The US and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad met for four hours earlier today, hosted by Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki in his office in the Baghdad Green Zone.
This was the highest-level bilateral (trilateral) meeting between officials of Iran and the US since Washington broke diplomatic ties with Teheran in 1980. The length of today’s meeting was a welcome indicator that some serious– if still necessarily preliminary– diplomatic business got done.
In that report linked to above, Reuters’ Ross Colvin wrote that both sides afterwards described the meeting as “positive.”
He wrote that the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, called the meeting “a first step in negotiations between these two sides” and said Tehran would seriously consider an Iraqi invitation for further discussions.
Colvin wrote that K-Q’s American counterpart, Ryan Crocker,
- said he had been less interested in arranging further meetings than laying out Washington’s case that Shi’ite Iran is arming, funding and training Shi’ite militias in Iraq, a charge Iran denies.
Colvin wrote that Kazemi-Qomi said Iran
- saw positive steps in the talks.
“Some problems have been raised and studied and I think this was a positive step … In the political field, the two sides agreed to support and strengthen the Iraqi government, which was another positive item achieved in these talks,” he said.
He said Iran had offered to help train and arm Iraq’s security forces, presently the job of the U.S. military…
Crocker said he would refer to Washington a proposal by the Iranians for a mechanism with Iranian, U.S. and Iraqi participation to coordinate Iraqi security matters.
He said he had told the Iranians they must end their support for the militias, stop supplying them with explosives and ammunition and rein in the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Qods Force in Iraq.
The Iranians had rejected the allegations but did not respond in detail. In turn, they had criticized the “occupying” U.S. military’s training and equipping of the new Iraqi army, saying it was “inadequate to the challenges faced”.
… In a brief address to the delegations before the start of the talks, Maliki said Iraq would not be a launchpad for any attacks on neighboring states, an apparent reference to Iranian fears of a U.S. attack. It would also not brook any regional interference in its affairs, he added.
Colvin noted that the talks, “come as U.S. warships hold war games in the Gulf and after Tehran said it had uncovered spy networks on its territory run by Washington and its allies.”
The talks also, of course (though Colvin didn’t mention this) come as the region-spanning tensions over both Iran’s nuclear-engineering program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are running high. For my part, I find it very hard indeed to see how the US-Iraq-Iran imbroglio can be sustainably defused unless those other components of what I have called the “perfect storm” of three concurrent and linked crises in the Middle East can also be put on the path to sustainable resolution…
But still, to have these two significant governments at last apparently talking seriously about shared concerns in Iraq, rather than engaging in an open shooting war there or anywhere else, is a huge blessing for all of humankind, and especially for the long-suffering residents of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Let’s just first of all, all say a big thanks for that.
I have a few more comments on today’s developments:
(1) The role of the Iraqi government in the emerging US-Iranian negotiations (I guess it is still too soon to call this a US-Iranian “relationship”?)
But the Maliki government’s role in this is intriguing. Obviously, when Pres. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, one of his key goals was to install a reliably pro-US government there. Maliki emerged as PM as a result of an electoral process that was completely dominated by the US. But the demographic and political realities of Iraq meant that any use of anything approaching a “fair” electoral process there always meant that the product of such a process would be a leadership much more responsive to the urgings of “brotherly” and neighboring Iran than to those from distant, and very “foreign”, Washington.
How on earth could the Bushites ever have expected anything different? (Because they always systematically blocked out any input into their decisionmaking from objective scholars and analysts who actually knew something about Iraq, is how. But we don’t need to revisit that here.)
So now, we start to see some of the diplomatic results of that.
