More Thinking About "The Prospects"

Did you read Bruce's post below about Sy Hersh's interview with Scott Ritter? While I admit, I haven't paid attention this year to the warnings of inevitable war with Iran, (the idea seems completely insane) I have recently read some disturbing pieces that suggest we might be closer than we know. One of the frightening thoughts that occurred to me after reading an article in Asia Times by a guy who goes by the name of Spengler, is that maybe the deteriorating situation in Iraq was part of the plan. In other words, maybe the shortage of troops, the bad decisions, the civil war that is now happening was part of some larger scheme to broaden the war into Iran? Now I can't vouch for this guy Spengler, but I figure he's either completely whacko, or some sort of genius. Here's a scary excerpt from one of his essays.

It is silly to portray the United States as a declining imperial power. The US set out to stabilize Iraq, and instead plunged it into civil war, precisely as I predicted three years ago. [1] Suppose instead that the US had set out intentionally to plunge Iraq into civil war. How easy would that have been? Iraq is an empire in miniature, a multi-ethnic-and-confessional changeling created by French and British imperialists in their own image. Like Iran, where Persians comprise just half the population, and Syria, an ethnic and religious farrago ruled by an Alawi clique, Iraq suffers the centrifugal faults of empire without, however, enjoying the imperial advantage of rewarding one's own people by oppressing others.

It is embarrassing to read the musings of American strategists about their supposed options in Iraq. In an October 20 essay in the Wall Street Journal, Professor Eliot Cohen listed as candidates for "Plan B" the following: (1) ask Iran and Syria to help, (2) withdraw, (3) send in more US troops, (4) let the civil war proceed with US troops sheltered in secure bases, (5) put a military strongman in charge, and (6) partition the country. "All of the options for Plan B are either wretched to contemplate or based on fantasy," concluded Cohen.

In fact, there is another option, namely to stop treating the conflict as an Iraqi matter and extending it to the whole region, first of all by attacking Iranian nuclear installations, and second by destabilizing Iran. Regime change as such may be a fantasy, but keeping the Iranians busy with problems inside their own borders is not. Widening the conflict is just what the US could not do in Vietnam without risking war with Russia or China.

Spengler goes on to say that it is about time someone taught the Persians a lesson, and that's the part that makes me think he's a complete lunatic. Because if you read newspapers with any regularity, if you think the options for Iraq are bad, consider an expanded war with Iran. Once our oil supply is cut off, and our economy collapses like a bad souffle, the number of troops we will need to sort the mess out will require the drafting of your children (sorry, but I don't have any children to send to war, and if I did, I'd already be in Canada) and the neocon dream of World War Four will become a horrible reality.

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