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The Bush Administration, the Iraqi Quagmire and Baker's Report |
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
It is very lonely when you grow old, but you are also very vulnerable if you are living now in Iraq like me. I have been here for a bit more than seven moths and in spite of the dangers which are posed by this stay I feel very strongly attracted to the place, the currently unfolding events in this country are nothing but historical. I am also enjoying the modest professional help I am providing to the victims of the incredible violence which is engulfing the country. A very good American friend, a prominent radio journalist an intelligent and a very decent woman told me after the recent atrocious attack on the offices belonging to the ministry of higher education during which dozens of employees and visitors were abducted most of whom are still unaccounted for told me that my staying was senseless and provoking fate. I am still around alas I feel very lonely and vulnerable in spite what I have just said about the unfolding history and the great enjoyment provided by my professional work.
Today is the 1st of December, I am going through the last draft of the next posting to The Hanoudi Letter, I hope that my highly talented nephew Rayan who is in charge of the computer and editorial aspects of this website to have the time to insert it into the blog as early as possible. As I have mentioned earlier, I have been here for about seven months now, I have witnessed an escalating violence of unprecedented virulence and lethality with a tremendous loss of life and destruction. There are no signs of an end to this nightmare at the end of the tunnel; I have not seen anything like what happened in Baghdad last week.
On Thursday the 23rd of November around midmorning a very unfortunate man a passer by the ministry of health's building which is situated in central Baghdad was shot dead in the middle of the street. Doctors who work in medical city which is a major medical center situated nearby were told by an old guard that the situation was growing very tense around the area and were advised to be ultra careful when suddenly the ministry building was subjected to a barrage of mortar shells and gunfire from the rooftops of nearby buildings, the firing continued for about two hours, eventually the attackers were forced to flee the scene due to the arrival of American and Iraqi forces a few hours later. By 4 PM, four powerful car bombs and mortar shell tore through the teeming Shiite district of al-Sadr city followed by the explosion of four powerful car bombs leaving 204 dead and about 255 injured the Shiite' revenge was swift they retaliated by firing scores of rockets on the nearby mainly Sunni are of al-Aadhamia, which resulted in 8 deaths. That’s when hell broke loose with huge explosions from various parts of the city with American air power in full swing firing, I don’t know at what and from the top of our heads, the whole country was on the brink of an extremely serious escalation reminiscent of the vents which followed the destruction of the sacred Shiite al-Askari shrine in Samarra in late February. The authorities responded to the explosive situation by imposing an indefinite curfew on the capital banning all vehicles and pedestrians from the streets. The 7 million citizens of Baghdad were forced indoors; all movement by pedestrians and vehicles was forbidden with the city cordoned they said until further notice. The further notice continued for three days during which time the sound of explosions and the hovering of the American military aircraft above our heads never stopping day and night, but the curfew was finally lifted during the early hours of Monday, what happened to the unfortunate millions of the inhabitants of the city especially those who depend for their living on the bread they earn on a daily basis is left to your imagination. The curfew was finally lifted during the early hours of Monday evidently under pressure from the Americans.
The Americans themselves have been plunged into a very serious quagmire in Iraq as a result of the Bush administration's increasingly dangerous and expensive adventure in Iraq, they have actually been literally trapped, and they cannot pack and leave in a hurry like Bill Clinton hurried departure from Somalia. The Americans have already expended so much in blood and treasure, they have extremely serious interests in the country and the Middle East as a whole a sudden hasty withdrawal from the country would result in a great damage to the United States influence, credibility and prestige. Staying the course and accepting the increasingly high cost of continuing their occupation of the country with the threats of escalating violence and the threats of civil war are an equally difficult option in view of the increasing opposition to their adventure which was very dramatically shown during the November mid term elections. The election resulted in the words of one of my American friend “Washington earthquake” when the Republicans were roundly routed with the victorious Democrats after a dozen years of being practically sidelined. The Democrats are now in a strong position to start demanding changes in the strategies and tactics which have been employed by the Bush administration which was itself almost paralyzed by the results the only thing they could do was looking for a useful immediate so they had to depart with Donald Rumsfield who was shown the door out and resigned after insisting on staying at the helm of the Pentagon for a very long time even in the face of very strong criticism by some of his most senior retired generals with more heads expected to roll in the very near future. The Americans were actually aware of the trap they were in for some time before November and they were looking into ideas on how to deal with it so they created the “Iraq Study Group” a 15 member bi-partisan commission for a review and an assess the situation under the co-chairmanship of ex-foreign secretary James Baker and ex-Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton.
James Baker is a very influential member of the establishment; he is extremely well connected to some of the most powerful blocks of the Republican Party. Baker had served for many very important jobs the last one was Secretary of State for the senior Bush's administration, which he left few months towards the end of the tenure of that administrations to direct the effort to re-elect Bush senior during the 1992 presidential elections as a campaign manager, the senior Bush lost that election to Bill Clinton and James Baker returned to a very lucrative lawyer's job in Texas. James Baker is well known in Iraq and vividly remembered because of a remark he made to the then Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz during a meeting in the international hotel in Geneva/Switzerland a hastily convened meeting to try and avert the looming war over Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait at the end of that meeting when the Iraqi foreign minister was showing no signs of relenting, Baker told him that if your president is not going to comply with our demands we are going to push your country back to the dark ages. Baker’s group has been studying the Iraqi situation for few months now, James Baker himself has been few weeks ago in Iraq for a two weeks stay, they have also met and interviewed scores of people face to face through satellites and by closed circuit TV conferences, Tony Blair and Koffi Anan were interviewed, the United Nation's secretary general has already described the American debacle in Iraq as a trap.
The commission's work was supposed to be conducted in secret but some of its final recommendations had already been leaked and have been very critically scrutinized in Iraq and abroad. A very cynical view of the Baker's commission work by a lot of people suggests that the exercise is no more than a very clever gimmick to give the Bush administration a brief respite a breathing spell to allow it to weather the storm which followed the severe rout the Republicans had suffered as a result of last November's mid term elections. The Bush administration is playing for time hoping to find some reasonable way to exit the current quagmire in Iraq without a total loss of credibility and prestige, but the current Iraqi situation is extremely complicated and highly explosive whatever is going to be recommended by the study group will not be enough to extricate the Americans from there dilemma, what the Bush administration need is a miracle.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Baghdad/Iraq
Monday Dec. 4, 2006
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