{"id":6042,"date":"2014-06-27T13:43:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T13:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=6042"},"modified":"2014-07-01T18:45:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T18:45:53","slug":"the-chaos-in-iraq-is-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=6042","title":{"rendered":"The Chaos In Iraq Is By DESIGN"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0George Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

Neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz planned regime change in Iraq more than 20 years ago \u2026in 1991<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the goal wasn\u2019t just regime change (or oil<\/a>).\u00a0 The goal was to\u00a0break up<\/em>\u00a0the country, and to do away with the sovereignty of Iraq as a separate nation.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0in 2003:<\/p>\n

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked. \u201cWe fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

They are probably still splitting their sides with laughter in the Pentagon. But Mr Mubarak and the [Pentagon] hawks do agree on one thing: war with Iraq could spell disaster for several regimes in the Middle East. Mr Mubarak believes that would be bad.\u00a0The hawks, though, believe it would be good<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that\u00a0everything is going according to plan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The \u201cskittles theory\u201d of the Middle East \u2013 that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes \u2013 has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the \u201cwar against terrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled \u201cA clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm\u201d, it was intended as a politicalblueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu<\/strong>. As the title indicates, it advised the right-wing Mr Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy \u201cbased on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The paper set out a plan by which Israel would \u201cshape its strategic environment\u201d, beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and \u201croll back\u201d Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also sort out Lebanon by \u201cweaning\u201d the Shia Muslim population away from Syria and Iran, and re-establishing their former ties with the Shia in the new Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. \u201cIsrael will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them\u201d, the paper concluded.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The leader of the \u201cprominent opinion makers\u201d who wrote it was\u00a0Richard Perle \u2013 now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Also among the eight-person team was\u00a0Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as under-secretary of policy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Two other opinion-makers in the team were\u00a0David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav<\/strong>(see\u00a0US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy<\/a>, August 19). Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and international security.<\/p>\n

A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) \u2013 a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

With several of the \u201cClean Break\u201d paper\u2019s authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to \u201ctranscend\u201d its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it.<\/p>\n

(Before assuming prominent roles in the Bush administration, many of the same people \u2013 including\u00a0Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, John Bolton and others<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 advocated their imperial views during the Clinton administration via their American think tank, the \u201cProject for a New American Century\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Thomas Harrington \u2013 professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut \u2013writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[While there are some good articles on the chaos in Iraq, none of them] consider whether\u00a0the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One of the prime goals of every empire is to foment ongoing internecine conflict in the territories whose resources and\/or strategic outposts they covet<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The most efficient way of sparking such open-ended internecine conflict is to brutally smash the target country\u2019s social matrix and physical infrastructure.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Ongoing unrest has the additional perk of justifying the maintenance and expansion of the military machine that feeds the financial and political fortunes of the metropolitan elite.<\/p>\n

In short \u2026 divide and rule is about as close as it gets to a universal recourse the imperial game and that it is, therefore, as important to bear it in mind today as it was in the times of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Spanish Conquistadors and the British Raj.<\/p>\n

To those\u2014and I suspect there are still many out there\u2014for whom all this seems too neat or too\u00a0conspiratorial<\/em>, I would suggest a careful side-by side reading of:<\/p>\n

a) the \u201cClean Break\u201d manifesto generated by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) in 1996<\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

b) the \u201cRebuilding America\u2019s Defenses\u201d paper generated by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, a US group with deep personal and institutional links to the aforementioned Israeli think tank, and with the ascension of \u00a0George Bush Junior to the White House, to the most exclusive \u00a0sanctums of the US foreign policy apparatus.<\/p>\n

To read the cold-blooded imperial reasoning in both of these documents\u2014which speak, in the first case, quite openly of\u00a0the need to destabilize the region<\/strong>\u00a0so as to reshape Israel\u2019s \u201cstrategic environment\u201d and, in the second of the need to dramatically increase the number of US \u201cforward bases\u201d in the region \u2026.<\/p>\n

To do so now, after the US\u2019s systematic destruction of Iraq and Libya\u2014two notably oil-rich countries whose delicate ethnic and religious balances were well known to anyone in or out of government with more than passing interest in history\u2014, and after the its carefully calibrated efforts to generate and maintain murderous and civilization-destroying stalemates in Syria and Egypt (something that is easily substantiated despite our media\u2019s deafening silence on the subject), is downright blood-curdling.<\/p>\n

And yet, it seems that for even very well-informed analysts, it is beyond the pale to raise the possibility that foreign policy elites in the US and Israel, like all virtually all the ambitious hegemons before them on the world stage, might have quite coldly and consciously fomented open-ended chaos in order to achieve their overlapping strategic objectives in this part of the world.<\/p>\n

