Opening the gates of hell - Wall Street Journal

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When "Bush41", James Baker and Brent Scowcroft decided not to go all the way to Baghdad at the end of the First Gulf War it was because they knew that the possibilities of exactly the sort of catastrophe facing "Bush43" today were high. This was not because these men were especially clairvoyant or were "speaking in tongues", but because that was the opinion of most people with deep knowledge of the region. The potential for disaster in Mesopotamia has been evident from the days of T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. In other words the idea that Iraq could fall apart and take with it the entire jerrybuilt construction that Sykes and Picot had cobbled together out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire was not exactly "rocket science", but in reality the opinion of most reputable experts at the time. Therefore, if only as hypothesis, I think we might begin to contemplate the idea that this disaster has been deliberately provoked. By whom?

The "usual suspects" in all the popular conspiracy theories surrounding the invasion of Iraq have always been "Oil and Israel". What could this "dynamic duo" possibly gain from such a hecatomb and horror? To begin with, if all the Muslims begin to fight with each other everywhere, the pressure on Israel to evacuate "Judea and Samaria" would lessen dramatically. What about the price of oil rocketing over $100 a barrel? Well, that would mean some huge profits for oil companies and remember that if Texas were an independent republic it would be a major member of OPEC... after all, Texas was the first "Saudi Arabia". Sound nutty? You bet it does! Nuttier than the great "democratic renaissance" of the Middle East? "May you live in interesting times," is a famous Chinese curse. DS

Allies See 'Nightmare' In Iraq - Wall Street Journal - pg A1

Abstract: As President Bush prepares to unveil his latest Iraq strategy, Arab allies are worried about what might happen if the plan fails: that worsening strife could engulf the entire region, sparking a wider war in the middle of the world's largest oil patch. The potential of a much larger regional conflict that pits Sunnis against Shiites is increasingly on the minds of both Arab leaders and U.S. military planners, according to regional diplomats and U.S. officials. Some are calling such a possible outcome the "nightmare scenario." A wider conflict appears more plausible now because, even as Iraq is separating along sectarian lines, regional dynamics are shoving neighboring nations into two rival camps. On one side is a Shiite-led arc running from Iran into central Iraq, through Syria and into Lebanon. On the other side lie American allies Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, along with Persian Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These Sunni regimes are horrified at the emerging, increasingly radicalized Shiite bloc, largely financed and inspired by Iran, Arab diplomats say.(...) The Saudis have warned the Bush administration that they are prepared to aid the Sunni militias in Iraq if the Sunni population there becomes imperiled, a Saudi diplomat said. Jordanian officials have told the Pentagon that they may move troops into Iraq's uninhabited western desert as a buffer if events there spiral out of control, according to U.S. military officials. Turkish officials, who are grappling with a separatist Kurdish movement in their country, say they would oppose the creation of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. They also say they are prepared to defend Iraq's Turkmen population, who share a common ethnicity with Turkey's majority population, should it come under attack. Even Syria, which the U.S. alleges has been abetting the conflict, is expressing alarm over the potential fracturing of Iraq.(...) The U.S. is also pushing a wide-ranging strategy to persuade its Sunni allies that it is serious about counteracting the rise of Iran -- in exchange for Arab help in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Key to the effort is the continued promise to keep U.S. forces in Iraq for as long as necessary. But the U.S. is also beefing up U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and plans to deepen security cooperation with Gulf allies. The Pentagon has proposed sending a second carrier battle group to the Gulf region. There are also advanced plans under way to knit together the air-defense systems of the six smaller Gulf states, including Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and to build a U.S.-administered missile-defense system. Similarly, the Air Force is laying plans to step up exercises with Arab allies in the region. One proposal calls for the U.S. to hold combined air exercises with Oman and the UAE.(...) Under one scenario, sketched by Mr. White of the Iraq Study Group, Iraq's Shiites would launch an extensive campaign to drive the Sunnis out of large areas of central Iraq. Fearing a rout of the Sunni population, Saudi Arabia would finance a large-scale counteroffensive, funneling aid to former Iraqi military officers through Jordan, which has longstanding ties to Iraq's Sunni military class. Egypt would do its part by providing guns, munitions, artillery and vehicles. "What people forget is that the Sunnis comprise nearly the entire top brass of the former Iraqi army and nearly all of the old Republican Guard," says Mr. White. "You give them the guns and proper equipment and they will become a formidable force against the Shiite militias." The possibility of a full-blown civil war in Iraq dissolving into a regional conflict "is a scenario that nearly everyone was rejecting just a few months ago," he says. "Not anymore." READ IT ALL (subscription)

