Antiwar.com Blog

Spencer Ackerman, writing in Iraq’d, points out that according to the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Americans are now the proud owners of the New Iraqi Army. Nathan Brown of George Washington University identified this situation first in his assessment of the TAL.

Ackerman highlights the reasoning behind Brown’s conclusion, and the impetus behind the inclusion of this ominous article in the TAL becomes clear:

What’s more, this provision was surely not put in the TAL because we covet Iraq’s military. As Brown notes, this is surely in the TAL as a way to make an end-run around the Governing Council’s refusal last month to negotiate an early basing arrangement for U.S. troops ahead of a sovereign government. Council members, you’ll recall, rightly worried that they didn’t possess the legitimacy necessary to conclude a deal with the U.S. on how our troops can operate in their country. Now, by linking the Iraqi forces to the “multinational” (read: U.S.) coalition forces, we’ve glommed on to their own army–and added an automatic wellspring of legitimacy: U.N. Security Council Resolution 1511, which authorizes a “multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq.” Note that subsection (C) authorizes the Transitional Government to negotiate what’s known as a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with us, determining what the rules of engagement are for our troops, and what legal protections they’ll enjoy–but our command of the Iraqi armed forces will last until that temporary government gives way to a permanent one, which will occur by December 31, 2005, if all goes according to plan. So while the Transitional Government negotiates a SOFA with us, we’ll be in control of its military. Now that’s what I call leverage!

The importance of the basing rights issue to the US shouldn’t be underestimated. Jim Lobe writes:

……statements made by Jay Garner this week in an interview with The National Journal suggest that the administration had its own reasons for the war. Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, ”I hope they’re there a long time,” and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S. military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.

”One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities),” he said. ”And I think we’ll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south … we’d want to keep at least a brigade.”

Garner added, ”Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That’s what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East.”

While U.S. military strategists have hinted for some time that a major goal of war was to establish several bases in Iraq, particularly given the ongoing military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, Garner is the first to state it so baldly. Until now, U.S. military chiefs have suggested they need to retain a military presence just to ensure stability for several years, after which they expect to draw down their forces.

If indeed Garner’s understanding represents the thinking of his former bosses, then the ongoing struggle within the administration over ceding control to the United Nations becomes more comprehensible. Ceding too much control, particularly before reaching an agreement establishing military bases will make permanent U.S. bases much less likely.

Considering the Saudi bases that proved to be so popular with Osama bin Laden that he attacked the US with passenger-laden airplanes to get rid of them because they were defiling the Holy Places of Islam, it is fair to wonder how the Shi`a will take the presence of American troops in ancient Mesopotamia, the location of their most holy shrines and shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.

UPDATE: An alert reader points out “Don’t forget Baghdad, the site of the caliphate and the cultural center of the Islamic world from the 700s to the 1200s . One of Osama Bin Laden’s espoused goals is to reestablish the caliphate. What better focus to organize Islamists around than the occupation of the caliphate by the infidel? It is the Crusades all over again! Pulling out of Saudi, home of the holy cities, is fine. Moving next door and occupying the heart of Arabia and site of the caliphate itself doesn’t look too smart. More of a time-bomb than a ‘coaling station.'”

I’d been thinking mainly of the Shi`a reaction to the presence of Infidel troops in Iraq. As this reader points out, these troops will also offend OBL, a wahhabi Sunni.

[i][/i]

They enlisted to defend our nation from attack. Now, they are encamped on the other side of the world as an occupation force with cloudy and confusing goals. Though they did sign on the dotted line voluntarily, with the coming of Bush and the neocons, like the proverbial horse, their job description seems to have been changed in midstream. Here’s Part I of day-to-day life at a hellhole aptly named Firebase Purgatory, Afghanistan:

“Are we [here] to alter a way of life? To stop tribal warfare? Or are we stopping the enemy of our country?” Bergeron asked. It’s difficult to know whether they’re winning or losing, say Triple Deuce soldiers and officers.

“How do you measure disruption?” Cunningham wondered. If coalition soldiers leave, the Taliban and al-Qaida will come back, says 1st Lt. David Hawk, Cunningham’s executive officer. “This country has historically harbored terrorists. There are a million places to hide … and no one to bother you.” In that sense, Purgatory’s an emerging template, the first of dozens of similar stabilization efforts around Afghanistan.

“We’re a cog,” Hawk said, “in a machine that’s going to turn for the next 10 years.”
… read more

In this accompanying article, the soldiers of Firebase Purgatory offer some tips on how to make life more tolerable until they can go home. One carries:

In the left breast pocket of his shirt a complete packet of memories, including photographs of his mother, brother and sister, soil from the front yard of his boyhood home in Harrisburg, Pa., and even a little Bible his grandmother received when she graduated nursery school.

