Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: The situation for the United States in Iraq appears to have worsened.

INTER PRESS SERVICE
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26924
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (IPS) - While the world's attention has been focused
for the past 10 days on the catastrophic tsunamis in South Asia and
the subsequent relief efforts, the situation for the United States and
its dwindling number of allies in Iraq appears to have worsened.
The administration of President George W. Bush and its supporters
continue to insist that elections to a constitutional assembly
scheduled for Jan. 31 will turn the tide against the insurgency, even
as key figures in Baghdad's interim government, as well as outside
analysts, are expressing growing doubts about whether the poll should
even go ahead, given the deteriorating security situation.
Indeed, two weeks after a suicide bomber killed 18 U.S. troops and
contractors, as well as three Iraqi security personnel, at a military
base in Mosul, the ambush and killing in broad daylight Tuesday of the
governor of Baghdad, Ali Haidary, raised new questions about whether
even senior officials could be adequately protected less than four
weeks before the scheduled elections.
Haidary, a staunch U.S. ally, was the highest-ranking official to be
killed by insurgents since last May.
On the same day, five U.S. soldiers were killed in several incidents
around Iraq -- the worst toll since the Mosul bombing. And the number
of U.S. wounded in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, more than half
of whom have not returned to active duty due to the gravity of their
injuries, surpassed the 10,000 mark.
Meanwhile, Iraq's interim president, Ghazi Yawar, who Bush himself had
quoted just a week ago as being determined to proceed with the
elections, expressed renewed doubts Tuesday, telling Reuters that the
United Nations should ”stand up for their responsibilities and
obligations by saying whether (holding elections) is possible or not”.
He said it was a ”tough call”.
Yawar spoke a day after President Ayad Allawi himself telephoned Bush
on the latter's first day back at work after the Christmas holidays
about what White House officials described as ”impediments” to pulling
off the elections given the prevailing insecurity and the growing
likelihood that the Sunni population -- about 20 percent of Iraq's
voters -- is unlikely to participate.
Two days before, another long-time U.S. favourite who played a leading
role in the transition from the formal occupation to the formation of
the interim government last June, Adnan Pachachi, expressly urged the
administration to put off the vote to enhance the chances for Sunni
participation and get the security situation under control. ”That
situation has deteriorated significantly,” stressed the veteran Sunni
politician and former foreign minister in a column published in the
Washington Post entitled 'Delay the Elections'.
And, as if to underline the security problem, the interim government's
intelligence chief, Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, told a Saudi newspaper
this week that he believed that U.S. and Iraqi forces were facing as
many as 40,000 ”hard-core fighters” -- twice Washington's previous
biggest estimate -- backed by as many as 150,000 to 200,000 others who
acted as part-time guerillas, spies, and logistics personnel. He
blamed the growth in the insurgency on a ”resurgent Baath Party” under
the direction of former officials, some of whom he said, are based in
Syria.
”I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq,”
Shahwani said.
If even remotely accurate -- and U.S. officials were quick to cast
doubt on Shahwani's claims, although they did not deny them either --
those numbers should discourage the U.S. military, since basic
doctrine calls for a 10:1 troop-rebel ratio to control and eventually
defeat an insurgency. Washington currently has 150,000 troops in Iraq.
What's worse, the insurgency, by virtually all accounts, is actually
growing.
”Until now, the best efforts of the United States and the emerging
Iraqi army have not succeeded in preventing the growth of the
insurgency,” noted Robert Killebrew, a retired Army colonel and
counter-insurgency specialist, who believes that even if the elections
come off, Washington may well soon face the greater danger of a
region-wide insurgency.
Killebrew, whose theories will be featured next week at a forum at the
influential neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
argues that the only way to redress the situation is to increase
Washington's, as well as the Iraqi government's, troop strength, close
the borders with Iran and Syria, and threaten Iraq's neighbours with
retaliation if they provide support or safe haven to the insurgency.
He also favours substantially expanding the U.S. military as a signal
of ”national will”.
But to other counter-insurgency specialists who believe that
Washington might still snatch some modicum of victory from the jaws of
defeat, increasing U.S. forces and influence in Iraq at this point is
likely to be counter-productive, if only because Washington's actions
have so thoroughly alienated so much of Iraq's population.
”The beginning of wisdom,” wrote James Dobbins, an analyst at the Rand
Corporation who served as U.S. special envoy in a host of hotspots
from the Balkans to Afghanistan, in the latest 'Foreign Affairs'
magazine, ”is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one
that the United States can win.
”As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and
inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's
confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back,”
according to Dobbins, who argued that the situation can still be saved
”but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their
efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the
support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing
their dependence on the United States.”
From Anthony Cordesman, a highly regarded military expert on the
Middle East at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS), also argues that eventual success will depend on Iraqis
themselves taking control, mostly through the creation of ”larger and
more effective Iraqi forces as soon as possible” and far more
effective governance than the interim regime has been capable of to
date.
”The nature of both the insurgency in Iraq and Iraqi politics makes it
all too clear...that only Iraqi forces can minimize the anger and
resentment at U.S. forces, give the emerging Iraqi government
legitimacy, and support efforts to make that government and the Iraqi
political system more inclusive,” Cordesman wrote in his latest
analysis. ”It is also clear that even the segments of Iraqi society
that tolerate Coalition forces as a necessity today want them out as
quickly as is practical”. (END
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          Io riconosco e mi vanto di possedere uno spirito nobile ed alacre: e
aggiungo che il giorno in cui non mi sentissi più stimolato da questa
inquietudine mi riterrei diminuito e liquidato.
Io non mi "adagio" mai in nessuna posizione; non mi siedo non mi addormento
sul già raggiunto; non sono un impiegato tardo e marginatore di pratiche, ma
un camminante che non riconosce mai nella meta raggiunta, quella definitiva
o suprema.
Ho l'orgoglio di aggiungere a questo quadro auto-biografico che non mi
mancano e volontà e tenacia. Sono trenta mesi oramai che io, giorno per
giorno, implacabilmente, ho tenuto fermo nella battaglia contro le forze che
minacciavano di rovina la Nazione. Trenta mesi di duro lavoro, di quotidiano
lavoro, alternato da vittorie e da sconfitte; confortato talvolta da vasti
consensi, gelato talora da isolamenti improvvisi. E non ho mai piegato.
Sono infiniti i campi nei quali possiamo applicare le nostre energie.
Comprendo e compiango quelli che non sanno astrarre dai loro ambienti, vi si
inchiodano e non vedono altro, e non credono alla esistenza di un più vasto
e complesso e formidabile mondo. Sono i riflessi del campanilismo, riflessi
che sono estranei a noi, che vogliamo sprovincializzare l'Italia e
proiettarla come "entità nazionale" , come blocco fuso oltre i mari e oltre
le Alpi.
Ma l'uomo che ha fondato e diretto un movimento e gli ha dato fior di
energia, ha diritto di prescindere dalle analisi di mille elementi locali
per vedere il panorama politico e morale nella sua antitesi; ha il diritto
di vedere dall'alto di una montagna, cioé da un ampio orizzonte, il
panorama, che non é di Bologna o di Venezia o di Cuneo, ma é italiano, ma é
europeo, ma é mondiale. "
(Benito Mussolini, 19 agosto 1921 - Diario della Volontà).
 
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