Via Talking Points Memo, the New York Times carries a report on its front page covering the resurgence of Al Qaida in the border areas of Pakistan. According to (unnamed) U. S. officials:

... the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.
 
The new warnings are different from those made in recent months by intelligence officials and terrorism experts, who have spoken about the growing abilities of Taliban forces and Pakistani militants to launch attacks into Afghanistan. American officials say that the new intelligence is focused on Al Qaeda and points to the prospect that the terrorist network is gaining in strength despite more than five years of a sustained American-led campaign to weaken it.

There's an erroneous assumption contained in that statement, however. There is no evidence of a "sustained" campaign against Al Qaeda; the Bush administration has devoted its resources to a war with Mexico in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor. And the Mexicans are winning.

Thanks a lot, George, Dick, Donald and Condi (and Paul, Doug, Stephen, Daniel and the rest of the neocons) for getting us into this mess.

New York Times 2/19/2007: Al Qaeda Chiefs are Seen to Regain Power

There is an insurgency. The Sunnis, formerly in power in the Baathist regime, are major players in the campaign against the American occupation. The Shia are more circumspect, mainly because the U.S. is tilting towards them and they are a majority.

The question arises: Why don't the Sunnis and Shiites temporarily make up until the U.S. troops leave, after which they can fight it out or come to terms with each other? Nothing would be more persuasive of withdrawal than a united Iraqi government that pacifies Iraq and gives the Americans no reason to stay. In other words, to get the U.S. forces out of Iraq, the different sides must bury their differences and unite. The logic is impeccable. Iraqis are not so stupid or so blinded by religious prejudice that they don't see this, and it is foolish to think otherwise.

So what's the problem? Why are the Iraqis, especially the Sunnis, so hostile to the U.S. and the Shia when all they have to do is come together and ask the U.S. to leave?

It's because no one in Iraq believes that the U.S. intends to ever leave. Accepting this proposition changes the political equation drastically in terms of how each side calculates the costs and benefits of each course of action.

If the U.S. forces stay in Iraq, the U.S. will not allow a sovereign and strong democratic government to rule Iraq, because the first thing a popular government will do is ask the U.S. to leave. Once the U.S. leaves, it will then do whatever is necessary to appropriate its vast oil resources for the benefit of Iraq and the Iraqi people, not for the benefit of the international oil corporations like ExxonMobil and BP.

Second, the withdrawal of U.S. forces will ultimately lead to Iraqi sovereignty over the oil fields, even if a civil war intervenes. Whoever comes out on top will take over the oil industry in Iraq. This would be true even if another bloodthirsty dictator like Saddam Hussein seizes power.

It is good bet that Bush plans never to leave Iraq. The U.S. is constructing huge bases, which clearly points to a long-term occupation whose object is the control of Iraq's oil, either to assure the U.S. a stable supply of oil (the popular view), or to keep Iraq from driving down the price of oil, which would hurt the oil companies that are the mainstay of the Bush administration.

Under those circumstances, what is the logical strategy for the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds, given the assumption that the Bush administration plans to occupy Iraq indefinitely?

The Kurds, under the present situation, can have their cake and eat it, too. They control the north, which includes the major oil fields around Kirkuk, and they have been left alone by the U.S. for the most part. Their long-term objectives are independence and appropriation of oil revenues from the oil fields in their region. At the moment, they are getting neither, but they can afford to wait. The U.S will not permit exclusive Kurdish control of the oil fields and Turkey will not permit an independent Kurdish state. Having been given a free reign in their area, they can afford to wait and watch what happens in the south. They clearly have no interest in a unified Iraq under the control of any central government. Having been betrayed over and over by every nation around them, including the U.S., they are not inclined to trust anyone for their security.

The Shiites, although they want the U.S. to leave eventually, are politically in a strong position. They form the majority of the population. The U.S. has handed the government over to them, but they are discovering that there is little substance to the government they have been given. At best, this is a relatively quiet interlude in which they can position themselves to suppress the Sunnis and Baathists when the Americans leave. They can afford to bide their time.

The Sunnis, on the other hand, have nothing to gain from any possible scenario that the U.S. would allow in Iraq. They can expect nothing but oppression under the Shiites or the Kurds, whom they oppressed under Saddam. They are being ethnically cleansed from their neighborhoods in Baghdad. They have been all but banned from participation in the puppet government. The only course of action left to them is to drive the U.S. out of Iraq using the resources available to them, and those resources have turned out to be formidable indeed. It is likely that Saddam's general staff is intact, as well as the command structure of his secret police. They would be in a good position to seize power when the U.S. leaves.

