April 23, 2006
"The proposal
appeared in a [2003] November 25 column by Leslie Gelb, a former editor
and senior columnist for the Times. Gelb calls for dividing Iraq
between the "Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south."
He continues: "Almost immediately, this would allow America to put most
of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly--with
the Kurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its
forces from the so-called Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad,
largely freeing American forces from fighting a costly war they might
not win. [ full NYT article ]
This sort of approach had been considered even earlier than Gelb's
version. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Cheney and likely many others
among the NeoCons thought there was a good chance Iraq would descend
into bloody sectarian strife. In that case, they had a plan :
The Cheney Plan
In Machiavellian terms, at least, it was a neat plan for "taking care of" Iraq and freeing up US forces for an assault on Iran.
"One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please...That's our mission" - Michael Leeden
Daily Kos member Dave Mason floated the same sort of scenario I'm exploring here..... over a year ago, in A Plan To Fail In Iraq
Bush is throwing the war on purpose.
It is a standard tactic in warfare to try to divide your enemy and exploit divisions among their ranks.
The more time, energy, ammunition and lives they expend killing each
other, the easier it becomes to conquer them, or so states the theory.
Provoking a civil war is Bush's hidden strategy in Iraq.[ emphasis mine
]
WendellGee was also an early writer on this subject [ January 29:
US war with Iran already begun?
As the US gov. admits that it has been devising war plans against Iran since at least 2003, it's worthwhile to stop and consider how we got to this point.
Here's the preface to an
article from the Centre From Research On Globalization with a similar
take on the little noticed 2003 NYT "Iraq Ethnic Cleansing" proposal:
"This article by Michel Collon was first published by
Global Research in December 2003. It outlines with foresight the
strategy of the US, through covert intelligence operations, of breaking
up Iraq into a number of separate states. The unleashing of a civil war
with a view to deliberately breaking up Iraq was part of the US war
agenda from the outset...."
How could the US attack Iran while tied up in Iraq ? Well, the
actual PR job of whipping up US public sentiment for a US strike on
Iran may not be that hard given Iranian pronouncements on wiping Israel
off the map. For that matter, the Bush Administration could get a lot
of mileage out of simply promoting Iranian postage stampes like this
one, celebrating the abortive hostage rescue attempt in 1980 ordered by
President Jimmy Carter:
But the military obstacles to a US attack on Iran seem almost
insurmountable. Or are they ?
It seems that Dick Cheney may have had a "planned failure" scenario for
Iraq from the onset, and even Henry Kissinger has lent his substantial
gravitas and his imprimature to the division of Iraq along sectarian
lines :
[ source : Kissinger op-ed, Korea Times
February 9, 2004 ]
...it may be that like Yugoslavia, Iraq, created for geostrategic
reasons, cannot be held together by representative institutions, that
it will tend toward autocracy or break up into its constituent groups.
While this is far from the preferred outcome, if the democracies are
unable to produce democratic central institutions and unwilling to
support a benevolent autocrat like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of
the Turkish Republic), then a breakup into three states is preferable
to refereeing an open-ended civil war. But it would require firm
international guidance.
Such a plan - with Dick Cheney as one of the main authors - was reported on, in 2002, by STRATFOR :
An idea to unite Jordan and Iraq in a pro-U.S.
Hashemite kingdom after a U.S. war is being floated in diplomatic and
opposition circles, reports Stratfor, the global intelligence
company. The plan could be Washington's best scenario for ensuring a
stable post-war Iraq.
....Such a plan reportedly was discussed at an unusual meeting between
Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and pro-U.S. Iraqi Sunni opposition
members in London last July. In September, Israeli paper Yedioth
Ahronoth stated that the U.S. goal in Iraq was to create a united
Hashemite kingdom embracing Jordan and Iraq's Sunni areas. Israeli
terrorism expert Ehud Sprinzak recently echoed this sentiment on
Russian television Sept. 24.
In a nutshell, the plan may involve uniting Jordan and Sunni-populated
areas of Iraq under the rule of the current Jordanian regime....
Who is floating the Iraq-Jordan idea, and who might benefit from its
realization if it ever comes through? Although it might be wishful
thinking by some Iraqi opposition members and Israeli media, it also
could bring strategic benefits to the United States, Israel and
Jordan....
