The charge was made on PBS last week by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, that the Bush
Administration has decided to make no strategic decisions with
respect to Iraq. Notwithstanding SecDef Robert Gates’s recent
statement that American troops will remain in Iraq for a
“protracted period,” Brzezinski believes George Bush is leaving the
entire problem to the next president.
It may take a while, but eventually both the Democrat and
Republican parties will come to the realization, whether they like
it or not, that the strategic decision already was made by force of
circumstances: The United States has to maintain permanently a
sizable military presence in Iraq.
Iranian regional power ambitions must be countered, and the
United States is the only country with the military strength in the
region capable of accomplishing this. As distasteful as it might
be, the U.S. will have to continue indefinitely to assume a
protective role within Iraq.
There appears at this time little possibility of the evolution
in the foreseeable future of a strong, stable, democratic central
government in Iraq. There is no dynamic, responsible leadership on
the horizon. Al Qaeda’s Iraqi instrument has grown as an
independent element in Iraq’s turmoil and now constitutes an
autonomously effective destructive force.
The existence of a permanent combat-ready U.S. military ground
presence in the Middle East has been under consideration ever since
the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage taking by the Iranians and the failed
efforts to free them during the Carter presidency. Various American
administrations since then have avoided assuming the daunting
responsibility of projecting a major American ground force in the
region permanently.
After the First Gulf War it initially was thought that the
Saudis might accept a permanent U.S. Army base on their soil. That
idea was quickly dropped when the fighting ended and the Saudis
felt safe again. The idea of having infidel soldiers based on Saudi
territory was out of the question. Limited air facilities perhaps
would be acceptable, but not a true forward military base.
Operation Desert Storm had come and gone with a pat on the head
by the ever prideful and manipulative al Saud. Air and naval
facilities were established in Oman and Bahrain with support
elements in Diego Garcia and to a limited extent in Saudi Arabia.
But nowhere was there a permanent forward defense position of U.S.
ground forces.
There was a time when Turkey was assumed to be a friendly enough
ally to be able to be counted on if a quick build-up was necessary.
The American air base at Incirlik played a vital NATO
reconnaissance and re-supply role. The so-called Turkish alliance
went flying out the window with Ankara’s refusal to allow U.S.
forces to transit Turkish territory to attack Saddam from the
northwest. Fifty years of American/Turkish military cooperation
dissolved in a matter of a few key weeks.
It’s tempting now to shrug our national shoulders and simply to
bug out — to use an old army expression. The trouble is that we no
longer have that choice. As psychologically satisfactory it might
be simply to leave Iraq to the Iraqis and the Middle East to the
Middle Easterners, that option does not exist — in spite of the
yearnings of most of the Democrats and even some Republicans.
To start with, al Qaeda is not merely a collection of young
radical Moslems bent on destroying all things Western. Al Qaeda is
a full-blown clandestine religious movement of primarily Sunni
followers who believe they are in a struggle to return the empire
of Islam to the ascendancy originally begun in the 7th century.
If that wasn”t enough, the Persian Empire is now reborn — at
least in ambition — by a clerically dominated Shia Iran that sees
its acquisition of nuclear weapons as the key to extending its
power over the Persian Gulf and westward to Lebanon. The only thing
that stands in its way is the United States and its Iraq-based
major military force with air and naval resources in the Gulf and
environs.
Naturally liberals and some “fortress America” conservatives
believe the alternative exists for the U.S. to effectively leave
Iraq either immediately or after a discreet period of time. It’s
not going to happen. Not under the next administration, whether
Republican or Democrat, or the one after that. The die has been
cast and the United States will be in Iraq and environs with a
major force of ground, air and naval assets for the indefinite
future.
WHAT IS NEEDED TO CHANGE that prognosis is the following:
* A new inspirational leader might rise up in Iraq — a
la Mustapha Kamel Ataturk in Turkey after World War I — and
bring together all Iraqi elements (Sunni, Shia, Kurd) with the
close cooperation and support of the United States.
*Al Qaeda must fragment into an uncoordinated disputatious
collection of radical Islamic malcontents primarily interested in
protecting their own turf from each other.
* Absent an unlikely successful democratic uprising, the
clerical leadership in Tehran must disavow the hegemonic ambitions
of its power-hungry secular politicians and the Revolutionary
Guards Corps. They must turn Iran toward internal economic
development rather than political expansionism energized by nuclear
weapon development.
* Lastly, the Saudi Royal Family’s must lose its ingrained fear
of overthrow that makes it vulnerable to radical religious
blackmail of Wahhabi-linked groups seeking to return the world to a
political period nearly 1,400 years ago.
When these things come together, and nothing new develops, the
United States can begin to remove its permanent military force from
Iraq and the Middle East.
