European Realpolitik on Iran

Europe is resisting American calls to economically boycott Iran because of Iranian meddling in Iraq and refusal to curtail their nuclear program, which Iran claims is civilian in nature.

European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, officials on both sides say. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran.

Administration officials say a new American drive to reduce exports to Iran and cut off its financial transactions is intended to further isolate Iran commercially amid the first signs that global pressure has hurt Iran’s oil production and its economy. There are also reports of rising political dissent in Iran.

In December, Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear program led the United Nations Security Council to impose economic sanctions. Iran’s rebuff is based on its contention that its nuclear program is civilian in nature, while the United States and other countries believe Iran plans to make weapons.

At issue now is how the resolution is to be carried out, with Europeans resisting American appeals for quick action, citing technical and political problems related to the heavy European economic ties to Iran and its oil industry.

This is unsurprising as Europe values its economic dealings with Iran more than the possible chance of war breaking out between Iran and the U.S. if Iran gets more aggressive in Iraq, which indeed seems unlikely. Again this is the nature of realpolitik -- an educated guess as to how events will turn out and how it can effect a state's or regional organization's interests.

Right now, Europe is playing with a tiny fire and is unlikely to be burned. But with any fire, however small, there is the chance an ember will jump out of the enclosure and create a forest fire.

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Finally...

someone writes about the plight of Iraqi civilians, regardless if it's gleaned from recently published books. Christian Caryl of the NY Review of Books reviews the Iraqi female blogger Riverbend's two books -- Baghdad Burning I and II, Anthony Shadid's Night Draws Near and Nir Rosen's In the Belly of the Green Bird and their overwhelming concern for the people of Iraq. As Caryl notes, Riverbend is particularly astute at uncovering the many tragic contradicitons of the U.S. Iraq adventure.

She is a passionate opponent of the occupation, and her writing sparks with rage and indignation. An avid consumer of the press and the Internet, she is well aware of the range of American attitudes about the war; she has her own.[1] When she hears that US forces in Iraq are fighting "terrorists," she notes that the American-installed Iraqi government includes several prominent members of the Islamist Dawa Party, which was behind a string of bombings that killed Iraqi civilians in the 1980s.[2] When she hears that Washington aspires to implant democracy in Iraq, she responds by showing how her rights as a woman are being steadily curtailed by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism sponsored by the very same political parties that the Americans have brought to power. And when the talk turns to "collateral damage," she asserts that "American long-term memory is exclusive to American traumas. The rest of the world should simply 'put the past behind,' 'move forward,' 'be pragmatic,' and 'get over it.'"

A harsh verdict, to be sure, but perhaps it needs to be heard. The underlying irony of all this should be obvious. The writer of these words is a young female computer programmer (now twenty-seven), whose resourceful English (acquired during a long stay abroad in her childhood) would put many Americans to shame. Her familiarity with American culture and principles repeatedly comes to the fore; indeed, it is her intense awareness of American political discourse and reporting that infuses her writing. If any Iraqi can be receptive to America's grand democratic design for Iraq, surely it ought to be someone like her. And yet, as her book dramatically demonstrates, she and her occupiers may temporarily inhabit the same country, but they continue to live in different worlds.

Yet while most Iraqis do indeed hate the occupation, there is a fear that an American withdrawal will, in the words of a Shiite matron, result in

"massacres... between the tribes, between the parties and between the Sunnis and Shiites, of course.'" She hastens to add that "no one who loves their country accepts an occupation. Everybody wants freedom."

And this is why Iraq is such a tragedy of the Bush Administration's making. The U.S. is truly damned if we do and damned if we don't regarding withdrawal. I should clarify this by stating that we are more damned if we do withdraw and Iraq becomes the next killing field of ethnic and religious cleansing. Can there be any doubt the U.S., along with the fanatics and jihadists, would be responsible for this gruesome situation? Is there any doubt that if we do withdraw and genocide does occur that the U.S. will not be deploying another mass of troops to stop and contain the situation?

The fierce proponents of withdrawal never answer these questions. I do think withdrawal is inevitable, but it cannot be immediate. If so, American troops will once again be between civilization's two rivers but the blood will be knee deep rather than the slim slick it is now.

