Juan Cole: Peace groups, Pentagon see eye-to-eye on Iraq

[quaoar]

http://www.juancole.com/

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In practice, I think the withdrawal plan implies a willingness to turn the five northern provinces over to the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary, and the 9 southern provinces over to a combination of Shiite militias and new Iraqi government security forces (Interior Ministry gendarmes and regular army). And, I think this obviously desperate plan really risks damaging the integrity of Iraq as a nation-state. But, it is unlikely that for the US to remain at its present force levels would help maintain that integrity, anyway.

Ironically, the peace groups who have been demanding a rapid US withdrawal have in recent months been closer to Pentagon thinking than they could have imagined.

Of course, it should be remembered that the Pentagon has wanted to draw down its troop numbers radically in the past. In April of 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that the US would be down to about a division (20,000 troops) by October of 2003! Wanting to draw down and being able to are not the same thing.

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[ugarte]

1. All about the 2006 elections

So Republicans can say the job is done, we're scaling back, standing down.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Yes... the job is done... we have driven Iraq into the hands of the

Iranians.... it's done alright.

[leftchick]

3. For once I disagree with Juan

Wolfowitz lied then and they are lying now. I believe it is more lies to eek them through the next election cycle. The USA is there to stay.Of course thousands more will die in the process, but that never stopped the neo-freaks before.

[damntexdem]

4. If the Pentagon has come around ...

to our way of thinking, good for it. However, over two years after the invasion, it is too late to seek a good outcome. The Pentagon knows that as well as do the rest of us; but the question is whether the Pentagon is willing to accept the consequences, as I hope that most of us are.

"Risk damanging the integrity of Iraq as a nation-state"? Insofar as it had any, that was destroyed by the invasion and the bungling of the occupation. Any deal among the different communities will be a stop-gap only. The Kurds want, and deserve, independence; but that is not an outcome that Turkey, and likely Iran, will be willing to accept. Should the Kurds be given effective independence, the U.S. would be hard-placed to try to prevent Turkey from invading; and there is no telling what the new, more-fundamentalist government of Iran might do. In any case, any Iraqi Kurdistan would face years of efforts to destablize it, if not to outright invade it, from at least two of its neighbors -- and perhaps from Shia Iraq as well. Meanwhile, Shia Iraq (which is what the Íraqi government' would be) would still be faced by a Sunni insurgency. Meanwhile, Baghdad is the new Beirut, but on a much-larger scale.

[hadrons]

5. Pentagon had no choice in coming around ....

its being worned down to a nub