The
Washington Post
And "Victory" In Iraq
By Jeff Berg
02 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
A friend of mine today, June
1, sent me a link to a Washington Post story extolling the "improvements"
in Iraq and claiming once again that victory was right around the
corner. It also claimed that the problem for the next President will
not be how to exit from a failed venture but how to sustain an improving
one.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2008/05/31/AR2008053101927.html
Once upon a not too long ago time the Washington Post was floating
stories about the "flowering of democracy in the Middle East."
The Iraqis had their first "free" elections which America
branded the "Purple Revolution". So named no doubt so as
to associate it in people's mind with the Ukraine's Orange one. The
Syrians were then forced out of Lebanon by an American backed "Cedar
Revolution". Next up on the agenda was the much promised "Road
Map for Peace" between Palestine and Israel which was designed
to start with the election of a properly compliant Palestinian Authority.
All that remained was to move Iran back into the fold it had so much
enjoyed during the Shah for all to be right (very far right) with
the world.
We know what happened next. The Palestinians voted the wrong way and
so began the embargo and pounding that Jimmy Carter this week called
"The worst violation of human rights in the world". Israel
then set Lebanon's infrastructure back at least a decade and its politics
even further. Once again the street's of Beirut, the Middle East's
Paris, ring out with gunfire and bombs and a further descent into
madness can by no means be discounted. Syrian society meanwhile groans
under the weight of hundreds of thousands of refugees as does Jordan's.
The Saudis for their part are building a wall that makes the one built
in Berlin seem like a gate.
I provide this backdrop only so as to contrast it with the Post's
article about the most recent "victory" in Iraq: The taking
of Basra's port. That this is the good news they have to peddle is
evidence aplenty as to how far this military/political venture has
fallen. That this piece also claims as "victory" the lessening
of sectarian violence and the diminishment of Al Qaeda is further
proof of the absolute amnesia of political analysis in the U.S. press.
For one thing Al Qaeda did not exist at all in Iraq before America's
invasion. For another the lessening of the sectarian violence is attributable
almost entirely to the fact that there are just about no ethnics left
to cleanse. The partitioning and garrisoning of enclaves in Iraq is
pretty much complete. How this can be classed a "victory"
is anybody's guess. There is also the not inconsiderable fact that
Iraq was once, even under Saddam, one of the least fundamentalist
states in the region. Its women and Jews enjoying rights that will
not even be dreamed for at least a generation in Saudi Arabia or any
of the Arab states that America classifies as allies. How long before
this Iraq can return to that level of advancement is not discussed.
Iran meanwhile has been the principal beneficiary of all of this carnage.
Content to sit back and enjoy the rise of the Shia majority in Iraq.
If for no other reason than because for Iran this fact makes a far
less bellicose neighbour for the foreseeable future highly probable.
This truth being only one of many reasons why it is very unlikely
that Iran's power structure is behind much if any of the sectarian
violence and attacks against American troops.
For one thing the dominant political groups in Iraq, SCIRI and Dawa,
are run in large part by Shia's who spent their years in exile in
Iran. E.g. Nouri al Maliki the Iraq PM. For another they know that
a sorely weakened and divided Iraq will be much less likely to find
the coherence necessary to be able to express the will of the Iraqi
people as to America's occupation. I.e. "Yankee go home!"
Something that Iran would very much like to see if only for selfish
reasons.
This geopolitical victory by default of Iran in Iraq is now a fact.
Whether this fact will be allowed to stand by the two countries that
have lost so much as a result of their ruthlessly violent enterprises
may be the most important political question of our generation. For
Iran is not Iraq. Their military was not devastatingly weakened by
Gulf War I. Their society was not ravaged by over a decade of sanctions.
Sanctions described by two of the bureaucrats who were put in charge
of the operation as "genocidal". (Von Sponeck and Halliday)
And while it is most certainly true that Iran's military, infrastructure,
and people, would be massively bloodied in any confrontation with
America's military, or even Israel's military for that matter, they
are very decidedly not without the means to wreak enormous havoc in
response. They have after all profited enormously from the rise in
oil's price and have no doubt used no small part of that money preparing
for just this contingency. For another such an attack would reawaken
much of the latent hostility in this proud people who remember America's
part in bringing down their nascent democracy even if we don't.
All this to say precisely what Gwynne Dyer said so presciently in
2004 in his aptly titled book "Future:Tense".
"The
problem isn't that America will lose the Iraq war, the problem is
that it may not lose it quickly enough."
ton confrere,
J.F. Berg
www.postcarbontoronto.org
www.pledgeTOgreen.ca
