U.S. Foreign Policy in Iraq: Which Way Forward?

And I might do two things with this discussion. One is sort of just give a brief background discussion on how the surge developed the idea of a surge. The ideal person to do this would be my partner and good friend Brother Kagan because Fred is really was the driving force behind the offering what I would call the ultimate Iraq Study Group report which turned in to the surge. I had something to do with it but Fred certainly carried by the overwhelming weight of this, with his military knowledge combined with the General Jack Keane that produced the surge report which then went on through the process of mutation and mutation is always better with anything dealing with the government to produce, I think, the surge that you now see which doesn't mirror perfectly that which had been recommended by Fred Kagan and General Keane. I would just note because there is there has been some sort of sort of odd commentary out there about what happened today. Yeah which is where the all the leg work was done for producing this alternate strategy of a surge and some of it's conspiratorial, some would lie. I mean initially what happened is that the there had been in the words in that a desire to actually have a much more thorough critique of what America was doing on the ground in Iraq. I can say for certain that inside of the Iraq Study Group one of the things which was a bit dismaying was to see what I thought was a lack of certain rigor in detail when it came to assessing what America had been doing since the fall of 2003. You would think that if the Baker-Hamilton report which was going to critique what America had done wrong and it wanted to recommend something for America to do better, that you would at least sit down and look at all the campaigns that the Americans had engaged in, both successful and unsuccessful and explain why when something worked, why it worked and something failed, why it failed. That didn't happen inside the Iraq Study Group. In fact only very late in the game were military folks called forward to really get serious commentary. There was brief discussion about Baghdad I remember some of the principals of the group went out there for a very short visit, they never really went beyond green zone and they had the commentary with senior officers, really not operation level. Senior officers certainly have their own disposition and not necessarily the end-all and be-all of getting truthful comments on what's worked and what's failed. What Fred Kagan did with general [0:03:44] (audio break); is under the auspices of a as we pull together what you might call sort of the dissident crowd in Sinka (ph). We certainly pulled together officers who who had a played a pivotal part in the command and the role of the battle of Tal Afar which is the one that president Bush referred to in his speech. It was a successful campaign and these were the officers who were intimately involved with that campaign that we brought in and then we exhaustively went thorough not only their operations but previous and later operations in Baghdad. In particular we went through in detail, district by district, the operations that occurred last summer in Baghdad and looked at what was right and what was wrong. Now, needless to say, if one is familiar with both the campaign at Tal Afar and other counter insurgency efforts in Iraq the theme that comes through over and over and over again, it's not the only one but it's the principal one, is that when Americans fail they fail primarily for one reason and that is they don't have enough troops. What happened time and time again is that the Americans had sufficient troops to clear. The Americans actually have a pretty good idea how to clear neighborhoods in Baghdad. They have done it repeatedly, it works. The problem is, is that they didn't delegate because they do not have sufficient troop strength. They didn't delegate this to the Iraqis and most egregiously to the Iraqi police force, which needless to say, is a compromised organization. And for very understandable reasons has links to various Shiite militias, most famously to the Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr. Needless to say when you have the Americans go clear out a Sunni insurgent neighborhood and then the Americans leave and essentially have removed the armed Sunni forces in those neighborhoods, guess what, Shiite militias, particularly the most vicious ones are predators and they swoop into those areas which are now left unprotected and they go after the Sunnis in great wrath of vengeance. Now what the Americans have realized and we all do these things, you know, empirically and experimentally is that you have to have greater troop strength. And the way you block, whenever the Americans were there, for example, in any numbers, and they didn't have to be particularly great numbers but when the Americans there were any numbers, guess what the militias didn't come because they were scared particularly the Mahdi army. I mean the Mahdi army has actually exercised a great deal of caution towards American forces since the summer of 2004 when the Americans mauled them down in Najaf and killed upwards of probably 9000 to 10000 of their forces. This has had a permanent effect, it appears upon the calculations of the Mahdi army and how they confront American soldiers and in fact since that time their confrontations with Americans have been for the most part indirect or through, you know, explosive devices. So the Americans have, I mean, it didn't take a great deal of rocket science to figure out that if you are going to be serious about restoring order to Baghdad you are going to have to have greater troop strength. Now on just a factual issue, the discussion of how many troops are going to be in Baghdad has probably been intentionally