Master plan

By now you'll probably know that Bush has at last announced the new new new new strategy for Iraq. It's been pretty much universally panned from what I can tell. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. On the one hand, here is a guy who is doing what his electorate clearly don't want him to be doing. The Democrats did so well in November's congressional elections largely on the basis of their Iraq opposition and their argument in favour of getting US troops out of Iraq. So it doesn't say much about the health of their democracy is you've got this cowboy carrying on with doing things his way. The Iraq Study Group's report also backed a troop withdrawal, but Bush kept waiting until he got a report that supported his wish to carry on and, it seems, even escalate the number of troops.

On the other hand, and I doubt I will ever say this about Bush and Cheney again, I think this is the right plan, if it is carried out properly and also with a degree of reliance on luck. It seems to me to be the least bad option and with good fortune might help to improve things here in the long run. It might of course make matters here no better, but that seems to be what any other plan's guaranteed outcome would be. All the headlines have been about the troop numbers, but that's only a part of what is happening this time. If anything, they should probably send at least 30 or 40 thousand more, but that was always unlikely. There are 2 reasons this plan might work: first, this time there is a real desire to deal with the militias, in particular the Mahdi Army. Whether that is going to happen depends entirely on the Iraqi government. They've shown no inclination to deal with it before, but it's pretty clear that if they don't do something about it then their days as a government will be numbered. They're losing support from the US and, importantly, from their own people, so this is really their last chance to pull finger and do it. The other reason I think this is a starter is that at the same time as they're (hopefully) dealing with the militias, they're also trying to get factories open and Iraqis back into work. If there is work for desperate men that means they won't have to rely on the militias, then the militias can be dealt with by lack of recruits as well as depriving them of political power.

Of course, it's a long shot. But early signs are potentially encouraging. Mahdi Army are apparently going to be keeping a low profile when the extra troops arrive. If the most can be made of that (presumably) more stable time to get the factories up and running and even electricity production increased, then by the time the troops leave there will be less chance of the militias operating as they have been. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but it makes better sense to me than anything else that's been tried.

For now, though, it's still going ape shit out there. Yesterday 70 people were killed and twice as many injured when two bombs went off at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. I heard that Sunnis were being blamed for that but that doesn't make much sense. For one, the Sunnis are if anything more affiliated than anyone else at universities, and it was Sunnis who had the vast majority of the teaching jobs at universities in Baghdad before the invasion. Most of them have now fled to Jordan. Also I think the Ministry of Education is Sunni controlled as well, and when you hear about universities or academics being the target of violence, they're usually Sunnis that get killed. This time it was a mixture of Sunni, Shia and Kurds, so it may well be that terrorists from outside Iraq were responsible. At least that's the theory in a logical place but Baghdad tends to defy all logic these days.

This afternoon a couple of bombs went off, the one below in Sadr City killing 15. I saw the plumes of smoke and wondered what the hell it was. It doesn't take long to log on and find out. I remember when I first came to Baghdad I saw some plumes of smoke and wondered whether they were from bombs or simply fires. I don't tend to question it anymore.