[Marxism] Petraeus: A politician-general helps rulers double their bets in losing war

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Meet Gen. David Petraeus
His Militia Strategy Plunged Iraq Into a Civil War, And Now He's Back for
More
 
by A.K. Gupta; September 11, 2007  

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the scholar-warrior tapped by Bush to salvage the
U.S. war in Iraq, is settling in for the long war.

Having assumed command of all U.S. forces in Iraq earlier this year,
Petraeus warns the war is not "going to be resolved in a year or even two
years." In fact, he predicts that the counterinsurgency effort could last
"at least nine or 10 years." 

Petraeus is overseeing the escalation of 30,000 more troops, bringing U.S.
troop levels to 155,000, near the highest levels of the whole war. (This has
been matched by a big spike in American deaths with 126 in May alone, also
near the highest levels.)

With a Ph.D. from Princeton University, he exemplifies the new breed of
warrior who combines scholarly insight, cultural understanding and steely
determination. Despite his high profile, Petraeus' record has largely
escaped scrutiny. If any one general symbolizes the failure that is Iraq, it
is Petraeus. Having served in multiple positions in Iraq since the 2003
invasion, Petraeus bears enormous responsibility for the Iraq debacle. And
he hasn't seemed to have learned anything as he is replicating policies that
deepened the quagmire in the first place. 

Petraeus is green-lighting the funding and arming of Sunni militias in
strife-wracked Al Anbar province for the stated purpose of routing Al Qaeda
in Mesopotamia. But it is also part of the Bush administration's overall
Middle East strategy. 

Petraeus and the White House are forming Sunni militias apparently as a
counterweight to Shiite militias and parties that it helped bring to power
in Iraq and which they see as an Iranian fifth column.
 

THE IRANIAN HAND
Wherever the Bush administration looks in the Middle East, it sees an
Iranian hand. This was not how it was supposed to be. Prior to the invasion
of Iraq, neo-cons were crowing that "the road to Tehran runs through
Baghdad." In the Gaza Strip, The White House labels Hamas an Iranian proxy;
ditto for Hizbullah in Lebanon. In Iraq, it describes various Shiite forces
as in thrall to Iran's mullahs. In Afghanistan, it charges that Iranian
weapons are flowing to the Taliban. 

Its obsession has become self-fulfilling, turning these separate wars into a
regional clash of Sunni versus Shiite. Even with Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Palestine locked in conflict and the spillover threatening to drag in
neighboring countries, White House operatives are itching for the biggest
fight of them all: a war against Iran.
         

END RUN
Steven Clemmons of thewashingtonnote.com wrote in late May of how Vice
President Cheney and his staff were planning an "end run strategy" around
Bush by colluding with Israel to launch a small-scale attack against Iran in
the hopes it would strike back at U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and ignite
a full-blown war. Part of the strategy is to have neo-conservatives push
publicly for war. John Bolton recently pronounced, "Regime change or the use
of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a
nuclear weapons capability." And Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz fired
his shot in an article entitled, "The Case for Bombing Iran." 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk told Seymour Hersh, "The White
House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq. It's doubling the bet across the
region." Hersh writes that this amounts to a "new strategy" termed a
"redirection." It's bringing "the United States closer to an open
confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a
widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims." He adds, "A
by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist
groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America
and sympathetic to Al Qaeda." 

This is the situation in Iraq.

 

THE PETRAEUS FILES
In June 2004, Petraeus took the assignment of organizing training for all
Iraqi military and police forces following their collapse during the Shiite
and Sunni uprisings two months earlier. 

During this period he was instrumental in forming government-sponsored
militias throughout Iraq that operate as anti-Sunni death squads to this
day, and which have plunged the nation into civil war. In the fall of 2004,
Petraeus was arming, equipping and funding the Special Police Commandos,
calling them "a horse to back."

Petraeus said he aided them because, "I want to get the hell out of here."

But rather than taking over the fight, the commandos (renamed the national
police) have become another side in the war, operating as Shiite-run death
squads. By early 2005 the 10,000-strong Special Police Commandos were
reportedly disappearing, torturing and murdering Sunni men. Investigative
reports detailed scores of incidents in which Sunni men who were detained by
the commandos were later found tortured and killed. This death squad
activity was going on under Petraeus' command, and was a critical factor in
turning the Sunni Arab community wholesale against the Iraqi government. His
role in the $15 billion U.S. effort to train the 350,000 Iraqi security
forces on the books is even more dismal. 

