Choose Your Bloodbath

By Stephen Pizzo
Created Nov 2 2006 - 9:09am

Here's a question I bet you've never asked yourself.

How do you like your bloodbaths - long and ugly, or short and ugly?

I only ask because that's the only real issue facing the next leaders of
Congress, be they Republicans or Democrats, when it comes to Iraq.

No one likes to say these kinds of things right out loud, especially
politicians. So let me take the heat for it. Here's the three choices facing
American policy makers for Iraq:

Option One: Force Iraqis to live peacefully together under a unity
government:

If we continue trying to create and maintain some approximation of a unity
government in Iraq we will be there for a decades doing so. Because there
really is, and never has been, an "Iraq". The place is an artificially
created "vessel" filled with vinegar, water and oil. Unless someone is
willing to continually shake the shit out of this vessel, those three
ingredients separate. And, they hate the shakers, and will toil day and
night to kill them. And, when they can't get their hands on the shakers,
they kill one another, just to make the point that they are three separate,
incompatible, unblendable elements..

What I've just described is the current state of affairs Iraq. Yesterday the
Iraqi government - you can bet urged on by their American handlers -
announced they would no longer count and report the number of daily civilian
deaths - which have been averaging 130 a day, and rising. In October the US
lost 103 troops, or roughly 3.5 shakers a day.

Even Democrats are afraid to suggest we stop shaking Iraq because doing so
would "result in a bloodbath." But would shaking avoid a bloodbath? Or would
it simply result in a slow-motion bloodbath? Let's see.

Killed Iraqi Civilians: 130 a day x 365 days = 47, 450 a year
Killed US Troops: 3.4 a day x 365 = 1,241 a year

Total: 48,691

And those would just be the deaths we know about. Common sense and history
tell us that the actual death toll -- from both direct military activities
plus "collateral" deaths flowing directly form wartime civil and social
deficiencies - is likely to double that number each year.

But, even without doing that kind of speculative math, or allowing for leap
year, I think we can all agree that over 48,000 killed humans in one country
in one year qualifies as a "bloodbath."

And then onto 2007. Now it's 96,000 And 2008 -- 140,000. And so on, and so
on and...... ?

In short, a strategy that tries to keep Iraq in one piece will require
Americans accept a slow motion bloodbath without end. A successful and
sustainable unity government for Iraq is as likely as a unity government was
in the former Yugoslavia. It's a fiction. And a formula for a bloodbath.

Option Two: Forcefully partition Iraq.

This idea has been floated by Senator Joe Biden and others. Those who
propose this solution say they too are trying "to avoid a bloodbath," and
feel partition is the best way to do that.

But this solution too is fatally flawed. Not because partitioning Iraq is a
bad idea, it's not. But because westerners should not be drawing any more
arbitrary boundary in that part of the world. In fact that's the very reason
it's such a mess now. Because back in the early years of the 20th century
the British decided to tidy up their budding Middle Eastern empire by
drawing borders where there had been no borders before. When the British
surveyors were done drawing lines the three warring tribes that had lived on
that land for thousands of years were told they were now one tribe - Iraqis.

They were not - and are still not -- a-m-u-s-e-d.

If the US carves Iraq up into three parts we will spend the next hundred
years defending those new borders as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds "disagree"
over their locations. And these disagreements will occur in a region that
has more guns and explosives per capita than any similar sized piece of real
estate on the planet.

The result of a US-enforced partitioning of Iraq would be non-stop bloodshed
for as far into the future as anyone can predict. If you think the Israelis
and Palestinians are at each other's throats over borders, wait until you
see how Iraqi tribes fight over access to Iraq's oil-producing real estate.

Option Three: Let the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds determine their own
futures - (or lack thereof.)

This is the option no one dares suggest. Withdraw entirely from Iraq and let
the three warring parties settle their beefs among themselves.

"Yikes, man! What are you suggesting? Just let these people kill one
another? It would be a bloodbath!"

Yes it would be a bloodbath. But, ask yourself.. for how long? And how many
would die? Would it last three, five, ten years, like the other two options?
Not likely. Why? Because history tells us so. When we withdrew our troops
from Vietnam there was the predictable flurry of score settling and then it
was over. Next month Bush will travel to Vietnam to attend the Asian Pacific
economic summit which Vietnam is hosting. Could there be a lesson in that
for Mr. Bush? One would think.

And ask yourself how many would die in such a "let the Iraqis settle it
themselves 'bloodbath?'" Would 48,000 die, 96,000, 140,000? Hard to say. But
it would more likely be fewer than if we continue trying to force a unity
government on them. And, however many die, the killing would end sooner.
Admittedly this is brutal logic. But any more brutal than our current
strategy is reaping now?

Yes, if we chose this third option all hell would break loose in Iraq. The
fur would fly for sure. But with no American troops there to put these fires
out for them when they get out of hand, behavior would change. It would soon
become apparent to the three tribes that, unless they want to live
perpetually in a world only Mad Max could love, they must come to some kind
of accommodation. If the Shiites and Kurds refuse to share the oil with the
Sunnis, the Sunnis will make sure the other two tribes don't get any oil
either, by blowing up oil infrastructure.

However when Iraq is inevitably partitioned, those new borders must be drawn
by Iraqis themselves, and with Iraqi blood, sweat and tears. That's how the
US Mexican border was drawn, not by the French or the British but by US and
Mexicans. It wasn't pretty. But it's peacefully held:

"With the exception of a small number of minor Rio Grande border disputes,
since settled, the current course of the border was finalized by the 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase." (More [1])

It also took some bloodshed to settle the US/Canadian border. (More [2])

Bloodshed will be required to settle matters once and for all in Iraq as
well. Or, more precisely, what we will come to call, "the region formerly
known as Iraq." Once we stop shaking the water - Kurdistan, the vinegar -
Sunnistan, and the oil - Shiitstan, will bubble and boil apart, and it won't
be pretty. At least initially there will "a bloodbath."

The only question our newly minted members of congress need to decide when
they take office this coming January is this:

Do we want to be part of a show-motion bloodbath that goes on for decades,
to which we add US blood?

Or

Do we want to get out of the way and let the three antagonists with most to
gain or lose settle the matter once and for all on their own, and without
further loss of American lives?

To quote Dick Cheney, I think it's a no-brainer.

--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson