Operation Rolling SNAFU:
On to Damascus…and Teheran!
That’s the only explanation for Rumsfeld and Powell ostentatiously twisting the noses of Syria and Iran over the last few days over night vision goggles and itchy Shi’ite brigades even as our overextended divisions stall in front of Baghdad.
Months ago our neocon warlords already served notice to Syria and Iran that they are penciled in for regime change after we take care of a little unfinished business in Iraq. Now, when our business in Iraq is anything but unfinished and requires our full and desperate attention, we perversely move Syria and Iran to the front burner.
Paradoxically, the immediate risks to Iran and Syria have been increased by the conspicuous failure of the United States to bomb itself into the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.
If we were already sitting in Baghdad savoring our victory (and our cake), the international community and the antiwar movement would have been shut up permanently and our civilizing armies could move against Iran and Syria at our leisure and discretion.
Instead we are looking forward to months if not years of bombing, pacification, and occupation at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. It looks like we got the worst of the bargain when we booted diplomacy and the U.N. into irrelevance.
Iraq is already a resounding failure for the Bush doctrine of triumphant unilateral pre-emption. Once the dust settles, it is unlikely that Bush will ever get the keys to the warmobile again from Congress, let alone the UN.
Therefore, while our troops on the ground engage in the “pause that is not a pause”, the neocons are scrambling to rescue and remake their Middle East strategy.
For the armchair warriors in Washington, I suspect these are tense and exciting times. Dangerous, too, if the risk from papercuts is factored in. Failures must be explained away, accountability evaded, and new and more grandiose plans laid before our befuddled and desperate Commander in Chief.
The lesson I believe they have drawn from the debacle? Let’s take failure and supersize it! Extend the war into Iran and Syria by hook or by crook while the war with Iraq is still going on. Call it Operation Rolling SNAFU, in honor of the “rolling start” doctrine that pours successive waves of U.S. troops into the Middle East to deal with the disastrous consequences of our over-optimistic blue sky military planning.
The neocons’ hard-thinking brainiac Paul Wolfowitz is probably crowing that he’s turned lemons into lemonade. “If the war’s going to drag on we’ll just use it to take care of Iran and Syria at the same time!” This is the kind of wishful intellectual jiu-jitsu that turns a disaster into the seed of a greater triumph, or at least into a breathtakingly bold Powerpoint presentation.
Escalating the Iraq war to a regional mess does a few things:
First, the goalposts for success are moved. As Rummy keeps saying, it’s too early to say things are screwing up. Well, if we keep expanding the war mission, it will always be too early to hand down a judgement on the Bush war strategy. Bush’s conservative base can be placated with the idea that it’s not a $100 billion failure in Iraq; George is going to run the table, take out Syria and Iran too, and then we’ll have rice and rose petal parades all over the Middle East, and not just in Baghdad, damn it!
Second, the debate over starting a second or third ruinous war is short-circuited. In the most poisonous iteration of “support our troops” we will be expected to keep silent as horrified onlookers as Bush’s unique formula of arrogance, intimidation and stupidity foments further crises in the name of protecting our forces against overt, covert, imagined, or invented threats from Damascus and Teheran.
Third, with their liberation theology in tatters in Iraq, the neocons get their last chance to remake the Middle East into the subjugated satrapy of their dreams before a hostile Congressional investigation sends them crawling back beneath their think-tank rocks.
The Syrians and the Iranians, including the Coke ™ guzzling pro-Western ones, are waking up to the fact that America’s foot up the ass approach to regime change as showcased in Iraq is not something they want happening to their countries.
Syria and Iran have issued a joint call for the war to stop, hoping that U.S. efforts in Iraq will quagmire to a halt outside Baghdad before Bush has the opportunity to expand the war and its objectives to the borders of their countries.
No surprise that Bush, in disregard of military prudence, is hot to move on Baghdad before the rest of our army shows up, and brays his determination to fight the war to its conclusion no matter what. Better to keep the pot stirring or else a stalemate might occur and — heaven forbid! - peace might break out.
One can imagine that Syria and Iran, both soon to be effectively encircled by pro-American states, have been burning up the wires to their new best friends Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder.
If America tries to target Syria and Iran using the same tired old diplomatic strategy of demonization and isolation that failed to rally the international community the first time around — and has laid such an enormous egg in Iraq — then the Russians and the Europeans will undoubtedly become openly pro-active in preventing the Middle East from becoming America’s sandbox.
Better to exploit the “fog of war” to seize this chance and get the larger war going now before the U.N. grows a backbone or Iran invites Putin to open a couple military bases down there or Chirac starts sending military aid to Syria and we’re the ones who get boxed in instead of the other way around.
Probably Chirac and Putin are considering how best to leverage their prestige and power in the Middle East to frustrate American ambitions. If they can get the Arab League to stop alternately bickering and groveling before its American masters, a meaningful and effective peace initiative could be ginned up between the Arab states, Iran, Old Europe, Russia, and China that would stop America in its tracks before it rumbles into Iran and Syria.
It’s also up to the anti-war movement to repudiate the ostrich-like “get the war over so we can start arguing about winning the peace” posture. If Bush has anything to say about it, this war is not ending any time soon and U.S. and U.K. activists will have to address the difficult issue of how to agitate effectively while their fellow citizens are still soldiering in harm’s way in Iraq.
Fortunately, the same reckless military adventurism Bush relies upon to maintain his political initiative as he blunders from crisis to crisis inspires the strongest global feelings of disgust and apprehension.
It also elicits a unified opposition that joins popular movements across continents, links mass and elite within countries, and creates alliances among nations and between geopolitical blocs.
Bush’s ability to unite the world against him is the one miracle that might save us.
It’s not being anti-Semitic to note there are only two parties that benefit from the chaos and bloodshed of the spectacularly destructive and unsuccessful U.S. imperial escapade threatening the Middle East.
One is Ariel Sharon’s Likud, which has thoughtfully endowed our Middle East doctrine with its confrontational mindset, the strategy of unilateral pre-emption, the military and political tactics of provocation and escalation, and even the polarizing existential crisis that radicalizes and militarizes the Arab world and provides Bush’s intervention with its theoretical rationale. Even if Bush’s serial stupidity produces nothing but bloodshed and hatred, the energy and attention that might have been devoted to containing an aggressive and expansionist Israel will be expended on hindering the United States and attempting to save Muslim societies and governments from external attack and internal subversion.
The other is the hard right wing of the GOP that relies on the continued political viability of George Bush for preferment, power, and riches. Bush, dedicated to remaining its eager benefactor, recklessly plays his geopolitical cards like the dumb Texan oilman in the casino who loses every hand but always reaches into his wallet for a handful of bills to prolong the game and avoid toting up his losses.
The currency in question is of course the physical and financial security of the American people, whose futures he is willing to squander in the sands of the Middle East. But as long as Bush can postpone the day of reckoning and win the next election — which is the only validation of his leadership within reach after the unending parade of catastrophes of his first term — he’ll say, “It was worth it”.
I doubt many people in America, the Middle East, or the world will share his sentiments.
