Video: We’ll fight the Iraqi government like we fought Al Qaeda, says Anbar tribal leader; Update: At best, says LAT, surge has preserved status quo
posted at 8:10 am on September 4, 2007 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend |
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
So much for “bottom-up reconciliation.” It’s Sheikh Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, deputy head of the biggest tribal confederation in Anbar, the Dulaim. He pops up from time to time in news articles criticizing the U.S., the Iraqi government, his fellow tribesmen, etc etc. Most recently he was McClatchy’s source for a report on the massive extortion racket Al Qaeda is running against building projects flush with American reconstruction funds. Bill Ardolino heard the same stories when he was Fallujah back in January.
A few glimmers of hope here — he seems reasonably well disposed towards Maliki, if no one else, and seems open to the idea of true representation for Anbar in parliament, which suggests he accepts the basic legitimacy of the new system — but long-term reconciliation with the Shia and even short-term reconciliation with the Americans looks shaky. Click the image to watch.
Update: Things are better in Baghdad, the LAT concedes, but as far as the surge having cleared the battle space for any long-term solutions, the results are “dispiriting.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
This is the problem with us coming up with cool sounding terms for the few occasions when some sectarian group’s motives in Iraq parallel our own. We get to thinking that we have some kind of ownership over it when really, that group is just as likely to, say, turn against the government we helped install the next day.
We took out Saddam and accomplished our mission. Now let’s just get out of there. If this is how they want to run their country, so be it.
e-pirate on September 4, 2007 at 8:57 AM
Share your frustration. But I think maybe we accomplished that particular mission, not the entire mission. Namely, to prevent Iran’s expansion, deny Al-Qaeda a state, help Israel and the “moderate” Arabs, protect the oil lanes, etc. So maybe even tho the nation building is getting old, the other objectives still apply.
JiangxiDad on September 4, 2007 at 9:32 AM
Personally I hope that President Bush, Admiral Gates, and General Petraeus seriously listen to this man because in Iraq and the entire Middle East all issues are tribal first, second, and last.
Buzzy on September 4, 2007 at 9:39 AM
These seem to be two different interviews at two different times. Did anyone catch the dates they were done?
bnelson44 on September 4, 2007 at 9:50 AM
Good point. Does that mean that things could/would be more stable and calmer if Iraq was partitioned?
JiangxiDad on September 4, 2007 at 9:51 AM
This guy seems reasonable. Democracy is not a very good form of government, but it is the most likely to prevent oppression. Monarchy is the most efficient of governments, but it is easy to have an oppressive Monarch who isn’t interested in the will of the people.
To people who have never had democracy, I can believe that they don’t want it. But they do want freedom. Freedom is universal. He said he didn’t care who was in parliament, or who was the prime minister because the public he sees everyday is what matters. Food, Water, Work, Security.
He asks what law do I enforce? Good question (American? they have the guns and real authority - Iraqi? The politicians according to him are only out for their own benefit to line their pockets. Shi ites don’t care what happens in the Sunni region no matter who was elected.)
This guy wants freedom. He didn’t like Al Qaeda because they tried to enforce their own religious beliefs on them and change their culture (sound familiar?). They fought against Al Qaeda because they took their freedom.
He then mentions that the Army was better than the Marines. But the Marines got the job done and secured the province. The problem has always been Rumsfeld. If he was not in charge of this war from the beginning, we would not have had nearly as many problems as we had.
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 9:53 AM
Typical . . . the leftist press is making an all out assault on any and all news from Iraq that could be construed as positive. Their goal is simple, and that is for the United States to lose the war in Iraq.
rplat on September 4, 2007 at 10:01 AM
I’m not surprised. I’d expect everyone in the press to come out ahead of the official report by our commanders, declaring that what has been understood as success is really evidence of failure. This will allow cover for the dems. in Washington so that they can still play the “we hate Bush and his plans suck” card. The democrat leaders, both Reid and Pelosi, among others, have already stated that they won’t believe the report. Thus if they won’t believe that narrative, then there has to be one that they can believe in its place; enter the press (and the GAO apparently) to provide something that is a little bit more politically palatable.
Weight of Glory on September 4, 2007 at 10:15 AM
bnelson44-
23 July 2007 for the first, 27 August 2007 for the second.
How did you get that out of these interviews?
I thought this was an illuminating interview. His charge of previously-unknown, come to make a buck politicians, it actually echoes of our own period of reconstruction post 1865. The point he made about justice, what jail I’m going to put them in etc, makes sense actually. If you were tasked with protection of a tribe or town and you capture a murderer, without a justice system, I can see why they ’solve’ the problem the way they do.
