Three developments are particularly troubling—the administration's insistence that the surge is working but that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is failing; the growing tendency to blame Iranian "meddling" for military failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan; and what appears to be a changing of horses—back to the Sunnis—in midstream.
Consider the evidence of a policy reversal: immediately after the fall of Baghdad the US insisted on aggressive de-Baathification, in effect barring Sunnis from top jobs in the government and military. Now the administration is insisting that al-Maliki relax de-Baathification rules to bring Sunnis back into the government. At the same time the US military is creating battlefield alliances with Sunni insurgents, is encouraging the admission of Sunnis into the security and military services, and has remained silent while two separate groups of Sunni cabinet ministers have withdrawn from the al-Maliki government. It is likely that the US even encouraged the second group of defections by ministers loyal to Iyad Alawi, who has had close ties to the CIA for decades. Americans may not notice what is going on but the Shiites do. The obvious danger when the surge began in February was that we would bring the Shiites into the war against us. This now appears to have happened. The New York Times on August 25 reported the conviction of the military "that 78 percent of attacks against the United States are now carried out by Shiites." More remarkable still is the fact that a Democratic leader, Senator Carl Levin, has called for removal of the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, al-Maliki. Does no Democrat worry that a widened war with the Shiites of Iraq will bring a danger of war with the Shiites of Iran?
--NYRB, 9-27-2007 p 36
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