Surge Strategy Will Not Stabilize Iraq

Contrary to what most Americans and the rest of the world had hoped for, president Bush once again defied the common sense and made another mistake by sending more troops to die in Iraq. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt objects to the US plan of troops surge in Iraq and believes that implementing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) , which the President did not fully adopt, could be a step in the right direction.

Violence cannot end unless dialogue begins. The US must engage in direct dialogue with the legitimate resistance groups and their leaders to reach an agreement that preserves Iraq’s unity and through which the US will obligate itself to a phased withdrawal within a timetable, in return for commitment by these groups not to engage in military operations and to help protect the security of the Iraqi people and participate in the political process. The US must also engage in direct dialogue with the governments of Syria and Iran in order to help secure Iraq’s borders and stop the influx of fighters and weapons used by war thugs to insinuate more violence and serve specific political agendas.

President Bush should listen to his own people who voted down his war strategy, and plan for a phased withdrawal within a timetable to encourage sincere Iraqis to step forward and take control of their own country"s security. If the president was serious about “securing Baghdad” as he claimed in his speech; he could have redeployed his large army of 132,000 to provide the 20,000 soldiers needed for the mission, but instead he decided to add more fuel to an enraged fire by adding more soldiers to his brutal occupation force.

Providing more troops might secure part of the country for a relatively longer period as president Bush mentioned, but surely, violence will ensue as soon as the troops leave as it has been happening since the beginning of the invasion. Resistance groups do not operate by confronting the strong core of an organized army, but they are trained to attack the thin outposts in a hit and run operations. Adding more troops means that more Americans will have to die and a lot more Iraqi civilians will face the same fate.

Any sincere plan to save Iraq must win the support of the Iraqi people themselves, not just the government, especially a sectarian and ineffective government imposed by an occupation force in a fake election. The US troops will never be able alone to bring peace and stability to Iraq because simply they are the main part of the country’s problems. Iraqi people hate the US for the destruction it brought to their country and the death and torture of many civilians, therefore the US troops must leave Iraq.

In order to win the support of the Iraqi people in any solution, the US government must first apologize to the people of Iraq for invading and destroying their sovereign country and misleading the world about the real reasons to go into war. The US then must use the leverage it has on the current Iraqi government to seek national reconciliation and to end its support to the Shiite militia and the death squads responsible for killing thousands of Iraqis and eradicating Sunni from Shiite controlled areas. Free elections should then follows within 6 months-once the country becomes stable- to form a strong and credible national unity government that represents all Iraqis, and begin rebuilding the country, not just to serve as puppet for an occupation force and uses its authority to settle old scores.

Ikhwanweb

Cairo, Egypt