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3 More fuel on Iraq's spreading
flames By W Joseph Stroupe
The year 2003 marked the implementation of
bold and reckless strategies aimed at handing the
US and Britain virtual ownership of the crucial
Middle East region and far beyond, but 2006 was
the year all the negative repercussions of their
failed policies finally converged, obliging the
two reckless powers to stare into the yawning
chasm of a regional forfeiture.
Now, 2007
is the year that marks the full-blown arrival of
the endgame in the Middle East, when the US,
Britain and Israel
attempt somehow to pull a
"win" from the mauling flames of regionwide
failure. Their desperate policy of "one last push"
to achieve that win is already shoving all the
region's fractious players into a similar endgame
stance, powerfully accelerating the region's
descent into instability and upheaval as all its
players take postures to make their final moves to
prevent the loss of their respective goals and
interests, each one attempting to win the game
before time and opportunity run out.
However, while the region is certainly
characterized by a multitude of fractious entities
all struggling for advantage and ascendancy, the
negative effects of the ill-fated US/British
invasion and occupation of Iraq and now their "one
last push for a win before defeat" policies are
causing the region's varied sectarian, political
and militaristic factions to polarize. They are
lining up on only two fundamental sides, with the
ever more distinct dividing line between them
constituted as the issue of Shi'ite against Sunni
in a struggle for regional ascendancy and
domination.
Thus the entire region is
sharply mirroring the bipolar sectarian
configuration of Iraq itself - with Shi'ites and
their sympathizers and supporters on one side and
Sunnis and their sympathizers and supporters on
the other.
Crushing balance of power
mechanisms When the US and Britain removed
the oppressive and bloodstained Sunni-based Saddam
Hussein regime in 2003, they simultaneously
unleashed the very real prospect of Shi'ite
regionwide ascendancy. The Hussein regime
effectively and strategically kept Shi'ite Iran
contained, and worked to keep its regionwide
tentacles (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) weak and
manageable.
Prior to the 2003 invasion,
there existed a rough balance of power between
Shi'ite and Sunni factions across the region -
neither was able to achieve inordinate regionwide
power or dominance. The US and Britain took
directly on themselves the enormous task and
responsibility of maintaining that rough regional
balance of power when they crashed into the
Hussein regime. They were entirely unprepared to
assume that strategic responsibility, however.
They permitted and, by rushing along
Iraq's troubled political process, they even
facilitated and encouraged the steady rise toward
ascendancy of one faction over the other, and not
merely within Iraq. They facilitated the
regionwide ascendance of the Iran-friendly Shi'ite
faction.
Thereby, they set the stage for a
fundamental, lopsided power imbalance, one that
has pointedly inspired the hopes and determination
of the rising Shi'ite faction with respect to the
achievement of (1) freedom from its perceived
cruel domination by Sunnis, (2) increased regional
influence and power, and even (3) regional
domination.
At the same time, as that
US/British-instigated imbalance of power continues
to tip in Iran's favor, it has acutely disturbed
and frightened the oil-rich Sunni Arab regimes who
legitimately fear a regional takeover by ascendant
Iran.
In 2007 the final consequences of
the United States' failed policies will arrive.
Those consequences are extremely unlikely to
include anything resembling the "win" still hoped
for by the US, Britain and Israel, for the simple
reason that all the evidence points to the
conclusion that the regional tipping point toward
ascendancy by the Shi'ite faction may already have
been reached.
Reconstructing broken
mechanisms Now, the US and Britain are
faced with the insurmountable problem of finding a
way, at this extremely late date, to restore a
rough balance of power to the region by attempting
to reconstruct something similar to the mechanisms
they eliminated and failed to replace in 2003. And
they now have but one last chance, and they must
be successful before the sectarian tinderbox they
helped create is set aflame by only one of many
impending sparks. All the odds are entirely
against them.
The two powers realize they
cannot literally reconstruct a dominant Sunni
regime in Iraq to face down the Shi'ites and Iran
in a bid to revive power-balancing mechanisms.
Those former mechanisms are gone and they cannot
be revived. Those are no longer workable
strategies and policies, anyway.
But if
Iran and the region's Shi'ite factions are to be
faced down and counterbalanced, only the Sunnis
can hope to accomplish the task and hold it in
place on a strategic basis, because the US,
already severely over-stretched and bogged down in
Iraq, cannot genuinely accomplish the feat by
itself.
This is true notwithstanding the
United States' increasing naval presence in and
around the Persian Gulf. Except for
short-term,
