Henry Kissinger, writing in the International Herald Tribune, says that withdrawal is not an option. And he makes one of most nakedly imperialistic claims for why this is the case.
American forces are indispensable. They are in Iraq not as a favor to its government or as a reward for its conduct. They are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
This is about the sixth or seventh expressed reason for why our troops are in Iraq. It’s not because of Saddam’s human rights abuses, or his connection to Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 attacks, or about his harboring of terrorists, or about weapons of mass destruction, or about democracy and self-determination for the Iraqi people. No. Our troops are merely ‘an expression of the American national interest’ to keep Iran from dominating a region which has our energy supplies.
Of course, this is the exact reasoning that led Reagan to support Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s. The irony of this is enough to make anyone’s head explode. We have waged a 15 year war with Saddam Hussein only in order to find ourselves bogged down in Iraq because Saddam Hussein no longer controls the country. We have to stay in Iraq because we fear that Iran will dominate the country if we leave, when it was our invasion that took the anti-Persian Sunnis out of power and replaced them with a Shi’a dominated pro-Iranian government.
Assuming Kissinger is right, we should be strongly considering rounding up the neo-cons as traitors that have been doing the bidding of Iran.
The rest of Kissinger’s plan is the same as Charles Krauthammer’s…just a little more fleshed out. We pull back to bases and let them slaughter each other; we kill any al-qaeda types we become aware of; and we patrol the borders to make sure no outside country invades. While we are doing this, we begin intense diplomacy and convince our erstwhile allies to help us pick up the pieces.
It’s all a brilliant plan. Never mind that the public will never stand for it. Never mind that the President doesn’t have the credibility, imagination, skill, intelligence, will, or inclination to carry out Kissinger’s delicate diplomatic efforts. It’s all nothing more than Friedmanesque wishful thinking. Just do what Henry says and everything will be okay. But Henry!! They’ll never do what you say. They aren’t capable of it. The Iraqis aren’t capable of it. You’ve been through this before with General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Why repeat our mistakes?
that Henry the K agrees with us dirty fuckin hippies on the actual reason for the Iraqi War — OIL.
If you’re gonna get stuck in a quagmire, it might as well be in a big, black, petroleum puddle.
I saw some comments of yours on dKos today about dirty fuckin hippies. Just to let you know that I agree with those comments I saw there and these here in this thread. We’re all dirty fuckin hippies to Kissinger.
Peace
and good to see you here leftvet
Oh the irony, yes I find most of this ironic and remember Sadaams nearly last words where he stated his belief that the US would use him to regain control of the country, should they have?
very last words the most chilling. I believe that one of his hecklers during the hanging invited him to enjoy hell and he heckled back, “The hell that is Iraq?”
…They are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Yep, it’s much better for Iraqis to be dominated by US imperialism and ideology.
I think it was MDC, a hardcore band from SF in the 1980s that sang the famous lyrics
That’s the entire song. Less than 5 seconds long, but highly effective.
It’s refreshing to see that time hasn’t tempered Hank’s xenophobic, sociopathic and narcissistic tendencies. Having escaped Nazi Germany as a teenager, you’d think he’d have chosen a different path. It boggles the mind.
If you are a ruthless fucking bastard please don’t hide it, this is America so stand up and be proud of who and what you are. And please please do let all the rest of us know without question what we are attempting to deal with here!
From beyond the point of no return, we are reaching for a silver bullet that will rescue us from the monster of our own creation. Despite my personal pacifism, from the perspective of our national interest (strong defense, prosperity, and promise), I don’t see how ‘Hit it and Quit it’ (Withdrawal) can work once we’ve let things get this far. So should we Hit it and Quit it, Regionally Redeploy or Surge and Stay?
Pull out and you risk genocide, stay in-country and you referee a simmering civil war. Pull to the edges, we will be just be brought back in by events on the ground, or have front row seats for genocide.
Phases and pre-conditions for withdrawal are just flavors of the basic premise that are likely unsatisfiable or meaningless. The best case scenario of a full withdrawal depends on people with fresh blood of their families spilled and the blood of others still fresh in their noses to come to their senses just because we are not there. This seems less likely than genocidal warfare.
The best case of surge and Occupation requires those same folks to suddenly not blame us for unleashing this violence, which seems very unlikely, as it would have at least started to happen already.
