"As for any comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam: Iraq is, indeed, Iraq---and the situation is potentially much worse... because whereas the Vietnam War was, essentially, a civil war between North and South,..."
The Vietnam as a Civil War paradigm, heavily promoted by Left-wing historians, is myopic. There was certainly that aspect to it but the Vietnam War was heavily internationalized on both sides. North Vietnam could not have prosecuted the war as they did without massive quantities of Soviet and Chinese aid or a Soviet run air force and air defense system. Nor could South Vietnam have withstood such an attack on their own without the United States. Vietnam in such a context is even less of an apt analogy for Iraq than Dr. Sciabarra admits.
Sciabarra continues:
" Iraq is not even a homogeneous nation. It is a makeshift by-product of the British colonization of Mesopotamia, made up of warring tribes... Sunnis, Kurds, Shiites (indeed, multiple tribes within the Shia), Turkomanns, and so forth. The US would stand a better chance of "building" new nations if it broke up Iraq and started from scratch. But that won't happen--- "
All true but the Iraqis of the warring tribes have vigorously indicated they do not want Iraq to be broken up into economically dysfunctional but homogenous statelets. Is finding a microstate for the Assyrian-Chaldean minorities really an option ? Iraq is Churchill's artificial construct but it isn't the Yugoslavia we all ( including myself) imagined it would be.
Sciabarra wrote:
"...especially since Turkey, the US ally to the North, would be dead-set-against any independent Kurdistan on its borders that might inspire a similar movement for independence among Kurds within Turkey (who are already being blamed for the recent bombings in Istanbul)."
The Turkish Kurdish independence movement already exists - Abdullah Occalan's notorious and cult-like Marxist-terrorist PKK - which is also the longstanding enemy of the two main Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga groups.
Sciabbara wrote:
"This is a freaking mess. And it was dictated predominantly by a neoconservative political agenda. The fountainheads of terrorism in the Middle East are more likely to be found in Pakistan (another nation with nuclear weapons) and Saudi Arabia---but they too are US allies. And they won't be touched. Not in any significant way."
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia represent different problems in the war on terror and the latter is not beloved by the administration's Neocons. If you recall, it was DoD Neocons who sponsored the " warning shot " briefing at the Pentagon Advisory board where the prospect of a U.S. attack on Saudi Arabia was laid out and then leaked. Whatever you may think of Perle, Feith etc - they are not friendly toward the House of Saud. The Musharraf government in Pakistan was apparently faced with quite dire threats from the United States after 9/11 and they chose to cooperate rather than bear the brunt of our retaliation which they certyainly would have. You support the war on terror ? Well to be frank we need the help of these squalid states because we do not have - and will not have for a decade- the HUMINT -linguist-analyst resources to tackle the pan-Islamist terror networks on our own. They are simply too obscure in terms of language and ethnicity for blond haired, blue eyed CIA agents to infiltrate. We can't even translate what SIGINT material we receive on a timely basis.
Sciabarra wrote:
" And, no, this is not a call to Bomb Mecca. It is simply a recognition of the reality of US government and corporate ties to---and complicity with---oppressive, duplicitous regimes. The cycle won't end, until its broken---fundamentally, radically. "
I'd like to hear more on what concrete policies you are proposing here. From what I have observed the critics of nonintercourse with despicable regimes ( Cuba) and engagement with despicable regimes ( Pakistan, Egypt etc) tend to be the same folks. Adopting a New Left critique of American foreign policy with an Objectivist gloss doesn't make it any more internally consistent, constructive or practical than it was ten or twenty years ago
by mark safranski on November 25, 2003 at 10:46 AM