The Bottom Line Remains Unchanged

Ever since the occupation of Iraq began, there is one central puzzle that has been left addressed even as the US continues to tinker with all manner of strategies aimed at achieving what President George W. Bush and members of his inner circle in the White House and in the other sections and arms of the US government call ‘victory’. That puzzle is: How much do Iraq’s diverse groups want continued US presence in their country? The invasion proper was rightly preceded by that puzzle, but the derivative response to it was fraught with extensive assumptions steeped in fantasy. That was why the architects of the invasion proclaimed that the Iraqis will receive US troops with flowers. Well, no flowers were seen when US troops entered Baghdad, or thereafter. But all the same, the occupation has continued in the absence of a valid resolution of that puzzle.

It seems that the need to resolve that puzzle has been lost in either the debate over continued US presence in Iraq, which was heralded by the mid-term election that brought the Democrats to a slim majority in Congress in November 2006, or over the White House’s over-zeal to plod on with the occupation like nothing has changed at all in the initial support for the war by most Americans. The decision to escalate the number of American troops in Iraq was made in spite of the non-resolution of that puzzle. So was the kite flown last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the Bush administration’s desire to have troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time.

The current decision to arm members of the Sunni religious sect to combat al-Qaeda is riding on the back of that vacuum as well. One is hard-pressed to believe that the same Sunni community whose leadership was routed and humiliated by Saddam Hussein’s ouster and execution, which was televised globally, would willing and truly stand behind the US in its occupation of Iraq. The decision to arm the Sunni is indicative of US desperation, because going by instances in the past when what was received from the US by the Iraq security forces was deployed against US troops by elements in them, there is no proof that the current arrangement to assist the Sunni will not turn out that way as well. The only litmus test that it would not back fire can be found in a change in the bottom line, i.e. the Sunni people must genuinely declare their acceptance of continued US presence in Iraq. It is only when they do that that the US can then begin to court them as allies. They haven't do that yet, and don't seem ready to do it at all.