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Bill Clinton must be cackling over this one.
The president once pilloried for
his containment philosophy
on Iraq had to watch while spineless Democrats, eager to distance themselves
from bad boy Bill, voted me too(!) for a preemptive war in Iraq. Now
former President Clinton seems prescient in his patience, having adopted a philosophy
from the Cold War for the new world to come, while demanding regime change well short of preemption.
The reality of the carnage playing
out day after bloody day has finally made the neocon colonialists capitulate
to President Clinton's containment policy. But, shhhhh, don't tell anyone about the new watch word for George W. Maybe no one will notice. While the neocons slowly slip into the lame duck
twilight of the first nitwit presidency of the 21st century, as the rest of
us make our way to a saner world.
I'd like a big glass of bubbly with lunch, please. Read it and pass the presidential
crow.
An old word is gaining new currency in Washington: containment. You may be
hearing a lot more of it as the Bush administration hunkers down for its final
two years. Containment of Iraq’s low-level civil war, which shows every
sign of persisting for years despite the new government inaugurated this week.
Containment of Iran’s nuclear power, which may lead to a missile defense
system in Europe. Containment of the Islamism revived by Hamas and Hizbullah,
by the Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq, as well as by the “Shiite Crescent”—as
Jordan’s King Abdullah once called it—running from Iran through
Southern Iraq and into the Gulf.During the cold war, containment doctrine was based on the premise that the
Soviet Union was a powerful force that was going to be around for a long time
to come. Containment’s chief author, George Kennan, concluded that the
best Washington could do was to keep the Soviet bloc penned up in its sphere
of influence until it expired of its own internal problems (though Kennan
later despaired that containment had become too militarily focused, culminating
in Vietnam). The policy was carefully laid out in NSC-68, the basic blueprint
for containment, in the spring of 1950. Forty years later, the policy succeeded.No such strategizing surrounds the current version of containment. Indeed,
few people in the Bush administration will even concede they are thinking
in such terms, because the president has not permitted an honest reckoning
of the difficulties he faces. On Monday, Bush again appeared to sidestep the
realities, calling the new “free Iraq” “a devastating defeat
for the terrorists.” Back in Iraq, however, it was just another typical
day: some 20 Iraqis died in bombings and drive-by shootings, with few or no
arrests.So today’s containment is a furtive policy being developed willy-nilly
behind the scenes, as Bush’s pragmatic second-term officials seek to
clean up the vast Mideast mess left by the ideologues who dominated in the
first term. A series of cautious concepts similar to those that came to dominate
the cold war are emerging as the least worst way of holding off powerful forces
that are also going to be around for along time: disintegration in Iraq, expansion
in Iran, Islamism all over.Washington’s
New Watchword: Containment
As Iraq’s weak new government takes shape, the Bush administration’s
best hope is for a non-bloodbath.
Iraq
isn't working.
And if you thought the violence was bad now, the Iraqis have finally shifted into real rocky waters: how
to divvy up the oil resources. U.S. troops won't make this
outcome any easier.
We also won't stop mosques being blasted into oblivion.
I know it's unpopular,
but if people, especially Democrats, had followed Bill Clinton's plan of containment,
which followed a long line of smarter leaders who preferred a fragile peace,
we wouldn't be where we are today. Too bad Hillary didn't heed her own husband's
words.
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