Middle East

Whenever I think of the way the US left Viet Nam, I imagine the scene from the beginning of Raiders of The Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is running through the jungle to his waiting pontoon plane, being chased by local natives, scrambling across the beach yelling “Start the plane! Start the plane!”, swinging on a vine and landing in the lagoon, swimming up to the pontoon and grabbing hold while the plane starts off down it’s watery runway for takeoff as spears and arrows land all around.

I get a similar emotion when I think of the Blackhawk Down situation in Mogadishu.

And I am starting to get the feeling that the situation in Iraq will be the same now that the Democrats are taking over.

It may not be politically correct, but I hope the US takes advice from John Robson.

What would Caesar do in Iraq? I ask not only because it was in that region that Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. I ask because Imperial Romans habitually thought clearly and acted decisively on geopolitical questions.

As democratic politicians too often do the opposite, let me offer a simple, Caesarean solution to cut through the trouble and deliver Western security interests alive and well.

…

My plan A that won’t happen is the coalition troops grab their stuff and leave … through Syria. About 200,000 heavily armed, highly trained, really annoyed U. S. and other coalition troops stomp Bashir Assad’s regime flat, hang a left through Lebanon to demolish Hezbollah, then sail home from Haifa waving a sign saying: “Don’t make us come back and do that again.” I call this plan Caesarean because it’s the sort of thing Imperial Rome would have done to extricate itself from Iraq while inspiring salutary caution in its enemies, especially following the provocative assassination of Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon. But you know it’s not going to happen and you know why.

Far from being the ogre of Michael Moore’s fantasies, the U. S. lacks even the hard-headed sang-froid of imperial Britain, let alone Rome.

To expand Robson’s point, I think the Democrats lack the sang-froid of Scooby Doo and Shaggy when their box is out of Scooby Snacks.

Robson goes on with a plan B that makes a lot of sense to me.

…devise a Plan B that could happen. Namely that the U. S partitions Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite countries and leaves at least the latter two.

This plan is also Caesarean, and not just because Iraq est omnis divisa in partes tres. Yes, I realize it would require some people to relocate, but moving beats dying in a bloody civil war. Meanwhile my proposal has three decisive geopolitical virtues for the coalition (beyond the PR plus that if sectarian violence persists it will be clear who’s to blame).

First, whatever the various domestic and foreign insurgents in Iraq want, it clearly isn’t partition. Second, once done it would be extremely hard to undo. Third, it lets the coalition depart without fleeing, leaving in splendid Roman fashion at least one client state very keen on U. S. support.

John Robson writes for the Ottawa Citizen and can be heard every Friday morning with Steve Madely on CFRA between 8am and 9am. He also has a new book out that Mark Steyn has given a strong endorsement for.