Rice's Folly: Rejecting Talks with Iran and Syria

[domer]

Condi Rice has put the State Department's imprimatur on the Bush Administration's characteristic "good vs. evil" conception of the world by rejecting the ISG's suggestion to initiate talks with Iran and Syria over the situation in Iraq. Surely, of course, both countries have contributed and are contributing to dangerous ideas and practices in the modern world. But just as surely, those transgressions are not the some of their populaces nor the potential they represent as nations. From that perspective, engagement and exchange might start to tease out their better selves. Indeed, as has been so often said lately, we must talk to our enemies just as much as we must talk to our friends.

According to the report I heard, Rice was said to have commented that a nuclear-armed Iran (its presumed bargaining goal) and a Syria resurgent in Lebanon with an established hegemony (not to mention ceding the Golan Heights) are costs she is not willing to pay for a chance at augmented stability in Iraq. That position ignores the ISG's recommendation that the nuclear-Iran issue be left in the Security Council, and the larger concept of simply compartmentalizing issues, or at least trying to.

It seems to me that both countries have a keen incentive not to see Iraq degenerate into all-out bloody chaos. Such a development would surely affect their respective states and risk sparking a wider, regional Sunni-Shi'ite conflict that would injure the national aspirations of each.

For someone so smart and otherwise eminently respectable, Secretary Rice again proves herself to be a toady when it comes time to doing President Bush's bidding.

[BT]

Obviously she is a toady, because with the far greater information at hand than you would ever hope to obtain, she comes to a different foreign policy recommendation than you.

If I were Bush, in cooperation with the Iraqi government,  i would escalate the conflict, by bombing the training facilities the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is providing for insurgents as well as close the borders between Iraq and Syria as well as Iran. A ten mile DMZ patrolled by air should do the trick.

Then i would start disarming the militias. one civillian at a time.

[domer]

Damn, you're tough. Does that impress the ladies?

[BT]

Damn, you're tough. Does that impress the ladies?

Brilliant retort.

[domer]

Brilliant or not, it was apropos.

[sirs]

Brilliant or not, it was apropos.

No, actually that was more in line with folly. 

So Domer, since Js couldn't answer it, what-say-you.  What kind of "talk" to you suggest for the likes of Syria & Iran, 2 countries saturated with Terrorist enterprises and sponsoring, with the current President of Iran on record as looking forward to the abolishment of both Israel and the U.S.  So, where are YOUR talks going to start?  What are the concessions you're putting on the table?

[BT]

Brilliant or not, it was apropos.

Also quite typical of your behavior patterns.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If I were Bush, in cooperation with the Iraqi government,  i would escalate the conflict, by bombing the training facilities the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is providing for insurgents as well as close the borders between Iraq and Syria as well as Iran. A ten mile DMZ patrolled by air should do the trick.
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Your cunning plan would start a war with Iran (bombing any country is an act of war), and would require more troops than the US has available just to patrol the DMZ. The borders between Syria and Iran are rather long ones. Long and porous. It is illegal to use land mines these days.

One thing the US clearly does not excel at is closing borders, by the way. We really suck at it bigtime, actually.


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Condi is not the Commander in Chief, and cannot make policy. She can only follow it. She is a toady, but that is her job.

She should, however, be telling Juniorbush that talking with Iran and Syria is preferable to ignoring them.

[BT]

Your cunning plan would start a war with Iran (bombing any country is an act of war), and would require more troops than the US has available just to patrol the DMZ.

Thus the suggestion to patrol by air. Helicopter gunships perhaps.

Condi is not the Commander in Chief, and cannot make policy.

But she can make recomendations, which is what i said.

[Plane]

"It seems to me that both countries have a keen incentive not to see Iraq degenerate into all-out bloody chaos"

Why do you say this?

Both of these countrys feel that they are "next" on the action list . If they want to keep Iraq from being a settled question , that seems natural , just to keep themselves from becomeing the center of US or international attention.

If they did not want Chaos in Iraq they could simply stop supporting the insurgency and start closeing their borders to arms smugglers , since they are facilitateing rather than hindering these things one might presume that they actually wish for all out Bloody Chaos.

[sirs]

[Plane]

I wonder if FDR ever considered turning Italy and Japan against Germany ?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I wonder if FDR ever considered turning Italy and Japan against Germany ?

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Duh. Italy WAS turned against Germany. When the Germans deemed that the Italian campaign was not working, because the Italians were losing battle after battle, they intervened. This was so unpopular with the Italians that Mussolini was forced to take refuge, after which he was captured and killed by the partisans.

Japan was too far away for it to fight Germany. The Japanese were simply allies with the Germans and Italians because each was building an empire, and they were agreeing on the turf, so as to not get in one another's way.
 
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If they did not want Chaos in Iraq they could simply stop supporting the insurgency and start closeing their borders to arms smugglers , since they are facilitateing rather than hindering these things one might presume that they actually wish for all out Bloody Chaos.

Iraq would have a civil war if it were an island in the Sea of Nowhere. Iran and to a far lesser degree, Syria, are a much less important part of this civil war.

God has placed  oil under the areas controlled by the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South and East. The Sunni areas have far less. The Sunnis are used to running Iraq: they have been ruling since Ottoman Empire times. Shiites are politically like evangelicals and other more emotional religious groups in the US: less education, less status, less money and less respect. The Sunnis do not feel that the Shiites are competent or deserving of running Iraq. They feel the same way about the Kurds, but the Kurds are fellow Sunnis, but a conquered race, and also inferior in the Sunni mind.

Iran considers herself (and is) the defender of the Shiites, and feel that they are living proof that the Shiites can effectively liberate themselves from US domination and corruption better than any Shiite has done. History is, in fact the proof of this. They threw the US out and refuse to allow the US to corrupt their leaders or order them about.

Iran feels that it has a moral obligation to help the Shiites of Iraq to liberate themselves. Iran also doesn't want a huge US army base next door, in much the same way that the US would not wish to see Iranian bases in Alberta or Coahuila.

Syria wants the Golan Heights back above all else, and wants the US out because Israel will be weakened in both Lebanon (which Syrians consider to be an artificially independent part of Syria herself) and Israel. Also, Syria does not want the US to dominate Iraq.

Neither Iran nor Syria want the huge flow of refugees that will pop in on them if the Civil War in Iraq gets worse.

Talking with both Syria and Iran is essential for the US to resolve its problem in Iraq. 

Bad intel got us into this mess and a lack of it will certainly not help get us out.

[Plane]

Of Course Italy was turned around <duh> how silly of me to forget!


Perhaps President Bush should negotiate with  Bashar al-Assad the same way that President Roosevelt negotiated with Benito Mussolini?








http://lexicorient.com/e.o/assad_bashar.htm
http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_mussolini.html

[Xavier_Onassis]

Assad, unlike Mussolini, has never declared war on the US. Assad, unlike Mussolini was not a sworn enemy of democratic regimes everywhere, even in the US. Observe how Syria does not fire upon Israelis, even the ones that Israel has settled in the Golan Heights. This is due to diplomatic negotiations begun by the US.

You comparison is, well, silly.