It is notable that today’s talks– and presumably, the continuing diplomatic process that we can now expect will flow from them– are being described as “hosted by” Maliki. Okay, he is still to a large degree the “captive” of the US forces, there in the Green Zone. But these days, the Americans may well need him– to provide a veneer of political legitimacy to their presence in Iraq– just as much as, if not more than, he needs them (to, among other things, protect him from the wrath of an Iraqi citizenry that is very fed-up with the fact he has been able able to deliver almost nothing of any value to them…)
It is notable too that, at a time when the political elite in the US is abuzz with discussions of Maliki’s many claimed “shortcomings” as Iraq’s PM, the Iranian negotiator was saying that the Iranian government wants to give the the Maliki government more support, including through the provision of military and security-force training– in a move that seems couched as a thinly veiled criticism of what the US has been doing in this field up until now.
(2) The exchange of accusations between the US and Iran.
Crocker trotted out the US’s very well-rehearsed litany of accusations of Iran’s unjustified “meddling” in Iraq. All of which are, of course, particularly rich, coming as they do from a power that sent troops, fighter-bombers, and cruise missiles halfway round the world to intervene extremely illegitimately in Iraq!
But the Iranians also have their own, very numerous, accusations regartding the US’s many– and generally much better documented– hostile acts and declarations against them.
These include Congress’s funding of regime-change activities; the Pentagon’s despatch of an additional large naval task force to the waters very near Iran’s coast, and their conduct of some large-scale military exercizes there; the US forces’ recent arrests of five Iranian diplomats in Erbil, northern Iraq… And most recently, the accusations that Teheran’s Intelligence Ministry made last Saturday that it had,
- “succeeded in finding, recognizing and confronting some spy networks of infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers in west, southwest and central Iran… These spy networks were guided by the intelligence services of the occupiers and were supported by some influential Iraqi groups.”
The Iranian news agency IRNA promised that more details of this accusation would be forthcoming “in the next few days.”
No indication was given there whether these “spy networks of infiltrating elements” were connected at all with the bitterly anti-mullah Iranian dissident organization the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, which has some 3,800 fighters concentrated in Camp Ashraf, which is around 60 km north of Baghdad (and 100 km west of the Iranian border.)
The US has formally designated the MEK as a terrorist organization. But in early April, CNN was reporting that, “The U.S. military… regularly escorts MEK supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf.” The reporter there did not specify what these “supplies” were, though he quoted the camp’s MEK leader as saying that what was involved was “procurement of logistical needs.” As third-country nationals in a country under military occupation, the occupying power has a responsibility to ensure that the MEK members’ basic humanitarian needs are met– but certainly not their need for “logistics”, whatever that term might cover… And especially not, given that the MEK as as an organization is still designated as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
There have been various reports of other, non-MEK, Iraq-based and US- and british-backed saboteurs undertaking acts of violence and other hostile actions inside Iran in recent months, too.
The CNN reporter wrote in April that Shirwan al-Wa’eli, Iraq’s national security minister, had said,
- “We gave this organization [the MEK] a six-month deadline to leave Iraq, and we informed the Red Cross…And presumably, our friends the Americans will respect our decision and they will not stay on Iraqi land.”
I found it interesting that in today’s press briefing, Amb. Kazemi-Qomi made no mention of the MEK– or indeed, of any of the accusations that Iran has about anti-Iranian actions being undertaken or supported by the US government, whether from Iraq or from elsewhere. Rather than getting drawn into endless rounds of reciprocal accusations, K-Q seemed more intent on being “statesmanlike”, and on focusing on the forward-looking agenda regarding his government’s negotiations with the US– an agenda that Crocker and most of the rest of the Bushites are seem noticeably reluctant to think about or talk about in public.
(And regarding the MEK, the Iranians are probably more intent on trying to work bilaterally with the Maliki government to get the MEK camp or camps dismantled. So they must have been pleased to hear Maliki say that Iraq “would not be a launchpad for any attacks on neighboring states”.)
