The Obama Administration’s announcement of a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq is a stunning defeat for the neocons. The neocon plan was an indefinite military presence in Iraq on the model of the continuing American military bases in Japan and Germany after WWII. Obviously, Iran is a big winner, at least for now, with an ally in the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq.
Of great interest is whether Iraq will maintain the democratic institutions established by the Americans. In the long run, I suspect that from the viewpoint of the neocons, the operation certainly bought time — the time needed for Iraq to rebuild and once again pose a danger to Israeli interests.
It’s too soon to tell, but I expect Iraq will revert to the Arabic norm of autocratic governments cemented by kinship ties among a dominant elite. Democracy is a Western institution with at best shallow roots in the rest of the world. The biggest lie in the neocon Iraq war promotion (apart from WMD—facilitated by neocons manning U.S. intelligence services; see here, p. 48ff)) was academic Middle East expert Bernard Lewis (a strong Zionist with close personal relationships with the Israeli political and military establishment) maintaining that there was a long tradition of democracy in Arab cultures that could easily be unleashed by a military invasion. Lewis is a textbook example where a strongly identified Jew uses his status as a professor at an elite institution (Princeton) and access to the elite media to advance his ethnic interests.
When Iraq reverts to form, it will be yet another nail in the coffin that non-Western peoples can easily adopt Western cultural forms. This is the basis not only of the neocons’ rationale for invading the world, it is also a subtext for why immigration into Western countries does not endanger the institutional framework of the host societies. As repeatedly maintained at TOO, when Whites become a political minority in the foreseeable future, there will be a decline and eventual eradication of European cultural forms of democracy, constitutionalism, and the illegitimacy of close kinship connections as the basis for political power. Whites have much to fear about a future without constitutional protections surrounded by peoples with a strong sense of historical hatred motivated by real and imagined injustices at the hands of Whites. The fact that intellectual basis for has been so firmly planted among our elites and in a substantial proportion of the people as well is a long term disaster for Whites.
The other day I saw Sean Hannity dismissing any threat from immigration because the culture will remain. Dream on. And why would you risk everything on a belief (that Western cultural forms will be maintained no matter what the ethnic structure of the population) when that belief may well not be true. Indeed, all we know about the costs of multiculturalism shows the flimsy basis of the multicultural, diversity-is-good ideology. The key finding is that there is much more conflict in multicultural societies—conflict that has often resulted in deadly violence and victimization of the relatively powerless. Can we really trust the assurances of an intellectual establishment dominated by people who have repeatedly shown that they are far more concerned with advancing their ethnic interests than in dealing with reality?
Not to mention that the ethnic interests of Whites are clearly compromised even if Western cultural forms were to endure.
Naturally, the neocons are not at all happy with this outcome. Writing in the LA Times, Frederick W. Kagan (American Enterprise Institute) and Kimberly Kagan (Institute for the Study of War, yet another neocon lobbying group) note that Iraq fails to meet the appropriate standards of sovereignty, stability and self-reliance—all touted by Obama in his rationale for troop withdrawal:
Its sovereignty is hollow because of the continued activities of Iranian-backed militias in its territory. Its stability is fragile, since the fundamental disputes among ethnic and sectarian groups remain unresolved. And it is not in any way self-reliant. The Iraqi military cannot protect its borders, its airspace or its territorial waters without foreign assistance.
Note particularly the point that ethnic and sectarian conflict has not been resolved and, as they say later, “are likely to devolve into armed conflict once again.” I agree, and the result is that eventually Iraq will revert to the Arab norm, as outlined above, in which there is a dominant elite cemented ultimately by kinship and with at best the trappings of democracy. Contrary to the neocon perspective, staying there another 50 years would not change this likely outcome.
The biggest worry for Kagan and Kagan is that Israel’s greatest enemy is the big winner:
In a year that also saw the “Arab Spring,” it will ultimately be Iran that emerges ascendant in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. America’s defeat is nothing to be relieved about.
The idea that America has anything to fear from an ascendant Iran and a rebuilt Iraq is preposterous, but it’s a different story from the perspective of Israel and its supporters.
For the neocons this is a defeat, but not fatal. If Iran is the winner, this lends even more urgency to the neocon promotion of a war with Iran. These efforts are continuing apace, now under the guise of retaliation for the supposed Iranian plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. One wonders just how such a plan could possibly be a pretext for the U.S. attacking Iran, but in the neocon intellectual wonderland, it makes perfect sense. Any rationale with even a shred of plausibility will be trotted out in the war against Israel’s enemies.
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