Clusterfuck Defined

In case you've been wondering about the complex realities on the ground in Iraq, as opposed to the fantasies spun by the Bush administration and John W. McCain, here's about the best explanation yet of just how screwed we really are:

As mentioned yesterday, the grossly oversimplified propaganda of the Bush administration thoroughly distorts the situation, making any clear strategy simply impossible to formulate. This is a situation that is fiendishly complex.



The truth is that the Maliki government and its allied Shiite faction, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly known as SCIRI), are much closer to Iran than the Sadrists are. Maliki's campaign against Sadr isn't a noble crusade by the good Iraqi government against the bad Iranian-backed Sadrists, but a battle waged by a weak Shiite leader backed by one militia, ISCI's Badr Corps, against another, stronger Shiite leader, Sadr, with his own militia, the Mahdi Army. Not only that, the "good" militia, the Badr Corps, was created in Iran by Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- the same organization whose Quds Force the United States notoriously declared to be a "terrorist organization" last year. The maraschino cherry on this sundae of absurdity: It was the head of that Quds Force, an Iranian general, who bailed out Maliki after Maliki's assault on Basra ignominiously failed, forcing him to send officials to Iran to broker a truce.



As Juan Cole, a regular Salon contributor, told me, "The Americans are doing propaganda." I called Cole, a nationally recognized expert on Shiite Islam, because I wanted to get a reality check not just on Petraeus and Crocker's expected Iran-is-to-blame spin, but to hear what Cole thinks the United States should do to extricate itself from Iraq. As it turns out, the two questions are inseparable. Cole makes a disturbing case that the Bush administration's hard-line position on Iran and Sadr could end up wrecking our chances of getting out of Iraq without leaving chaos in our wake.

Can you say QUAGMIRE?


Update: Michael Ware is my favorite war correspondent (next to Lara Logan, of course). Here he breaks down the disastrous situation described above in the starkest of terms:

BLITZER: Quick question, we just heard Nic’s report from Sadr City. Can the Iraqi forces loyal to the prime minister Nouri al Maliki crush these Shi’ite militias in Sadr City with U.S. military help?



WARE: Well, first Wolf, I think you’d have to find which of these Iraqi units actually have soldiers loyal to Nouri al Maliki. Because, let’s bear in mind, much like the government itself, the Iraqi security forces are comprised of and drawn from the militias themselves. Now, whilst you do have other recruits who’ve just shown up for a paycheck, at the end of the day, the troops on the ground are drawn from the militias, are drawn from the political factions. These are the building blocks of Iraqi political power. And Nouri al Maliki, the prime minister, doesn’t have a militia and given that guns, the barrel of the gun is still the currency of political power in Iraq; Nouri al Maliki has little but words and some influence. Real power rests elsewhere.

Blimey!