Ten Fallacies About the Violence in Iraq

By John Tirman, AlterNet

December 4, 2006

The escalating violence in Iraq's civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass yet another milestone -- U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions. Let's look at a few of them:

1. The U.S. is a buffer against more violence. This is perhaps the most resilient conjecture that has no basis in fact.

Iraqis themselves do not believe it. In a State Department poll published in September, huge majorities say the U.S. is directly responsible for the violence. The upsurge of bloodshed in Baghdad seems to confirm the Iraqis' view, at least by inference. The much-publicized U.S. effort to bring troops to Baghdad to quell sectarian killing has accompanied a period of increased mortality in the city.

2. The killers do it to influence U.S. politics. This was the mantra of right-wing bloggers and cable blowhards like Bill O'Reilly, who asserted time and again before November 7 that the violence was a "Tet offensive" designed to tarnish Bush and convince Americans to vote for Democrats. This is American solipsism, at which the right wing excels. If anything, the violence has grown since November 7.

English-language sources have more than 1,000 dead since the Bush rejection at the polls. Bill, are the Iraqi fighters now aiming at the Iowa caucuses in '08? [COMMENT: ROTFL!!!! Tell us O'Reilly!!!]

3. The "Lancet" numbers are bogus. Since the only scientific survey of deaths in Iraq was published in The Lancet in early October, the discourse on Iraqi casualties has changed. But many in media and policy circles are still in denial about the scale of mayhem.

Anthony Cordesman, Fred Kaplan, and Michael O'Hanlon, among many others, fail to understand the method of the survey -- widely used and praised by leading epidemiologists -- which concluded that between 400,000 and 700,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict. One knowledegable commentator describes the Lancet survey as "flypaper for innumerates," and the deniers indeed look foolishly innumerate when they state that there was "no way" there could be more than 65,000 or 100,000 deaths. As soon as that bit of ignorance rolled off their lips, the Iraq Health Ministry admitted to 150,000 civilians killed by Sunni insurgents alone, which would be in the Lancet ballpark. Much other evidence suggests the Lancet numbers are about right. (See "The Human cost of the War in Iraq" here; fyi, I commissioned the study. More on this another time.)

4. Syria and Iran are behind the violence. There is no compelling reason why the two neighbors would foment large-scale violence that could spill over to threaten their regimes. Iran is in the driver's seat -- as everyone not blinded by neo-con fantasies knew in advance -- with its Shia cousins in power; Syria has its own regime stability problems and does not need the large influx of refugees or potential jihadis. That both are happy to make life hard for the U.S. is not a secret (call it their Monroe Doctrine). But are they organizing the extreme and destabilizing violence we've seen this year? Doubtful. And, there's very little evidence to support this piece of blame-someone-else.

5. The "Go Big" strategy of the Pentagon could work. The Pentagon apparently is about to forward three options to Bush for a retreat: "Go Big," meaning more troops for a short time, "Go Long," a gradual withdrawal while training Iraqis, and "Go Home," acknowledging defeat and getting out. Go Big is what McCain and Zinni and others are proposing, as if adding 20,000 or 30,000 troops will do the trick. The argument about more troops, which speaks also to the "incompetence dodge" (i.e., that the war wasn't wrong, just badly managed), has one problem: no one can convincing prove that modest increments in troop strength will change the security situation in Iraq (see #1 above). One would need 300,000 or more troops to have a chance of pacifying Iraq, and that is neither politically feasible or logistically possible, and is therefore a nonstarter. So is "Go Big."

6. Foreign fighters, especially jihadis, are fueling the violence. This was largely discredited but is making a comeback as Washington's search for scapegoats intensifies. By most estimates, including the Pentagon's, foreign fighters make up a small fraction of violent actors in Iraq -- perhaps 10 percent overall. (This is based on identifying people arrested as fighters.) Some of the more spectacular attacks have been carried out by al Qaeda or its imitators, but overall the violence is due to three forces: U.S. military, Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents, and Shia militia, with minor parts played by Kurdish peshmerga in Kirkuk and the foreign bad boys.

7. If we do not defeat the violent actors there, they will follow us here. This is now the sole remaining justification for U.S. involvement in the war. If the numbers about foreign fighters are correct, then it is plainly wrong. The main anatgonists are Iraqis, and they will remain there to fight it out for many years. That does not mean we have not created many "terrorists" who would do us harm, as U.S. intelligence agencies assert, but killing them in Iraq is not a plausible option. It's too difficult; aggressive counterinsurgency creates more fighters the longer we stay and harder we try; and they might not be there.

8. The violence is about Sunni-Shia mutual loathing; a pox on both their houses. This is the emerging "moral clarity" of the right wing, that we gave it our best, we handed the tools of freedom to Iraqis, and they'd rather kill each other. That there was longstanding antagonism, stemming from decades of Sunni Arab domination and repression, is well known. But the truly horrifying scale of violence we see now took many months to brew, and is built on the violence begun by the U.S. military and the lack of economic stability, political participation, etc., that the occupation wrought. Equally as important, sectarian killing found its political justification in the constitution fashioned by U.S. advisers that essentially split the country into three factions, giving them a very solid set of incentives to go to war with each other.

