"Before the war, the equilibrium between Iraq and Iran was a principal geopolitical reality within the region. At that time, the government in Baghdad was a Sunni-run dictatorship. The Shiite-dominated, partly democratic structure that has emerged from the war has not yet found the appropriate balance among its Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish components. Nor is its long-term relationship to Iran settled. If radicals prevail in the Shiite part, and the Shiite part comes to dominate the Sunni and Kurdish regions, and if it then lines up with Tehran, we will witness — and will have partially contributed to — a fundamental shift in the balance of the region." Kissinger
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Well, Henry…. You and your pals in the Bush/Cheney/neocon menagerie broke Iraq. You destroyed the "equilibrium between Iraq and Iran." You all conspired to deceive the American people and convince them that Iraq was an imminent nuclear threat to the United States. What you really wanted was to trigger a social revolution in the Islamic world that would make safe your "friends." You succeeded in that misinformation propaganda campaign. The US invaded Iraq and then searched the country for years looking for the non-existent nuclear weapons that your lies had made people expect to find.
The revolution against religion never happened. Instead your war enabled the forces of Islamism. There are Sunni Islamists and there are Shia Islamists. You enabled the Shia Islamists. Now you, and yours, are unhappy that your tinkering with history has produced unplanned results.
Well, Henry. We are done In Iraq. Your adventure is the disaster that I have often called it. pl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020202682.html
Will there ever come a time when neoconservatives admit that they engineered the worst foreign policy disaster in America history? Not likely. They are not made of the same stuff as, say, Robert McNamara.
There is not a hint of introspection by Kissinger in this piece about his own role in this mess — he is still adopting the rhetorical stance of an oracular wise man.
Kissinger writes: “The region runs the risk of living indefinitely on top of a heap of explosives toward which a smoldering fuse is burning.” If I read the neocons aright, making the entire region go boom in their “war against radical Islam” (that is, Islam) is their most ardent desire.
Well stated, Sir…
“Henry” has always been in the Anglo-Zionist camp…why did those Israeli spy cases developed by the FBI etal during Henry’s tenure at NSC and State get deep sixed? And we can ask the same about the tenure of Brzezinski at NSC. The orders to quash the investigations came down from the “White House” and NSC in particular I have heard…
From Ha’aretz, 4 Nov 2006
Kissinger powwows with Jewish leaders on Iranian threat to Israel
By Shmuel Rosner
In a meeting last week in New York, one of a series of meetings on planning the future of the Jewish people, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger took part. Kissinger had accepted an invitation from the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute to be one of a group of leaders tasked with setting strategic goals for improving the situation of the Jewish people. Last week’s discussion centered on the Iranian threat to Israel.
Participants agreed that one serious problem generated by the Iranian leadership’s comments and Tehran’s ability to ignore international pressure and continue its nuclear program is the resurrection of a debate within the Arab world about Israel’s very existence. In the early 1990s, it seemed that the Arabs had made peace with Israel’s existence, even if they had not all decided to embark on a peace process. But now, the idea of a Middle East without Israel seems to have been rekindled. One participant in the meeting said that Kissinger considers this very dangerous.
The participants also agreed that the broadest possible international coalition must be formed to curb Iran’s plans. Among other things, they discussed the idea that Sunni regimes, also concerned by Iran, might become allies on this matter. One participant called the prevailing atmosphere “very serious, even gloomy.”
The meeting was attended by leaders of several major U.S. Jewish organizations, including David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC’s Howard Kohr, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Morley Levine from Hadassah. It was also attended Dennis Ross, the former Clinton administration special envoy to the Middle East; former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler; Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz; Israeli Cabinet Secretary Israel Maimon, representing the Israeli government; Yitzhak Molcho, who was formerly Benjamin Netanyahu’s political advisor. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute was represented by Dr. Yehezkel Dror, Institute Director General Avinoam Bar-Yosef and former Israeli Foreign Ministry director general Avi Gil.
The meeting was defined as a preparatory session on urgent geopolitical issues and their impact on the fate of the Jewish people. It was essentially a continuation of a previous series of meetings held over the summer at Wye Plantation in Maryland, in which the heads of all the major Jewish organizations participated for the first time.
The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, founded by the Jewish Agency, plans to hold a conference of Jewish leaders in Israel in May, including participants in this week’s event. The Jewish People Policy Conference will focus on three main issues: Jewish communities, Jewish identity and the strategic problems threatening the Jewish people.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/783374.html
[We do recall that Dennis Ross ran the above institute? The same Dennis Ross in the White House today who supposedly handles Iran issues…]
I agree completely with your comments about Kissinger, Colonel. In my opinion, this sinister, amoral apparatchik cannot be denounced enough.
I bookmarked this article thinking that one day it might come in handy:
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_kissinger_connection/
Henry’s friends may have a bigger problem in the future.