Tipping point: Coming to grips with failure in the Middle East

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Today, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "If I were an average Iraqi, obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying: 'Am I going to see my child again?' The society needs security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done - not recovery or reconstruction." There is a moment when failure becomes 'official', a moment when Paul Krugman asks, "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?" This moment is called the "tipping point", when people start running for the doors. Many Americans have trouble realizing how bad things really are at this moment; the American managerial class, mostly lives cocooned in the comfortable banality of the suburbs, . But in the Middle East, where rich and poor... they are all of them staring death and chaos straight in the face, every day... for them, all this is all very real. At bottom I think both Americans and the people of the Middle East thought the USA was much more powerful than it really is. All of us still lived with the image of the omnipotent America of the 1950s and 1960 in our heads and together we are having to face the truth. Only facing that truth is a much more serious business in the Middle East than in an American suburb. DS

Mideast allies near a state of panic - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: Instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president's journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy — and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse. President Bush's summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney's stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom's leaders. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new U.S. push for peace, found little to work with. In all, visits designed to show the American team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with U.S. leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts. The trips demonstrated that U.S. allies in the region were struggling to understand what to make of the difficult relationship, and to figure whether, with a new Democratic majority taking over Congress, Bush even had control over his nation's Mideast policy. Arabs are "trying to figure out what the Americans are going to do, and trying develop their own plans," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), one of his party's point men on Iraq. "They're trying to figure out their Plan B." The allies' predicament was described by Jordan's King Abdullah II last week, before Bush arrived in Amman, the capital. Abdullah, one of America's steadiest friends in the region, warned that the Mideast faced the threat of three simultaneous civil wars — in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. And he made clear that the burden of dealing with it rested largely with the United States. "Something dramatic" needed to come out of Bush's meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to defuse the three-way threat, Abdullah said, because "I don't think we're in a position where we can come back and visit the problem in early 2007."(...) Expressing deeper unhappiness with the United States, leaders from Jordan, Egypt and Persian Gulf countries told Rice during her trip to an economic development conference in Jordan on Friday that the U.S. had a responsibility to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which they and many analysts viewed as the key to regional stability. Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, urged greater U.S. action, warning that the Middle East was becoming "an abyss…. The region is facing real failure." READ IT ALL

Looked over Jordan and what did I see...? A Burned Bush

From Time Magazine: The fact that Bush is holding talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not in Baghdad, but in the comparatively tranquil Jordanian capital of Amman, has not gone unnoticed."One hundred and fifty thousand U.S. soldiers cannot secure protection for their president," mocked a Jordanian columnist, who called the choice of venue "an open admission of gross failure for Washington and its allies' project in Iraq." READ IT ALL
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This trip to Amman to meet Maliki, which as the Jordanian columnist in the Time article points out, is in itself an admission of failure in Iraq, combined with the famous memo degrading Maliki timed to coincide with the trip, that at the same time gives Moqtada al-Sadr a further excuse to destabilize the government... Like so much in the American/Iraq catastrophe none of it makes any sense. Trying to follow the ins and outs of it, if you have to in your work, like I do, is quite hard on the nerves. Like having to watch a Three Stooges movie, where they torture and kill Curly... watching it in a loop. A friend told me once that he didn't believe in conspiracies, but that he believed in idiots. I'm converting. Finally there will have to be some sort of Nuremberg trial and in depth investigation, not just to determine responsibility and to punish, but to try and truly understand how so much stupidity and incompetence, venality and imbecility could rise, like it was cream, to the top of the most powerful and complex country in the world... twice. DS