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August 31, 2007
Unlike the Howard Government, which continues to engage in imperial flag waving in support of fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, it is now widely accepted that the U.S. has created an intractable mess in Iraq. The insurgency has viewed the foreign presence as an occupation, not liberation.
The quagmire may well worsen, if Vice President Cheney gets his way on bombing Iran. A desperate and increasingly shrill President Bush is drawing on Graham Greene to offer selective "lessons" from U.S. military involvement in Vietnam arguing that leaving Iraq would provoke the kind of bloody retribution that followed U.S. withdrawals from Indochina. Presumably, Vietnam, for Bush was a self-inflicted defeat, not a disastrous war from the start, whilst bombing Iran is equivalent to Nixon bombing Cambodia in the Vietnam war.
Many in the Middle East are well aware of the limits of American power, and the fact that it is on the wane in this region. The signs are there when the regimes most dependent on direct U.S. military support — Iraq and Afghanistan — are simply ignoring the Bush Administration’s injunctions against consorting with Iran.
Another sign of the collapse of Pax Americana in the Middle East is David Walker, comptroller general of the US, saying that the US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.
As it is accepted in the Middle East that the U.S. must begin withdrawing from Iraq in the coming year and that the surge was only a temporary U.S. excuse to prolong a losing hand in Iraq, so the regional power politics is about the nation states deciding on what strategy they will pursue toward a post-American Iraq. Will they side with Iran in supporting a Shiite government in Iraq, or will they side with Saudi Arabia in supporting the Sunni resistance?
Presumably, the U.S. will muddle on with the present order, perhaps drawing down its troop levels and relying more on air power to essentially manage the conflict at more or less current levels. Maintaining the present level of civil war may now be all that’s possible with the leverage available to the U.S. acting more or less alone.
Update:2 September
Scott Burchill has an op-ed in the Sunday Age on the diminished power and significance of President George Bush when compared to the man who addressed the Federal Parliament in 2003. He writes:
More than most, the Bush Administration has been characterised by illusions, fantasies, ignorance and incompetence in foreign policy. Washington refuses to acknowledge the limits of its power and does not understand that military force rarely translates into geopolitical influence and success — wars are won politically or not at all....The great paradox for Bush is that at a time when the US has never been more militarily powerful, it has never felt less secure. Iraq and Afghanistan have been calamitous and incompetent interventions, disastrous for the people of both countries and the image of the US around the world.
Rightly said. It is in contrast with the past In the past, when Washington's strength rested on its ability to convince other nations it was in their vital interests to see the US prevail in its global role. Bush's strident unilateralism after 9/11 squandered much goodwill and effectively undermined this diplomatic approach.
George Bush has asked Rudd to rethink Labor's policy to withdraw troops from Iraq in interviews with Australian journalists ahead of his scheduled arrival in Sydney on Tuesday for the annual APEC leaders meeting. The ALP is holding firm: Rudd rejected any change to Labor's policy of a phased withdrawal of Australian troops in consultation with Washington.
Well, that's a relief. There is still a point of difference between the Liberals and Labor. For the latter, the alliance with the United States does not mandate automatic compliance with the United States on every element of foreign policy.
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And another one to come when Iran is attacked. Per Bush's speech at the American Legion Convention:
Congress has no intention of stopping this insanity, Democrats have buckled to the Israeli lobby and the propaganda of Iran being responsible for US failures in Iraq. Notice how the language and demonisation is the same as it was before the invasion of Iraq.
The nightmare of Iraq may well be overshadowed by the holocaust of Iran, triggered by US provocation --Bush is just itching for a 1914 style Serajevo incident to unleash the bombing, (like assassination of a US General?) however, if it happens and I for one believe it will, and am far from alone in that viewpoint: it really means the end of US hegemony, and will likely cause a world depression.
With his name and reputation trashed in world opinion, Bush it seems, is determined to drag his country down into the gutter with him. To crash through or crash. To put his name in the history books as the man who purportedly "saved" Israel. Reality is that revulsion and loathing will be the history accorded him, not entirely unlike that reserved for another tyrant in 1945.