Act Now or a Civil War May Hit Iraq
A year into the "war after the war," far too many U.S. officials are still in a state of denial.
They ignore the ABC poll conducted in February that found roughly two-thirds of Sunnis and one-third of Shiites to be opposed to the U.S. and British invasion and "humiliated" by it.
They ignore the fact that roughly one-third of Sunnis and two-thirds of Shiites support violence against the coalition and want coalition forces to leave Iraq immediately.
They talk about the insurgents as a "small minority" because only a small minority so far have been violent -- a reality in virtually every insurgent campaign and one that in no way is a measure of support for violence.
They do not see just how much the perceived U.S. tilt toward Israel and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon alienates Iraqis and Arabs in general. They do not admit the near total failure of U.S. information operations, and the fact that Iraqis watch hostile Arab satellite TV stations and rely on newspapers filled with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
They measure success in aid programs in terms of contracts signed, fiscal obligations and gross measures of performance like megawatts, not in terms of progress on the ground, the kind that can really win hearts and minds. They fail to understand that U.S. calls for liberty, democracy and reform have become coupled with images of American interference in Arab regimes, the broad resentment of careless negative U.S. references to Islam and Arab culture, and conspiracy theories about control of Iraqi oil, neoimperialism and serving "Zionist" interests.
These were among my observations during a recent trip to the region. I returned to the United States last week after finding the situation more disturbing than ever.
One of my biggest concerns is that American officials simply don't seem to recognize that U.S. tactical military "victories" are often, in fact, political defeats. The Iraqi insurgents do not have to win battles in a tactical sense; they merely have to put up a determined, courageous resistance against the world's only superpower.
The last few weeks of resistance also have sharply undercut the already low political legitimacy of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and interim Iraqi Governing Council. Pro-American Iraqis have been divided and weak, and U.S. ties to some particularly unpopular members of the council are becoming steadily more damaging -- particularly ties to Ahmad Chalabi. The end result is that the U.S. ability to convey legitimacy has been sharply undercut at precisely the time the U.S. needs legitimacy for its June 30 turnover of power.