9. The war is an Iraqi affair, and the best we can do now is train them to enforce security. This is the more upbeat version of #8, the "Go Long" strategy that sees training as a panacea. Despite three years of serious attempts, the U.S. training programs are bogged down by the sectarian violence itself, or by incompetence all round. No one who has looked at this carefully believes that training Iraqis is a near-term solution. It's a useful ruse as an exit strategy, blaming the victims for violence and failure.

10. Trust the same people who caused or endorsed the war to tell us what to do next. We know who they are: Bush, Cheney, McCain, and other cronies; the neo-cons now increasingly on the periphery of power but still bleating (Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Adelman, Lieberman), the liberal hawks, and the right-wing media (Krauthamer, Fox News, Glenn Beck, phalangist bloggers, et al). They say, "just finish the job." Just finish the job... at a human cost of how many more dead? How many lives ruined? How much more damage to U.S.-Arab relations? How much anti-Muslim racism fomented to justify the killing?

The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Yesterday there was a report about 100 widows a day being created in Iraq. A Times of London report from last summer notes that gravediggers in one Baghdad cemetery are handling 200 bodies daily, compared with 60 before the war. The situation of the displaced is becoming a humanitarian crisis that will soon rival the worst African cases; the middle and upper classes have fled, leaving the poor to cope. So the poor from the U.S. go to beat up the poor in Iraq, or stand by helplessly as the Iraqi poor ravage each other.

That is the harsh reality of violence in Iraq. A half million dead. More than two million displaced. No end in sight.

Beware the delusions.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/44771

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Nice piece. I could quibble with parts of it -- like the assertion that the constitution encourages sectarian killings -- but overall, right on.

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Man up.

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

On the contrary, to most brainwashed Neocons, this is definitely news.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

And the saddest truth of all is there is very little outrage in our country. Something is wrong with this country and its system when you can post a long list of problems our national leaders have brought on this nation, yet so few people are spittin' mad.

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Hobo
Charter member of 'Republicans Who Hate Bush" Club

Good point. As I see it, the problems are:
(1) people have been dumbed-down by the government school system - they're ignorant of anti-statist viewpoints and their own history,

(2) people have been "distracted" by technology - they're slaves to the entertainment/internet/videogame industry and

(3) people live in a state of comfort unknown for most of the history of the world. They'd rather continue living as semi-slaves to big government authority, and keep this high level of personal comfort, than question authority and risk losing it. Because of the incredibly high level of wealth and comfort in our society - (even the working poor, in many ways, live better than kings of 300 years ago lived) - their desire for reform and true justice has been compromised.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

but would be remiss if I didn't put my 2 cents in. The war is not going well for the US. There is certainly a civil war. With that said ...

Well that's just not true, unless you are claiming that the US is setting up these car bombings or supporting the death squads. I understand the frustration that the Iraqis are feeling, but the US merely let the genie out of the bottle. This is primarily Arab on Arab violence.

Well the fact that Americans voted Democrats has a lot to do wih how badly the Iraq war is going. In fact, it's the #1 reason. So the insurgents got what they wanted. Now as far as the continual violence, that's the part taht we call a civil war. When the US does leave, how is the power structure going to look. That's what the violence in Iraq has to do with. Here's a prediction ... Shiite control and close relations with Iran. Esentially the insurgancy is effecting Iraqi and American politics. 2 birds 1 bomb no bush.

It wouldn't spill over into their regimes if they where the ones controlling it. Neither Iran nor Syria want a democracy next door. That would be a much bigger threat than violent insurgency spilling over the border. Iran is supporting their Shiite bretheren and have from the get. I am not saying that there isn't sectarian tension already, I'm saying that it's in these peoples' interest to spill as much gas on it as possible and let the US play fireman.

Agreed completely. It's a war of attrition. More troops without changing the naturre of the war the US is fighting would do nothing.

I'd be truly surprised if it was even that high. The local insurgents have this well in hand. They don't need foreign assistance.

The war with Iraq has nothing to do with terrorist attacks in the US. The US has stopped several attempts to attack it since the war in Iraq has started. Obviously not all the terrorists are busy taking on the US in Iraq. This really was a silly reason to go in.

Well there is some grain of truth to this Hatfield-McCoy story. They really don't like each other. However this is more a political power grab than anything else. Add a bit of revenge mentality, and viola, civil war Arab style.

Well, it's not an Iraqi affair, but it's certainly not winnable or controlable if the US keeps playing pattycake in this ass kicking contest in the desert. So maybe quasi-training and bolting really is the best solution. I'm not certain if it makes a bit of difference really.

Certainly not a good idea. However, I would love to see the withdral on the same watch that got the US into this quagmire. I do believe that to some extent the reasons for going in where honorable. What that extent is, is arguable. However, bringing democracy to this region was ambitious, if not a bit naive. So maybe those that didn't realize this before deposing the dictator that kept the tention contained should not be making the decisions. Like I said before ... not certain it makes 1 iota's difference.

Incredibly sad. But don't be deluded either. This violence will go on even if the US leaves tomorrow.

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"The key difference between cats and lies is that cats only have 9 lives" - Mark Twain