Sunday Roundup

Meet the Press from today here.

Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary giving Bush administration line and policy on how to deal with House vote against surge, Rep. Murtha's plan to cut funding, etc. Basic line: the administration thinks (and perhaps are right?) that they want a vote on funding to make it a partisan issue. So the blame for the war (actually the post-war peacekeeping) can be blamed on the Dems for 08.

At minute 21 until 38, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Hagel is the only Republican candidate for President--which I'm assuming he is going to announce--talking about Iraq as only one piece of Middle East policy, emphasizing diplomacy. Maybe Sam Brownback is, don't know.

But I found the most fascinating piece, the final segment (38+) with Richard Engel, the war reporter for NBC.

He discusses that when ordering a hotel room in Southern Iraq you speak in Farsi (Iran's language) and pay in Iranian currency. Iran, not the US, is building southern Iran infrastructure and the Shia Southern State that the US' main ally, Parliament Leader Abdul Aziz al Hakim (SCIRI) is pushing for, will be an economic partner of Iran. Which I think is good thing, it will work ala Eastern Europe to Soviet Russia.

Russert asks Engel what he sees as Iraq in one year. Engel's answer I think is more or less on target: the Shia will be in control of Baghdad, the Shia will control the Iraqi State (whatever degree of authority it will have), the US will declare victory from Baghdad and be fighting in Anbar province (Sunni heartland). My one quibble with Engel is he says the US will be fighting al-Qaeda in Anbar, but this distinction between Sunni Baathist insurgents and al-Qaeda is (for now) not entirely clear.

I'm not sure whether with the Shia controlling Baghdad and Anbar becoming the de facto center of a new Arab Sunni State whether the US could broker deals with the Sunni tribal leaders and elements of the insurgency thereby isolating the al-Qaeda elements. There are conflicting reports as to how infiltrated al-Qaeda is into the Iraqi insurgency. Part of the problem is that the Iraqi Al-Qaeda is from Zarqawi not bin Laden. It is not a trans-national organization seeking to take down Israel and US. It will be an Iraqi group who will target the Iraqi government, Iran (through Sunni proxies in North as evidence in an attack this week), Jordan, and the Saudis as it seeks a caliphate.

Zarqawi's vision was to pull the Shia and Sunni in the region into an all out war creating a situation of instability which they (al-Qaeda in Iraq) could exploit to re-create the Caliphate. Of course al-Qaeda is never actually going to recreate the Caliphate. But Zarqawi's legacy may very well be this regional all out conflict.

Engel does mention that the North and South will be strong states but the west/center Sunni lands a failed state which is going to bring down the central government. Again this is basically what I have been saying for some time.

Engel also discusses that Moqtada al Sadr has gone into hiding--the best reports suggest the Southern Arab Iraq Marshes not Iran. The US is going to take out the roughly 1/3 of the Mahdi Army that Sadr does not control, thereby letting Sadr off the hook for purging his own group. I.e. the Americans are going to do his dirty work for him. And that policy will likely actually aid the eventual Shia takeover of Baghdad. Although for right now all it has done is made the Shia more angry with the US because with the Shia militias dissolved temporarily the Shia neighborhoods are more prone to attack--hence the rise in car bombs in Sadr City and other Shia enclaves of Baghdad.

The Americans long term enemy in the region are the Sunnis, not the Shia, no matter how much Bush wants to talk about Iranian-manufactured explosives and the al-Quds force. But his closeness to the Saudis is making him unable to see this point. The Saudis have promised to send in arms and training to Sunni insurgents once we are gone. If the US heads to Anbar are we going to be fighting Saudis and Saudi backed Iraqi groups?

This is the major flaw as I see it with Bush's attempt to create an anti-Iranian and Syrian alliance: namely the Iraqi government is a pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian entity. And the Saudis who are the US partners in the attempt to create a Palsetinian unity gov. and to bolster the Lebanese government against Hezbollah are backing our enemy in Iraq.

In that sense, Sen. Reed is right that the issue is not votes or no votes, non-binding resolutions or not, but the basic policy as such, within the regional framework (ala Hagel). This circle can not be squared unless the US moves to a sorta honest broker position with Iran and the Saudis as our Palestinian-Israeli stance and/or Chinese-Taiwanese position. Then the US plays referee, as it were, with its main emphasis (Engel's point) to stop trans-national terrorist bases from forming in Anbar. The US then lets the Saudis and the Iranians duke it out before Iran gets the bomb through proxies in Iraq. Thee Iraqi people by this plan would experience a massive tragedy and humanitarian crisis. The response to that criticism is that such an outcome is at this point only a matter of when not if.