ISSUES....
Inside,
confidential, off the record
One
for home
Leave to James Baker -- the master of turning a US surrender and
retreat
from Iraq into an art masterpiece. When Gates testified before
Congress
yesterday, he said he did not know if the US "was winning
or losing" in
Iraq. He needs to talk to his close friend James Baker, who told
Congress
in no uncertain terms today that the US is definitely losing in
Iraq and
must therefore sue for peace. These two need to get their stories
straight.
They are both
wrong. The US is finally winning in Iraq while Iran, at long
last, is losing, no thanks to Baker, Gates, or Rice, but to Sadr
, Maliki,
President Bush and Steven Hadley.
Above all,
the great reward for US success goes to Iraqi Shia leader Abdul
Azziz al-Hakim and Iran's President Ahmadinejad. Their blunders
took Iran
out of the policy game in Iraq, in a stunning and entirely undeserved
windfall for the US.
First, what
is Baker trying to accomplish with his new plan? This is
simple. He wants the applause for giving way to popular demands
for US
troop withdrawals and US "engagement" (in reality appeasement)
of Syria and
Iran. He has not given a moment's thought as to how to translate
these
policies into reality; indeed, no practical way exists to do so.
As far as
Baker is concerned, working out such messy details is someone
else's job.
Well before the reality sets in that Baker's plan is primed to
self-destruct, he is on his way to his next project, while the
"someone
else" gets blamed for failure.
Why will Baker's
plan of a pre-emptive surrender to Syria and Iran, followed
by US troop withdrawals, not work in the case of Iraq? First,
Syria does
not want a US surrender in Iraq. It wants a US victory, which
is now within
reach, that ill contain Iran, which is the real threat to Syria,
not Israel.
To this end, Assad is supporting Muqtada al-Sadr and Prime Minister
Maliki, as is the US, against Iran, which is also the real threat
to Iraq,
not the US.
Second, as
for Iran, it is in no shape to accept a US surrender in Iraq.
In
fact, Iran is seriously overstretched by provoking and thereby
buying into
two potentially major regional conflicts, in Iraq and Lebanon.
On the very
bad advice of Hakim and Hezbollah, Iran rolled the dice by provoking
a coup
d'etat in Iraq, to displace Maliki; and in Lebanon, to displace
Siniora.
Both coups have bogged down and will likely fail altogether, in
a major and
potentially fatal political embarrassment for Ahmadinejad.
Iran's big
problem is literally lacks the financing and the military reach
to take part in these conflicts in the event the failed coups
precipitate
civil war, which is already underway in Iraq, and just over the
horizon in
Lebanon. Iran can always fight in Iraq And Lebanon through proxiy
forces,
as it is doing today via Hakim and the Badr Brigade in Iraq and
Hezbollah in
Lebanon, but runs a large risk of being sucked in to use its own
forces and
humiliated. Ahmadinejad is certainly not sleeping well these days.
In short,
Iran has been defeated in Iraq and Lebanon, beginning this week.
Baker is trying to surrender Iraq to a loser. Iran, it is safe
to predict,
will refuse to accept Baker's White Flag in Iraq. Iran will beg
the US to
stay in Iraq, if for no other reason than to protect Iran from
Muqtada
al-Sadr. To put it another way, Iran does not want to do peacekeeping
and
economic reconstruction in Iraq, period, or in Lebanon.
Who
deserves credit for this US success. The answer is President Bush
and
Steven Hadley, who refused to throw the Maliki-Sadr government
in Iraq to
the wolves, as demanded by Hakim and no doubt approved, mistakenly,
by
Ahmadinejad. Like James Baker, President Ahmadinejad may be done
in by a
fatal flaw - the taste for an easy win while ignoring the Devil
lurking in
the details.
From:
Iran-Watch.com / 12.07.06
ISSUES....
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