Confronting Iran may doom Iraq goals
BARNETT
ARTICLE: To Counter Iran's Role in Iraq, Bush Moves Beyond Diplomacy, By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, January 11, 2007
This is where I part ways with Bush dramatically (Iran), as I argue in my column this weekend. Adding the Iranian fight on top of the Iraqi effort right now comes close to dooming our effort.
Iran will simply intensify the fight in Iraq and conflate it elsewhere, like it did in Lebanon last August. We'll feel more and worse short-term pain.
I mean, that's not even being clever on Iran's part, that's just not having their heads up their asses.
I agree you work Iran in the future if no improvement there, but why telegraph your punch endlessly with axis of evil back then and stuff like this now? How can this administration act with such secrecy and duplicitousness at home and remain so godawfully transparent to our enemies abroad? There's stupid in your living room and then there's stupid on my front lawn: I don't have to do anything about the former, but the latter will earn a response. I thought that response came with the November election, but Bush and Cheney are effectively blowing that popular will off, and you know what? This time those "dumb average Americans" are outperforming the Vulcans in more ways than I care to calculate.
If Bush made the Big Bang seem sequential (like the Balkans unfolded), then the American people would be able to come along. But if he makes it seem additive, as I arguedin PNM, he loses them, especially when Iran will forcefully pursue an asymmetrical strategy designed to prevent any effective U.S. response down the road.
Ahmadinejad did well by Bush's speech last night. Our troops will suffer as a result in Iraq.
This is Bush's biggest problem in grand strategic thinking: too expansive in defining enemies (especially over time, thus telegraphing punches way in advance), and way too unimaginative in defining friends.
The incurious president costs us a whole lot over the long haul of this Long War--i.e., he just doesn't seem to know enough about the world to overrule the neocon-in-chief, Cheney.
Who's on first in terms of WMD?
Another thing that baffles me with this neocon/hawk push to define Iran as near-term military action (e.g., pushing hard to position the "what is to be done?" argument in the 2008 race), is that Iran remains years away from the serious combo of missiles and nukes, while North Korea is already there today (tests missiles, detonated a nuke). North Korea can't fight us asymmetrically like Iran can due to our Iraq tie-down. Plus, dealing with NK first settles us out considerably with China, freeing resources in Asia for the fight and potentially tapping an ally with very similiar interests (you think China doesn't want cheap dependable oil from the Gulf?).
The radical Salafi jihadist movement's only hope long term is to pit rising East against aging West. By holding Iran short-term and China long-term as preferred enemies, the neocons and hawks do their myopic best to deliver this outcome right into bin Laden's hands with their inability to discriminate the strategic battlefield whatsoever. China's actions on energy signal a clear overlap on strategic interests, our willful ignorance of which is just plain sad. And conflating Iran-the-Shiia-threat with Al-Qaeda-the-Sunni-based-movement is just plain dumb. The conspiracy theorist in me just wonders if Bush simply does want one conflict following upon another, it's that strategically stupid.
Again, where is the grand strategic thinking with Bush and Cheney? Where is a sense of sequencing and making the fight as unfair to our enemies as possible by constantly maximizing our assets while minimizing theirs?
This is a Long War? But Bush fights it with no sense of time. If FDR had fought WWII like this, we would have invaded Europe and pushed on Japan at the same time (instead we worked Japan for years and didn't open real second front in Europe til summer 44--made possible by alliance with past-and-future foe (but then ally of convenience) Soviet Union.
Where is this sort of strategic vision from Bush? He and the neocons just seem to want to fight everybody all at once, which accomplishes the twin problems of: 1) making us look confused and isolated (who wants to join this merry-go-round approach?) and making us look ineffective (Iraq), which only emboldens our enemies more and cows potential allies.
Bush and Cheney are our own worst enemies in this regard. Their inability to think strategically preordains suboptimal outcomes. It is tragic, really, given the huge costs: people, money, but most of all--opportunity.
To me, this is a strategic incompetence that history will judge very harshly.
This administration is urgent in all the wrong places and slow-footed in all the necessary areas. Our leadership remains our greatest weakness.
thomaspmbarnett.com |
