The fundamental problem for America and its allies in Iraq is not Iranian interference, it is incoherent US foreign policy in the Middle East. If you think this is just opinion, try comprehending US-Middle East relations.
You will need strong coffee to follow this, and aspirin afterwards.
While no state has friends like people do, officials talk of friendly and enemy states. Though oversimplified, a friends/enemies assessment might be easiest to follow, so let's give it a whirl.
America considers the Shiite-dominated, democratically elected Iraqi government a friend. The anti-democratic insurgency in Iraq is almost completely Sunni and supported by two Sunni-dominated dictatorships in Syria and Saudi Arabia.
US policy is to support the development of democracy in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. So that should make these states US enemies and Iran, a Shiite-dominated semi-democracy helping the majority Iraqi Shiites fight anti-democratic Sunni insurgents, a US friend, right?
Not according to President George W. Bush. Dictatorial Syria is an enemy because it allegedly helps Sunni insurgents against the Iraqi government. Clear enough. But Iran is doing the opposite. Doesn't that make Iran the enemy of my enemy, and thus my friend?
But Bush considers Shiite-dominated Iran, a friend of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, an enemy.
Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has long been proclaimed a US ally. But 15 of 19 hijackers who attacked the United States on 9/11 were Saudis. Saudi Sunnis are assisting Iraqi Sunnis in attacking US troops and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
So if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but this is not so for Iran, how can the friend of my enemy who attacks me and my friend be my friend?
But Bush argues Saudi Arabia is.
Another Mid-Eastern group, Iraqi Kurds, are friends to America. But the Turks, American allies, regard Kurds as enemies and vice versa. The Iranians are enemies of the Kurds, so the Turks regard Iranians, enemies of their enemies, as friends. Thus Turks treat US allies as enemies and US enemies as friends, so how can they be friends?
But officially, they are.
As Muslims, the Syrians, Iranians, Saudi Arabians and all three factions of Iraqis hate Israelis and regard them as enemies. Democratic Israel has long been supported by US arms and aid, so Muslims attack the United States as friends of their enemy.
But the United States dismisses these sentiments because, it says, Muslim countries are not full democracies while Israel is, and as a fellow democracy, the United States supports Israel. Yet when democratic elections in Palestine return a majority who sees Israelis as enemies, the United States refuses to support the Palestinian democratic government, making its support not a matter of supporting democracy but apparently of supporting Judaism against Islam.
This makes Muslims regard the United States as a friend of their enemy, and thus their enemy. Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who was an American ally against America's Soviet enemy but is now an enemy, explicitly claims this is the basis of enmity. Al- Qaeda, a theocratic Sunni group, hates Shiites and democracy, so it should befriend the majority Sunni dictatorship Syria and be an enemy of Shiite-dominated, semi-democratic Iran.
Yet the opposite is the case. Shiite Iran allegedly shelters al-Qaeda terrorists while Syria kills them.
This explains US-Iran enmity, but not US-Syria enmity.
But if whoever shelters al-Qaeda is a US enemy, why is Pakistan considered a US friend?
Pakistan has agreed with its pro-al- Qaeda, pro-Taleban border tribes not to enter or permit US forces to attack their territory. This makes them shelterers of US enemies. The democratically elected Afghan government has even become hostile to the dictatorship in Pakistan for sheltering its enemies, the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
Since Pakistan is enemy to Afghanistan, America's ally, they are enemies of our friends and friends of our enemies, so they must be enemies, right?
Apparently not. India has been repeatedly attacked by Islamic terrorists like the United States, so they should be friends. Pakistan shelters terrorists who attack India, Afghanistan, Iraq and the United States. But the United States has tilted repeatedly in Pakistan's favor when India and Pakistan have fought.
If you are totally confused by now, you join me, friend.
As my wife's Appalachian ancestors used to say, if you find yourself between a Hatfield and a McCoy - two famously feuding families - get out of the way.
