Marble Composition

The Grand Game

I've read reams of material on the Neoconservatives. I've read the Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses. I've read A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. I've read everything and anything I could get my hands on so I could try and understand what was going on and where we're headed. After all of that, it never dawned on me these people were dreaming of something like this:

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.

If anyone thinks the people that we have in charge will choose a less destructive policy over one that will cost hundreds of thousands of lives, you'd better get correct. It might be easy to forget that these are the people that get something wrong, make things worse, and then rinse and repeat. Make that get everything wrong. Why should we believe for one second they'll get it right now? Right, none. The chances favor them, being as incompetent and cut off from reality as they are, choosing the worst options.

By way of her amazing reporting, Laura Rosen has shed light on the administration's proposed "tilt" towards the Shiites. I guess with what Josh has given us above, it's all starting to fall into place.

Just to round things out, today CNN is reporting that Bush is leaning towards sending 20,000 to 30,000 more troops into Bahgdad to try and quell the ethnic cleansing going on there. As Michael Schwartz amply points out in his piece, the last time we tried putting more troops into the capital, the more the violence increased, on all sides. This option will of course be cheered on by the beltway crowd ("we're doing something"), but those of us out here in the hinterlands should treat this option with nothing but derision and contempt. It will only result in more suicide bombings, more civilian deaths, and more dead American soldiers; the rates growing exponentially based on how many troops we add.

When the next minor shift in policy fails, we'll be treated to more of this:

The pattern has always been:

1. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Bad Thing from happening.

2. Bad Thing happens anyway.

3. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Worse Thing from happening.

4. Worse Thing happens anyway.

5. Reiterate sequence.

At no point does the “Sensible Center” consider that the previous failures implicate our ability to fulfill the new mission, which is always paradoxically grander in scale while being a retreat from previous ambitions.

There are titanic shifts underway in the Middle East, and the fuel that charges those changes is blood. Expect a tanker's full of it to be spilled in the next couple of years, with U.S. troops stuck right in the middle of it. Duncan Black has stated over and over again that Bush will never pull out of Iraq, and that Bush believes leaving equals losing, and I've long thought that something might come along to change the president's mind. Given his rejection of the Baker-Hamilton commission's report, I would now concede that there is no other conclusion to be made.

If one needed any indication that Bush will not change his strategy on Iraq, all one needs to do is listen to what he says:

Yet Bush is described by another recent visitor as still resolutely defiant, convinced history will ultimately vindicate him.

"I'll be dead when they get it right," he said during an Oval Office meeting last week.

Even the historians that study his presidency will get it wrong. That is, unless they agree with him.

The overarching point here is that things can always get worse in the Middle East. Much worse, and at a moment's notice. The policies that the American administration seems to be poised to make will only add fuel to the fire. They couldn't care less, as long as their legacy is looked upon somehow as favorable. In what might be viewed as some sort of sad, Faustian bargain, they've taken to listening to Henry Kissenger. History will judge them on its own terms, and worry not, they'll be plenty of graves to be dug for everyone.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 12/13/2006 12:26:00 AM