Writing in the Washington Post in September 2004, Petraeus argued "18 months
after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are
being rebuilt from the ground up." He spoke glowingly of Iraqi leaders
"stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces
courageously," and listed the various outfits that were being trained "to
shoulder more of the load for their own security." 

Exactly one year later, as Petraeus was packing his bags to assume a new
command stateside, of the nearly 100,000 Iraqi troops that had been
"trained," only one battalion was capable of independent combat operations.
In June of 2007, with the latest U.S. escalation complete, all talk of Iraqi
security forces "taking over the fight" has disappeared. And so have Iraqi
units, which are plagued with a desertion and absentee rate of more than 25
percent. 

These days it seems the only Iraqis in the fight are either in death squads
or attacking U.S. forces. Just a few months ago, The New York Times reported
that Iraqi police have been caught cooperating with insurgents planting
improvised explosive devices used against Americans while Iraqi soldiers
have been killed in combat against U.S. troops in Baghdad.


COUNTERINSURGENCY
In late 2005 Petraeus assumed command at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he
oversaw training programs for the entire U.S. Army. While there, he also
co-wrote the U.S. military's first manual on counterinsurgency warfare in 20
years. His recommendations included setting up "Specialized paramilitary
strike forces," "home guards to provide local security" and "paramilitary
units."

This is precisely the strategy in setting up Sunni militias in Anbar
province under the umbrella of the "Anbar Salvation Council." This is an old
strategy, one with a grim historical record. 

The New York Times observes that "providing weapons to breakaway rebel
groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in places where it
has been tried before, including the French colonial war in Algeria, the
British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in the early 1950s, and in
Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with weapons given to the rebels being
turned against the forces providing them."

 

BLOWBACK AGAIN
In the Ramadi region, Petraeus endorsed a plan to arm and pay thousands of
irregular forces that have all the makings of Sunni militias. Many of the
Sunni groups the military is reaching out to "have had past links to Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia." Like their Shiite militia counterparts, there is the
"possibility that some local leaders are using newly armed tribal members as
their personal death squads to settle old scores." 

This is entirely a Pentagon effort. Eight policemen told the Washington Post
that "the U.S. military was giving them weapons, money and other materials
such as uniforms, body armor, helmets and pickup trucks [and] paying
salaries of up to $900 a month to tribal fighters. 

The New York Times notes that "some American officers" say arming Sunni
groups, "could amount to the Americans' arming both sides in a future civil
war." There is the risk "that any weapons given to Sunni groups will
eventually be used against Shiites or against the Americans themselves."

In fact, this looks to be deliberate observes the Times: "the Americans seem
to have concluded that as long as the Shiites maintain their militias,
Shiite leaders are in a poor position to protest the arming of Sunni
groups." One aide to the Iraqi Prime Minister blasted the American strategy,
"We have enough militias in Iraq that we are struggling now to solve the
problem. Why are we creating new ones?"

The Shiite parties should be concerned because U.S. commanders are
encouraging the Sunni militias to go after the Mahdi Army, which is
affiliated with the powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. 

According to the Washington Post, this past July, a Sunni leader of one of
the "neighborhood protection groups" in Baghdad told U.S. Army Col. Ricky D.
Gibbs that his militia would, "clear the neighborhood of anyone who belongs
to al-Qaeda or JAM [Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army] or even carries a bullet.
We want you, sir, to give us the green light. They are ready." 

While dispensing the usual warning of "You can't just shoot anybody," Gibbs
told the Sunni leader, "You have the green light," and added, as for "the
bad guys -- I don't care. Go get them." 

This is the twisted landscape of the Iraq War. What began as a war to remake
the Middle East has boomeranged. The Bush administration is fighting the
Iraq War as an extension of the regional disaster it has spawned. Its goal
is not even to stabilize Iraq, it is to create more chaos so as to counter
Iran, Shiite movements and the broad array of Sunni-based resistance groups.


None of this would be possible if the home front were not blissed out on
shopping and celebrities. Bush may only have 16 more months to go, but the
domestic disconnect - why oppose Bush's wars when he's headed out the door?
- gives the administration freedom to fan the flames of war in the Middle
East.
 

A.K. Gupta is an editor of The Indypendent newspaper, a bimonthly based in
New York. He is currently writing a book on the history of the Iraq War to
be published by Haymarket Press.

 

 




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