Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007 By ROBERT BAER
A Sunni volunteer refuses to be photographed in Muqdadiyah, Iraq.<...>
If I hadn't read it in Tuesday's White House press briefing, I would have taken the whole thing as a hoax. But indeed, on Tuesday Bush met with the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Abd al-Aziz Hakim, to discuss the "tribal awakening."
Never mind that the last thing Hakim wants to do is hand power over to the tribes, his real objective being to turn Iraq into a Shi'a Islamic republic. Or that Iraq's tribes are no more ready than any other Iraqis to share power, equitably divide Iraq's oil revenues, or compromise on any of the other issues that are causing Iraqis to kill each other.
I know what life raft Bush is clinging to. The Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar province have in fact turned against the insurgency, and, yes, brought down the level of violence. But that doesn't mean Fallujah has turned into Crawford, Texas. Nor have the bombings in Baghdad stopped, even if the tribes have helped walk Iraq back from the abyss.
The Bush administration would like us to believe we picked up a new ally in the war on terrorism, that there's momentum on our side. In fact, the Administration has been so encouraged by the success in Anbar that it intends to use it as a template in Pakistan. In 2008, the Pentagon will nearly double the money it gives to the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani paramilitary force recruited from the tribes along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The Pentagon is hoping they will do what Pakistan's army couldn't, find bin Laden and drive the Taliban out into the open.
Before Bush puts on a burnoose and starts thinking he's Lawrence of Arabia, he needs to understand that Anbar's tribes came over to our side because they figured out that the only thing that stands between them and getting crushed by the Shia is our troops. They don't really care about our war on terrorism. He should also keep in mind that an estimated 40% or so of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudis, another tribe that happens to be fighting on the wrong side. Tribes are tricky like that.
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