Pinkerton: Where's Saddam when you need him?

[babylonsister]

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppin025316570aug02,0,3388258.column

Pinkerton: Where's Saddam when you need him?

James P. Pinkerton
August 2, 2007


Finally, President George W. Bush has stumbled across a winning political-military strategy for containing Iran. Of course, it's too bad that Saddam Hussein, a leading proponent of that strategy, is no longer around to help carry it out.

But Hussein's anti-Iranian spirit lives on, embodied in the Bush administration's new approach: selling advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and other Arab regimes that fear and loathe Iran.

Unfortunately, the United States came to this position the hard way, after having made just about every possible mistake over the past five years. The biggest mistake was thinking that American troops could be effective in a protracted ground war/occupation. In this postcolonial era, it's simply not possible for a "white" European army to invade a Third World country and make enduring friendships with the locals. If the Westerners get in and get out quickly - to be replaced in power by indigenous folks who share color, language and religion with the population - that's often doable.

But a prolonged stay? Fuhgeddaboutit. No matter how generous and well-meaning the invaders might be, the friction of mutual misunderstanding soon starts rubbing everyone the wrong way. After a while, the local zealots (or patriots, depending on one's point of view) will start agitating against the invaders - and then they'll start shooting. That's what happened to the Israelis in the Palestinian territories and to the Americans in Iraq, and that's what's happening to NATO forces in Afghanistan, where nearly six years of Christians interfacing with Muslims is not working out.

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The Bush administration did not understand this intra-religious dynamic in 2003, when it launched a war that has made Iran stronger, not weaker. Perhaps the United States was too eager to depose and hang Hussein, a Sunni who ruled the Shia majority in his country through traditional Sunni means - force and terror. Hussein hated the Shia Iranians so much that he fought an eight-year war against them in the '80s, during which shrewd American leaders, eager to check the ever-present Iranian threat, were happy to help him.

Now, of course, America is considering its own war against Iran, but we won't have Iraq's help. That was poor "strategery" on the current president's part.

Thus we get a new Bush Doctrine: Build up the arsenals of other Sunni Arab governments, beyond Iraq, to contain Iran. And, chastened by the Iraq experience, we won't care any more, of course, if "our" Arabs respect human rights and majority rule.

Too bad about Saddam Hussein - he would have loved to have helped us in our latest anti-Iranian alliance.