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August 09, 2005
Diamond's view
Larry Diamond -- Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, former CPA advisor, and friend of the Watson Institute -- drops some wisdom (via Kevin Drum):
One of the issues that most baffles me in a way is the question of long-term military bases in Iraq. It’s now pretty clear that the ambition to establish long-term American military bases in Iraq, in order to secure the Persian Gulf region, contain Iranian expansion, and enable us to draw down or withdraw altogether our forces in Saudi Arabia, was an important motivation for going to war. When we pressed so vigorously and relentlessly in the drafting of the interim constitution for the easiest possible means of ratifying a treaty, it became clear to me that we were looking to smooth the way for an eventual treaty with Iraq giving us long-term basing rights.
At the same time, we know from a variety of sources, private as well as public, that intense opposition to US plans to establish long-term military bases in Iraq is one of the most passionate motivations behind the insurgency. There are many different strands to the violent resistance that plagues Iraq: Islamist and secular, Sunni and Shiite, Baathist and non-Baathist, Iraqi and foreign. The one thing that unites these disparate elements is Iraqi (or broader pan-Arab) nationalism—resistance to what they see as a long-term project for imperial domination by the United States. Neutralizing this anti-imperial passion—by clearly stating that we do not intend to remain in Iraq indefinitely—is essential to winding down the insurgency.
This conforms nicely to my own view of the administration's underlying motivation in Iraq: we went there to stay there, plain and simple. Check out the rest of Larry's stuff at TPMCafe. Not only does he write clearly and eloquently from ample experience -- both academic and practical -- but his blogging is generating a great discussion over there.
Posted by Daniel Widome at 08:39 PM to Middle East
