Bush's Iraq Plan Founders with Shiites

Iraq's Shiite-dominated government and its militia allies appear willing to let the U.S. military escalation go only so far -- in the direction of taking on the rebellious Sunni minority. In this guest essay, Ivan Eland looks at the contradictions undermining George W. Bush's plan. January 17, 2007

Although President Bush’s escalation of the Iraq War has been opposed by a substantial majority of the American people, many generals, the Iraq Study Group, and most Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, the most important opposition may come from Iraqis.

Although Bush had trouble correctly reading the results of the November 2006 congressional elections, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki got the message loud and clear.

When Maliki met Bush in Amman, Jordan, later in November, he hoped the newly chastened American president would be sensible enough to lower the U.S. profile in Baghdad. Maliki demanded that the United States turn most of the security responsibilities in Baghdad over to the Iraqi government and withdraw U.S. forces to the outskirts of the capital.

Rather than training Iraqi security forces and moving toward the exits, however, the President has decided to do the opposite. His escalation of the war will now result in U.S. forces bearing the brunt of the fighting and dying in the Iraqi capital.

Although U.S. forces will have been strengthened, their mission also will have been expanded substantially. Instead of merely fighting Sunni insurgents, they now will go after Shi’ite militias, such as the Mahdi Army of Moktada al-Sadr, the largest such militia in Iraq.

If U.S. troops actually do go into Sadr City to attack the Mahdi Army, they may have quite the fight on their hands—as they did in Najaf in 2004. Also, instead of keeping U.S. escalation a secret and hitting Sunni insurgents and perhaps the Mahdi Army with “shock and awe,” the gradual entry of the additional 21,000 troops piecemeal into Iraq will telegraph the punch, thus making it much less effective in debilitating these factions.

More than likely, violence in Baghdad will decrease only temporarily and then continue to rise over the long-term—a repeat of the last time the United States sent additional forces into Baghdad. Continued

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