Taking the leash

Get ready for a massive irony.

For the last four years, Tony Blair has stood accused of being George Bush's poodle. His slavish support for White House has exposed him to ridicule and contempt from opponents of the war.

Now, Donald Rumsfeld has been pushed out and a more conventional figure put in his place. John Bolton looks like he's on the way out and the James Baker report is due. In other words, as Gerard Baker argues in a characteristically lucid column, the Bush regime is shaping up to change its Iraq policy.

And what will Tony Blair do? He will lead those of us who feel that to retreat is disaster, and who insist that we do our best to achieve as secure an Iraqi democracy as possible. Britain will be stiffening American resolve.

Here's where the irony comes in. All talk of poodles will be forgotten. Mr Blair will be attacked for being on his own as even America moves away from him. He will, in other words, stand accused of being insufficiently slavish.

Comments

[Peter Fiske]

Horse manure! It is finally time to realize this is a civil war and we have already done incredible damage by going into it at all. The best result now is to bring the troops home in a reasonable period of time and leave the Iraqi people to sort it out in their own country as we should have done in the first place.

[Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis]

US Iraq policy: from mistake to disaster?

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Meglommatis

The US Iraq policy was not bad; if anything, it was badly conceived and lamentably implemented. Current discussions and rumours about a forthcoming partition of Iraq to Shia, Sunni and Kurds reveal that, misguided, the US Middle East policy has become a major threat to the US global interests.

Partition without any reference to Philosophical Principles will be disastrous.

More voices have recently suggested the partition of Iraq as the last chance of America for a triumphant exit in Iraq. To suggest related bibliography would be a matter of hundreds of references, suffice it that we mention here the seemingly lucid approach "Think the Unthinkable: Partition Iraq" by Ivan Eland in http://www.independent.org/newsroom/arti...p?id=1310.

The suggestion has all relative charcateristics of proposals that do not emanate but from practical observation carried out on the spur of the moment - only. Yet, the US encounters in Iraq thorny problems, complex issues, and ethnic, religious and linguistic groups (or peoples) that antedate Islam and even Christianity. At a moment of difficulty, it is always wise to draw back for a short time, re-think of matters related to one's identity and originality, reassess what one represents in this world, and re-estimate the value and the significance of the ideals and the principles one stands for.

What is the point of America being in Iraq, if in doing it America loses its soul? Like every nation, America hinges on and represents its own principles and values that are nothing more and nothing less than the Ideals of the Founding Fathers, namely Freedom, Equity, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, Lights, Independence (national self-determination), Respect of Human Rights, Democracy, Representativeness, and all the other values that made of America the most attractive pole in the Modern World.

Now, America must apply these Principles in Iraq. Since this involves Justice, a preliminary examination of what happened in that area over the past centuries (with a certain focus on the last decades) must take place.

Suggesting immediate partition of Iraq to those who stand accused for exterminating other peoples who peacefully lived there for centuries and millennia is not Justice; it is Political Amoralism of the worst kind.

Political Realism contradicts America's Founding Principles, and there is nothing about it in any Historical American National Document that relates to these Principles. Realpolitik may be useful for a moment when it does not enter into contrast with the nation's Moral Philosophical Foundations, but these are its limits.

America rose to Supremacy over all the other nations, the remnants of the defunct Soviet Union, and the old colonial empires of France and England, Japan, Spain and Portugal. The rising powers of China, India and Brazil will need time to catch up, even if this - according to some - may be a matter of a decade or two.

Accepted as the only Superpower, America finds itself in the role of the Prince in the famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Acting in Iraq is for America the ultimate test, the corroboration of a foreign policy that applies the aforementioned Principles. What America was standing for, what made of America the reason of so many people moving to, must now be exported to and applied in Iraq.

America must finally listen to the Voice of History that louds like that of Lady Capulet (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1):
I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.
Romeo slew Tybalt. Romeo must not live.

Partition with problem conceptualization and historical understanding will be ominous!

How can one dare suggest that Iraq must be divided into three federal states, the Kurdish, the Sunni and the Shia?

How much Saudi oil income has been paid within the States to diffuse these immoral idea that makes of the butcher a respectable partner?

