Behind McCain's Iraq Fantasy

As much as we'd love to humor the addled Mr. McCain, there is simply no precedent in the post WWII-era for what is on the horizon in Iraq.  McCain's entire candidacy is predicated on his status as a foreign-policy "expert".  In fact, Mr. McCain doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia, Al-Qaeda and Iranian Extremists or Halloween and Purim.  So why would he know the difference between the waning days of an occupation and a dawning post-war peace?  He wouldn't, and he doesn't.

Mr. McCain and his partisan cheer squad, have received the recent spate of good news from Iraq as a sure sign of our immanent, permanent, and manifest victory in Iraq.  In fact, the precise opposite is the case.  As a recent New York Times article pointed out:

"The government victories in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were essentially negotiated, so the militias are lying low but undefeated and seething with resentment"

"...the government's successes in Basra and Sadr City were not so much victories as heavy fighting followed by truces that allowed the militias to melt away with their weapons.

In reality, America is in the midst of the worst kind of occupation in Iraq - unsustainable and impossible to stabilize.  In fact, we can anticipate conditions getting much much worse, and stability is not possible as long as we are there:

1. The size and number of urban areas that can be continuously kept under control by the Maliki government are sharply limited by the numbers of available troops. Any circumstances that provoke widespread anger against the Maliki government - such as might happen if the government tries to suppress Sunni or Sadrist voters during the upcoming elections - could easily overwhelm the troop's ability to maintain control and lead to a widespread breakdown.

2. Even if widespread unrest does not occur, because the insurgents' morale has not been broken or even seriously weakened, they will not give up because they have lost control of territory. Rather, they will shift to the kind of urban guerilla warfare practiced by the IRA and the Algerian resistance against French colonial rule. The US and Iraqi army do not have an effective technical or tactical defense against this kind of warfare.

The latter of these two likely outcomes will have disastrous and all-too familiar consequences:

First, because the shock waves from bombs and other explosive devices are the primary source of injury being sustained by U.S. troops, a prolonged occupation will result in literally tens of thousands of traumatic brain injuries. VA and other medical professionals treating injured soldiers already refer to traumatic brain injury as the "signature injury" of this conflict, comparable to the land-mine caused loss of limbs in Vietnam. A particularly appalling characteristic of these brain injuries is that while they shatter and destroy the remainder of a person's life even more fully then the loss of an arm or a leg, such injuries are much more easily concealed, minimized and underestimated in government statistics because the injury is to soft tissue and not as visible as missing limbs

Second, as time goes by several factors will converge to increase the perception of U.S. troops as an occupying force - (1) the return of the major US oil companies to Iraq and the consequent need to deploy substantial troops to protect U.S. oil workers and installations, (2) the competitive pressure on Iraqi politicians to demonstrate their "independence" and "nationalist" credentials by denouncing the U.S. (this is already beginning to happen in the debates over the status of forces agreement) and (3) the "public relations" benefits to the insurgents of portraying themselves as warriors against foreign domination rather than seekers of sectarian advantage.
Taken together with a turn to IRA style urban guerilla warfare, the result will be a heightened tendency for insurgents to specifically target U.S. servicemen and women rather than other Iraqis. U.S. casualties will increase while "victories" will become increasingly elusive.

Thus, John McCain's fantasy likely masks a brutal reality.  The likelihood of a peaceful glorious future in Iraq is decidely remote.  Much more likely are scenarios akin to the Algerian terror campaigns and the IRA in Northern Ireland.  

Instead of largely peaceful expansion of our worldwide military presence, McCain would have us hunkered down under an ongoing barrage of IADs, resulting in untold deaths and traumatic brain injuries.  

McCain is promising Disneyland, but behind the facade this war will cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.  In fact, it will take a generation for us to understand the true cost of this war of lies.

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