A tough election looming just ahead

How time flies! All of a sudden, it’s crunch time in the United States. (Did you think I was referring to the Philippine elections in May 2007?) In two weeks, on November 7th, American voters will go to the polls to decide whether the Republicans will hold on to their slim pluralities in the Senate and the House of Representatives, or whether US President George W. Bush will be saddled with a hostile Democratic-dominated Congress for the final two years of his term.

Although the surveys are apparently disappointing to the Republicans, and indeed they may fall behind, I believe it will be a cliffhanger like the UST-Ateneo championship face-off – which ended, sorry for the fighting Blue Eagles, in disappointment for the Ateneo.

Politics obviously are the same everywhere. In the coming Mid-Term elections, the Democrats could in truth seize control of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate. They need to rack up an additional six out of the 33 Senatorial seats being contested this year to attain a 51-49 majority.

Local issues, as in our own elections, will be important – even the silliest ones. Already there has been party-switching, mostly to the Democratic Party in House electoral districts. The Democrats are gleefully hailing the influx of balimbings into their party as a harbinger of victory. On closer inspection, though, some of those who’re conveniently switching their Party labels plan to run for congress, or governor, Lt. governor and other positions as "new" Democrats seem to have jumped across the fence because they don’t have a prayer of winning nomination in their Primaries in States which are dominated by the Republican Old Guard. They may make a case of ditching Bush and his Republicans owing to disagreement over Iraq and other "conscience" issues, but it’s the same old story. US politics and Pinoy-style politics are not, when push comes to shove, so completely different. It’s the survival of the fleetest.

What may deep-six the now distressed Republicans is the burning issue of Iraq. Even President Bush, who’s nailed his flag to the mast, and continues to declare that Americans "will not cut and run" and that US troops will be there until they finish the job, is beginning to weave and tack.

His recent statements betray a mild tectonic shift: namely that while the goal remains the same, victory – and helping Iraqis achieve democracy – the tactics may need changing. The other day, Mr. Bush closeted himself with his crucial Cabinet members and his ranking generals (recalling the top commander in Iraq for the pow-wow) presumably from which bull-session a new strategy could emerge – to be announced and implemented just before Day Zero on November 7.

Will this be enough to stem what may turn into a political rout? More than 83 Americans were killed in Iraq this month – and it’s still late October. At least 2,500 US servicemen thus far have died. This is nothing compared to the awful statistics of the Vietnam War. But in an election season, they impact painfully on the swing voters.

It’s clear that Iraq is breaking up. The fact that it probably would do so even without the Americans and Coalition Forces being there doesn’t "save" Mr. Bush and his harassed planners. It’s the classic dilemma. Americans will be damned if they stay and damned if they leave. There is no easy way out.

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The recent avalanche of books proclaiming doom and gloom in Iraq have not helped the Bush Administration one bit.

The kind of breathless book-production on why it was a mistake for Bush to have invaded Iraq, alleging that he had lied to the American people, and so forth, is par for the course.

Remember the days when Bush was running for reelection to his second term? There was a torrent of anti-Bush books decrying his family dynasty, alleging he had invented the Iraq War ("Wagging the Dog," movie-style) for political gain, attacking his "oil" cronyism, tearing his character – or lack of character – apart; in sum, every author Bush-bashing mercilessly. Notwithstanding, Dubya won anyway – and dispatched war-hero John Kerry in his neat Allen-Edmonds shoes, to join Al Gore in the club of the Also-Rans.

Will Bush and his Republicans be as lucky this time, or will the Iraq Revisited controversy finally prove their downfall? In the past two months the public has been bombarded with weighty volumes dunning Bush, first Thomas E. Ricks with his FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, then Watergate Pundit Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, publishing a peevish condemnation of Mr. Bush, STATE OF DENIAL: Bush at War Part II.

Woodward, whose exposés co-written with fellow Postman Carl Bernstein (thanks to the revelations of Deep Throat) devastated the Nixon White House and led to the late President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation possibly wants to do a repeat on Mr. Bush. This time, however, Bob’s intended thunderbolt from Mount Olympus seemed to be less than powerful – especially disappointing was his "gee whiz" discovery that Bush had lied to the American people. Ricks and scores of other tart-tongued commentators had already been saying that for months.

Then there’s that indictment by former Ambassador (to Croatia) Peter W. Galbraith. His volume entitled "THE END OF IRAQ", subtitled, How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, came off the press this year, weeks ahead of the books by Ricks and Woodward.

