The term covers too much ground and risks becoming just another world for everything bad.
I have always preferred to discuss Right Zionists–the folks who championed the most fateful decisions undertaken after the US invasion of Iraq: disbanding the Iraqi army, de-Baathification, and the “year of elections” in 2005.
These are the audacious policies that sought to terminate Sunni Arab minority rule in Iraq and herald a new balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
But the old “Neocon” banner also included folks I call Unipolarists–figures like William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Frederick Kagan, Niall Ferguson, and Max Boot, whose defining feature has never been a particular brand of Zionism (although none could be considered hostile to Israel!) but a generic brand of American Imperialism that seeks, above all, to project US power around the world and to thwart the power of Great Power rivals.
One short-hand way of understanding the difference: most Right Zionists backed Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries while most Unipolarists backed John McCain.
The adoption of the current “surge” strategy marks a victory for the “McCain Doctrine” within the Bush administration.
A “Neocon” Split
The distinction between the Unipolarists and the Right Zionists is becoming increasingly important as the two camps have split on internal Iraqi politics.
It must be getting a little tense over at the American Enterprise Institute, home to leading voices (for example, Right Zionist Reuel Marc Gerecht and Unipolarist Frederick Kagan) from both warring camps.
Right Zionists: Stick with Maliki
The Right Zionists like Reuel Marc Gerecht and Fouad Ajami continue to support the original idea of Shiite political dominance in Iraq.
As I suggested in several earlier posts (here, here, and here), Right Zionists tend to be quite pleased with the Maliki government, favor aggressive counter-insurgency against the ex-Baathist and nationalist Sunni insurgency, and give Moqtada al-Sadr some credit for playing a positive–if “dirty”–role on the ground in Iraq.
In short, Right Zionists support a “Shiite Option” or so-called “80 Percent Solution” in Iraq.
Unipolarists: Dump Maliki
Unipolarists may have given lip service to those ideas.
No longer.
In terms of the internal politics of Iraq, Unipolarists have now firmly aligned themselves with Right Arabists who favor the restoration of Sunni Arab power in Iraq.
Charles Krauthammer is explicit about this in his most recent Washington Post column, “The 20 Percent Solution.”
Ever since the December 2005 Iraqi elections, the United States has been waiting for the central government in Baghdad to pass grand national accords on oil, federalism and de-Baathification to unify and pacify the country. The Maliki government has proved too sectarian, too weak and perhaps too disposed to Iranian interests to rise to the task…
For an interminable 18 months we waited for the 80 percent solution…
The Petraeus-Crocker plan is the 20 percent solution: peel the Sunnis away from the insurgency by giving them the security and weaponry to fight the new common enemy — al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Maliki & Co. are afraid we are arming Sunnis for the civil war to come. On the other hand, we might be creating a rough balance of forces that would act as a deterrent to all-out civil war and encourage a relatively peaceful accommodation.
In either case, that will be Iraq’s problem after we leave. For now, our problem is al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and the extremist militias on the Shiite side.
Sweet Little Lies
Krauthammer’s embrace of the ex-Baathist Sunni insurgency should, in may ways, be cause for celebration among those who have long criticized the Bush administration for forging a US-Shiite alliance.
But Krauthammer’s essay requires two little lies.
“Cleansing” the 80 Percent Solution
First, it requires a small modification of the real basis of the original 80 percent solution. Krauthammer writes:
For an interminable 18 months we waited for the 80 percent solution — for Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-Kurdish coalition to reach out to the Sunnis.
The Right Zionists who still support the 80 percent solution have been far more realistic about the fact that the 80 percent solution implied picking a winner in the Iraqi civil war.
Here is Gerecht on the 80 percent solution:
The Sunni insurgency will likely cease when the Sunnis, who have been addicted to power and the perception of the Shiites as a God-ordained underclass, know in their hearts that they cannot win against the Shiites, that continued fighting will only make their situation worse. Thanks in part to the ferocity of vengeful Shiite militias, we are getting there.
Here is Ajami:
In retrospect, the defining moment for Mr. Maliki had been those early hours of Dec. 30, when Saddam Hussein was sent to the gallows…
The blunt truth of this new phase in the fight for Iraq is that the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad…
Whole mixed districts in the city–Rasafa, Karkh–have been emptied of their Sunni populations. Even the old Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyyah is embattled and besieged. What remains for the Sunnis are the western outskirts…
No one knows with any precision the sectarian composition of today’s Baghdad, but there are estimates that the Sunnis may now account for 15% of the city’s population. Behind closed doors, Sunni leaders speak of the great calamity that befell their community. They admit to a great disappointment in the Arab states that fed the flames but could never alter the contest on the ground in Iraq. No Arab cavalry had ridden, or was ever going to ride, to the rescue of the Sunnis of Iraq…
Now the ground has shifted, and among the Sunnis there is a widespread sentiment of disinheritance and loss.
