I keep reading from various sources that the United States does not have the troops to invade Syria or Iran. This is almost of small or no consequence as Bush has a history and an agenda of using one faction against another.
To this end the United States is training 20,000 Kurds to oppose Iran and it seems also Azerbaijanis. If Bush can add the Arabs to this group he might be able to come up with a formidable force to oppose Iran with little of our own troop involvement. Looks better for us if no one knows.
You make a very valid point however long term management of such things is not something I would expect the Bushies to do very well with. War in general is unpredictable and underestimating anyone of these groups or someone elses influence over one of these groups could backfire much worse than Iraq itself. Look at Kosovo. We actually lost the war to Milosovich in practical terms. The Russians took control of the airport in Kosovo. It took them several months to actually get Milosovich after the war AND last time I looked into it virtually nothing had changed. Milosovich's family still controls Serbia minus Kosovo which Milosovich was willing to give us without our invading. Milosovichs wife is in exile in Moscow calling many of the shots back home and the sons remain in Belgrade along with virtually all of Milosovich's Cronies still in place controlling the Milosovich empire. Short term what you suggest may work very well for the Bushies but the longer term I think we wont be able to control much of it if China and Russia are willing to go to war.
These are two ways in which Bush is already attacking Iran.
The United States is fostering ethnic disputes and is preparing the ground for a kind of compromising Islam to dominate the area in a bid to attain its own economic and hegemonic goals.
Cases in point:
Religions are not being wiped out; they are too good a tool. They will be slowly and insidiously changed in order to become more conducive to the needs of the state.
Thus we read in the following text that although Beijing has given up its bid to wipe out religion as an "opiate of the masses," its strategy these days is to repress, control and otherwise harness the growing popularity of organized faith in the service of the Communist Party just as Washington has harnessed the growing popularity of the unwitting Christian Right in the service of perpetual war and world domination in the service of the Bush administration. #msg-3858690
US intelligence agencies, whose operatives now maintain a strong presence in Arab capitals and rural areas, play a decisive role in determining what organisations, or individuals, are to be classified as terrorists or financiers of terrorism, and therefore prosecuted or banned. The result is that Arab leaders are devoting most of their time to the ‘pursuit of terrorists’, to the neglect of more pressing social and economic issues. Laws relating to security and human rights have been drastically amended, as have fiscal laws, to facilitate the persecution of ‘suspected terrorists’ and ‘al-Qa’ida sympathisers’, and to block the flow of funds to Islamic organisations (even charities) labelled as such. Arab governments are mobilizing Arab Muslim scholars and ‘intellectuals’ to hold meetings to "reinterpret" the Qur’an and ahadith and depict ‘Islamic extremists’ and their backers as ‘terrorists’.
But one of the most dangerous developments is the Arab officials’ call on the ulama to "reinterpret" the Qur’an and persuade young Muslims that belonging to ‘extremist’ Islamic groups is against Islam. #msg-6476192
Bush has a history and an agenda of using one faction or ethnic group against another.
To this end the United States is training 20,000 Kurds to oppose Iran and it seems also Azerbaijanis. If Bush can add the Arabs to this group he might be able to come up with a formidable force to oppose Iran with little of our own troop involvement.
Where the details of the operation with the participation of Azerbaijanis against Iran are being considered. #msg-6273446
Dividing the Arabs against the Persians is the same strategy Bush has been trying in the Persian Gulf Island Dispute. #msg-3136614
The Sunni Arabs know they have an education and experience advantage over the more numerous Shia Arabs. They know that powerful Sunni Arab nations in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, will back them in many ways. The fear of Islamic conservatism from Shia Iran can also be manipulated. #msg-6071457
-Am
Iran slams US for provoking ethnic disputes
www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-26 23:38:14
TEHRAN, May 26 (Xinhuanet) -- A top Iranian official slammed the United States on Thursday for encouraging regime change in Iran by provoking ethnic and racial strifes, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"The United States is trying to deviate the young generation (of Iran) from ethics and aspirations of the Islamic Revolution, and they have resorted to all means to provoke unrest in the country,"Information Minister Ali Younesi was quoted as saying.
On April 15, a letter, which was said to be written by Iran'sformer vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi to promote a coercive migration of Arabs in the southwestern province of Khuzestan,touched off riots in the provincial capital of Ahvaz.
Iran disclaimed the letter and reined in the unrest, claiming "some foreign agents" were behind the incident.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on April 11 that Washington had earmarked 3 million US dollars to "promote democracy in Iran," a move criticized by Tehran as "interfering in Iran's internal affairs."
Younesi said the West, represented by Washington, has been trying to politicize the existing ethnic and racial issues in Iran and distort the image of the Islamic government.
"US officials should know that igniting a hardware revolution ora war in Iran will only cause them to lose their target and willalso turn the country into a big cemetery for their soldiers,"Younesi warned.
The minister said Washington, by taking hostile and aggressive measures against Iran, pursued to strengthen its grip on the Middle East.
"The Middle East, due to its strategic situation, has always been considered as a center for provoking rifts among political andethnic disputes," Younesi said.
"The United States is preparing the ground for a kind of compromising Islam to dominate the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East in a bid to attain its own economic and hegemonic goals," he added.
Iran and the United States have become hostile to each other since the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The United States accuses Iran of threatening the world peace by developing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorists, labeling the Islamic Republic as part of "the axis of evil".