low-balled by the Pentagon. You often see, I was just reading something, I can't remember whether it was the New York Times or the Washington Post this morning and it suggested that they were only going to be 17500 more troops in Baghdad. That's probably not true. The real figures for troop deployment, combat troop deployment are probably going to be between 30 and 37000 of which, probably, around 30000 are going to go to Baghdad. Petraeus it appears is going to have a pretty free hand in this and certainly if you just calculate up brigade strength, I mean the proper accounting for a brigade is 6000 soldiers, for some odd reason certain people in the Pentagon reduce that number to around 3500 which makes no sense, it's 6000 forces. Now if, in fact, you get fire brigades in Baghdad you are going to get 30000 men in Baghdad. You may get one to two other brigades, there is people are now talking battalions we will see for the rest of Anbar province. What I suggest to you is actually the probably the easier part of this affair. Assuming that we don't screw it up by a slow delivery of forces, assuming that those senior military officers who have been dead set against a surge, most importantly General Abizaid is really for now out of the picture, though his influence is certainly felt in General Casey. More particularly who, if confirmed, and I don't think he has been confirmed yet will become the Chief of Staff of the Army. Assuming that these gentlemen and their supporters inside the military do not stop General Petraeus and do not figure out a way to bush rack the project, then, I think, probably the easiest part of what the Americans are going to undertake is actually substantially reducing the violence in Baghdad. I think you probably will see that, that violence drop off significantly. And in that measure, I think, the proper measure of victory right now and these things are gradual but in the short term all you want to see, I would argue, a good definition of victory is if the greatest foreign correspondent who is in Baghdad, John Fisher Burns who is the Bureau of Chief for the New York Times. If John can walk out of his compound and not get shot, kidnapped or decapitated and can actually report on Baghdad. Then I think you will see a significant shift in the mentality about what is possible and what is not possible in Iraq. You will also have fulfilled at least the key element of what I call Hobbes 101. I mean, I think the discussion so far in Washington has been a bit a bit surreal on this subject and this is largely again, I think, owing to the strategy and tactics developed by General Abizaid, Generals Abizaid and Casey and Mr. Rumsfeld. Let us not forget him, he is too what's force of nature and a very powerful force here. That because, in fact, they didn't they didn't want to deploy a great many troops in the beginning because General Abizaid in particular had developed this light-footprint approach which is I might call it a little bit meanly. What I would call the counter-insurgency strategy of the Harvard Department of Near Eastern studies, which is, if the best way that you you diminish violence is by having fewer troops. That is the presence of Americans that provoke violence and if you reduce the number of Americans, the natives will be happier and there will be less violence. Now the only problem with this theory is that since this fall of 2003 it has been rigorously tested throughout Iraq, but particularly in Baghdad and we have seen that's the opposite of that. We have seen what you might call more classic approach, the issue of counter-insurgency and that is as the Americans started to reduce numbers in Baghdad, as Americans started to reduce the number of checkpoints, the number of patrols, guess what happens. Violence skyrocketed. I think it could have been predicted, but this is not the way they wanted to go and more importantly this married and, I think, General Abizaid is very sincere in believing this approach. But it married very nicely with the desire in the Pentagon and certainly in Secretary Rumsfeld's office to keep the number of troops in Iraq to a minimum. So you had theory combining with the in at least for, I think, for Secretary Rumsfeld the larger issue of keeping numbers down because guess what, if you design an army to engage an occupation and counter-insurgency you are going to design an army which is fairly large. You are also going to spend lots of money on soldiers and you are going to spend a lot less money on military hardware, on what the Secretary Rumsfeld was very fond of and that sort of you know doing a lot more with a lot less having a lot more hi-tech and a lot of fewer, what might be called, you know, sort of primitive traditional forces which are of course ideal for counter-insurgency. That has and we still have we still without a doubt have a certain predicament here and that it would be a lot better for the Americans and for the Iraqi if the U.S could deploy more than say 37000 combat troops in Iraq. However, we are going to operate with what we have and it is a decent bet that if you can't get Baghdad under control that you can change the dynamic. It's by no mean certain, but if you don't get Baghdad under control you cannot change the dynamic. It is impossible to do anything in Iraq unless Baghdad is brought back to some more reasonable normal order, you just won't go anywhere. It is impossible to have any type of political discussion and as I perhaps should have said earlier part of this light footprint approach, the political as part of it was that you were going to have a political solution to the military problem. I mean, if one of the striking things and I would describe is somewhat dismaying things about listening to American, Senior American Commanders since 2003 is how quickly they tell you that there is only a