I am rather dubious about the intentions of both Syria and Iran with respect to Iraq. Iran wants to turn it into a Shiite theocracy, and Syria has been aiding the insurgency (though less so lately). And don't forget the Iraqis, as Arabs, have been fighting the Iranian Persians for about three thousand years. I find it hard to believe most Iraqis would welcome either actions by either state.

Greg, if you disagree, explain what you think are the intentions Syria and Iran, their material capabilities to be of help, and what response each main group in Iraq (i.e. moderate Sunni tribal leaders, moderate Shiites, radical Shiites, Kurds, etc) would have to each country intervening.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at October 20, 2006 01:09 AM | Permalink to this comment

Les....

does it matter what Iran or Syria's intentions are? I personally don't think so.

So what if Iran's intentions are to set up an Islamic theocracy? Guess what --- that's their plan already, and its working. The question is whether you want hundreds (if not thousands) of Americans and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis to die trying to stave off the inevitable.

Maybe you want to be up to your eyeballs with that blood because you disapprove of "their intentions".... but if that is the case, your comtempt for the lives of American disqualifies your opinions from serious consideration.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at October 20, 2006 02:17 AM | Permalink to this comment

> Iran wants to turn it into a Shiite theocracy

Iran, and the majority of Iraq, want this...

Posted by: hank williams at October 20, 2006 02:24 AM | Permalink to this comment

America actually allowing the Syrians to help negotiate a way out of the Iraq guagmire? After we celebrated their withdrawal during the Cedar Revolution? Oh, I forgot about the the Israeli air campaign against Lebanon after the the Cedar Revolution. That was when Condi proclaimed we were witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Kissinger said almost exactly the same thing when he was commenting upon the chaos spreading through Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Only he said we were witnessing the birth pangs of a new Asia.
Am I imprisoned in a Samuel Beckett play entitled "Waiting For George?" Perhaps, a more appropriate theatrical allusion would be to Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape." Of course, the emphasis would be on the first word of that play's title.
Baker's mission to Baghdad is the last act in this farce, tragedy having been the quagmire in Vietnam.
Once again we have been humiliated by our own hubris, thinking we could create democracy through the barrel of a gun. Policy wonks make poor grunts, whether they are New Frontiersmens or Neocons.
I saw on CNN some videos of American soldiers in Iraq being shot by insurgent snipers, which proves the old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words. Shock and awe meets YouTube. YouTube won the propaganda campaign.
As the wounded grunts on the ward where I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam used to say rhetorically when they were asked about whether there was really a light at the end of the tunnel: Would the last soldier leaving the country please remember to turn out the lights.
Perhaps, in the next several weeks after the mid-term election, which seems to be clearly a resounding defeat for the Republicans on the Iraq War coupled with the increased KIA's and WIA's among the ranks of the American soldiers prosecuting this failed policy, we will probably see Iraqi PM Maliki overthrown in a coup d'etat harking back to JFK's toppling of the Diem regime. Perhaps, it will be a bloodless coup, having Maliki stepping aside with the necessary dignity worthy of his position as a surrogate for Sadr.
Greg, good night and good luck.

Posted by: George A. Hoffman at October 20, 2006 09:59 AM | Permalink to this comment

one thing you have to factor in to the Administration's reluctance to talk:

the fact that they're not very good at it.

I don't mean only Bush's notorious verbal infelicity. I mean a deeper sort of inability with words, the inability to get what you want by bargaining and negotiation.

Skillful negotiation takes a kind of cleverness sorely lacking at the top levels of this administration. (Rove has some of it, and I wouldn't mind seeing him appointed lead negotiator, but he has no knowledge outside of the domestic sphere). The top people here have gotten through life playing the bully card or the overwhelming force card. Now that those cards are played, they have nothing to fall back on, no other strategies for getting what they want.

The Middle East is a haggler's paradise--not for nothing do we talk about rug-merchants and bazaars when we think about negotiations. Bush junior would walk into a rug merchant's shop to buy a rug, and walk out having lost all of his money and clothing, and owing the proprietor 250 rugs to boot.

And at some level he knows it. He has always been an easy mark, which was part of what Rove liked about him; their division of labor was that Rove supplied the cunning, while Bush supplied the wealth, contacts, and brute force.

But the result of this life-long incompetence at verbal dealings is that Bush is deeply afraid of the bargaining table. And that fear extends downwards throughout the administration. Certainly it includes Bolton, who also distrusts negotiation and assumes that force is the only way.

