Hell’s Bells
December 1st, 2006Fred Kaplan’s latest piece on Iraq addresses the Baker Commission’s forthcoming recommendation that we withdraw soldiers in the next one to two years and calls for us to ask Syria and Iran to work with us in fixing the country given. I can’t say I invite the Iranians or Syrians to Iraq easily as I consider them to be awful regimes and untrustworthy. Frankly, the situation in Iraq is absolutely no-win, and there may not be a solution at all. The ending of Kaplan’s piece was especially striking.
The days of America’s unilateral influence in Iraq are long over, if they weren’t mythical from the outset. Look at this week’s fiasco. Prime Minister Maliki canceled a dinner with President Bush—just brushed off the president of the United States, the country that’s sacrificed thousands of young men and women and spent hundreds of billions of dollars to keep Maliki’s government standing—because keeping the date would have upset Muqtada Sadr, the most powerful Shiite militia leader, who apparently now has more leverage than the United States and its 150,000 troops.
It’s pathetic, but it’s also a wake-up call. Our leverage is minuscule, and it’s declining by the day. To talk of grand schemes—partitioning Iraq or pressuring Maliki to form a “reconciliation government” and amend his constitution—is, quite apart from their merits, plainly absurd, because we have no control over what the Iraqis do. We still have some control, though, over what we do and, maybe, over what we can persuade others to do with us. The only choices are to give persuasion a whirl or to sit and watch a piece of the world fall apart.
Should we speak to the Iranians and Syria? Yes. Absolutely, but I can’t say it’ll amount to much and it may very well be more trouble than it’s worth, considering that those countries have no reason to support the West and are nothing at all like the West despite what some would have you believe. Oh, this War won’t end well.