by Patrick Lang
The tragic outcome for Iraq and the region could be that both Arabs and Iranians might enhance their assistance to their respective sectarian allies in Iraq in what is shaping up as a fight by proxy.
These are the very developments that the Bush administration and its allies had wanted to avoid. But they are now confronted with them as a fait accompli. The occupying forces can no longer really trust either the Iraqi Sunni or Shiites. The only friends on whom they can count are the Kurds. No wonder President Jalal Talabani, the most prominent Kurd in the present Iraqi leadership, is desperately trying to persuade the United States and Britain against any early withdrawal of their troops.
“Unless Bush and Blair succeed in opening direct negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and enlist the support of Iraq’s neighbors, especially Iran and Syria, as well as the Arab League, the Iraq conflict is set to grow into a bigger and longer-term regional crisis. ” (iht.com)
(Amin Saikal, a professor of political science, directs the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.)
| Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold. |
Our basic mistake in Iraq was to believe that Iraq was eagerly awaiting a social revolution that would sweep away the old and welcome the new in a kind of joyful French Revolution festival of retribution and enabling. The neocon Jacobins, true to their names, believed this most of all and somehow believed that the 12er Shia would be the instrument for the realization of this fantasy. These Shia were the same people who were angry at Saddam for not allowing them to beat themselves with chains and machetes on Ashura.
So, instead of re-starting the clock of history in Iraq …
Continued BELOW:
So, instead of re-starting the clock of history in Iraq as a first and triggering step toward a general festival of westernization in the Middle East, we have de-stabilized a system in which the only thing that unites all the groups, tribes, ethnic nations and religious identities is their mutual detestation of the “other.” Oh, yes, they don’t have much use for us either. (Kurds excepted, but they might get there yet.)
So…. After the momentary elation of the referendum (purple thumbs) dies down, let us all think of how we are going to try to live in the real world and give up for a while our preference for some other world.
Oh! I am inclined to think that some measure of accountability should be attempted for the catastrophe that has been visited on so many. In Lincoln’s time the Congress created the “Committee on the Conduct of the War.” Perhaps the word “misconduct” could be substituted.
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“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
is that accountability for the catastrophe in Iraq will be adjudicated in part by Patrick Fitzgerald. Then perhaps there can there be “opening direct negotiations with the Iraqi resistance” and support from Iran and Syria. Wesley Clark is the only one I can think of who might succeed at such an effort.
You’ve taught me a lot by posting here, Patrick Lang. Thank you!
The only friends on whom they can count are the Kurds.
Have we sufficiently reciprocated?
And there’s something very dangerous, it seems, for the Kurds to be seen as our only friends…. what’s in store for them should this fragile house of toothpicks collapse completely?
I’ve been wondering about what may happen to the Kurds also susan, and I don’t foresee a particularly good outcome for them-or anyone in Iraq at this point.
I don’t either. And the last people they should count on are the Bushies. (But they’re very astute people — surely they know.)
I agree that they couldn’t be completely counting on bushco-they must have some sort of backup plan or more likely they are doing more behind the scenes work than we know.
I’d say there’s a “snowball’s chance in hell” that the neocon war party, (the Jacobins as Pat Lang so aptly describes them), will ever allow reality to intrude on their delusional ideological fantasy. Their wishful thinking and the blindness that accompanies it will always trump their ability to reason.
But, the rest of us are not so tightly bound to the need to believe only that which supports our illusions. And because of this I have some small hope that, even though the inimical forces that have been set in motion by the war party will outlast this current administration by several decades, I think rational minds will at some point before the end of this decade start refusing to finance this insane agenda. The Vietnam war was finally stopped through underfunding, and I’m hopeful that the congress will start to get the message soon that pumping in more money to fund the kind of incompetence we’ve seen, (and which incompetence seems to only feed the flames of further violence), is a losing proposition, regardless of the ideology that might be driving it.
We may not be able to stop the neocon agenda from wreaking more unneccessary destruction, but we may be able to slow their ability to further incentivize others to more strongly oppose us.
I agree completely that the neocons will continue to go on their merry way with their own crazed plans that has no basis in reality except in their own minds.
I honestly don’t understand how these people can be so incredibly and just plain stupid as to what the reality on the ground is and will continue to be as they have not changed their plans once single iota from day one. And instead seem hell bent on creating even bigger mistakes by threatening Syria and Iran. And isn’t that the definition of insanity? to continue to do the same thing over/over again? Yet expect different results.
It’s not that they’re “stupid”; that’s not why they fail to grasp reality. No. They have no ability to comprehend or relate to reality because they are so infatuated with their own ideas and ideology that they’re incapable of according any validity to anything that challenges that ideology’s veracity. They believe themselves infallible, and whenever someone’s self image get’s that particular wrinkle, they become impossible to reason with.
It’s sort of like a form of predatory narcissism. Cheney, et. al. are infatuated with themselves, with the “perfection” of their grand plan for global hegemony. And because they regard themselves as incapable of making mistakes, they cannot acknowledge any need to rethink or re-evaluate their actions. “Reality” means nothing to them because they create their own reality, and it is impervious, (in their own minds), to analysis and reason.
Think of any empire of the past, think of any ambitious dictator, past or present, and you find the examples of the pathology currently on display in the neocon’s psyches.
That’s a much better explanation than my simplistic being stupid answer. I like the phrase ‘predatory narcissism’ also.
I wrote something somewhere in the last week about bush’s last ‘major policy’ speech which goes along with what you’ve said. Where I basically said that he has a set idea from day one about Iraq and what would happen(flowers thrown, etc etc)when we invaded, then happy Iraqi’s, then voting, the writing constitution, then another vote…and he just periodically goes out and follows this outline in his head irregardless of the facts and what is really happening in Iraq.
Bush’s comprehension of the world around him is more or less at the “comic book” level. His perception is capable of only the most childish and simplistic levels of understanding.
His cognitive ability is severely impaired, and it’s only going to get worse as his fragile emotional state becomes more unstable. Add to that the fact that his self-professed evangelicalism is losing it’s ability to be an effective anger management tool for him, and I think he’ll not last the rest of his term without experiencing a monumental mental and emotional breakdown that will require him to step down from office.
Col. Lang. Thanks for this article. Ms. Hu and others have expressed concern for the Kurds, if and when we pull out. Probably rightly so! What are we to do there? The status quo is unacceptable to more and more folks on THIS side of the Atlantic. I can only imagine what those in the region think.
In my view, there is no hope of Condi, or anyone from BushCo actually initiating talks with all the various factions from inside and outside Iraq, with a view of ending our involvement there.
So… what do we do about Iraq now, or when we regain the White House in 08? Col. Lang, any thoughts??
I’m not Col. Lang but I’ll offer my sense that, tragically, no one in the region really cares if the Kurds exist or not. no one, not Iran, not Syria, not Turkey certainly, and not anyone else will lift a finger to do anything to help the Kurds in the region once the charade of “democracy” in Iraq is finally abandoned.
The US will have to make deals with neighboring countries to repairsome damage and keep the Saudi oil flowing, and one of the things they’ll do is to notobject to any measures that return the Kurds to their former status as the people at the lowest rung of the Middle Eastern ladder.
Once the US troops bunker down in those permanent bases in Iraq, then Turkey will begin mounting bigger and more violent cross border attacks on the Kurds in Iraq.
I appreciate your response and insight. If that is the way it is, my only response at the present time is a very cynical SWELL!