cosmic poaching

Charles Krauthammer wrote in his 1-16-09 syndicated column, The sincerest form of flattery: Barack Obama is following in George Bush’s footsteps, that Iraq is now “an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States.” Really? Some ally. The Iraqi government demanded, and received from the Bush administration in the Status of Forces Agreement, that the U.S. will not use Iraqi territory to launch attacks on Iraq’s neighbors. (The agreement, also called SOFA, went into effect on 1-1-09. Article 27, Deterrence of Security Threats, states that “Iraqi land, sea, and air shall not be used as a launching or transit point for attacks against other countries.”) Did France, a real ally of ours during WW II, ban us from attacking its neighbors? The only new allies we created in the Middle East with this disastrous war is the Shiite alliance between Iraq and Iran. Iran is now the dominant power, allied with Iraq. The Shiites we put in power in Iraq are not our allies. If they were they wouldn’t have banned us from attacking their neighbors. And we are going to have to deal with the Iran-Iraq alliance for years to come, a frightening thought.

Mr. Krauthammer then peered into his crystal ball and closed the column by claiming the Iraq war will serve this country well in the coming years. Let’s consider a more realistic future: A) our troops leave in three years, there’s a coup and the next Saddam takes over. Should we invade again? B) Al-Maliki becomes our guy, cancels elections and rules Iraq with an iron fist. We’ve seen this game before in the likes of the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos, etc. C) Iraq finally gets its elusive WMDs – from its real ally, Iran.

This entry was posted on January 18, 2009 at 12:19 am and is filed under Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.