Prof Cutler | Musings on the News

The decision by CBS to air a 60 Minutes report–CIA offical Tyler Drumheller’s accusations that the Bush administration ignored warnings about faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion of IRaq–appears to be an odd choice. The program wasn’t a re-run, but it sure felt like old news. Perhaps it was intended to serve as a link to the developing story of Mary McCarthy, the CIA analyst fired recently for leaking classified information to reporters.

The story was a reminder of the particularly vapid mode of criticism that has animated much of the political squabbling over Iraq. Drumheller’s criticism is that the Bush folks knowingly lied. But the Drumheller segment also ends with the CIA official blasting the decision to invade as one of the most significant policy mistakes of all time. End of interview. He never explains this accusation. Simply that the Bush administration made that mistake “knowingly.” Doesn’t that cry out for elaboration?

Let’s stipulate that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence it used to justify the invasion. Let’s be “shocked, shocked” to find that lies were told. Then let’s move on. Beyond the game of gotcha, isn’t it time for the follow-up question: if the threat of WMD was not actually the reason you were so determined to go to war–just the one for public consumption–then what were the private reasons that motivated the invasion? Not the “personal” reasons–to avenge the Father or the kill the Father. And not just the most general reasons–oil, no doubt. But the more specific reasons behind the extraordinary decisions to remake the Iraqi political order: the initial attempt to terminate Sunni minority rule in Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shia.

I have tried to make some sense of this in my article, “Beyond Incompetence: Washington’s War in Iraq.” One of the key issues raised there is the prospect that right Zionists (aka “neocons”) played the game in Iraq for very high stakes: reshaping the regional balance of power. The goal was to tilt power away from Sunni Arab dominance–the Gulf Arab states of Saudi Arabia and Sunni-dominated Iraq–in favor of a Shiite Gulf.

Earlier in April, Brian Lehrer of WNYC interviewed Salameh Nematt, Washington bureau chief of Al Hayat about Arab reaction to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Worth a listen. Nematt spoke about Gulf Arab concerns that a nuclear Iran would enhance its regional power. These concerns were not limited to the current regime, but also the regional power of Iran as such. Nematt emphasized the continuity of Iranian regional ambitions–relative to the Gulf Arabs–under the Shah and the Revolutionary regime. Regime change in Iran or not, the Arab states do not want a nuclear Iran.

Lehrer also interviewed an Israeli diplomat about Iran’s nuclear program. Not surprisingly, the Israelis are quite hostile to the Iranian Revolutionary regime acquiring nuclear weapons. More surprising, however, is that unlike the Gulf Arabs, right Zionists seem quite willing to contemplate a nuclear Iran after the fall of the Revolutionary regime. In June 2005 Michael Rubin, a Right Zionist at the American Enterprise Institute who served in Iraq as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority, published an essay in The Forward entitled “Washington Must Plan Today For Democratic Iran of Tomorrow.” In that essay, Rubin warns against the threat posed by the Iranian’s quest for nuclear weapons, but then comes to his central point:

A democratic Iran might not abandon its nuclear program, but neither would it sponsor anti-American terrorism, undercut the Middle East peace process or deny Israel’s right to exist. Democratization, therefore, can take the edge off the Iranian threat.

Right Zionists are hawkish about the current Iranian drive for nukes, but their preferred solution is not a direct military assault on Irans nuclear program.  They want populist regime change. Indeed, some understand that US efforts to repress Iranian nuclear ambitions incite popular nationalism and help stabilize an otherwise unpopular regime.

For Right Zionists, this is the preferred future regional balance of power: a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Israel (and a nuclear India?) aligned against Sunni Arab regional dominance (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan). Right Zionists do not like the Iranian Revolutionary regime, but unlike the Gulf Arabs they are far from hostile to Iranian regional power. Indeed, they cannot bring themselves to abandon the dream of restoring the Iranian-Israeli regional alliance the flourished under Nixon’s tilt toward the Shah. Right Arabists in the US (aka “realists”) howled against that regional shift during the 1970s and they have not stopped howling since the Bush administration started moving toward the invasion of Iraq.

For Right Zionists, the road to Tehran starts in Baghdad. First step: hand Iraq to the Shiite majority, under the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Second step: join Sistani in sparking a Shiite-led populist rebellion against his clerical opponents in Iran. Third step: exploit Sunni-Shiite rivalry over control of the Gulf–is it a Persian Gulf or an Arab Gulf?–in order to rebuild the alliance between a “democratic Iran” and Israel. Fourth step: pry the US away from its dependence on Sunni Arab regimes deemed hostile to Israel and/or unreliable to the US.

