``We've destroyed Iraq and we've destroyed the region''

Rosen and Packer--there is nothing that America can do about this anymore

Nir Rosen and George Packer are writers who recently have cast extremely pessimistic assessments on the prospects for Iraq.

Nir Rosen appeared on Monday's edition of Democracy Now!. He rattled off a very disturbing list of talking points concerning what ``Americans need to know'' about Iraq and the Middle East region:

Shias own Iraq now. Sunnis can never get it back. There's nothing Americans can do about this.

There was no civil war in Iraq until we got there. And there was no civil war in Iraq, until we took certain steps to pit Sunnis against Shias.

As for the Bush and Maliki meeting,... both Bush and Maliki are absolutely irrelevant in Iraq. Neither one of them has any power.

Maliki has no militia to speak of. Bush has militia, the American army, one of the many militias operating in Iraq,... But [the Americans] strike mostly at innocent people,... unable to distinguish between anybody, certainly unable to wield any power, except on the immediate street corner where it's located. So, it just doesn't matter.

We already handed Baghdad over and much of the country to the Shia militias. So there is no strong man solution.

There is this romantic idea lately that you could have a coup and replace the Maliki regime with somebody else,... You could put anybody you wanted in Baghdad, it just wouldn't make a difference outside of Baghdad. And the guy you put in Baghdad would have to have power in Baghdad, which means street power, which means Muqtada al-Sadr.

When you hear about people dressed as police officers, or dressed as security forces, kidnapping somebody, you'’re just hearing about supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, who are members of the police, kidnapping somebody. He'’s been very anti-American from the beginning, very nationalistic, unlike perhaps, Abdul Aziz Hakim, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution fin Iraq, who was perceived as coming on the back of American tanks.

If there was anything good that the American’s had done it was to unite the Sunnis and Shia’s against them. But that all fell apart by 2005, or by the end of 2004. And since then, Muqtada al-Sadr, his militia, have taken the lead is sectarian attacks.

The crowds just went crazy when they saw [al-Sadr], and afterwards, they all rushed the fence to shout their support for him. He can really get the largest number of Iraqis on the street willing to fight with the snap of his fingers.

It is very popular for us to blame the Iraqi’s for the chaos that we've brought upon them. This will perhaps be something for the cameras in the US, when [Bush meets Maliki in Jordan], to show that he'’s going to make Maliki, seize the reigns of his country, or something absurd like that, because Maliki has no power of his own.

There is a civil war in Iraq.

In Lebanon, concerns are exaggerated. Much has been made of the assassination of Pierre Gemayel last week. And the American media portrait it as if ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand had been killed, or John F. Kennedy, but really this guy was a fairly insignificant politician. And not a vocal anti-Syrian critic. He does come from a party with fascist links that massacred thousands of Palestinians. Which nobody seems to mention... [But] America would like there to be a civil war in Lebanon, I think Isreal would like that. I think they would like to weaken Hezbollah in a way they failed to do during the war, but I don'’t think that its very likely at this very moment.

Iran and Syria have always been concerned about the instability in Iraq. They are the neighbors of Iraq and if anybody can be threatened by the instability, it's them.

In Syria right now you have about 3 or 4 thousand Iraqi refugees crossing the border everyday, that'’s going to destabilize Syria. You already have nearly a million Iraqi refugees in Syria today.

At some point Shias will make a move, a large move against the Sunnis in Baghdad. You'’ll find a day when there are no Sunnis left in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are of course panicking about this, and they are hoping that the US will in some way arm or support Sunni militias.

The civil war will spread and become a regional one. And I think Jordan will cease to exist as it does now. Eventually, because you'll have the Anbar Province of Iraq joining somehow--you already have one million Iraqis in Jordan at least. You walk down the streets of Jordan, you hear Iraqi Arabic as much as any other kind.

Now it is just too late...we are responsible for what'’s happening in Iraq today... There is no solution. We've destroyed Iraq and we've destroyed the region.

We've managed to make Saddam Hussein look good even to Shias at this point.

We've managed...not only destabilize Iraq, but destabilize Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran. This is going to spread for decades, the region won't recover from this,... for decades. Americans are responsible.

This is a bleak assessment. It's an education for me. I've been arguing with people that the way to make the situation for Iraq better would be too remove American troops as quickly as possible and that as soon as they began to filter out while America took its foot off of Iraq's neck, the situation would calm. I argued this sort of thing in comments just a few posts back: ``As soon as the Americans start to filter out of Iraq, my guess is the whole thing begins to calm down.'' I guess that proposition would be very difficult to support.

In the November 27 issue of the New Yorker, George Packer comments about potential negative consequences of proposals by Congressional Democrats on troop withdrawal. Packer scolds people like me, who have thought a rapid withdrawal of American troops could help Iraq:

PACKER: The argument that Iraq would be better off on its own is a self-serving illusion that seems to offer Americans a win-win solution to a lose-lose problem. Like so much about this war, it has more to do with politics here than reality there. Such wishful thinking (reminiscent of the sweets-and-flowers variety that preceded the war) would have pernicious consequences, as the United States fails to anticipate one disaster after another in the wake of its departure: ethnic cleansing on a large scale, refugees pouring across Iraq'’s borders, incursions by neighboring armies, and the slaughter of Iraqis who had joined the American project.

I suppose what Packer is saying is not too different from what Nir Rosen is saying. Packer concludes, ``We may have to accept that the disintegration of Iraq is irreversible and America's last remaining interest will be to leave. If so, we shouldn'’t deepen the insult by pretending that we'’re doing the Iraqis a favor. Even realism has an obligation to be realistic.''

But Packer leaves out any discussion of the notion that America has caused this disaster in Iraq. Rosen paints a fuller picture of what the American attack and occupation has done to Iraqis and is clearer about the desirability of withdrawal of American troops, even while he too recognizes it as desirable mainly in terms of the interest of the Americans who are ordered to sacrifice for the project.

ROSEN: Troop withdrawal, if I was an American, then I would want troop withdrawal, because why are Americans dying in Iraq? Every single American who dies in Iraq, who is injured in Iraq, dies for nothing. He didn'’t die for freedom, he didn't die to defend his country, he died to occupy Iraq. And if withdrawal the troops you'’ll have less Americans killing Iraqis. Everyday the Americans are there they kill innocent Iraqis, they torture innocent Iraqis, and the occupy Iraqis and terrorize Iraqis. They should leave today.

Despite digesting these extremely pessimistic assessments, I still concur with those who favor rapid withdrawal. We must accept the consequences. These consequences lie squarely on the heads of those like George Packer, a liberal hawk who like so many others, thought a just course of action for America to take was to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein, and that this decision properly could be made in Washington rather than in Iraq.

I enjoy nothing about being right--about seeing years ago, long before the war, that war could not impose a just resolution after years of American support for the despicable Hussein regime followed by more years of devastating sanctions mainly harming the Iraqi people. The war foreseeably has lead to nothing but a bleak quagmire, a shattered Iraqi society, and the possibility of wider conflict.

Was Nelson Mandela prophetic in this January 2003 comment?

What I am condemning is that one power, with a President who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust. I am happy that the people of the world -- especially those of the United States of America -- are standing up and opposing their own President.

That holocaust is knocking at the door. America with it's unthinking president has caused this through its criminal actions. I am torn up inside that we were unable to stop it in 2003, when it really mattered.