Ideas & Options for U.S.-Iraq Policy

Isaiah 18:4 reads "For so the Lord said to me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest"

It isn't simple for a Christian of the United States to comment about administration policy regarding Iraq from either a prophetic, eschatological nor a secular, political point of view. On the one hand God has pre-determined human history yet people have free will to choose to conform their fate to the pre-destined. Much as bees can fly anyplace they 'choose' but invariably move to the nectar and flowers of destiny, human original sin and disregard for the truth and will of God leads to conflict, strife and confusion. Muslim's are lost without the saving grace of Jesus Christ while the House of Jacob awaits God's final reconciliation of a remnant unto Himself.

American Christians may wonder of the present role of Iraq in Bible prophecy, and if the administration is able to use Feith based policy to shape events in Iraq consistent to the Biblical guidelines if such exist if the administration interpretation of the road map to the second coming of Christ is correct, select a Mahdi for Prime Minister or separate conflict of interests between corporatism, contract and politics as readily as oil and water from a contaminated pipeline? Can administration confusion or perfidy regarding Bible prophecy, Calvin's five points and the time-line of teleology be transcended without national grief pursuant blundering into serving as a prophetic bad actor in Mesopotamia, or exploitation of misinterpreted prophecy for purely financial gain and greed by select corporatist neo-cons with a belief that globalism and corporatism are good for themselves? American Iraqi policy can be considered from many points of view of course, and following I will consider some of the most 'material' and readiness to change aspects, following a couple more verses from Isaiah about Mesopotamia and the nations...

13-9 "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; an he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it."
13-11 "And I shall punish the world for their evil; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtyness of the terrible."
13-15"Every one that is found shall be thrust through, and every one that is joined to them shall fall by the sword."

These prophetic 'sound bites' of Isaiah are fascinating with a triplex space-time continuum reference possible in relation to Isaiah's time, a future time and times and a half regarding Jesus Christ and the future history of the Jewish people. Southern Mesopotamia may even become a wilderness area and refuge for endangered species it seems.
Perhaps the best application right now for the prophetic criterion of Isaiah is simply for the willing to be saved spiritually by the Son of God the Lord Jesus Christ and for the administration to apply Christian kindness principles pragmatically to its macro-political Iraq policy so far as possible reducing it's accentuated policy prioritization of future corporate oil profits.

Another couple of verses from Isaiah...

17-11 "In that day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make the seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and desperate sorrow."
17-12 " Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
17-13 "The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind."

If critics of the U.S. Administration's approach to rebuilding a peaceful Iraqi infrastructure following the April 2003 Iraq war offered other than existential retreat options without recognition of possible empirical political consequences it might be easier to discover a viable political way to satisfy U.S. and Iraqi interests together. Iraq has many trans-national, regional interests that need to be addressed simultaneously with internal stabilization issues not unlike the way a human cell has simultaneously evolving internal and externally oriented components. Al Qae'da might be thought of as an HIV virus entering Iraq's cell border membrane to place explosive wrong R.N.A.. instructions in the government reconstruction D.N.A. 'ladder' perhaps in the interest of external oil consuming organisms.

The land by the rivers isn't readily amenable to formation of an insular monocultural nation unaffected by extra-territorial political interests. Many Iraqis live in Iran, or have lived in Iran for instance, while many Kurds and Sunni have lived elsewhere as well for a variety of reasons, and pipelines from Iraq as well as commercial highways travel in all directions.

Moderation isn't by any means necessarily a vice or virtue in relation to any given political circumstance but is one of several policy directions. It is not always possible to arrive at the end of a political journey immediately without going through intermediate stages, neither is it either possible always to know in advance the course to the destination, but course corrections may be needed as the journey's political landscape unfolds; adaptability is important in foreign relations even while keeping mission discipline. Iraqis may need to complete phases of their walk through Mesopotamian reorganization alone when the regions of Iraq can develop enough security to go forward without stumbling immediately into civil war. The U.S.A. may need to be satisfied that they have given the people of Iraq a reasonable opportunity to choose their own fate for-themselves so far as God allows.

