An Uneasy Triumvirate: Who Holds the Ring of Power?

Among other items of interest, Juan Cole says:

...Any US attack on Iran could well lead to the US and British troops in Iraq being cut off from fuel and massacred by enraged Shiites. Shiite irregulars could easily engage in pipeline and fuel convoy sabotage of the sort deployed by the Sunni guerrillas in the north. Without fuel, US troops would be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks that US air power could not hope completely to stop (as the experience of Israel with Hizbullah in Lebanon demonstrates). A pan-Islamic alliance of furious Shiites and Sunni guerrillas might well be the result, spelling the decisive end of Americastan in Iraq. Shiite Iraqis are already at the boiling point over Israel's assault on their coreligionists in Lebanon. An attack on Iran could well push them over the edge. People like Cheney and Bush don't understand people's movements or how they can win. They don't understand the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1978-79. They don't understand that they are playing George III in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Muslims, and that lots of people want to play George Washington.

By the way, Hersh maintains that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has at least some inkling of all this, which is one reason he hasn't been enthusiastically cheering on the Lebanon war.

I had this second hand, from someone who knows someone in the know. It confirms Hersh's account:


' Rumsfeld is very uneasy with the unquestioning support for the Israeli offensive because of the impact it will have on American troops in Iraq. His point to Bush and Rice is that Iraq's Shias will not stand by while their Lebanese Shia brothers are destroyed. He has pointed out to them -- to Rice and Bush -- that there are close family and political ties between the Moqtada al-Sadr family and the Musa al-Sadr and the close friendship between Maliki and Nawaf Moussawi, the foreign minister of Hezbollah. That Hezbollah worked to free the Dawa 17 at one point in its history was a surprise to Rice, as well as to Bush. With American casualties mounting in Iraq Rumsfeld does not believe we need to make enemies of the Shia. The demonstration of last week shook him -- and American commanders. '



If Hersh and my correspondent are correct, we are beginning to see an "India Office" effect in the US government. When Britain ruled India, the British Government of India often developed its own foreign policy and priorities that were not the same as London's Foreign Office. Rumsfeld does have Iraq interests for which he has to speak, however much he hates Hizbullah and Iran.

The strategeric analogy with Kosovo is unsettling. That was a dust-up NATO more-or-less won, but the guys in charge were Democrats. It's an uneasy analogy, though, since that was a conflict where the neo liberals- and DynCorp private security cut their teeth. It was also where DynCorp got their fame in human trafficking. Dr. Cole goes on to say:

As for the Israelis, the Kosovo analogy is plausible, since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instanced Kosovo as justification for his actions. The irony is that the Israelis misunderstood Kosovo. Hizbullah is like the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), not like Milosevic's Serbs. If Wesley Clarke had bombed the KLA, the Kosovo war would have failed completely. More ironically, in its decision to expel the Shiite population from the area of Lebanon south of the Litani river, and to make nearly 1 million Lebanese homeless, the Israelis acted more like Milosevic himself than like NATO...

The perception of reality by Darth Rumsfeld is to be encouraged, if only to keep us all out of World War III. Rumsfeld likes slow simmering wars where men of low profile can make lots of dirty money. Cheney likes the money too, but the siren song of colonialism and all that oil in the ground and all those nukes we've got stockpiled makes him yearn for a Final Solution for those difficult people.

Dear Leader just thinks what Dick sez, and loves his pretty Precious.

But the ceasefire went through. Darth Rumsfeld may have won this round. One wonders if Shotgun Dick will let the balance stand, with the power of the moustache of Sauron himself humilated before the whole U.N.?