Ah, back when we had overwhelming, unchallenged, military might. Those were sweet, sweet days. The diplomacy of "you're next". Wasn't that a lovely vision? None of this haggling and dickering--all you had to do was yell, and people jumped. Nice while it lasted. Would have lasted longer, too, if Junior and Rumsfeld hadn't decided to launch a war on the cheap and degrade the services into decrepitude.

Now all we have left is talking. Damned shame we don't have anyone good at it. Because it's not just Junior who's going to get taken to the cleaners. It's the whole United States, god have mercy on our souls.

Posted by: kid bitzer at October 20, 2006 03:36 PM | Permalink to this comment

Aren't they already talking? Wasn't Condi's "Syria knows what they need to do" supremely helpful? Talking to either would admit mistakes, and we all know how the open the Bushies are to admitting to mistakes.

Posted by: Gus at October 20, 2006 06:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

p.lukasiak:

>does it matter what Iran or Syria's intentions are? I personally don't think so.

>So what if Iran's intentions are to set up an Islamic theocracy? Guess what --- that's their plan already, and its working. The question is whether you want hundreds (if not thousands) of Americans and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis to die trying to stave off the inevitable.

hank williams:

>Iran wants to turn it into a Shiite theocracy

>Iran, and the majority of Iraq, want this...

I agree that Iran's plans to set up an Iraqi theocracy are succeeding, at least to a considerable extent. But no, most Iraqis, both Shiite and Sunni, are moderates. The problem is the Islamists are the ones with the militias, and they have intimidated the moderates and taken over the political process. And 100% of Sunnis are violently opposed to a Shiite theocracy.

As to the bloodbath, I don't have any really good suggestion, I am just saying that Greg's plan wouldn't make things any better. If Greg disagrees, he should offer some arguments. He needs to explain what he wants the Syrians and Iranians to do, do they have the capabilities to do it, what would be their motives, and how would the various groups in Iraq react.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at October 21, 2006 03:34 AM | Permalink to this comment

Perhaps, in the next several weeks after the mid-term election, which seems to be clearly a resounding defeat for the Republicans

Maybe I hang out on the wrong blogs, but I haven't seen this discussed much at all.

A lot of people claim the GOP won the last three elections by fraud. What if they're right?

If they're wrong, it would make sense for the GOP-controlled government to take active steps to convince the public there is no election fraud. It's important that public opnion believe the elections are fair and accurate. But they mostly haven't done that. One possible reason not to is that the actual methods can't stand scrutiny.

So if they were doing that, and they faced a chance of losing control, wouldn't they do it more? In that case I'd expect to see a lot of close races where the republican candidate won, enough that they kept control of both houses. There would be a lot of grumbling about election fraud but no positive proof. Statistical arguments that the result was unlikely, but who believes statistics?

Alternatively, they could, say, lose the House and nothing happens. If someone has sufficient blackmail on enough Democrats, they would drag their feet and do nothing, and who would get blamed for that?

Posted by: J Thomas at October 21, 2006 07:08 AM | Permalink to this comment

The problem is the Islamists are the ones with the militias, and they have intimidated the moderates and taken over the political process.

Is there any evidence for this?

Is there some sort of reason to think that moderates don't form militias?

Posted by: J Thomas at October 21, 2006 07:13 AM | Permalink to this comment

Les this ain't rocket science. off the top of my head i can think of four things the syrians could do in a short time frame to help, if we proffered an intelligent (if the team in power is capable of so doing) mixture of carrots/sticks: 1) make the border less porous, 2) reduce Iraqi Baath money floating about Syrian banks getting to insurgents, 3) cut down on former deviationist-type Iraqi Baath who fled to Syria during Saddam's regime to Syria trying to cut a non-Saddamite, neo-Baath resurgence in Iraq (though these days one suspects there could be worse scenarios!), and 4) have Damascus be more cooperative w/ Maliki's government. As for the Iranians, it's no secret they are hedging their bets and, not only supporting Shi'a militias, but also Sunni insurgents. Similar inducements (mixed with the specter of punitive actions) could get the Iranians to reduce support to some of the groups causing us the worst problems, whether Sunni or Shi'a. Neither Damascus nor Teheran want a total meltdown in Iraq--which would also involve large refugee flows to both their countries--countries with their own somewhat disgruntled minorities (Azeris in Iran) or indeed majorities (Sunnis in Syria). In diplomacy, as in life, you talk to your opponents on occasion to get results. Hope and 'they know what to do' isn't a plan.

Posted by: greg djerejian at October 21, 2006 05:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

What Greg said. Les, there was an interesting piece by Vali Nasr in Foreign Affairs recently that discussed the common interests of the US and Iran vis-a-vis Iraq, and how the two ostensible adversaries could potentially work together (as they have, with surprising smoothness, in Afghanistan).