A military force reduction and relocation policy of moderation could develop with American military forces in Iraq reduced to 70,000 soldiers and relocated along the boundaries of Shi'a Sunni and Kurdish regions, Baghdad and the Iraqi borders. A sectarian Iraq may already be forming and abandonment of Iraq's existing reconstruction to the forces of terrorism by immediate complete abandonment would perhaps create not only a civil war, but sectarian wars regionally as well as Iranian-Gulf States-Saudi wars and a terrorist insurgence in Saudi Arabia.
Sectarianist regionalization of Iraq may or may not lead to democratic liberalization. The people of Iraq eventually must choose for themselves what relationship to or degree of Muslim clerical influence in government they will have. The international should community support their choices and trust that an actual liberation created by civilized values will draw the people of Iraq away from reliance on hopefully outmoded tools of civil repression. Global corporatism that attacks democracy surreptitiously is an increasing danger to the west as well as a possibly disingenuous advocate for democratic reform in Iraq today.

Plainly the history of U.S. reconstruction policy in Iraq entails an element of ineffective trial by error. Military deployments have sometimes been used in substitute for political intelligence and policy design by the U.S. administration without accomplishing general objectives. Military logic requires, like any valid syllogism, for validity that the premises if valid must equal the conclusion. U.S. military logic in the 2003 war was sound enough to accomplish the victory, what was absent was any sort of logical and valid premise corresponding to empirical political reality for reconstructing Iraq politically.

The long-term deployment of the U.S. military in Iraq in substitution for more intelligent and nuanced U.S. Iraqi political interactions and planning presents a military logic posture unsuitably designed for production of a political victory. Complex terrorist, sectarian, economic, global oil and alternate energy issues, disparate regional political systems and ethnic issues do not present themselves directly or obviously to a plain military logic solution wherein military force suitably applied will produce a 'victory' accomplishing the conclusion postulated. The United States has no interest in the totalization of power such as an occupying Empire presents in which universal military logic is a valid tool, and in which human rights of 'subjects' are of no concern; that criterion is hopefully a dead historical oddity left with buried empires.

The U.S. military is given the objective of replacing an Iraqi Army and intelligence service from the former regime of Saddam Hussein to maintain social order until a new Iraqi, unified government and it's Army and police forces is made to govern the people that are also aggrieved in part by the continuing U.S. military presence. With the low financial cost of terrorism and number of new volunteer terrorists available the standard military logic calculation for winning is at the least unclear, if not improbable. An intifada of volunteer terrorism with remote financial sponsors could go on for decades in theory that the U.S. military as a national police might be unable to contain. Unlike many of the standard anti-insurgence books of the past designed to counter a native insurgence supported by a percent of the people locally the Iraqi crisis has several streams of terrorist running into the region with different targets, different goals, different financing and a variety of munitions sources. Standard counter-insurgence operations of a military nature will have reduced effectiveness in such an environment; political adaptations to isolate and control terrorism-- Iraqi firewalls with sectarian Iraqi fire-guard personnel may be a reasonable adaptation to U.S. support policy for the central government of Iraq.

Opposition to the U.S. occupation force arises from a number of points, and the opportunity for enemies of the United States to harm America financially with great cost efficiency in Iraq is another factor promoting global insurgence localized in Iraq. Americans are borrowing and spending about 20 billion dollars per month in Iraq while terrorists perhaps spend a million or two.

The costs to the United States of the prosecution of peace in Iraq are tremendous reaching towards a half trillion dollars and up. The opportunity costs to diverted infrastructure development in the United States are also substantial, and one wonders if the corporatist-socialist pig-vermin elite in D.C. are aware of the costs since they have a globalist point of view economically. The corporatist-socialist axis of deficit spending and civil repression advocates flooding the nation with cheap Mexican migrants in order to enrich the corporatist's profits while social services for the immigrants are added onto the public debt. Taxpayers such as myself working in free enterprise disadvantaged house repainting and writing may earn just 6100 dollars a year and receive a 950 dollar tax bill with federal demands for immediate payment of 531 dollars plus interest, and that recovering in a year from a separated shoulder and journey's through Alaskan forests in deep snow to avoid starvation. The federal government supports a corporatist no net tax payment ,no bid contract redistribution of wealth to globalists with corporate broadcast media disarming U.S. mass political and civil intelligence through propaganda. The D.C. demons with their socialist alter-ego will simply gut the independence of the United States and leave a wreck for future generations if given a chance. The globalist matrix is the essential transcending reality over U.S. nationalism. It does not require victory of peace in Iraq either as it is an ongoing profitable enterprise for the right corporate connections, and indignant locals that are Muslims or whatever are simply untrained consumer-proles that can be corrected through superior and eventual military force. Such idiot lack of reasoning in government permits extremist Islamist reactionaries greater opportunity to foment terror against such a hapless foe. The United States as a nation picks up the tab for global corporate perfidy overmuch. While in the cold war era corporations were the counter-example to socialist-Leninist Marxism of the Soviet Union's dull economic monolith in the post cold war era corporatism has run amok without regard for the democracy and American national self-interest that supported it largely.

