One more point about the looming inter-sectarian charnel house in Iraq. There’s a very bleak irony here that’s worth noting. Because of the unipolar world we now live in, when anarchy and genocide break out in the world, only the US is really in a position to halt it. I don’t mean alone. But rather with other countries acting in concert and probably with some NATO or UN mandate. That was the lesson of the Balkans in the 1990s. Only the US has the mix of military, diplomatic and financial muscle to make it happen. Or did.
I don’t pretend it would be easy in the middle of Iraq. It might not even be possible. But we’re simply not available because as the authors of the catastrophe we simply have no standing or credibility to bring it to a halt. Or even to lead others in doing so. Add to that the fact that the last four years of twiddling our thumbs has sharply depleted our military capacity, diplomatic influence and financial flexibility.
It’s worth stepping back for a moment and realizing that if we weren’t the ones who had started this a lot of us would be calling for the US to intervene to prevent what looks to be coming down the pike. But, as I said, we’re not available.
It’s an irony I suspect some folks will be mulling in hell, or at least in limbo, for quite a long time.
Gay Rights bashing of Romney continues — now at the American Spectator.
Paul Kiel’s got more here at TPMmuckraker on one Postie’s dismissive response to questions about the paper’s hiring of the AP’s John Solomon. What we’re supposed to believe is that the gripes about Solomon are simply a matter of his stepping on toes with his sleuthing. Please. As a pal of mine puts it …
Someone posed the question to Peter Baker in a Post chat session–of Solomon’s partisan hackitude–and Baker arrogantly brushed him off, suggesting that anyone who criticized Solomon was a rank partisan. That’s simply not true, of course, since a bunch of media critics including Howie Kurtz have given serious consideration to the question in a non-partisan way. It also avoids the whole debate at the AP between legit non-hack reporters there, who thought Solomon was a hack, and the contingent that liked him.
If you want to know more about his MO, check out this post from earlier this year and the reference back to that piece in the Atlantic Monthly about reporters who are easy marks for second rate oppo research dumps.
And as long as we’re on the subject, where’s Jack Shafer on this? Perfect story for him. And even a good chance to get in the face of the new corporate overlord.
Should the ISG folks have been talking to the troops on the ground?
Very good point!
From TPM Reader JM (good initials) …
Just to put things in perspective… with public approval solidly in the 20s, the war in Iraq is now less popular than a bevy of social issues that have long been considered political poison for Democrats. Imagine if a Democratic president and Congress had made any of these issues their #1 priority, as Bush has with Iraq.
And they wonder why they lost the election?
The Iraq War is less popular than gay marriage, legalizing pot, banning handguns, and rescinding the death penalty.
CNN shows split screens of Barack Obama with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Who knows — maybe GOP Rep. Saxby Chambliss’ ad man (creator of the spot showing pictures of Dem Max Cleland next to Bin Laden and Hussein) is working for the network now?
Have we got your attention, Tom?
Over at the new and oddly entertaining TomDelay.com blog, Tom has a post about the Q&A he did for right wing bloggers today over at the Heritage Foundation. Here’s the pic they posted. But look down there at the blogger in the lower right hand corner. What site is that blogger reading?
By the way, apparently the insider word he gave the winger bloggers is that that Hillary’s gonna be the next president.
Does anybody have a good explanation for why the Saudi ambassador to the United States just resigned his post and left the country on a day’s notice? Officials are giving various unconvincing explanations, the best of which is that, in the words of an unnamed embassy official, “He wants to spend more time with his family.”
Perhaps we can take that as a foreigners gently parodic homage to the American tradition of political white lies.
Ordinarily, even if there were some hidden backstory, it would likely be some palace intrigue in the Saudi royal family or some arcane point in US-Saudi relations. But look at the geopolitical context. Saudi Arabia’s neighbor Iraq is in some sort of slow motion civil war. The neighbor across the water, Iran, has been empowered tremendously and stands to gain even more power if their Shi’a coreligionists in Iraq take over the country and slaughter or dominate the Sunni Arab minority. And the White House is signalling that it might opt to take the side of the Shi’a in that cataclysm and, shall we say, go along for the slaughter.
That would cut at the heart of the seven decade US-Saudi alliance, though admitteldy it’s taken quite a few cuts already of late. The White House has also just been presented with the Baker-Hamilton report which has, I think fairly, been characterized as a bid to return to the earlier US policy of aligning its regional interests with those of the Sunni autocracies in the region. The White House has dismissed that out of hand.
I’m no expert on the finer points of US-Saudi relations. But I don’t think you need to be to see that the underpinnings of the relationship are on the table right now. And just at this moment, the ambassador resigns and gets on the next plane home. To borrow a phrase from our judicial pals, I think any excuse that this is just some personal matter deserves the strictest scrutiny. Something must be up.
And one other thing. Many readers have written in to say that there’s just no way we’re going to let ourselves take sides in what would likely be at least a borderline genocidal civil war between Iraq’s Sunni minority and Shi’a majority. To which, I can only say, why not? Is there anything we’ve seen in the last six years that makes you think we wouldn’t pull the trigger on a ridiculously foolish new plan? I don’t just mean that as trash talk. I think it’s the only sensible way to approach the case at hand.
The main mistakes I’ve made thinking about foreign policy over the last half decade were, I think, all cases where there were certain outcomes I just didn’t find credible because they were just too stupid and dangerous for anybody in a position of power to try. Good luck on that.
Another point, and one I’m not sure is widely appreciated. The folks who brought you the Iraq War have always been weak in the knees for a really whacked-out vision of a Shi’a-US alliance in the Middle East. I used to talk to a lot of these folks before I became persona non grata. So here’s basically how the theory went and, I don’t doubt, still goes … We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi’a were oppressed by Saddam. So they’ll like us. So we’ll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren’t very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi’a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you’ll see a new government in Tehran. Plus, big parts of northern Saudi Arabia are Shi’a too. And that’s where a lot of the oil is. So they’ll probably want to break off and set up their own pro-US Shi’a state with tons of oil. So before you know it, we’ll have Iraq, Iran, and a big chunk of Saudi Arabia that is friendly to the US and has a ton of oil. And once that happens we can tell the Saudis to f$#% themselves once and for all.
Now, you might think this involves a fair amount of wishful and delusional thinking. But this was the thinking of a lot of neocons going into the war. And I don’t doubt it’s still the thinking of quite a few of them. They still want to run the table. And even more now that it’s double-down. I don’t know what these guys are planning now. But there’s plenty of reason to be worried.