About-face on Iran coming?

[laststeamtrain]

About-face on Iran coming?

A new US strategy for victory in Iraq may be in the works

By Hassan Nafaa

08/27/07 "Al-Ahram" -- - That the US is knee-deep trouble in Iraq is hardly in dispute. Few inside or outside the US contest that fact or doubt the reasons that led to it. And yet, some still argue that the whole thing is little more than correctable "mistakes" by a reckless administration. Others wonder if a face-saving exit is still possible. But at least a few maintain that a "strategic victory" is attainable in Iraq.

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Some members of the neoconservative US elite, who haven't yet despaired of winning the war in Iraq, are now busy looking for a third option. Among the barrage of ideas that surfaced of late, the views of William S Lind are interesting. Lind is the director of the Centre for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. He summed up his views on the Iraqi debacle in an article published 30 July in The American Conservative under the title, "How to win in Iraq".

In that article, Lind notes that the US administration still defines victory as it did at the war's outset: an Iraq that is an American satellite, friendly to Israel, happy to provide the US with a limitless supply of oil and vast military bases from which American forces can dominate the region. None of these objectives, he argues, are now attainable. Lind believes that the attempts to quell urban disturbances in Iraq are based on the wrong assumptions. He argues that the war can still be won on a strategic level, not through "small tactical gains." Lind suggests that the new US strategy must employ what the British military theorist Basil Liddell-Hart called an "indirect approach."

The threat facing the US is not coming from any state, but from a collection of groups using non-conventional methods commonly labelled "terrorism", Lind argues. Such groups can only flourish in situations where governments are weak. He calls for a new strategy of three elements to win the war on a "strategic" level.

The first element is to engage Iran in a rapprochement, just as the US did with China in the early 1970s. At the time, China was creating more than one Vietnam in order to sap the US power. Likewise, the groups hostile to the US are trying to create more than one Iraq in order to baffle the Americans. Lind believes that it would be hard to undermine such groups without having a strong government in Iraq, which requires rapprochement with Iran. He admits that pro-Iranian Shiites may end up dominating the Iraqi government, but that should not be a problem so long as a strong Iraqi state evolves.

The second element of Lind's strategy is to allow the Sadr group, which is popular in Iraqi streets, to achieve its full political potential. The US will have to pay a price for that, such as giving up the prospect of military bases in Iraq. So far, the US has been trying to suppress the Sadr group while favouring unpopular, pro-American groups. This approach, Lind says, has weakened successive governments and reduced their ability to control the situation on the ground. Lind admits there is no guarantee Al-Sadr would be able to form a strong Iraqi government, but the chance is worth taking. The US administration, he says, must allow Al-Sadr, or anyone who can, to establish a strong government in Iraq.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18262.htm

[cui bono]

1. Interesting. I suppose it's better than bombing them

though I'm not sure what the final outcome would look like.