"As usual, I find things there amiably awful!" Mephisto retorts when God chides him for caviling about evil cir stances on Earth. After two years of predicting civil war in Iraq, Mephisto's words come to mind now that civil war has arrived. God helps drunks, small children, and the United States of America, the old saying goes. Someone is helping the United States in Iraq, although here it might not be God but rather the other fellow.
One reads dire predictions everywhere that civil conflict in Iraq might lead to regional war. That is true, but no one fears this more than the government of Iran. Iran sent its cat's paw, the sectarian butcher Muqtada al-Sadr, running home from Lebanon last weekend with a message of religious brotherhood. Iran has only one military objective, namely to own nuclear weapons. Without them its military is an ill-equipped rabble; with them, it is the dominant regional power. For Tehran, anything else is a distraction.
....
More wishful thinking has been wasted on the notion of regime change in Iran than on the lottery. The Ahmadinejad regime represents the majority of Iranians, poorly educated people with few prospects in the modern world. Whom are such people supposed to choose as an alternative? Iran's regime cannot be subverted, unless, of course, it becomes embroiled in a foreign military adventure in which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's supporters come to dislike their role as cannon fodder.
In fact, the worst outcome from the vantage point of Washington's interest would be a stable cons utional government in Iraq. Once Shi'ite elements controlled leading ministries, Iran would have unlimited means to meddle in the classic Middle Eastern style of infiltration, bribery and intimidation. Middle Eastern governments, after all, are not governments in the Western sense, but rather hotels in which different factions rent rooms. With footholds inside the Iraqi government, Iran could develop forces on the ground in depth and at leisure.
America's military already has repositioned to the periphery of cities; there will not be another siege of Fallujah. Although the proximate cause of this redeployment was reduction of US casualties, it has two other effects. One is to allow both Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias freedom to assemble military forces capable of inflicting large-scale atrocities on each other. The second is to prevent either side from massing sufficient forces to launch a full-scale civil war.
The result will be a low-intensity civil war that can persist more or less indefinitely. Populations caught in the middle will do what such populations normally do, that is, migrate to areas of sectarian control that offer greater protection. It will not be necessary to announce a par ion. The Iraqis will par ion themselves with household items piled into pickup trucks.
....
Reply With Quote
