H. Kissinger - The New Iraq Strategy

[Dover]

The new Iraq strategy
BY HENRY A KISSINGER

19 January 2007

PRESIDENT George W Bush’s bold decision to order a “surge” of some 20,000 American troops for Iraq has brought the debate over the war to a defining stage. There will not be opportunity for another reassessment.

The Baker-Hamilton commission has powerfully described the impasse on the ground. It is the result of cumulative choices — some of them enumerated by the president — in which worthy objectives and fundamental American values clashed with regional and cultural realities.

The important goal of modernising US armed forces led to inadequate troop levels for the military occupation of Iraq. The reliance on early elections as the key to political evolution, in a country lacking a sense of national identity, caused the newly enfranchised to vote almost exclusively for sectarian parties, deepening historic divisions into chasms. The understandable — but, in retrospect, premature — strategy of replacing American with indigenous forces deflected US forces from a military mission; nor could it deal with the most flagrant shortcoming of Iraqi forces, which is to define what the Iraqi forces are supposed to fight for and under what banner.

These circumstances have merged into an almost perfect storm of mutually reinforcing crises: Within Iraq, the sectarian militias are engaged in civil war or so close to it as to make little practical difference. The conflict between Shias and Sunnis goes back 1,400 years. In most Middle Eastern countries, Shia minorities coexist precariously with Sunni majorities. The civil war in Iraq threatens to usher in a cycle of domestic upheavals and a war between Shia and Sunni states, with a high potential of drawing in countries from outside the region. In addition, the Kurds of Iraq seek full autonomy from both Sunnis and Shias; their independence would raise the prospect of intervention from Turkey and possibly Iran.

..snip..

But under present conditions, withdrawal is not an option. American forces are indispensable. They are in Iraq not as a favour to its government or as a reward for its conduct. They are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend. (seems to be alot of that 'imperialism and fundamentalist ideology' going around!)

..cont'd

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2007/January/opinion_January62.xml§ion=opinion&col=

[acmavm]

1. Henry is doing his 'spout a bunch of senseless and dangerous

claptrap to confuse the issue and make it look like there might be hope of winning this thing' rap again.

[Parche]

2. henry

Henry Kissinger can go 'cheney' himself

[truth2power]

3. Kissinger is a monster, just like the rest of 'em...

but at least he admits it's all about the oil. "...on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend."

[bemildred]

4. In other words: keep digging. nt