Some excerpts:

In Iraq especially, the two governments' short-term goals seem to be at odds: whereas Washington wants out of the mess, Tehran is not unhappy to see U.S. forces mired there.

So far, Tehran has favored a policy of controlled chaos in Iraq, as a way to keep the U.S. government bogged down and so dampen its enthusiasm for seeking regime change in Iran....Seeing the Bush doctrine proved wrong in Iraq would be an indirect way for Iran's leaders to discredit Washington's calls for regime change in Tehran.

On the flip side, however, Iran and the US do share the long term goal of stabilizing Iraq. Aside from the risks to economic interests that have been benefiting from the increase in tourism through the Iraqi southern region punctuated with important Shiite shrines and other draws (with Iranian's poised to continue to exploit the tourism industry through close ties to, and influence over, the region), Iran no doubt realizes that it is playing a dangerous game. Controlling "chaos" is not an exact science, nor is "chaos" a particularly cooperative subordinate.

And yet, in the longer term, U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq may well converge. Both Washington and Tehran want lasting stability there: Washington, because it wants a reason to bail out; Tehran, because stability in its backyard would secure its position at home and its influence throughout the region. Iran has much to fear from a civil war in Iraq. The fighting could polarize the region and suck in Tehran, as well as spill over into the Arab, Baluchi, and Kurdish regions of Iran, where ethnic tensions have been rising. As former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Maleki has put it, chaos in Iraq "does not help Iranian national interest. If your neighbor's house is on fire, it means your home is also in danger." Clearly wary, Tehran has braced itself for greater troubles by appointing a majority of its provincial governors from the ranks of its security officials and Revolutionary Guard commanders.

Two groups within Iran could help convince the Iranian leadership that cooperation with Washington is in its interest. The first are Iraqi refugees, who act as a lobby for Iraqi Shiite interests in Tehran. They have encouraged Iran to pursue talks with the United States over Iraq, partly because they view Washington and Tehran as the twin pillars of their power in Iraq. The escalation of tensions between the two governments would not serve the interests of Iraqi Shiites, and that lobby does not want to see Iraq become hostage to the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program. The second important constituency is made up of the many Iranians who are greatly concerned about the sanctity of Iraq's shrine cities. Every major bombing in Najaf and Karbala so far has claimed Iranian lives. The Iranian public expects Tehran to ensure the security of those cities; its influence has already provided Khamenei with a pretext for publicly endorsing direct talks with Washington over Iraq.

Still, Iran will actively seek stability in Iraq only when it no longer benefits from controlled chaos there, that is, when it no longer feels threatened by the United States' presence. Iran's long-term interests in Iraq are not inherently at odds with those of the United States; it is current U.S. policy toward Iran that has set the countries' respective Iraq policies on a collision course. Thus a key challenge for Washington in Iraq is to recalibrate its overall stance toward Iran and engage Tehran in helping to address Iraq's most pressing problems.

Some further discussion here:

http://tianews.blogspot.com/2006/09/diplomacy-of-breaking-headlock.html

Posted by: Eric Martin at October 21, 2006 06:30 PM | Permalink to this comment

Oh bollicks. The HTML tags didn't work as expected. For the record, the third paragraph after the excerpting begins is my own, the rest are Nasr's words.

Posted by: Eric Martin at October 21, 2006 06:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Greg, Eric,

Well, you have one-quarter persuaded me. The strongest argument is that both Syria and Iraq want to avoid chaos in Iraq. And contrary to what Bush seems to think, talking with them can't hurt and it might help.

I still am dubious about the specifics. Greg's list of actions Syria could undertake is fine, but 1) we don't have much in the way of sticks. If we did, Bush would have used them long ago. 2) Syria is sure to demand geopolitical carrots that would run against US interests. I don't follow the Flyntt Leverett school that says Bashir is a reasonable fellow who is a problem only because the US is mistreating him. Instead I go with the group that says Syria's strategy is to cause trouble and then ask for rewards to behave, and its goals are generally counter to the interests of its neighbors.

Iran is much more important as far as influence goes. As far as the fear of chaos goes, it seems to me that for Iran, inspite of all the violence, things are still basically going in the right direction, with Shiite radicals holding great power in the government and attacking the Sunnis ever more fiercely. The Vali Nasr article talks about how afraid the Shiites are of Sunnis, which makes it seem unlikely they are going to push for a peaceful accommodation with them in Iraq. Instead the Shiite Islamist strategy in Iraq is to pound the Sunnis into the ground.