On the 1/23/10 thread 2006 Redux?, Mo mentioned Hassan Nasrallah saying that the next war would be the last war and that he was a man of his word. The discussion went on how MANPADs would be the game changer in the fight, but how would it end the conflicts?
Could Hezbollah take and hold the Shebaa Farms?
Thanks for the link, Bill Wade. From 2006, as relevant as tomorrow.
The strategic victor of the Iraq War was all but assured on the day that coalition forces went over the berm on the border with Kuwait. It was Iran.
Who will free us from this meddlesome lying basterd?
Please, Henry, book a flight to Madrid.
JBouman,
Will they arrest him like Pinochet? If so, I’m game, where do we send the money for the airline ticket.
This post will roil everybody.
It’s not that the neocon is creating bad policy, but it pits united states with its own allies or countries that better not clash with.
– Germany (remember Condi marching to berlin demanding torture, and attack on Iraq? This include contract termination, trade embargo, etc. Germans hate that stuff. That’s Weimar republic. The reason they gas all jews.)
– france (old europe, attack Iraq, lebanon war. then installing zarkosy.)
– Russia (georgia, Iran)
– China (now Iran)
– Brazil (Perez was demanding this and that)
Plenty more, if you listen to hush hush talk. The entire Asia, some section of africa and all of latin america. (all these related to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Palestine) The so called “western countries” that currently Hillary is using. Is nobody, not with China coming down hard and being very unpleasant with the entire middle east thing. (yes, they know the entire arab world is on their side. And they don’t have to do anything except standing up)
This is the data that ought to give everybody a pause before dismissing this last neocon antics.
No country has ever won a war without trade and industrial base. Any sane general will see that the country is in danger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steel_producers
# 116.4 Mton ArcelorMittal (Luxembourg HQ/Global)
# 35.7 Mton Nippon Steel (Japan)
# 34.0 Mton JFE (Japan)
# 31.1 Mton POSCO (South Korea)
# 28.6 Mton Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation (China)
# 26.6 Mton Tata Steel (India / Global)
# 23.6 Mton LiaoNing An-Ben Iron and Steel Group (China)
# 22.9 Mton Shagang Group (China)
# 22.8 Mton HeBei Tangshan Iron & Steel Group (China)
# 21.5 Mton United States Steel Corporation (United States)
# 20.2 Mton Wuhan Iron and Steel (China)
I would argue that we should not forget the role of the ‘neo-liberals’ in the Iraq debacle. While surely the neo-cons took the lead, these tough talking Dems added the soothing Vail of bipartisanship to the debacle. You had different ‘customers’ for the same product. Some ‘customers’ wanted to line up behind any campaign (that for the most part they did not have to be personally involved with, except attending confs)that professed an intention to ‘liberate Iraqi women’. Or read do the Marshes…or free the Kurds. The neo-liberals had gotten their rush from viewing the overthrow of the Taliban…and the rush in Kabul to head to the barbershop after the Taliban fell. They, the neo liberals, were hooked on that stuff like crack cocaine.
Pat Lang,
There, in his article, is Kissenger being disengenuous and employing a version of the usual Washington formulation, “mistakes were made”. This grammatical technique, employing mistakes as the subject, rather than the object, is meant to keep the buck from stopping anywhere.
Regarding the occupation, I ran across a passage in the the book “1945” by Gregor Dallas which, seems to me to be a fine example of plus ca change, plus la meme chose (I apologise for the lack of accents, etc.) “AMGOT was a vast ‘Tammany Hall’according to Harold MacMillan, the UK High Commissioner in Italy, ‘designed to give good jobs to people high in the New York Italian community – make them all colonels.” This refers to the occupation authority as the armies moved up “the boot”. When you substitute Coalition Provisional Authority for AMGOT, republican party loyalists for people strong in the New York Italian community, and government ministers for colonels and look at the dismal results in each case, the similarity is striking.
Another comment. While attention since the New Year has been on Afghanistan and Iran, Netanyahu is, effectively, stealing the rest of Palestine and sealing the fate of the people.
WPFIII
I understand the argument that Iran is the clear strateic winner, but it isnt as simple as that, although there is no doubt Iran’s position has improved significantly. From Tehran’s improved security position arises opportunity for DC. The parties will come to some sort of modus vivendi b/c it is inherently salutory for US interests on a range of broad strategic areas. Iran has no territorial ambitions, it is not an expansionist power. It is Washington’s natural ally, and US policy should at least attempt to engineer Iran’s moving away from the Russians, Chinese and others.
I recall General Odum writing that a change in the direction of US/Iran relations “could help bring Iran back into its traditional role of strategic cooperation with the United States in stabilizing the Gulf region. Eventually, Iran could even return to its long-standing and geopolitically natural pre-1979 policy of cooperative relations with Israel.”
Its only a matter of time…..