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Coalition of the Grudging

Slate's Jacob Weisburg has a good argument today for the U.S. to again revamp its multilateral streak and press for NATO to take up peacekeeping responsibilities if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

Now I don't agree with Weisburg when he compares Iraq to Vietnam -- it's not anything like Iraq other than we may lose and the U.S. certainly did not enter Vietnam to stop totalitarianism -- and his comparison of a possible genocide in Iraq to Cambodia is wrong -- it would be more like the Balkans. Nevertheless, he makes some great points, especially why it would be in certain countries interest to stop Iraq from falling into genocidal madness.

Where might troops come from? The most willing providers would probably be "new" Europeans such as the Poles, who remain eager to demonstrate their cooperative capabilities and earn some cash. Muslim troops might come from neighboring Jordan and Turkey, which have obvious stakes in preventing the refugee crisis that would attend violent partition. Western European nations would be reluctant, but possibly willing, to contribute when faced with the consequences of inaction. For France and Germany, the bargain would involve Bush admitting, at least implicitly, that his previous unilateralism was bad and wrong. Call it the Coalition of the Grudging

Spot on.

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Iraqi People: Get Out Within a Year

Kevin Drum, over at TWM, links to the recent poll released by Program on International Policy Attitudes which clearly states the Iraqi population's -- Shia and Sunni -- attitude toward the U.S. occupation: Get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

Drum writes:

74% of Shiites and 91% of Sunnis want us to leave within a year (the number is 80% for Shiites in Baghdad). By wide margins, both groups believe U.S. forces are provoking more violence than they're preventing, and both groups believe that day-to-day security would improve if we left. Support for attacks on U.S. forces now commands majority support among both Shiites and Sunnis. And none of this is because of successful al-Qaeda propaganda: 94% of Iraqis continue to disapprove of al-Qaeda.

Now, it may be that these views are misguided. But it hardly matters: it's simply not possible for us to occupy the country successfully if a majority of Iraqis actively support attacks on our troops and a vast majority think we're responsible for the rising violence. It's time for us to leave.

If this is correct, I do agree with Kevin that we cannot stay and withdrawal is necessary. I am just so very afraid we have created the conditions for possible genocide. But without an enlightened leadership and multilateral coalition of partners could we even avert genocide if we wanted to? I say no and I don't believe the American people have the will for American soldiers to be the fleshy buffer between ethnic and religious hatreds.

The only problem is this: If the U.S. does leave, does anyone seriously think we won't be back there in some capacity within a decade?

Strategically, for the U.S. and those of us that believe in democratic internationalism, Iraq could've gone worse. Every U.S. interest in the region is worst off and democracy in Iraq is effectively dead.

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Bush's Vietnam Analogy

Noam Chomsky used to write alot about the "Vietnam syndrome" or the belief among elite decision makers that the American people could not and would not weather long drawn out wars and would call for withdrawal once the body count escalated beyond what the public could stomach. Today, aptly in Vietnam, President Bush likened the Iraq War to the Vietnam War stating "we'll win unless we quit." Now this statement hosts a dizzying array of questions both moral and pragmatic, chiefly: Did the U.S. morally speaking deserve to win the Vietnam War. Unsurprisingly, I say no.

But I don't like this Vietnam analogy concerning Iraq no matter where it's lobbed out of the political spectrum. American troops should have never been deployed to Vietnam, period. Iraq is not so easy. While I still believe the initial war in Iraq was illegal and immoral, it is now and will continue to be a front in the global war against jihadism, whether we like it or not.

Now the question we must ask ourselves is: Are we willing to sacrifice the lives of more American soldiers to keep Iraq from falling into utter anarchy -- which is our moral responsibility considering we took over the security responsibilities for the country once we invaded -- or will we completely withdraw, let Iraq fall into civil war and possible genocide, which could ignite the whole Middle East, Sunni vs. Shia and both vs. Israel, while Al Qaeda uses the chaos to radicalize, train, and arm more jihadists for their global campaign against rationalism?

There can be no doubt the Bush Administration has led us right into a colossal debacle of historic proportions. The initial fight should have been concentrated mainly on the core Al Qaeda organization. But we are past that. The fight against jihadism and the war in Iraq have tragically become one and the same. No matter what we do, withdraw from Iraq or walk the same crimson path, there will be bloody consequences that will continue on for generations.

The right question to ask now is: "What is best for the Iraqi people and is in the long term interest of progress and peace in the Middle East?"

My answer is feeble, I honestly don't know.

Morally, the Vietnam War was never this complex. We should have never have gone and we should have never stayed.

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