Kissinger Tells BBC: Win In Iraq Impossible, Unless We Negotiate With Iran

Yes, I'm sure the people who are funding, arming, training and occasionally sending troops to directly particpate in the insurgency will be very helpful in stabilizing Iraq. We just have to ask them sweetly.

Sounds like a good, realistic plan to me:

Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors -- including Iran -- if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq --whatever we think about how the situation was created --would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

This seems idiotic to me. What Iran would want in exchange for helping to "stabilize" Iraq would be for the US to accept, and help impose, that Iraq should be a client state of Iran's, a terror-sponsoring state aligned against the US.

This "stabilizes" Iraq, yes -- in precisely the way we don't want it stabilized.

I'd rather see Iraq in civil war for ten years to have it "stabilize" as a wealthy funder and trainer of anti-US terrorists. Not that that would be my first preference; but if the choice is between an Iraq at war with itself and an Iraq joining with Iran in perpetual terrorist war against the US, I'd choose the former.

But this guy is just about the "stability." At all costs.

The Baker commission sought his advice, so there's a preview of the great ideas coming.

This is akin to Frist's suggestion that we bring the Taiban into the Afghan government in order to bring "peace" to that country. In both cases, "stability" and "peace" for those countries is elevated over the actual US national interest.

Do I want peace in Afghanistan? Sure -- on terms acceptable to the US. Giving Afghanistan back over to the killers is not acceptable.

They say "better a bad peace than a good war." Not in this case. In this case, it's "better a bad war than a good peace." Because there's no such thing as a "good peace" with these people.

They are prisoners of pre-9/11 thinking, Cold War thinking. But this is not a second Cold War. This is a hot war, and will remain such until the Islamists and their soft-supporters are humilitated, marginalized, or simply killed.

All of these morons assume these people are, pace Clausewitz, using war as yet another means to pursue other political goals. If we satisfy those other political goals through appeasement, then the war goes away.

But their assumption is wrong. War against us is not means to achieve some other end. War against us is the end in and of itself -- the ultimate goal.

They can't be bought off with carrots they prize more highly than killing Americans, because there is nothing at all they prize more highly than that.

Related... Allah links Michael Young on the stupifying lack of realism in the thinking of the "realists."

posted by Ace at 01:30 PM

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