In return, Iran terms Washington as enemy of the Islam. Enditem
Selling Kurdistan via California By Bill Berkowitz
Aug 3, 2005
OAKLAND, California - As chaos continues across much of Iraq, the governing authority is coming to yet another crossroads.
Inside the Green Zone - the location of the US Embassy and major Iraqi government offices - officials are struggling to forge an acceptable constitution by the mid-August deadline. Outside the relative safety of that enclave, the insurgency continues apace as demonstrated by daily suicide bombings and civilian casualties.
While the Shi'ite leaders of the government are negotiating deals and solidifying ties with Iran, and the Sunnis remain mostly disaffected from the political process, the Kurds appear to have mastered a dual strategy of participating in government decisions while at the same time taking matters regarding their future into their own hands.
The generally efficient, if questionable, electoral process in January not only turned out large numbers of voters, but it also allowed Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, to be selected as the country's president, ensuring close participation by the Kurds in all important government deliberations.
In a parallel strategic track, however, the Kurdish Regional Government appears to be keeping its options open, recently hiring Russo Marsh & Rogers (RM&R) - a Sacramento, California-based public relations firm with close ties to the Republican Party - to promote its interests.
Many political observers believe that the future of Iraq may see a full-blown civil war or possible partition. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently wrote in The New Yorker magazine that a United Nations official involved in the elections told him: "The election was not an election but a referendum on ethnic and religious identity. For the Kurds, voting was about self-determination."
RM&R's Joe Wierzbicki said, "Our job with the Kurds is to carry out a public relations campaign that will thank the American people for supporting the war in Iraq and encourage Americans to visit and invest in the Kurdish region."
The project has not yet begun and it is unclear how long the contract will actually run. "It's a short-term thing because they don't know how long the public relations campaign might go," Wierzbicki said.
RM&R took on this work, he said, because "of all the different groups in Iraq that have a vision for the future, the vision of the Kurds is closest to ours. It's important to recognize that the Kurds are not hostile to the West. Their vision, belief system and values - they've had a democratic system in place for a while - parallel ours.
"It's a very messy situation over there and the country is trying to figure out its future. The Kurds would like the rest of country to look at the Kurdish region and see it as a model for the rest of the country."
Wierzbicki quickly added that they are definitely "not advocating an independent Kurdistan" and was circumspect about exactly what issues his firm would be handling.
But according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, one of the chief goals of Kurdish leaders is "the return of Kirkuk", an oil-rich northern Iraqi city populated by Kurdish and Turkmen people. The struggle over Kirkuk could precipitate a major conflict within Iraq.
The public relations campaign's launch date could come as soon as later this summer or could be put off until the fall, Wierzbicki said, and the campaign would likely feature television and print advertisements.
The "war on terror" has been good to RM&R. Shortly after September 11, it supported a brief but nasty and failed campaign to unseat California Democrat Representative Barbara Lee, after she had cast the lone Congressional vote against giving President George W Bush a blank check to pursue his war on international terrorism.
Lee, who received numerous death threats and received special condemnatory attention from David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, was challenged by former Green Party state assemblywoman Audie Bock.
With the support of RM&R, Bock came out of the box with the campaign slogan, "It's OK to Love America." Completely misjudging the electorate in the Ninth District, a district that was represented by Ron Dellums, the longtime voice for anti-militarism and social justice, Bock's campaign came to a crashing halt in short order.
Before RM&R finalized the deal with the Kurds, it had other business in Iraq to attend to: handling the publicity for the "Truth Tour", a seven-day carefully calibrated trip to Iraq by a group of conservative radio talk-show hosts that was intended to spread the "good news" about what is happening on the ground.
The tour was organized by Move America Forward (MAF), an organization that, according to the Washington Post, owes much of its existence to the good offices of RM&R. The Office of Media Outreach, a taxpayer-funded publicity arm of the Department of Defense, also sponsored the tour.
MAF describes itself as "a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to preserving our American heritage of freedom and liberty".
Its website pointed out that the purpose of the "Truth Tour" was "to report the good news on Operation Iraqi Freedom you're not hearing from the old line news media ... to get the news straight from our troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including the positive developments and successes they are achieving".
Wierzbicki said that from the very beginning, MAF was the project of Howard Kaloogian, a former California state assemblyman, and Melanie Morgan, the co-host of a morning show on KSFO-AM in San Francisco, and that Sal Russo, the founder of RM&R, "helped set it in motion".
Wierzbicki allowed that RM&R has done "all of the [group's] public relations stuff, press releases, and radio and television ads that have been aired to date".
MAF is currently soliciting contributions to run an advertising campaign called "Tortured Words", a commercial aimed at countering Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's recent criticism of the conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. MAF intends to run the ads on major broadcast affiliates such as NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox throughout Durbin's home state of Illinois.
In June 2004, eager to discredit Michael Moore's award-winning documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 before it hit the movie theaters, RM&R collaborated with MAF to lead a campaign that urged its supporters to stop Michael Moore "by taking action against the release of his anti-American movie Fahrenheit 9/11".
RM&R's web site claims that when it comes to winning elections, few firms can match its success.
By its own accounts, its record is impressive. It maintains that it devised the campaign strategy that allowed George Pataki, "a little known state Senator" from Peekskill, New York to defeat New York's Governor Mario Cuomo.
RM&R also "was hired by the California Republican Party to help salvage a sagging campaign to pass Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative (also known as the anti-affirmative action initiative) (and) in the weeks leading up to election say (it) produced an advertising campaign which saved the initiative".
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the US Right.
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