political solution that is there is no military solution. I would prefer in general to have my military officers be somewhat less sociologically advanced and say that, you know, maybe there is a military solution to this and politics will come secondarily. If they err I would further for them to err in that direction than the other. And one of the things we have, of course, have seen is, you know, needless to say again its Hobbes 101 that when you have escalating violence, guess what, politics doesn't work too well. And while we have seen in Iraq is and the most damaging thing we have seen and is the radicalization of Shia. I mean literally for almost two years the Shia took it left and right. I mean they simply turned the other cheek, they were being mauled. They were being blown up, the women and children were being killed at a rapid rate, and anyone who knows the Middle-East knows that if you start slaughtering women and children in any large number, guess what, men are going to get really bad. I mean, I think if a comparable thing were happening in Texas, I mean just imagine that for a moment. That if for two years we had a Mexican you know, revisionist movement that was bombing, sending suicide bombers in downtown Houston against woman and children, slaughtering Texas officials and blowing up the lone star state's energy industry. I suspect the response by Texans would not be, to put it politely, pretty. And guess what the response in Iraq amongst the Shia has not been pretty and it was, you know, it shouldn't have taken a great deal of foresight to see this coming. So the issue, the principal issue now in Iraq, I would argue, is can this surge, this escalation and I have by the way I would like to put escalation. There are lots, and the Democrats try to use this word in trying to bring up, you know, illusions to Iraq, to scare people, but I think escalation is fine. If you look in the Webster's or the Oxford English dictionary that the idea of escalation, I think, is just what we want in Iraq. So anybody wants to use the word escalation I think it's fine. Excuse me, it actually suggests a better idea than surge because if this works ideally or even if it just works, one thing that it will translate into is that America soldiers will definitely be in Iraq for a lot longer, not a lot shorter period of time. And that guess what, the both the Democrats and Republicans, they will have to deal with this issue in 2008. And that is, by the way, something that it goes unspoken, I think, in Washington that is, if this is a success, it means Americans aren't coming home anytime soon. The only scenario that it was at all reasonable is that if we failed, you know, could America, you know, withdraw from Iraq with a tail between its legs. If this actually succeeds and that is as you do restore order in Baghdad and you slowly develop a plan to move out into Anbar province, into the Sunni triangle, to stop the insurgency because if you don't batter down the insurgency you are never going to be able to stop the radicalization of the Shia. All right the radicalization of Shia have gone a long way. They will it will continue to gain speed and if it gains speed then you will lose Iraq. Because if, in fact, it gets to that point that the entire traditional structure inside of the Shia community in Iraq collapses then you will have the eventual fire that I would argue will consume the entire country. That hasn't happened yet. I mean contrary to much of the usual commentary on Iraq, the opposite could be said to happen in the last year. And that is when we had the attack on the holy shrine in Samarra in February of 2006 it looked like that's Grand Ayatollah Sistani was going down and that his influence inside of the Iraqi Shia community was going to approach zero pretty quickly, because he had recommended patience, he had recommended turning the other cheek and, guess what, it happened tens of thousands of Shia had been slaughtered. They hadn't struck back and the shrine, which is the most Shiite shrine in all of Iraq which was increasingly it was hit. You could hit Samarra without damaging any part of Sunni history. You cannot hit, and also it's much more difficult to hit, either Najaf or Karbala because those both of those things would touch upon Sunni tradition as well as the Shia tradition you would be attacking shrines dedicated to the descendents the prophet. In Samarra that was not that was not the case and also Samara was in the custody of Sunnis that has always been in the custody of Sunnis to protect or at least in modern times. And that made that target particularly attractive and when it went it down the scaring that was done inside of the Shiites community, I think, cannot be over stated. But guess what, this following year despite all of that has not lead to the collapse of the traditional order and you know that because you have seen people like Sadr and his men and scary still go see Sistani, still asks for his blessings on legislation. In fact what disappointed, briefly disappointed, the Americans so much is their grand, their last grand effort, their last grand push for what I would call the unity government there. That is an approach based on placating the Sunni minority which represents about somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the population, I suspect the lower figure is more accurate than the higher. That you had to bring them in, that the thrust of whatever you were doing had to essentially placate the Sunnis, unless you placate the Sunnis you are never going to have a political order. When that fell apart and it largely fell apart because Sistani refused to give it his blessing. That should have actually cheered you up because it told you quite clearly that, in fact, the traditional structure inside the Sunni Shiite community had not gone down. And we