{"id":304,"date":"2007-06-07T11:19:18","date_gmt":"2007-06-07T16:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=304"},"modified":"2007-06-07T11:19:18","modified_gmt":"2007-06-07T16:19:18","slug":"the-playbook-for-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=304","title":{"rendered":"The Playbook for Withdrawal"},"content":{"rendered":"
If you want to end war and stuff<\/title><a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=195\">If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But does the Left have to choose sides in the internal politics of Iraq?<\/p>\n<p>Robert Dreyfuss seems to think so.<\/p>\n<p>In his latest missive at <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/cs\/articles?article=is_there_a_nationalist_solution_in_iraq\"> The American Prospect<\/a><\/em>, he argues (<a href=\"http:\/\/robertdreyfuss.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/usbaath_talks_bring_back_the_b.html\">again<\/a>) that withdrawal demands re-Baathification in Iraq and fierce resistance to Iran.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last February, Representative Jim McDermott of Washington organized an \textraordinary Capitol Hill event. By teleconference, McDermott brought five \tIraqi members of the 275-member parliament together with a dozen or so \tmembers of Congress to discuss the future of U.S.-Iraqi relations. All five \tIraqi parliamentarians called for an <strong>end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq<\/strong>, \talong with urgent steps to help end the civil war, <strong>restore Iraq’s old \tarmy<\/strong>, <strong>accommodate the dissolved Baath party<\/strong>, and rebuild the \tshattered economy…<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks ago, I spent several hours with Mohammed al-Daini, a member of \tthe parliament, who was visiting Washington. “The Maliki government is part \tof the problem, not part of the solution,” he said…<\/p>\n<p>“When you <strong>weaken Iran’s influence in Iraq<\/strong>, it will also weaken \tMaliki’s government.” Daini told me. “The Maliki government is using Iranian \tintelligence to get rid of its opponents.” Indeed, many Iraqi leaders, \tespecially the <strong>Sunni Arabs, were alarmed by the May 25 U.S.-Iran talks<\/strong>, \tfearing an American deal with Iran to carve up Iraq. Following the U.S.-Iran \tmeeting, the <strong>Baath party of Iraq — which plays a key role in support of \tthe armed resistance — warned that the United States and Iran are \tdetermined to eliminate Iraq’s “Arab identity,” adding: “The U.S.-Iranian \talliance is the number one enemy of Iraq and of the Arab nation.”<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the end, if and when the United States reconciles itself to a \twithdrawal from Iraq, the <strong>path to stability<\/strong> will be found in a \tnationalist government constituting most or all of the emerging “<strong>national \tsalvation<\/strong>” coalition. It’s possible that the team of so-called <strong> \trealists now in control of U.S. foreign policy<\/strong> can come to that \tunderstanding on their own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Note to White House: somebody should tell Cheney about “the U.S.-Iranian alliance.”\u00c2\u00a0 He and his staff <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=301\">appear to be off message<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, let Cheney know that so-called “realists”–not his “Neocon” allies–now control U.S. foreign policy.)<\/p>\n<p>As I have suggested previously, Dreyfuss takes his cues from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/content\/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10185\">Right Arabist playbook<\/a> written by his friend <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=90\">James Akins<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Assume for the moment that Dreyfuss is actually motivated by a desire to see the swift withdrawal of US troops from Iraq (leaving aside the fact that Dreyfuss was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hostage-Khomeini-Robert-Dreyfuss\/dp\/0933488114\"> committed Iran hawk<\/a> <em>long<\/em> before there were US troops in Iraq).<\/p>\n<p>It is far from obvious that Right Arabists, focused as they have always been on the “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nixoncenter.org\/index.cfm?action=showpage&page=IraqAutocracy\">path to stability<\/a>” in Iraq, are the most likely allies in the battle to bring US troops home from Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>I have <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=279\">previously argued<\/a> that the opposite might even be true: Right Zionists committed to Shiite political dominance in Iraq might be <em>more<\/em> inclined to “allow” US withdrawal than Right Arabists who have always known that restoration of the old Sunni Arab political elite would require <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=289\">ongoing and expanded<\/a> military occupation.<\/p>\n<p>The same point was made (for different reasons) by Dan Senor, former spokesman for Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, in his <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> Op-Ed, “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/editorial\/feature.html?id=110010168\">Realists on Iraq<\/a>.”<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>it has often been said that the president got into Iraq because he \tdisregarded advice from the true regional experts: foreign-policy “realists” \twho put together the Gulf War I coalition and counseled President George H.W. \tBush against regime change; “moderate” Sunni Arab Governments; and the U.S. \tintelligence community.<\/p>\n<p>But what if today these groups were actually advising against an American \twithdrawal?…<\/p>\n<p>Consider Brent Scowcroft, dean of the Realist School, who openly opposed the \twar from the outset and was a lead skeptic of the president’s \tdemocracy-building agenda. In a recent Financial Times interview, he \tsuccinctly summed up the implication of withdrawal: “The costs of staying \tare visible; the costs of getting out are almost never discussed. If we get \tout before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to \tresemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution.”<\/p>\n<p>And here is retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Centcom Commander and \ta vociferous critic of the what he sees as the administration’s naive and \tone-sided policy in Iraq and the broader Middle East: “When we are in Iraq \twe are in many ways containing the violence. If we back off we give it more \troom to breathe, and it may metastasize in some way and become a regional \tproblem. We don’t have to be there at the same force level, but it is a \tfive- to seven-year process to get any reasonable stability in Iraq.”<\/p>\n<p>A number of Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors also opposed the war as well as the \tU.S. push for liberalizing the region’s authoritarian governments. Yet they \tnow backchannel the same two priorities to Washington: Do not let Iran \tacquire nukes, and do not withdraw from Iraq…<\/p>\n<p>It would be one thing if only the architects of the Bush policy and their \tdie-hard supporters opposed withdrawal. But four separate groups of \tknowledgeable critics–three of whom opposed going into Iraq–now describe \tthe possible costs of withdrawal as very high.<\/p>\n<p>If the Realists, neighboring Arab regimes, our intelligence community and \tsome of the most knowledgeable reporters all say such a course could be \tdisastrous, on what basis are the withdrawal advocates taking their \tposition?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Senor’s final question should be addressed directly to Robert Dreyfuss.<\/p>\n<p>The answer, however, has more to do with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arlo.net\/resources\/lyrics\/alices.shtml\">Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement<\/a> than with taking sides in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/content\/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10185\">intramural imperialist battle between Right Zionists and Right Arabists<\/a> over the preferred mix of proxy forces able to police US imperial interests in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you want to end war and stuffIf you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 But does the Left have to choose sides in the internal politics of Iraq? Robert Dreyfuss seems to think so. In his latest missive at The American Prospect, he argues (again) that withdrawal demands re-Baathification […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3,10,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}