If this interview is representative of the Iraq view-point, it doesn’t shout out Kumbaya.
Spirit of 1776 on September 4, 2007 at 10:18 AM
Now, now. Let’s not declare the “bottom-up” approach a failure yet. It may fail, goodness knows many such plans fail when implementation is attempted. But, why should we believe that our plans for reconciliation should fail but this one tribesman’s plans should succeed without a hitch? His desire to “use the same methods” contain the likelihood of failure too. Assumptions that he is holding may not be right. Things he may be counting on to be present may turn out not to be there. So let’s not call this one yet just because this guy says he won’t cooperate.
Weight of Glory on September 4, 2007 at 10:22 AM
Spirit of 1776, I didn’t get the Rumsfeld thing out of the interview. I’ve been saying that for a while.
I don’t understand why nobody is framing the new found successes that way. Why are we doing so much better MILITARILY now that Rumsfeld is gone? You have to lay the blame where it belongs. Rumsfeld screwed up (I imagine he had the Army there doing nothing and when he left, they brought in the Marines to get the job done - that’s where it came from).
I don’t see this interview as a negative. I see this as a positive thing. This guy WANTS to lead the security of his people and ensure the freedom of the people in his tribe. He doesn’t want the Americans or Al Qaeda - BUT he wants a system of government that takes his and his people’s interest into account (not necessarily through a democratic vote).
This interview isn’t a bash on the American involvement in Iraq. It shows his desire to get serious about developing the new Iraq after Hussein. He said if you replace one authority for another, the replacement MUST be better. He doesn’t see Maliki as ‘better’, but he sees the future freedom as ‘better’.
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 11:03 AM
Isn’t this pretty much what all the American and International papers were reporting day after day after day post-WWII during the recontruction and rebuilding of Japan, Germany and France? Woe is us. The US sucks. Everything sucks. Everything is a failure. No success in sight.
Sorry, I don’t really care what the news agencies and their “experts” say anymore. None of them give a rats rear end about anything good happening. It’s always doom, gloom, failure, we suck, we’re incompetent, we can’t succeed, no way no how, etc etc etc ad naseum. I tire of their nonsense.
Michael in MI on September 4, 2007 at 11:23 AM
JiangxiDad on September 4, 2007 at 9:51 AM
I don’t want to see a partitioned Iraq because that would mean handing the biggest chunk over to Iran but honestly it may be the only way not to hand over the whole damned country.
Personally I think our problems in Iraq come from the “big government” mindset where “little government” is the answer. If the decision was mine I’d look up Suleiman and give him what he needs to secure his area and take care of his people. If he keeps his province secure and peaceful he’d never need to see American combat troops again unless he asks for them. Once this has worked there will be other Sunni leaders lining up for the same deal. There are political hearts and minds to be won on the tribal level in Iraq and from the tribal level they can form a central government that works for them.
Buzzy on September 4, 2007 at 11:48 AM
I’ve read your comment a few times and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. Are you saying the army was incapable and it took the Marines to ‘get it done’? And Rumsfeld is responsible for not using the Marines first?
To directly answer your question, the success militarily has been for two reasons I think: the atrocities lately by AQ in Iraq that have cause the population to work with the US, and additionally, perhaps more important, an increase number of troops in surge areas. You might argue that we should have had those numbers there from the beginning, but we both know those numbers are not sustainable. Additionally, we have the ‘right’ guy supposedly now in Petraeus, (not Gates).
I think Rumsfeld is a catch-all for people’s angst. The reality is that Bush ran in ‘00 on a no-nation building platform. So to be upset that his SecDef would have a model for the military consistent with that platform is somewhat unreasonable I think. One could say we need(ed) a larger army, but this requires more than wishful thinking, it requires enlistment. To fill enlistment, they have already expanded the boundaries of the acceptable.
Rumsfeld is occasionally derided for a ’small-footprint’ strategy. Which I understand, but I think is somewhat myopic for two reasons. One, post-Iraq, I think the US will be resistent to engage in full-scale nation-building projects for a few years. Therefore the need for a rapid and extremely precise military will be increased if we are to be able to strike at cells throughout the world. (Think of how devestating it would be if instead of fighting in Iraq, AQ went somewhere else while the military was in heavy-footprint work in Iraq setting up infrastructure etc and attacked the US from there - that’s a much worse scenario b/c we are tied down to construction of a nation and unable to leave it to the wolves in the region, and would have even less resources at hand to strike AQ in a different hotbed. There have been no significant attacks on the mainland for a reason). And second, was it not Cheney himself who said his mistake, or mis-judgments were political in nature.
