The True Price of Failure

Are we the only one to note that in all the wailing and thunder over the President’s "Surge" speech, no one is even mentioning the two ton black elephant in the drawing room: What’s going to happen once we’re gone?

The Dowbrigade gets an uplifting sense of real national unity in this country these days, more so than at any time in recent memory. The far majority of the American public and the pundits all agree – Bush’s plan has less chance of succeeding than a bagel shop in Sadr City.

What nobody wants to think about is what that means to the balance of power in the region and our immediate access to energy supplies. And yet these are the very factors that are driving our foreign policy in this case.

What is playing out today in Iraq is nothing more or less than the final stage of the Iran-Iraq war, the most recent iteration of which broke out in 1980 when Saddam Hussein, with covert and overt American support, invaded the recently installed Islamic Republic. Of course, there has been rivalry between kingdoms of Mesopotamia and Persia since the dawn of history in the region.

We picked sides in this one over 30 years ago, when the Ayatollahs took over the US Embassy in Tehran. First, in a time-honored practice of empires since Rome, we backed local strongman Saddam Hussein as our surrogate in the struggle. When he proved unsuccessful, unreliable and unacceptable to our other surrogates, the Israelis, we had to invade the country and carry on more directly.

As has been becoming depressingly common during our lifetime, our leaders bet on the losers again. And when we finally throw down our cards and walk away from the table, Iran is going to rake in all of the chips.

With a multicultural Iraq now a tattered, smokescreen pipe dream, the 70% Shi’ite majority is already halfway into the Iranian embrace, receiving daily financial, social, political and military support from across the porous border between the two countries. Both of the main forces we are fighting – the Sunni insurgency and the Shi’ite militias, are being supplied by the Iranians.

When we leave, or shortly thereafter, the majority of what is now called Iraq will be absorbed into a radical Shi’ite "Greater Iran" or "Iran-Iraq Republic". The 80-year European conceit which never really existed except as lines on a map and power-lust in the minds of despots and dominators will vanish like a mirage in the desert, leaving only the bedrock of Islam and tribal survival.

Greater Iran will have a significant percentage of world proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia and the US combined, and be very close to having nuclear arms. And they will hate our guts. How’s that going to affect the price of gasoline?

Believe it or not, the emergence of a rabidly anti-American Greater Iran is actually the best-case scenario. Equally likely, when examining historical and geopolitical tendencies, is the emergence over the next 10 years of a Greater Islamic Republic stretching from the Horn of Africa, across the entire Middle East and into vast stretches of Asia.

We have written of this coming unified Islamic colossus before. It would be dangerous stupidity to ignore this increasingly probable eventuality, which is the declared goal of the Ayatollahs, Osama bin Laden and fundamentalist Muslims everywhere. If the powers in the Islamic world can overcome the sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shi’ite, the Muslim world could transcend the western imposition of the nation-state model, and become what it has always been underneath, a militant religious empire, determined to convert or annihilate everything in its path.

It would hold almost a billion people and would include Afghanistan, Pakistan (making it definitely a nuclear state) Saudi Arabia (kiss your car goodbye), several ex-Soviet Socialist Republics (aiming a dagger at the heart of Europe) and even parts of China. It would be a fulcrum which could move the world, and would signify the end of life as we know it .

As far as we can see, the only concrete moves the US is making to forestall or deal with this eventuality is building up a future state of Kurdistan as a possible buffer against the Islamic Empire.

Bringing us to a final. macabre irony. The way things are shaping up, the only force with a chance to derail the Greater Islamic Empire is exactly what President Bush is trying to quell – sectarian violence.

Maybe, if the bloodshed and hatred between Sunni and Shia is deeper than the unifying force of Islam itself, we will merely have to deal with a "Greater Iran" and can keep our access to the rest of the oil, at least for a while.