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Surging towards catastrophe?

One eyewitness shows a far less rosy picture in Iraq

Rolling Stone's Nir Rosen has an alarming on-the-ground report from the Dora district of Baghdad describing the "Awakening" or the U.S.' co-optation of the Sunni opposition with guns and money to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq. He fears the United States is merely arming the Sunni opposition to fight the Shiite majority, especially the Mahdi Army, in an upcoming and inevitable civil war.

What's worse is the U.S. Army knows it's being used:

"The only reason anything works or anybody deals with us is because we give them money," says a young Army intelligence officer. The 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which patrols Osama's territory, is handing out $32 million to Iraqis in the district, including $6 million to build the towering walls that, in the words of one U.S. officer, serve only to "make Iraqis more divided than they already are." In districts like Dora, the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight.

And if you think this is buying Americans at least a little affection, think again. Rosen reports:

On one raid with US troops, I see children chasing after the soldiers, asking them for candy. But when they learn I speak Arabic, they tell me how much they like the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al-Sadr. "The Americans are donkeys," one boy says. "When they are here we say, 'I love you,' but when they leave we say, 'Fuck you.'"

When you read in-country reportage such as this, it's hard to take what people like Charles Krauthammer write regarding the surge as nothing more than willfull hopefulness.

The surge has certainly brought increasing security to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, but if the deadly animosities between ordinary Sunnis and Shiites don't moderate, then the surge was akin to a bandage on a bullet wound: it stemmed the bleeding for a time, but eventually the blood will gush through.

The question now for the two parties' candidates is whether they will acknowledge that Iraq cannot be solved by an immediate withdrawal (Clinton, Obama) nor proclamations that the U.S. military has already won (McCain), although there remains "long, hard work to do."

Both these positions have been derived from pandering to each party's base, not from thinking hard about what's best for Iraq and its brutalized people.

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