It was an ingenious idea.  An American college professor arranged an online video conference between his class of students and a class of Iraqi college students in Baghdad, a dialogue between the two cultures and a real education, I expect, for the soft-life Americans. 

For one thing, the Iraqis had to meet at a Green Zone hotel because it was too dangerous for them to attempt the meeting on their campus.

I caught the story at the tag end of an NBC news broadcast, just in time to see a chastened American student ask, "I know this may sound lame...but what can we do to help?"

A young Iraqi woman, her head covered in a pretty scarf, answered, "Please don't leave us--but you need to leave soon."

Not only did the young woman not notice the irony in her own remark, but the handsome TV news reporter seemed to miss it as well, because he did not comment on the strange statement.

But it reminded me of a book I've got, called, I Hate You--Don't Leave Me, by Jerold J. Kreisman, M.D., and Hal Straus.  Subtitled, "Understanding the borderline personality," bold black print on the book's back cover states the following symptoms for a borderline personality:  a shaky sense of identity; sudden violent outbursts; oversensitivity to real or imagined rejection; frequent periods of intense depression; self-destructive tendencies; an irrational fear of abandonment and an inability to be alone.

Now, don't get me wrong. I would never be so cavlier as to suggest that the horror now taking place in war-torn Iraq--demons unleashed from hell by an act of aggression by this administration--could be so simply summed up as some sort of national personality disorder.  But it did occur to me that the simple statement by a young woman victimized by war nailed the situation in that country better than all the pundits, prophets, politicians, and professors put together. 

But then I read Gareth Stansfield's unparalleled report, released by the Chatham House of Britain and Exeter University, called, "Accepting Realities in Iraq."  (see my previous post for the link)

I've plowed through a lot of these things, searching (in vain, usually) for some small glimmer of hope that might help me sleep nights.  A Marine mom who opposes the war (did so from the beginning) and yet supports her loved ones as they go off to fight it is a sort of schizophrenic exercise in itself.  (Not in the textbook definition, but the popular one of split personalities.)

You want the war to end.  You don't care what happens to those people over there.  You want your guys home safe and sound.

On the other hand, you don't want their terrible sacrifices to have been in vain.  You want SOMETHING SOMEWHERE to validate the awful things they've been through in such a way that it will not have been a waste.

You believe the whole damn thing was a photo-op political campaign by evil neocons bent on capturing the second-largest oil reserve in the world for their Exxon and Mobil buddies and their Halliburton private mercenary contractor buddies who feed on war like vultures on a carcass.

On the other hand, you get all excited when you see the purple fingers and proud that your own child helped to provide a safe and secure environment for that one day at least, so that people could go cast maybe their first vote ever.  You feel empathy for the Iraqi people and you want mothers over there to feel as if they can send their own children to school without worrying that they will be kidnapped and tortured on the way or bombed once they get there.

And so on.  Makes me tired to go into it all, but you get the idea.

So I read this stuff, hunting for hope, and find precious little of it.  One of the hallmarks of most of these academic exercises, whether by professors or by politicians or by military brains, is that each seems to embrace a reality that they WANT to see, and builds the framework of their ideas for success on that foundation of quicksand.

Then, along comes this Brit, and he says, flat-out, that if we don't "accept reality" of the situation as it really, truly exists right now in that fractured country, then no amount of military surges or purple fingers is going to make a damn bit of difference. 

The first thing we have to picture--at least, this is the metaphor that works for me--is not a society breaking neatly in half, like a pencil, but a society crumbling, like a cookie.

Over in our country, we think of civil wars as a divided nation, blues and grays, opposing armies fighting one another for control of a central government.

This is not the case in Iraq.  There IS no "civil war."  Rather, there are MULTIPLE civil wars.

Sadrist Shiites fighting SCIRI Shiites; tribal Sunnis fighting al-Qaeda Sunnis; Shiites fighting Sunnis and vice versa, EVERYBODY fighting the Americans and Brits, and so on.

We can't even pick a side to support, because there IS no "side."  It's not just Shiites and Sunnis.  We'll arrest Sadrists for torturing Sunnis and arrest Sunnis for bombing Sadrists and kill any of them who try to kill us.

We're just trying to survive.  Ask any grunt on the ground and they will tell you all the hell they want to do is make it home alive and in one piece and get their buddies home too.

As sectarian rivalries boil over, then these hatreds have become internalized, Stansfield writes.  We can see this when we read accounts of mixed marriages that suddenly fall apart because of family hatreds that did not exist before the war, or if they did, they were tucked away out of sight.  Neighbors killing neighbors they once accepted.  And so on.  This polarization soaks down into the individual psychic soul, as witnessed by the young Iraqi student in the news report.

They say they hate Americans for being the occupiers and, increasingly, poll that they think it's okay to attack Americans.  They demand that Americans leave.

