Iraq gut check?

Nope. Neocon agenda not moving toward reality-based policy


Bush policy to prefer death and destruction, as illustrated by hospitals and mosques flattened along with hundreds killed in the US-led offensive against Fallujah, Iraq (BBC photo)

Juan Cole posted recently a piece written by an interesting establishment figure. In this piece, American Options in Iraq, author William R. Polk comes to the same conclusion I have promoted for a long time: the United States should withdraw from Iraq as quickly and as rationally as possible. Any other other course will lead to political, economic, and human disaster. Polk, a former member of the US State Department's Policy Planning Council, responsible for the Middle East, after demolishing options wrought with danger that he calls "stay the course" and an Iraqi version of "Vietnamization", writes:

The third option is to choose to get out rather than being forced. Time is a wasting asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make. The steps required to implement this policy need not be dramatic, but the process needs to be affirmed and made unambiguous. The initial steps could be merely verbal. America would have first to declare unequivocally that it will give up its lock on the Iraqi economy, will cease to spend Iraqi revenues as it chooses and will allow Iraqi oil production to be governed by market forces rather than by an American monopoly. If President Bush could be as courageous as General Charles de Gaulle was in Algeria when he admitted that the Algerian insurgency had "won" and called for a "peace of the braves," fighting would quickly die down in Iraq as it did in Algeria and in all other guerrilla wars. Then, and only then, could elections be meaningful. In this period, Iraq would need a police force but not an army. A UN multinational peacekeeping force would be easier, cheaper and safer than creating an Iraqi army which in the past destroyed moves toward civil society and probably would do so again, probably indeed paving the way for the "ghost" of Saddam Hussein....

In such a program, inevitably, there will be set-backs and shortfalls, but they can be partly filled by international organizations. The steps will not be easy; Iraqis will disagree over timing, personnel and rewards while giving the process a chance will require American political courage. But, and this is the crucial matter, any other course of action would be far worse for both America and Iraq. The safety and health of American society as well as Iraqi society requires that this policy be implemented intelligently, determinedly and soon.

The unwritten line here is that this Iraq thing is going to kill America and Iraq if we follow the Bush neocons down this endless tunnel where no light is visible at all, as the pointless destruction of Fallujah indicates.

There is no evidence President Bush will show any interest in this kind of gut check. Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reports on hawk-preferred policy directions recommended for the recently-ratified neocon regime:

An influential foreign-policy neo-conservative with longstanding ties to top hawks in the administration of President George W Bush has laid out what he calls "a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term."

The list, which begins with the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq and ends with the development of "appropriate strategies" for dealing with threats posed by China, Russia and "the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America," also calls for "regime change" in Iran and North Korea.

The list's author, Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), also warns that Bush should resist any pressure arising from the anticipated demise of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to resume peace talks that could result in Israel's giving up "defensible boundaries."

While all seven steps listed by Gaffney in an article published Friday morning in the 'National Review Online' have long been favoured by prominent neo-cons, the article itself, 'Worldwide Value', is the first comprehensive compilation to emerge since Bush's re-election Tuesday....

"Indeed, the president laid claim squarely to the ultimate moral value -- freedom -- as the cornerstone of his strategy for defeating our Islamofascist enemies and their state sponsors, for whom that concept is utterly (sic) anathema."

To be true to that commitment, policy in the second administration must be directed toward seven priorities, according to Gaffney, beginning with the "reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens utilised by freedom's enemies in Iraq"; followed by "regime change -- one way or another -- in Iran and North Korea, the only hope for preventing these remaining 'Axis of Evil' states from fully realising their terrorist and nuclear ambitions."

Third, the administration must provide "the substantially increased resources needed to re-equip a transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of intelligence 'reforms' contemplated pre-election that would make matters worse on this and other scores) while we fight World War IV, followed by enhancing "protection of our homeland, including deploying effective missile defences at sea and in space, as well as ashore."

Fifth, Washington must keep "faith with Israel, whose destruction remains a priority for the same people who want to destroy us (and ... for our shared 'moral values) especially in the face of Yasser Arafat's demise and the inevitable, post-election pressure to 'solve' the Middle East problem by forcing the Israelis to abandon defensible boundaries."

Sixth, the administration must deal with France and Germany and the dynamic that made them "so problematic in the first term: namely, their willingness to make common cause with our enemies for profit and their desire to employ a united Europe and its new constitution -- as well as other international institutions and mechanisms -- to thwart the expansion and application of American power where deemed necessary by Washington."

Finally, writes Gaffney, Bush must adapt "appropriate strategies for contending with China's increasingly fascistic trade and military policies, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin's accelerating authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America", which he does not identify.

Unfortunately, the neocon Middle East policy arc Lobe describes is locked in. Any other mode of thinking would force admission of error and undermine covert US purposes: develop military bases while controlling the region's still substantial energy reserves (with the world as a whole now entering an era of resource decline) -- including most importantly the ability to run the spigot for economic rivals like Europe, Japan, China, and S. Korea.

World players will seek alternatives. The S. Koreans recently entered an oil deal with Kazakhstan, the Chinese another with Iran. The Bush team intends to keep up the tension in all of these areas. Who is next on the hit list?