Purging the Purge

One way or another, what the Military commanders told President Obama today when they reportedly met to discuss matters related to withdrawal from Iraq, is that the reported success of the "Purge", like the war itself is built upon a lie. The message they gave the President is that if and when he withdraws, there will be civil war in the country. To any keen observer of world matters, this will not come as a surprise. AFter the Balkans it should be hard for any one to believe that it is possible by means of prolonged imposition by force to change historic realities on the ground. Iraq never was, is not and will not long survive as one country. It is three. The problem is that one of the countries - the one in the middle - has no oil.

So, the Purge is built upon a political agreement between the US and the primary actors which prepared the way for the US departure and for the civil war that follows. The Kurds can hardly wait for us to leave. The Shiites are biting their nails until they are free to take revenge upon the Sunnis and the Sunnis are scared as hell of what will happen to them when the US leaves. The Shiites, after a period of following their hearts for revenge against the Sunnis and against the US for occupying their country, came to the conclusion that they could not take what they believe is rightfully their's - the oil in the south and the control of the nation - as long as the US was there and that the US would not leave until it appeared that the nation was at peace. The Sunnis realized that as much as they resisted the US, the more they incurred the wrath of the US and that they, not the Shiites would the target of the US military efforts. So, they made a deal: the US would arm them sufficiently to have a fighting chance in the civil war to come if they would participate in controling the radical elements of Al Quaeda and other foreigners who were wrecking havoc on the US mission.

All of a sudden, we have a less violent Iraq and elections coming up and political progress toward resolving some, but not many of the important, political questions that would prepare the country for unity in the future.

The surge did not work because it was the right military strategy, but because all the parties finally agreed that it was politically expedient to each of their interests to give the impression that there was progress toward peace and unity; using the relative peace as a time to build up internal strengths for the coming struggle while the US arms all three sides.

The problem for the Obama administration is that the lie of the success of the Purge leads to a lie about the reason for withdrawal We will say that we are withdrawing because we have been successful in establishing democratic rule of the country and training a national army and police force to maintain order and stability. The truth is that there will be civil war when we withdraw, if not right away then shortly. Then we will have to lie about why this civil war happens (the Republicans will blame the Democrats and the Democrats will blame the Iranians and no one will tell the truth). The truth is that it was wrong to go to war in Iraq, the war has only prolonged the simmering conflict in the region at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of damage to infrastructure and a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money at a time when the nationa debt was skyrocketing under the Bush administration and the economy failing.

It is a hugely complicated political problem that can be solved very easily: withdraw the US troops in 16 months as promised and as agreed to with the current Iraqui government.

Of course, this will reveal, to open minds, that it was a mistake to make war in Iraq which strengthened the most radical elements in the region and eakened the moderate elements. So, we will tell another lie: that Iran, Syria and Turkey are meddling in the internal affairs of democratic nation.

This will also be a lie as the conflict is essentially internal, although the surrounding powers will try to exploit it. But then, this war began with a lie, was based on a lie and it is well known that one lie leads to another.

Nevertheless, in 16 months the American taxpayer will not be paying for the lie and the real protagonists for the future of the Middle East will have their future in their own hands and that likely, will create a balance that will limit the damage to the regional stability. And, the majority of US citizens will not blame the Obama Administration for what follows the withdrawal, because, in fact, the majority never liked the war for an even more perverse reason - they do not care if that region prospers or not and they certainly do not believe that the region will support truly democratic governments. Only the super patriots who love war will make a lot of the coming disaster, saying that the Obama administration betrayed and abandoned a democratically elected government to the whims of neighboring dictators. That will also be a lie as the democracy in Iraq is a sham like all imposed democracies. We can hope the that this time the lie won't stick so we can back to something like telling the truth.

In that vain, the truth is that Obama is wrong to invest too much more in Afghanistan in supposed support of democracy there. For democracy, Afghanistan is even a worse case scenario than Iraq except for the possibility that they have a wider variety of counterbalancing forces that could come to an agreement to keep the formality of a country as a cover for each exploiting their control of their own homelands and enjoying the profits of the poppy season. The goal then would be to deter the Taliban which is the only group with a real national project and the will and power to impose it. The only goal in Afghanistan ought to be to leave enough UN or US presence in the region to deter the expansion of the Al Quaeda network, but then this is not an Afghani problem to take care of; this is a problem that only Pakistan can help address. Therein lies the real challenge.