In his opening chapter, cleverly headlined The Appointment in Samarra (remember the famous ante-bellum novel of that name?) at least gives us a cogent reason why Iraq is falling apart. In sum, he makes clear why the vicious sectarian spiral of violence and murder between Twelver Shias and Sunni Muslims, with the Kurds sniping from the sidelines, are plunging that fractious nation into a destructive Civil War.

As Galbraith put it, "Iraq’s deadliest terrorist attack killed no one."

In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, he recounted, armed men stormed the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, sixty miles north of Baghdad. They handcuffed four guards and left them in a side room. Working for several hours, the men placed several hundred pounds of explosives at strategic points under the shrine’s golden dome. At 6:55 a.m., they detonated the explosives, probably with a cell phone. The dome collapsed and a shrine dating back to the ninth century was in ruins.

The blasted shrine is the holiest shrine of Iraq’s Shia Muslims.

"For centuries," the author explained, "Iraq’s Shiites brought a saddled horse to the Askariya shrine. The horse waited for the return of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the twelfth and last Imam who went into hiding in 878 in a cave under the shrine. Still a child when last seen, the Imam communicated with his followers through an intermediary for 70 years before contact ceased. Shiites believe he is still alive. His return will usher in an era of justice to be followed by Judgment Day."

The background to the, I guess, eternal enmity between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims is that the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, the spiritual head of the rival Sunni branch of Islam, had ordered the Mahdi’s grandfather, the tenth Imam Ali al-Hadi, brought to Samarra, in a kind of house arrest. The Shiites believe the Caliph had Hadi poisoned in 868 and that he ordered Hadi’s son, the eleventh Imam Hassan al-Askari, also killed six years later. The faithful hid the twelfth Imam to spare him the same fate." (Thus, if you haven’t noticed, the sect is called the "Twelver Shias.")

In outrage, Iraq’s Shiite majority saw the terrorists who destroyed the Askariya shrine, Galbraith underscored, "as successors to the Caliph’s assassins, and with good reason." He said that "almost certainly the shrine was destroyed by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi offshoot of the organization that brought down New York’s World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda seeks to restore the Sunni Caliphate and considers adherents to the Shiite branch of Islam as apostates deserving of death."

Galbraith noted that within hours of the shrine’s destruction, black-clad members of the Mahdi Army, a militia named for the twelfth Imam, took control of key points around Baghdad. Shiites then launched attacks on Sunni mosques around the capital.

In the week after the Samarra bombing, 184 Sunni mosques were destroyed or vandalized. Sectarian violence killed more than 1,000 Sunnis and Shiites. "In predominantly Sunni neighborhoods, vigilantes warned Shiite families to leave, while Sunnis were evicted from Shiite neighborhoods."

As everyday reports from Iraq on CNN, BBC and other wire services attest, the strife between Shiites and Sunnis appears to be escalating rather than abating.

The Economist of London (October 14-20) reported in a scathing piece entitled Divisa in Partes Tres that "seldom has the violence been worse that it is now. Over a 24-hour period this week 60 bound, tortured and murdered bodies were found scattered across Baghdad.

Iraq’s ministry for migration reports that sectarian killing has caused over 300,000 Sunnis and Shias to flee from one part of the country to another . . . Some have suggested, to go back to the drawing board and think about partitioning the country into a Kurdish north, a Sunni center, and a Shia south."

The trouble is that Turkey and next-door Iran would never tolerate an autonomous Kurdish State, since Kurds launch attacks from northern Iraq across the Turkish border, and the Kurdish minorities in those two neighboring countries are restive, even outright rebellious.

As for the Sunnis, if confined to the center, they would have no "oil." The Kurdish north and the Shia south would contain all the oil fields and oil reserves.

Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki is obviously there because he represents the Shia majority. How can the current setup be a formula for unity, or, for that matter "democracy?" It is the law of the gun all over the land, and the Americans – for all their military firepower and boots on the ground – seem to be helplessly caught in the crossfire.

Back home, President Bush is in the cross-hairs of the crisis in Iraq.

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A DEATH IN THE FAMILY: We mourn the loss of our Deputy Managing Editor, one of the pillars of our STAR, and loved by all who worked with him, Alex M. Fernando, who was only 48. I got my first message about Alex having died yesterday morning in a text from our Executive Editor Amy Pamintuan. She had to affix the note, "This is not a joke." Alex, who wrote our first banner headline 20 years ago, lies in state in the National Press Club, but his body will be transferred day after tomorrow to his hometown of Bustos, Bulacan. Adieu and Bon Voyage Alex, into the embrace of our Father in Heaven!