"We obviously would prefer an Iraq sufficiently united to thwart neighbors that might like to rip off pieces of it or keep the country in turmoil. That is a good reason to keep the country united, but not necessarily ruled from Baghdad. Baghdad's power should be limited to the critical issues of border defense, foreign policy, and sharing of oil revenue. These centralized powers should be sufficient to keep mischievous neighbors at bay." (See: http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB112294796617502263.html)
That's consistent with the program of a federal Iraq being promoted by the Bush administration.
The "mischievous neighbors" Gelb is referring to is primarily Iran, which would exercise an inordinate influence in an independent Shia republic in the south. And a civil war which would likely spill over into other parts of the Middle East and threaten the oil supply is the last thing the US wants.
I doubt Gelb or any other US agent is in Baghdad running "black ops" pitting teams of Sunni and Shia suicide bombers and death squads against each other in order to spark civil war. I'll need more than "part of an editorial" in an old copy of the NYT by a bit player to convince me otherwise. ====================================================== ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leigh Meyers" <leighcmeyers at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:48 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] CFR on civil war in Iraq
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> But that's not terribly controversial. What is controversial is Leigh's
>> demented assertion that the US wants civil war in Iraq, and that this
>> strategy was decided upon by the Council on Foreign Relations. The whole
>> point of the Biddle article in Foreign Affairs
>> <http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85201-p0/stephen-biddle/seeing-baghdad-thinking-saigon.html>
>> is avoiding civil war, not promoting it.
>>
> I'm overposting, so vats nu? But I need to rebut the assertion that:
> "...this strategy was decided upon by the Council on Foreign Relations."
>
> I never said that, nor do I believe that they are the sole 'players'
> in a race to the bottom of the 'cultural and ethical sink'.
>
> I simply posted part of an editorial from the NYT by Leslie Gelb,
> president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who asserted:
>> “For decades, the United States has worshipped at the altar of a unified
>> Iraqi state. Allowing all three communities within that false state to
>> emerge at least as self-governing regions would be both difficult and
>> dangerous. Washington would have to be very hard-headed and hard-hearted,
>> to engineer this breakup. But such a course is manageable, even
>> necessary, because it would allow us to find Iraq’s future in its denied
>> but natural past.”
> The CFR is assuredly more balanced in it's worldview than the neocon
> element
> of American policy advisors, but their overweening interest is still
> linked inexorably
> to American hegemony, and the obviously untenable belief that American
> interests
> are the only interests...
>
> That's not delusional, Nor am I. I just have few vested interests that
> reside in
> maintaining the "American lifestyle", or the propaganda machine that keeps
> it
> together like a house of cards in the path of a tornado.
>
> The tornado is oil, and how it's quickly (perhaps already) moved from a
> commodity to a source of world wide conflict. The other natural resources
> of the world will follow suit shortly.
>
>
> Leigh
> www.leighm.net
> http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
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>