Reality, Reason, and Iraq
The news calls them “jihadist” and “Sunni extremists.” You have no idea who they are or what they want. Iraq is a nation three large minorities: ethnic Kurds, Shi’a Muslims, and Sunni Muslims. (Baghdad’s Jews and Marionite Catholics no longer count.) Historically, Iraq was never a nation until the British created it from the old Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. That they did not create Kurdistan at the same time is another sad story.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
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None of what you are saying is untrue, but people misconstrue the facts... they think the relationship between GHW Bush and the Saudi family comes from their supposed "oil fortune"... at most, they were tiny wildcat players in Midland, TX... not Chevron or Texaco. The relationship is a result of GHW's time as the Director of the CIA, and as Vice President, Ambassador to the UN, Ambassador to China, etc.
Frankly, I'm more comfortable with those relationships... than I would be with being a "friend" of the Clintons... something that is very, very dangerous.
Kuwait was not an "independent nation" in any real sense. It was created as a fueling depot by the British. Kuwait was really as much a part of Iraq as anything could be. Look at the map. The Kuwaitis could have mounted a heroic defense and won -- if they cared to fight.... None did. The country was loaded with foreign workers who had no rights. No one could vote. They had no elections. It was a theocratic monarchy and their oil money went for the big royal family. Saddam Hussein had a lot of support among Kuwait's Palestinian guest workers.
Moreover, we never (to my knowledge) ever settled the casus belli - Iraq claimed that Kuwait was slant drilling into its oil fields. Were they? Who knows?
The horror stories and atrocity stories about Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators and shipping the machines back home were false. We know that now. Much about that war was false.
With Saddam Hussein successful in Kuwait, the message to Saudi Arabia was clear. As a theocratic monarchy whose guest workers have no rights because, really, no one has any rights there, the Saudi Royal Family were sitting ducks. Saddam Hussein could have taken as much of Saudi Arabia as he wanted. And who cares?
Well, the Bush Family cared because the House of Saud are their personal friends. So, the Saudis hired the Americans to defend them because they were incapable of defending themselves.
That brought in Osama bin Laden.
"... it is a fact that the Saudi royal family gave the bin Laden family--and group--exclusive rights to all construction of a religious nature, whether in Mecca, Medina or--until 1967--the Holy Places in Jerusalem. This enabled the bin Ladens to establish an industrial and financial empire which now extends far beyond religious construction projects.
The relationship between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family is quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets. This is particularly the case with regard to the group's present-day leaders and the Soudairi clan.
Thanks to the renovation of Mecca, Sheik Mohammed bin Laden did not become merely Kin Abdul Aziz' official contractor, but his friend and confidant as well. This friendship has been handed down to their children. The bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the numerous offspring of King Abdul Aziz and they all followed the same path." -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...
Families are so troublesome.
The other issue I see is that we can not take back what we have already done in the Middle East. While we can speculate on what they will do if we pull out, it hasn't been proven that they will let bygones be bygone, either.
I don't understand how we got to this point. We dealt with the threat of nuclear war, yet we scared by a bunch of loosely-connected losers committing crimes. It's almost like some people need a huge threat like the Soviet Union was. In the absence of it, they try to get fired up over gangs or some other boogie man. If you call the gangs terrorists and suspend disbelief, you can almost imagine them being as bad as a country with thousands of ICBMs. You let the criminals of the world know we'll treat you as a serious world player if you only commit some ghastly murders.
It seems to me the key to making it work is creating a pluralistic gov't, one that's strong enough to fight insurgents but that grants regions and cities autonomy. There's the huge issue of managing the oil wealth, but that could be managed without violence if they had a strong pluralistic gov't.
Look to the report on terrorism written by Newt Gingrich and Gary Hart and released in early 2001.
Cold war policy, poor policy at that, coming back to bite us ten fold. It better to get our own hands dirty.
Jan,
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