So walking back up the logic it seems to me: political progress in Iraq is disappointing, therefore lets blame it on the security situation. The security situation is the responsibility of the military, so lets blame it on Rumsfeld. Now we have a scapegoat so that McCain can campaign with ‘horribly mismanaged’ and not insult the President directly, and we can claim that things are different because Gates is there now.
Comparing that to your own observations in this interview, (…he wants a system…but not necessarily through a democratic vote…) how is that expressing a desire to move forward? Seems to me he is saying his patience is not endless and they will act appropriate to their own needs. It doesn’t seem to me that he thinks AQ suits his needs (clearly) or that the Marines are either from his account.
Spirit of 1776 on September 4, 2007 at 12:19 PM
Generallly, the percentage bet is with the gloomy assessment in Iraq. But reading the transcript of the interviews (conducted in July and August, since bnelson asked) shows a sheikh who is responding to questions suggesting he is a tool of the US and not much suggesting he plans to wage war on the national gov’t (though he clearly) has no love for it. I’m not surprised at such talk given that the status of provincial elections is still in play.
As for the L.A. Times, its bias — particularly that of Tina Susman — is well-established.
What links the two subjects in this post — but generally ignored or not considered by the media — is that while the “surge” is meant to provide for political reconciliation in the medium-term, the bottom-up approach of supporting the Sunni tribes inevitably disrupted the Iraqi political status quo. Sunnis at the national level are losing the AQI threat as leverage against the majority Shia gov’t, but are gaining leverage from their new alliances (even if they are temporary). So it should not be shocking that the Shia and Sunni blocs have been recalculating their positions, which accounts in no small part for the current disarray in the nat’l gov’t.
Karl on September 4, 2007 at 12:37 PM
BTW, for all of the talk about partititon, find me a poll of Iraqis who say they want it. The largest “recent” poll done for the Times of London in March showed that 64% of Iraqis still want to see a united Iraq under a central national government.
Karl on September 4, 2007 at 12:43 PM
Spirit of 1776 on September 4, 2007 at 12:19 PM
Rumsfeld called the shots. From all accounts I have heard, any dissent from advisors to Rumsfeld was met with more or less ‘I don’t care what you think because I am in charge’. More troops was ultimitely his decision. We needed more troops much earlier. We needed to secure the borders of Iraq ourselves much earlier.
Now that Rumsfeld is gone, we can have a different interpretation of the war plan that just ‘whatever Rumsfeld wants’. You dismiss the fact that once Rumsfeld left the military began succeeding. That’s my point there.
Maybe this interviewee’s marines vs army characterization was wrong. I’m not saying one did what the other couldn’t because I don’t know specifics. I was responding to what was said in this interview.
I think that to give Rumsfeld a pass on this war that has his fingerprints all over it (at least the execution of the warplan) misses the point. He was Cheney’s buddy. Bush’s problem is that he is loyal to a fault. If you are his guy, you are his guy no matter what. ‘Brownie’, ‘Miers’, ‘Cheney’, ‘Rumsfeld’, ‘Gonzales’. . . etc, etc. That’s a good quality, but it also can be bad and was bad in terms of Rumsfeld.
When Rumsfeld said ‘we don’t have more humvee’s with armor because you go to war with the army you have’, that was disingenuous. He should have said, we give our troops the best equipment we have available and we are getting armored vehicles out ASAP. But he didn’t care. That’s when I soured on Rumsfeld executing this war. He was detatched because he could be.
I like the idea of a partitioned Iraq, but only in the form of partitioned states like here in America under a central government. Not different countries, but different states with different elected local officials determining how laws are executed in the particular regions. The central government settles disputes between regions and distribution of oil wealth and military. I think that’s the best solution.
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 1:06 PM
At this point, the Iraqi Sunni have three interests in fighting or threatening to fight the Iraqi Shia: (1) honor; (2) Shia militias coming to get them; (3) saber-rattling in order to get a better deal from the central govt; (4) belief that they can somehow win and rule Iraq again.
(1)-(3) will persist for the near future. For me, the interesting question is whether (4) holds true. I would think that it doesn’t given their reliance on the U.S. to do much of the heavy lifting against AQ in Iraq. There is the possibility of support from Saudi Arabia and others, but would they consider this realistic? Then again people can convince themselves of many things that are unlikely or untrue.
jaychandra on September 4, 2007 at 1:25 PM
I understand the frustration, especially in regard to securing the Iraq borders to prevent inflow. But let me respond with a couple of points.
