Obama & McCain Foster: Mirage of Iraq ‘Victory’

by Gerry Foley / October 2008

Intelligent and well-informed commentators and reporters have presented more than enough arguments to show that U.S. politicians' claims of victory in Iraq are hollow. But although these boasts are a specialty of the McCain campaign, his rival has done little or nothing to call attention to their emptiness. Obama even declared that he was a belated convert to the virtues of "the surge," to which McCain attributes the prospect of "victory" in Iraq.

There seems to be an understanding among capitalist politicians that it is impermissible to talk about the limits of American power or the fundamental perverseness of U.S. policy.

Patrick Cockburn wrote in the Sept. 14 British Independent: "If McCain wins the presidential election in November, his lack of understanding of what is happening in Iraq could ignite a fresh conflict. In so far as the surge has achieved military success, it is because it implicitly recognises America's political defeat in Iraq. Whatever the reason for President George Bush's decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, it was not to place the Shia Islamic parties in power and increase the influence of Iran in the country; yet that is exactly what has happened."

Cockburn did not consider what Obama would do differently, since the Democratic candidate thinks that more U.S. troops are also the answer in Afghanistan.

Cockburn pointed out: "The surge only achieved the degree of success it did because Iran, which played a central role in getting Nouri al-Maliki appointed Prime Minister in 2006, decided to back his government fully. It negotiated a ceasefire between the Iraqi government and the powerful movement of Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra, persuading the cleric to call his militiamen off the streets there, in March and again two months later in the Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City.

"It is very noticeable that in recent weeks the US has largely ceased its criticism of Iran. This is partly because of American preoccupation with Russia since the fighting began in Georgia in August, but it is also an implicit recognition that US security in Iraq is highly dependant on Iranian actions."

A substantial article in the Sept. 16 Los Angeles Times also pointed out that the Iraqi government was slipping toward a closer relationship with Iran: "America's eroded leverage has left Iran, with its burgeoning trade and political ties, in a better position to affect Iraqi government policies.

“It also means that whichever U.S. presidential candidate is elected—Republican John McCain, who insists on what some see as a vaguely defined American victory in Iraq, or Democrat Barack Obama, who has long called for a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops—will have less ability to sway Baghdad than did the Bush administration.”

By way of conclusion, the article quoted an Iraqi politician: "'The Iranians will stay in this place forever till the Judgment Day and the Americans will withdraw,' said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior Shiite politician. 'The Americans built their status on their military and their political viewpoints. They didn't try to find shared lines of interest or common ground. The Iranians dealt with this matter in a more positive way.'"

The U.S. military is still looking over its shoulder at the Iranians. A Miami Herald article Sept. 10 noted: "Bush, however, announced that he will order only 8000 more combat troops to leave Iraq by February, the month after his presidency ends, reducing the number there to about 138,000.…

"U.S. defense officials said Bush's decision to withdraw only 8000 soldiers from Iraq reflects a persistent concern among top commanders that the improvements in security could be temporary and that renewed violence could erupt. Officials fear that Iran might reactivate the Shiite Muslim militias it's armed and trained and that the Sunni group al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to reestablish itself in Mosul."

In fact, probably the major factor in reducing the attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces have been the political errors of al-Qaeda, the best organized and best trained of the resistance groups. Al-Qaeda's strategy was to try to arouse the Sunnis by provoking a civil war with the Shia. In Baghdad, they got their wish, and it destroyed the Sunni insurgency there.

Patrick Cockburn noted: "Life in Baghdad certainly is better than it was 18 months ago, when some 60 to 100 bodies were being found beside the roads every morning, the victims of Sunni-Shia sectarian slaughter. The main reason this ended was that the battle for Baghdad in 2006-07 was won by the Shia, who now control three-quarters of the capital. These demographic changes appear permanent; Sunni who try to get their houses back face assassination."

Even among Sunnis, the main base of the insurgency, al-Qaeda's strategy proved disastrous. An article in the Sept. 10 Washington Post pointed out: "A second important factor in the lessening of violence was the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces.

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq had made a strategic mistake in the province, overplaying its hand. Its members had performed forced marriages with women from local tribes, taken over hospitals, used mosques for beheading operations, mortared playgrounds and executed citizens, leaving headless bodies with signs that read, 'Don't remove this body or the same thing will happen to you.' The sheer brutality eroded much of the local support for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

These factors obviously were not a result of U.S. military power per se, surge or no, but of political decisions by the U.S. authorities to manipulate Iraqi forces rather than impose their will directly. So far this game has paid off for the U.S.-led occupation. But it can also create problems in the future greater than the ones it mitigated.

For example, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 16: "[Iraqi Premier] Maliki has pressed demands that the Americans had previously rebuffed, notably over the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program, made up mainly of former Sunni insurgents. Though the program has received credit for the decrease in violence across Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government has resisted incorporating the force's members into the police and vowed to prosecute some leaders for past criminal acts.

"Last week, U.S. officials announced they would hand the Iraqi government control of the estimated 54,000 fighters in Baghdad at the beginning of October. The Americans had previously shielded prominent Sunni paramilitary leaders from arrest warrants based on doubts about the charges.

Asked whether such fighters could be guaranteed a fair trial, the American diplomat said, 'No, but we are in a transition period.'"

Another factor in the decline of the insurgency described in the Sept. 10 Washington Post article was advances in surveillance, apparently technological. But these instruments are quite ineffective in dealing with mass movements of the sort the U.S. could face in the future in Iraq. And that is to say nothing of the problem of keeping the reins on a government that seems to be slipping into an alliance with the main enemy of U.S. imperialism in the region, Iran.

So, it is clear that U.S. politicians' boasts of impeding victory in Iraq are a mirage. The only questions are whether it will last as long as the U.S. election in November and what the new U.S. government might do when it can no longer maintain the illusion that it is going to get any positive results from the money and the lives that have been thrown into the adventure in Iraq.