We Can't Handle the Truth!

The truth is we can't leave Iraq because of Iran. The Islamic Republic is not only our enemy, it's our overt and blatant enemy, and has been since 1979. Ever since its satanic revolution, Iran has been incessantly proclaiming its aim to destroy us--the Great Satan and the Little Satan. Just recently, Iran threatned Europe too and they are planning to go Medieval on Europe if the EU sides with the US. We have heard it so much that we have become dysynthesized to the bullying of the Islamic Republic going with impunity and we chalk it up to "crazy rhetoric by a dust mite" (Dennis Miller's characterization of Ahamdinejad) To many, the over-the-top nature of such charges sound almost comical; surely, they "can't be serious" or my favorite ruse that somehow Ahmadinejad is powerless and the Supreme Leader is not aware of what he is doing or he doesn't have or need the approval of the opium-addicted Supreme Leader.

We cannot leave Iraq and withdrawal our troops realistically because Iran has been meddling in Iraq since the very first days of shock an awe. Leaving Iraq would amount to handing Iraq to Iran on a silver platter. The south of Iraq is now an Iranian quasi protectorate, with police and local militias controlled by Tehran. Richard Haass's "A troubling Middle East era dawns" informs us that Iran will be a "Classic Imperialist" that would cause harm to itself and the world in the next decade. Mr. Richard N. Haass is the President of the Council of Foreign Relations. (a non-partisan Resource for Information and analysis). Here are a few lines from his speech:

"And so I basically believe—and I haven’t seen any reason to question it yet—that you’ve got these dozen or so factors. Well yes, the United States is still stronger than any other outside factor. But the more interesting thing is not simply that the other outsiders are increasingly going to go their own way, but that inside forces are going to have independent policies or behaviors that will have true consequences, many of these adverse: Iran emergent, quite powerful—(inaudible)—serious peace process; Iraq, which we can talk about, at best messy, at worst a regional war, a growing phenomenon of militia-ization, continued terrorism; Islam increasingly filling the political and intellectual void in this part of the world, the latest “ism,” if you will, to animate not just political life, but life more broadly..."

Mortimer Zuckerman, chief editor of US News articulates and, in my opinion, gives us the best reasoned-argument I've encounterd so far regarding the foolishness of depending on the doctrine of mutual deterrence that worked in the Cold War if the Islamic Republic obtains nuclear weapons:

"Some say we should accept that Iran will become a nuclear power and seek consolation in the doctrine of mutual deterrence that worked in the Cold War. Such advice fails to account for the vehemence of the religious and ideological fanaticism that motivates Iran. Think of a country where thousands of young Iranian Shiites volunteered in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) to charge across Iraqi minefields, knowing they would die. There may be hundreds of thousands–even millions–willing to join suicide brigades. The fundamental assumption of mutual deterrence–that both sides value their lives–simply doesn't apply here."

(...)

Ahmadinejad boasts that the Hidden Imam (an Islamic messiah) gave him the presidency to provoke a "clash of civilizations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, using hundreds of millions of Muslim ghazis, or holy raiders, keen to become martyrs while their opponents love life, fear death, and hate to fight. Hot air? We can hardly count on it. The leading opponent in this epic battle, by the way, would be none other than the United States.

Mort. also does a good job of assessing the global strategic risks of allowing Iran to go on with their game-- intimidate Europe, buy off Russia and China, isolate the U.S. diplomatically and go about becoming a nuclear power:

Iran's emergence as the Middle East regional superpower. Why? Because it places the center of the world's increasingly stretched energy resources more and more under the influence of an oil-rich, fundamentalist, pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic regime that has not only nuclear ambitions but the means to realize them.

Iran's malign hand now reaches directly into southern Iraq, to Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in the West Bank, and to the shores of the Mediterranean. Iran's long shadow now casts a deepening pall over the Sunni Arab countries of the region, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. All the Sunni gulf states have sizable Shiite populations, which Iran could turn against them. And what once promised to be a seed for democracy in the despotic Middle East, a new free state of Iraq, has betrayed every hope in an increasingly violent religious schism aggravated by Iranian meddling. The elections in Iraq led not to collaboration between different ethnic and religious groups but to a Shiite majority with a mandate to introduce what is, in effect, a radical Islamic republic.

Iran’s efforts to secure its stake in Iraq’s future continued last week when it offered the government in Baghdad a billion-dollar line of credit and locked down a host of contracts and trade agreements for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Not bad for a nation with a $181.2 billion gross domestic product. Proportionally, it is like the United States extending a $74 billion credit line. It was a telling sign of Iran’s determination to increase its leverage over its destabilized neighbor.

We can't leave Iraq until we find a way to reverse what we have done before Iran gobbles up not just Iraq but the whole region. We have to prevent an imminent Iranian proxy state from emerging.