Coverage in major U.S. newspapers this last week is fading, as the looming revolution continues; The current story that I located is from a Saudi major news entity Al Arabia that focuses on this region. Here’s the headline, excerpt and link to the story.
Iraqi forces shut down Baghdad to prevent Green Zone protests
Iraqi security forces ramped up their presence across Baghdad on Friday, blocking most major roads and bridges to keep followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from reaching the government district they stormed a week earlier.
Snip
The demonstrations are aimed at pressuring Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to follow through on months-old promises to replace party-affiliated ministers with independent technocrats as part of an anti-corruption drive.
Iraq has endured months of wrangling over the proposal, with a divided parliament withholding approval amid scuffles and protests. Deep frustration among Iraqis over the deadlock culminated on Sunday in the unprecedented breach of the Green Zone, which houses parliament, government offices and many foreign embassies.
United Nations envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the situation remains unpredictable and could unfold in many different directions.
Of course this chaos is of our making, as then Secretary of State Collin Powell enunciated what was called the “Pottery Barn” principle of regime change, “You break it, you own it.”
I recently read a highly lauded book from 2006 on the run up and early years of this war, “Fiasco” by Thomas E. Ricks. It was so meaningful that after reading a library version, i bought a copy from Amazon for my own reference, and then wrote a review, that for the first time of my fifteen or so submissions they refuse to post. So, I’ll post it here just for the record. The book also gives some context on H.R. Clinton voting for the 2002 Iraq War Resolution while Bernie Sanders voted against. Hint: they were both voting with the majority of Democrats in their respective Houses of Congress.
=============
Review of Book:
A riveting read. First I come away with admiration for the military, who where thrown into a challenge based on idealism of the elected leaders of the country,who chose not to attend to the warnings by so many of the top military echelon. Of course the egregious actions against some locals was explored, but Ricks chose not to bring in another aspect, which was the covert and not so hidden sense that America represented Christianity, expressed by some such as General William G Boykin, who was officially reprimanded for his conflating Christian goals with those of the country. He was defended by Rumsfeld, which shows how deeply this clash of civilizations was tacitly condoned.
General Antony Zinni is the voice of reason from the beginning. Here's a quote from Zinni as part of a congressional Foreign Relations Committee hearing shortly before the war" He told them -- "You need to abandon an exit strategy because there isn't going to be one" -- "There's things in this part of the world that are too important for us to think that this a go in, do the job as best we can, and pull out"
Ricks describes the unrealistic optimism of Neo-Cons especially Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, but somehow avoids placing their views in a conceptual geopolitical discussion-- except in the following two paragraphs. On pp 87 Ricks summarizes Zinni's view of why we went to war, but not clearly enough. He starts by saying that the general "decided that day that the neoconservatives in the administration really were consciously rolling the dice", and the inclusion in quotes, including an epithet, must mean this was told to him personally, Then Ricks includes this most candid observation from Zinni that explains both how this fiasco happened - and, paradoxically, what was a reasonable hope.
"I think, and this is just my opinion --that the neocons didn't really give a shit what happened in Iraq and the aftermath," Ricks continues - "He said much later" (when, and to whom is not supplied, a serious defect for the historical record) "I don't think they thought it would be this bad. But they said: (meaning the neocons) "Look if it works out, let's say we get Chalabi in, he's our boy, great. (But if) we don't and maybe there's some half-ass government in there, maybe some strongman emerges, it (the country) fractures, and there's basically a loose federation and there's really a Kurdish state, who cares? There's some bloodshed and it's messy.
Who cares? I mean, we’ve taken taken out Sadam. We’ve asserted our strength in the Middle East. We're changing the dynamic. We're now off the peace process as the centerpiece (must mean the continuation of the stalemated two state negotiations ) and we're not putting any pressure on Israel."
Ricks, by choosing to include this seemingly private observation by Zinni, goes beyond the level of examination he avoids in the rest of the book, which as defined in the military argot is Strategy - long term goals, contrasted with Tactics, which is how to achieve them. Only the preceding two paragraphs addressed geo-political strategy. The neo-cons, and even the President could have been intentionally dissembling about WMD, yet doing it based on a reality that is not part of the American mythos. I would say that this was beyond the scope of the book, and it was good that it was included in the two paragraphs, but was worthy of a chapter to have made this the definitive book on this war.
This entire book is a valuable compendium of two behemoths, the U.S. Military and a Presidential Administration- he concluding that it was the administration in the form of Rumsfeld, Cheney and both of their neocons and the President as facilitator who did prevail over the combined talent and insights of military who knew the reality of the project of completing "regime change in Iraq. Many top generals and below were vocal in their objections, but the media and public lost interest, A given career officer had a choice of overt insubordination or retiring to a pension and a lucrative corporate directorship. So almost all of them went along.
We also learn about the dynamics of the Congress, how the House of Representatives, as an institution, based on gerrymandering providing safe seats allowed more Liberals to oppose this war than in the Senate, where being “weak” on defense can destroy a political career.
This book describes our national failure, certainly by naming names, but also by delineating the nodes of power that ultimately allowed this invasion. Now, thirteen years later, we are seeing those “unintended consequences’ in the region and the world.