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The number one U.S. partner, of course, is Israel.
Just as the United States -- with generous input from such "experts" in handling former colonies as Britain, France and Germany -- alienated and largely emasculated its only reliable military ally in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, by conniving at its removal from relevance by Pashtuns nominally led by Hamid Karzai, Petraeus has alienated the Shiites by propping up Sunni supremacists with assistance in cash and weaponry.
In 1947 those "masters" in the handling of non-European civilizations, the British, sought to prevent a Hindu-Muslim bloodbath by partitioning India and creating a religious state, Pakistan. The remedy itself provided the tinder for a conflagration that claimed nearly 2 million dead before dying down.
Once the U.S. commanders in the field sufficiently arm and encourage Sunni vigilantes to make a civil war between them and their Shiite counterparts viable, the present lull in Iraq will evaporate. Hopefully for U.S. President George W. Bush this will be after he steps down from office. Should presidential hopeful John McCain mean what he says about using U.S. forces to force a resolution of the Shiite-Sunni schism in Iraq, they could be there for the full 100 years that he is willing to commit them.
Unlike those living in the bubble of the Green Zone in Baghdad, those in touch with reality in Iraq are aware that it is only a question of time before violence reaches catastrophic levels in a country where the majority of the population has sullenly settled under an occupation they would like to immediately end.
Apart from the Shiites, the other once-friendly segment of the population, the Kurds, is heading the way the Northern Alliance did, being slowly squeezed out of their control over the resources and administration of their region for the first time in 17 years. Only this time it is the United States and not Saddam Hussein that the Kurds blame for seeking to take away what they regard as their birthright -- genuine autonomy that includes the decisive say over the region's assets.
During the 1990s Zalmay Khalilzad, then working for the Rand Corporation, joined hands with Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel and others in the Clinton administration to help the Taliban take control of Afghanistan. That created consequences that may over time prove less damaging to U.S. interests than the actions he has taken as envoy to both Afghanistan and Iraq by seeking new friends among historical foes, but in the process alienating key supporters. Sometimes -- in fact usually -- the enemies of one's enemy ought to be backed rather than ignored in favor of (presumably repentant) foes.
Like India and China, Iran and Iraq are natural rivals. Although Tehran has sought to position itself as the hub of Shiite Islam, it is Iraq that deserves this honor. Iraq has both sites and scholars of far greater significance than those in Iran, many of whose clerics are now merrily dabbling in moneymaking through control over policy.
If Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini has any time left for theological reflections or spiritual pursuits after dealing with the complexities of managing Iran's business, secret services, foreign policy and military affairs, it can probably be counted in minutes. Once Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini designed the doctrine of the "Vilayat-i-Faqih," giving political rule to clerics, the clergy in Iran has become indistinguishable from the traders -- the "bazaaris" -- and the security service thugs.
Those few clerics who seek a transfer of attention from Mammon to God have been persecuted almost as viciously as those demanding that Iran return to its roots as a moderate civilization. Like alcoholics in a bar, Khameini and his crew have refused to hand over control to lay authority, even during the period when two clerics, former presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami -- who kept his integrity if not his effectiveness intact -- were in power.
Had Iraq been allowed to become an independent state rather than a U.S.-U.K.-NATO protectorate, its Shiite clergy could have rapidly rescued the faith from the distortions created by the Khomeinists and had a compelling influence on Iran. Instead, the military occupation of Iraq after the 2003 defeat of the Saddamites -- followed since 2005 by U.S. military support to enemies of the Shiites -- has enabled quasi-Khomeinists such as Muqtada Al-Sadr to establish ascendancy. Now most Iraqi Shiites prefer Iran to the United States as an ally, despite that country's Khomeinist leadership.
For sound military reasons, the United States needs to hand Iraq back to its people. For every extra month that U.S. and European forces occupy that devastated country, the tinder for a future civil war grows. Only a speedy withdrawal would ensure the survival of a federal entity -- with substantial autonomy for its regions -- that would decide its own policies, rather than watch as U.S. generals and sundry officials impose their own views on what needs to be done.
John McCain needs to understand that some of the lessons he learned in Vietnam may be a trifle out of date. It is not the "surge," but changes in U.S. tactics that have resulted in a fall in military casualties. The presence of what is now seen as an invading and occupying force is changing friends into enemies in Iraq and helping Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad emerge as the Big Brother in what the tactics of David Petraeus are cementing into a de facto alliance.
Only Iraqis can secure Iraq, not the brave and hapless men and women of the U.S. forces, who have been inserted into a no-winners conflict by policymakers oblivious to the changing chemistry of the population of the region.
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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
