Timothy Garton Ash: Faced with the tragedy of Iraq, the US must rethink its whole foreign policy
You think you've reached bottom, then you hear knocking from underneath. As I follow the news from Iraq, and the American debate about it, I fear that the worst is still to come. Here's the latest twist. In desperation, and since the surge is not having the desired effect, the US military is now arming and funding Sunni gangs to help them fight other Sunni gangs linked to al-Qaida. The enemy of my enemy is my friend - even if, until only yesterday, he was the enemy I had claimed to be defeating. But how will the US military know they are not supporting killers who have the blood of American soldiers on their hands? Ah, because they will use biometric tests - retina scans and fingerprinting - on those they are arming. How reassuring.
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In the short term, this modern version of a 19th century British colonial technique may actually serve to beat back the al-Qaida-related bands, as it reportedly has in Anbar province. But in the medium term, it can only fuel the civil war that most observers expect to erupt with full fury as American and British forces pull back. And that's in addition to arming the largely Shia forces of the Iraqi army. One way or another, Americans are giving Iraqis more weapons with which they can kill each other. After yesterday's attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, another round of Sunni-Shia violence must be expected.
The surge is due to be over next April. A new president will be elected in November. What will he or she do about it? Let's start with the she. "What I'm trying to do now," said Hillary Clinton in a discussion broadcast by CNN last week, "is to figure out how we get out of Iraq and how we get out as soon as possible." Well, that's clear enough. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are talking a very different language: one of resolution, staying the course and winning the fight. But some of their lesser-known Republican competitors have other ideas.
Senator Sam Brownback, for example, proposes partition into three states: Kurdish, Sunni and Shia. Tommy Thompson, a former secretary of health and human services, says each of the 18 territories in Iraq should elect its own leaders, "and if they do so, the Shias will elect Shias, Sunnis will elect Sunnis, Kurds will elect Kurds. And you know something? People will go to those particular territories, and you get rid of this civil war." Get rid of it by ethnic cleansing, that is.
On the ground in Iraq, the bright ideas of distant politicians can be written out in blood. McCain himself sees and warns against this. "You would have to divide bedrooms in Baghdad," he says, "because Sunni and Shia are married to each other." If the United States followed Brownback's proposal, "you [would] withdraw to the borders and watch genocide take place inside Baghdad". But it may yet come to that, even if it is only to the Green Zone that US troops withdraw - and McCain has not convincingly told us how he would prevent it. Already there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, wounded and bereaved. An estimated 2 million Iraqis have fled the country and another 2 million are internally displaced. It can hardly get worse, we say. Then it does.
I hope very much that I am wrong, but it now seems likely that future historians will see Iraq as an American defeat as big as that in Vietnam, though different in kind. It's not yet, and may never be, a case of the helicopters taking off from the flat roof of the embassy in Baghdad - as happened in Saigon - but it's already something tragic and pitiful. The most powerful military in the history of humankind, with a total budget now in the order of $500bn a year, is reduced to handing out arms to local brigands in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of violence and anarchy. Thereby it piles up more tinder for future violence and anarchy.
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In the short term, this modern version of a 19th century British colonial technique may actually serve to beat back the al-Qaida-related bands, as it reportedly has in Anbar province. But in the medium term, it can only fuel the civil war that most observers expect to erupt with full fury as American and British forces pull back. And that's in addition to arming the largely Shia forces of the Iraqi army. One way or another, Americans are giving Iraqis more weapons with which they can kill each other. After yesterday's attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, another round of Sunni-Shia violence must be expected.
The surge is due to be over next April. A new president will be elected in November. What will he or she do about it? Let's start with the she. "What I'm trying to do now," said Hillary Clinton in a discussion broadcast by CNN last week, "is to figure out how we get out of Iraq and how we get out as soon as possible." Well, that's clear enough. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are talking a very different language: one of resolution, staying the course and winning the fight. But some of their lesser-known Republican competitors have other ideas.
Senator Sam Brownback, for example, proposes partition into three states: Kurdish, Sunni and Shia. Tommy Thompson, a former secretary of health and human services, says each of the 18 territories in Iraq should elect its own leaders, "and if they do so, the Shias will elect Shias, Sunnis will elect Sunnis, Kurds will elect Kurds. And you know something? People will go to those particular territories, and you get rid of this civil war." Get rid of it by ethnic cleansing, that is.
On the ground in Iraq, the bright ideas of distant politicians can be written out in blood. McCain himself sees and warns against this. "You would have to divide bedrooms in Baghdad," he says, "because Sunni and Shia are married to each other." If the United States followed Brownback's proposal, "you [would] withdraw to the borders and watch genocide take place inside Baghdad". But it may yet come to that, even if it is only to the Green Zone that US troops withdraw - and McCain has not convincingly told us how he would prevent it. Already there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, wounded and bereaved. An estimated 2 million Iraqis have fled the country and another 2 million are internally displaced. It can hardly get worse, we say. Then it does.
I hope very much that I am wrong, but it now seems likely that future historians will see Iraq as an American defeat as big as that in Vietnam, though different in kind. It's not yet, and may never be, a case of the helicopters taking off from the flat roof of the embassy in Baghdad - as happened in Saigon - but it's already something tragic and pitiful. The most powerful military in the history of humankind, with a total budget now in the order of $500bn a year, is reduced to handing out arms to local brigands in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of violence and anarchy. Thereby it piles up more tinder for future violence and anarchy.