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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (237650)	7/24/2007 11:23:18 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

we still have a chance to walk away with a free kurdistan and an iraqi shiaa religous state that does not have to be a protectorate of iran. That new shiaa state i think would want to offset iranian influence/dominance with relationships with europe and the US. Michael, Galbraith is saying that the most likely outcome is that Iran will have a large influence over any Shia state in Iraq. He says that the only way to reduce their influence somewhat would be to support a free Kurdish state in the north. But, one thing one should note about Galbraith--he has had a soft spot for the Kurds for decades now, and was advocating a Kurdish state even before this latest fiasco. Which isn't to say he is wrong here, it just adds a caveat emptor to reading him. He is just one voice among many, but a far more informed one than most. Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today—a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region. Iraq's Kurdish leaders and Iraq's dwindling band of secular Arab democrats fear that a complete US withdrawal will leave all of Iraq under Iranian influence. Senator Hillary Clinton, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke are among the prominent Democrats who have called for the US to protect Kurdistan militarily should there be a withdrawal from Iraq. The argument for so doing is straightforward: it secures the one part of Iraq that has emerged as stable, democratic, and pro-Western; it discharges a moral debt to our Kurdish allies; it deters both Turkish intervention and a potentially destabilizing Turkish– Kurdish war; it provides US forces a secure base that can be used to strike at al-Qaeda in adjacent Sunni territories; and it limits Iran's gains. In laying out his dark vision of an American failure, President Bush never discusses Iran's domination of Iraq even though this is a far more likely consequence of American defeat than an al-Qaeda victory. Bush's reticence is understandable since it was his miscalculations and incompetent management of the postwar occupation that gave Iran its opportunity. While opposing talks with Iran, the neoconservatives also prefer not to discuss its current powerful influence over Iraq's central government and southern region, persisting in the fantasy—notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary—that Iran is deeply unpopular among Iraq's Shiites and clerics. (At the same time, US officials accuse Iran of supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with particularly lethal roadside bombs.)