“It didn’t work.” Thus spake William F. Buckley:
One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “the bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans.
Now, one hopes the neocon mission will be to salvage the concept of World Democratic Revolution instead of further risking it. The alternative is a grand event to inspire war against Iran. As poisonous as the former is, it is hugely preferable to the latter. This column by Buckley is a sign that optimism is not unwarranted.
The reason Iraq failed is that the postulates were stupid from the start. There was never any reason that Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Kurds were going to stick together without a dictator forcing them to do so without mass slaughter, the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia should have been evidence enough for any logical observer. As for the wonderful drug that is democracy, I couldn’t help but laugh when I read a minor columnist clinging to the now-outdated argument that we must stand by Israel because it is the only Middle East democracy, ignoring the free and democratic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority.
By that logic, Hamas must now be our ally. What a tangled web we weave, when ourselves we practice to deceive….
Watch for the democratic government of Iraq to do these two things prior to the 2008 election: a) launch a large-scale anti-Sunni pogrom, and b) call for the eliminatio of Israel.