The neoconservative crack-up

Actually, the title of Charles Krauthammer's essay is, "The Neoconservative Convergence." In it, he describes the fever dream he had recently in which he boldly looked past the chaos, violence, and despair of a country slipping into civil war because the neoconservative architects at the heart of the planning for Iraq's post-war screwed it up so magnificently as to be beyond belief, and sees...glorious victory. Well, for the neocons, I guess; unclear about the Iraqis.

The Iraqi elections had one final effect. They so acutely embarrassed foreign critics, especially in Europe, that we began to see a rash of headlines asking the rhetorical question: Was Bush Right? The answer to that is: yes, so far. The democratic project has been launched, against the critics and against the odds. That in itself is an immense historical achievement. But success will require maturation—a neoconservatism of discrimination and restraint, prepared to examine both its principles and its practice in shaping a truly governing philosophy.

Of course, when he wrote this Krauthammer would have had no idea George Bush would be spending his summer vacation hiding from a 48 year old woman and her insidious questions about why we're in Iraq and why her son is dead. Perhaps he wrote it before it became obvious that every month seems to set a record for the number of U.S. troops killed, or before it became evident that instead of the "sobriety" of the neocons in the White House, they are in full panic-mode.

Nevertheless, the essay paints an interesting picture of the middle east of today and has a telling passage that does much to illuminate the mind of Mr. Krauthammer as well as the level of intellectual honesty that he posseses. To wit:

Alliances with dictatorships were justified in the war against fascism and the cold war, and they are justified now in the successor existential struggle, the war against Arab/Islamic radicalism. This is not just theory. It has practical implications. For nothing is more practical than the question: after Afghanistan, after Iraq, what?

The answer is, first Lebanon, then Syria. Lebanon is next because it is so obviously ready for democracy, having practiced a form of it for 30 years after decolonization. Its sophistication and political culture make it ripe for transformation, as the massive pro-democracy demonstrations have shown.

Then comes Syria, both because of its vulnerability—the Lebanon withdrawal has gravely weakened Assad—and because of its strategic importance. A critical island of recalcitrance in a liberalizing region stretching from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border, Syria has tried to destabilize all of its neighbors: Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and now, most obviously and bloodily, the new Iraq. Serious, prolonged, ruthless pressure on the Assad regime would yield enormous geopolitical advantage in democratizing, and thus pacifying, the entire Levant.

Some conservatives (and many liberals) have proposed instead that we be true to the universalist language of the President’s second inaugural address and go after the three principal Islamic autocracies: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.3 Not so fast, and not so hard. Autocracies they are, and in many respects nasty ones. But doing this would be a mistake.

Hmmm. What country isn't mentioned as a proper target for liberalizing democracy except in its geographical proximity to Syria?

Iran.

A curious omission, particularly, as Georgie Anne Geyer wrote recently, Iran was really the main objective of neocon warry lust. Iraq was supposed to fall easily, leaving a shaken Iranian leadership so fearful that they would depose themselves at the first wave of our powerful hand.

While America has been so dangerously and wastefully tied down in Iraq, Iran has been moving to form the diplomatic, political and military imprint of a kind of "Shiite Internationale" among the region's Shia populations. This would take in all the followers of the Shia sect of Islam, from the 60 percent of Iraq, to the oil-rich eastern regions of Saudi Arabia, to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrilla/political control of Lebanon.

Two of our most sagacious analysts of the area, Larry Johnson and Patrick Lang, both with years of apt experience in these areas, sent out an e-mail to their colleagues this week outlining the situation. It read:

"Iran, if things continue to go its way, finds itself on the threshold of controlling vast oil resources that stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean ... Iran is well on its way to achieving de facto control of significant portions of Iraq. Teheran is backing Shia cleric the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (a Persian, not an Arab) and the radical Muqtada al-Sadr. The Iranians are funneling money and training to supporters inside Iraq. The Iraqi Shia control the political process and comprise the majority of the security forces ... Iran is in a dominant position in Lebanon. The murder earlier this year of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has left Lebanon under the de facto military guard of Hezbollah. Iran remains the main benefactor, supporter and adviser to Hezbollah ..."

[...]

The odd thing is that Iran, not Iraq, was always the primary target of the neocon group that so distorted American policy after 9/11, in part because Iran was seen as the primary enemy of Israel; but Iraq seemed easier to them.

Thus, the Iranians were able to simply stand back while their archenemy, Saddam, fell at the Americans' hands and at no cost to themselves. Should it be any surprise that they should move, as ruthlessly as always, to achieve their goals? And now, with their exalted idea of themselves as the holiest of Shia, their goals have been perfectly complemented by the "Great Satan." (That's us.)

Iran is no unified state. There are special ministries which, often secretively, back revolutionary movements like Hezbollah; there are special military units, such as the Revolutionary Guards, the "Quds" (Jerusalem) forces and other militias. The new president, the former mayor of Teheran, is himself a kind of mystery; but we do know that he, too, represents a turn away from the liberalizing that was slowly progressing in Iran -- surely another reaction to the American occupation next door.

Michael Mazarr, professor at the U.S. National War College, wrote this week in The New Republic that "the only long-term solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear aspirations is integration into the world economy and a gradual return to reform." But the American overextension into the Middle East has made this, at least for now, impossible.

But no matter, as long as we have the sight of hot chicks protesting in Martyrs Square every now and then, Bush can declare, "Mission Accomplished."