two pointless wars that did not achieve their ever changing objectives, several thousand of our boys and girls killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans killed, terrorist recruitment a big success, drugs trade roaring, Islamic extremism a fact of life worldwide, and no luck at all in capturing or killing the people who attacked us on 9/11.
Gorilla says: “No matter how you spin it, war is stupidity by other means!”
It looks like business as usual is returning to Iraq.
The great “surge” strategy of General Petraeus was essentially based on two things: 1) allowing ethnic cleansing to proceed in many Baghdad neighborhoods and Iraqi towns before securing them, and 2) putting former Sunni insurgents on Uncle Sam’s payroll.
Now we’re pulling out and the Sunnis are off the payroll. What’s left is what has always been there: deep distrust of the Shi’ites by the Sunnis and deep indifference by the Shi’ites about reintegrating the Sunnis.
Gorilla concludes: “Civil war is the result we could have had by withdrawing 5 years ago. Or the result we’ll have 5 years from now.”
The Obama Administration apparently wants to cut off gasoline supplies to Iran if the Iranians don’t come to the table to negotiate on the nuclear issue.
How this is supposed to happen, when the Russians, a very large Iranian gas supplier, have never indicated the slightest support for “tougher” sanctions is well beyond comprehension.
We seem to be stuck in a post-9/11 trap of our own making: Countries that 10 years ago would have been seen as fifth-rate, marginal regional threats have been conflated into America’s existential nightmares. How else to justify the massive expenditure of lives and treasure on such total failures as Iraq (slowly descending back into civil war) and Afghanistan (never left civil war) while not actually catching the very terrorists who attacked us?
The real winners in this have been Islamic extremists (no difficulty attracting new recruits or undertaking bombings worldwide), Pentagon budgeteers (now spending 10 times what any other country does) and several right-wing Israeli governments (why be good?).
The working policy principle is: “We don’t talk, so they must scare us”.
Gorilla thinks: “One day we’ll decide to sit down and cut a deal with Iran and North Korea. They know it, the Russians and Chinese know it, and one day so will we”.
