[lbo-talk] CFR on civil war in Iraq

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Thu Mar 9 13:26:11 PST 2006


Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>
>> Times change, and sometimes minds change. (At that time, most Iraqis
>> didn't want the US to leave; now they do.) In Aug 2003 few people had
>> an inkling of how messy things would turn out. But I'll ask Christian
>> when I interview him in about 2 hrs.
>
> You are probably right. A deliberate aim at civil war (or "chaos") seems
> unlikely -- but only unlikely, not inconceivable. The outcome of such
> chaos might be the Balkanization of Iraq, which would be preferable, I
> presume, to a unified state under an anti-u.s. government.
>
================================ I think the greater concern for the US is that a civil war would spill over into neighbouring states, threaten the oil wells in the Shia part of Saudi Arabia, further strengthen Iranian influence in Iraq, and catch US troops in the crossfire. That is, it seems to me, the greater risk than a "unified state under an anti-US government" which would have pretty much the same makeup as the current Iraqi government, which collaborates closely with the Americans. If the US pulled out and there were no insurgency, the government could distance itself further from the US, but not to the point it would jeopardize its oil markets and source of reconstruction loans and investment in the West.

Also, you have to think if the USG didn't give a damn about an Iraqi civil war, it would have done the politically popular thing and pulled the bulk of its troops out rather than continuing to take casualties which make the headlines. But who knows? If the Bushites had done the rational thing, in terms of overall US global interests, it wouldn't have launched its reckless adventure in the first place.



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