3. The further agenda for the US and Iran talks, regarding Iraq.
This is huge. But most Bushites, as noted above, are probably still very reluctant to start to address it. This is an issue that is still very problematic and divisive within the administration. Gates, the uniformed military, and Rice are all now probably more or less united in realizing that,
- (a) Washington has to find a way to negotiate a substantial US troop withdrawal from Iraq, starting at the very latest in early 2008;
(b) To do this, including Iran as one major party in the negotiation is unavoidable; and
(c) In this context, a military attack on Iran is out of the questions; and probably, in addition, the current level of tension in the US-Iran relationship needs to be de-escalated.
Within the Republican Party– and indeed, within the broader US political elite, as well– the first of those three propositions now has considerable support. But its corollaries (b) and (c) still don’t, by any means, either in the GOP or in the broader political elite!
Hence, presumably, the need the Bushites see for extreme wariness in proceeding with this negotiation.
4. The US-Iranian agenda beyond Iraq.
As I mentioned above, the Bushites’ policies conflict harshly with those of Teheran in other areas, too, primarily regarding the nuclear issue and Arab-Israeli issues. It seems the “ground-rules” for today’s meeting in Baghdad had been firmly established by the US side as being that the discussions could only deal with matters directly related to Iraq.
Hey, who knows what the three of them might all have talked about inside the room there? Maybe we’ll never wholly know. But anyway, in his remarks after the meeting, K-Q stuck to the agreed script and didn’t mention any non-Iraq-related subject.
However, as I noted above, it will certainly be very hard for the US to get very much of what it wants to get from the Iranians regarding Iraq unless it is prepared to at least start dealing with some of Iran’s very sharp concerns in other fields.
Including, if Washington’s desire US really is for an orderly and substantial US troop withdrawal from Iraq– then what on earth is the Iranians’ interest in that?? Because now, the Iranians have the US troops in Iraq just exactly where they want them: dispersed, stretched out; vulnerable– 160,000-plus sitting ducks who are Teheran’s present guarantee that the US will undertake no military attack against Iran, and also, that it will rein the Israelis from trying anything similar.
Jimmy Carter only had to think about the fate of 52 US hostages to the will of the revolutionary Iranians. Now, George Bush has quite voluntarily and recklessly sent 3,000 times that number of hostages to the same fate…
No wonder that some administration insiders are now talking about a post-surge “Plan B” that would remove substantial numbers of the US troops from Iraq, and concentrate the remainder within only three or four, presumably very well-guarded perimeters.
But why should anyone believe the Iranians would be willing to let that happen so long as they continue to be subjected to all kinds of other hostile acts and declarations by the Americans?
So for the Iraq part of the US-Iran negotiation to work requires, at the very least, that the two sides reach agreement on a broader pact of ending direct hostilities between them.
How far-reaching might such an agreement be? We don’t know yet. But one thing that seems clear to me is that with every month that passes, the Iranian side of this complex balance is becoming stronger, and the US side weaker. Thus the longer the Bushites delay the conclusion of a non-agggression pact with Teheran, the broader will be the gains that Teheran ends up making.
5. Other regional and international actors.
Of course the US and Iran are not the only foreign (non-Iraqi) governments who have an intense interest in containing and ending the current state of insecurity in Iraq. In particular, I note that in the Arab world, all the Arab governments have a very strong interest in both
- (a) Seeing the restoration of political stability and public security inside Iraq, before Iraq-incubated Sunni extremism becomes an even more threatening force than it already is, for all of them; and
(b) Not seeing the affairs of the Middle East being regulated entirely between these two non-Arab governments, in Washington and Teheran.
When I was in Egypt and Jordan in February, those were two very strong themes I heard again and again from my Arab friends and colleagues there– at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, and elsewhere.
(I note that Israel and Turkey also have certain interests regarding the the US-Iranian-Iraqi nexus. Turkey’s have mainly to do with the situation in the north, and can probably be fairly well accomodated in the context of improving US-Iran relations. Israel’s– as understood by the current government there– depend fairly strongly on there not being any improvement in US-Iran relations… Just the opposite! Tough luck for them, then, if they have to sit back and watch while US-Iran ties improve.)
