Dying for W

by Robert Parry

George W. Bush admits he has no evidence that a withdrawal timetable
from Iraq would be harmful. Instead, the President told interviewer
Charlie Rose that this core assumption behind his veto threat of a
Democratic war appropriation bill is backed by ?just logic.?

?I mean, you say we start moving troops out,? Bush said in the
interview on April 24. ?Don?t you think an enemy is going to wait and
adjust based upon an announced timetable for withdrawal??

It is an argument that Bush has made again and again over the past few
years, that with a withdrawal timetable, the ?enemy? would just ?wait
us out.? But the answer to Bush?s rhetorical question could be, ?well,
so what if they do??

If Bush is right and a withdrawal timetable quiets Iraq down for the
next year or so ? a kind of de facto cease-fire ? that could buy time
for the Iraqis to begin the difficult process of reconciliation and
start removing the irritants that have enflamed the violence.

One of those irritants has been the impression held by many Iraqi
nationalists that Bush and his neoconservative advisers want to turn
Iraq into a permanent colony while using its territory as a land-based
aircraft carrier to pressure or attack other Muslim nations.

The neocons haven?t helped by referring to Bush?s 2003 conquest as the
?USS Iraq? and joking about whether next to force ?regime change? in
Syria or Iran, with the punch-line, ?Real men go to Tehran.?

By refusing to set an end date for the U.S. military occupation, Bush
has fed this suspicion, prompting many Iraqis ? both Sunni and Shiite
? to attack American troops. Another negative consequence has been
that the drawn-out Iraq War has bought time for foreign al-Qaeda
terrorists to put down roots with Sunni insurgents.

Obviously, there is no guarantee that a timetable for a U.S.
withdrawal would bring peace to Iraq. The greater likelihood remains
that civil strife will continue for some years to come as Iraq?s
factions nurse their grievances and push for a new national
equilibrium.

But the counterpoint to Bush?s veto threat against a withdrawal
timetable is that his open-ended war is doomed to failure. To attain
even the appearance of limited success would require American forces
to effectively exterminate all Iraqis who are part of the armed
resistance to the U.S. occupation.

After all, the only logical reason for not wanting the ?enemy? to lie
low is so American troops can capture or kill them.

That has been Bush?s strategy for the past four-plus years ? longer
than it took the United States to win World War II ? and the military
situation has only grown increasingly dire. Meanwhile,
anti-Americanism has swelled around the world, especially among
Muslims.

Failed Surge

But a long, bloody stalemate is the likely result from Bush?s
stubbornness. With little fanfare, the Bush administration has
essentially abandoned its earlier ?exit strategy? of training a new
Iraqi army so as ?they stand up, we?ll stand down.?

Bush?s much-touted ?surge? ? beefing up American forces in Baghdad and
other hot spots ? is an indirect acknowledgement that the training was
a flop. The ?surge? is a do-over of the war?s original approach of
relying on American troops to bring security to the country.

The ?surge? also places American troops in lightly defended outposts
in Iraqi neighborhoods, rather than concentrating U.S. forces in
high-security barracks. The Pentagon acknowledges that this approach
will put Americans in greater danger, both from insurgents and from
Iraqi police whose loyalties are suspect.

The prediction of higher U.S. casualties is already coming true, as
al-Qaeda-connected terrorists and Iraqi insurgents adjust their
tactics to kill the vulnerable Americans. On April 23, two suicide
truck bombers rammed a U.S. Army outpost near Baqubah, exploding two
bombs that killed nine American soldiers and wounded 20 others.

As Iraq?s temperatures begin to soar into the 100s, the American
troops will have to fight the heat as well as the insurgents. The
secure base camps were well equipped with air conditioning, water and
other supplies that won?t be as accessible in the remote outposts
scattered throughout hostile neighborhoods.

Supplying these American troops will be another invitation for
ambushes and roadside bombs.

The chances that U.S. troops will kill Iraqi civilians will rise, too,
as may have happened earlier this month when an American helicopter
gunship killed an Iraqi mother and her two sons in Baghdad Al-Amel
neighborhood. [Christian Science Monitor, April 24, 2007]

Bush?s insistence on an open-ended U.S. occupation also plays into the
hands of foreign al-Qaeda terrorists who are estimated to number only
about five percent of the armed opposition.

Captured al-Qaeda documents reveal that the terrorist group has had
trouble building alliances with Iraqi insurgents. So, al-Qaeda has
pinned its hopes on keeping the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq
indefinitely while those bridges are built and a new generation of
extremists is recruited, trained and hardened.

In addition, having the U.S. military focused on Iraq protects Osama
bin Laden and other terrorist leaders holed up on the Afghan-Pakistani
border.

An announced date for American withdrawal would put non-Iraqi al-Qaeda
operatives in a tighter fix. Without the indefinite U.S. occupation,
al-Qaeda would find it tougher to recruit young jihadists and would
likely face military pressure from Iraqi nationalists fed up with
foreign interference of all kinds.

That is why al-Qaeda leaders view Bush?s open-ended war in Iraq as
crucial to their long-range plans for spreading their radical ideology
throughout the Muslim world. As ?Atiyah,? one of bin Laden?s top
lieutenants, explained in a Dec. 11, 2005, letter, ?prolonging the war
is in our interest.?

[To read the ?prolonging the war? passage from the captured Atiyah
letter at the Web site of West Point?s Combating Terrorism Center,
click here and then scroll down to the bottom of page 16 and the top
of page 17.]

?False Hope?

Military and intelligence analysts have told me that the ?surge? is
already recognized as a failure by U.S. military officers stationed in
Iraq. ?It?s just another layer on top of what they?ve already been
doing,? one well-placed U.S. military source said.

In this view, the ?surge? is more a political tactic than a military
one, a way for Bush to argue for more money without strings, one more
time. Presumably, after the ?surge? collapses in obvious failure, Bush
and his advisers will point to another mirage on the horizon.

Or, as comedian Lewis Black has put it, ?Keep false hope alive.?

Given what the Iraq Study Group has called the ?grave and
deteriorating? conditions in Iraq, why not give a timetable for
American withdrawal a chance? It potentially could help achieve three
goals:

First, it might tamp down the violence from Iraqi nationalists who, if
Bush?s ?logic? is right, would lie low for a while. Second, it might
pressure the Iraqi government to get serious about reconciliation
during a respite from the violence. Third, it might help isolate
al-Qaeda and deny the terrorist group the recruiting advantage from
the open-ended U.S. occupation.

There also would be an incentive for the Iraqi nationalists to
cooperate in reconciliation, because the United States could reverse
its withdrawal plans if Iraq descended into chaos as a failed state or
became a haven for al-Qaeda. At minimum, an announced U.S. withdrawal
would change the current depressing political and military dynamic in
Iraq.

So, a Bush victory in the funding showdown with congressional
Democrats might lead to some high-fiving at the White House and mean
that President Bush will have saved some political face. But the
prospect of an open-ended war will condemn Iraqis and American
soldiers alike to nightmarish months ahead and the certainty of many
more deaths.

In effect, they will be asked to die for W.
.

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