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Iraq

The Back-Room Deal That Explains The Chaos In Iraq

2014-06-14

[BusinessInsider] By wanting to get out of Iraq for good, the [American] administration might have contributed to a situation that could have exactly the opposite result.

Posted by:Uncle Phester

#7 So you're quoting that guy? The guy who says:

There is a very good article in this month's Atlantic, the kind of article that keeps me subscribing to the magazine although I don't read more than two issues a year. This one is on the future of Israel and asks the brutal question, is Israel finished? It is very much worth your reading. Israel made some very fundamental errors during its growth. Some were silly: alienating the Christian Arabs and driving them into the arms of the Palestinian Moslems was perhaps the most fundamental. The Christian Arabs would have welcomed the Israelis as liberators had the Israelis cared to take that role. Instead they have ignored the Christian Arab communities at best and persecuted them as about as often as not, with bureaucratic nonsense like losing building permits, and failure to enforce court evictions of Jewish squatters in Christian hospitals; the list could continue.

The settlement issues have brought about an indefensible border: and the Palestinians are out breeding the Israelis. It will not be many years before the Jews are a minority in the Jewish State; at which point it ceases to be Jewish or ceases to be a democracy, since just about all the Arabs will vote en bloc first for a secular state, then...

As to why this is important: given domestic US policies, the US has no choice but to be both a friend and protector of Israel. No other policy is possible. We have and will pledge blood, treasure, military equipment, and just plain subsidies to Israel, and there is nothing that can or will be done about it; take this as a given. This limits the number of real allies we can have in the Middle East to secular Muslims, and few Royal States. The chief ally we had was the Shah of Iran, but Jimmy Carter threw him to the wolves, and we had to try to make do with Saddam Hussein (Baathist; secular). That didn't work in part due to the sheer incompetence of the Foreign Service bureaucracy (See the Iron Law of Bureaucracy), and the result was the first and second Bush Gulf Wars, both expensive and needless and the second leading to the quagmire dilemma in which we find ourselves today. The Second Gulf War might have been won had not the amazingly incompetent Bremer been sent to make sure we would lose. That may not have been the intention, but it was certainly the result. He may be the greatest fool of a pro-consul in the history of Iraq, and that includes Lucullus who lost all his legions.

Thus the US has few possible allies: the secular Turks, who are NOT democrats, being the chief potential allies; but we are alienating them as we continue to try to build a Kurdish state. Kurds and Turks are ethnically very different people. Kurds are not Arabs, nor are they Turks. They are more closely related to the Iranians (Land of the Aryans) than anyone else over there. Saladin, who destroyed the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem established in the First Crusade, and whose interactions with Richard Lion Heart form a sage not forgotten over there -- mothers still frighten their children with threats of Melanch Rich -- is fondly remembered. Saladin united the Arabs under the Kurds, threw out the Christians, and rebuilt some of the lost glory of the Caliphate. This was before the appearance of the Turks.

The Israelis no longer know what their goals are; they are a divided people. Israel was originally to be a safe haven for Jews following the Holocaust. Never Again.

I recommend the article itself, which requires a subscription; meanwhile the Jerusalem Post summary is worth your time. I will try to get comments from Joel Rosenberg, whose views I respect...

(JP summary here.)

I've seen him have harsh words for "the neocons," but I've also seen him have harsh words for both Israel and those in America who support it unconditionally. As seen above.

Frankly, your insistance that there's no real difference at all between the conservatives here who oppose Obama's attempts to dismantle America and Israel and Obama himself reminds me strongly of what he's said in the past both in the quoted section and elsewhere about Israel's treatment of Palestinians and how Israel has often cut off its nose to spite its face. (As does your "what innocents?" performance from last night. Oh, and your comments on the Ted Cruz thread. Among many others.)

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-06-14 12:43

#6 It is significant that the Iranian Quds force brokered the deal between Obama and Iraq.

Al

Posted by: frozen al 2014-06-14 12:13

#5 we need a summit to come up with consensus hashtag responses

Posted by: Frank G 2014-06-14 10:35

#4 This bunch in Washington are like pampered, spoiled, children who toss their toys around, throw a tantrum and pound their fists and stamp their feet when they don't get their own way.

Please send some adults to DC to clean up this mess that has been created.

Posted by: JohnQC 2014-06-14 07:06

#3 It was foreseeable from the moment they sent in Brenner as proconsul and he disbanded the Iraqi army. It was forseeable from the moment we did not tell the Iraqis we were their liberators but also their conquerors and there were certain conditions We had no need to go in there, but having done it we had some obligations to leave them stable but that is not a condition that can be brought about through Liberal Democracy in Iraq. The conquest of Iraq was not the End of History and part of the transformation of the world into a peaceful league of liberal democracies, and those who thought it would inevitably be so were not only dead wrong, but ideologically blinded, and ignorant of history.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-06-14 06:11

#2 Amateurs don't concern themselves with the long-term impacts of their actions. Short-term gratification and political goals are all that matter. I doubt Champ was seriously thinking he'd be re-elected anyway. Might as well leave the mess for the next poor bugger and set him up for failure.

Posted by: Besoeker 2014-06-14 03:00

#1 Yeah, the Americans were out maneuvered and the Iraqis/Iranians were laughing at them...

That's encouraging to know.

We REALLY are the laughing stock of the middle east, a region in which POWER and manliness are very important to good diplomacy.

Posted by: Bill Clinton 2014-06-14 00:15

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