Back to the Arab states, though. I guess a big question in my mind is whether goals (a) and (b) above can both be satisfactorily reached. I would say they could– provided the Iranians are prepared to do do some fairly clever and sure-footed diplomacy to set at ease the minds of Arab elites in places like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, for any stabilization project inside Iraq to succeed will require the active involvement of, at the very least, the Saudis, Jordanians, and Syrians, all of whom have various fingers in the Iraqi pie at present.
… So, bottom line on the US-Iranian diplomacy: Yes, today’s meeting was a great breakthrough… But considerable further diplomatic work remains to be done.
Let’s all hope and pray the leaders in all the relevant capitals are prepared to do that work. As Winston Churchill once memorably said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” That was never truer than today. The lives of Iraqis (and American service members) will continue to be lost and devastated in quite unacceptable numbers until the diplomats– supported, I hope, by a swelling movement of citizens in all the countries concerned in favor of much more “jaw-jaw” and less “war-war”– can get their act together and definiteively defuse this very, very harmful situation.
Thank you for the timely analysis, Helena. I especially appreciated your clear-eyed recognition that Iran (let alone Russia and China) has no interest in helping America out of its own unforced, self-instigated quagmire as long as America and Israel keep threatening to do to Iran what they have, respectively, already done to Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. So, consider this:
(1) What makes anyone think that the American government — or that “elite” pack of knaves and fools who infest it — WANT to get out of Iraq? I see no evidence to support any such thesis. The pathological perps do want something, of course: they want the American people to stop nagging them about things that they consider none of the people’s business — like militaristic imperial foreign policy as a means of grasping even more domestic political power and the keys to the nation’s treasury for the benefit of themselves and their crony camp-followers. (President Eisenhower quaintly called this cancerous phenomenon “the Military-Industrial Complex.” I call it Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism.) Prolonging the American military occupation of Iraq serves the nefarious purposes of America’s greedy and self-serving political/economic/military “elite.” Getting out of Iraq doesn’t. So, again, what would lead anyone to suppose that the American regime in fact wants to get out of Iraq?
(2) Given that The Worst and the Dullest (i.e., America’s corrupt and inept political “elite”) want to stay in Iraq and that Iran wants this also (at least until it can safely develop its nuclear power programs), then what do the two ostensible antagonists have to discuss except how to make America’s occupation of Iraq last at least long enough so that a new American administration gets the “who lost Iraq? (hint, hint)” hook placed in its throat before it can gain any independent traction for a true reversal of policy?
(3) As with the Lunatic Leviathan in its former Southeast Asian incarnation, the current schizophrenic rendition only seeks to defuse anti-war domestic opposition by ever-nebulous “hints” and “intimations” of “troop withdrawals” and “new beginnings” “sometime soon” (like at least a year from now before the next year from now) that in fact only result in mission-creeping escalation, or “surges” that look more like trickles and dribbles. How many times can one stupid people fall for the same transparent tripe, over and over and over again?
(4) Some will argue that the unpopularity of America’s War on Iraq (among the American and Iraqi people) will somehow force the political powers in those two countries to come to their senses and end the destructive, counter-productive stupidity. Especially in America, some deluded souls imagine that a change in political parties occupying the White House will somehow prompt sanity to break out in Washinton, D.C. Yet, as someone (Scott Ritter?) recently and accurately observed: the “Democrat” Bill Clinton proved a much more effective (if not simply lucky) imperialist than the Republican Deputy Dubya Bush.
As well, I remember Richard Nixon saying in 1968: “I’m going to end that war (in Vietnam) because if I haven’t ended it in six months, it will become MY war.” He didn’t end it in six months, though, so it did become his war. He therefore became its prisoner, as had his predecessor Lyndon Johnson. “His” war then destroyed Nixon, just as it destroyed America’s preceeding presidential “owner.” I see the same future for any Democratic Party President who “inherits” (i.e., covets) the opportunity to see this “war” through to a “victorious” conclusion (which the opposition Republicans will demand but never allow to happen as long as any Democrat could justly claim credit for such a “win.”)
