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December 23, 2004
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.
Stavro
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
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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.