The best case scenario for regional redeployment involves a terrible algebra that balances the American people’s tolerance for watching violence and our impulse to withdraw. This is less dependent on miraculous changes of Iraqi mindset, and more on said algebra. This is the most likely ‘best case’ to actually pan out because at least it is in our control, based on our national, ‘subjective’ interest. Problem with that is the neo-cons can use our regional forces against any other regional target if they so wish.
The worst-case scenarios are similarly tipped towards regional redeployment. Total withdrawal risk genocide, from which our reputation in the world could never recover. This worst case is all to likely and much of what I have heard from Democrats risks this. After a real withdrawal, redeploying to Iraq to prevent a genocide will likely be too slow/expensive to stop it before too much killing occurs.
Staying is not working, perhaps we are already in the worst-case: refereeing a civil war (or sectarian proxy war) which will likely result in the expansion of Iranian influence in the region and has no end in site. At least we are there to prevent rapid genocide, but there is nothing we can do to stop the conflict as it is now.
The difference between Surge and Stay and a regional redeployment in terms of worst cases is basically a logistical argument. It will simply take more money and time to get where we need to to prevent a genocide or an Iranian border incursion, for example.
Basically, if you want to get out, it seems regional redeployment is the best option because at least in that it allows for an Iraqi solution to appear, allows for return in extreme circumstances like a genocide and gets our troops out of harms way (ish), and gets as many of our troops out of harm’s way possible. The impulse to then use those ‘freed’ forces to fight Syria or Iran could be prevented by Congress.
I haven’t heard much about handing the country over to the Iranians, but maybe that would be best – let them handle this mess. Then we can foment violence on purpose! It’s their’s anyway if Surge and Stay works.
Or we can just pull our guys out and cover our eyes and ears until the killing stops.
What does phased withdrawal look-like when conditions on the ground beg for return after only the first stages of troop removal? That is the most likely scenario. It looks like a more expensive version of regional redeployment. It looks like a way to re-brand long term occupation from failed mis-adventure to just fulfilling our responsibilities: “I swear we are trying to leave, really!”
We (you, me everyone) let this bull into the china shop. Now that it is in there, we can’t just leave, can we? Is it in our interest to have removed the threat of the failed Afghan state and replace it with a failed Iraqi state? Withdrawal has it’s own obvious potential for blowback.
If you can say to yourself ‘I don’t care if a million Iraqis die, at least this will be over,’ then we should withdraw immediately, end of debate. Can you? If you think that won’t happen if we withdraw, then the debate is also over. Will it or won’t it?
I was not for the war, and have always thought the whole enterprise was a criminal act. However, allowing a genocide, or even a full civil war is also criminal. Phased withdrawal will almost definitely fail to go smoothly, let alone succeed, and risks genocide the most (it only takes one horrible act by any one group to force us back in).
Ideally we could pay for an international stabilizing force to do our work for us, as our presence is making things worse, but Bush has successfully prevented that for now. Ultimately that is why regional redeployment can work: it provides both the opportunity for an Iraqi solution and the dis-engagement that may eventually provide political wiggle-room for regional powers to send their own stabilizing coalition in. Redeployment does this while maintaining our ability to prevent total disaster. Surge and Stay and Withdrawal can’t do this, as they only compound US ownership of the mess and instigate generalized violence. If congress acts to tie Bush’s hands vis-a-vis expanding to another theater, then perhaps Kissinger’s idea isn’t totally insane.
it’s insane to think it can work without a new administration in place here to do the diplomacy.
It was insane to go in there a fuck everything up completely and in every way. But now that we’ve done that and no one is happy with the status quo, someone has to act. This seems in opposition to the idea that no option can work without regime change here at home, then why recommend we do anything but promote stalemate while seeking to dethrone king and the whole line of succession all the way to Pelosi? Is that what Clinton’s troop cap red herring is about?
I have one question for you. What do the Iraqi people want the Americans to do? And who’s country is it?
Make that two questions.
I am sure you could find at least one Iraqi with any opinion you wish. Most likely of which is : ‘please don’t kill all of my people, but please don’t leave if it means all of my people are killed. Oh, and we hate you for putting us and yourself in this position.’
I take it you are ok with the whole withdrawal leads to unpreventable genocide scenario then, under the precondition that they ‘asked for it’.
Kissinger’s peer group are those other prominent figures in recent decades guilty of massive crimes against humanity; Pinochet, The Argentine generals,the psychopathic dictators in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala Markos, Sukarno.
This grotesque, macabre and malevolent creature is like a bad cartoon character, a diabolical clown,consistently wrong about everything. Without him existing in real life, the film “Dr Strangelove” would seem far less relevant and poignant.