Iraqi “Democratization,” With Shameful Outsourcing of the Real Jihadist Threat—Iran—to Israel

A satellite image of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility

According to the London Telegraph, Israel is apparently preparing to neutralize a real time threat—Iran’s nuclear program—while the US apparently has other (absurd and delusional) “priorities” in Iraq.

A former head of Mossad has warned that Israel has 12 months in which to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme or risk coming under nuclear attack itself. He also hinted that Israel might have to act sooner if Barack Obama wins the US presidential election.

We must salvage our foolhardy extended involvement in “democratizing” Iraq—this Iranian client state being made “safe for Sharia”—by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities NOW, while Bush is still in office, and not delay risking that opportunity any longer with the election of Obama, and/or any change in the transient public perception that in fact the surge has at least as of this very fragile moment, been of some success. Otherwise it is a shameful dereliction of our duty placed upon the Israelis who are in the end far more constrained by true existential threats than are we.

The US should not wait till beleaguered Israel is compelled to attack at great risk—both in performing the mission, and in suffering potential retaliation from the global jihadist umma—including Iranian supplied missiles from Gaza Hamastan and Lebanon Hezbollahstan—while our mass of forces—land, water, and air—just sits by and does nothing (other than awaiting retaliation by Iran, at any rate, perhaps?) from its bases in neighboring Iraq.

Delay—with both the distinct possibility of Iran gaining nukes, and our limited surge related “success” in Iraq being reversed—is the worst possible option, if the overriding goal is to prevent a nuclear armed Iran from emerging in the near future. This is infinitely more important than the “(Blair Witch?) Democracy Demonstration Project” in Iraq, which almost 75 years later is no further advanced than what the British “hoped” to have accomplished, circa 1935, as I wrote two years ago:

…the same misplaced optimism expressed 70 years ago by the British Arabist S.A. Morrison. Despite great expense of British blood and treasure, more than a decade of military occupation, and even after the Assyrian massacres (by Arab and Kurdish Muslims) of 1933-34, shortly after Britain’s withdrawal, Morrison wrote, (in “Religious Liberty in Iraq”, Moslem World, 1935, p. 128):

Iraq is moving steadily forward towards the modern conception of the State, with a single judicial and administrative system, unaffected by considerations of religion or nationality. The Millet system [i.e., dhimmitude—not reflected by this euphemism] still survives, but its scope is definitely limited. Even the Assyrian tragedy of 1933 does not shake our faith in the essential progress that has been made. The Government is endeavoring to carry out faithfully the undertakings it has given, even when these run directly counter to the long-cherished provisions of the Shari’a Law. But it is not easy; it cannot be easy in the very nature of the case, for the common people quickly to adjust their minds to the new legal situation, and to eradicate from their outlook the results covering many centuries of a system which implies the superiority of Islam over the non-Moslem minority groups. The legal guarantees of liberty and equality represent the goal towards which the country is moving, rather than the expression of the present thoughts and wishes of the population. The movement, however, is in the right direction, and it may yet prove possible for Islam to disentangle religious faith from political status and privilege.

Over seven decades later, the goals of true “liberty and equality” for Iraq remain just as elusive after yet another Western power has committed great blood and treasure toward that end. More ominously, Iraq’s newly empowered Shi’ites and their leaders appear to have forged an unholy alliance with Iran which is more likely to promote Sharia despotism, than liberal democracy.