'If We Pull Out Now, They'll Kill Each Other.' posted by Richard Seymour

Now, what did I say? And what did you say? I was right, wasn't I?

It looks like all this talk of civil war is a pretext for the US to further outstay their welcome in Iraq:

The expectation now is that U.S. force levels will remain the same for the foreseeable future, according to a senior military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another Pentagon official said that with violence continuing in Iraq, the current number of American troops would likely be maintained at least through the end of 2006.

According to this 'think' piece from an establishment CFR hack, the US can't "Iraqize" the war because this is "civil war". The main thing now is, we are told, to "slow" the development of Iraqi security forces and use US military strength to play the warring sides off against one another, forcing them to reach a 'compromise' that the US find acceptable. One assumption in the article is that a 'low intensity' civil war is already under way. Another assumption is that the US has the right to threaten any one supposed bloc within Iraq with obliteration if it doesn't acquiesce.

Of course, this is not unfamiliar. Last year, Thomas Friedman recommended arming the Shi'ites and Kurds and leaving "Sunnis to reap the wind". The Project for the New American Century, meanwhile, posited the same Sunni Bad-Shi'ite/Kurd Good dichotomy and suggested that the only way forward was to vanquish or kill the resistance, pretending as it did to ventriloquise the Iraqi viewpoint. The obvious logical corrollary of such an attempt is mass murder of an even greater scale than we have seen to date. Every attack by the US, every blockade or barbed wire fence, every new barbarity by the occupiers produces a new wave of recruits to the resistance. The rate of resistance attacks has increased dramatically over the past two years. So, a new wave of direct violence against the resistance is likely to involve the US in an exponential murder rate which, while it would hardly trouble a hair in Washington, might prove politically troublesome. Far better from their viewpoint to play upon Iraq's sectarian divisions as they have been doing, to divide Iraq and divert the military attention of resistance fighters to defending their communities against sectarian attacks.

In light of which, the claims that the US is actually begging the Iraqi state which it created, arms, trains, funds and directs in every substantial way to "integrate" the sectarian death squads into the "security forces" can only bring hollow laughter. As Robert Fisk says: "The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities." One might add a further question: who thought up the "Salvador Option"? Who thought up the Phoenix Programme? Why are anti-occupation Iraqi academics dropping like flies?

Update! From the mind of Daniel Pipes:

The eruption of civil war in Iraq would have many implications for the West. It would likely:

*Invite Syrian and Iranian participation, hastening the possibility of an American confrontation with those two states, with which tensions are already high.

*Terminate the dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This will have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago.

*Reduce coalition casualties in Iraq. As noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Rather than killing American soldiers, the insurgents and foreign fighters are more focused on creating civil strife that could destabilize Iraq's political process and possibly lead to outright ethnic and religious war."

*Reduce Western casualties outside Iraq. A professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Vali Nasr, notes: "Just when it looked as if Muslims across the region were putting aside their differences to unite in protest against the Danish cartoons, the attack showed that Islamic sectarianism remains the greatest challenge to peace." Put differently, when Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.