<div dir="ltr">Sunil Ramalingam wrote:<br><br>>>When W announced the surge, it's stated goal was to buy the Maliki government <br>>>time to meet US legislative goals, primarily the oil bill the administration wanted the <br>
>>Iraqis to pass. Maliki depended on the US military presence and guns, and the idea <br>>>was that he would do the administration's bidding....<br><br>>>When the war's defenders insist that its opponents acknowledge the 'success' of the <br>
>>surge, they forget that the military aspect was Part A. Part B was a compliant Iraqi <br>>>government doing our bidding. It appears that Part B is not going according to plan.<br><br>The U.S. imperialist design (Cheney, Rumsefeld, et al.) on Iraq was formulated in the<br>
context of American ethnocentric cultural assumptions and the western concept<br>of the nation-state. The U.S. installed a Shia Arab regime, and ignored the ethnic<br>and religious complexities of the region. Saddam's war with Iran was as much an<br>
Arab vs. Persian conflict as it was a Sunni vs. Shia conflict. During that conflict,<br>many of the current Iraqi Arab Shia leaders (both secular and religious) took refuge<br>in Iran, are still on close personal terms with the current Iranian religious and<br>
political leadership.<br><br>McCain's favorite "surge" has "worked" in part because the U.S. has put the Sunni<br>militias on the payroll. Their "allegiance" to the Maliki regime has been bought.<br>
Such loyalty will last as long as the "bakhsheesh" (bribes) keep coming. <br><br>Maliki and company have met with Iranian leaders, and would love to get rid of the<br>Americans and make a deal with the Iranians. They want a free hand to finish off<br>
the Sunni Arab militias, and take on the Sunni Kurds as well so as to impose<br>a Shia Arab hegemony in multiethnic Iraq--with the help of a powerful Shia Persian<br>ally in neighboring Iran. Bush and Company--blinded by their ethnocentric cultural<br>
and political assumptions--cannot understand or visualize these Middle East<br>dynamics.<br><br>Dick Cheney and his cohorts, of course, are preparing the WMD argument to justify<br>"Operation Iranian Freedom." Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the "axis of<br>
evil." Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il have seen what the U.S. did to Iraq. Why shouldn't<br>they want to develop nuclear capacity in the interest of self-defense? By what kind of<br>divine right did the U.S. get the power to determine who can and who cannot develop<br>
nuclear weapons?<br><br>The more important concern should be Pakistan. Now with Mr. Ten-Percent Zardari<br>at the helm, the ISI out of control and thoroughly infiltrated with Taliban and<br>Al-Qaida sympathizers, one would think that the biggest WMD threat to the<br>
Middle East, South Asia, and the U.S. is Pakistan--not Iran. Maybe Bush will look<br>into Zardari's eyes, just as he looked into Putin's eyes--and have a soul connection.<br><br>--Loren<br><br><br><br><br></div>