Amsterdan

It's bad. It's very bad.

I yield the floor to Tim Dickenson writing in Rolling Stone (rollingstone.com), March 22, 2007. A panel of experts tells writer Tim Dickinson the war is lost, surge or no surge. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again." How awful can it get? The panel's three scenarios:

BEST CASE -- Civil war in Iraq and a stronger al-Qaida: "The best we can hope for is an Iraq that is politically passive but hostile toward America," says Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser.

"It's complete anarchy now," says Nir Rosen, author of "In the Belly of the Beast." "Americans are still killing Iraqi civilians left and right. There's no government in Iraq; it doesn't exist outside of the Green Zone. We deliberately created a weak government so that we would have final authority over everything in Iraq. ... The best you can hope for is that doesn't spill into the neighboring countries."

MOST LIKELY -- Years of ethnic cleansing and war with Iran: Rosen says our Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia are pushing the United States to switch sides and support the minority Sunnis in Iraq. "The whole buildup to a new war against Iran, which sounds so much like the buildup in 2002, is part of that," he says.

Bob Graham, ex-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, adds: "This administration seems to be getting ready to make -- at a much more significant, escalated level -- the same mistake in Iran that we made in Iraq. If Iraq has been a disaster, this would be multiple times Iraq. The extent to which this could be the horror of the 21st century is hard to exaggerate."

Brzezinski says, "If the war continues without any American willingness to accommodate regionally and to pull out, the Iraq war will be extended to Iran."

WORST CASE -- World War III: "Israel sees that it's threatened by these developments," says McPeak. "Once the Israelis get involved, then everybody piles on. And you've got nuclear events going off in the Middle East."

He concludes: "Our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment . If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference."

Labels: blunder, Bush, fiasco, Iran, Iraq

posted by DanZ @ 10:21 PM 0 comments

Where is Bandar Bush when the world needs him?

In two current New York Times analyses, the think-for-yourself conservative David Brooks points out that Iraq is now in the pre-Darfur, pre-Rwanda, pre-Bosnia phase of the coming bloodbath.

Brooks writes, “Iraq already has the psychological conditions that have undergirded the great bloodbaths of recent years. Iraqi minds, according to the most sensitive reporting, have already been rewired by the experiences of trauma and extreme stress.

"Some people become hyperaggressive and turn into perfect killers. Others endure a phased mental shutdown that looks like severe depression. They lose their memory and become passive and fatalistic. They become perfect victims.” (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/opinion/25brooks.html?th&emc=th)

The solution is a “soft partition” of Iraq.
Brooks outlines a 4-step plan including (1) modify the Iraq Constitution, which already decentralizes power, to equitably share oil and gas revenue; (2) get implicit consent from all sects that separation and federalism are in their interest; (3) relocate people into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish districts as was done successfully in Bosnia; (4) get Iraq’s neighbors – who have everything to lose in the coming transnational bloodbath – to buy into the arrangement. (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/opinion/28brooks.html?hp)

Brooks concludes: "In short, logic, circumstances and politics are leading inexorably toward soft partition. The Bush administration has been slow to recognize its virtues because it is too dependent on the Green Zone Iraqis. The Iraqis talk about national unity but their behavior suggests they want decentralization. Sooner or later, everybody will settle on this sensible policy, having exhausted all the alternatives."

But does anyone think Bush-Cheney will actually plan this or just pretend it isn't happening and screw this up, too? And where are Iraq's neighbors in all this? If a transnational bloodbath is a possibility; if “failure is unthinkable” as Bush said in his State of the Union; then why aren't Iraq’s neighbors, many of them our allies, stepping up and offering to help? Where is Bandar Bush when the world – and George W – need him most?

Labels: bloodbath, Bush, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, partition, Saudi

posted by DanZ @ 7:18 PM 0 comments