With the news from Iraq turning ever more savage, many in the Middle East were glad to see the Democrats take Congress from the GOP in November, delivering a well-placed rebuke to President George W. Bush. But make no mistake: the Democrats’ victory will not deliver any major policy shift, as the American Constitution grants Bush, for better or for worse, chief authority in matters related to foreign and military policy. So now, the discussion must turn to how the Democrats can influence or pressure Bush; they will not be making new policy on their own.
And that’s too bad, because Iraq needs a fundamental rethinking of American policy and goals. Staying the course has led to the destruction of a country, destabilization of the region and a massive human catastrophe with at least 150,000 Iraqis killed. Bush’s adventure in Iraq is a failure on an unprecedented scale.
One thing has already been rethought: Donald Rumfeld’s employment status. Robert Gates, the senior President Bush’s CIA director, is the new Secretary of Defense, but Rumfeld’s departure may be less a change of direction than an attempt to keep Rumsfeld from testifying before Congress when the Democrats take power in January.
So, what can we expect to see in the next year or so, both from Iraq and from the American presence there? It’s not pretty, because the president’s stubbornness has led the region into a cul-de-sac of bad choices that almost certainly will see either continued chaos and death or an empowered Iran and Syria. In either case, America’s grand plans for the region are finished.
The US will now leave Iraq with as much face as the Iranians and the Syrians will allow, which probably isn’t much. Indeed, the Iraq Study Group, headed by long-time Bush fixer, James Baker, and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton have already opened up backchannels to Damascus, as Syrian ambassador to Washington Imad Mustapha revealed in November. He told the study group “in detail what actual things we can do, and what are the things that we cannot do. We were very candid with each other.”
For the Americans, much depends on whether they are willing to meet their adversaries’ prices. For the Iranians, they will reign in the Shia militias if they can get a guarantee of supremacy in Iraq through the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. Tehran has long sought to remove Iraq as a threat on its western flank, something allowing them dominance in the south and Baghdad will permit them to achieve. For Syria, they will halt their support for the Ba’athists financing and running the Sunni-insurgency in Iraq if they can have Lebanon back; it’s the economic ventilator for the wheezing Syrian economy.
In return, the United States gets to keep its army and take it home. Most of it, anyway.
But for the Iraqis, the future will be bloody. The Sunnis and their allies in the region will not be happy with Iraq being reduced to an Iranian client state. Indeed, in November, Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accord Front and one of the most powerful Sunni politicians in Iraq, called on the Sunni world to help their Iraqi co-religionists, “lest Baghdad become a capital for the Safavids,” he said. With such polarization, even if the US accedes to Tehran’s wishes, the sectarian civil war already raging will likely get worse when the Shia government doesn’t have US troops to attack Sunni insurgents. However, it will be brief; With Iranian support, the Iraqi Shia will show little mercy to their former tormentors.
As for Lebanon, well, the US will have its hands too full getting its army out of Iraq to support the March 14 forces in their attempts to face down Syrian machinations in the form of Hizbullah and Free Patriotic Movement putsches, although the slaying of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel last month seems to have re-energized the movement. It may not be enough, however. Just as in 1990, the US will once again abandon Lebanon to the Syrians in exchange for the support of Damascus in Iraq, but this time Michel Aoun could be the beneficiary instead of the victim of America’s fickle affections.
And that is how Iraq likely ends, with both a bang and a gurgled whimper. Back in 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan warned of a “Shia Crescent” stretching from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut should the Shia win the elections in Iraq. They did, and the civil war in Iraq—along with the American public’s disgust at Bush’s handling of it—has grown so intense that in order to save the 140,000 American troops now stuck in the crossfire (and Republican electoral hopes in 2008) America now needs the help of the two countries it most hoped to pressure when it invaded in 2003. Iran will be the preeminent power in the Gulf, and the Sunni-dominated governments of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will have to respond. Instability, regional arms races and a loss of American influence will be the order of the day.
Welcome to the New Middle East.
