Playing the Hand We've Dealt
*
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20friedman.html
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/tho
maslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per> THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 20, 2007
Last week, President Bush appointed a "war czar," Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, to
oversee everything we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - which raises the
question: Who was doing this job up to now? The answer, amazingly, is no
one. We're like a fine restaurant that has decided five years after it's
opened - and has lost most of its customers - that it might be good to hire
a head chef. Better late than never. General Lute comes advertised as smart
and tough. Good. I hope his first memo to the president starts like this:
Mr. President, if you look around the region, all those we've tried to
isolate - Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban - are
stronger today than they were two years ago. We have to reassess our
strategy, beginning by facing up to the fact that we've fundamentally
altered the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East.
We brought down the hard walls that surrounded Iran by destroying Iran's two
archenemies - the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam's regime in Iraq. As a
result, we are dealing today with an emboldened, resurgent Iran, which has
taken advantage of our good works to expand its economic, cultural,
religious and geopolitical influence into Persian-speaking western
Afghanistan and into Shiite Iraq.
With Saddam gone, none of the Arab states are strong enough to balance Iran.
They are all either too weak or too dysfunctional. This means we have two
choices. We can be the regional power balancing Iran, which will require
keeping thousands of troops in the area indefinitely. Or we have to engage
Tehran in a high-level dialogue, in which we focus on our mutual interests
in stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq. You have to choose, Mr. President: I
can't do my job if you don't face the fact that our wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan - and our energy gluttony - have empowered Iran.
War with Iran is not inevitable. Let me remind you how well we worked with
the Iranians in Afghanistan, initially. As you recall, we had a regular
cooperative dialogue between our ambassadors in Kabul. The Iranians helped
to deliver us the Northern Alliance. Then they cut their financial support
for their favorite warlord in Herat, Ismail Khan, so that the pro-American
Afghan government could extend its authority there. When, in early 2002, we
gave them the names of members of a Qaeda group operating in Meshad, Iran,
they rolled them up and put them on a plane to Afghanistan. There was much
more, until things went sour.
I don't know who is responsible for the breakdown - the Iranians point to
your calling them part of the "axis of evil," after they had helped us so
much. We can point to their involvement in bombings in Saudi Arabia in 2003.
But for the past few years we've been in cold war with them - and today
their proxies are beating our proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq.
As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," points out: "Stability in the
Middle East is now about U.S.-Iran relations, and it is fantasy to think
that we can go back to the old days where the Cairo-Riyadh-Amman axis
manages the region for us." Iran will not allow a stable Iraq to emerge if
its interests are not protected, and if the new balance of power in Iraq -
one based on a Shiite-Kurdish majority - is not recognized.
Yes, the Saudis will go nuts, but look what they've been doing: in private
the Saudis tell us we can't leave Iraq and in public their king denounces
our occupation there as "illegal." Of course, we must protect the Saudis.
But they and their Sunni allies in Iraq have to accept the new reality
there, and stop treating the Shiites as a lower form of life. Then we can
cut them the best deal possible. If not, they're on their own. Our kids are
not going to die to restore Sunni minority rule to Iraq.
At the same time, we have to open a dialogue with Hamas - not to embrace it,
but to lay out a gradual pathway that will bring it into relations with
Israel. As Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University's Palestinian expert and
author of "The Iron Cage," points out: "If we let the Palestinian Authority
be destroyed, and then we keep Hamas isolated" - even though it won a
democratic election that we sponsored - "we will end up with the hard boys,
the gangs you see today on the streets of Gaza, who respond to no authority
at all."
If I thought that isolating Iran and Hamas was working, I'd continue it. But
it manifestly is not - any more than isolating Castro has worked. So either
we find a way to draw them in or we'll be fighting them - and the hard boys
- in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan for a long, long time.
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