But they are terrified that the Americans actually WILL.  Then there will be NO buffer between them and whichever sect opposes them.

In my previous post, I quoted a young Iraqi blogger who said that it is generally accepted that when American soldiers knock at your door, you heave a sigh of relief, because they can be trusted.

Not so the Iraqi army, because who can know which tribe or sect or imam they follow?  Which cabinet minister they place secret calls to?  Which militia leader whose orders they really follow?

This creates a new sort of Iraqi nationalism.  By that I mean, if you think of yourself as an Iraqi, you tend to think of yourself as a Sadrist Iraqi or a Baathist Sunni Iraqi or whatever.  You don't just automatically think of yourself as a nationalized entity.

In America, we've got all these minorities and ethnic groups and immigrant groups and political organizations and religions and so on, but at the end of the day, we all know what we mean when we say that we are Americans.  We are secure in that identity.

But try though this administration does to ignore it, that sort of Iraqi identity is now dead.  There is no longer any Iraqi.  There are only local identities.

Each of these tribal sects and divisions is struggling for power right now, and they're not just doing it in Parliament or in committee.  They have armed militias and powerful financial backers and their own charismatic leaders, as well as voting blocks in the government.

(And that doesn't even count outside Arab or Persian support for whichever entity.)

So you can't just come in and set up a benchmark of, say, approving a new oil law, and expect the "national" government of Nouri al-Maliki to pull together all those crumbling factions and get some sort of consensus.

Not unless you accept the reality that these divisions are powerful and must be reckoned with in their own rights.

This is what makes the central premise of the so-called military "surge" a false one.  (Is there any other kind that comes out of the White House?)

The idea of "stabilizing" Baghdad so that the "central government" can pass these U.S.-imposed benchmarks and thus get the country under control is bogus.

As we have seen, putting a platoon of U.S. soldiers on every street corner in Baghdad has not kept bad guys from fleeing to such godawful places as the Diyala province and blowing that place off the map and the thin line of Americans out there who are trying in vain to stabilize it. 

Joe Biden referred to it as a "water balloon."   Squeeze one end of the balloon, or the middle of it, and the water squishes out to the other ends.  You never get rid of the water in the balloon.

Unless, of course, the balloon pops.

Popular mythology propogated by the White House is counterproductive in many ways.  For example, Stansfield points out that Muqtada al-Sadr is not only powerful in his own right, but he is actually a NATIONALIST.  He does not welcome the influence of the Persians in Iran.

But the Bush administration continues to promulgate the idea that he is.  They overlook the fact that if he does indeed depend upon Iran for anything, it is out of bitter necessity and not out of loyalty or sense of community.

He should be reckoned with, and negotiated with, in his own right.  Certainly he weilds a great deal of power in the Iraqi parliament.  Trying to marginalize and shut out al-Sadr is not going to work in Baghdad the way marginalizing and shutting out people like Gen. Eric Shinseki or Colin Powell did in the Rumsfeld years.

Because al-Sadr is laying low right now, and his militia is too, the Bush administration is crowing that we are succeeding in breaking up his organization.

This is yet another arrogant mistake that will come to light in time.

What Stansfield points out is that each of these disparate power-units in Iraq, such as the Kurdish north and Sadrist Baghdad and SCIRI Basra and so on--each of these has now ASSUMED THE POWER OF NATION-STATES.  Each has his own security force, his own armed militia, his own block in Parliament, his own loyal imams, and so on.

Here in Texas, we're proud of the fact that we used to be our own country.  Had our own president and everything. 

Imagine if, now, we had our own army, our own charismatic leader --(I'm not nominating the moron governor Molly Ivins referred to as "Governor Good-Hair")--our own huge voting block in the Senate and Congress, our own religious identity, our own history, our own loyal populace, and so on?

And we liked to sneak across the New Mexico border and bomb the hell out of Santa Fe and Albuquerque now and then because, by God, WE HATE SKIERS!!!

But those pesky skiers, why, they frequently invaded our capitol city and beheaded as many folks as they could drag off the UT campus in retaliation.  (Which would be secretly okay to Aggies everywhere.)

And meanwhile, so did New York?  And so did Delaware, those spunky little fighters.

You get the picture.

Stansfield points out that you can't wishful-think these powerful entities away:

The result of this fracturing of state and society has been the devolution of power to localities and militias and the hardening of communal identities.  the problem for policy-makers wishing to promote a centralized state is that, once political power has devolved to localities and local political structures have become empowered and entrenched, it is exceptionally difficult to promote a voluntary 'recentralizing' of that power.  Rather, a more proactive way foward could be...to recognize the divisions that now exist...as at least semi-permanent...and formalize the emerging regional arrangements through the constitutional articles that enshrine federalism.

Stansfield points out that, the way Washington is looking at it, Iraq is federal in name only, with authority still resting in Baghdad.

