Egemonia

By Zbigniew Brzezinski

Washington Post
Friday, January 12, 2007; A19

The president's speech gives rise to five broad
observations:

* It provided a more realistic analysis of the situation
in Iraq than any previous presidential statement. It
acknowledged failure, though it dodged accountability
for that failure by the standard device of assuming
personal responsibility. Its language was less
Islamophobic than has been customary with President
Bush's rhetoric since Sept. 11, though the president
still could not resist the temptation to engage in a
demagogic oversimplification of the challenge the United
States faces in Iraq, calling it a struggle to safeguard
"a young democracy" against extremists and an effort to
protect American society from terrorists. Both
propositions are more than dubious.

* The commitment of 21,500 more troops is a political
gimmick of limited tactical significance and of no
strategic benefit. It is insufficient to win the war
militarily. It will engage U.S. forces in bloody street
fighting that will not resolve with finality the ongoing
turmoil and the sectarian and ethnic strife, not to
mention the anti-American insurgency.

* The decision to escalate the level of the U.S.
military involvement while imposing "benchmarks" on the
"sovereign" Iraqi regime, and to emphasize the external
threat posed by Syria and Iran, leaves the
administration with two options once it becomes clear --
as it almost certainly will -- that the benchmarks are
not being met. One option is to adopt the policy of
"blame and run": i.e., to withdraw because the Iraqi
government failed to deliver. That would not provide a
remedy for the dubious "falling dominoes" scenario,
which the president so often has outlined as the
inevitable, horrific consequence of U.S. withdrawal. The
other alternative, perhaps already lurking in the back
of Bush's mind, is to widen the conflict by taking
military action against Syria or Iran. It is a safe bet
that some of the neocons around the president and
outside the White House will be pushing for that.
Others, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, may also favor
it.

* The speech did not explore even the possibility of
developing a framework for an eventual political
solution. The search for a political solution would
require a serious dialogue about a joint American-Iraqi
decision regarding the eventual date of a U.S.
withdrawal with all genuine Iraqi political leaders who
command respect and wield physical power. The majority
of the Iraqi people, opinion polls show, favor such a
withdrawal within a relatively short period. A jointly
set date would facilitate an effort to engage all of
Iraq's neighbors in a serious discussion about regional
security and stability. The U.S. refusal to explore the
possibility of talks with Iran and Syria is a policy of
self-ostracism that fits well into the administration's
diplomatic style of relying on sloganeering as a
substitute for strategizing.

* The speech reflects a profound misunderstanding of our
era. America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq.
But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial
war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating. That is
the fatal flaw of Bush's policy.