FIRST UNMENTIONABLE
The so-called Surge Plan promulgated by President Bush is even worse than we feared. The way Bush has set it up, it provides a dual command structure, a foolish arrangement that violates all military doctrine- exactly what you would expect from a civilian who never served in war and believes God is telling him what to do. That is, The Surge According to Bush embeds Americans in Iraqi units but has them reporting to their American commanders, and the Iraqis reporting to their own unit commanders. Thus, in the same operation you have two chains of command, and two Deciders, if you will. For more in this, see Salon.com article for 27 January 2007 (http://www.salon.com...)
This is a recipe for assured disaster. The good thing is that, embedded or not, the Americans are supposedly not under command of the Iraqi Army officers, who have been proven not only unreliable but prone to involve themselves in the secular civil war on the side of their co-religionists, rather than being even-handed in suppressing violence. The bad thing is that the Americans are not in charge, so we can expect that, with perhaps a few minor exceptions, the Iraqi Army will attack Sunni insurgents and not Shi-ia militias, since the Prime Minister is Shi-ite and his main support comes from al Sadr's Shi-ite militia.
The reality is, that the Americans are in fact being committed to the civil war against the Sunni faction and on the side of the Shi-ites, which is the faction of Maliki, the Prime Minister. The Shia, remember, have varying degrees of linkage with Iran. That is the same Iran which Bush is preparing to attack on the basis that Iran is developing nuclear capabilities and is also meddling in Iraq (like us, but different, of course). Confused? Wait until the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia weigh in on this mess. Dual commands? Cross-purpose policies for Iraq vs. Iran? Way to go, Dubya!
SECOND UNMENTIONABLE
Aside from the mismanagement of this ill-conceived war, there is another factor, the geo-political and historic imperatives unmentioned and undoubtedly not considered by the Bush policy-makers. Following World War II the European empires disintegrated after having dominated Asia and Africa for over four hundred years, during which time the European powers had blithely re-drawn the maps of the two continents. Wherever their armies marched, there they took over, crushing together wildly different ethnic groups and cultures to form each new colony.
When the Europeans departed, the mismatched components were left crammed together inside the boundaries of that colony, which, often as not, fell into the hands of a strong leader determined to maintain the boundaries of his mismatched newly independent state. Quickly, the United States showed up to help the strong man hold his ex-colony together, supposedly to prevent Communists from taking over.
Then began the insurgencies, the rebellions, the civil wars which inflamed most of Africa and much of southern Asia. The mismatched ethnic, cultural, and religious groups were struggling for their own freedom, disdaining the artificial boundaries that the Europeans had imposed on them- from Cyprus to Chechnyia to Rwanda to Vietnam to Darfur to Ceylon to Indonesia...
American voters last November voted to get out of the Iraqi civil war, for that is what is going on: the artificial Greater Mesopotamia created by the British after World War I out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire, now freed from its strongman, is breaking into its component parts, and the war will not stop until somehow the religious and ethnic parts are satisfied with their situation.
Using force to impose our solution on them is for the 19th century, not the 21st, and America is caught in middle of a great historical tide; we are sweeping back the sea like King Canute, with about as much success. War on Terror notwithstanding, Iraq is the last place to which we should commit our military and our treasure at this juncture in history.
On the issue of sectarian divisions, the International Crisis Group's After Baker-Hamilton report stated that these divisions are more manufactured then real. We have a situation similar to the Balkans where a handful of political leaders are exploiting these differences and exaggerating them for short-term political gain. The sectarian identity now trumps the Iraqi identity, but, the Kurds excepted, that was not the case as recently as 2004. That's my understanding at least.
It took a while for things to fall apart (see my earlier article on Why They Became Insurgents)--- we had a window when we could have established control of the place, but WE let it drift into chaos. The religious divide, just as in Cyprus and India has, for whatever reason, become so severe that it looks as if only another strongman can quash it, or as though only partition can stop the killing. In these situations there is almost always a demagogue ready to exploit such divisions to his advantage.
The Kurds had several years above the no-fly zone to reach agreements among themselves, so the only place they are fighting Arabs is in a major city or two where Sadaam engaged in ethnic cleansing, sending Sunnis Arabs in to displace Kurds... and in one or two operations in central Iraq where WE brought them in, to the consternation of resident Arabs. We seem to have a tin ear for these things, and go about only making it worse, since I doubt the various Iraqis have the same view of their future as we have, no matter what Maliki says to placate George.