Going From Bad To Worse
By Joseph L. Galloway
Miami Herald
July 23, 2006
The world's attention is focused this week on the renewed fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, but let's not take our eyes off the situation in Iraq, which is going from bad to worse.
Does anyone in the administration still want to quibble over what definition of the ''civil war'' applies to the bloody mess in Iraq when the United Nations is reporting that during the month of June sectarian violence killed an average of more than 100 Iraqis a day?
What would they prefer to call it when a single car bomber last week drove into the heart of Shiite rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's hometown of Kufa and, after assembling a large crowd of Shias looking for jobs, set off his bomb and killed 53 and injured more than 105?
The U.N. report says that the number of violent deaths of Iraqis this year rose 77 percent from January's 1,778 to June's 3,149. The total number of civilian dead for the first half of 2006, the United Nations estimates, is 14,338.
What this says, put simply, is that the Sunni vs. Shia communal slaughter is rapidly accelerating, and that nothing the U.S. forces or the fledgling Iraqi government has done or is doing is making the least bit of difference.
What is also says is that our best hope for an orderly withdrawal of American and coalition forces from Iraq is going awry. The Iraqi army and police forces -- remember that as they stand up we will stand down -- are turning out to be more of a problem than a solution.
Both army and police are made up almost entirely of Shia and Kurds, and various militias of both have infiltrated the ranks, especially of the police. Some of them have not merely facilitated but participated in the revenge slaughter of Sunnis.
This is a biblical land, and it's Old Testament in the extreme: An eye for an eye is only a beginning.
We've paid close attention to the American casualties in this 3 ½-year-old war but avoided trying to come up with any precise tally of the growing Iraqi civilian casualties. The numbers killed have ranged from President Bush's estimate of 30,000 a few months back to a more recent guess of 50,000 or more.
What's happening now, as McClatchy Newspapers' Tom Lasseter reports from Baghdad, is no longer the ''trembling on the brink of civil war'' of months gone by, but the real thing. If you don't believe it, ask Sunnis and Shia in Baghdad who are no longer safe in their own homes and shops or on the streets or riding a bus. Ask the thousands of Iraqi refugees who've been forced to flee mixed neighborhoods in towns and cities where they'd lived in peace with those who believed differently.
Of what use is a democratic government that cannot secure the most basic of human rights -- the right to life, the right to be secure in your own home? Of what use is an American force that toppled a bloody dictator but has left many Iraqis worse off than they were before?
The daily sectarian blood bath makes it harder and harder for even the most Pollyanna-ish to believe that Iraq somehow is going to emerge as a unified, secular, democratic nation where Sunni and Shia and Kurds and Turkomen work together to build a future.
It makes an American president's declarations that we'll somehow achieve victory in Iraq if we only stay the course ring ever more empty.
Who gets to define victory? The Iraqis or us? At some point, both sides may be willing to define victory -- or at least relief -- as our departure from that sad and bloody land. If so, let's hope that we at least have learned some useful lessons from an investment of 2,500 American lives and $400 billion or more of our taxpayers' money:
*''To jaw, jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.'' (Thanks, Sir Winston Churchill)
*There is never a time when some way cannot be found to avoid drawing the sword. (Thanks, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant)
*Never go to war assuming that everything will turn out right, because no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
*Avoid going to war in a place where you have little or no understanding of the people, culture and history. (See Sun Tzu, fourth century BCE.)
*Be prepared to be at least as adaptive in your tactics as your enemy is in his.
*War may be too important to be left to the generals, but it sure can't be left to politicians who have no experience of it.
Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
Miami Herald
July 23, 2006
The world's attention is focused this week on the renewed fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, but let's not take our eyes off the situation in Iraq, which is going from bad to worse.
Does anyone in the administration still want to quibble over what definition of the ''civil war'' applies to the bloody mess in Iraq when the United Nations is reporting that during the month of June sectarian violence killed an average of more than 100 Iraqis a day?
What would they prefer to call it when a single car bomber last week drove into the heart of Shiite rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's hometown of Kufa and, after assembling a large crowd of Shias looking for jobs, set off his bomb and killed 53 and injured more than 105?
The U.N. report says that the number of violent deaths of Iraqis this year rose 77 percent from January's 1,778 to June's 3,149. The total number of civilian dead for the first half of 2006, the United Nations estimates, is 14,338.
What this says, put simply, is that the Sunni vs. Shia communal slaughter is rapidly accelerating, and that nothing the U.S. forces or the fledgling Iraqi government has done or is doing is making the least bit of difference.
What is also says is that our best hope for an orderly withdrawal of American and coalition forces from Iraq is going awry. The Iraqi army and police forces -- remember that as they stand up we will stand down -- are turning out to be more of a problem than a solution.
Both army and police are made up almost entirely of Shia and Kurds, and various militias of both have infiltrated the ranks, especially of the police. Some of them have not merely facilitated but participated in the revenge slaughter of Sunnis.
This is a biblical land, and it's Old Testament in the extreme: An eye for an eye is only a beginning.
We've paid close attention to the American casualties in this 3 ½-year-old war but avoided trying to come up with any precise tally of the growing Iraqi civilian casualties. The numbers killed have ranged from President Bush's estimate of 30,000 a few months back to a more recent guess of 50,000 or more.
What's happening now, as McClatchy Newspapers' Tom Lasseter reports from Baghdad, is no longer the ''trembling on the brink of civil war'' of months gone by, but the real thing. If you don't believe it, ask Sunnis and Shia in Baghdad who are no longer safe in their own homes and shops or on the streets or riding a bus. Ask the thousands of Iraqi refugees who've been forced to flee mixed neighborhoods in towns and cities where they'd lived in peace with those who believed differently.
Of what use is a democratic government that cannot secure the most basic of human rights -- the right to life, the right to be secure in your own home? Of what use is an American force that toppled a bloody dictator but has left many Iraqis worse off than they were before?
The daily sectarian blood bath makes it harder and harder for even the most Pollyanna-ish to believe that Iraq somehow is going to emerge as a unified, secular, democratic nation where Sunni and Shia and Kurds and Turkomen work together to build a future.
It makes an American president's declarations that we'll somehow achieve victory in Iraq if we only stay the course ring ever more empty.
Who gets to define victory? The Iraqis or us? At some point, both sides may be willing to define victory -- or at least relief -- as our departure from that sad and bloody land. If so, let's hope that we at least have learned some useful lessons from an investment of 2,500 American lives and $400 billion or more of our taxpayers' money:
*''To jaw, jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.'' (Thanks, Sir Winston Churchill)
*There is never a time when some way cannot be found to avoid drawing the sword. (Thanks, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant)
*Never go to war assuming that everything will turn out right, because no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
*Avoid going to war in a place where you have little or no understanding of the people, culture and history. (See Sun Tzu, fourth century BCE.)
*Be prepared to be at least as adaptive in your tactics as your enemy is in his.
*War may be too important to be left to the generals, but it sure can't be left to politicians who have no experience of it.
Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 9:38 AM
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