The alternative is to try to make peace with the Sunnis, but 1) the Sunni insurgents don't want that 2) the Shiites are, I understand, scared that if the Sunnis are part of the government, they may stage a coup at some point The third strategy Iran might pursue is partition, but the Sunnis don't want that, and ditto most Shiites.

Nasr's article talks about how Iran could influence Shiite militias to stop attacking the Sunnis, and ditto the Sunni militias it covertly supports. However the article says, "Tehran will end its military and financial support to Shiite militias and criminal gangs in southern Iraq only if it receives broad security guarantees from Washington." I take it that would have to include allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear weapons program, which of course the Bush administration would never agree to.

Also, Nasr leaves out the problem of Iran's radical ideology, which by its nature makes it highly mistrustful of the US and prone to aggressive behavior. (It's interesting, those who oppose Bush say he is following a disasterous path because he has a deluded ideological view of the world, while all the countries he is fighting with are actually quite reasonable. On the other hand, those who support Bush say he is quite in touch with reality and it is the opposing countries that are following deluded ideologies. Is it possible both sides are partly deluded and partly in touch with reality?)

However, maybe I'm wrong and talks could get somewhere. It is not as if sticking with the present course has very good prospects.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at October 22, 2006 01:18 AM | Permalink to this comment

I think the point above all is the one you made regarding talks: they couldn't hurt.

The only groups threatened by talks are those that do not want to see a diplomatic resolution to any of these conflicts. Unfortunately, elements of those groups are tightly enmeshed in the office of the vice president which still, to our detriment, has enormous sway over our foreign policy.

I think that the regime in Syria is concerned with its own preservation. Some carrots that would help Assad solidify his position could be enough. I don't doubt that Syria will, at times, play the part of provacateur and then ask for a reward for putting out the fire that they started, but there are also legitimate concerns/problems.

For one, Assad is forever preoccupied with the restive Sunni majority in his country - growing increasingly agitated by the violence in the region (as an aside: many of the provocative, anti-Israeli actions taken by the Syrian regime are efforts to solidify support amongs its potentially hostile populace).

Now, for Assad to crack down on groups within this population that are providing support to Sunni insurgents in Iraq (including by attempting to seal off the border area), will entail political/sectarian costs. Assad will need to have something in return for his expenditure of political/sectarian capital.

We can ask him to suffer the repercussions for nothing in return, but that isn't really realistic. Of course, certain American and Israeli factions might view any deal that buttresses Assad as anathema - preferring instead to isolate him, and hopefully induce an internal collapse (though I am in constant wonderment at what these groups think will replace Assad in Syria).

It depends on how much we really value the effort in Iraq as the "central front of the war on terror."

However the article says, "Tehran will end its military and financial support to Shiite militias and criminal gangs in southern Iraq only if it receives broad security guarantees from Washington." I take it that would have to include allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear weapons program, which of course the Bush administration would never agree to.

Maybe, but not necessarily. We could attempt to address the nuclear program at the same time. In a related sense, security guarantees are one of the things Iran is looking for as a condition to suspending its nuke weapon program. In fact, the lack of such guarantees, and the fear of US invasion (credible, I should add, at least at various points over the past 6 years if less so now), is part of what is driving the renewed focus on Iran's nuke program.

If it comes to a point, though, that Iran says that it will not abandon its nuke program, then we can call off the talks (if we have other options to disrupt its nuke program that come at acceptable costs, including the future of Iraq). At that point, our credibility will have been enhanced though, and our actions will appear closer to good faith. Not everyone will be won over (that is an impossible goal), but we may nudge some fence sitters and middle grounders our way (which is entirely possible, and should always be the goal).

Again, nothing to lose, and everything (or some things) to gain. Although some fear no actual military confrontation, so for them, peaceful resolution is a defeat.

Posted by: Eric Martin at October 23, 2006 04:28 PM | Permalink to this comment

Again, nothing to lose, and everything (or some things) to gain.

It depends. If you're a zionist, and you believe the USA is heading on a path of self-destruction that will leave us unable to protect israel, then it makes sense for us to do as much damage to arab economies as we can, while we can. So the point of massive airstrikes on all iranian dual-use industry is not to "win" a short-term war, it's to cripple iran's ability to attack israel, on the assumption that we need to do it now because we won't be able to do it later.

Siimilarly with whatever we can reasonably do against syria. Whatever we don't do now israel will have to do alone later.

Posted by: J Thomas at October 24, 2006 01:38 PM | Permalink to this comment