A poster at Jihad Watch recently expressed conventional wisdom when he wrote: "The Iraqi military is not ready yet. Chaos would be the result. Iran would take the opportunity to control the southern half of Iraq, along with substantial additional oil resources. If the U.S. will not aggressively deal with Iraq, there is no chance it will deal with Iran."
I replied:
What is the "Iraqi military"? Is it Sunni Arab? Is it Shi'a Arab? Is it Arab rather than Kurd? Explain to me exactly the makeup, and real desires of, and size, and competence, of this "Iraqi military" you posit. Are there Sunni units and Shi'a units, or mixed units, and if there are mixed units, how do you think they perform now together? In the future? Ever?
And why do you say that "chaos would be result"? Would not a civil war be the result? It would not necessarily be "chaos," for most of the country is clearly Sunni-Arab-ruled, or Shi'a-Arab ruled, or Kurdish (non-Arab)-ruled, save for Baghdad. Would chaos exist for a long time? Would not the armed parties on either side quickly establish their own lines, and then would not something like the civil war in, say, Russia, ensue, with here the Sunnis defeating the Shi'a or being defeated, and here the Kurds pushing out the Arabs, or vice-versa? Is that "chaos"?
And if it were "chaos," why would that be bad for us, the Infidels? Why do you have such a difficult time envisioning an area of constant warfare, and unsettlement, with that very warfare, those hostilities, that constant unsettlement, keeping everyone preoccupied, each with each? And what's more, there would be the interference of co-religionists, chiefly of Iran and of Lebanon's Hezbollah, on the side of the Shi'a, supplying money, men, and weapons. Saudi Arabia and other rich Arabs would supply money to the Sunnis of Iraq, while Sunni volunteer soldiers might arrive from everywhere in the Sunni Arab lands, but especially from Egypt, Jordan, and even Syria, whose Alawite rulers would be glad to see those Sunni warriors go elsewhere to fight and die.
Why is this a bad thing? Why is this not a good thing, as good or possibly even better than the eight-year Iran-Iraq War?
And why are you so quick to predict that the Shi'a of Iran will, whatever aid they send, simply come naturally to control southern Iraq? What makes you say that? The Islamic Republic of Iran cannot even control the Arabs now within its borders, in Khuzistan. What makes you think the Arabs of Iraq would not simply take Iranian aid, to be used against the Sunnis, but still wish to preserve their own independence? This business of one vast Shi'a state is a fear now being whipped up by the governments of Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in order to inveigle the Americans to remain as long as possible in Iraq to protect the Sunnis -- even as the Sunnis in Iraq assume that they can continue to try to kill as many Americans as possible. It's a false fear that the Sunnis are attempting to raise in Washington, a kind of bookend to the false hopes that were raised by plausible westernized Shi'a in exile, such as Ahmed Chalabi, who wanted to inveigle the Americans into getting rid of Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Shi'a. Remember all those promises about how the "liberation of Baghdad would make the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession"? That was, I believe, Bernard Lewis, but it could have been any number of American advisors and strategists who were confusing the secular, westernized Chalabi, Alawi, Kanan Makiya, Rend al-Rahim et al., with the real Shi'a of Iraq, who are represented much more truthfully by al-Hakim, and al-Maliki, and al-Jaffari (the man who on his Washington visit called for a "Bush Plan" for Iraq, just like the Marshall Plan for post-war Europe), and of course the ineffable los-de-abajo Moqtada al-Sadr.
We were fooled by Shi'a hopes, and now are being fooled by the exaggerated fears of the Sunnis. When, for god's sake when, will Americans in both the Executive and Legislative branches, finally become immunized to this kind of middle-eastern-souk bargaining, promises ("I love you, effendi, I love you more than I love my mother, I love you more than I love my father"), threats, and all the rest of the Arab blague? Good God, how naive can people be? After all, we are not schoolgirls, we are not Samantha Smith, we are not Jimmy Carter -- are we?
So what if Iraq becomes a client state of Iran? Why should it matter to us what the Sunnis think or if Iran poses a danger to them? What will helping them do for us? What benefit is there to the US in doing anything for any Arab country ever again? As I see it, they are just reaping what they have sown.
