William Lind, a military strategist, has an interesting piece about why this is a good opportunity for the U.S. to cut its losses, but probably won't:

<a href='http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13038' rel="nofollow">http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13038</a>

This doesn't strike me as a very useful analysis. Is Maliki's opposition to the Status of Forces Agreement genuine or not? If its genuine it suggests that he's not quite the puppet he has been portrayed as. If its just theater, that will be clear soon enough. This article strikes me as less a concrete analysis of a concrete situation than an attempt to claim some wiggle room if Dawa and SCIRI don't prove to be the simple Quislings they have previously been described as.

it is interesting that William Lind's analysis is more informative then "a world to win" even if he is not politically an "anti-imperialist."

The surface of the war is relatively simple although it is missed entirely in the world to win piece.

The winner of the war is Iran and the U.S. army has lost (some sectors of U.S. capital who supported the war are wining like Haliburton, Exxon/Mobil etc. ).

Iran is and has been the target of U.S.'s relationship with Iraq since the CIA overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Massadeg in 1959. Overthrowing Saddam was meant to be a prelude to overthrowing the Iranian revolution (A world to win assert that the U.S. is allied with Iran—that is absurd and they have no evidence for it).

The Iranian victory, however, was postponed by “the surge.” The surge allows U.S. to maintain its presence in Iraq without taking heavy casualties. But the surge is not politically or financially sustainable.

That is the rub. If the U.S army withdraws then Iran wins the war, the current Iranian state will become stronger and they will have gained a very strong ally in Iraq. That is what is meant when bourgeois analyst say that the Iraq will slide into chaos if the U.S. leaves. It won’t be chaos it will be an Iranian victory. That victory will also strengthen Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Palestine, and thereby undermining Israel.

That outcome is unacceptable to the classes that make up the military industrial complex (energy, military, defense contractors etc.) But what we have to show, I think, is that such an outcome is not a danger or threat to most people in the world including those in the U.S.

There are two problems with a “world to win’s” analysis. First, the supposed analytical category “America” and “American.” This is an ideological abstraction and it is right wing ideology at that. Who is “America.”“ America” is not at war in Iraq. Some social classes are fighting the war, some support the war, others are opposed to the war—Marxists are supposed to make class analysis.

Secondly is the term “phony.” The Iranians are “phony” anti-imperialist, Sadr is phony etc. Not the basis for an analysis.

Do collaborators suddenly grow backbones? Why not? We look at things from the point of view of classes and class interests. Does someone care to argue that there is some essential collaborator-ness that is inherent and irreversable?

In US history, Ben Franklin went to London in 1764, representing anti-independence elite circles in the colonies, to try and create conditions under which it would be possible for the Crown to maintain its hold there. Facing British intransigence and pushed from behind by growing American resistance, he became a leader of the struggle for independence.

A more recent example, among many, is Omar Torrijos who as an officer in the Panamanian National Guard was actually trained at the School of the Assassins in Fort Benning and overthrew the elected Arias government, which represented the anti-US but ineffectual <i>rabiblanco</i> elite based around the Canal Zone. Torrijos, despite a deep fondness for US culture and a personal friendship with John Wayne, resolutely opposed US hegemony in Central and South America, providing arms and sanctuary to the Sandinistas, for instance. Most importantly he wrested control of the Canal from US imperialism and returned it to Panama.

A similar problem arises in the tendency of some communists to treat the comprador bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, in violation of dialectics, as separate, mutually exclusive and immutable groupings. Certainly both will exist at any given time in an oppressed nation's history, but the objective interests of a bourgeois class in such a country, no matter how nascent, how deformed, how trained in dependency it may be, will tend to drive it to expand its take from exploiting the working people and the natural wealth of the land.

This can be seen in the one of the most striking failures of the neo-liberal regime of accumulation which dominated world capitalism from the late '70s through the current global crisis--while "privatization" was the battle cry, except for the component states of the collapsing USSR, there was no significant trend to privatize oil. In fact, many countries nationalized their holdings.

You think the US wouldn't rather have Saudi oil (nationalization completed 1980) still run by the old Seven Sisters-dominated Aramco? Call the Sa'ud family compradors all you want, but they aren't giving up the wells, Neither are Libya, Norway, Ecuador, Malaysia, Brazil, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Venezuela or literally dozens of other countries around the world. This doesn't mean that these countries aren't dominated by comprador sectors at any given juncture, but it does suggest that their rulers are at least as likely to use US weakness as a way to expand their own role as to jump to the aid of their supposed masters.

(If there's still any action on this thread when I return after the weekend, I hope to comment more directly on the particular contents of the sad little <b><i>AWtW News Service</i></b> piece.)

Part of the problem is that the term "collaborators" is so morally freighted that it makes it difficult to discuss the complexities of the relations involved.

It seems to me that the Shi'a parties made a calculated decision to "collaborate" with the US/UK forces based on an emerging understanding that the occupation would be a losing proposition in the long run but that it could provide essential resources that would compensate for their own organizational weaknesses coming out from under Baathist rule.

Sadr seems to have the most sophisticated approach (reflecting in part his deeper roots). He oscillates between "critical participation" in the government and short episodes of combat with US forces always ending in truces that give him an opportunity to regroup and consolidate. In this manner he has built up his credibility as a genuine nationalist and given his militias critical military experiences without having to suffer the likely devastation of a protracted war with the US. As I see it from afar, when the US begins to pull out, his forces will be best able to credibly "give chase," forge alliances with Sunnis, and lay claim to leadership of Arab Iraq (the Kurdish question remaining unsettled).