But that doesn't work when, say, people in Austin and Santa Fe ignore the Washington establishment, raise their own armies, and set about trying to exterminate each other.  (Damn skiers.)

Throw rich oil reserves into the mix and you've got the making of a real fire.

Stansfield believes that the only real hope for any sort of coherent national policy is to draft an effective oil law.

But the Kurds, up north, who have had a stable society since the Gulf War, thanks to U.S. flyovers and protections, do not want to concede control of their bounty to the likes of Baghdad.

The Sunnis, out west, pretty much don't have any oil, at least, not yet, so they are desperate FOR a national plan that would equitably distribute oil revenues to the whole country.  Otherwise, they'll starve.

The Shiites down south want to hang on to their own oil reserves but the Baghdad Shiites hate the Basra Shiites and they know that if there's not a fair plan, they'll be living in slums for the rest of their history.

Stalemate.

"Kirkuk, federalism, and oil, combined with the security concerns, writes Stansfield, the targeting of Iran and the implementation of U.S.  policy in Iraq and the wider region, all come together in 2007, creating the likelihood that the situation in Iraq will get much worse before it can get better.  Many different agendas, processes and forces will converge in the near future, making it more likely that Iraq will lurch from crises to crises in 2007 than enjoy improved security and follow a constructive political process involving dialogue among its communities."

The truth of that statement hit home in an article in the Washington Post on Tueday, "Running Out of Time in Iraq," by David Ignatius.

On a recent trip to Baghdad, he described the faces of the Iraqi people in the streets as "a hollowed-out look of fear."

Following Adm. William Fallon ,the head of U.S. Central Command, around on visits to top Shiite and Sunni leaders, Ignatius writes:

The top Shiite and Sunni leaders each insisted that the other side is to blame for the violence that torments the country.  Each demanded that the other side make the first concessions.  Each voiced support for the surge of American troops while at the same time complaining that his own neighborhoods aren't much safer.

...A languid Shiite cleric who is the leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite party...told Fallon that "the real problem in Iraq is the Sunnis."  Even if the Shiites made concessions to the Sunnis by sharing oil revenue or easing de-Baathification..."the enemies will never accept."

...A few minutes later, Fallon was in the office of...the country's top Sunni leader...(who) came prepared with a list of concessions he wants from the Shiite prime minister..."The man in the driver's seat is the prime minister," he insisted.  "He should make the compromises."

After pointing out the vested interests--and meddling--from neighboring countries Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, Stansfield makes the interesting point that if the Americans pulled out of Iraq, the Saudis and the Iranians would fight each other by proxy in the civil wars in Iraq.

Which, frankly, is fine with me.  We've been fighting it for them.

In his conclusion, Stansfield reiterates the virtual powerlessness of the central government in Baghdad:

Many of the...cities of Iraq...Kirkuk, Mosul, Baqubah, Samara, Ramadi, and Basra, have become lawless theatres of inter-and intra-sectarian and inter-ethnic violent conflict.  They have fallen out of the orbit of the Iraqi government's control and instead succumbed to the power gained from the barrels of the guns of whichever group manages to dominate a particular area.

This reality will HAVE TO BE ACCEPTED "as a defining feature of Iraq's political structure.  It will need to be worked with rather than opposed," says Stansfield.

He says those leaders who have a credibility among a large segment of Iraq's population MUST be negotiated with as the only basis for stabilization in Iraq.

Those best-suited for those delicate negotiations, he points out, should be from neighboring countries, who share ethnic and cultural and religious ties.

Though such negotiations are ongoing "behind the scenes," Stansfield says they need to be "public and transparent."

He puts forth three aspects to this approach:

*find Sunni Arab representatives to participate in government

*recognize Muqtada al-Sadr as a legitimate political partner

*be more responsive to Kurdish concerns

These solutions, and others put forth by the Iraq Study Group, really have nothing to do with military might in Iraq.  While no one on either side has really called for a "precipitous withdrawal" of U.S. forces, there is an understanding that we just can't maintain these force levels indefinitely, or the American military will crumble like that proverbial cookie. 

The bottom line, as Stansfield says:  "THE SOLUTION TO IRAQ IS TO BE FOUND IN IRAQ ITSELF.  Iraqi solutions will need to be found to Iraqi problems.  These solutions will then neeed to be supported by regional powers and the U.S.  Devising U.S. or regional solutions according to the players' own interests, and imposing them upon Iraq, has been tried and has only served to destabilize the situation further."

It's time to accept reality in Iraq.

They may be saying, in effect, I hate you please don't leave me, but by staying, we are creating a false dependency, making them think that they CAN'T solve their problems without American soldiers and Marines on every corner, and this just is not true.

There are ways to make this work, but they have to start with accepting reality.

If we don't, then we will wind up as Anthony Cordesman stated in his own report, and quoted by Professor Stansfield:

"It is more than possible that a failed President and a failed administration will preside over a failed war for the second time since Vietnam."