With apologies to 60 Minutes and Tyler Drumheller, the fact that the Right Zionists lied about intelligence on the road to war is small potatoes. The stakes in this war are far greater. The truly significant issue is not the secret lies behind the invasion, but the open truth behind the lies.

The selection of Jawad al-Maliki as the new Iraqi Prime Minister does little, so far, to clarify the nature of US objections to the prior designation by the Shiite alliance of Jaafari as PM. Reporters and bloggers have generated elaborate profiles of Maliki’s record, but none have discerned any major differences between Jaafari and Maliki. One US diplomat, cited by the New York Times, reports that Maliki is simply more “competent.” Maybe. But the idea that the administration of George W. Bush put it all on the line in defense of “competence” stretches credulity to the breaking point. Swopa cites the LA Times conclusion: Jaafari and Maliki appear to be carbon copies.

If so, it becomes even more difficult to discern who blinked in the impasse over Jaafari. On the one hand, Khalilzad’s attempt to spin the Maliki deal as “a major positive” seems like a weak effort to cover his losses. Khalilzad’s attack on Jaafari seemed, at times, to aim at reshaping the power balance in Iraqi governance, replacing democratic Shiite majority rule with an extra-constitutional government of “national unity.” No sign of that here. Not yet, at least. If he aimed at substance, he missed. Khalilzad blinked. And lived to fight another day.

On the other hand, if the Shia–Sistani, but especially Sadr who stood by Jaafari for months while the US complained–were really looking to defy the US and establish their political independence, why hand the US even a symbolic victory? Why accept a carbon copy when you hold all the winning cards? Why allow Zhalilzad the (false) image of success?

If personnel changes do little to illuminate the central issues at stake in the Jaafari impasse, policy decisions almost certainly will. First up, according to Reuters, the future of Iraqi militias. Maliki seems to favor “integration” of militias within the official security system, the US allegedly wants the militias disbanded. Is this the real crux of the issue? If so, Maliki seems defiant and the US is headed for tough sledding with the new government. But does the US want “all” militias disbanded? The Kurdish Peshmerga? Nah. The US-instigated and trained Shiite “Commando” units at the Interior ministry? Nah. Sadr’s Mahdi army? Maybe, but why? Hasn’t Sadr has been pretty well contained within the political system? And if Khalilzad is interested in reaching across the sectarian divide, is it plausible to think that Sadr’s nationalism is so dangerous? Sadr has worked overtime to try to keep his own rank-and-file base from retaliating against the Sunni minority for anti-Shiite terror attacks.

During the long months of the Jaafari impasse, Iraqi Shiites rightly suspected that Khalilzad’s real goal was to put the Shiite genie back in the bottle and restore Sunni minority rule in Iraq. If Badr brigade control at the Interior Ministry is a symbolic sign of Shiite power, then the militia issue seems significant at that level. But during the last two months, Khalilzad managed to keep SCIRI closely aligned with his agenda. If there is some massive split between SCIRI and its own militia wing, it is fair to say that the details of such a rupture have been largely ignored by media outlets of all stripes.

Suppose, then, that the real index of US efforts to retreat from de-Baathification is the fate of former-Baathist and pro-Baathist figures like Iyad Allawi, Adnan Pachachi, and Salih Mutlak. If so, then the real mystery of the Jaafari impasse is that it featured entirely mixed-up alliances. Allawi, Pachachi and Mutlak stood with their old sectarian enemies: the Kurds and the pro-Iranian Shiite forces of SCIRI. Standing in opposition to this peculiar re-Baathification initiative was the most ant-Iranian Arab nationalist Shiite leader and the only Shiite leader with links to the Sunni-led insurgency, Muqtada al-Sadr. The alleged reason: Sadr is still bitter that Allawi led military campaigns to crush Sadr during Allawi’s time as US-appointed Prime Minister. Maybe. But the world has seen stranger bedfellows.

Perhaps one reason why Khalilzad blinked and let the Jaafari impasse slide was because the battle lines were not useful for a sustained campaign againt Shiite power. Don’t worry, though, he’ll try again. And next time, he might have Sadr on his side. At the height of Shiite objections to Khalilzad’s post-election maneuvering in favor of a national unity government, Juan Cole noted that Sadr offered up a peculiar, but potentially significant formula: “We want the expulsion of the Occupier and not the American ambassador.” Khalilzad, take note.