Picking friends and enemies among these feuds and historic Mid-East disputes leads to demonstrable incoherence. It just makes everyone doubt outsiders' intentions.
Or sanity.
[thanks to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars]
Ms. Belle also points to the expert handling of the Iraqi governmental allies of Dear Leader. The son of the moderate Dear Leader favors got a little roughed up today. But Pravda covered this earlier today in detail:
BAGHDAD, Feb. 23 — American troops seized and then released the eldest son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, perhaps the most powerful Shiite political leader in Iraq, after he crossed the border from Iran into Iraq on Friday morning.
Allies of the Hakim family denounced the detention as a serious insult, and a senior adviser to the family asserted that American forces also had assaulted several guards. The Hakims control the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the backbone of the Shiite political alliance that has dominated politics during the occupation.
State-run television said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who depends on Mr. Hakim’s support, intervened to help release the son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.
In an interview after he was released from an American military base in Kut, Amar al-Hakim said that American forces had treated him roughly and that their justification for seizing him — that he crossed the border with an invalid passport — was untrue.
An official with the Iraqi force that guards the border said American troops had been lying in wait to apprehend the Hakim convoy as it drove into Iraq...
...The son is himself a senior official in Mr. Hakim’s political movement and has often taken a leading role in building support for his father’s political efforts throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. A Hakim aide suggested that the son was being groomed to take control of the family’s political dynasty.
The detention worsened relations with the Hakims — who spent years in exile in Iran and remain close to Tehran — two months after American forces raided the Hakims’ elaborate Baghdad compound near the Green Zone and detained two Iranians whom they accused of running guns and planning sectarian attacks.
That raid came just a few weeks after the elder Mr. Hakim met with President Bush in Washington. Mr. Hakim has generally been an ally of the United States presence, but he has criticized the Americans for what he said was favoring the interests of Sunnis over Shiites.
The incident comes at a delicate moment in the relationship between the United States and Iran, which American officials have accused of fomenting violence in Iraq and supplying Shiite militias with the deadliest munitions employed against the American military’s armored vehicles, armor-piercing explosives known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s.
One of Amar al-Hakim’s most prominent public roles of late has been canvassing the Shiite provinces of southern Iraq to build support for his father’s controversial plan to cleave nine Shiite provinces into an autonomous region that would have wide authority over its security and natural resources...
A senior adviser to the Hakim family, Haitham al-Husseini, described the son as being in his mid-30s and said he was considered an heir to his father’s political movement. Mr. Hakim also has a younger son, Moshin, who serves as a political adviser, and two daughters.
Amar al-Hakim was in Iran no longer than five days, said Mr. Husseini, who added that he was probably visiting relatives or other people the family knew from their years in exile during the rule of Saddam Hussein. He said the Americans had held Amar al-Hakim a good part of the day. The convoy was stopped “without any justification,” Mr. Husseini said. “Some of the guards were beaten by the U.S. forces.”
An American military official declined to comment on the allegation that Mr. Hakim’s guards had been beaten but said he had been detained because he possessed an expired passport and was traveling with men who had a large number of guns.
But after his release at the provincial governor’s office in Kut, Mr. Hakim said his passport was valid and the Americans detained him a few miles from the Iranian border on Friday morning.
“They arrested me and my guards in an unsuitable way, and they bound my hands and blindfolded me,” he said. “They took our phones, bags, money, documents and the guards’ weapons, and sent us to an American base.”
An Iraqi correspondent for The New York Times said Mr. Hakim showed a passport that had an expiration date of Sept. 17, 2007, and quoted him saying, “They claim the reason for the arrest was because my passport had expired, but as you can see my passport expires on the 17th of September...”
If Darth Dick gets his war on with Iran, you can bet, troops or no troops, the Green Zone will go up in flames. All of this slow motion posturing as the minions of Darth Dick posture to go for the oil fields of Iran allows preparation of more than the U.S. Air Force. Remember the scene in Star Wars where the storm troopers at a prearranged signal
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kill all the Jedi all at once?
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