More importantly, the fear that sectarian violence will rise to the level of civil war has subsided as Iraq's own security forces have improved. It is widely recognized that, as a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes, "Iraq's military has the ability to contain internal violence with limited help from" the United States. Iraq's political institutions have also matured, if haltingly. As Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution recently wrote, Iraq's "young democracy has been characterized by a good deal of political brinksmanship to date, but in general they have pulled back from the brink so far."
That leaves Iran, which plainly would like to serve as the kingmaker of a Shiite-ruled Iraq -- and an enfeebled one as well. Iran has succeeded in promoting a sympathetic regime in Baghdad and fostering proxy militias inside the country. But is Iraq really so helpless before Iran, or so bewitched by it? As the Iran expert Ray Takeyh wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, Iran's cynical combination of diplomacy and brutal subversion in Iraq has "done much to alienate the Iraqi government and a populace eager to put the burdens of conflict behind it." Iraq's jealousy of its sovereignty includes Iran as well as the United States; Prime minister Maliki has been prepared to move against the Shiite militias which serve as Iranian proxies. He did so, forcefully, in Basra in the summer of 2008.
Iran's radical ideology, its regional ambitions, and its drive to gain at least the capacity to produce nuclear weapons make it a clear threat both to its neighbors and to the United States. And Iran's leaders certainly see themselves as the chief beneficiaries of American withdrawal from the region. But Iran is not 10 feet tall. It has been weakened by an increasingly bitter internal power struggle; Syria, its great ally in the region, has plunged into chaos; and its maladroit diplomacy has alienated Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two of its chief rivals for regional supremacy, to whom the Iraqis may increasingly turn for support. The United States thus might be best served not by confrontation, but rather by some combination of patient containment of Iran and respectful attention to the needs of Iraq. Once having made good on its promise to withdraw from Iraq, the United States might even be able to return with the same sort of program of military training and assistance that it has established with other Middle East allies.
There is something fishy about the right-wing obsession with the Iranian threat to Iraq. Today's sabre-rattlers are, of course, the same folk who urged President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime, and to prevent Saddam from joining forces with the Sunni extremists of al Qaeda. None of the hawks warned then that toppling Saddam could embolden Iran, and yet Iran has turned out to be the greatest beneficiary of that massively botched undertaking. Now the war's biggest boosters are blaming Obama for a problem created by Bush, and magnifying Obama's alleged failure with whatever rhetorical tools may be available. It's a switcheroo of breathtaking proportions.
The dire warnings over Iran are part of a larger pattern. Obama came to office under suspicion that he would be "soft on terrorism." But the killing of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, the absence of terrorist attacks on American soil, and the administration's willingness to leave intact much of Bush's counterterrorism architecture have armored Obama against those claims. The exhaustion of the American people with ambitious foreign undertakings has likewise taken the sting out of attacks on his conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In order to demonstrate the president's supposed fecklessness -- and perhaps also in order to turn the tide in the growing debate over cutting the defense budget -- critics on the right have had to look elsewhere: to the threat from aggressive autocratic states, chiefly China, Russia, and Iran. Obama, they claim, is coddling America's enemies. Those countries, and a few others, certainly are our competitors and rivals, and perhaps even our enemies. But they are not our equals, and it does not serve our interests to exaggerate the danger they represent.
SUBJECTS:
(15)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE