Eye on Iraq: Why more US troops will die
Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
May 30, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Almost 1,000 US troops died in Iraq last year, and more than that could die in the coming year if current trends continue.
The reason for these statements is that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating ominously. The risk is growing that unless rapid action is taken to avert it, the 147,000 US troops currently deployed in that country could find themselves facing a Shiite Muslim militia uprising far more dangerous than the Sunni Muslim insurgency that they have been fighting since spring 2003.
Over the weekend, forces of Moqtada Al Sadr's Shiite militia, the Mehdi Army, again clashed with British forces in southern Iraq, and Sadr called upon US forces to quit Iraq as quickly as possible.
Already, General David Petraeus' much touted new "surge" strategy, while enjoying some tactical successes, appears to have failed at the strategic level - as we predicted that it would in these columns.
The "surge" strategy did succeed in dramatically slashing the incidence of random militia terror and retaliation killings in Baghdad. But that has been achieved at the cost of significantly rising US casualty figures.
April was the bloodiest month yet for US troop fatalities in the war. Even more ominously, the rate per day at which US troops are being killed and injured by insurgent attacks, primarily by improvised explosive devices and car bombs, is now running at its highest level since the insurgency began.
The figures for May are expected to be worse than those for April, and no relief is expected over the summer. Even the White House has abandoned its regular rosy-eyed attitude on Iraq to acknowledge that it expects casualties to continue running at a relatively high level at least through August.
Wars are not won without cost, contrary to the delusions of the high-tech romantics who infested the Pentagon during Donald Rumsfeld's fateful six years as US defense secretary. And throughout history, many of the most successful generals, such as Napoleon, Wellington, Pershing, and Ulysses S. Grant, have endured huge casualties - far greater than anything that the United States has so far endured in Iraq to win wars.
But what is most telling against Petraeus' "surge" strategy is not the rising US casualties, which were anticipated, but that it has failed to erode the Sunni insurgents' capabilities to continue inflicting havoc on Shiite and Kurdish civilian populations.
Further, the rising tensions with Sadr are a fire bell in the night to US policymakers that their time is running out. It remains uncertain how long the Shiite majority will endure a major US troop presence that does not appear to be bringing them the basic security that they need.
Defenders of the "surge" strategy say that it still needs time and that effective counter-insurgency tactics against such guerrilla groups take many months, or even years, to become effective.
There are three answers to that argument: First, in 1950s Malaya, 1950s Algeria, 1921 Ireland, and late 1970s Ireland, effective counter-insurgency measures did not take that long to become effective. Improvements should usually be seen within a few months.
Second, there has been no real sign of significant attrition of the Sunni insurgent groups' overall capabilities since the surge strategy began nearly three months ago, and many US combat and intelligence officers privately have no expectation that there will be.
That is because counter-insurgency can only work when there is a real, credible government backing up the military forces trying to win the counter-insurgency campaign, and as we have repeatedly documented in these columns, the ramshackle parliamentary system imposed arbitrarily on Iraq by the Bush administration is incapable of producing any kind of credible national government. The writ of Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki runs exactly as far as either the US armed forces or his Shiite militia allies who exercise the real power will let him use it. Without them, his government is powerless.
Third, and most important, even if current US strategies could still prove effective over the long term, they are not going to be allowed to have a long term. The key dynamic here is not the growing anti-war sentiment within the United States - it is the growing danger of conflict with elements of the Shiite majority in Iraq.
Also, as we have noted before, if the Bush administration launches a preemptive series of airstrikes to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, it will run the risk of a far more widespread Shiite uprising within Iraq than merely from Sadr's Mehdi Army. The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is closely allied to the Tehran regime, would certainly react ferociously against any such US move.
Washington now teems with unsubstantiated reports of upcoming policy reassessments on Iraq. No doubt they will happen. But all current indications are that they will only tinker with existing policies, like the recent playacting over naming a powerless, middle-rank general officer as a "war czar" when he was in reality no such thing. Meanwhile, the soldiers in the field will continue to die. |
