A Reply to Krauthammer’s The 20 percent solution. Formed in 2003, the 1920 Brigades are the declared enemy of the Iraqi government. They have since split into two units, the Hamas in Iraq and the Islamic Jihad. These names carry much freight to the informed observer, they were carefully chosen for maximum impact, declaring their intent to destroy any secular government. These are our new foot soldiers in the war against Al Qaeda.
In 1920, in the wake of World War One and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the provinces now constituting Iraq came under the control of the British. The British Empire installed a compilant puppet, King Feisal the First.
The Arabs had bravely fought the Turkish Ottomans, assisted by Lawrence of Arabia. Promised control of their own lands, both Lawrence and the Arabs were furious at the treachery of the Sykes-Picot agreement. Over the ensuing years, the Sunni Arabs have not forgotten they were also promised a homeland. From this ancient grievance arises the name of our newest allies, the 1920 Brigade.
There is an argument to be made for Sunni allies. Iraq’s current Shiite-dominated government has colluded with Iran and the pasdaran Revolutionary Guard. The war in Iraq has been dominated by foreign influences: our own military is one such influence, Al Qaeda another, and Iran the third. We are playing with fire, backing the 1920 Brigade. Israel played such a game with Hamas against the PLO, back in the days when Arafat was the monster and the Muslims somewhat less monstrous. Hamas in Gaza distributed aid and summary justice where the PLO was just a corrupt pack of warlords and murderers of Olympic athletes. How times have changed! Within the last 24 hours, Israel released 256 Fatah prisoners into the West Bank. Within hours, these prisoners will be issued weapons and assigned to units. The more things change, the more they stay the same: feeding monsters only creates more monsters. The enemy of our enemy is not our friend. The Marines fought the 1920 Brigades in Fallujah. I wouldn’t want to be the supply sergeant tasked with issuing ammunition and weapons to these new allies.
It’s all quite confusing, to be sure. The 1920 Brigades, or should I say "Hamas in Iraq" and "Islamic Jihad" are waging an effective war against Al Qaeda in Iraq. In the corner of the hotel room, CNN shows grainy footage of our new allies dragging a prisoner off a lorry, telling him to say hello to one of their dead brethren and machine gunning him to death.
Krauthammer finds this "purely American solution" very true and refreshing. We have seen it all before, when Israel backed another Hamas in an effort to rid itself of another enemy. By undercutting the Maliki government in this way, we have set in motion a great boulder whose motions we cannot predict. Al Qaeda in Iraq may be crushed by this boulder, but where it will stop rolling, none can say. If Maliki and his Shiites feel endangered by this new development, they have the capability of betraying us, putting a mighty hurt on what cooperation we now have from the Shiites and Kurds. Krauthammer is righter than he knows, backing "Hamas in Iraq" and "Islamic Jihad" is a "purely American solution", recapitulating our backing of Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, another wicked, unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression pitting Sunni against Shiite, with disastrous consequences for all involved.