Henry Kissinger, writing in the International Herald Tribune, says that withdrawal is not an option. And he makes one of most nakedly imperialistic claims for why this is the case.
American forces are indispensable. They are in Iraq not as a favor to its government or as a reward for its conduct. They are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
This is about the sixth or seventh expressed reason for why our troops are in Iraq. It’s not because of Saddam’s human rights abuses, or his connection to Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 attacks, or about his harboring of terrorists, or about weapons of mass destruction, or about democracy and self-determination for the Iraqi people. No. Our troops are merely ‘an expression of the American national interest’ to keep Iran from dominating a region which has our energy supplies.
Of course, this is the exact reasoning that led Reagan to support Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s. The irony of this is enough to make anyone’s head explode. We have waged a 15 year war with Saddam Hussein only in order to find ourselves bogged down in Iraq because Saddam Hussein no longer controls the country. We have to stay in Iraq because we fear that Iran will dominate the country if we leave, when it was our invasion that took the anti-Persian Sunnis out of power and replaced them with a Shi’a dominated pro-Iranian government.
Assuming Kissinger is right, we should be strongly considering rounding up the neo-cons as traitors that have been doing the bidding of Iran.
The rest of Kissinger’s plan is the same as Charles Krauthammer’s…just a little more fleshed out. We pull back to bases and let them slaughter each other; we kill any al-qaeda types we become aware of; and we patrol the borders to make sure no outside country invades. While we are doing this, we begin intense diplomacy and convince our erstwhile allies to help us pick up the pieces.
It’s all a brilliant plan. Never mind that the public will never stand for it. Never mind that the President doesn’t have the credibility, imagination, skill, intelligence, will, or inclination to carry out Kissinger’s delicate diplomatic efforts. It’s all nothing more than Friedmanesque wishful thinking. Just do what Henry says and everything will be okay. But Henry!! They’ll never do what you say. They aren’t capable of it. The Iraqis aren’t capable of it. You’ve been through this before with General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Why repeat our mistakes?