Just see all the Napoleonic pretenders — of both right wings of our one corporate party — standing before their bedroom mirrors pathetically practicing their best “commander-in-briefs” salute — with both of their left hands.
(5) If America truly wanted out of Iraq we would simply betray the Shiites (we’ve done it before) and re-install the Sunni Baathists in power. (Meaning, simply get out of the way and let nature take its course.) In any event, those whom “the world’s greatest military power” hasn’t managed to defeat — in over four fruitless years of throwing everything including the kitchen sink at those “dead enders” “in their last throes” — will emerge with all the nationalist credentials upon unceremoniously expelling us; so just recognizing this reality and switching expedient allegiances to come out on the same side as the eventual “winners” would make the most sense — IF America really wanted to leave Iraq.
So, where do the eventual Sunni Baathist “victors” enter into this diplomatic conversation between Americans and Iranians who say that neither of them wish for the marginal “Al Qaeda” to “win” in Iraq?
Say Michael, where’d you come up with this one?
“If America truly wanted out of Iraq we would simply betray the Shiites (we’ve done it before) and re-install the Sunni Baathists in power. (Meaning, simply get out of the way and let nature take its course.)”
Nature? Only way a Sunni Baathist restoration will happen is with an acceleration of the already massive infusion of Saudi $$ and “whatnot” (assuming you could get the various Saudi $$$ sources to stop funding al-Qaeda) — but shhhhh…. nobody in the American mainstream media dares to mention this general subject…. especially when its so much easier to insinuate that Iran is somehow responsible for all ills befalling Iraq.
Mr. Harrop: Where did I come up with “that” one?
Why, didn’t I make my reasoning clear?
I would think that anyone familiar with the Middle East would understand the nature of temporary alliances of convenience that shift like the desert sands with every petty and transient calculation of self-interest — and then shift again when the careful calculations of profit and loss change. The American government has made an alliance of convenience with the Kurds and Shiites of Iraq precisely in the colonial belief that fostering and nurturing these divisive groups against the formerly ruling secular (largely Sunni) Baathists would help keep Iraq divided along secessionist and sectarian lines, badly governed by weak Shiite religious incompetents, and therefore easily conquered. An unfortunate and perhaps unforseen consequence of this calculation by and for America has seen America destroying its own military, running its economy deeply into inflation and foreign debt, and risking unceremonious sacking of the American regime itself by enraged and betrayed American voters. So now the calculations of self-interest have got to change, which will require changing the transient alliances of convenience in Iraq that have proven not much in the way of alliances and anything but convenient for America. I had thought regular readers of this forum would not require me to spell this out in such obvious and minor, if not ugly, detail.
I maintained in my post — I thought in reasonably clear English — that I did not and do not believe that the American “government” really wants to get out of Iraq. Do you care to dispute this? I also claimed — and claim — that the American government in fact only wants to find some excuses for staying in Iraq indefinitely and therefore wishes to find or invent some “plausible” marketing pitch that will sell interminable occupation of Iraq to the American people. Cheap, self-serving example: “The Iraqi ‘government,’ ‘police,’ and ‘military’ (meaning Shiite death squads and Pesh Merga militia) can’t make it on their own without our ‘help,’ ‘training,’ ‘tutelage,’ ‘benchmarks,’ et cetera.” Do you wish to dispute this obvious and failing subterfuge? It hasn’t worked for the American regime and so therefore, America will have to change policy or change its ruling regime. The American regime doesn’t want this — no surprise there — and so it may have to change policy in order to survive. If this means “betraying” the bad Shiite and Kurdish puppets who sought to manipulate us in their own interest every bit as much as we sought to manipulate them in ours, then so what? Again, we’ve done such before (and so have they) and we will do such again (and so will they) — “IF” America really wants to get out of Iraq and restore our own republic to something survivable and worth salvaging. The calculations will change, the alliances will shift, and the Middle Eastern desert will go on as it always has.
