Should the United States attack Iran, which side would the Iraqi government support? The answer to that simple question is far from clear, despite the thousands of lives and billions of dollars we have sacrificed to support the ruling coalition in Baghdad. While the Bush administration seeks to isolate and even overthrow the Iranian regime as well as its Syrian ally, its partners in Iraq are establishing closer relationships with both.
Indeed, the most powerful elements of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political coalition regularly collude with the Iranian intelligence apparatus - which the Bush administration has accused of arming the insurgents and terrorists who are attacking our forces, committing sectarian atrocities and undermining the new Iraqi democracy. The Maliki government has resumed diplomatic relations with Syria, signed a billion-dollar aid agreement with Iran and encouraged the expansion of Iranian consulates and border stations.
Friendship with Iran and Syria is endorsed not only by Shiite fundamentalists such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army warlord, and his rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, chief of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq - but also by President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Kurdish leaders who believe in secular democracy and actually like the United States.
So in Iraq, the friends of our enemies are . . . our best and only friends.
That lethal contradiction is among the many reasons why the president's plan to send more troops to Iraq won't achieve his objectives - and why the basic framework of his policy is fundamentally flawed.
Nothing proposed by President Bush in his "new way forward" speech solves this conundrum. Instead, he and his aides pretend that the Middle East is now divided between "reformers and responsible leaders" in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, versus Iran and Syria. So said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 11, when she declared that the president's escalation represents a "regional strategy."
She was wrong, as usual.
There is no such simple divide in the Middle East. Even Israel has been secretly negotiating with the Syrians through third parties over the past two years, as revealed by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. For the United States to rule out discussion with the Iranians or the Syrians - while the Iraqis exchange diplomats and sign agreements with those governments - is not a regional strategy. It is merely the residue of strategic failure.
When you can't tell which side is which, or where the goalposts are, or how many balls are in play, or what the object of the game is, or what the rules are, it's time to leave the game. Especially if a glimmer shines through your little pea brain that everybody else is gangin' up on you and you're losing because you were stupid enough to get in the game in the first place.
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