With all of the attention to the War in Iraq, with so many people eagerly or fearfully awaiting the findings of the Iraq Study Group, it seems to me that the crucial issue is being almost completely avoided or ignored. The War in Iraq is no longer about Iraq, it is about establishing conditions to address Iran.
Th primary goal of our invasion of Iraq was the removal of Saddam Hussein and his minions. Iraq was being poorly contained, with the risk of them breaking containment growing by the day; it had a government that had already used WMD, was quite willing to use WMD again, and, to all expert eyes, had ongoing WMD programs and stockpiles of WMD.
[The fact that the Intel on Iraq was faulty and fooled the Intelligence Agencies of America, England, France, Israel, Egypt, Russia, the UN, etc is old news and not germane at this point.]
The secondary goals included shattering the equilibrium of the despotic states of the Middle East which were the incubators of Islamic terror; if Iraq could be democratized, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other dysfunctional states would face increasing internal pressures to reform. There were several notable successes to the strategy. The AQ Khan Nuclear Bazaar was closed down and Qaddafi decided to give up his nuclear ambitions (and was found to be much closer to having a bomb than our Intel realized) with the pictures of Saddam Hussein being pulled from his rat hole powerfully concentrating his mind.
In essence, we have won the Iraq War.
Since those successes, the Sunni's of Iraq have managed, with the able assistance of al Qaeda in Iraq, to foment civil strife. Wretchard links to a post by Westhawk which points out that the Sunnis have boxed themselves into an untenable position, which requires they continue to fight, not with any hope of victory, but out of desperation:
Col. Devlin (USMC, a senior intelligence officer on the staff of II Marine Expeditionary Force whose classified report was leaked to the Washington Post this week) apparently believes that Iraq’s Sunni Arabs will continue to fight because they believe they face either extermination or banishment if they do not.
Wretchard comments:
In an irony that must rank as one of the most curious in history, the insurgency in al-Anbar finds it must continue precisely because of the threat of a US drawdown. At the end of a sequence of blunders, Sunni strategists have managed to add yet one more. It is a continuation of a failed policy which begun with the Sunnis defying the US Armed Forces; that led to US Armed Forces building up a Shi'ite Army; that resulted in the crushing of Sunni strongholds. It continued in their absurd response to defeat: provoking civil unrest in an internal conflict they could not hope to win. That civil unrest has come within a handsbreadth of politically driving America from Iraq. And now they realize too late that an American withdrawal means their inevitable massacre in a war they are now too weak to win. The Sunnis find themselves, as Westhawk puts it, looking at a political "chasm" they cannot cross. And because they cannot cross, they fight, however pointless it may be. Westhawk understands that whatever the culpability of the Sunnis, unless they are helped to cross, the outcome will be slaughter in Iraq.
In point of fact, if we abandon Iraq there will be a blood bath but for those who believe in Realpolitik, the deaths of multiple thousands of Iraqis counts as much as the deaths of Vietnamese and Cambodians after we abandoned South Asia. However, the price to us and our interests should we follow through on the recommendations of abandonment, would be incalculable. And, again, it all revolves around Iran.
The removal of American forces from Iraq would be seen universally as a great victory for Iran and the forces of Shia extremism. Absent annihilation, the HISH forces believe any outcome that leaves them with any living Jihadis, is a great victory. Amir Taheri sees Lebanon sliding to disaster:
First, the summer war flushed Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, depriving it of its chief operational base against Israel. To fight Israel now, it would have to use Beirut and the Bekaa Valley bases. To do that, it must control the government so that no one will trouble it with U.N. resolutions and demands that Hezbollah be disarmed.
The second reason lies in the new regional defense doctrine of Hezbollah's ultimate sponsor, the Islamic Republic. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convinced that an eventual military clash with the United States (and probably Israel too) has become inevitable. His doctrine requires having both Syria and Lebanon firmly under Iran's control - as well as the use of Iraq, and to some extent Afghanistan, as means of exerting political and military pressure on America.
Last summer's war in Lebanon, that is, was a dress rehearsal for a bigger war between the Islamic Republic and the United States.
Lebanon's best interest, of course, is to stay out of a conflict that could bring it nothing but grief. For this war would not be limited to small operations, as the last one was. Indeed, it might instantly expand to include Syria, Israel and, eventually, Iran.
If one side in a conflict believes that war is inevitable, it makes the probability of war much more certain. John Podhoretz explains why so many think war is inevitable:
What do Syria and Iran want more than anything else in the world? To see an American defeat in Iraq. To see an America so crippled that they can work their will in the Middle East without fear of retribution. Syria could swallow up Lebanon whole once again. Iran could do whatever it chooses inside and outside its borders (develop and peddle nuclear weaponry, sponsor terrorism against Israeli and Western targets) with impunity.
The idea that we can talk to people who are actively at war with us and think they are winning is an example of denial of the first order. Those who seek an exit strategy and a return to (illusory) stability in the Middle East are unwittingly supporting an Iranian victory.
Maintaining American troops in a combat zone (even though the actual level of combat is of fairly low intensity; perhaps we should refer to the Iraqi theater as an Intifada rather than a war) and tolerating a low level of American casualties, as painful as that is, will place us in an optimal position to try containment. By staying in the neighborhood, we are better able to restrain Iran with the (veiled) threat of force or the use of measured force and, if necessary, we also make the ultimate option, of destroying Iran's nuclear capacity by the use of force, more feasible. If we remove our troops, we end up leaving ourselves only the choice of the use of force.
The optimal outcome would be to contain Iran, find a way to convince them that it is in their best interests to join the civilized world, and lessen the threat of a wider war. The Iranians have no interest in moderation while they think they are winning.
We will know a great deal more about Iranian thinking and intentions on Decemeber 15.
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