still have that to play with. That means politics in Iraq isn't over, that means that for at least 80 percent of the population you have a growing concern that it may in fact still congeal. Now, what is going to come after the surge, what's going to come after politically and I have been working on this and I am - still haven't finished, working on this issue is trying to set up a system where essentially the Shia start to argue with themselves peacefully. All right. I would argue and this this view by the way is not yet dominant in Washington and there is a lot of resistance to it because you still have many people dedicated to the idea of some type of Sunni compromise. I would argue a Sunni compromise will come, but it will only come through, in fact, what I call Shia compromise, internal Shia compromise. As the Shiites start to argue amongst themselves about the basic issues of governance and they have had no chance to do that yet. There is there has been almost no argument inside of Iraq on basic issues of governance because everything has been, everything has been everyone has been concerned with insurgency, everyone has been concerned with the violence, everyone had been concerned with the destruction of Baghdad. Only when you start to restore basic order can you then have these discussions. And I mean, for example, I mean, I track SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq which is probably the most important Shiite player and it is I have yet to find and I have spoken to Iraqis, I have spoken to American officials, I have searched the internet, I have talked to clerics, I mean you can't yet find for example any real testament by SCIRI of what it's political objectives are, all right. Now in a normal order you would have already had that. I mean, SCIRI, for example, is in an identity crisis, that's one of the most interesting things about SCIRI, is they don't really know yet who they are. Well, one of the reasons is they haven't had to figure out who they are because right now the key issues inside of Iraq are all violent ones. Well, as you restore order these issues are going to come back to the foreground and you are going to see the Shiites start to argue amongst themselves about not only about what do we do with the Sunnis, what to do with the Kurds, what we do with each other? And that's what you want to see, now one of the things that is going to be disappointing to some not today but certainly to those who believe that only if you have a liberal order in Iraq is the whole exercise worthwhile. I dissent from that view. I have always thought from the very beginning that, in fact, what you wanted to see in Iraq was a democracy blessed by the clergy. And if you didn't see a democracy blessed by the clergy then democracy had no chance, all right. And that by definition meant that religion is going to have an enormous role inside of any type of Iraqi - functioning Iraqi political system. And it should you want it to. Now, for those, and again I think probably three quarters of these folks who get upset with this actually never supported the Iraq war anyway. They never supported the exercise of trying to build a democracy so their criticisms, I think, are a bit tongue in cheek. But for those who actually did support the Iraq war hoping that you could create a more liberal order and there are certainly a lot of Iraqis who would come in that category including my very good friend Kana Makiya then it is going to be disappointing. I would still suggest after the hell we have seen that it will be an enormous improvement and certainly after living under Saddam Hussein it would be a normal an enormous improvement. If you could see some type of democratic structure develop and the key is just elections. You know people have a tendency to talk about the building blocks of Democratic society. It's a natural for westerners to do this because everybody immediately shoots back to the Anglo-Saxon history of the growth of democracy which is, of course, the most successful and solid history that we have and it was a very slow process where you had all the civic institutions develop and democracy became a natural outgrowth of this of this socio-economic and political development. Well, you know, you are not going to get any of that in Iraq and I would also argue you won't get any of that anywhere else in the Middle East. What you are what you want to see the minimum that you have to see, the catalyst for the entire process is just elections. You have to see just elections every, in Iraq's case, every 4 years where you have the change of government based on elections. You are not going to see, any time soon, that change of government create a liberal order that most Europeans would recognize, or most Americans. But you will start to see and by the way if the more religious the structure in Iraq, the more, that religion is an integral part of the democratic process. The more that both Shiites and Sunnis can find common ground, all right. That's another issue. There there is often a discussion of Iraqi society, particularly at the Sunni community which I find a bit surreal, suggesting that the Sunnis are all secularists and the Shia are all religious. I mean that's just simply not true. The Sunni community in Iraq is as religious as the Shia and what and again this all stands to reason. I mean, one of the things you have seen in Iraq is the same thing you have seen elsewhere in the Middle East is as these Secular dictatorships collapsed internally, psychologically, as they ceased to function of engines for hope and in fact just became repressive tools secularism as an idea collapsed. All right, and you have seen the growth of religion everywhere, you have seen the growth of religion as a political identity. Iraq was slightly and I think emphasize slightly behind the curve