Yoshie F cross-posts extensively so one is never sure just what one has replied to. But I think I replied to this on A-List and am now tracking it down on PEN-L. My argument has been augmented--or padded, depending on how you look at it. Perhaps if I see the same post on still yet another list, I will write that book I have been dreaming about.
One is reminded of all that garbage reporting about how Saudi Arabia financed 9-11 too. Given the amounts reported, I think I could have financed it! Or then again there is the garbage reporting about how some sort of mythical Iran of clerics has emerged the big winner in Bush's 'well-intentioned' but disastrous war. No wonder we usually end up arguing bitterly over nonsense on lists. Getting to YF's comments:
The most likely scenario of the Iraq War is that Washington will
arrive at an "Afghan solution": overlook, or even fascilitate, the Saudi backing of Sunni guerrillas and terrorists while withdrawing US troops to the safe Kurdish region of Iraq for force protection and base building or redeploy them elsewhere in the Middle East, and let the Saudi-backed Sunni guerrillas and terrorists fight Moktada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, on the grounds that it will be better for Iraq to become a new Afghanistan than fall into Tehran's sphere of influence. -- Yoshie>> Whoa Yoshie, guerillas and terrorists? Talk about falling for the fallacy of the begged question courtesy of the usual media suspects. The Sunni Resistance is Baathist holdouts, Al Qaeda, insurgents, terrorists, BUT NEVER EVER the SUNNI RESISTANCE in the media. Do we really need to echo that? Kudistan wouldn't make a good place for US bases--just like most of Afghanistan. No ports, local or regional hostility, and no money to pay for anything. Just another client satellite, the likes of which the US really doesn't want more of. And the oil in N. Iraq is decades away from being re-developed, unlike that of S. Iraq. Sure it would be a good place for special forces to hang out, sitting on stocks of explosives and radio equipment, waiting to call in air strikes, but no Ramsteins, no Kadenas, nothing of what the post-Rumsfeld DoD really wants. I don't think we will see either the scenario of the report or your analysis. Here's why. First, the Sunni Islamists who have fought it out to the bitter end over Anbar and much of Baghdad have fought it out mostly with the US and its puppets, not the Sadrists. Second, much of this money is really private money going to provide some sort of relief to the people whose lives have been devastated by the occupation and the US's bombs. Third, private Arab money is also going into Iraq towards rebuilding the Shia holy sites, which the US also destroyed. Since the Sadrists are a force independent of Iran but also mostly Arab, they are a force that the Arab world will have to come to terms with outside of that Saudi Arabia-Pakistan vs. Iran framework. That is because, like Hezbollah, the Sadrists have had to form a state within a state (an occupied one at that, much like Lebanon) and will not actually form any sort of international threat to either side of that rivallry. Finally, much of the Arab world is waking up to the facts on the ground that it was their own repressive, undemocratic governments (such as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States) that enabled the US to invade and destroy Iraq. Those who hope for the liberation of Iraq might come more and more to see both the Anbar Resistance and the Sadrists as the heroes--just like Hezbollah in Lebanon. So, would the rulers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia pursue the very sort of policies advocated by Israel in Iraq because they think it will allow them to cling to power? Remember, when Afghanistan was abandoned by the 'West', to quite an extent it was only Pakistan that acted in concert with the dominant Pashtun as a force to re-establish some sort of government, whatever else you might think about the Taliban. I think what will be settled in the next year is whether or not the outside regional powers will acquiesce to a broken up Iraq. That is what the US is most likely working hardest at. The problem being that even if you artificially split Iraq up into Kurd (who when religious tend to side with Sunnis, and when not ally themselves with the occupation), Sunni Arab and Shia Arab, you can't geographically divide it up like that, which is why it was always best run by a national government centred in Baghdad in the first place. As for devolution, power-sharing, and regional autonomy, Iraq had more of it under Saddam Hussein, who only stayed in power during the last decade of blockade, embargo, covert war and bombardment by making huge concessions on such matters. Ironically, although it allowed his faction to stay in power in the centre of the country, they mostly lost control of northern Iraq and much of the south as well, which undermined any chance they might have had of actually mounting a military defence of the country when the US did invade. C. Jannuzi