How an idea like this can be even allowed within the US, when its diffusion consists in flagrant violation of all the Founding Fathers' Principles, and its application will bring total destruction to America?

The simple sentence that 'the Sunni criminals of Iraq can be given an inch of the Mesopotamian soil' is a lethal bullet deep into the Heart of America.

The Sunnis were the only supporters of the Saddam Hussein thug-state; they absorbed almost the entire national income, they were given undeserved privileges, they were the recipient of property usurped from people belonging to all the different oppressed ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. The Sunni criminal population of Iraq may now represent 15% of the entire population but this is due to the fact they have been the reason of many Aramaeans (also named Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldaean) emigrateing to various continents, fleeing from an oppression far worse than that of Hitler.

The Aramaeans, either Christian or Mandaean (Gnosticists whose religion antedates the times of Jesus), represent the most authentic group in Mesopotamia, a country that must be named after them. It is with the Aramaeans of the Late Antiquity that the indigenous Babylonians were assimilated. When Islam was diffused in the area, it is the local Aramaeans who became Muslims, and the only way to understand the identity of the Shia and Sunni Arabic speaking populations of Iraq is to realize that they are Aramaeans who got linguistically Arabized because they accepted Islam.

Only the Aramaeans can give an authentic, fair, and historically just name in the area called by the Ancient Greeks as Mesopotamia: Aram Nahrain is the real name of the country, and this is the only way for America to start having a success there. Iraq was a colonial term that was never in use, even during the last moments of the Ottoman rule.

The Colonial British introduced the term 'Iraq' - in flagrant opposition to the Principles of the Founding Fathers. The reason is simple: Divide and Rule is not part of the American Founding Fathers' Ideals, it is a Colonial, British practice and amoral approach.

Aramaeans must receive recompense, Aramaeans must be given the largest part of Iraq, all the country in the West of Tigris until Hillah, Hindiyah and Nukhayb on the Saudi border, plus Baghdad, must be given to them, as Justice for what they suffered because of Ottoman unfair treatment, British (bogus-, if not anti-)Christian indifference, Arab nationalist / royalist oppression and criminality, and Sunni Baathist Saddam flagrant and unprecedented torture.

The very simple 1850 - 2003 reality is this: in the small local circle of a town or village with civilized Aramaeans and with semi-barbaric Sunni inhabitants, it was well known that if the Sunni thugs attack and kill an Aramaean, they would have successively the Ottoman support, the British high treason (of the Christian realm) and indifference, the Arab nationalist mass criminality (involving fights of families and killings of hundreds of Aramaeans), and the Saddam promotion to high positions with Baath.

Thus, the criminal Sunni thugs knew that they would not need to get civilized in order to have a proper and clean house: all they needed to do was usurp it from the Aramaeans. They did it on purpose, they did it repeatedly, they did it extensively, and they never repented; the proof is that when they lost their privileges they were immediately versed into this criminal acts against Aramaean Christian priests, Shia mosques., and US soldiers.

They do not regret and they do not repent. And they will never...

The reason is simple: regret and repentance need a civilized background that the murderous Sunni thugs (principal cause of the Anti-American, Anti-Iranian, Anti-Christian, Anti-Aramaean, Anti-Shia, Anti-Kurdish, Anti-Turkmen, Anti-Turkish, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Israeli hatred and hysteria in Mesopotamia) do not have.

The only way for US success in Iraq is to name the country Aram Nahrain, and to divide the entire area into Aramaean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Shia federal states, relocating populations wherever need be.

The entire Sunni population must be deprived from its possessions, declared criminal in its entirety, relocated to an area at the east of Baghdad, accommodated in tents, and be engaged into forced works, and educational seminars.

The national income of the entire country Aram Nahrain (not Iraq anymore) must be divided into four equal parts for the main groups (Aramaean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Shia) after an earlier deduction of 30% that will be offered to all Aramaeans who fled from the area over the past 150 years, and who must return there with American moral and material support. Justice is the Sign of Victory for the US, and if America does not play the role of Shakespeare's Prince in Romeo and Juliet, America will not be a power anymore....

Do it America!

[royc]

The rush to pull out of Iraq is political and domestic rather than practical and realistic. In the British area in the south, there are three works in progress that need to be completed if we are to leave the place in a reasonably semi-stable position that does not promptly turn into tribal conflict.

