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December 23, 2004
the new crusade
The Americans are in a state of denial about Iraq.They are in a situation where their crusade to democratise the Middle East and turn it into a dependency in their empire has become bogged down into a Vietnam War-style scenario.
As David Day observes in The Australian:
"It is a situation in which the towns and cities of Iraq will continue to be laid waste by the devastating firepower of the US air force and artillery while the deadly bombings of the insurgents take a similarly indiscriminating toll on the inhabitants."
As long as US forces remain in effective occupation, the insurgency will continue. The rubble of the neo-conservative strategy lies all around Iraq.
The Bush administration's obsession with shock and awe is a result of its misunderstanding of the war it is fighting, which is political and not military. The "shock and awe" of American regional dominance [is] turning into a daily spectacle of ineptitude and failure because the military commanders have no sense of politics or diplomacy.
My judgement is that in the long run Iraq will have a Shi'ite-led regime in aligned with Iran. What then for the US? Continuing to define its Middle East strategy in terms of Israel's national interests and take a hard line based on bombing Iran's nuclear facilities and engineering regime change? Continue to caricature Iran's regional foreign policy in terms of Iran being a "rogue" power that aims to overthrow its neighbors?
Iraq's future alignment with Iran suggests that the neo-conservative dream of total American hegemony without need of allies or international law is being exposed as an impossible one.
To see the limits or constraints of the neo-conservastive's geo-political strategy can be seen in the Middle East go to this post at the excellent chez Nadezhda
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 23, 2004 01:33 AM
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Comments
Have you been reading Tom Clancy's Executive Orders?
"My judgement is that in the long run Iraq will become aligned with Iran"
That is exactly what happens in the book.
Then again I suppose the world has suspected it or been suspicious of it for some time.
Posted by: Vee at December 23, 2004 09:07 AM
Vee,
No I haven't. I've only seen the Clancy books as films.
For those interested here is a review of Executive Orders. One of the passsages says:
"In Executive Orders, Jack Ryan has just becomne president, following the events of Debt of Honour. He has to deal with an assortment of domestic problems, along with simply being president. And then, America is infected with an airborne form of Ebola by the newly formed United Islamic Republic, an amalgam of Iran and Iraq. While the infection is combatted, successfully, Ryan has to cope with attempted assasinations directed at himself and his family, and an invasion of Saudi Arabia by the UIR."
The sabre rattling US policies towards Iran are making life difficult for American power in the Middle East.
U.S. military action on suspected Iranian nuclear sites could reignite Iranian nationalism and allowed fundamentalist clerics to consolidate their hold on Iran just when the Islamic revolution had begun to wobble.
Iran can cause the US much trouble through its support of groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, as well as the Shiites in Iraq.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 23, 2004 10:45 AM