I also thought I made it clear that “IF” — and please note the conditional nature of this little huge qualifier — America “really” wanted out of Iraq (which again, neither Iran nor China nor Russia nor America really wants) that some “Iraqis” who speak the language and know the place would have to actually govern and hold Iraq together so that America could withdraw its bedraggled and foundering military in a little more dignified a manner than a complete and humilitating route in helicopters from off the Baghdad Embassy rooftop. No “Iraqis” to my knowledge have successfully done this holding-together and unifying thing in recent Iraqi history other than the reasonably secular Sunni (and some Shiite) Baathists. Do you care to dispute this?
Helena — and too many others to mention — keep reminding us that two million Iraqis (mostly Sunnis) have fled Iraq with all the money, education, and professional expertise needed to hold Iraq together and govern it. I understand that another two million of these same sorts of people have become internal refugees as well. That makes about four million qualified and motivated people who would otherwise hold Iraq together and govern it “IF” America would stop preventing this in order to maintain its occupation of Iraq through encouraging Shiite religious fundamentalists to fantasize about their ability to run a government and society through appeal to “eternal verities” laid down for them by ignorant preachers every Friday in prayer at the local mosque. For a truly awful example of precisely what not to do when mobilizing and staffing a nation’s government: just look at what has happened to America since we let a mob of our own ignorant religious fundamentalists (who get their marching orders from ignorant preachers at Sunday School) into our bureaucracy’s highest offices without the slightest education and expertise necessary to make things actually work. So, again, do you care to dispute that the last functioning, orderly Iraqi government owed its effectiveness largely to educated, technically competent secular Sunni (and some Shiite) Baathists who had a political ideology that grew up on earth and didn’t descend from “Heaven”?
Your “point” (upon which you did not care much to elaborate) about “Saudi” $$$$$$ (“dirty” money?) flowing into Iraq in support of the largely Sunni “insurgency” (or “Baathist Restoration,” as you call it) seems a little ironic, wouldn’t you say, coming as it does within days of America’s own Congess appropriating yet another hundered billion dollars (leading up to perhaps a trillion dollars eventually) for only four more months (which averages out to over 20 billion dollars a month) of futilely trying to prevent just such a “Restoration”? In fact, judging from the cheap “improvised” home-made land mines and crappy little rockets with which the largely Sunni “insurgency” has twarted America’s own vast wasted expenditures in this matter, I would say that the “Saudis” (and the rest of the 80% Sunni Muslim World) have gotten a lot more “bang” for a lot fewer “bucks.” Would you care to dispute this obviously more economical allotment of resources? The side that goes bankrupt first — and that increasingly looks like us — loses. I can’t put the matter any more simply than that.
Enough with the red herrings and non sequiturs, please. In fact, you make your own worst case against your own (hardly elaborated) bad argument: namely, that somehow “money” (if from “bad” sources you don’t approve) will determine who holds Iraq together and governs it in the future. I claim, quite to the contrary, that America’s blown hundreds of billions of $$$$$$$$$$ have proven otherwise. Ideology, technical competence, organizational ability, and nationalistic motivation will win out every time against “the eternal verities” spouted by “holy men”: hallucinations that have spectacularly proven — over the entire course of human history — neither eternal nor especially true. In short, I’d bet my limited funds on the historical record of who has actually ever “governed” Iraq and who most likely shows the promise of ever effectively doing so in the reasonably near future. Have I made that clear enough?
