Gen. William Odom says Vice President Cheney has it all wrong when he warns that the U.S. must stay in Iraq because failure there could prompt collapse elsewhere. In fact, now it looks like a new Arab-Israeli war could be breaking out precisely because our actions in Iraq have emboldened Iran and Syria.
By William E. Odom
diane@hudson.org
Recently on national television, Vice President Cheney warned that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would prompt the collapse of governments in other countries in the region, namely Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, putting them in the hands of radical Islamist rulers. Cheney has it exactly backwards. Our continued entanglement is what is destabilizing the region.
The escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas could become a new Arab-Israeli War. And it is precisely our actions in Iraq that have opened the door for Iran and Syria to support Hezbollah and Hamas actions without much to fear from the U.S.
Cheney’s assertion is a new version of the old domino theory which was invented to justify the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Were the Communists to win there, it was claimed, a series of other countries in Southeast Asia would also fall, like dominos, to the Communist bloc, making China extremely powerful and menacing. Laos and Cambodia did fall, more or less, to China's sphere, while Vietnam stayed with the Soviet Union. But the larger U.S. aim, the containment of China, was achieved, in spite of the United States, by Soviet and North Vietnamese actions against China. And the dire consequences of the domino theory that were so widely proclaimed by hawks at the time never came to pass.
We should have learned a number of things from the Vietnam War, but most of all that unintended consequences are often the most significant outcomes. Our well-intended policies in Vietnam soon rendered the United States incapable of accomplishing anything positive in the region. Massive use of American combat power justified all of the extremism that North Vietnam used in pursuing its course, and most important, it removed all doubt about who could claim the banner of "national liberation" in Vietnam. The Saigon government was soon seen as no more than America's lackey. Thus withdrawal from Vietnam actually improved America's strategic position for turning the tide against the Soviet Union, beginning during the Carter administration and accelerating during the Reagan administration.
In the succinct language of military strategy, strategic withdrawals often involve tactical defeats but open the way to counteroffensives and "strategic success." The domino theory, invoked to avoid "tactical defeats," can easily obscure the wisdom of a strategic withdrawal and instead pave the way to "strategic defeat." Is the domino theory valid for the Middle East? No, not any more than it was in Vietnam. But a reverse domino theory is. The longer the U.S. stays in Iraq, the more likely the collapse of the secular regimes in those Muslim nations, and the more likely a full-scale war between Israel and its neighbors. It’s American departure from Iraq that could prevent it.
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00103&stoplayout=true&print=true
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