Response to a Concerned Iraqi-American Friend

Dear Mr. Almudallal,

Thank you for voicing your concerns and for your cogent, well-reasoned
suggestions for carrying forward the mission in Iraq. I agree with
your insights on the problematic notion of a three region partition of
Iraq. A partitioned Kurdistan is more of a pipe dream than an actual
option, and in my estimation there are no foreign affairs experts who
actually believe that Kurdish political autonomy will ever happen (the
Kurdish free autonomous zone instituted after the Gulf War [1991] was
problematic enough for Kurdistan's neighbors). Turkey and Iran are far
too concerned with the ideological, geographical, economic, and
political containment of the Kurds for anything even resembling a
Kurdish state to come into existence. With regards to the south of
Iraq, I think you are correct to fear the alliances between Basra and
Iran and between Karbala and Saudia; both "provincial" alliances would
have serious ramifications for the Iraqi oil industry. With regards to
the Iraqi oil industry, I am dismayed and confused as to why only 30%
of Iraqi oil revenue has made it into the books since reconstruction
began. The failure of the Iraqi state and the United States to account
for Iraqi oil, the primary source of funding for reconstruction in
Iraq, is indicative of the embarassingly misguided priorities of the
United States as well as the corruption and incompetence of those
currently holding the reins of power in the Iraqi administration. You
are perfectly right to assert that a partition, which would put oil in
the hands of the Kurds and the southerners, would economically
disenfranchise the very region of Iraq which now suffers from the most
violence in the growing civil war. If Iraq is to survive as a state,
the oil revenue MUST serve as the financial backbone of
reconstruction; if paritition occurs, there is no need to talk about
the survival of Iraq as such; rather, we may begin to talk about the
annihilation of the Kurds, the ravage of central Iraq, and the fusing
of Basra, Karbala, and al-Anbar province with Iran, Saudia, and Syria
respectively.

So, the question remains: what can we (the United States) do to help
end the violence? While I am intrigued by your suggestion that U.S.
troops redeploy to the borders, I do not think this is a viable option
due to the political/moral circumstances of the Iraq occupation. If
the U.S. troops are to remain in Iraq at all, it is unreasonable to
expect the people of the U.S. or the international community to accept
our presence if we are not doing all we can to counterattack the
violent factions of the central cities (patrol, cordon, search in
Baghdad, Fallujah, an-Najaf, an-Nasiriyah, Balad, Ramadi, Samarra).
Redeployment to the borders would send a strong message to Iran and
Syria, but it would drive home the message to the international
community that the United States is interested only in its foreign
policy initiatives, homeland security, and saving face. While I think
troop presence on the border could prevent any invasion efforts on
behalf of the Iranians, who might invade were the U.S. to pull out
altogether, I find the odds of outright Iranian military action
against Iraq very unlikely. As you clearly illustrate, Iran has no
need to take any military action against Iraq; Ahmedinijad's clerical
advisors are already close supporters/friends of al-Malaki's clerical
advisors. The alliance between Iraq under al-Malaki and Iran under
Ahmedinijad (or, we might assume, their shiite successors) will not
require bloodshed if the United States helps Iraq's shiite leaders
tighten their grip on Iraqi governance. With this in mind, we need not
take heart at al-Sistani's and Moqtada al-Sadr's recent approval of
the troop increase in Baghdad: if U.S. presence equals support of the
Iraqi National Guard and safer central cities, and if a stronger ING
and safer cities equal a fortification of shiite governance, then the
support of these clever clerics should not surprise us. Of course they
want more troops in Baghdad! All the sooner will they be able to
emerge victorious in the civil war, forge links with Iran, and begin
the suppression of hostile sunni factions, and all under the guise of
"stability" and "peace."

Responding to your insistence on the abandonment of the Green Zone in
favor of a less glaring occupation/protection of Baghdad and Iraq's
governmental leaders, I must speak from the position of practical
necessity. If the U.S. is to remain in Baghdad in an official capacity
then the Green Zone is a necessary defense against relatively long
range and easy to obtain mortars and rockets, the indirect fire of
choice of the insurgency. Even as it stands, the inner buildings of
the Green Zone are not immune to these types of attacks. Were an
embassy to stand alone in Iraq, the perimeter would not allow for
sufficient security. Your suggestion that the elected Iraqi officials
face the dangers of the streets and "learn what it's like to live like
normal Iraqis" fails to account for the ease with which even U.S.
convoys are attacked by hostile forces. Al-Malaki would not last a
day. Maybe this is good news to you, but it is bad news for the future
stability of Iraq. Killing begets killing, and no killing begets more
killing than the killing of
ideologically/nationalistically/religiously invested political
leaders. On the issue of a recall you make more sense. You might
consider abandoning the call for representative democracy altogether,
which you lean towards when advocating federalism. Perhaps the best
system of governance for Iraq would be a variant of socialist
federalism, where the diverse regions of Iraq remain relatively
autonomous from one another and have a great deal of local
self-governance, but where very high taxes and a platform of
distribution of state wealth dominates the overarching national
government, i.e. each region gets a large and equal share of the oil
revenue to invest in local governance, programs, healthcare,
education, etc. Since a significant portion of Iraqis ARE
uncomfortable with the idea of their nation crumbling, we might expect
more support for the idea of Iraq as a state/identity/actor in the
region if there were any promise of a determinable economic and
political future.

