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July 06, 2006

Update on Iraq

From Robert Dreyfuss at TomPaine.com:

Ironically, in response to Maliki’s less-than-forthcoming initiative, what appears to be a majority bloc of the Iraqi resistance made an offer of their own. The resistance, they said, would halt the fighting, stopping all attacks on U.S. occupation forces and the Iraqi government, in exchange for a U.S. pledge to leave Iraq in two years. For the United States, fighting a war-without-end in Iraq, that ought to have been seen as a good deal. But it was rejected out of hand.

The offer by the resistance, a ceasefire in exchange for an end to the occupation in 2008, also got little U.S. media attention. And, although I may have missed it, not a single U.S. political leader from the left nor those who are calling for a U.S. withdrawal—not Russ Feingold, not John Kerry, not Jack Murtha—took note of the offer. None had the guts to say to Bush: we ought to accept this deal. No editorial writer at the New York Times took up his pen to support it. No thinktanker at the Brookings Institution or the Center for American Progress had the courage to say: “What the Iraqi resistance is saying is a good idea.”

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, Maliki made it clear exactly what “conditional amnesty” means. While offering to talk to Sunni tribal elders and to minor elements of the resistance that he believes he can co-opt, the government of Iraq issued “Wanted” notices and rewards for 41 resistance leaders. It was a bitter irony. The list of 41 was a Who’s Who of the Iraqi resistance; in other words, the regime was offering rewards of up to $10 million for the capture or killing of precisely the people it ought to be negotiating a truce with! Among them were Raghad Hussein, the daughter of Saddam, who is living in Jordan; Saddam’s wife, Sajida Hussein, who lives in Qatar; Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top Iraqi official who is widely believed to be a leader of the underground; and at least a dozen other top former Baathists, Iraqi military and intelligence officials, and others. The issuance of the list underscored the fact that neither Khalilzad nor Maliki are seeking a deal with the real Iraqi resistance, merely attempting to corral a few more stray Sunni leaders into the regime.

The list of 41 received an immediate rebuke from Jordan. Since 2003, Raghad Hussein has lived in Jordan under the protection of the government of Jordan and King Abdullah. Asked whether Jordan would turn her over to the Iraqi government, Amman slapped Baghdad in the face. A spokesman for the king of Jordan said bluntly: “She is the guest of the Hashemite royal family.”

The Jordanians added that, in their opinion, Raghad is not violating the terms of her asylum agreement, according to which she is supposed to refrain from political activity. Of course, it is widely believed that she, along with many other top Iraqi officials in Jordan, are helping to direct, support and finance the Iraqi resistance. Although the Jordanian government prefers to maintain the polite fiction that Iraq’s resistance has no base in Jordan, it does. And Jordan’s rebuff of Iraq means that even this erstwhile American ally is prepared to challenge the U.S.-Iraqi regime of quislings in Baghdad.

Jordan’s stance makes it even clearer that no end to the fighting can occur until and unless an international conference is convened to involve Iraq’s neighbors (including Iran), the Arab League, and the United Nations (including Russia and China) in helping to stabilize Iraq politically. Part One of ending the war is a deal with the resistance, and Part Two is the internationalization of the peace. So far, there is not the slightest hope that the Bush administration is prepared to accept either. “We will stay. We will fight. And we will prevail,” Bush told troops at Fort Bragg on Sunday.

Posted by Mike at July 6, 2006 10:06 AM

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