there might be a way out of the iraq mess via an internationalization of the conflict. the americans would have to recognize that there is no way out FOR THEM because they are and have been from the outset--that is from the invasion--a party within the civil war.
jacques chirac proposed an international congress of some unspecified type that would address these problems last week: i started a thread about it, which went nowhere.
one option would be the un.
another would be something like a congress of vienna, i dont know: but the idea seems far more likely to actually accomplish something positive in iraq than any of the options that are on the table right now--i understand that something like this is an element of biden's plan for iraq as well.
what i see as the primary obstable to this is that from the far right/neocon viewpoint occupied by the bush people, any such internationalization of the conflict would be tantamount to defeat. so the primary obstacle is the hyper-nationalism of the bush administration, the neocon "realism" that remains intact (even after its obvious pulverization by events)---from the start, i have thought that the best document for thinking about the rationale behind the invasion was the project for a new american century website: if you look at it, it is clear that this iraq war is about the first iraq war and the Problem was less saddam hussein than it was the un.
a subtext for the "surge" appears to be saber rattling at iran:
Quote:
Iran target of US Gulf military moves, Gates says
Mark Tran and agencies
Monday January 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Increased US military activity in the Gulf is aimed at Iran's "very negative" behaviour, the Bush administration said today.
The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a "surge" of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not "overcommitted" in Iraq.
Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future."
Article continues
His remarks followed tough comments on Iran at the weekend from other senior US officials. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, accused Iran of "fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq", while the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the US was "going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq".
Such remarks, following the prospect of "hot pursuit" raids into Iran as raised by George Bush in his televised address last week, have fuelled speculation that the US is softening up the American public for possible action against Tehran.
The increasingly confrontational pose struck by the US is a repudiation of one of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for the start of a dialogue with Iran and Syria in an effort to extricate the US from Iraq.
Mr Gates, who as recently as 2004 publicly called for diplomatic engagement with Iran, said the situation was now different. In 2004, Iran was concerned by the presence of US forces on its eastern and western borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its behaviour had changed.
"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways," he said. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point."
"And so the Iranians are acting in a very negative way in many respects. My view is that when the Iranians are prepared to play a constructive role in dealing with some of these problems then there might be opportunities for engagement."
Besides concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, the US has accused Tehran of supporting Shia militia and of not doing enough to stop foreign fighters from infiltrating Iraq.
US-led forces in northern Iraq arrested five Iranians last week who the US military says were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq - a claim Iran has rejected.
Meanwhile, Iran said it was installing 3,000 centrifuges, effectively confirming that its nuclear programme was running behind schedule as these devices for uranium enrichment were meant to have been in place by the end of last year.
"We are moving toward the production of nuclear fuel, which requires 3,000 centrifuges and more than this figure," the government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a news conference. "This programme is being carried out and moving toward completion."
At the weekend, Iran dismissed reports from Europe that its uranium enrichment programme had stalled. Enriched uranium is used as fuel in nuclear reactors and, at a higher degree of enrichment, in atomic bombs.
Iran has condemned as "invalid" and "illegal" a UN security council resolution that imposed sanctions on it last month for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
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source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1990962,00.html
and this at a point when iran really must be included in a larger dialogue that would enable the americans to make themselves less central to the debacle that they have unleashed (thanks, bushco)....
so with the bush administration still anywhere near power, it seems to me that the americans have no good options. there ARE options, but the ideological worldview of the bush people seem to preclude them. after losing in the polls, the right is now hiding a bit of its ideological underpinnings: they are still as ideologically incoherent as before november, but now prefer to downplay ideology and instead to act as though its alternative universe was a fact of nature, its strategy reasonable and its sense of alternatives legitimate. reality has demonstrated that none of this is true. the people of the us, despite republican gerrymandering efforts, rejected the policies of bushco. the american system of governance is now an ongoing demonstration of the problematic version of democracy we have: bushco is still in power and is still in a position to impose its blinkered, dysfunctional worldview on iraq, on american troops, on their families, on all of us, on the international community--and there appears to be nothing to be done about it.
this does not mean that there are no alternatives: but it does mean that with george w bush in power, these alternatives will not be explored.
meanwhile, again, lots of people will die as the far right cycles through version after version of its idiotic politics based on its idiotic fetishism of the american nation-state as global military hegemon. lots of people die and the bush administration is not, and in all probablility will not be held to account for it. quite the system we have here.