Three Weak Compositions From The Washington Post

Today's Outlook section in the Washington Post has three pro-withdrawal and three pro-"stay the course" opinion pieces under a general section headlined "Iraq & Consequences."

All six pieces are worth reading, but I will deal with the three which state that we should drag out the inevitable. These compositions are examples of muddled mentation, wishful thinking, and several other errors which are hard for a non-psychiatric professional to decipher.

First comes "We Might Prevent a Failed State" by Phebe Marr. The title alone says it all. Ms. Marr (I am presuming this is a woman by the name) works for the Orwellian-named U.S. Institute of Peace.

Marr believes that an Iraq sans U.S. military support would be unable to export its oil. Yes, you read that right. She actually believes that the money-driven oil industry which has no problem operating in every shithole known to man would have problems in a post-war Iraq.

It gets worse. Marr writes:

(N)o Iraqi forces, including the strongest militias (the Kurdish peshmergas and the Badr Brigade, which effectively rules parts of southern Iraq), are yet ready to take on the hard-core Islamic radicals.

This is simply untrue. The Shiite leader of SCIRI, which runs the Badr Brigade, has publicly chastised the U.S. military for restraining his forces from ruthlessly dealing with the Sunni Islamist terrorists.

Enough with Ms. Marr's lightweight essay. Next up is "Civil War Can Be Averted" by Zaki Chehab, a writer and editor based in London.

Chehab is of the opinion that a U.S. pullout would be a victory for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign fighters.

Chehab also cites his informal polling, conducted during his recent visit to Iraq. According to Chehab:

Perhaps more importantly, most Iraqis do not want the United States to pull out. As I traveled through Iraq in recent months, from Irbil and Dahuk to Basra via Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi, I asked many people whether they really wanted to see American forces leave their country in the near future. Almost invariably, they would be surprised at the question. They know that a premature U.S. departure could fragment Iraq even further, and that they would then face the possibility of the civil war that they have so far succeeded in avoiding.

Under this logic, the United States will have to remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future (perhaps forever) to prevent the longtime Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish adversaries from settling their grievances. That's a non-starter even among Iraq war hawks.

Chehab also points to economic reasons, for the Americans to stay:

A Sunni businessman from Mosul told me that Iraqis want a good relationship with the United States, as they need American technology.

WTF? Money talks, bullshit walks.

We then hear a familiar, though not as hysterical as from Marr, refrain:

As for Iraqi oil, he said, Iraqis can't drink it. They need to sell it, and the United States is one of the countries capable of being a partner in that transaction.

No kidding. Along with the United States there are at least two dozen industrial countries willing to take the other side of that trade. I'm detecting talking points here.

The final pro-war treatise titled "Zarqawi May Be Glad," comes from retired Marine Corps colonel Gary Anderson. The title is completely misleading, Anderson's entire essay details otherwise:

When it comes to considering whether the U.S. military should precipitously pull out troops or stay in Iraq, we should ask ourselves, "What would Zarqawi do?"

I believe that our departure would be his worst case scenario. Zarqawi would then face a serious dilemma. Instead of fighting a non-Arab occupying force made up of "infidels," he would be confronting the imminent breakup of the anti-U.S. insurgent alliance of which his group is the smallest, if most dangerous, component.

(...)

With U.S. troops out of Iraq, the nationalists among the insurgency would then see Zarqawi's group as the only foreign-led element of the insurgency. Their immediate question would be, "Why do we need al Qaeda in Iraq any more?" The largely secular Baathist portion of the insurgency would see the terrorist leader as a threat to the return to some level of respectability in the country where the Baathist once ruled.

Does this sound like "Zarqawi May Be Glad"? In their respective opinion pieces, Anderson and Chehab reach completely different conclusions about Zarqawi.

Besides, the United States should not be making any decisions whatsoever regarding Iraq based on any assumptions about Zarqawi. This is because there is a credible rumor in security circles that Zarqawi himself and his "Al Qaeda in Iraq" may be a fiction, created by U.S. intelligence to influence and infiltrate the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Middle-East.

You didn't hear it from me.