...or are you just happy to see me?

BAGHDAD, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) --The U.S. and Iraqi security forces have killed some 400 suspected insurgents and detained a similar number of people during the 11-day-old major security clampdown in the capital, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday.

Um...Nope, no human rights violations here. Move along.

I'm sure there's a reason why this isn't getting wider reportage in the U.S. media. Well, I mentioned it here a week ago. So that's something I guess.

Labels: insurgency, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki

Tits deep and falling fast the al-Maliki-led, U.S.-backed government in Iraq is struggling to provide basic necessities to a nation broken by war, civil and sectarian strife, and ancient animosities. While American troops are dying every day as the situation continues it's bottomless descent, it took a Congressional repudiation for the Bush Administration to take action.

As the symbolic, non-binding resolution moves from the House to the Senate today, Secretary of State Condoleza Rice flew to Baghdad unannounced to secure the Administration's position in the hearts and minds of Iraq's beleaguered leaders. She'll be playing hardball demanding results from the latest plan to quell the violence in the nation's capitol, while offering assurances that the Bush Administration has no intention of caving to Congress or the American people. The escalation will happen. But, if swift progress is not made, the U.S. will lessen it's support of the ruling coalition, which is essentially a death sentence to anyone working in the Iraqi government at the moment. In short: "We don't care how you do it, just get it done." The pressure is on.

The Administration's escalation plan calls for 21,500 U.S. troops to be embedded with Iraqi forces to secure key areas of Baghdad and Al Anbar province. This allows the full spectrum of American military intelligence, technology, and fire support to be made available to Iraqi units on the ground through their American embeds without compromising U.S. operational security. It also allows Iraqi troops - taking orders from their own civilian government - to effectively become the best equipped, best informed, and best trained death squads the world has ever known without asking U.S. troops to become war criminals. It's all very neat and tidy.

Dear people of Iraq, rejoice for you have been liberated.

Labels: Condoleza Rice, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, Surge

A week after one of his top aides was forced to resign for speaking to the press about plans for a possible amnesty for insurgents, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced his actual plan to establish a framework for peace in the war-torn nation: amnesty for insurgents.

Apparently the test balloon was well received.

Amnesty for Iraqi citizens who participated in acts of violence against Iraqi and Coalition forces is offered in hopes that such a program will marginalize foreign players in the conflict. Non-Iraqi combatants - long suspected of being the operational core of the insurgency - will become strangers in a strange land should this plan take root in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Therein lies the problem. Amnesty as a form of mediation in civil and ethnic conflict is not a new concept. It's been utilized successfully to resolve conflicts and avert devastating violence in some of the most extreme situations of recent human strife. But there is a catch. The success of any amnesty is entirely dependent on the capacity and willingness of the parties involved to forgive and move on.

Those who currently man the opposition of occupation forces and the democratic regime it helped establish are not political dissidents. They are people who feel they have been wronged. Individuals who have suffered the traumas of an Abu Ghraib interrogation, or who have lost family in botched check-point inspections or neighborhood raids are not fighting for or against an ideology. They are fighting for vengeance. Acceptance and forgiveness are not in their vernacular.

Not that it matters. Whether the individual players in the insurgency choose to stop fighting and collaborating with non-Iraqi fighters is moot. Either way a solution is fast at hand for American troops.

If the amnesty is accepted, Prime Minister al-Maliki will have to convince the Iraqis to "just get along." A gambit which, if successful, would lead to the reduction of American troop levels at the request of the Iraqi people; The pre-requisite of coalition disengagement.

If the amnesty is denied, the Iraqi government - and by extension their coalition partners - will have a full-blown civil war on their hands. Not exactly a solution, but it would be an official evolution of the situation. New options would be available to the coalition. Options such as declaring the civil war an internal problem of a sovereign nation and walking out with a deal to provide funding, arms, training, and logistical support. A slight departure from the "you break it, you buy it" paradigm true, but also a plausibly dignified step toward tactical disengagement.

On the other hand a denied amnesty could lead to perpetual American involvement in the region. Imagine a Vietnam-eqse theater of operations stretching from Israel to the Himalayas where terrorists and other enemies of the "forces of freedom" are hunted by thinly stretched American forces for a generation. This prospect is not really a solution, but it might force the rest of America to wake up and smell the quagmire sooner rather than later and demand this Administration lead us out of the war they led us into.

Here's hoping this hand of Texas hold'em doesn't go in the toilet.

Labels: Abu Ghraib, insurgency, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki