The Bush administration and their Corporate headquarter in London wanted to
give hand to Iran. Previously in Kissinger time, they wanted both Iraq and
Iran to be messed up.. Kissinger is saying that Americans far destroyed Iraq
than planned.. The English empire has links with Iran / Shiites hundreds years
back..In fact it was the Spanish who first supported Shiizim in 1500 as part of
their aggression against the Ottomans.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020202682.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Obama's Iraq policy must be focused on more than withdrawal
By Henry Kissinger
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
In a 71-minute State of the Union address,
President Obama managed no more than 101 perfunctory words about Iraq.
Throughout its term, the administration has recoiled from discussing
Iraq's geostrategic significance and especially America's relation to
it.
Yet while Iraq is being exorcised from our debate, its reality is
bound to obtrude on our consciousness. The U.S. troop withdrawal from
Iraq will not alter the geostrategic importance of the country even as
it alters that context.
Mesopotamia has been the strategic focal point of the region for
millennia. Its resources affect countries far away. The dividing line
between the Shiite and the Sunni worlds runs through its center --
indeed, through its capital. Iraq's Kurdish provinces rest uneasily
between Turkey and Iran and indigenous adversaries within Iraq. It
cannot be in the American interest to leave the region as a vacuum.
Nor is it possible to separate Iraq from the conflict with
revolutionary jihad. The outcome in Iraq will influence the
psychological balance in the war against radical Islam, specifically
whether the ongoing withdrawal from Iraq comes to be perceived as a
retreat from the region or a more effective way to sustain it.
But Iraq has largely disappeared from policy debates in Washington.
There are special envoys for every critical country in the region
except Iraq, the country whose evolution will help determine how
American relevance to the currents of the region will be judged. The
Obama administration needs to find its voice to convey that Iraq
continues to play a significant role in American strategy. Brief visits
by high officials are useful as symbols. But of what? Operational
continuity is needed in a strategic concept for a region over which the
specter of Iran increasingly looms.
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Before the war, the equilibrium between Iraq and Iran
was a principal geopolitical reality within the region. At that time,
the government in Baghdad was a Sunni-run dictatorship. The
Shiite-dominated, partly democratic structure that has emerged from the
war has not yet found the appropriate balance among its Sunni, Shiite
and Kurdish components. Nor is its long-term relationship to Iran
settled. If radicals prevail in the Shiite part, and the Shiite part
comes to dominate the Sunni and Kurdish regions, and if it then lines
up with Tehran, we will witness -- and will have partially contributed
to -- a fundamental shift in the balance of the region.
The outcome in Iraq will have profound consequences, above all, in
Saudi Arabia, the key country in the Persian Gulf, as well as in the
other Gulf states and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, financed by Iran, is
already a Shiite state within the state. The United States therefore
has an important stake in a moderate evolution of Iraq's domestic and
foreign policies.
The Obama administration is stalemated in negotiations with Iran to
contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Whether the nuclear issue
is settled by diplomacy or other evolutions, the stability of the
region will be crucially affected by the ability to bring about a
political and strategic equilibrium between Iran and Iraq. Without such
an arrangement, the region runs the risk of living indefinitely on top
of a heap of explosives toward which a smoldering fuse is burning.
The formal expressions of administration policy on Iraq primarily
concern the rate of withdrawal. Even President Obama's reference to
Iraq in his State of the Union speech was largely in that context. Few
high-level Iraqi leaders are invited to Washington, and their reception
is reserved. America needs to remain an active diplomatic player. Its
presence must be perceived to have some purpose beyond withdrawal. An
expression of political commitment to the region is needed. In
executing an exit strategy, we must make sure that strategy remains
linked to exit.
The writer was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
© 2010 Tribune Media Services
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