Another, on a more practical level:

“You gotta bring baby wipes,” he added. “One, to bathe with. Two, for other ‘sanitary needs’ because the toilet paper in MREs is no good.”
… read more

With the recent death of an American soldier by improvised explosive device, the total number of Americans killed in Iraq reached 555. This combat death follows three other incidents in Iraq:

March 8th: soldier dies of a “non-combat cause.”
March 7th: soldier dies of a “non-combat cause.”
March 5th: soldier dies in auto accident.

Roderick Long has organized a series of links for a very interesting debate that has been going on over at the Liberty and Power group blog on the subject of libertarians and the left. Here’s a post I did a few days ago inspired by the Liberty and Power debate with quotes from Roderick Long and Steve Horwitz.

Here’s a sample of the excellent quality of these posts, this one an excerpt from Gus diZerega:

What seems under appreciated is how both right and left have changed over the past few decades. Most liberals are no longer socialists, and while they certainly support intervention, they recognize the central role of market processes in creating a viable economy. Bill Clinton did more for free trade than George Bush.

Further, liberals are far far better on civil liberties in general, and less interventionist than the current crowd in foreign policy. It is difficult to imagine liberals wanting to bring back the draft – it is not difficult to imagine that under the current regime. Bourne was right – war is the health of the state. And no concept of war in our history has been as open ended and vague as Bush’s “war on terrorism” which seems to be expanding into a “war on evil” if we are to believe his neoconservative friends like Frum and Perle.

Libertarians could often make common cause with the right when it was strongly defined by views akin to Barry Goldwater’s. It no longer is. Goldwater harshly denounced the influence of religion in right wing circles, and it is easy to see today which view is dominant. It isn’t Goldwater’s.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: In the Balkans, everything is politics. Thus with the recent story concerning a folk festival marked by consumption of the world’s biggest pork sausage, the Serbian Orthodox Church’s reaction to it, and the coverage this drew in the Western press.
One SOC bishop threatened to excommunicate believers who attended the Turija town festival – a 20-year old tradition with the world’s biggest pork sausage at its centerpiece (this year, it was 2.2 kilometers long!) – because it took place during the feast of Lent. Another has threatened similar measures against newlyweds who chose to consume their marriage during Lent. Most Serbs, who follow Orthodox customs as part of their ethnic identity but don’t adhere strictly to church rules, shrugged off the threats and went about their business. But the Church outbursts definitely fed the grist mill of secular humanists and elements in foreign press with Serbophobic tendencies… Continue reading “Press, Priests and Pork Sausage”

Spencer Ackerman has an interesting analysis on the gyrations of Chalabi & Co. last weekend. Essentially he asks, what if the walkout by the five Shi`a puppets wasn’t Sistani’s idea at all? What if what we saw was an attempted end run around Sistani? It makes sense in that his scenario is truer to everything Sistani has said and done so far.

Ackerman:

Here’s a fellow cleric talking to Reuters: “The religious authorities have made their position clear to the politicians, but don’t want to interfere directly. They have deep reservations, but also know this interim constitution is a step in the right direction.”

For another thing, I would think that if Sistani were so deeply involved, more than five of the thirteen Shia members of the Governing Council would have refused to sign. One of those eight remaining Shia council members, Raja Kuzai, called the walkout “a disgrace”–not something I’d say if I was convinced the undisputed Shia religious authority in the country had issued the directive.

Finally, after a heated two days of negotiations–during which a furious Kurdish official called the boycotters “Iranians, not Iraqis,” a slur in Iraqi politics if there ever was one, given that this was exactly Saddam’s pretext for his massacres of the Shia–the five Council members abruptly shifted their story on their relationship with Sistani’s views on the issue. Whereas on Friday they portrayed themselves as following Sistani’s orders, now they seem to be portraying themselves as pleading their case to the cleric. After a meeting in Najaf with Sistani, Mowaffak Al Rubaie of the Governing Council told The Washington Post, “We are very happy that Ayatollah Sistani understands our point. We came to clarify the reason of delaying signing the law. … [Sistani] understands the explanation we gave him.” Al Rubaie sounds to me like a man who realizes his attempted end-run around the Basic Law simply failed, and is now scrambling to remain in a strong political position on the Council.

Ackerman quotes Juan Cole:

I can’t understand why Sistani wants 5 presidents, and I actually suspect that it is Shiite IGC members who came up with this formula and put it in Sistani’s mouth. As Borzou Daragahi reports, Sistani is a quietist and doesn’t believe that clerics should rule. The main beneficiaries of a 5-man presidency are people like Ahmad Chalabi, who probably could not get selected president, but who want to ensure for themselves some sort of high executive post.

This is just the kind of thing that snake Chalabi would do, while Sistani’s actions as portrayed by the mainstream media over the weekend seemed out of character. Why would Sistani issue a fatwa if there was some “agreement?” If there wasn’t an agreement, why did those 5 walk out last Friday? I’d like to know what Chalabi thought of Sistani’s fatwa, issued just after the Puppet Council got back on script and signed.