Could Truce After Intensifying Iraq War Be October Surprise?

by Franz Schurmann

(PNS) -- Why is the U.S. intensifying the Iraq war? The simplest answer comes from the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In the final months of both wars the U.S. and its enemies recognized that neither side could win. But the U.S. also decided to inflict a final blast of death and damage. Why? There is no simple explanation. Maybe the Pentagon wanted to show the war was worth the huge budgetary outlays or they wanted to warn the enemy not to try another aggression.

In May 1953, shortly before the Panmunjom truce accords, the U.S. bombed five huge dams that caused great flooding. Shortly before Christmas 1972 the U.S. decided not to bomb the Hanoi dikes but inflicted hitherto the fiercest death and damage in the Vietnam War. But one month later, the U.S., North Vietnam, and a reluctant South Vietnam signed the Paris peace accords. The North Korean and the North Vietnamese knew that, despite the bombing, the U.S. had to come to the negotiation table.

A month ago it looked like the Iraq war had finally seen light at the end of the tunnel. The highly esteemed Ayatollah Sistani rushed back from London, where he had gone for heart treatment, to broker a deal between the Americans and firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr that called for the Americans to pull out of the holy city of Najaf. And al-Sadr, the Americans' arch-enemy, promised the Ayatollah he would he would end his guerrilla warfare to enter into politics before the January 2005 elections.

The smooth way the Americans took over Baghdad in April 2003 made it clear that neither side in the conflict wanted to sacrifice too many lives in regime change. But the White House changed horses in mid-race by ousting General Jay Garner as President Bush's pro-consul in Iraq and putting in Paul Bremer. Bremer and some advisers in the Pentagon believed that Garner recruited too many operatives from Saddam Hussein's Baathist party. Bremer decided that the American forces had to recruit more from the oppressed Shi'ites which upset the Sunnis. But when he ordered the arrest of Shi'ite firebrand Muqtada as-Sadr and closed down his newspaper, suddenly the Americans had to contend with a Shi'ite army.

As chaos spread, one man, the quiet scholar Ayatollah Sistani reluctantly appeared on the peace scene. Even though Sistani was Iranian-born, he survived in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) as one of the five Ayatollahs who are considered the highest spiritual authorities in Shi'ite Islam. When Saddam Hussein brutally crushed the Shi'ite Rebellion of 1991 Sistani survived by being scrupulously apolitical. When Paul Bremer sought a meeting with him, Sistani refused to see him because that would have tainted his authority.

But now surprisingly, Ayatollah Sistani became a political figure at the age of 75. His demands were simple. He wanted to assure the majority Shi'ites a secure place in the Iraqi scene and save the holy Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini was even older than Sistani when the former launched his revolution against the westernizing Shah. But did Sistani want to start a revolution when he called on Shi'ites from everywhere to march on Najaf? Nobody knows, but many Iraqis believe the much younger Muqtada Al-Sadr has visions going way beyond those of Sistani and closer to those of Khomeini.

The Ayatollah was able to mobilize thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims who marched to the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali in an example of just the kind of democratic people power that President Bush said was possible in the Middle East. Those Americans who are old enough to recall the 1965 Selma marches for the full civil rights of African-Americans, had hoped that Iraq could come out of its nightmare through the Najaf march.

The American military forces decided otherwise. As a result much of the old town was destroyed and many civilians killed. The American-trained Iraqi police killed some 35 marchers. The swath of destruction hit the close-by town of Kufa and more recently the vast slum town of Sadr City that houses mostly poor Shi'ites.

In an AP interview, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz said that after a month of attacks on U.S. forces reaching an average of almost 100 per day, the U.S. military will work to regain control of rebel strongholds and turn them over to Iraq's fledgling security forces so elections will be seen by Iraqis, and the world, as free and fair.

Whether or not the January elections take place it is unlikely that Lt. Gen. Metz's visions of free and fair democratic processes will turn into reality. But, unlike previous wars, this time it's possible that, inasmuch as death and damage strike Americans as well as its enemies and those caught in between, some movement on the truce front could be the October surprise before election day on November 2.