In the game of ‘do-overs’, do you have one higher than not disbanding the IA? Had not the Iraqi army been disbanded we would not have had to do their work for them. Are you laying the responsibility for that pivotal decision on Rumsfeld? There was an article re:Bush’s biographer (I think in the headlines here) that makes the that particular question extremely interesting. It is my impression that directive did not come from the very top.
I’m not given Rumsfeld as pass, so much as saying reality is more than Rumsfeld=incompent. I understand that you soured on him, and you give compelling reasons, but this: we don’t have more humvee’s with armor because you go to war with the army you have, is a true statement, whether there is a better answer or not. I’m sure some people would think the best answer would be to blame the Clinton administration for what they did to the armed forces.
These don’t even deserve to be clumped together. The argument against Myers and Brownie is that they lack significant experience. Cheney and Rumsfeld have tremendous resumes. And you know as well as I that the original Bush cabinet was the ‘MBA’ idea - surround a young and energetic leader with the wisdom and stability of long-serving successful pols.
Not dismissed, answered with my 2nd paragraph in previous post. And no need to complement Petraeus faintly. He is a great leader because Rumsfeld is gone? I think he is worthy of approbation on his own merit.
Spirit of 1776 on September 4, 2007 at 1:37 PM
I didn’t say ‘Rumsfeld = incompetent’. He is a very capable statesman who is a Washingtonian through and through. Washington has a ’special way’ of doing things and the top dog calls the shots regardless of any other suggestions.
My beef with Rumsfeld is all the anecdotal evidence from people who worked with him who indicated his reluctance and downright stubbornness to accept any advice from other well intentioned and capable Americans for the sole reason of ’showing he’s in charge’.
The reason I mentioned those names together had nothing to do with their performance in their respective positions. Those people are examples of ‘Bush’s guys’. Lots did lots of good things, some did lots of bad things.
The list of names was only to describe how if you are one of Bush’s guys, he’ll stick with you no matter what. That’s a good thing in many cases. However, Rumsfeld should have been changed about a year or two earlier so that decision making could have been more collaborative. Instead of saying ‘well we don’t have humvees with armor’, he should have said, ‘we’ll take some of the trillion dollars we are spending on this war to get some’.
HE didn’t fight the war without appropriate equipment on the front lines. The only way they were killing our guys was with IED’s so the most imperative thing is ARMORED HUMVEES for the safety of our troops. He only recanted and started looking for better equipment when there was public outcry about his comment. It should have been obvious that his job was to equip the military with WHATEVER THEY NEEDED (troops, bullets, trucks, guns, planes, etc, etc, etc) to succeed.
That comment showed his failure to do his job of getting the troops what they needed.
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 3:24 PM
I didn’t say it because it seems disingenuous and is water under the bridge. . . but this is one statement I will agree with wholeheartedly.
Clinton’s budget numbers were good in his presidency because his first act was to close all the bases and slash the military in half. There goes half of the budget so the deficit disappears. It’s a nice luxury to have a strong economy and an ability to slash military spending because there is no threat from Russia any longer. Of course when the military doesn’t have what it needs and we need to start spending again, it’s ‘Bush’s fault that the budget is out of whack for having to catch up on the spending.’
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 3:31 PM
Things frequent do not occur according to plan, and if Bush is to believed in that interview, the dissolution of the IA was not according to their plan. With the IA intact and the subsequent difficulties springing from their absence thereby being non-existence, you might be forced to call him a genius.
As for the other you seem to have set in your mind the impression of a cold-heartless power maniac, similar to what the left says about the CinC.
I’m not particularly interesting in have a discussion along these terms, nor is it likely I would sway your view. The last word is yours.
Spirit of 1776 on September 4, 2007 at 3:39 PM
I think we mostly agree spirit. My comments about his egomania came from excerpts I read from people who worked with Rumsfeld or tried to. I don’t know the man so I wouldn’t know for sure. But I’ve known people like that and he seems to fit the bill. My reasoning comes from anecdotes (heresay), but that’s where it comes from.
As for the IA, I’m not disputing what you are saying there. Maybe that would have helped us more than the expanded number of troops. Bottom line is that we needed more troops a lot sooner. Rumsfeld could have ordered them. They were ordered after he left. America is doing much better with more troops.
ThackerAgency on September 4, 2007 at 4:47 PM
Everyone can analyze this Sheikh character till your blue in the face, but the end result is that these tribal leaders only understand/respect power and tyrants. These barbarians are simply too stubborn to come out of the darkness and be remotely civilized in any way.
nottakingsides on September 4, 2007 at 7:14 PM