The Mahdi Army, more precisely the underclass of Sadr City, had won the fight for Baghdad.
Some folks might be tempted to call all this ethnic cleansing.
Mind you, both Gerecht and Ajami approve of the outcome.
Bush’s Apology for the War in Iraq
Krauthammer’s second little lie is one that is also at the center of Bush’s latest talking points: our top enemy in Iraq is al-Qaeda.
Many Bush administration critics were probably yelling at their television sets during President Bush’s recent press conference when he once again made the “9/11-Iraq connection” and made it seem like al-Qaeda was our one true enemy in Iraq.
The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home.
I know, it is crazy.
But critics of the Right Zionist “Shiite Option” in Iraq should understand that this is Bush’s way of conceding your point: we were wrong (or even crazy) to target the Sunni Baathist political and military establishment in Iraq.
Not to worry!
Behind all the talk of al-Qaeda is hidden an apology: we are waving the white flag in our battle against the nationalist Sunni insurgency. We were wrong to target them as an enemy. We are sorry. The Baathists are our allies, just Dad said at the end of Operation Desert Storm.
This is a complete reversal. No more “stay the course.”
In order to save face, however, Bush will not declare defeat at the hands of the Sunni Arab nationalist insurgency. Instead, the new emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq serves as the basis for a bait and switch: we have a new (smaller) enemy in Iraq. Not the former regime of Saddam Hussein but al-Qaeda. And, thankfully, the Sunni Arab “former regime elements” are prepared to be our allies in the fight against Osama’s Iraqi friends.
It is Bush’s casual, everyman, down-home way of saying that all those US soldiers who died fighting against the ex-Baathist Sunni insurgency died in vane. Oops. Sorry.
But, that said, we must now finish this war with a fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Oh… and maybe those crazy, uppity Shiites… We might have to fight them, too.
And their friends in Iran.
Thankfully, there is a link between Iran and al-Qaeda. So, it should be a seamless operation.
The reason for this “Right Zionist-Arabist-Unipolarist ” split is simple I think. Iraq was never the final destination. Iran was. The assumption was Iraq would be used as a base from which to overthrown Iran’s ‘regime.’ With that done, it really wouldn’t matter if Shiites controlled Iraq and Sunnis could be ethnicly cleansed till the cows come home.
Now Krauthammer et al are loosing hope of any Iranian regime change and so they demand an Iraqi mulligan. “Lets have a Sunni dominated Iraq that will be a check against Iran!” they say. “An excellent Idea. I wonder why no one thought of it before.”
The Gerecht-Ajami group still may hold out hope for Iran’s downfall. As the hope fades look for a change of opinion similar to Kraut’s
The long and short of it is that neither a Sunni or Shiite solution will permit a long term U.S. presence in Iraq. Until that unpleasant fact dawns on the RZers and their fellow travelers, look for all manner of silly ‘ideas’ to get them out of their hole.
They are at the bargaining stage now. Acceptance will be a bitch.
Apparently, the 6 or 7 most important resistance groups have formed a joint front called the Office of the Iraqi Resistance, that is predicated upon the mutual belief that the U.S. will soon pull out – and this will be their joint negotiating arm. The Iraqi Baath, supposedly cut out of the above have also been making public statements about consolidation and mission re-definition. Even AQinM has been making anti-Iranian noises. Looks like a lot of grease being put on the skids doesn’t it?
In reality, nothing much has changed: the US counterinsurgency strategy was always to KILL or CO-OPT and it still is.
Only one faction of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party – the one led by that unprincipled usurper, Mohammed Younis Al-Ahmed, is willing to cut dirty deals with the US, and the US is still committed to liquidating all Iraqis who – like Saddam Hussein – refuse to countenance permanent US bases on Iraqi soil.
All this chatter about Al-Qaeda is a diversion. The US empowered Al-Qaeda in order to intimidate Iraqis into embracing the US empire as a supposedly lesser evil.
Interesting and logical line of thought.The idea that the US unleashed a sectarian terror group loose on Iraqis to cajole them into backing a US client regime seems quite plausible.It’s v.similar to British policy in N.Ireland where we backed loyalist deathsquads and persuaded thereby nationalist groups like Sinn Fein to come on side.
Certainly we have been bombarded by media statements about al Qaida attacks on Shia mosques in order to create civil war simultaneously as we were being lead by the nose to believe that al Qaida was the reason we were fighting a war on terror in Iraq in the first place!
It all adds up to utter media complicity with the imperialist project in Iraq.