There are a disturbing number of dots to try to connect this month when it comes to the future of Iraq. The picture those dots form could very well be titled “Occupation in Perpetuity” but the fine details of the next 12 months or so are still cloudy.
But a possible explanation for the not exactly “slow” news month of August has been put forth by Professor Juan Cole and it’s a classic golden oldies play: a coming military coup in Iraq in order to create a strong central government alternative to Nouri al-Maliki’s three-ring circus.
A rumor is circulating among well-connected and formerly high-level Iraqi bureaucrats in exile in places like Damascus that a military coup is being prepared for Iraq. I received the following from a reliable, knowledgeable contact. There is no certitude that this plan can or will be implemented. That it is being discussed at high levels seems highly likely.
“There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak. . . [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]
The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes.
The plan includes a two-year period during which political parties would not be permitted to be part of the government, but instead would prepare and strengthen the parties for an election which would not have lists, but real people running for real seats. The two year period would be designed to take control of security and restore infrastructure.
. . .[I]t is another [desperate plan], but one which many many Iraqis will support, since they are sick of their country being pulled apart by the “imports” – Maliki, Allawi, Jaafari et al. The military group is composed of internals, people who have the goal of securing the country even at the risk of no democracy, so they say. “
Now, John Cole isn’t given to Drudge-like superlative insanity. The key is, as Cole points out, that this is being discussed. And the more I think about this, the more a coup to replace Maliki with a military council (which of course would need a leader or spokesman) may be in the works.
It’s the consequences of a coup that brings up some very chilling possibilities, as well as explaining many of the arguably strange actions of the Bush administration in recent weeks.
Of course, if the recent announcements of both Karl Rove and Tony Snow are explained by Maliki being on the way out, it implies foreknowledge of the Iraqi PM’s exit by the President and his men. It also means that since the US is nominally in charge of “Iraqi security” still, that the US would not only have to allow a coup to happen, but would have to actively engineer it.
That’s a pretty huge leap of logic. But it’s an option that makes a lot of sense from the position of Bush’s supposition that we must remain in Iraq.
It gives the surge political cover. For “stability in the region”, our troops would have to remain in order to work with the new government. Remember that the line out of Washington this week is that while there’s “modest” improvement on the ground, Maliki needs to be shown the door. Even if the coup rumor has no basis, there’s plenty of talk about who would replace Maliki. Already, the instability of Maliki’s job security is prompting calls for another Friedman Unit or two in Iraq.
Replacing Maliki, either through a coup, a collapse that brings in Allawi, or through some other means would basically cement our presence in Iraq through 2009. In addition, whoever is in charge of Iraq afterwards would have A) every effort to be on their best behavior, B) would nominally have been vetted by the US to begin with and C) would be eager to enact what the US wanted in the first place: the oil agreements that have stalled and died in Iraq’s parliament.
It also leaves a very convenient scapegoat for the GOP. “See, all the past failures of Iraq over the last two years, that was all Maliki’s fault. So you can’t blame us. We’re trying to help the new guys maintain stability.”
So why the coup? If replacing Maliki is as simple as letting Ayad Allawi get back in charge, that could be done without the need for the massive chaos a military coup would cause. The key may be the chaos itself. The Devil’s advocate position seems to dictate that if the coup could somehow be tied to Iran through the collapse of the “duly elected Maliki government” then we’d have yet another “casus belli” for attacking Iran and expanding the war.
Could the fall of the Maliki government and the resulting coup be the trigger that would put us on course for bombing the IRGC? I’m not sure, but it would definitely be something an increasingly desperate Bush might be willing to do in order to force us to remain in Iraq and expand the war to Iran.
It would explain why Karl Rove and Tony Snow got cold feet, why the IRGC is being targeted as a “terrorist group”, why the White House has soured on Maliki and why the hard sell on the Long War is going full blast. While replacing Maliki in a less violent manner would achieve some of these goals, a coup could be used to not only get everything the Bush administration wants in Iraq, but everything Cheney wants in Iran.
Would the Bush administration go that far? A coup of that magnitude wouldn’t just “happen” under the noses of 160,000+ US troops and support personnel…not unless it was meant to happen.
It certainly seems Maliki’s days are numbered however.
Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job of detailing the effort to get rid of Maliki and replace him with Ayad Allawi.
Most extraordinary of all is how deceitful this whole process is. As CNN reports: “The lobbying firm boasts the services of two onetime foreign policy hands of President Bush: Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the former Deputy National Security Adviser, and Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
But currently, Zelikow in particular runs around Washington holding himself out — and being held out — as an Expert on the Future of Iraq while concealing that his firm is being paid by Allawi to undermine Maliki. As but one example, Zelikow was a featured Iraq Expert on ABC News with Charles Gibson three nights ago, on Monday.
Reporter Martha Raddatz narrated the story which began (via LEXIS): “today, for the first time, President Bush said Maliki could be replaced.” The story then flashed to Michael O’Hanlon, who said: “I think Mr. Bush made a very significant change in his policy today. He made it clear that his support for al-Maliki is on very thin ice.”
Perhaps this effort is being done to indeed set Maliki up for a coup, and make sure he’s replaced with who the US wants: Ayad Allawi. The truth of the matter may be somewhere between a tacit military effort to overthrow Maliki and a purely political implicit overthrow by forces in the US.
Either way, Nouri al-Maliki is being set up as the fall guy for all of Bush’s problems in Iraq, while serving as a reason to delay our withdrawal and even expand the war.