July 20, 2007
This Is How Empires End
by Patrick J. Buchanan

. . .
It is a near certainty the U.S.-backed government will fall and those we leave behind will suffer the fate of our Vietnamese and Cambodian friends in 1975.

But who would attack? It's currently an Iranian-backed Shi-ite government. Their recent complaint was - look, golly and gosh, the Sunnis still have guns. How could this have happened?

Are the Sunnis going to attack and overwhelm an Iran pouring division into Iraq at that point to prop up its puppet government?

You have to hope for the best. But the present situation suggests - to me - that the US needs to occupy the darned country because otherwise it looks like a bunch of little kids unwilling to consider compromise or any alternative other than what they've always and safely known.

The US pacification of neighborhoods goes well. Al Queda is on the run in many places, and has been cut off at the head. Power is being installed where it had been previously. Port is operational. Etc. All that stuff.

But the problem in Iraq isn't the US, its this idiot government that's been allowed under reconstruction. And Pat might be right, in a way. Because if it stands, it ultimately will stand with Iran against the US.

   
As U.S. combat brigades move out, contractors, aid workers and diplomats left behind will be more vulnerable to assassination and kidnapping.

They have been from the start, Pat.

   
The Turks, with an army already on the border, will go in to secure their interests in not having the Kurdish PKK operating from Iraq and in guaranteeing there is no independent Kurdistan. What will America do then?

How does Pat accuse in this way, after accusing "America" of having acted against his own wishes in the first place?

He might ultimately be right about the 'religious and cultural difference' of the middle east when it comes to supporting a representative democracy, whether or not religiously founded (the Popes have suggested that a republic can be religiously based, and historically were under Christendom). That religion must be Christendom. That's what Islam always fought. And Christendom is the foundation for such free republics. But he's wrong to accuse in this way.

   
As for this country, the argument over who is responsible for the worst strategic debacle in American history will be poisonous.

Pat's already got the pills.

   
With a U.S. defeat in Iraq, U.S. prestige would plummet across the region.

That's true. But isn't that what Pat is demanding? Or he is accusing "America"?

   
What we are about to witness is how empires end.

If they took Pat's advice. The military commanders have a better idea of what is going on. And there's no empire. There SHOULD be. The US should not be playing with these people. This, right now, should be full-on occupation. Martial law, the whole bit, in certain places. I understand the frustration of the commanders. It's not that because the US isn't an Empire - it's not Rome. We may yet see such a thing. But it's not the US, and probably won't be.

The problem that THEY refuse to address, however, is that pesky government. I don't trust it, in the least. If Pat proves to have been right, or Matt, or Sobran, or the others, then it will be because the US reductively turned on the power, but handed authority for the power plant over to a new Saddam.

That's foolish, and reckless. The US needs to take more charge, now, to see if a stable coalition government truly can be built. Because partition, a break-up, as Pat suggests doesn't seem possible. Irrendentist claims would never be surrendered. And perhaps Turkey and the Kurds need to enter into some talks, as well.