Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan usually provides good
value on Iraq. Here is a sample from his commentary which suggests that a
troop drawdown may be complemented by more use of US air power. He also
quotes some choice comments by Sy Hersh whom many will


Monday, November 28, 2005
US Air Power to Replace Infantry in Iraq;

Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh is reporting in the New Yorker that the
Bush administration has decided to draw down ground troops in Iraq.
Knowledgeable observers strongly suspect that this step would produce a
meltdown and possibly even civil war in Iraq (which could become a regional
war). Bush's strategy may be to try to control the situation using air
power.

Readers and colleagues often ask me why a Shiite majority and the Kurdish
Peshmergas couldn't just take care of the largely Sunni Arab guerrillas. The
answer is that the Sunni Arabs were the officer corps and military
intelligence, and the more experienced NCOs, and they know how to do things
that the Shiites and Kurds don't know how to do. The Sunni Arabs were also
the country's elite and have enormous cultural capital and managerial
know-how. Sunni Arab advantages will decline over time, but they are there
for this generation, and no one should underestimate the guerrilla
leadership. If the Americans weren't around, all those 77 Hungarian T-72
tanks that the new Iraqi military now has would be in guerrilla hands so
fast it would make your head spin.

Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim complained to the Washington Post that
the US itself was holding back the Iraqi army (which seems to be mostly
Kurds and Shiites) from going after the Sunni Arab guerrillas in a concerted
way. But this prospect is the other reason that the Shiites and the Kurds
can't just take care of the Sunni Arabs. If one isn't careful, it would turn
into a hot civil war on ethnic grounds (I don't mean 38 dead a day, I mean
it would be ten times that). And if the Shiites and Kurds massacre Sunni
Arabs in the course of fighting the guerrillas, the Saudi, Jordanian and
Sunni Syrian publics are not going to take that lying down and volunteer
fighters would flock to Iraq in real numbers.

Hersh reports that US Air Force officers are alarmed by the implication
that Iraqi targeters may be calling down air strikes using US warplanes. I
remember that Iraqi troops (mainly Kurds) were allowed to call down
airstrikes in Tal Afar last August, and if my recollection serves, the Tal
Afar operation may even have been conceived as an opportunity for Iraqi
troops to get practice in doing so. They levelled whole neighborhoods of the
Sunni Turkmen (many of whom had thrown in with Saddam in the old days).

The Air Force officers are right to be alarmed. It has been obvious to me
for some time that US air power will be used to try to keep the guerrillas
from taking over Iraq as the ground troops depart. This is why last August I
argued for keeping some US Special Operations forces embedded with the new
Iraqi army, since I felt that the US military should remain in control of
the use of American air power (i.e. the laser targetting should be done by
Navy Seals and others, not by Iraqis).

Likewise, I argued that the US should only make this airstrike capability
available for defensive operations. Say that the 1920 Revolution Brigades
got up a militia force to march on Hilla from Mahmudiyah, and the brigade
made short work of the Iraqi infantry sent against it. In such a situation,
the US should use air power to stop the neo-Baathists and Salafis from
massacring the Shiites of Hilla. But the US Air Force should not be a toy in
the hands of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who will most likely be the most powerful
politician in Iraq come Dec. 16. If one keeps some Special Ops forces in
Iraq, it would require a continued ability by the US to rescue them if
anything went wrong, which is one reason both I and Congressman Murtha
envisaged a continued over-the-horizon US presence in the region for a
while.

But Hersh's sources in Washington strongly give the impression that George
W. Bush is incapable of making coherent policy in Iraq, and is fixated on
his legacy there 20 years down the line.

Even Bush allies such as former transitional Prime Minister Iyad Allawi,
however, are already bringing his legacy into question. Allawi asserts that
governmental abuse of human rights in Iraq today is even worse than in the
time of Saddam. If yours truly had said something like that, Jeff Jarvis
would have called me pond scum and Andrew Sullivan would have given me a
Sontag award. Jarvis and Sullivan were big supporters of Allawi (who is
alleged to have been involved in a terrorist attack in Baghdad in the 1990s
that blew up a school bus full of children). So what do they have to say now
that the bad news is coming from the secular, pro-American politicians and
they aren't playing pollyanna any more? By the way, President Jalal Talabani
rejected Allawi's charges, but then he heads the government that Allawi is
critiquing.

Bush's legacy as a builder of democracy and promoter of rights in Iraq, all
he has left going for him, was dealt another black eye by the emergence of a
video that appears to show private security guards in Iraq firing at
civilian vehicles for sport out on the road to the airport.

Hersh appeared on Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, and Wolf read out this quote from
the New Yorker piece by Hersh:

" 'The president is more determined than ever to stay the course,' the
former defense official said. 'He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer
in the adage, "People may suffer and die, but the Church advances." ' He
said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to
Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. 'They keep him in the gray world of
religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,' the former defense
official said."

Hersh goes on to tell Blitzer that Bush disparages any information about
Iraq that does not fit his preconceived notions, and that he feels he has a
(perhaps divine) mission to bring democracy to the country. Hersh's inside
sources paint a president who is detached and in the grip of profound
utopian delusions, which Hersh charitably characterizes as "idealistic."