An Election That is Likely to Do More Harm Than Good in Iraq

[mia]

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=4386

An Election That is Likely to Do More Harm Than Good in Iraq

By Kevin Zeese
December 21, 2005



...The election is likely to increase violence in Iraq, strengthen the hold of those that favor a religious government, increase ties between Iran and Iraq, heighten calls for an independence in the Kurdish region of Iraq and increase the likelihood of terrorism against Americans at home and abroad. The Iraq elections may become a premier example of the law of unintended consequences....

Regarding Israel, some point to a 1996 report entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” as a basis for the Iraq War as a plan to help Israel. The reality is that one unintended consequence is that the war will decrease the security of Israel. “Clean Break” set out a plan for Israel to “shape its strategic environment,” beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. With Iraq transformed, there would be a strategic axis of Iraq, Jordan and Turkey that would weaken and “roll back” Syria. They argued that the strategy would divide the Shia in Iraq with those in Iran and Syria.

Instead, the opposite has occurred. The Iraq War and occupation has brought Iran and Iraq together. Indeed, the effects of the American push for democracy in other parts of the Arab Middle East are also hurting Israel. In Egypt, the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood have increased their presence in the Egyptian parliament. On the West Bank the anti-Israeli Hamas organization has won control of several major towns in local elections there and is expected to win at least 40 percent in the coming parliamentary vote. Israeli officials, who are not great fans of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have warned the Americans that their drive toward "regime change" in Damascus could end up bringing to power radical anti-American (and anti-Israeli) Islamic groups....


Finally, Iraq is adding to U.S. security problems, Patrick Cockburn writes “Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator, said: 'In two and a half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq.'” Just what we need! And, if the Shia with their electoral victory consolidate their hold over the military and police and direct their attacks on Sunnis, and the Sunnis respond – we can expect the magnetic effect of Iraq – pulling anti-US terrorists to the county and the opportunity for training in terrorism to increase. A decade from now U.S. citizens should expect someone whose family or friends were killed in the U.S. occupation to strike back. Every day the U.S. remains an occupying force more people who hate Americans and more danger in the world are created....



Is there anything that this administration has done that has NOT resulted in "more harm than good"?

[tularetom]

1. It would be ironic and sad

if our poorly planned and executed adventure in Iraq resulted in the partial or total dismemberment of Israel.

[mia]

2. Yes, sad, indeed.

I've sometimes thought that the oil barons who put Bush in power are just using Israel.

[keta11]

3. Thats what we get for electing a fool clown

incompetent to become President of the USA

[dusmcj]

4. more neocon poopee ('securing the realm')

at http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

we find the report, whose preamble reads:
-----------------------------
Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.
-----------------------------

So we have at least Feith and Perle as PNAC luminaries. Looking at the Institute's website at http://www.iasps.org we have a collection of neocon cant which is very familiar. The linkage seems to be becoming more and more overt by the minute. The other linkage, to old-gold American moneybags is as well, seeing how the Institute, as well as the Hudson Institute, another operation which now appears peopled with neocons (but appears to once have been a center of objective knowledge, how sad) are both funded by the Scaife Foundation.

I think the fundamental error made by the folks who foisted these policies on us was their choice of American oil goys as executive agents for their plans. Did they not see that the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld have all the subtlety of a piece of newsprint used as toilet paper ? The implementers of the PNAC agenda are a collection of wannabe great power playas and wrinkled empire boys (and girls) probably without match. Talk about geopolitical Romper Room, I don't think it could get any better than them. Tinky-Winky go sleepy now, Dipsy too, Lala Po sleep too, heeheeheeheehee. Juvenile on the one hand, out fascist on the other. What a striking innovation in international affairs.