Bill Nelson and Jim Webb sit on both the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services committees. Yesterday they questioned Condi Rice as part of Joe Biden’s Foreign Relations committee. Today they questioned Robert Gates and Peter Pace as part of Carl Levin’s Armed Services committee. Nelson noted the radical difference in tone between the two hearings. Gates is getting a lot of respect and deference. Rice received little more than incredulity.
Gates and Pace have their story down pat. This is their argument. Prime Minister Maliki wanted to do a major military mobilization in Baghdad in an effort to stop the sectarian bloodshed. But, according to Gates and Pace, when his military and security experts sat down to plan it out they realized that they didn’t have the capability. So, they asked the Americans to send 20,000 more troops. This is not an honest account of what happened. At best, it is incomplete and badly misleading.
Senator Susan Collins, who sits on Armed Services, noted that she talked to Maliki three weeks ago and that he did not want any additional troops. Secretary Gates admits that Maliki originally wanted to do this mission without American troops. In fact, Gates admits that Maliki told him that he didn’t understand how he could be held responsible for mayhem in Iraq if he couldn’t even take command of his troops.
What I believe happened is that the Saudi Arabians intervened in this process. When they found out that Maliki was about to unleash the Iraq army on the Sunnis of Baghdad they threw a fit. I can’t say I blame them. It started on November 25th, 2006 when the Saudis summoned Dick Cheney to Riyadh and reportedly warned him that they would financially back Sunni insurgents against Maliki’s government if we didn’t rein him in.
The Saudis fired another shot across Cheney’s bow on November 28th, when Saudi advisor Nawaf Obeid wrote an editorial. Ostensibly he was warning us not to initiate a phased withdrawal, but the context suggests that they were warning us off Maliki’s plan to crackdown on Sunnis in Baghdad.
Because King Abdullah has been working to minimize sectarian tensions in Iraq and reconcile Sunni and Shiite communities, because he gave President Bush his word that he wouldn’t meddle in Iraq (and because it would be impossible to ensure that Saudi-funded militias wouldn’t attack U.S. troops), these requests [for aid to Iraqi Sunnis] have all been refused. They will, however, be heeded if American troops begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
Then on
December 1st, 2006, Robin Wright wrote an article called U.S. Considers Ending Outreach to Insurgents. Wright reported that the State Department had produced a report (originating with 9/11 Commission director Philip Zelikow) nicknamed the 80% solution.
The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal.
Some insiders call the proposal the “80 percent” solution, a term that makes other parties to the White House policy review cringe. Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people.
Things got worse on December 12th, 2006, when Michael Fletcher reported that Bush was delaying his plan for Iraq.
In its policy review, the administration is focusing closely on the “80 percent solution,” that would bolster the political center of Iraq and effectively leave in charge the Shiite and Kurdish parties that account for 80 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people and that won elections a year ago. Vice President Cheney’s office has vigorously argued for the plan.
The same day Robin Wright reported the abrupt resignation of Saudi Ambassador Turki al-Faisal. The spin was that it was all a disagreement between al-Faisal and Prince Bandar, but it occurred in the context of this fight over Cheney and Zelikow’s 80% Solution.
In my opinion, the present escalation in Iraq signals, somewhat counterintuitively, that the Saudis finally managed to prevail over Cheney. Instead of leaving the Shi’ite government free to crush the Sunnis, we will embed our troops in with the Shi’ites. There is a bunch of rhetoric about how the Iraqi army will take on Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shi’ite militias. That remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any Senators asking questions about the role of the Saudis in this escalation. I believe they are behind it. And I believe they insisted on it as a way to protect the Sunni minority in Iraq.