My comments from back in 2007 regarding the ‘Sunni Awakening’:
To a certain extent I feel they are repeating the same mistake the British made in the 1920’s. It’s hardly an exact parallel, but it does make me shake my head a bit. The British deliberately elevated tribal leaders, making them into political figures that they hadn’t been under the Ottomans, while undermining the Ottoman-educated administrative classes. To the British, the tribal sheikhs were exemplars of the ‘Noble Savage’, corrupted by the venal influence of oriental despotism, which could only ape western ways in the most counterproductive manner possible. The elevation of pensioned chieftaincies at the expense of any centralizing, modernizing tendency, helped set the stage for the failure of Iraq as a state. Toby Dodge goes into this in some detail in Inventing Iraq.
The American impulse is different from the quaint chauvinism of the early 20th century - more a matter of expediency or perhaps desperation - but I worry the results will be similar. First the disastrously overbroad “de-Baathification” drastically weakens Iraq’s administrative machinery and the disbanding of the army shatters any possibility of quickly reasserting central authority. Now the encouraging and enabling of tribal elements to organize into discrete armed bodies.
The tribes are realities in Iraq, that’s true. It’s definitely necessary to deal with chieftains as societal intermediaries and intercessors. And it’s not like they were unarmed to start with, really. But validating their standing as independent, armed, political entities outside/parallel to the state? Bad news.
Iraq has enough tendency towards balkanization from competing sectarian communities and rival parties. Now you’re adding yet another armed layer capable of striking out on their own and carving out turf. I have a hard time imagining these sheikhs meekly surrendering authority to the central government once ( if ) those annoying foreign elements are ejected. Sunni chieftains submitting to a government they perceive as Shi’a dominated? No - you’re replacing one immediate threat to central authority with another, far more rooted and popular one. That they could even become a source of armed resistance to the U.S. down the road is hardly inconceivable.
I suppose you could argue that it’s just the cherry atop the sundae when you already have such pervasive militia influence in Iraq. But why add to a bad situation, unless you really are conceding it’s hopeless? Sad as it is too say, better the wholly unreliable, factionated Iraqi army take control in these areas if only for appearances sake. Tribal control means tribal autonomy and that has hardly worked out well in Afghanistan or ( these days ) Pakistan.
I was concerned then, I’m sure of it now - Petraeus screwed the pooch long-term with his tactics. Short-term fix for an immediate problem that just added to more long-term misery. Do you really think the Shi’a would have tolerated us “forming ( not electing )” a government for them? Fuck no. We would just have been in a reverse situation struggling with Shi’a factions southern Iraq. There were no good options in 2007 ( and Petraeus and company get some sympathy for being stuck in that situation ).
I think a.) you are blaming Obama for issues beyond his control and that originated before his time and b.) you are guilty of believing there is any good options now or in 2007 for that matter. There isn’t and there weren’t. The invasion of Iraq was a horrible idea, undertaken for no good reasons, colossally mismanaged, with the absolutely shitty set of outcomes that many predicted. There is no rehabilitating this mess.