This puts the Bushites in an impossible position. There is simply no way to squelch the insurgency short of putting 500,000 troops on the ground, and even that number is probably insufficient. A draft (which isn't going to happen, now that Congress is Democratic) would take years to produce a sufficient number of trained combat troops. The "surge" now being executed by Bush is no more than a stunt and would be almost comical were it not for the extreme gravity of the current situation.

In addition to the four parties mentioned above—U.S. forces, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds—there two other groups that have an interest and an influence on what happens in Iraq: private contractors and the major oil companies.

This is the first war in which practically all support functions have been privatized, to include a sizable contingent of combat personnel--mercenaries, in other words. The largest corporations, such as Halliburton, Dyncorp, and Bechtel are only the visible tip of the iceberg. They are raking in literally billions and tens of billions of dollars on this war and thus they have a strong interest in keeping it going as long as possible with as little oversight over spending as they can arrange. They have influence in Washington, especially in the White House, which has used the contracts as a form of patronage, granting them without bidding and awarding them only to Republicans. They are a strong force pushing the administration to stay the course.

The other party with a stake in the Iraq War is big oil, which has experienced its largest profits in history from the rise in energy prices. They don't need Iraq's oil assets, at least for now. In fact, they want Iraqi oil to stay out of the world market, where it has the potential to cause a collapse in oil prices. Greg Palast has written extensively on this subject and the evidence he brings to the table is persuasive that Iraq's oil has been the subject of a political battle between the neocons, who want to auction off the oil fields to private companies, and the major oil companies, who want a single Iraqi oil company that can control production and play the price game. They don't want the oil so much as they want to control production. They would be happy with a puppet government in Iraq.

There is one more party in this war that I nearly forgot: the American public, which has had quite enough of the war and is finally beginning to see through all the deception and lies used to gain public consent to the invasion. The public now wants the war to be over and no longer believes that the war is worth all the death, suffering and sacrifice that is being asked of it. Barring a meltdown in the Democratic party over the next two years, the public will elect a Democrat for president and a strongly Democratic house and senate that will end the war on whatever terms it can get.

Bush, his administration and his corporate masters will never attain their objective: a puppet government in Iraq able to keep order and which permits the major oil corporations to control its oil fields. Such an outcome would have been difficult to attain under the best of circumstances by a competent, corruption-free American government. Not only has Bush violated international law in attacking a nation that was no threat to the U.S., a crime for which we hanged Nazis after WWII, but in his utter incompetence and his indifference to gross and widespread corruption, he has thrown away any opportunities the invasion might have presented. The American occupation of Iraq is now on course to a catastrophic, costly, and bitter end. An attack on Iran will only hasten the end in Iraq and even in Afghanistan.

I went to Sawmill Mall in Laurel today to purchase some walking shoes, and was pleased to see that there were at least three stores that sold the kind of shoe I was looking for. I walked into the first store and began looking at the merchandise without the slightest idea of how to choose a shoe. The labels on the boxes were no help at all. After about ten minutes of examining virtually all the shoes on display and receiving no offers of help, I walked out. The girl at the checkout counter saw me leave but showed no interest in why I was leaving without buying.

Perhaps the next store would be more accommodating. I walked in and started looking at shoes, much like I did at the first store. After five minutes of being tortured by loud music without my presence being acknowledged, I walked out of the second store. Again, no one seemed concerned that I didn't purchase anything. The clerks continued socializing with each other on the other side of the store.

Maybe the third time would be a charm. Guess what? Exactly the same experience as the first two.

Retail merchants pay onerous rent for a good retail location; why are they ignoring customers? Perhaps someone can explain how these people stay in business. I sure can't figure it out.

Helena Cobbin, columnist for the Christian Science Monitor,relates the gist of her conversations with prominent persons in Cairo and reports that Sunnis are unanimously opposed to a U.S. attack on Iran. Further, she states that the animus among Sunnis towards Shiites is eclipsed by anger against the U.S. for its invasion and subsequent bungling of Iraq.

A former Egyptian ambassador rebutted Mr. Hadley's claim that Arab countries feel deeply threatened by Iran's nuclear program. "We have lived beneath Israel's nuclear weapons for many years, so even if Iran gets nuclear weapons it wouldn't be anything new. Anyway, they are not that close to it," he said.

Helena Cobbin: Sunni Arab view of US-Iran tensions: There's virtually unanimous opposition to a US attack on Iran.

Ms. Cobbin's blog, "Just World News," is linked on the sidebar of this page.