When the Funk Hits the Fan
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Posted by James Wolcott
Michael Ledeen, who was the only kid in elementary school with a Machiavelli lunchbox, is peeved. President Bush isn't prosecuting the war on terror and implementing the neoconservative shake-and-bake agenda in the Mideast as hard and fast as he would like.
He hates when that happens.
Malaise, schmalaise--Ledeen wants the president to get a move on and make that beautiful dream that Norman Podhoretz has christened World War IV become bracing reality. He elocutes in National Review Online:
"Freedom is our greatest weapon against the terrorists, and we do not always need to send armies to support its spread. [Good thing, too, given that Rumsfeld is masterfully wrecking the one we have--j.w.] Syria and Iran are ripe for revolution, and the dictators know it. The revolutionaries are looking to Washington for clear and material support. They are not getting it today. Twice in the past, the president slid into a similar funk, first permitting himself to be gulled by the Saudis into believing he had to make a deal with Arafat before he was entitled to liberate Iraq, then permitting the British to drag out the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom with endless votes in the Security Council. Each time he realized his error, and pressed on with greater vigor. It’s time for him to do that again."
Ledeen clearly oversubscribes to the Great Man theory of history. Unless Bush keeps a Superman cape in his closet, he isn't going to be able to change the facts on the ground, which have gone wildly against him and defied original expectations.
Immanuel Wallerstein, the Senior Research Scholar at Yale University who contemplates our planetary doings with the troubled omniscience of the Fantastic Four's Watcher, explains what went awry:
"When September 11 occurred, the neo-cons seized the opportunity to get Bush to focus on a war on Iraq. As we know, the invasion would finally occur in 2003, resulting in the overthrow of Saddam. At the time, George W. Bush denounced the 'axis of evil' - a trio of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The U.S. had now decided to be against both the Iraqi and the Iranian regimes simultaneously, but to take on Iraq militarily first. It is quite clear that in 2003 the Bush regime considered it only a matter of time before the U.S. took on Iran.
"What President Bush seemed to expect in 2003 is that the U.S. would be able to install, rather rapidly, a friendly regime in Iraq, and then proceed to force a showdown with Iran. What they did not expect was a quite powerful resistance movement in Iraq, one which they now seem unable to contain seriously. What they did not expect was effective political pressure from the Shia to hold early elections that would give the Shia a majority in the government. What they did not expect was that the U.S. military would be so overstretched that there is now no way the U.S. can seriously consider undertaking any kind of military action to change the regime in Iran.
"And least of all did they expect that it would be Iran that would be in a position to be the great diplomatic victor of the U.S. invasion. Take what happened on May, 15, 2005. The U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, during which she spent her brief time half scolding, half pleading with the new Iraqi government, and all this is public. She said that the Iraqis should try to be more 'inclusive,' the code word for making more space for Sunni Arabs in the government. She cautioned against 'severe' de-Baathification, meaning the inclusion in power of at least some of those who supported Saddam Hussein. Presumably, Rice thinks this might undermine the resistance to U.S. occupation and make it possible to reduce U.S. troop commitment to Iraq (the better to use them against Iran?). Curious turnaround where the U.S. Secretary of State is pleading on behalf of at least some ex-Baathists. And, as far as one can tell, to half-deaf ears. The analyses of the present Iraqi government, or rather its priorities, seem to be different.
"Two days later, the Foreign Minister of Iran, Kamal Khazzeri, arrived for a far more successful four-day visit. He was greeted at the airport by Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Sunni and a Kurd, who broke into fluent Farsi. After three days, Iraq and Iran signed an agreement to end hostilities between them, in which the new Iraqi government agreed with Iran that the Iraq-Iran war was initiated by Saddam Hussein. The two countries renewed criticisms of Israel. If Bush thinks the new Iraqi government is going to join the U.S. in a crusade against Iran, that other member of the 'axis of evil,' he clearly has another think coming.
"Relations between Iraq and Iran have now become normal, en route to becoming friendly. This is not what the neo-cons had envisaged when they launched the drive for a U.S.-led 'democratization' of the Middle East. When the U.S. forces leave Iraq (probably sooner rather than later), Iran will still be around, and (thanks to the U.S.) stronger than ever."
This is what happens when American foreign policy is hijacked by ideological gangsters.
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