December 6, 2006 at 08:53:18

Who Brought Us to the Iraq Abyss?

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Bernard Weiner - Writer

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

Here are five predictions for the short-term in Iraq. After that, some context and explanations.

1. Maliki will be gone shortly. Not only is he an ineffective Iraqi Prime Minister, but he had the temerity to stiff Bush at the summit's first meeting. Bad move! Dubya has no tolerance for that kind of push-back. Bush did a Brown/Rumsfeld on the Iraqi Prime Minister ("heckuva job, Maliki-man"), which in Bushworld is the kiss of death. Expect him to be forced out, or a coup to topple him.

2. I think we can anticipate Iraq's "Tet Offensive": There may soon be a major, frontal assault by the insurgents against and perhaps even inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, along with coordinated major attacks all around the country. This assault will serve as a clear demonstration of how vulnerable and untenable the U.S. position is in Iraq. That will be the beginning of the end of the U.S. Occupation.

3. Events on the ground (large ethnic population shifts inside, mass emigration outside) will lead to de facto recognition that Iraq is splitting into three relatively autonomous zones: Sh'ia, Sunni, Kurd. Whether there will be a weak central organizing authority is unclear, though that is likely, at least in the beginning, to parcel out the oil revenues.

4. The Bush Administration will seek to negotiate with whoever is in charge in Iraq to maintain control of its large military bases in that country. Eventually, even those "permanent" bases will be abandoned as a result of violent Iraqi opposition to their existence.

5. Bush will seek, through one delaying tactic after another, to postpone the inevitable U.S. retreat from Iraq. His aim is to make it through January 2009, so that America's acknowledged defeat in Iraq does not happen on his watch. If a Republican cannot be inauguarated that month as the new President, all the better for Bush: the defeat in Iraq will happen under the Democrats. But it is highly unlikely that Bush will make it to 2009, maybe not even through 2007.

IN SEARCH OF SCAPEGOATS

For most Americans, as the recent midterm elections made clear, the issue is how do we get our young men and women out of Iraq as quickly and safely as possible. For the Administration, it would appear that the issue is how to avoid blame for the catastrophe of Bush's war and occupation.

In Iraq, it looks like the scapegoats are going to be the Maliki government specifically and the Iraqi people in general.

Domestically, the scapegoats being targeted are the Democrats, activist peace groups, liberal bloggers, and the American people as a whole who didn't have the patience to wait for Bush's certain "victory" in Iraq. (The Republicans will conveniently omit mention of the huge number of traditional conservatives and military leaders who abandoned Bush's senseless war.)

In all of this maneuvering to locate the appropriate blame-patsies, there will be no acknowledgement by the Bush Administration that its policies might have had the slightest thing to do with the chaotic horror that is Iraq today. However, the American electorate was not so addicted to reality-avoidance: At the midterm elections, the citizens, in no uncertain terms, correctly fingered the Bush Administration as the progenitors of this unconscionable, unnecessary war.

HOW IRAQ FELL APART

Bush has been a loser all his life. He determined from the outset of his residency in the White House to reverse that syndrome in the post-9/11 era by engaging in an amazingly ambitious imperial adventure that, in his simplistic mind, was bound to succeed: unleashing America's enormous military might on a country ill-equipped to respond in kind, and with no Superpower that could stop the U.S.

The idea was that the "coalition" forces would quickly topple the Saddam regime, establish a friendly government in its place (originally with puppet Chalabi as the new Iraqi leader), build hardened military bases there, and set about re-shaping the geopolitical face of the Middle East. The Bush legacy as an effective, heroic "winner" would follow.

1 | 2 | 3

www.crisispapers.org

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author

Contact Editor

View Authors' Articles

Book Recommendations for "Bush Messes To"

Ode to peace ; to which is added, The negro's appeal
by John Henry Colls

Number of pages:
Publisher: by Mess. Longman and Rees ... ; and by Dingle, Bury; Rawe, Ipswich; Dighton, Cambridge; Keymer, Colchester; Pigge, Lynn; Bush, Yarmouth; Sudbury, Swaffham; Lubbock, Thetford; Parslee, Holt; Miller, Bungay; Barker, Dereham; Stewartson, Fakenham; and Mindham, Wells