[lbo-talk] Qaeda at Work (was the Iraqi resistance at work)

[Seth Ackerman]

www.leninology. blogspot.com wrote:

>>The US didn't put Chalabi in charge of de-Baathification. His newfound 
>>allies in the UIA did. A reminder: The US had tried to prevent the UIA 
>>from winning the Jan. 2005 elections.
>>    
>>
>
>No.  The UIA did not place Chalabi in charge of de-Baathification.  Chalabi was
>in charge of the de-Baathification committee under the IGC and was later
>restored in April 2005.  It was occupation policy from day one to hollow
>out the Iraqi state.
>
>The point here is that Chalabi et al were permitted to use the HNCEBP to 
>pursue sectarian political agendas and exert patrimonial control: it isn't 
>only that the US has supported religious sectarianism once it found it difficult
>to impose a weak despot.
>  
>

When Chalabi was on the IGC he was a neocon protege who was expected 
(foolishly) to be the future leader of a united pro-American, pro-Israel 
Iraq. When that plan went down the toilet he tried to salvage his career 
by allying with Moktada al-Sadr. He was quickly jettisoned by 
Washington, accused of spying for Iran, and disavowed by the neocons. 
*Then* he was restored to the de-Bathification post by the UIA. Was that 
all part of the devious plan?

>>>>integrating  the Badr
>>>>into the security services another;
>>>>        
>>>>
>>Again, this happened because decisions by the UIA Interior Minister 
>>after the elections.
>>    
>>
>
>Question-begging.
>
>You assume the US can't stop the decisions of the appointed 
>ministers resulting from in processes it determines: oooh no.  The CIA would
>have found it impossible to stop the Badr Brigades from infiltrating
>their baby.  Steve Casteel, a man with experience dealing with far
>right death squads, had no conception that such a thing could happen.
>  
>

Um, yeah. You don't remember what happened? After the election, the UIA 
announced it was appointing  Bayan Jabr, the head of the Badr Corps, as 
Interior Minister. The US tried to block the appointment but failed. The 
CIA then refused to turn over the Allawi-era Interior Ministry files to 
the new Interior Minister. And the US then spent a year trying to get 
Jabr replaced. They finally succeeded with Jawad al-Bolani, the current 
minister. But Bolani, by all accounts, doesn't fully control his own 
ministry where police recruitment is still in the hands of Badr 
henchmen, and even Sadrists. This is one of the things the US keeps 
hectoring Maliki to fix. But I'm guessing that you see all this some 
kind of carefully choreographed kabuki dance arranged by the 
imperialists...

>>Who drafted the constitution? The Shiite and Kurdish parties. When the 
>>Sunnis objected and sought revisions, who advocated on their behalf? The US.
>>    
>>
>
>The US intervened to save the legitimacy of the constitution, not to dispense with
>it.  
>
Wait. I thought the US was trying to deprive the Iraq state of legitimacy :

[...]

>The US has pursued sectarianism in order to create a state with weak
>capacity and legitimacy, (but with a strong counterinsurgency stance)
>


>There's a simple way to test this: did the US, in its interventions, override the
>commitment to dispersing the most vital powers to the regions?  It did not.
>  
>

This is crazy. If the US had tried to throw out the constitution and 
impose a fully centralized government, the Kurds and Shiites would have 
revolted and the US would be left with literally zero friends in Iraq 
and would be forced to leave. Have you not noticed that the entire US 
foreign-policy establishment sees the Iraq war as a disaster? That Bush 
is the least popular president in history?

If Bush's hair caught fire you'd say it was part of a cunning 
imperialist plot to increase profits in the hat industry.

Seth