Of 450,000 tons of military weapons and explosives in Iraq following the 2003 war more than 200,000 tons remain hidden awaiting use by resistance and criminal gangs it has been written (see Allawi's 'The Occupation of Iraq'). Terrorists arriving from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere may bring 50,000 dollars (see Allawi's book) or more with them to purchase influence with the money supplied by oil wealthy Saudi radical Islamists. American dependence on fossil fuels fights against their own strategic regional interests in supporting a Shi'a majority for democracy in Iraq that seem to prefer an Islamist government after bi-lateral terrorist arm-twisting, that is opposed by a Sunni minority used to supplying a totalitarian government over the Shi'a, and an external Saudi proletariat of oil wealth committed to the destruction of the emergent Shi'a dominated Iraqi central government. The United States in the mean time has bungled its rebuilding policy for Iraq in a variety of ways.

If the Shi'a and Shi'a militias patrol their own areas and form their own security nets at least peace in that region should develop, and Sunnis patrolling Sunni areas might be able to defeat the terrorists themselves, and the Kurds similarly while all three groups participate in a unified government in Baghdad.

American military forces could relocate to new border security regional areas with better security for themselves, and help prevent sectarian terrorists from travelling to opposite sectarian areas to perpetrate suicide bombings.

Even the Iraqi police force has tended to be divided along sectarian lines, while revenge killing of former Bathists has occurred by Shi'a militias affiliated with the police. If one combined the Bloods, Crips and Mexican Mafia or Lunatics into one police force in Los Angeles maybe a certain degree of inter-police force killings would develop as the rival gangs vied for control, and as they purged rival turf while perpetrating revenge killings. If Cholos or the tattoo cult from beyond financed heavily by Venezuelan oil money or Columbian drug cartels breezed in to blow themselves up and splatter innocent gang dominated civilians all over the streets of Los Angeles to complicate political stabilization perhaps it would take some time for the new police force to develop a unified character...but in time the Top Dog would emerge after sufficient bloodbaths to consolidate 'the boys' under his aegis quite probably. The Iraq security situation may deserve an equally optimistic formulation for stability soon.

U.S. interests do exist in both a peaceful Iraq and a reduced military presence in Iraq rather than either troop increases or sudden withdrawals something like removing primary building supports rather than a removal of scaffolding.

U.S. congressional votarees of complete, sudden withdrawal should formulate leadership not upon poll numbers by an uniformed electorate but instead educate the electorate about the circumstances of deployment, conditions of occupation, consequences of remaining or departing and options available to creatively and meaningfully accomplish American policy objectives in a moral and democratic paradigm.

American Iraqi policy hasn't been much subtle and nuanced but instead trended toward the pursuit of a transference of idealized visions that would not actualize perhaps even in the increasingly corporatist dominated U.S.A. Speeches and goals with timetables that work more for abstracted from Iraqi pragmatism administration planners trained in think tanks are countered by Democrat Party absinthe-forgetfulness planks seeking a sort of existential departure from Iraq without American consequences at the pump-their other preferred point of contact for reality beside reality t.v. American Idol etc; one can just drunk drive off a bridge and swim away from the mess anytime to sober up and get on with things properly.

Policy development in the administration does not progress much over time. The G.W. Bush inherited a fine military that it spent in Iraq and Afghanistan and hasn't had anything else that worked in the last 6 years of its own innovation. Iraq peace reconstruction efforts have been notably unimaginative and misguided, insensitive and retarded while corruption was allowed to flourish in Iraq and in the contracts let to favorite corporations. It is still possible to conclude the American Iraqi involvement in a satisfactory way to all beside the terrorists of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries perhaps, by following a phased redeployment and reduction of U.S. occupation forces in support of increasing regional security of Iraq's major sectarian regions.

Simultaneously with sectarian autonomy and self-governance, control of transsectarian terrorism with border security should be structured. Relocation and concentration of U.S. military forces in better defensible areas of sectarian refereeing security control and oil field pipeline protection could structure better, temporal implementation of Iraqi security measures.

Select infrastructure and energy production decentralization through independent energy producing home solar panels, construction of security and recreational canals in Baghdad and other sharply conflicting sectarian areas, manufacture of electric toilets with the Incinolet company as contractor consultants for the governments of Iraq and other individual enabling technologies of decentralization and environmentalism should be advanced.