The fact remains that Iraq MUST have a security force of some sort to
ward off the threat of regional exploitation and to suppress
"terrorist"/militant activity from a factionally disinterested stance.
At present, I do not believe that the Iraqi National Guard represents
the interests of the broader Iraqi population. I do not trust the
infrastructure of the ING, which has been very tribal from the
beginning, nor do I expect Iraqis to trust the ING which has been
repeatedly accused of serving the interests of local militia leaders,
operating as a separate and self-interested entity, and carrying out
missions against its own people. I wonder: if the U.S. pulls out and
the ING falls into disorder, will the Iraqi state which crops up after
the civil war will be able to establish a factionally disinterested
army dedicated to the state a/o the tribe? Probably not.




Where do we stand?

1) Partition will lead to the dissolution of Iraq, dividing the
already sectarian society with economic inequality. The dissolution of
Iraq as a state will add strength to enemies of the United States.

2)Redployment to the borders is logistically/morally impossible.
Increased presence in the cities causes more violence than it
prevents, and without the promise of a safer future. The U.S. forces
are viewed by many in Iraq as one among several forces in the civil
war, as are the ING; as long as we are a political and military enemy
to large factions of the Iraqi people, it is unreasonable to expect
that any legislation/infrastructure
which we bring to salience with military support will last the test of
time. "Staying the course" in Iraq means staying forever if the
"course," redefined, is the end to the civil war. While I [obviously]
sympathize with our moral responsibility to "fix what we have broken"
and to restore order where we have sewn discord, I have faced the
reality that our military occupation of Iraq cannot and will not serve
any parties' interests. We would do better to assist in the
reconstruction and growth of the Iraqi economy and to help eradicate
incipient corruption and poor organization; we can do this from
outside of Iraq's borders.

3)Abandonding the Green Zone presents too great of a security risk to
those who remain, and as we must leave Iraq eventually, and the now
protected leaders face the inevitability of violence, we may as well
face the truth that -- in the end -- we can protect them neither now
nor later.

4)The Iraqi people must fight their civil war until the end: they must
"stay the course." American presence in Iraq does nothing to bring
about the end of the civil war, which is the event which MUST happen
before any other political developments (including regional stability)
are possible in anything resembling a lasting manner, i.e. we can make
Baghdad SEEM safe, but it will not be; we can make Iran temporarily
nervous, but not forever, and at the cost of jeopardizing U.S. moral
initiative.

5)In order for the U.S. to enact any successful change in policy,
commanding authorities in the Middle East would need a build up of
many more thousands of troops than 21,500 or 17,500, (100,000?
200,000?) and we would need to make a commitment to stay in Iraq for
many years to come. Without such a firm posture in the region, which
would enable a full- fledged focus on reconstruction and organization
of the Iraqi government, any singular efforts are doomed to failure.
The country is just too violent and unstable. Since we all know that a
troop increase of consequence will not be tolerated by the American
tax-payers or the increasingly vocal protesters, we need to quit
promising what we can't deliver to the Iraqi people and let them
"deliver themselves" from the evil of this situation (one which we
clearly created, but one which Iraqi and foreign fighters are
perpetuating). Money which would fund troops can go into
reconstruction with the support of U.N. accountability mechanisms (one
option among many).

6) If we leave, I find it unlikely that the violence will worsen. The
U.S. presence in Iraq stokes the fires of militant propagandists who
cite our presence as evidence of our evil intentions in the regions.
Once secular citizens of Baghdad are now harboring or, at least,
tolerating jihadists because the "prophecies" of the jihadists are
supported by the empirical evidence of the U.S. occupation. When the
U.S. forces are no longer there to make true the fighters' hostile
charges (many/most mujahidin are foreigners), it is unreasonable to
assume that street-to-street and house-to-house support of these
extremely destructive fighters will remain at its current level.
Foreign fighters require food, shelter, and moral support; so long as
we remain in Iraq, we cannot blame the Iraqi people -- who have seen
no U.S. promises fulfilled without concomitant destruction and
pork-barrelling which would make U.S. pundits shiver -- for
disbelieving us and believing those whose language, culture, history,
and futures are linked with theirs. Without the U.S. presence as a
target for ideological and physical violence (Iraq IS ABSOLUTELY the
#1 training site for international jihadists because of U.S. presence.
If you are a dragon-slayer, you will find no work in the village. You
must go to the dragon's lair.), the street-to-street violence will
become increasingly more difficult and irrational in the eyes of the
Iraqi people. Alternatively, and far more cynically, if the U.S.
leaves then the amount of hostile factions in the civil war decreases
by a factor of one (a BIG one), which will enable a "more focused
civil war," where national issues of identity and governance are not
confused with or derailed by a war against an occupying force; the
civil war will end more quickly, and possibly with less bloodshed.
What's more, the undistracted civil war might produce a resolution
which has a chance of suriviving, based on a real balance of power
which is not merely imposed and protected by the foreign occupier.
That balance of power may extend across borders so that Iraq actually
ends up as a buffer zone between anti-U.S. and "anti-democratic"
nations.

Isn't that what we wanted all along?

It's time for the boys and girls to come home. My heart is thoroughly
broken, but I'm with you.

Best,
SPC Elliott Dunnington Woods
C 237th Sapper Company
West Point, VA