Enter
Turkey
By Paul Craig Roberts
03 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
John
Lukacs in his monograph, June 1941: Hitler and Stalin, reports that
"the best military experts throughout the world predicted the defeat
of the Soviet Union within a few weeks, or within two months at the
most" following Hitler's invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941.
While the superb German military
machine made an excellent showing, by the beginning of 1943 its offensive
capability was exhausted and the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad.
Germany lost the war one and one-half years before the US could manage
the invasion of Normandy. If HItler had not depleted the German Army
in Russia, a US invasion of Normandy could not have been contemplated.
Lukacs concerns himself with
unintended consequences of June 22, 1941. It is not too early, or too
late, to concern ourselves with the unintended consequences of March
20, 2003.
Four and one-quarter years
ago the Pentagon and its neoconservative advisors and media propagandists
promised Americans a "cakewalk" war of 3 to 6 weeks duration.
Six weeks later on May 2, 2003, in history's most ill-advised propaganda
stunt, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, whose
tower was adorned with a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished,"
and announced the end to major combat operations in Iraq.
In fact, the war had hardly
begun. Four years later with the failure in June 2007 of President Bush's
desperate last measure--"the surge"--US offensive capability
is exhausted. The US military can do no more and has less control of
the situation than ever.
Perhaps the clearest indication
that the war in Iraq is no longer under American control is Turkey's
announcement of plans to invade northern Iraq, the home of the Iraqi
Kurds. As June 2007 came to an end, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul announced that if US or Iraqi forces did not eliminate the Kurdish
guerrillas that were attacking Turkey, the Turkish Army would move into
northern Iraq to deal with the situation.
Foreign Minister Gul was
unequivocal: "The military plans have been worked out in the finest
detail. The government knows these plans and agrees with them. If neither
the Iraqi government nor the US occupying forces can do this [crush
the guerrillas], we will take our own decision and implement it."
This ultimatum puts President
Bush in an impossible situation. Neither the Iraqi government nor the
US military have the means to deal with Kurdish guerrillas in their
mountain strongholds. The US military cannot even occupy Baghdad. The
Iraqi government exists in name only and can be found only in its offices
located inside the fortified and US-protected Green Zone in Baghdad.
Moreover, to the extent that the in-name-only Iraqi government has any
support, it comes from the Kurds in northern Iraq.
The rest of Iraq is controlled
by Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias. Even Basra in the south has
been abandoned to the Shi'ite militias by Bush's British ally.
The over-stretched American
Empire hasn't any troops to send to northern Iraq. NATO, whose charter
was to defend Western Europe from Soviet invasion should have been disbanded
two decades ago. Today NATO functions as an auxiliary US force and has
been sent to Afghanistan, where it is being defeated like the British
and Russians before it.
In the midst of this unmanageable
chaos, vice president Cheney, Bush's former UN ambassador John Bolton
and large numbers of Christian and Jewish Zionists are demanding that
the US attack Iran, and Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The unintended consequences
of the "cakewalk war" are already far outside the Bush administration's
ability to manage and will plague future governments for many years.
For the administration to initiate new acts of aggression in the MIddle
East would go beyond recklessness to insanity.
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