It's difficult to know exactly what is happening in Iraq bacause of the press restriction by the US government and the danger to reporters of all nationalities if they stray into the countryside. It's fascinating to watch US corporate news such as FOX or CBS, then read even the BBC, or certainly Xinhua to get a view of what's really happening. It seems clear, from many sources outside the US media, that a low level civil war is already underway, pitting Sunni against Shia and Kurd, with a dash of Kurd vs. Turkomen added to the already chaotic setting.

The Bush Administration, anxious to show "progress" in Iraq, forced the plebiscite on the New Iraq Constitution based on American political timetables and electoral imperatives. They are already out on TV making the case that the higher turnout and Sunni participation was "progress." Larry Johnson has few words on this:

It is true that more people in Iraq voted in this election than last January. What Rice and other folks out of touch with reality ignore is that the increased number of Sunnis who voted came out to defeat the constitution. Unfortunately, the fix was in. Vote fraud was rampant. U.S. TV crews caught one Shia on tape casting seven yes votes. That's sort of an old style American politics a la Chicago's Daley machine--you know, vote early, vote often. And, results are now, once again, being withheld to "investigate" the irregularities.

Here is a bold prediction: The Constitution will pass and Shia politicians will have a lock on the new Government of Iraq. Consequently, the civil war currently underway will escalate. As the Iraqi Army grows, comprised mostly of Shia and Kurds, attacks against Sunnis will also increase. And that will put the United States in an impossible situation. If we allow the Shia Army and militias to attack Sunni targets we will continue to be the target of Sunni insurgents. If we intervene to try to aid the Sunnis, the Shia's will turn on us.

Another one-time supporter of the Iraq Debacle comes to his senses. On his blog News Hog, Cernig also throws in the towel:

But I have to say, I think it is now too late. I have worried over what will happen to the Iraqi people without coalition troops in place as their civil war will undoubtably then heat up. I have wracked my brains for some way to avoid that bloodshed and admit myself stymied. However, when I read that US troops are blowing up important infrastructure, bridges across the Euphrates, to deny them to the enemy I know that the coalition cannot win this war in Iraq. The war is already lost. Staying will mean the difference for the Iraqi people of being in a wok or a slo-cooker...either way they will end up cooked. Meanwhile, more Americans and Brits will die to prevent nothing and accomplish nothing.

Cernig does link to William Lind of the Defense and National Interest who suggests a way out of this mess.

Fortunately, war is often a contest in blunders, and the other side has made one too, also at the moral level. As Iraqi Sunnis register in droves to vote against the new draft constitution, al-Qa'ida in Iraq announced that it would target anyone who takes part in the voting.

Here once again is a golden opportunity for us to do the one thing that might allow us to avoid total defeat in Iraq, namely split the Ba'athist resistance from the Islamic resistance. The Ba'ath is still strong enough among the Sunnis that is could probably clean up al-Qa'ida in short order. At present, unfortunately, our policies push the two together, despite the fact that they hate each other's guts.

We need a deal with the Ba'ath, and the Ba'ath might be open to a deal with us. They need us to stop targeting them while they go after al-Qa'ida, and they need our help on the political level (the draft constitution outlaws them).

Can anyone in Washington or Baghdad's Emerald City see this opportunity? Are we talking with the Ba'athist resistance? Or is both our political and military leadership so locked in to a failed strategy that opportunities for political maneuver are meaningless?

Perhaps Clausewitz's most central point is that war and politics are always intermixed. We cannot win the war in Iraq. But just as war may come when politics fails, so politics must take the lead when a war is being lost. It is time to open negotiations with some of our Sunni opponents, and al-Qa'ida's blunder gives us the opening we need.

Nixon had a "secret plan" to exit Vietnam and, despite all the "light at the end of the tunnel" talk, Nixon knew, with the instincts of a life-long politician, that the war was lost. Kissinger was enought of a realist to admit the same and to negotiate with the North Vietnamese. I don't expect that the current moron-in-chief is capable of such independent thought or action. Further, Bush and Cheney's constituency, namely the oil companies and oil service firms like Halliburton, are making out big-time. But, Johnson was also trapped by his policy. It took a new administration to stop the bleeding.