[Peace-discuss] The events for which the Iraq war will be remembered... haven’t even happened yet.

[E. Wayne Johnson]

...as if reality wasn't already grim enough...(I am going to find some 
Good News and post it.  Soon. I promise.)

Two Elections  by William S. Lind

In many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the story line depends on some 
sort of magic elixir or potion. Similarly, the advocates for Brave New 
World tell us the comic opera called "democracy" flows from the magic of 
elections. Just hold elections and presto!, wars vanish. Regrettably, 
BNW’s music is not nearly so entertaining as that of Sir Arthur 
Sullivan, while its plot is even more absurd than most of Gilbert’s.

Two recent elections point to a grimmer reality. The first was in Iraq, 
for provincial councils. In Iraq as in most of the world, the question 
is neither whether elections were held nor who won. The question on 
which social order depends is who accepts the results of an election. If 
elections are to substitute for war, not only the winners but also the 
losers must accept their outcome. Losers must give up power, patronage, 
one of the very few local sources of money (often lots of it), and 
possibly physical security as well, hoping for better luck next time, if 
there is a next time.

I suspect the odds of that happening in Iraq are small. The /Washington 
Post/ recently quoted one U.S. officer who served as an adviser to Iraqi 
army units saying of Iraqi commanders, "When you got to know them and 
they’d be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the 
whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was 
absolutely ludicrous."

That quote was in a piece by Tom Ricks, the /Post/’s long-time defense 
correspondent, in the Sunday February 15 "Outlook" section. Ricks goes 
on to say,

    I don’t think the Iraq war is over yet, and I worry that there is
    more to come than any of us suspect…

Many of those closest to the situation in Iraq expect a full-blown civil 
war to break out there in the coming years. "I don’t think the Iraqi 
civil war has been fought yet," one colonel told me.

In such an environment, elections do not substitute for war but rather 
prepare the way for it. They exacerbate differences, heighten local 
conflicts, and lengthen the lists of "injustices" each party uses to 
justify fighting.

This unfortunate reality points again to what America needs to do in 
Iraq: get out now, fast, while it can. If we are lucky, history will 
grant us a "decent interval" between our departure and the next round of 
4GW in Iraq. If we dawdle until the fighting ramps up again, we may find 
it difficult, politically if not militarily, to leave at all.

This brings us to another election, that in Israel. It is not clear what 
government will emerge from Israel’s vote. It is clear the Knesset has 
shifted to the right. From the standpoint of America’s interests, that 
is a negative outcome.

The danger is not only to prospects of peace between Israel and the 
Palestinians, which are probably small in any event. The danger is that 
a new Israeli government in which Likud and voices to Likud’s right are 
stronger is more likely to attack Iran.

As I have said repeatedly in past columns, an attack on Iran by the U.S. 
or Israel threatens consequences disastrous to America. The worst 
potential consequence is the possibility of the destruction of the army 
the U.S. now has in Iraq. As almost no one in Washington seems to 
realize – thanks, as usual, to hubris – that possibility is all too 
real. All one need do to see it is look at a map. Iran sits alongside 
our main line of communications, supply and retreat all the way from 
Baghdad to the straits of Hormuz. Add in the probability that various 
Shiite militias and perhaps much of the new Iraqi army as well would 
join with the Iranians in attacking us, and the possibility of finding 
100,000 American troops in an operational /Kessel/ is frighteningly evident.

Thus we find that in two overseas elections, the magic elixir has proven 
poisonous to the United States. The two reinforce one another in their 
toxic effects, the one threatening to hold us in Iraq, the other to 
entomb us there. As Tom Ricks concluded his piece in the /Post/, "In 
other words, the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered 
probably haven’t even happened yet." Thanks to two elections, they may 
be coming all the faster.

/February 18, 2009/

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