The secular Arab governments aligned themselves with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and they were the only non-Communist countries to do so. The Shah of Iran was our bulwark against Communism taking over the oil sheikdoms. He saw first hand what being an ally meant with a man like Jimmy Carter in the White House. A nominal ally, Saudi Arabia, financed Wahhabism throughout the world that culminated in the attacks on 9/11. Another "ally", Jordan, hosted the PLO and served as a base for terrorism for decades. The PLO was kicked out only after they threatened the king. What did he do? He loosed them on the rest of the Middle East and they destroyed Lebanon and set up their bases for hijacking and terrorism even before the Iranian revolution.
Why aren't we turning our backs on the entire Muslim Middle East? With "friends" like them we don't need enemies.
Mr. Fitzgerald, you continue to make the mistake of looking at Iraq as Iraq and the middle east as a region which often happens when people are swept up in emotion which the Tavistock Institute engineers to sway the public.
There was a matter called 9 11 just like Pearl Harbor which proved Patton correct in an ocean fortress does not protect America. America was most fortunate that the FBI and CIA actually located and disarmed one to three nuclear devices after 9 11 as "the follow up".
Reference stories which were quelled of detained Muslims in New York dying of radiation poisoning. Allot of cover up went on just like that jet the day after 9 11 went down in the east coast was terror related and was not reported as such.
Iraq matters as it is part of the containment crescent which I explained at length under another name in various media against Russia and China. President Bush has had several coups staged against him for the reason he took the oil money which Saddam was laundering to the Rothschild banking cartel in Europe and the Rockefellers in America and gave it to the Iraqi people.
His experiment instead of vaporizing the middle east, but instead attempting regime changes and in a generation allowing the 20 million angry Muslim males to die was a nobel cause compared to the absolute of having to kill them all for world peace.
One can examine whether the nuances are failure or success, but with New York City not vaporized and America still standing the cost of Iraq is a small price to pay.
Suffice it to say if people knew the full measure of what has been thwarted they would have had the fear of God put in them and President Bush's poll numbers would be 100 percent in favor.
As stated, Iraq has containment virtues in surrounding Iran and Iran is key in this. In other venues, I have explained what logic predicts is a Putin National Bolshevik plot to arm both the Saudi's who have nuclear weapons as they funded Pakistan's bomb and via blackmarket sold Iran several SS 20 Satan warheads. (This is the reason France was threatening them with nuclear strikes last year. Everyone knows Iran has nuclear warheads and is why Bush, Poland and the Czechs are putting in missile defense as Iran can launch Shahab 3's to scorch Europe.
Putin is raising hell over it as he knows if the truth comes out Russia sold Iran nukes his plans will end.)
Putin's doctrine is simple. He wills to have a Saudi Islamofascist exchange a limited nuclear strike with Islamocommunist Iran to wipe out the world's oil supply. This will enable Russia to make a vassal state of China and use them as fodder against America and allow a National Bolshevik dream of a Stalinized Eurasia from Dublin to Moscow by oil blackmail.
All of this is known, just like Russian GRU and FSB dumped 2 shiploads of WMD into the Indian Ocean out of Iraq, shipped 2 plane loads of bio weapons to Syria and Lebanon and took Saddam's one heavy nuclear bomb back to Russia.
Bush needing help in a terror war has overlooked this which would have started a Cold War. Bush also has not made public all the French and German WMD ties which would have caused complete anarchy in all of Europe along with the Marc Rich affair which he paid the Clinton's money to sell Saddam's oil which money ended up in American and European cartel banks. Most of the ruling elite in the west would be in prison and our nations would plunge into chaos if this came out. President Bush takes the hits. The media knows all of this and allows it and the Iraq circus goes on leading people away from the reality.
Iraq therefore is important in this if one desires 2 things in US policy.
First, to keep Russia and China contained and an oil flow coming to the west so we will not be blackmailed and our economies collapse.
Second, the Eurasians in the 3 world wars which the planet has fought. The Seven Years, WW I and WW II have the habit of sucking Americans into their butchery and we end up dying by the bushel. Iraq is an attempt to thwart this from happening as the next war will be nuclear when Eurasia starts fighting among the 4 empires there (central Europe, China, Russia and the Caliph).
The nuances are important as Europe now is posturing to gain control over the holy land and blame America for the fallout. Allot of people want Jerusalem and it appears a limited horrific war is about to be staged for the same cartel powers benefit in order to gain control of the West Bank as they already have Olmert working for them against American interests.
