[Vision2020] The surge succeeded?

[Loren Singh]

Sunil Ramalingam wrote:

>>When W announced the surge, it's stated goal was to buy the Maliki
government
>>time to meet US legislative goals, primarily the oil bill the
administration wanted the
>>Iraqis to pass.  Maliki depended on the US military presence and guns, and
the idea
>>was that he would do the administration's bidding....

>>When the war's defenders insist that its opponents acknowledge the
'success' of the
>>surge, they forget that the military aspect was Part A.  Part B was a
compliant Iraqi
>>government doing our bidding.  It appears that Part B is not going
according to plan.

The U.S. imperialist design (Cheney, Rumsefeld, et al.) on Iraq was
formulated in the
context of American ethnocentric cultural assumptions and the western
concept
of the nation-state. The U.S. installed a Shia Arab regime, and ignored the
ethnic
and religious complexities of the region. Saddam's war with Iran was as much
an
Arab vs. Persian conflict as it was a Sunni vs. Shia conflict. During that
conflict,
many of the current Iraqi Arab Shia leaders (both secular and religious)
took refuge
in Iran, are still on close personal terms with the current Iranian
religious and
political leadership.

McCain's favorite "surge" has "worked" in part because the U.S. has put the
Sunni
militias on the payroll. Their "allegiance" to the Maliki regime has been
bought.
Such loyalty will last as long as the "bakhsheesh" (bribes) keep coming.

Maliki and company have met with Iranian leaders, and would love to get rid
of the
Americans and make a deal with the Iranians. They want a free hand to finish
off
the Sunni Arab militias, and take on the Sunni Kurds as well so as to impose
a Shia Arab hegemony in multiethnic Iraq--with the help of a powerful Shia
Persian
ally in neighboring Iran. Bush and Company--blinded by their ethnocentric
cultural
and political assumptions--cannot understand or visualize these Middle East
dynamics.

Dick Cheney and his cohorts, of course, are preparing the WMD argument to
justify
"Operation Iranian Freedom." Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the
"axis of
evil." Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il have seen what the U.S. did to Iraq. Why
shouldn't
they want to develop nuclear capacity in the interest of self-defense? By
what kind of
divine right did the U.S. get the power to determine who can and who cannot
develop
nuclear weapons?

The more important concern should be Pakistan. Now with Mr. Ten-Percent
Zardari
at the helm, the ISI out of control and thoroughly infiltrated with Taliban
and
Al-Qaida sympathizers, one would think that the biggest WMD threat to the
Middle East, South Asia, and the U.S. is Pakistan--not Iran. Maybe Bush will
look
into Zardari's eyes, just as he looked into Putin's eyes--and have a soul
connection.

--Loren
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