The decision by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step aside is illuminating for several reasons. Press reports quote Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman:

Jaafari’s change of heart followed meetings Wednesday in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf between UN envoy Ashraf Qazi and both anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation’s most prestigious Shi’ite cleric. ”There was a signal from Najaf,” Othman said in an interview. ”Qazi’s meetings with [Sistani] and [Sadr] were the chief reason that untied the knot.”

Othman’s claims, if true, are significant for the following reasons:

1. Sistani has advanced the US agenda in Iraq. This can only be seen as consistent with pre-war planning by neo-conservatives who argued for an alliance between the US and Sistani. For an elaboration of this argument, see my article “Beyond Incompetence: Washingon’s War in Iraq.”

2. Sistani will not deal with the US directly, but he is willling to negotiate and compromise through the legitimating mediation of the UN. Hence the role of UN envoy Ashraf Qazi. Sistani used the same technique in February 2004 when he used the mediation efforts of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as cover for an agreement that allowed the US to formally transfer Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004 while postponing Iraqi elections until 2005.
3. Sistani seems willing and able to contain Sadr. Sadr provided Jaafari with much of his base within the Shiite Alliance and Jaafari’s retreat is only possible with the consent of Sadr. Until Sistani withdrew his support, Sadr and Jaafari had boldly defied US demands for Jaafari to step aside.

On the other hand, the end of the Jaafari impasse leaves several issues unresolved, especially the original reasons for US objections to Jaafari. It is possible–but unlikely–that the naming of a new Prime Minister will illuminate the key issues at stake for the US throughout the Jaafari impasse.

Why the original impasse? What does the US want in an Iraqi PM?

1. US Occupation/Status of Forces Agreement: According to a December 2005 AP report, Sadr pressed Jaafari to support a “code of honor” that demanded a timetable for the end of the U.S. military presence. If the US believed that Sadr made this a condition for his support for Jaafari and believed that Jaafari would make good on the promise, then this might provide the key to US objections.

Note, however, that the AP report alleges SCIRI also signed the declaration. This makes it difficult to understand why–after the December 2005 election–the US initially backed the SCIRI candidate, Adel Abdul Mahdi, who lost to Jaafari by one vote in Shiite Alliance balloting for the Prime Minister post.

2. Iran: Jaafari’s party is close to Iran.

Fine, but SCIRI is just as close to Iran. The Iran issue is an obstacle for Bush administration Arabists who never wanted elections or an alliance with Sistani. Bush administration Zionists, however, know Sistani is Persian but remain confident he is no friend of the incumbent “revolutionary” regime in Iran. The key point, from this perspective, is that Sistani is more powerful than any of the political parties. So, why fear Jaafari?

3. Appeasing the Sunni Minority: Jaafari was too closely identified with Shiite militias, Shiite death squads in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and de-Baathification. Hence, the US pressure for a government of “national unity,” rather than Jaafari-led Shiite sectarianism.

First, the Shiite Interior Ministry is controlled by the Badr brigades, a militia linked to SCIRI, not Jaafari’s Dawa party. And it is far from clear that the Interior Ministry has been as independent of the US as has been alleged by the US in recent days. In any event, if SCIRI-backed death squads are the concern, why the US preference for SCIRI’s Adel Abdul Mahdi? Second, Sadr is the Shiite most inclined to build bridges with Sunni nationalists. Wouldn’t a Jaafari-Sadr alliance present the greatest opportunities for reaching out to Sunni parties, including those close to the insurgency?

4. Neo-Liberalism: Adel Abdul Mahdi is a leading Iraqi neo-liberal.

Fair enough. But it was the old, provisional Jaafari government that tried to cut gasoline subsidies only days after the December 2005 election. True, Sadr opposed these austerity measures and might have had more influence in any new Jaafari government.

5. Kurdistan: Jaafari met with the Turkish government–which opposes Kurdish independenc–wihtout first consulting the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. Sadr is also resistant to Kurdish demands for autonomy and control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Is the US ready to go to war with the Iraqi Shiite majority and Turkey in order to appease the Iraqi Kurds? The question must be rephrased in order to be answered. Are Bush administration Arabists ready to go to war with the Iraqi Shia? Yes. And the formation of a Sunni Arab/Sunni Kurdish bloc in opposition to the Iraqi Shia is the best way for mobilizing such an effort to restore Sunni Arab power in Iraq. Are Bush adminstration Zionists ready to alienate the Iraqi Shia? No. (For an explanation, see my article “Beyond Incompetence: Washingon’s War in Iraq.”)