Financial and political empowerment of the people of Iraq by transfer to private, individual citizens equal ownership shares of the oil fields of Iraq presently owned publicly by the government should develop. The U.S. Congress should pass a resolution urging that action and also create a U.S. Home power production bill and a no taxes on pure electric car sales bill.

With all the citizens of Iraq as personal equal stock owners of Iraq's oil any terrorists destroying oil infrastructure would be opposed by the overwhelming majority of the people in all likelihood. The Iraqi oil stock should not be available for sale to anyone for ten years after date of issuance.

The United States would perhaps save trillions of dollars if the people of Iraq owned their own oil and a stable, peaceful, non-belligerent society existed because of the stabilization of the cost of oil, reduced need for U.S. military costs in the future and so forth. A new, bigger middle east conflict that shuts down most middle east oil production would raise the price of oil above 200 dollars a barrel with global shortages besides.Americans would need to borrow money from Russia to finance the government deficit spending instead of from China, India and Japan as at present.

Another alternative goal for some anti-democracy planners is to coerce the majority Shi'a of Iraq in some way into another Sunni dominated tyranny and continue an otherwise royal dominated Gulf and Saudi Arabian oil production array with Wahabists and Salafists radicalizing Muslims 'from the right'.

Most terrorism against U.S. targets internationally have been from the Sunni sect, while Shi'a terrorism tends to be more local. It was Iranian revolution against an imperial government that broke the former block of royals supplying oil to America after the nationalization of Arab oil field contrived by Qaddafi. Corporatists seem to like royal governments quite a lot as the 'consumers' have little to do besides purchase as the government deems it proper. The oil producing aspects of the U.S. military-industrial complex have never forgiven the Shi'a for deposing royal oil suppliers, and the U.S. federal tendency to advance crude oil as the primary and decisive American value in middle east foreign political relations has matured as a frequently contradicting policy in regard to actual American interests of national security.

American economic interests have also suffered as the preference to rely upon oil and Sunni royalty into the 3rd millennium have overshadowed transition to alternate, non-trade deficit, environmentally benign fuel infrastructures. A retarded American national economy flanked by corporatist interests in a number of ways fails to trust and develop democracy, continuing national independence and environmentalism for itself and lapses into the short-term profit agenda of corporations without concern for national sustainability or civil rights even seeking to flood in millions of cheap laborers to transform the U.S.A. into a sort of synthetic Hapsburg's peonized empire under unified globalist-corporatist socialist rule balancing out the mass billions of poorer continental peons of China India and Latin America. Quick corporate profits are the transforming, paramount criterion of emergent American politics, with C.E.O.'s of top corporations averaging 8 million dollars a year in compensation for globalizing, outsourcing and subverting the United State's interests politically.

A brighter and more sensitive administration than that of President Bush might have applied a plethora of alternative and independent home power solutions to Iraq's issues of criminal gangs, black markets, broken energy infrastructures, vulnerable centralization of transmission lines and so forth. The people of Iraq were waiting for real improvements immediately in the sweltering heat, for their broken sewers spewing filth in Sadr City to dry up and the affluent excretions to become contained with perhaps work for the 70% unemployed; the administration foisted top-down dysfunctional government centralization through corrupt foreign contractors and corrupt administrators through a trim line of terrorists creating a mockery of a trickle down structure from an internally fractured 'government' of Iraq without an Army, police or intelligence corps. Death squad militias formed for civil defense in Sadr City in the absence presiding legal authority.

Though Iraq now has a very challenged sovereign government it isn't too late to redeploy and reduce American military forces in Iraq coordinated with intelligent, immediate quality of life bettering engineering projects. If the administration does not support the actual conditions for popular rule in Iraq with peace...even if they do not like the Shi'a because of hate of non-royal oil sales in Iran and concern that Mr. Sadr of Sadr City might wear a starched turban into political office becoming more powerful than a Rosie O'Donnel with death squads.

As a long range scenario a tripartite Iraq with a weak central government in Baghdad may be less harmful than a variety of other middle east conflict scenarios or a perennial 20 billion a month budget for U.S. soldiers to wander in Sunni or Shi'a houses in search of terrorists that maybe won't go away until no one will loan the U.S.A. any more billions to keep them in Iraq. A weakened U.S.A. financially that also redistributes its wealth to the middle east at the pump might be a Wahabist's economic dream come true.

Ali Allawi's book of December 2006 'The Occupation of Iraq; Winning the War; Losing the Peace' provided a substantial brief for individuals interested in the history of Iraq since circa 2000-2006, and should be read by members of congress interested in formulating informed opinions about U.S. Iraq policy.