Time.com: Analysis - How To Prevent Iraq From Getting Even Worse

[Hissyspit]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1549272,00.html

How to Prevent Iraq From Getting Even Worse
Analysis: Staying the course is no longer an option. Here's the best scenario for the U.S. to do some good before it pulls out
By APARISIM GHOSH/BAGHDAD

Posted Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006
It's a grim sign of the chaos engulfing Iraq today that trying to save your family can put them in even more danger. That's what happened to Ammar Jawad, a Shi'ite in Baghdad, who this month moved his wife and two children to Balad, an hour's drive north of the violence-racked capital. He figured his family would be safer in Balad, a Shi'ite-majority town—until the war went there too. A week after Jawad's family arrived in Balad, a couple of Sunnis were killed in a suburb. Sunnis in a neighboring town retaliated by killing a dozen Shi'ite laborers. The Shi'ites then called in militias from Baghdad, and they went on a rampage in and around Balad. By the time U.S. troops finally stanched the bloodbath last week, nearly 100 people had died. Now Iraqis like Jawad, whose real name has been changed to protect his identity, are wondering if there's anywhere to go. "Even if I can get them out of Balad, where can I hope to send them next?" he asks. "What is the use in making any plans?"

There are no good options left in Iraq. To those who have lived through the daily carnage wrought by organized criminals, sectarian militias and jihadist terrorists, the idea that the U.S. can prevent a full-scale civil war—let alone transform Iraq into a stable democracy—has been dead for months. The main question is, How long will it take for military officials in Iraq and policymakers in Washington to concede that the whole enterprise is closer to failure than success? Midway through what is already one of the deadliest months this year, the U.S. military's spokesman in Baghdad, Major General William B. Caldwell IV, last week called the persistence of sectarian violence in Baghdad "disheartening" and acknowledged that the three-month-old U.S. campaign to take back the city has gone nowhere. That verdict added to rising clamor for an overhaul of the U.S.'s strategy in Iraq. In recent weeks, senior Republicans, like Virginia Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, have said the Bush Administration should insist that the Iraqi government demonstrate progress by the end of the year or face a change of course by the U.S. Foreign policy hands in both parties are hoping that the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic Representative from Indiana, will provide the White House with the political cover to abandon its now quixotic goals of creating democracy in Iraq in favor of a more limited focus on establishing enough stability to allow U.S. troops to leave without catastrophic consequences. "You can't sugarcoat that. The Iraq situation's not winnable in any meaningful sense of the word. What the U.S. needs to do now is look for a way to limit the losses and the costs," Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Administration's foreign policy team, said last week. The question, Haass added, is "how poorly it's going to end up."

It's not just the politicians who are reassessing the U.S.'s options in Iraq. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has ordered a group of young officers to review the military's strategy in Iraq and ask tough questions. Pace is pursuing the underlying riddle: Why are there almost as many U.S. troops in Iraq now as there were two years ago when, in the interim, more than 300,000 Iraqi security forces have been recruited and trained? Pace, according to an officer familiar with the process, wants to know, What's wrong with this picture?

So what can still be done? Despite the consensus of gloom—Bush told abc News last week that the violence in Baghdad "could be" compared to the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968-69, which helped turn many Americans against that war—few Iraqi or U.S. officials believe an immediate withdrawal is wise or likely. But paralysis could be worse. So the focus is on finding ways to bring violence down to a sustainable level, after which the U.S. can begin to extricate itself from the mess. At this late date, there's nothing the U.S. or the Iraqi government can do to stop the bleeding altogether. Iraq's most pressing problems may still take years to resolve. But quick and decisive action in a few key areas could at least help slow the inexorable descent into anarchy. Here are five of them:

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[tocqueville]

1. another exercise in wishful thinking

here is a REALISTIC assessment :

Ending the Iraq nightmare - the key points

A Partition

What it means
One of the options being looked at by James Baker and his team - asked by Bush to study the exit alternatives. Lines would be drawn across a map of Iraq dividing it into three autonomous regions - Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the middle and Shia in the south.

Consequences
Dividing Iraq along sectarian lines would exacerbate sectarian violence and lead to ethnic cleansing. It would also unequally split up Iraq's oil resources - and leave the Sunnis with little arable land - which would give opposing sides an economic reason to fight each other. Partition would be far from straightforward in heavily mixed communities, holy cities would be contested and Baghdad would probably explode.

Support
Outside powers such as Iran would find it easy to dominate the new entities. The militias are already creating a partition and more and more people are becoming displaced.

B Regional help

read more here :

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1928616,00.html

phased withdrawal seems to be the best option, from an American point of view, at least in the short term.