Rumsfeld comes to Iraq… Again

Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rumsfeld’s visit to Bagh­dad today to talk about crony­ism and cor­rup­tion was really about Amer­i­can concerns

that Iraq could fall prey to polit­i­cal purges moti­vated by reli­gion, eth­nic­ity, tribal or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions that could upset the care­ful bal­ance being built.

Right. What Rummy is really warn­ing against is rad­i­cal de-Ba’athification, which is in the air these days. (Click that link, please?) Despite Amer­i­can pro­con­sul L. Paul Bremer’s orders in May 2003 to dis­solve the Ba’ath Party and sweep them into the dust­bin of his­tory, Amer­ica now finds itself in need of many of those guys it threw out in the street two years ago. For­mer Ba’athists fill top lead­er­ship spots in the new Iraqi Army and in the Inte­rior Min­istry, among other posi­tions. Edu­ca­tion and Health min­istries are full of ex-Ba’athists.
In other words, the United States, which spent bil­lions of dol­lars and lost more than 1,500 sol­diers to top­ple Saddam’s Ba’athist regime, is now warn­ing the new regime headed by reli­gious Shi’ite Ibrahim al-Jafari not to get rid of all of the Ba’athists.
Ironic, no?
It’s actu­ally not a bad idea to keep some of the old guard around, as long as they’re loyal and don’t have blood on their hands. But the Shi’ites are cir­cling and the guys who were party mem­bers before the war are get­ting ner­vous. So is the Defense Depart­ment, which doesn’t want to have to start over — again — two years after the war with a whole new cast of char­ac­ters in the Iraqi chain of com­mand to train.

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