elsewhere in the Middle East only because Saddam Hussein totalitarianism was so effective. But I would suggest to you and I think I have perhaps said this here before and too many times, that one of the reasons that Saddam Hussein became perhaps the greatest mosque builder in modern, modern Middle Eastern history is because he was aware that in fact the growth of the religious identity in his own community, particularly the Sunni community was enormous, and that what you started seeing in the 1990s was the Sunni religious identity; both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalists start to eat the Baath. So you are going to have to have some type of religious support for the democratic experiment. You have that on the Shiites side in Iraq. That is, I think, beyond question. What you have not seen yet and certainly is the the most dismaying aspect is that you haven't seen comparable religious support on the Sunni side. What you have seen is either explicit or indirect blessing of suicide bombers by prominent Sunni clerics. Now this has gotten out of hand and I think the Sunni community as a community has realized that its aggressive violence inside of Iraq, particularly its support to homegrown and foreign holy warriors has lead to an explosion of vengeance on the Shiite side that now has the potential of slaughtering them all. This has produced, I think, some moderation on the Sunni side because they have realized that in fact this has gotten out of hand and there is some chance that they can perhaps pull themselves back before it's too late. But, I think, the key issue and this is what you should watch in the United States and its hotly debated and it will continue to be debated is as this escalation move forward and assuming that Baghdad gets under control and that the Americans then start to devise some strategy for going all the way in the Sunni triangle. And then the next thing you are going to have to watch and its going to be a big test is when the Americans go for Ramadi because Ramadi really is the key, the core, the heart of the Sunni insurgency. You will not solve the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, you will not get it under control until Ramadi is under the control of the Iraqi government which means Ramadi is that under the control of, essentially, a Shiite army or a majority Shiite army, all right. Until you see that, then you still are just putting band aids on the problem in Iraq. Now the American government, I think, is aware of that. However, they are very leery about moving down the road intellectually and also operationally. I mean, one, Baghdad is enough to deal with right now and also when they go for Ramadi and I think eventually they will. It means that the entire political structure that the Americans had hoped would come into being won't. All right, because the Sunnis aren't going to play ball at all when the Americans go for Ramadi, because let's be frank, the Sunnis had used violence as a tool, as a point of political leverage in the negotiations in Baghdad. You take away that tool, then they, in fact, revert to their demographic strength probably 20 to 15 percent of the population. Now what the Americans I think they are going to push hard on, and we will see if its enough to turn any one on the Sunni side and I again I am skeptical because even though there are certainly moderate Sunnis, though when moderate Sunnis try to survive against radical Sunnis, guess what usually happens, moderate Sunnis die. I mean, one of the biggest problems for the American strategy for its failure to protect the civilian population in Iraq and that is, I think, the most egregious and damming critique that can be made of the Americans as they forgot the number one rule of occupation is that you protect civilians. You take casually, civilians don't. We had this in reverse. We tried to diminish our casualties, while their casualties just skyrocket through the roof. That one of the things that was lost through this American approach was that those Sunnis who wanted to compromise, who had a desire to compromise were either driven underground, driven into exile or murdered, because they could not come out in the open and stand their ground against radicals because they didn't have the military strength. I mean, when you have a collapsing society, guess what, this radical young men with guns who always prove dominant. I mean, this was the great problem on the Shiite side that the American strategy leads to the slow corrosion of authority on the part of Sistani in the traditional community. It empowered men like Muqtada Al Sadr who, in the spring of 2003, was even Sadr City not an icon. I mean, we made that man in great part. The Americans have helped enormously to make Muqtada Sadr to some perverse extent he is our creation. All right, because the truth be told. I mean if you are a Shia in Baghdad who has done more to protect you? That young man or the Americans? Without a shadow of doubt that young man. Now that is a perverse situation and it is equally perverse on the Sunni side, that they have, in fact, seen their traditional order which was a lot weaker by the way. There was no comparable Sunni order in Iraq to the Shiite side, didn't exist and that makes sense, because Saddam Hussein pulverized it, atomized it. So what the Americans have done is they took a very fragile situation because they wouldn't engage to put more troops, because they wouldn't be more aggressive on the ground. They have allowed, in fact, the Sunni side to splinter further and they become even more radicalized than what we have seen on the Shiite side. Now what you can hope and there is no guarantee here as the Americans come in and force and they have got to show convincingly demonstrate they are not leaving. Right now I think that is biggest problem for the