Initially, the argument for the Iraq War was American preemptive self-defense against Iraq's (non-existent) WMD; then it was imposing "democracy" on the Middle East; then the need to crush "terrorists"; then a demand for respecting "the troops" who bravely carried out the "surge"; then there were the neocon boasts of "victory at last"; and now the requirement that all the sacrifice not to be in vain.
But the bitter pill is this: the U.S. strategic defeat in Iraq was apparent almost from the war's outset when it became clear that many Iraqis would resist. [For instance, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bay of Pigs Meets Blackhawk Down."]
Possibly even worse, everything since the 2007 "surge" -- including an additional 1,000 or so dead American soldiers and more bloodshed among Iraqis -- was the price of buying a "decent interval" so Bush wouldn't have to leave office with a clear-cut military defeat hanging around his neck.
The real decline in Iraqi violence -- and it remains at troubling levels -- came when Iraqis concluded that the United States was truly on its way out. In summer 2009, when President Obama met the first key deadline of the SOFA by moving U.S. troops out of the center of Iraqi cities, Iraqis broke out into widespread celebrations.
It was as if the Iraqis were serenading the U.S. withdrawal with an Arabic "Na-na-nah-na, na-na-nah-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye." Since then, Iraqi officials have been guiding the Americans to the exit door like polite but insistent hosts removing a boorish guest who has long overstayed his welcome.
But the neocons don't want to accept this reality because it could be a death blow to their beloved and grandiose scheme for applying sophisticated U.S. military power against Middle Eastern regimes and movements regarded as hostile to Israel.
So, unwilling to admit that their glorious kick in Iraq sailed way-wide right, they keep trying to move the goal posts in that direction.
While an objective observer might see the consequence of the neocons' grand experiment as a humanitarian disaster leaving behind deep-seated animosity toward the United States, the neocons view the results as problems to be spun. Stress the positive; put critics on the defensive; avoid any accountability; keep the game going.
After all, that approach has worked before. Some of the neocons who helped formulate Bush's Iraq War strategy cut their teeth in the 1980s on Ronald Reagan's interventions in Central America, which used a compliant Honduras as a staging area for assaults on leftist-ruled Nicaragua and against peasant insurgencies in nearby El Salvador and Guatemala.
Pitching the Central American outcome as a "success" -- despite the horrendous death toll and the troubling legacy of anti-Americanism across Latin America -- some of the neocons, such as Bush's deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, sought to apply those lessons to the Middle East, with Iraq playing the role of Honduras.
In the neocon dreams, the invasion of Iraq would transform it into a "free-market" ally of Israel and a base for pressuring regime change in other hard-line Muslim states, especially Syria and Iran. A favorite neocon joke in 2003 was to ask whether to next hit Damascus or Tehran, with the punch-line, "Real men go to Tehran."
According to this vision, once Bush forced regime change in Syria and Iran, support would dry up for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Hamas in the Palestinian territories, freeing Israel to dictate terms to its Arab adversaries and thus bring a form of enforced peace to the region.
A Clean Break
The early outlines of this aggressive concept for remaking the Middle East predated the 9/11 attacks by half a decade, when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister.
The neocon strategy paper, called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary "clean break" from inconclusive peace negotiations.
Under the "clean break," Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
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