Does Sadr's strategy make him a "phony"? He's obviously no communist and in fact quite reactionary. But it seems to me that his strategy makes a great deal of sense in a largely urbanized country like Iraq where prolonged direct engagement with the militarily superior forces of the US is likely to be disastrous. The way I see it, Sadr is building a political wing and seeking to professionalize the military wing of his organization. The politics of the political wing are not ours, but that doesn't mean his calculation of its importance is wrong.

The AWTW piece implicitly and mechanically presumes the applicability of a strategy of protracted peoples war that doesn't really take into account the transformed social and physical terrain that Sadr is actually fighting on. I would submit that there is in this article a knee-jerk fetishization of a certain kind of warfare and an allergy towards political engagement in the electoral arena that is connected to this trend's inability to deal with the new things happening in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nepal and elsewhere.

I think Tellnolies has gotten to the heart of some issues here: both the strategies of the current government forces and Sadr, and the problem of an analysis that starts with an assumption that the correct strategy is "there for the taking" and then is unable to even look with open eyes with what other (hostile) political forces have chosen to do under these circumstances.

A lot of whats been happening recently has been maneuvering in anticipation of upcoming elections in Iraq in which Sadr is expected to trounce Dawa and SCIRI.

When the first round of elections occurred (at Sistani's insistence against US wishes) I was one of many who circulated a NYTimes article celebrating the "elections" in Viet Nam in, IIRC, 1967. The point being that the Iraqi elections were to be viewed as similarly fraudulent.

In retrospect I think that verdict was canned. Iraq isn't Viet Nam and the elections there, while highly compromised, are a serious arena of contention for public legitimacy. Sadr's performance in the electoral and military arenas has been mutually reinforcing. Trying to stuff the Iraqi experience into categories that made sense in Viet Nam blinded me to a genuinely changed situation. However restricted the Iraqi government is confined to the Green Zone, however bizarre it is for the names of candidates to only appear on election day, the Iraqi elections have not simply been theater to legitimize the occupation. The forces abcked by the US have had their asses ahnded to them in the elections and the US has been forced to deal with SCIRI, Dawa, and Sadr in spite of their (varied) relations with Iran. The characterization of this situations as an "uneasy alliance" between the US and Iran is self-deluding, a refusal to face up to the real political struggle taking place between the US and Iran and the fact that Iran is winning.

I’m also dissatisfied with the AWTW article. I wonder how many Iraqis were consulted in its preparation. It appropriately, if in a rather confused way, recognizes the key objective contradictions. The U.S. must align itself with the main force willing to collaborate with it (the Shiite ISCI and Dawa parties), but these admire the Iranian Islamic Revolution and are working to strengthen ties to a regime the U.S. depicts as a threat to the world. The U.S. is trying to impose a “security” deal and an oil law that enrage Iraqi public opinion which in turn obliges politicians including those beholden to the invaders to speak out against them. Within these politicians, there are contradictions between those demanding different timelines for U.S. withdrawal, and between those placing more or less emphasis on nationalism (with al-Sadr standing out as an advocate of Shia-Sunni unity despite the ethnic cleansing accomplished by his Mahdi Army). And there is a contradiction between the Shiite parties’ desire to avoid conflict with those who overthrew Saddam and hoisted them “to power” (in the very limited sense that they exercise it) and their desire to avoid involvement in the neocons’ plots against Tehran.

There are other significant contradictions that go unmentioned, notably that within the Bush administration between the neoconservatives and the so-called “realists.” The article states that the neocons initially wanted to install a secular regime but that when this proved impossible because of resistance elected to “make the bargain with the Shia establishment and Iran.” In fact, the neocons, who wanted to install their man Ahmad Chalabi (himself close to Iran) in 2003 were elbowed out immediately after the invasion as the State Dept. opted for a postwar Japan occupation model. The Bremer regime did indeed provoke Shiite resistance, encouraged by al-Sistani, and that was the decisive factor leading to the “restoration of sovereignty” and electoral successes by the Iran-aligned Shiite parties. But this was not a “deal cooked up with Sistani,” a “bargain with the Shia establishment and Iran,” or an “uneasy alliance” with Iran. It was a strategic move to forestall an embarrassing Shiite-based “people power”-type movement demanding elections and democracy that could have been ruinous to the occupiers’ plans. It was not favored by the neocons who would have preferred a new strongman like Iyad Allawi.

The main logical contradiction in the article is the acknowledgement of an “intensifying conflict with Iran” alongside the suggestion that there’s some sort of “alliance” with Iran. Maybe this reflects the RCP’s effort to equally oppose these two; equally evil, they might cooperate sometimes, right? (As in the Iran-Contra dealings in the 1980s.) There are in fact some in the Bush administration who have favored talks in Baghdad between Iranian and U.S. diplomats concerning security matters in the country, which have reportedly been businesslike and satisfactory to both sides. But they’ve been suspended by the neocons who want nothing to get in the way of their plans to bomb Iran before Bush’s term in office ends.

The failure to address the nuances of either the Bush administration policies or the positions of the Iraqi politicians results in a wooden analysis that clarifies nothing.

The notion that the “Sunni parties the working with the U.S. government” decided to boycott the elections of 2004 because the U.S.-aligned Shiite bloc’s victory was a foregone conclusion misses the point that the Sunnis, among whom the Baathists had a social base, were more consistently opposed to the invasion and naturally disinclined to collaborate in an electoral process organized by the occupiers.

So much more to say but have to get to work.

Patrick Cockburn's piece today in Counterpunch:
<a href='http://counterpunch.org/patrick06262008.html">http://counterpunch.org/patrick06262008.html' rel="nofollow">http://counterpunch.org/patrick06262008.html">http://counterpunch.org/patrick06262008.html</a> helps flesh out some of the internal and regional politics a bit more. It would appear AWTW has degenerated quite a bit in its ability to do political analysis.