By arresting a layer of the leadership and second-in command of the insurgents and militias, the U.S. shows it hasn't learned any of the lessons of the "Palestinian syndrome", where such actions by the Israelis have only served to enrage and embolden new more radical elements. New generation of leaders spring up in as rapid succession as they can be jailed or killed. Anyhow, arresting a few dozen or a few hundred of their leaders won't set back their operations for any serious amount of time. The Sunnis are well-trained and experienced, and the Shias have been catching up with the aid of Iran.

In fact, the U.S. has learned nothing about the lessons of counter-insurgency in Iraq. They are particularly blind to lessons of the Israelis in Palestine, where the most experienced force with regard to urban counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism is the U.S.A's closest ally Israel. The Palestinian insurgency began proper with the second intifada beginning in 2000. In the course of it, the Israeli forces have killed some 4,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 20,000. Another 28,000 insurgents have been arrested and 8,000 Palestinians remain in prison. But despite the colossal repression, the insurgency shows no sign of stopping 6 years on. Were the Americans to employ the same intensity of counter insurgency in Iraq, it would mean having to arrest about 190,000 insurgents and to kill or wound another 140,000. Clearly, this is not feasible or achievable.

The Papier-Mâché Government & Army

To make matters worse, the Iraqi government the U.S. Army is fighting on behalf of weak, unpopular, unreliable government, is likely to crumble at any moment. The governing exiles, like Maliki, are total novices when it comes to power politics and totally unreliable when it comes to personal interests over national ones. They are in way over their heads; they have no feel for the situation, no touch for the masses, nor finesse in anticipating and handling delicate and explosive issues. They lack any foresight as to the real situation and especially with regards to the consequences of their own actions. They are little more than narcissistic novices led by greed for personal power, prestige and the plundering of the state purses and lucrative kickbacks. They lack any moral ballast or integrity. In brief, the majority of Iraqi government ministers are inexperienced, irresponsible, myopic and thoroughly egotistic. Worse still, they show a sectarian mentality verging on humanitarian criminality.

Maliki and others, like the cleric Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, are hoping that the U.S. will still continue to strike mostly at the Sunnis and also weaken Muqtada al-Sadr sufficiently to secure their government's future. They hope that by the end of the operation in the summer, when U.S. troops will withdraw to barracks, the Iraqi Army can be systematically taken over by their own militias and will provide a force strong enough to concretise a Shia-led state. Al-Hakim is now going one-step further and hedging his bets, in case the U.S. cannot destroy the Sunni insurgency and Al Qaeda in Anbar province, by calling for a thinly veiled three-state-solution in the cloaked form of "federal regions."

But one shouldn't underestimate their capacities for optimism and imagination. While they espouse plans for the future, it is not at all sure they will last out in office till spring, let alone summer. Indeed, only days before Maliki was demagogically committing himself to the iron fist of militia disbandment, he was publicly talking of resigning! In reality, it will take only one major mishap for Maliki to jump ship. It will not be long before the Iraqi government collapses in the coming situation. In reality, it has long ago lost any public legitimacy. Even amongst the Shias its support is wafer thin. Their positions and future are no more secure than the general situation and somewhat weaker in fact. In truth, the government is simply a theatrical puppet show, a shadow court commanding a phantom army over the carcass of a country.

The Iraqi Army is generally an unreliable and contradictory force. From a purely military standpoint they are almost more of a liability than a support to the U.S. They are also poorly trained and poorly motivated. Desertion, absenteeism, apathy and unreliability are rife. In truth, most units couldn't repulse an attack by the Swiss army on bicycles. Furthermore, despite a formal mix of Sunnis and Shia in the officers' corps, the rank and file are obviously overwhelmingly Shia reservists. This has suited the U.S. until now, because most of their efforts have been against the Sunni insurgents. But if they attempt to use the Iraqi Army against fellow Shias and especially the Mahdi Army, the Americans could quickly find the bulk would go over and turn their weapons against the U.S. This is even more so for the police, whose jobs are little more than a fresh change of clothes for the militiamen.

Soon, the U.S. could find itself fighting an insurgency on behalf of nobody but themselves, with no elected government and no army or police. In essence, the Iraqi state is already just a rickety "Punch and Judy Show" held up the U.S. Army. Within weeks there could be no state at all. Like the myth of Sisyphus, the U.S. policy will become nothing more than a myth, a policy based on a fictitious rock and an imaginary mountain. The strategy to escape the mountain by the tactic of rolling a great rock up to its pinnacle turns out to be a worthless tactic, based on a false strategy. And as Sun Tsu warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."