One is the door-to-door search operation, which is pulling in a good bag of weapons and militants and calming things down. Two is training and mentoring the local Iraqi army division, which has been thrown together pretty quickly and needs time, help and equipment to be operationally effective. Three is getting on with repair and construction of basic amenities, which has been knocked off course by continual small-scale attacks by Mahdi army elements.

Completing these is about 18 months away. The good Danish and Oz troops in the south are staying with the task, so we shouldn't be packing up and scuttling away prematurely: the army is doing a good job, as always.

Ref the above Assyrian treatise, it is true that the Christians have had a hard time from all sides and close to half have fled the country. However, the territorial claims made by PDMSM are far-fetched.

The Assyrians have called for a small autonomous area comprising two or three districts opposite Mosul on the east Tigris plain, where the majority of them live. The EU Parliament has backed their claim and Talabani has said that the Kurds will accept it too, which is a promising development. There are other Assyrian communities in the Kurdish north where the Kurds needs to be pressed to stop intimidating them and provide greater protection.

They have never, in modern times, been more than a minority in Baghdad and Mosul though. Unfortunately, many of the educated Christians have been pushed out of these places in a fairly massive exodus, due to both Sunni and Shia action.

[alan]

peter fisk's horse manure, methinks he has a lack of context. read the following for a thumbnail of how deep it really is.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html
no blood no guts no virtue

[Noah]

I just read there has been about 30 terrorists plots foiled in Britain since the last bombing. It seems to me you chaps are under attack. Does anyone in Britain think that, or do you think the attacks will stop when the war is over?

[Amin Chowdhury]

Prof. Meglommatis? Who is this professor? His ideas are total madness! There has been movement of population in what is modern Iraq over last ten thousand years and a thorough mixing of them. Bringing in old terms like Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldaean or Turkic, Shia or Kurdish etc does not help either to understand the present problems or to resolve them. You can not divide each village or town into parts in proportion of the supposed population mixes existing today. They will change again tomorrow with population movement. In this age of mass migration we should have better ideas to solve conflicts among human groups than dividing territories. We should rather think of enlarging co-operation among existing neighbouring states instead dividing each one into mini states. However, there may be argument for dividing states into more self governing administrative units but not on the basis of religion or ethnicity. That is a receipe for disaster. Does this professor belong to a stone age? He seems to have a lot of hate in his heart.

[meleager]

Respectfully to Dr Megalommatis

From an American: BOLLOCKS.
No part or party in America will support re-education camps or idelogical indoctrination - we'll show the way, and marginalize those who oppose, but we wont play favorites, even if marginally, we wish one side or another to prevail - unless it is in our interest to do so. Your cause, best I could piece together, will never reach any audience in America - unless you reject sectarian and religious differences, and support the elected government of a united Iraq, flawed as it is. If you dont like it, vote in a new one.
However, from the tone of your appeal, I suspect you will not place the nation of your origin above your faith or tribe. Americans do. Our faith lies with individual rights and responsibilities, not collective group identification. I dont expect you to change or understand, but do not call on America. Learn more, look at the American $20 note, and learn what to expect America's response will be, after we have exhausted the very restrained actions of the last few years. No matter which party won the last election, and how few understand your complexities and nuances, Americans in the end will not stand with you - unless you move on - and take back your own.
We dont care, generally what happened last week, let alone 150 years ago.

Small aside - Fraternity - is a French concept, not American. Also, not an American concept is restriction of speech. I too do not support the division of countries, Iraq included, since the necessary re-allocation of resources and peoples causes more suffering than warrents the desire to have your neighbor be your kinsman. Should it be left to prosperity, the indigenous population of Iraq should revert to worship of Marduk and Asarte and Zoraster, instead of Jesus and Mo.
Instead, maybe we should partition Iraq into democraic and sharia free sectors.
You invoke the ancient Greeks..and a sub-conscious plea for the new Alexander, the Westerner, to save you from yourself. Start by throwing the mullahs from the minarets..

You also invoke Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". I can safely say, that that is the one play that all Americans graduated from high school have read. The lesson, universal to us, is that group identification based on family and tribe and false revenge for honor dooms true love. No American would ever take up your call...

meleager