As stated, the objective is American interests for security. Iraq serves that purpose in delaying a major Eurasian nuclear war which is coming.
President Bush was America's best hope in thwarting our being drawn into this but Americans have abandoned him. He is though trying to wean America from mideast and Russian oil in an attempt to keep the nation secure as we probably will have to contend with uprisings here when things kick loose over there.
No one in the administration is stating this nor will they ever, Jack Cashill has a handle on it and touches on the subject along with JR Nyquist on the Russian factor, but if you or others use the above give credit to the people doing the warning and explaining.
It is very complicated and I have not touched on one quarter of what is going on, but Iraq is important in depths not even explained here.
Thank you.
In my opinion, the problem isn't US military presence per se, but it's strategy. Take Afghanistan. When the US went in there it was in the midst of a civil war between the Al-Qaeda allied Taliban Pashtuns, and the Persian speaking Tajiks. The US picked the Tajiks, gave them air support, and a blank check to brutally wipe out the Pashtun opposition. The taking of Kabul by the Tajiks was especially gruesome, with widespread killing, looting, rapes, the whole nine yards. Then when the Pashtuns were crushed, it asked the Tajiks to let them into the government. The Pashtuns have largely left the Tajiks alone since then because they don't want a repeat performance. If the US tried to restrain the Tajiks, put ground forces on the ground to fight Tajiks guilty of atrocities against Pashstuns as well as Pashtuns guilty of atrocities against Tajiks, and pressured Tajiks to give political power to Pashtuns before they were subdued, you would have the mess in Iraq that you have now.
You can't deny facts just because they may be politically inconvenient. The Al-Qaeda allied Sunnis started a civil war against the Shia with the bombing of the Shia shrine. They should let the Shias declare a state of emergency, kick Sunni politicians out of the government, give them air support and let them do all that needs to be done to wipe out the Sunni insurgency. Then when the Sunnis are crushed readmit them into the government contingent on their good behavior.
Protecting the Sunnis prolongs the civil war, and drives the Shias into the arms of Iran. They remember that they were already encouraged to rise against the Sunnis by the US once, and then left to their fate. In the event of a US withdrawal, Iran is the only state in the region willing and able to protect them. Since they see the US as essentially protecting the Sunnis from Shiite retaliation, and with Democrats ready to cut and run, they look to Iran.
You can't run a government when one of the parties legislates by day, and then runs an insurgency against it by night, which is what the Sunnis are doing, so it's silly that the US is pressuring the Shias to make that work. They should let them declare a state of emergency, and put the Sunni insurgency down first before trying to build democracy. I suspect this protection of the Sunnis is more driven by wanting to keep the Saudis happy then an accurate assessment of US interests.
And I think US should take the opportunity and set up a permanent military base in Iraq. Put it in northern Iraq where the Kurds would be more then happy to keep the bad guys away because they know that a US military presence keeps the Turkish army and Arabs out , and get permission for it from the Iraqi government in the following fashion. Tell them, you have two choices…
1. A permanent US military base in Kurdish northern Iraq
2. A northern border with the newly created state of Kurdistan that hosts a permanent US military base.
For once, I would like to see the State Department planning US foreign policy based on what’s in our interests, and not based on what the Saudis and Turks want. Encouraging muslim ethnicities such as the Kurds to place their national identity over their religious identity should be a staple in our strategy in the war
"I think US should take the opportunity and set up a permanent military base in Iraq. Put it in northern Iraq where the Kurds would be more then happy to keep the bad guys away because they know that a US military presence keeps the Turkish army and Arabs out , and get permission for it from the Iraqi government in the following fashion. Tell them, you have two choices…
1. A permanent US military base in Kurdish northern Iraq
2. A northern border with the newly created state of Kurdistan that hosts a permanent US military base."
-- from a posting just above
The American government could do worse, if it feels it must have some remaining force on the land, than those two proferred choices. The second is preferable, and the Kurds have to promise to offer sanctuary to Arabic-speaking Christians in the north, and demonstrate continuously that they will not break this pledge. And they will have to make no claims on Turkish-held terrritory. But with Kurds in Iran and Syria, the American air force can make that sure that not even the sky's the limit.