Bush's Simplistic Vision

Mocking his critics, Bush asked yesterday: "If America's strategic interests are not in Iraq -- the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden's deputy has called 'the place for the greatest battle,' the country at the heart of the most volatile region on Earth -- then where are they?"

The obvious answer: Pakistan's rugged tribal area, where bin Laden and the real al-Qaeda are said to be actively re-establishing al-Qaeda training camps.

And Bush, whose prognostication skills have been almost uniformly poor when it comes to Iraq, spoke with great certainty about what would happen if U.S. forces came home:

"The reality is that retreating from Iraq would carry enormous strategic costs for the United States," he said. "It would incite chaos and killing, destroy the political gains the Iraqis have made, and abandon our friends to terrorists and death squads. It would endanger Iraq's oil resources and could serve as a severe disruption to the world's economy. It would increase the likelihood that al Qaeda would gain safe havens that they could use to attack us here at home. It would be a propaganda victory of colossal proportions for the global terrorist movement, which would gain new funds, and find new recruits, and conclude that the way to defeat America is to bleed us into submission. It would signal to Iran that we were not serious about confronting its efforts to impose its will on the region. It would signal to people across the Middle East that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its word. A defeat in Iraq would have consequences far beyond that country -- and they would be felt by Americans here at home."

On each and every count, however, as critics like retired Gen. William Odom have long been arguing, it's quite possible that the exact opposite is true.

Opinion Watch

Fred Kaplan writes for Slate: "The wars in Iraq (the plural is no typo) are about to expand and possibly explode, so it might be useful to have some notion of what we're in for. . . .

"The fighting in Basra, which has spread to parts of Baghdad, is not a clash between good and evil or between a legitimate government and an outlaw insurgency. Rather, as Anthony Cordesman, military analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes, it is 'a power struggle' between rival 'Shiite party mafias' for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country. . . .

"In other words, as with most things about Iraq, it's a more complex case than Bush makes it out to be."

Here's more from Cordesman, via the Tribune's Frank James: "Much of the current coverage of the fighting in the south assumes that Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr militia are the 'spoilers,' or bad guys, and that the government forces are the legitimate side and bringing order. This can be a dangerous oversimplification."

The Financial Times editorial board writes: "The battle in southern Iraq between government forces and Basra militiamen not only demonstrates how fragile are the security gains of the US troops 'surge' of the past year. It could be the prelude to a deadly new phase in Iraq's multi-cornered civil war, sucking American (and residual British) forces into the struggle for power within the majority Shia community. . . .

"[T]he Shia-dominated administration of Nouri al-Maliki is a national government in name only. In practice it has ceased even pretending to pursue a communalist agenda, preferring the even narrower sectarian interest of the prime minister's faction of the Da'wa (Call) party and that of its allies in the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq led by Abdelaziz al-Hakim. The Iraqi national army, moreover, is really rebadged militia: in this instance mostly the Badr brigades of the Supreme Council.

"That is why the offensive is targeting Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army. The Hakims, backed by Tehran as well as Washington, want power in Baghdad, but underpinned by an oil-rich mini-state made up of the nine mainly Shia provinces of southern Iraq. . . .