Antiwar\u2019s Justin Raimondo\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Iraq\u2019s fate was sealed from the moment we invaded: it has no future as a unitary state. As I pointed out\u00a0again<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0again<\/a>\u00a0in the early days of the conflict, Iraq is fated to split apart into at least three separate states: the Shi\u2019ite areas around Baghdad and to the south, the Sunni regions to the northwest, and the Kurdish enclave which was itching for independence since well before the US invasion.\u00a0This was the War Party\u2019s\u00a0real<\/a>\u00a0if unexpressed goal from the very beginning: the atomization of Iraq, and indeed the entire Middle East. Their goal, in short, was chaos<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 and that is precisely what we are seeing today.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

As I put it\u00a0years ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201c[<\/em>T]he actual purpose was to blow the country to smithereens: to atomize it, and crush it, so that it would never rise again.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we invaded and occupied Iraq, we didn\u2019t just militarily defeat Iraq\u2019s armed forces \u2013 we\u00a0<\/em>dismantled their army<\/em><\/a>, and their police force, along with all the other institutions that held the country together. The educational system was destroyed, and not reconstituted. The infrastructure was\u00a0<\/em>pulverized<\/em><\/a>, and never restored. Even the physical hallmarks of a civilized society \u2013\u00a0<\/em>roads<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>bridges<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>electrical plants<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>water facilities<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>museums<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>schools<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 were bombed out of existence or else left to fall into disrepair. Along with that, the spiritual and psychological infrastructure that enables a society to function \u2013 the bonds of trust, allegiance, and custom \u2013 was\u00a0<\/em>dissolved<\/em><\/a>, leaving Iraqis to fend for themselves in a war of all against all.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 What we are witnessing in post-Saddam Iraq is the erasure of an entire country. We can say, with confidence: We came, we saw, we atomized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why? This is the question that inevitably arises in the wake of such an analysis: why deliberately destroy an entire country whose people were civilized while our European ancestors were living in trees?<\/p>\n

The people who planned, agitated for, and executed this war are the very same people who have advanced Israeli interests \u2013 at America\u2019s expense \u2013 at every opportunity. In \u201cA Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm<\/a>,\u201d a 1996 document prepared by a gaggle of neocons \u2013 Perle, Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser \u2013 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was urged to \u201cbreak out\u201d of Israel\u2019s alleged stagnation and undertake a campaign of \u201cregime change\u201d across the Middle East, targeting Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and eventually Iran. With the exception of Iran \u2013 and that one\u2019s still cooking on the back burner \u2013 this is precisely what has occurred. In 2003, in the immediate wake of our Pyrrhic \u201cvictory\u201d in Iraq, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0to a visiting delegation of American members of Congress that these \u201crogue states\u201d \u2013 Iran, Libya, and Syria \u2013 would have to be next on the War Party\u2019s target list.<\/p>\n

(Indeed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

And Michel\u00a0Chossudovsky\u00a0points out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The division of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 10 years<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What is envisaged by Washington is the outright suppression of the Baghdad regime and the institutions of the central government, leading to a process of political fracturing and\u00a0the elimination of Iraq as a country<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This process of political fracturing in Iraq along sectarian lines will inevitably have an impact on Syria, where the US-NATO sponsored terrorists have in large part been defeated.<\/p>\n

Destabilization and political fragmentation in Syria is also contemplated: Washington\u2019s intent is no longer to pursue the narrow objective of \u201cregime change\u201d in Damascus. What is contemplated is the break up of both Iraq and Syria along sectarian-ethnic lines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The formation of the caliphate may be the first step towards a broader conflict in the Middle East, bearing in mind that Iran is supportive of the al-Maliki government and the US ploy may indeed be to encourage the intervention of Iran.<\/p>\n

The proposed re-division of both Iraq and Syria is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven \u201cindependent states\u201d (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo).<\/p>\n

According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n

The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy.\u00a0(Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).<\/p>\n

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO\u2019s Defense College\u00a0for senior military officers\u201d. (See\u00a0Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a \u201cNew Middle East\u201d<\/a>\u00a0By\u00a0Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya<\/a>, Global Research, November 2006)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes: While a\u00a0senior Bush adviser said<\/a>\u00a0that the Iraq war was launched to protect Israel, that is too simplistic an explanation. The architects of foreign policy in both the U.S. and Israel are either literally one and the same \u2013 e.g. Richard Perle \u2013 or see things identically.<\/em><\/p>\n

And if you think things are different under the Obama administration, please note that not only are the\u00a0Neocons back<\/a>, they\u00a0never actually left<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0George Washington Neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz planned regime change in Iraq more than 20 years ago \u2026in 1991. But the goal wasn\u2019t just regime change (or oil).\u00a0 The goal was to\u00a0break up\u00a0the country, and to do away with the sovereignty … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}