Back to square one in the Middle East
Monday, August 27, 2007 at 7:13AM OP-ED: Post-Iraq Strategy, By David Ignatius, August 26, 2007; Page B07
As reported by Ignatius, this is a sad commentary on the Bush administration's grasp of the region.
Here's the "grand bargain" we offer Tehran:
Early this summer, senior Bush administration officials still hoped that Iran might cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq. The two countries shared an interest in the success of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the theory went. Thus the United States agreed to bilateral meetings with the Iranians in Baghdad to explore a joint framework for security in Iraq. The prospect of an American-Iranian condominium in Iraq frightened the Saudis, but the United States persisted.
America's modest price for working with the Iranians was spelled out by Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard had to stop shipping deadly weapons to Shiite forces in Iraq that were destabilizing the country and killing American soldiers. U.S. officials had intelligence resources to monitor whether Iran complied with this basic demand. "We're not seeing it," says the senior State Department official.
It basically amounted to: "Stop meddling in a way that harms us and promotes your interests and then we'll let you bail us out for real."
Gosh, I wonder why that didn't work, given our declining circumstances in Iraq and loose talk about going after Iran's nuclear program with military force.
I've not seen anything from any quarter that suggests we offered Iran anything close to a package that had a chance of working. These deals were pre-packaged for failure, made simply so we could claim Iran wasn't cooperating.
The case for really engaging Iran was never about their simply helping us for nothing in return. But since we have no intention of offering them what we know they want (simple recognition of the legitimacy of their regime and something amounting to a promise that we're not actively seeking its fall), the mullahs are logically refusing to do anything that alleviates our situation in Iraq. The Bush administration's stance amounts to saying "we'll take our losses and failure in Iraq because we think Iran's more important," and to me, that's both scapegoating Iran AND bungling something this administration has repeatedly promised the American people (and our troops) that it would make succeed--no matter the cost.
How can we recognize the legitimacy of this terrorism-sponsoring, authoritarian regime that avows America as it's number one enemy and clearly works to reduce our influence in the region while bolstering its own?
How did Nixon create detente with the Soviets in the early 1970s when that country's crimes and misdemeanors ranked incomparably higher than Iran's today--on every possible scale?
Interestingly enough, that Soviet Union disappears completely within a generation of Nixon's bold move, at the cost of virtually no American lives.
The historical record is clear on tired authoritarian states: a strategy of engagement weakens them from within and they fall, but a strategy of bolstering their disconnectedness only plays into the hands of the power elite, keeping them in control and ruining any chance for moderates and reformers to rise and effectively change the country's course.
We engage tired old Brezhnevian USSR and now it's gone.
We open the door on tired old Mao's PRC and now it's more brutally capitalistic than we are.
We finally get over the hurt on Vietnam, recognize its communist leadership and look what's happened there.
Where were our preconditions for negotiation on any of these states? Very minimal stuff in each instance. I don't remember, for example, telling Moscow or China what they should or should not do with their nukes or militaries.
Then look at our record on isolating Cuba or Iran and ask yourself if we've done anything but benefit hardliners.
When you face tired authoritarianism, you turn their public against them. When you face serious totalitarianism, you have no choice but to go after the leadership directly.
We continue to deny ourselves our greatest possible asset in this struggle with Iran: the Iranian people. You want the Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels to arise? You have to create the conditions.
Bush has done nothing of the sort, despite the compelling need for a regional security/human rights dialogue created by his administration's many towering failures in managing postwar Iraq. We told everyone going in this was going to be an American show, whether they liked it or not. They could donate troops if they liked, but we were going to make all the calls, including one to simultaneously challenge Iraq's neighbors Syria and Iran, despite the strategic dangers of doing so.
We have made our bed in Iraq with such choices, and now, as Bush's many bad choices have us both sacrificing troops needlessly while standing watch over Iraq's slo-mo soft partitioning (all the while claiming we can't pull back because--CANUBELIEVEIT!--it could lead to a faster soft partitioning and the slow version is sooo much better and defensible, right?), the best we can come up with is a pathetic return to supporting tired Sunni authoritarian regimes in the region in an attempt to isolate Iran because its influence in the region has skyrocketed thanks to the Shiia revival we--apparently--unknowingly triggered when we took down the Sunni dictator of a majority Shiia nation right on Iran's border (WHODATHUNKIT!).
This is where we've come six years after 9/11: right back to square one on Saudi Arabia, right back to square one on Iran, right back to square one on the Taliban/Al Qaeda (who at least had to move one country over).
Tell me how you paint Bush's second term as anything but a complete disaster for the United States in this Long War? Every advantage or momentum achieved in the first term has been given up through our incompetent choices.
Reader Comments (3)
THIS was the man Nixon went to China to see. A few years later, Mao was dead and Deng was in charge.