The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?

The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush's illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group's unanimous conclusion that the United States needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs-down given by America's top military commanders to the neoconservatives' plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and new polls of the U.S. military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush's Iraq policy — thus giving new meaning to "support the troops" — are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.

When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.

The American establishment, concerned by Bush's egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.

In the Jan. 5 issue of CounterPunch, John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American establishment and the neocons.

Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reported on Jan. 4 that the neocons have used the failure of the administration's policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels.

Raed Jarrar in the Jan. 4 CounterPunch suggests that the Shi'ite militias, such as the one led by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi'ite militias. For longer than the United States fought Germany in World War II, 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq's minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional U.S. troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi'ite militias when 150,000 U.S.

troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.

The reason the United States has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi'ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi'ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against U.S. troops and Shi'ite militias and death squads. The United States owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.

Attacking the Shi'ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores U.S. military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, U.S. troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why Gen. John Abizaid resigned on Jan. 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party's sacrifice of U.S. soldiers to sectarian conflict.

In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican Sen. John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in diplomacy, pressed Abizaid to request more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq. Abizaid replied as follows:

"Sen. McCain, I met with every divisional commander, Gen. Casey, the core commander, Gen. Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."

Bush is like Hitler in that he blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering nonexistent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.

By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the United States stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for U.S. conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor" and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster. The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate's demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination. Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.

Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the U.S. military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.

Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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