There are two articles today in the Washington Post that are of major interest to anyone thinking about our foreign policy. One deals with the resurgence of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The other deals with the likely consequences of American/British withdrawal from Iraq. I am not going to excerpt them because you really should go read them both.

For the first five years of this ‘war on terror’ we have been effectively shut out of the policy arena. The Dems held a 51-49 advantage in the Senate from May 2001 until January 2003. They were not closely consulted on the plan for Iraq and were out of power before the first bomb fell.

Now we are in control of both houses of congress. The people have asked us to help set a different course for the country on Iraq. No one knows exactly what to do. The starting point is to figure out the facts. I watched a lot of the Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday. I saw some pretty bitter frustration from the Senators on both sides. McCain and Graham were fuming at Abizaid for suggesting he could get the job done without more troops. Senators Kennedy, Levin, and Reed were just astounded at the sanguine attitude of the administration in the face of mounting evidence of a disastrous and unfixable situation.

Comparing the articles in the Post to yesterday’s hearings is like comparing a history of World War Two to a travel column on Vancouver. One is serious and depressing, the other is frivolous and meant as a diversion.

In Iraq, our most basic problem has become a humanitarian one. We’re caught in a vice. The Shi’ites are our allies insofar as they make up the majority of the government, which we are committed to propping up. But they are our enemies insofar as they are more closely aligned with Iran than our regional allies (who are majority Sunni).

On the other hand, the Sunnis in Iraq are the ones most responsible for killing our troops, and most of the terrorists and al-qaeda types in Iraq are working with the Sunnis. Likewise, it is Sunnis that are killing us in Afghanistan.

When experts try to predict what will happen in the region after we leave, they paint a dark and catastrophic picture. It isn’t just bad for U.S. interests, it’s bad for humanity and peace.

Okay…I changed my mind, I will use an excerpt here:

“To envision that you can divide Iraq into three parts is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said Oct. 30 at a conference in Washington. “Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.”

“When the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country, it will not fail to occur elsewhere, too,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Germany’s Der Spiegel newsweekly recently. “It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars — no one will be able to get a grip on the consequences.”

In an analysis published last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Obaid said sectarian conflicts could make Iraq a battleground for the region.

Obaid described widespread interference by Iranian security forces within Iraq. He urged Saudi Arabia, which is building a 560-mile wall on its border with Iraq, to warn Iran “that if these activities are not checked,” Saudi Arabia “will be forced to consider a similar overt and covert program of its own.”

In Damascus, a Syrian analyst close to the Assad government warned that other countries would intervene if Iraq descended into full-scale civil war. “Iran will get involved, Turkey will get involved, Saudi Arabia, Syria,” said the analyst, who spoke on condition he not be identified further.

“Regional war is very much a possibility,” said Hiltermann, the analyst for the International Crisis Group. Iraq’s neighbors “are hysterical about Iranian strategic advances in the region,” he said.

My point here is not to offer up a solution. It’s not even to assign blame. My point is that the Democrats now have a seat at the table. Whether the Republicans will listen to us is another matter.

Each of these experts has an agenda that they are pursuing. We need to take their analysis with a grain of salt. Yet, there is a pretty strong consensus that Iraq is splitting apart and that it will draw in the other regional players. If we look at this from a traditional U.S. policy standpoint we find ourselves in a very odd situation. We really should be siding with Saudi and Turkish (even Syrian) interests, against Iranian interests. But we cannot do that because we are committed to the Iraqi government and their government wants to expand Shi’a influence, which benefits the Iranians.

We’re working to empower the Iraqi government to crack down on the insurgency and militias because our strongest adversaries are Sunnis and al-qaeda types. But the Shi’a internal security forces and militias are using that power to commit ethnic cleansing and (after we leave) probably genocide.

Every step we take in strengthening the Iraqi government is a step that undermines the power of the Turks and Saudis.

I can’t see a stronger argument for getting out, except that we need to at least try to figure out what will happen. Will there really be a regional war? And if there is, whose side will we be on? We supply almost all of the training and equipment for the Saudis and much of it for the Turks. Will we give them logistical help and replacement parts? What if they are fighting against the Iraqi government?

It’s easy to say that we should just stay out of all of it. But we all know that will not happen. This is where we get our energy from. This is where the world gets there energy from. Our entire post-World War two policy has been based on securing this region and establishing our hegemony there. Disruptions in energy flow could be crippling to the world economy and throw billions into poverty.

And, as if these issues were not difficult enough, we have the whole teetering edifice of Musharraf’s nuclear-armed Pakistan and the Taliban resurgency to worry about.

As unhappy as I am with our cozy relationship with the House of Saud, they may be our best bet now in figuring out what to do. They spent billions promoting their Wahhabi version of Islam which has radicalized an unhealthy portion of Muslims. Maybe they need to spend billions on promoting a more moderate form of Islam.

As far as American public opinion goes, there is a consensus for a long-term commitment to Afghanistan. There is no such consensus for such a commitment in Iraq. We cannot continue to spend money that is only used to strengthen Iran and that will contribute to greater lethality in the Shi’a sectarian war. Our allies won’t stand for it and it makes no strategic sense.

It’s hard to believe that Bush has screwed up this badly, but he has. Now that they have lost the ability to muffle over all honest discussion of our situation, things will start rapidly coming to a head. Bush wants to double down, and Baker is probably going to call for more troops. But, as the Armed Services hearing showed, we’re still not being honest with ourselves. The Democrats have to insist that we face up to the magnitude of the problem.

This isn’t just a threat to America’s empire, this is a threat to everyone. Managing the crisis will take wisdom and luck. And there are no simple answers.