None of this means that I “like” or “approve” of Baathists or Republicans (or even Democrats) any more than I approve of religions in any way shape or form, since all religions (and the political monstrosities based upon them) spring from primitive animism; and I just can’t get behind that whole “big invisible friend in the sky who likes my tribe best” stuff. I consider monotheism (in any or all of its malignant manifestations) the single worst religious idea ever conceived by the mind of man. The founders of my own formerly great republic thought the same and designed a goverment based on excluding religion from political life in every way, shape, or form. So, on the basis of secular soundness alone, I could make the case that secular “Baathism” seems a better bet for Iraq than fanatical religious fundamentalism. Would you care to dispute this? America will recognize this reality — both at home and abroad — or it won’t. I have merely argued that “IF” America really wanted out of Iraq — and I don’t claim that it does — that it would make just some such accomodation to historic and contemporary reality. What the Iraqis do for their part will depend on them and not us.
I don’t claim to know a hell of a lot abot Iraq or the Middle East, but I do know quite a bit about Asia and and the various struggles for national liberation from Western imperialism that have succeeded — largely against American opposition — since the end of the Second World War. The eventual native “winners” of those struggles sometimes looked unappealing to the Americans (who lost the “hearts and minds” contest in any event) because of their economic or political ideologies. Too bad for America and its knee-jerk, endemic imperial cryto-fascism. Right now, anyone who could bring order and competent government back to Iraq would look much better than all the “religious” maniacs who have given “the holy land” its name precisely because they chiefly spend most of their time putting holes in other religious believers who claim to get their marching orders through self-appointed interpreters of the gobbledygook dispensed by “the same” big invisible friend in the sky whom no one has ever seen but who somehow supposedly manipulates the laws (or “suggestions”) of the universe so that things turn out favorably for one tribe and not others. I don’t buy any of this homicidal nonsense.
I wish to see secular, democratic, non-apartheid governments everywhere and religious governments nowhere — not in my own country or anyone else’s. Failing that, I would rather see people settle their differnces and arrive at equitable living arrangements — no matter what form of government — peacefully. Failing that, and if the people of other nations really must fight among themselves to determine who gets to rule and establish clean drinking water, available electricity, functioning schools, and operating hospitals, then I hope that one side “wins” the fight quickly, with the least suffering and loss of life — and then gets on with the business of maintaining at least some sort of reasonable life for the people. “IF” America really wanted out of Iraq — and I don’t claim that it does — then America would back whatever secular movement could do a better job at what America itself has only cosmically bungled. “IF” that means (largely Sunni) secular Baathists in Iraq, then saving America from its own political/religious fanatics at home — and all their disastrous works — would seem the better alternative, in my humble opinion. In any event, Iraqis will decide their own fate for themselves, as the Chinese and Vietnamese before them did (in Barbara Tuchman’s words) “as if the Americans had never come.” For my little part, I want America to butt out of Iraq and attend to its own far-more pressing problems with imperial/military fascism and the ruinous recrudescence of religious reaction, the combined forces of which Barbara Tuchman called “intimidation by the rabid right at home.”
If all that doesn’t make my point, then nothing will.
scott, with due respect of your view but I very disturbed by saying “a Sunni Ba’athist restoration”!!
From where did you have this view?
Do believe in this?
Did you have it from that Big Corrupted Liar L. Paul Bremer III?
The Ba’ath party members contained all Iraqi from different ethics and religions, for your info the Shiites were 53% of the Ba’ath party members, don’t tell me they done that for living, some yes but not all of them.
We got sick and tried of those who simply wrong and misinformed putting posts and talks each time from some call themselves specialists or they have interest in ME and Iraq, starting put these words without bother to read the reality and seek for the truths,
I hope that inlight your view in future and get red off those lies that US media and those corrupted US administrators who worked in Iraq for destructions not rebuilding Iraqi State as we see the consequences of their stupid mismanagements and corruptions they have done when the where for one year in Iraq not for 35 years, I wonder if they be there for that long what they will be Iraq after that?
Might U.S., Iran cooperate on al-Qaida?!!!!
By R.K. Ramazani / Special to the Daily Progress
May 27, 2007
http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP/MGArticle/CDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351363286
Who is next?