What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber?
Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night
In his special
report Alexander Cockburn interviews former Wiesel colleague
and Holocaust survivor Eli Pfefferkorn. What Raul Hilberg, the
Holocaust's greatest historian, really thinks about Wiesel's
"Night". Also
in this special issue: Is Hugo Chavez Hitler or Father Christmas?
Larry Lack tells the full story of Venezuela's hand-outs to Uncle
Sam's Shivering Poor. Plus, Jeffrey St Clair profiles the Endangered
Visigoth and traces the rise and possible fall of Rick Pombo,
destroyer of nature.CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please
support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
Neocon
Advocates Civil War in Iraq as "Strategic" Policy
Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing
Muslims
By JOHN WALSH
One of the abiding myths about the War
on Iraq is that the neocons were too stupid to realize that they
would confront an unrelenting, indigenous resistance to their
occupation of Iraq. Unwittingly, the story line goes, they led
the U.S. into a conflict which has now produced a civil war.
But this simply does not fit the facts. The neocons clearly
anticipated such an outcome before they launched their war as
Stephen Zunes documents in Antiwar.com:
"Top analysts in the CIA
and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East
experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in
a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war's
intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper,
prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team,
David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that
a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by
sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States
to "expedite" such a collapse anyway."
Yet the line persists that
the neocons had no idea what they were getting into. This cannot
be correct as they think a lot about what they do and they plan
carefully. Not only is that charge absurd on the face of it,
but it is arrogant on the part of those who level it. And it
is the worst political mistake possible underestimating
your adversary.
Now the neocons are beginning
to advocate for civil war in Iraq quite openly. The clearest
statement of this strategy as yet comes from pre-eminent neocon
and ardent Zionist Daniel Pipes. In a recent piece in the Jerusalem
Post, Pipes spills the beans. He writes:
"The bombing on February
22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but
it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq's plight
is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger
to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility,
nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice
versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq,
in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic
one."
As ever Pipes's anti-Arab racism
is simply too rabid to be hidden. If Muslims are busy killing
other Muslims, then "non-Muslims" are less likely to
be hurt!! What does that say about Muslim lives? And of course
both Sunnis and Shia must be labeled "terrorists."
Pipes is doing nothing more endorsing than the oldest of colonial
strategies: Divide et impera.
Pipes envisions other "benefits"
to the civil war "strategy," such as inhibiting
the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Pipes again:
"Civil war will "terminate the dream of Iraq serving
as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying
the push toward elections. This would have the effect of keeping
Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas
was just a month ago."
And finally Pipes declares
that a civil war "would likely invite Syrian and Iranian
participation hastening the possibility of confrontation with
these two states, with which tensions are already high."
It is no secret that the neocons have been aching for the U.S.
to strike at Iran and Syria, so here too the civil war strategy
of the neocons makes good sense to them. Of course the added
death and destruction is not their problem since the victims
will be Muslims and some unwitting American soldiers.
There seems to be only one
fly in this neocon ointment. That is, will it be possible to
control the flow of oil in the midst of turmoil in Iraq. Here
I suspect the neocons who put Israel first might have their differences
with the oil barons, presently their allies. But the neocons
have certainly given a lot of thought to that, and it probably
explains why the location of the large and permanent U.S. bases
in Iraq is not known. It would seem, however, that there are
great uncertainties in this and it may cause some trouble among
the neocons and their allies over the longer term.
The only real question is whether
the civil war emerged spontaneously as Wurmser, Perle and Feith
predicted or whether the Iraqis had to be goaded into it by the
U.S. Given all the intrigues and mysteries in Iraq, including
the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra and the shadowy
death squads and torture chambers which the U.S. claims to know
nothing about, the latter seems more likely as of now. It certainly
fits the civil war strategy, and it is quite reminiscent of the
Iran-Iraq war in which the U.S. and Israel fanned the flames
that consumed over 1 million Muslim lives
The fact is that the neocons
who control U.S. strategy have no interest in preventing a civil
war but only in inciting one. Sectarian tensions were virtually
unknown in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. And in fact the Iraqi
Shia fought loyally as Iraqis against Iranian Shia in the disastrous
Iran-Iraq war. So to avoid an Iraqi civil war, the most important
step is to get all the U.S. troops home and thus to terminate
U.S. provocations. For it is now crystal clear that the neocon
strategy is one of civil war to divide and destroy Iraq; and
such a strategy amounts to a crime against humanity.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.