[Teal’c]Agreed[/Teal’c]
The mistake is trying to make them a lap dog. This is not what we did with Germany nor Japan. However, in that situation, we had another superpower breathing down our neck and our strategists decided that “not inimical” was better than “obedient”. The problem today is that, many being children of the '60s, the neocons are all extreme totalitarians of the “whoever is not with the movement is an enemy of the movement” bent. So I don’t think they are even capable of seeing that there is a difference between “not inimical” and “obedient butt-monkey”.
This is even worse than what Bush wants to do. It will be known as “the Partition of Iraq”, with the USA cast into the role of Germany and Russia gobbling up Poland. We won’t actually annex the land, but “obviously” we split Iraq up in order to be more able to dominate it. Kurdistan and Turkey would soon be at war, probably mutually instigated. The Shia state will soon find itself an appenage of Iran, with whom the USA just doesn’t get along. And the Sunni state will essentially consider itself a “remnant Iraq” with “inalienable rights” to the other two chunks and act accordingly.
Now, if the country breaks up on its own initiative after we leave, at least we can try to make ourselves look less culpable.
As I understand it, a lot of Iraq’s oil is in Kurdish territory. If we partition, the Shia and Sunni states are NOT gonna be happy to lose that oil. And foreign powers might find Kurdistan a toothsome morsel unless it’s armed to the teeth or has an ironclad agreement with the U.S. for defense (if any agreement with the US can be described as “ironclad”).
Dogface, I agree that partition would lead to Turk-Kurd war; Turkey is bitterly opposed to an independent Kurdish nation. And the Sunni part would certainly try to take over whatever parts of the Kurd and Shi’ite pieces that they thought they could grab. But the Shi’ite state in such a partition is unlikely to become an appendage of Iraq: even when they’re all Shi’ites, Arabs don’t want to be ruled by Persians, and vice versa.
What I want to know is, how in the world do you blame the neocons on the 1960s? Flower-power they ain’t.
I didn’t realize that the Iraqi Shi’a were Arabs. I thought they were Farsi or related.
Responding to the OP:
Iraq is certainly much more hospitable to terrorists now than it was a year ago, when Saddam ruled with the metaphorical iron hand. In the absence of strong central authority, armed independent operators of any sort have more room to work, from street gangs on up to warlord wannabes.
Things could break in so many different ways on our departure that it’s impossible to say whether Iraq will be more or less hospitable to terrorists in a few years than it is now. If we were to pull out today, I think it goes without saying that in the very short run - the next year or so - it would be far more hospitable to terrorists than it is now. But one of the possible middle-term outcomes would be a new iron-fisted dictator. So we might, after all that, wind up with an Iraq that was no more of a staging ground for terrorists than it was when we started.
But that’s the thing: with respect to the war on terror, the best we can hope for is an Iraq that is no better than it was under Saddam. But it could wind up being a lot worse. And this is why the war makes no sense to me. Would you buy a $1 lottery ticket if the best thing that could happen was that you got your dollar back? Of course not. But that’s what we’ve done.