[Mb-civic] Bleakness In Baghdad - George F. Will - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Bleakness In Baghdad
By George F. Will
The Washington Post
Sunday, March 19, 2006; B07

At this moment, one of the most dangerous since World War II, America's 
perils are exacerbated by the travails of a president indiscriminately 
despised by Democrats and increasingly disregarded by Republicans. What 
should he do?

First, concentrate the public's mind on the deepening dangers beyond 
Iraq. Second, regarding Iraq, accentuate the negative and eliminate the 
positive -- that is, emphasize the dangers of failure and de-emphasize 
talk about Iraq's becoming a democracy that ignites emulative 
transformation in the Middle East.

The dangers? Iran's regime proceeds with its drive for nuclear weapons, 
unfazed by threats of "isolation." North Korea has received less 
attention lately than have Denmark and Dubai. In Afghanistan, according 
to Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, 
"insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan 
government authority than at any point since late 2001." That government 
has an army of only 35,000 for a country nearly 50 percent larger than 
Iraq. The insurgency, by draining the government's energy, serves the 
lords of the heroin trade that accounts for at least a third of 
Afghanistan's gross national product.

But more than any presidency in living memory, George W. Bush's will be 
judged by a single problem -- Iraq, where on May 30 the war will be 
twice as long as was U.S. involvement in World War I. Today the 
impotence of Iraq's quasi-government is prompting ethnic recleansing: 
The government is too weak to prevent private groups from pursuing 
coercive reversals of Saddam Hussein's various ethnic cleansings. And in 
the absence of law and order, Iraqis seek safety in sectarian clustering.

Maples delicately says that although Iraq is not "at this time" in a 
civil war, "the underlying conditions" for such a war "are present." But 
civil wars do not usually begin with an identifiable event, such as the 
firing on Fort Sumter, or proceed to massed, uniformed forces clashing 
in battles like Shiloh. Iraq's civil war -- which looks more like 
Spain's in the 1930s -- began months ago.

In Spain, the security forces were united and in three years were 
victorious. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, 
U.S. commander in the Middle East, recently said that Iraqi forces would 
cope with a civil war "to the extent they're able to" (Rumsfeld) and 
"they'll handle it with our help" (Abizaid). Their problematic 
assumption is that Iraq's security forces have a national loyalty and 
will not fracture along the fissures of Iraq's sectarian society.

Tom Ricks, military correspondent for The Post, has doubts. He recently 
returned from his fifth visit to Iraq. In March 2003 he thought that the 
invasion was a strategic mistake in the struggle against terrorism. His 
assessment of subsequent events is the title of his book, coming in 
September: "Fiasco." Now, however, he thinks that a U.S. withdrawal 
would leave chaos that might lead to radical Islamists acquiring what 
they most want: Saudi oil fields and Pakistani nuclear weapons. So 
America, he thinks, needs a plan to reduce fatalities to two or three a 
week, then two or three a month.

But who, he wonders, will control the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr? Imagine, 
Ricks says, another cleric, the Rev. Al Sharpton, controlling the Bronx 
with a militia he can call into the streets at any time. Last Monday, 
when Bush again celebrated Iraq's progress from tyranny to December's 
"elections for a fully constitutional government," this was life in 
Iraq, as reported by the New York Times:

"Shiite vigilantes seized four men suspected of terrorist attacks, 
interrogated them, beat them, killed them and left their bodies dangling 
from lampposts. . . . In Sadr City, the Shiite slum in Baghdad where the 
terrorist suspects were executed, government forces have vanished. The 
streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and 
machine guns. They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and 
detain whomever they want. . . . 'This is our government now,' [a 
retired teacher] said, nodding toward Mr. Sadr's glowering face on 
television."

Conditions in Iraq have worsened in the 94 days that have passed since 
Iraq's elections in December. And there still is no Iraqi government 
that can govern. By many measures conditions are worse than they were a 
year ago, when they were worse than they had been the year before.

Three years ago the administration had a theory: Democratic institutions 
do not just spring from a hospitable culture, they can also create such 
a culture. That theory has been a casualty of the war that began three 
years ago today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031701795.html?nav=hcmodule
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