Sprinzak stated that the authors of a "Hashemite plan" are U.S. Vice
President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
Oddly - or not - the "Cheney Plan" was exactly congruent with Israeli intelligence objectives :
[ from previously linked WSW article ] An article that
appeared in the World Zionist Organization's publication Kivunim in
1982, on the eve of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and in the midst of
the Iran-Iraq war, spelled this out. Written by Oded Yinon, an official
in the Israeli foreign ministry, the article was entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s." It stated, in part:
"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn
on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its
dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is
stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which
constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will
tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able
to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of
inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will
shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into
denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into
provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times
is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three
major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south
will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the
present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization."
Here's a discussion of the larger scenario that fufils such Israeli
geopolitical objectives and seems now to be in play - from a December 1, 2002 LA Times OP-Ed by By Sandy Tolan and Jason Felch:
If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint:
It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with
implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle
East.
The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives:
controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional
military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916
Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which
carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The
neo-imperial vision...includes...compliant governments in Syria and
Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion.
For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided
the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier.
"Removing Saddam from power," according to a 1996 report from an
Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
was "an important Israeli strategic objective." Now this has become
official U.S. policy....
....After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended
occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who
spoke to the New York Times....
...Any occupation would certainly include protecting petroleum
installations. Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second
largest in the world and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices,
would be a huge strategic prize....
...But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not
necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners
determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign
policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the
Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran. "The War Won't End
in Baghdad," wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen
in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National
Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal
arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons
dealers and Israel. In the current war, he argues, "we must also topple
terror states in Tehran and Damascus."
....Perle and Ledeen...are too smart to ignore the rage across the Arab
and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on
multiple Middle Eastern fronts.
...anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain. Indeed, the
hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know in their
hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won
without the blood of Americans and their allies. "One can only hope
that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please," Ledeen
preached to the choir at National Review Online last August. "That's
our mission..."
Now, let's fast forward to the present:
[ Al Jazeera, April 17, 2006 ] many analysts are warning against an imminent U.S.-Iran war the coming weeks.
There will be an attack. According to an editorial on The New
Statesman, as long as the madman (Bush) is in the White House, now
considering bombing another country in the region, a Third World War is
imminent.
A recent article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker suggested the same.
But the U.S. media seems less concerned than the British over the issue.
News headlines on the British media are mostly booked for the Iranian
nuclear issue, which didn't even make the front pages of the Washington
Post or New York Times.
Will there be a war on Iran or not?
War would be a surprise for the British people, who don't expect their
leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair, to dare repeat Iraq mistake, but in
the U.S., the situation is a bit different.
________________
In short : Michael
Leeden summed it up - by many indications, reigning US NeoConservatives
WANT to create a widespread mess [ AKA "war" ] in the Mideast. They're betting the US military will prevail. Now, some predict that the partition of Iraq would lead to regional instability
- that's probably part of a range of anticipated scenarios too. Cheney
and the NeoCons are expecting Iraq will fall apart : hence, the
construction of vast permanent US bases that probably could be likened
to self-contained castles. The US military will supervise and guide the
fragmentation of Iraq - per the "Cheney Plan" but avoid too much
entanglement in the gritty details. And, they're likely expecting
blowback from a US strike on Iran : part of the plan. [ see: Perm Iraq Bases Underway, Analysts: Iran Hit=Terror Blowback.
Iran's on the horizon....
Wouldn't all of this involve massive bloodshed and loss of life ? Well,
yes. But, human lives ( and human rights ) don't figure much in this
recrudescence of the "Great Game" : Call it "creative chaos".
Now, back to our fearless leader:
[WaPo, February 26, 2003]
"President Bush intends to outline his postwar vision for Iraq and the
Middle East in a speech tonight designed in part to showcase the
administration's belief that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's overthrow
would be a significant step toward broad democratic change in the Arab
world....Beyond Iraq, administration officials have been talking for
months about the need for long-term change in a region where U.S.
presidents for decades have favored the predictability of autocratic
regimes."
That's fancy politician talk from George W., but then US Undersecretary of State John Bolton laid it out a bit more bluntly [ Ha'aretz ] in February 2003 U.S.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli
officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and
that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and
North Korea afterwards
Per usual, the real devil lies in the details. In the mind of a more
or less rational politician or geopolitical analyst, attacking Iran
with nuclear weapons would be - on the record - "inadvisable" or - off
the record - "insane". Well, the NeoCon faction that has its tentacles
firmly wrapped around the very malleable cranium of George W. Bush IS
demostrably insane. This is largely the same crew which sought to
provoke confrontation with the Soviet Union during the military
escalation of the 1980's - the same gang that produced absurdly
overstated assessments of Soviet Military capability, the very folks
who talked of widespread nuclear war as a conceivable option. In short,
they're nuts - super empowered nuts.
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