Americans, it's the biggest problem for George W. Bush is that there has been, as is obvious in the discussions in Washington, there is a great desire in certain quarters to to leave Iraq. Now I don't think people operationally actually think this through and when they didn't when they do think this through it becomes a little bit more complicated, you just don't get to leave Iraq. And, I mean, that's why you know Hillary Clinton and those who think they can be front runners in the Democratic Party are becoming progressively, you know, angry about the Iraq issue, because they know its not going to go away and they know that if its still there, when they get there, they don't get to blow the trumpet and suddenly call the great convoys into retreat and run down to Southern Iraq and Kuwait. It is not just going to happen that way. It will be, if the Americans decide to leave, its going to be very messy and as Fred Kagan has also very ably demonstrated, if the Americans don't just, you know, leave Iraq completely, that if they decide to stay and maintain the green zone all right and if they decide to maintain any relationship with the Iraqi army in any type of training capacity, of any type of logistical capacity, because the Iraqi army doesn't have the logistical means to sustain itself, the Americans must be there from the most minimal to the most difficult, we have to be there to logistically to sustain them. If you do that, without talking about anything else you have got an American troop strength in Iraq of roughly 75000 soldiers, all right. Now most people don't talk about that, I mean they think, well, you know we can reduce way down. Well no you don't, I mean, if you just want to maintain the most minimal presence in Iraq, you are talking about American soldiers around 75000, so 75000. So there is going to be, I think, a continuing desire, however, reluctantly on the part of both the Democrats and Republicans to try to figure this out, which I suggest you does give the President much more political leeway than is often the impression one gets from reading the American press. Now, but again, it's not us here that I think that really matter right now it's the Iraqis. And the essence can the Americans convey to them that we are not leaving, we are not running. Because you have to do that, if you don't do that then you aren't going to have sufficient civilian cooperation and most importantly on the Sunni side no one no one is going to be an idiot and go out there and say oh, well, lets work with them. Because if they are gone tomorrow you are dead, so this is, I think, probably the biggest hurdle for the Americans. It is not actually the military aspects of this. I think the American army will probably handle this pretty well. It's not even the political aspects as long as the Shiite side doesn't collapse you are going to have an ongoing political discussion, ongoing debate. It's not going to be pretty. No one is going to like it. It's not going to be particularly liberal. But it's going to be real and it's going to continue. And if it continues then you are going to have real political dialogue amongst the Shia and the Kurds and probably even with the Sunnis, assuming they don't decide to commit suicide and jump of the cliff and continue the insurgency and force the Shia into moving and then conquering all the Sunni triangle. The real tricky issue is basically on the ground. The psychological issue outside of the green zone amongst the Sunnis and amongst the Shia that the Americans are actually there to stay. It is the fear on that part. It is the concern that the Americans are actually going to leave. And again you have this odd situation of Iraqis who actually, ideally, would want the Americans to leave. Nevertheless not wanting them to leave because, you know, though the situation will even get worse. And the Americans do have a problem on the Shiite side and that is because we have been so pathetic at maintaining order, because we have had this light footprint strategy, we have actually led many on the Shiite side to believe that they are actually better at counter-insurgency than we are and to some extent they are right. I mean the way they had have engaged in counter-insurgency, the malicious have engaged in counter-insurgency in Baghdad is to clean out entire Sunni neighborhoods, and guess what, it has made life for Shia better. They have fewer attacks than they used to and what is disconcerting is those attacks are going back up largely in part because the Americans are not actually deploying yet enough troops on the ground to stop the Sunni insurgents from going and getting into the Shia communities. So we are going to also have to fight that view that has been built up for very understandable reasons past three years, that in fact the Americans are just lame, and that the way to approach this on the Shiite side is to be much more violent, and it is through, actually the use of militas it's through ethnic cleansing which you will eventually see have success. And the sad thing, is that the Shia are probably right. If it's it would be a long bloody terrible process, but they probably could in the end ethnically cleanse most of Iraq. It is something that I think all of us should want to avoid. But, if given no alternative, what you have seen the Shia do in Baghdad, I think you will see them do elsewhere, because in the end it will work. I mean, there is a terrible long history for population transfers in the Middle-East and one of the reasons there is a terribly long history for population transfers in the Middle-East is guess what they work. But, I mean, that is one of the principal reasons why, I think, everyone should want the Americans to stay. They should want this escalation work and that you should want to see more not less in Iraq and I will stop it right there.