Sunday, May 02, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: OK, here's what to do in Iraq

OK, no one technically in charge of the mess Paul Bremer and the gang have been making in Iraq woke up this morning, asking if the paper had come out yet with Vin's advice on the situation there.

But I think we've held our peace -- crossing our fingers and hoping these guys had a plan -- long enough.

They have no plan.

Iraq was a stupid place to go to war in the first place. The Sept. 11 al-Qaida killers and their money came from Saudi, not Iraq. Attacking Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia so as not to get the whole Islamic world up in arms about its holy sites is like looking for your lost car keys under a street-

light half a block from where you lost them because the light is better there.

But that's neither here nor there. The question today is, "What to do about Iraq?"

With the twin benefits of distance and simplemindedness, let us make a few fairly safe assumptions:

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. plan was to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq in a pincer movement, sending the 4th Division down through Turkey and Kurdistan, and the 3rd up from the south, to meet in Baghdad.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the war. Our brave NATO "allies," the Turks, refused to let us deploy across their territory.

A two-pronged attack suddenly became a one-pronged attack. Much more risky.

I'm just guessing here, but let's presume that President Bush had someone in the State Department warn the Turks at that point that this refusal to act like a friendly NATO ally that had received billions of dollars in aid over the years would have "serious repercussions" in American foreign policy.

I think it's a safe bet.

Can anyone think of anything bad that has happened to the Turks since then -- some kind of public slap upside the head that will make other third-rate nations hesitate to cross Uncle Sam in future?

I didn't think so.

Well, posit this: What if there was something we could do, that would really upset the Turks and the Syrians (the Syrians are serious jerks -- not only are they aggressively against allowing Jews to live peacefully anywhere in the Middle East; not only are they an oppressive dictatorship closely rivaling that of Saddam Hussein; but they actually have men fighting our boys right now, today, in Fallujah) and, at one fell swoop, solve more than half our problems in Iraq?

Ready?

What the Turks least want to see in the Middle East is a fully independent Kurdistan, since the Kurds have territorial claims inside the current borders of Turkey.

So let's give it to them ... good and hard.

Who in hell decided we needed to keep Iraq -- a "country" outlined on some chart table in the British Admiralty offices in 1919 by some third-rate clerk with a long straightedge -- as a single unified country? How does this help us?

Paul Bremer -- assuming we don't want to recall him and replace him with a military governor who knows how to supply our boys with, oh, I don't know, gasoline, flak jackets and ammo -- could declare tomorrow that this whole "unified Iraq" thing has been a loser from the get-go.

Why are the Kurds upset with us?

They're not: They love us.

Why are the majority Shiites upset with us? Only because they've realized Bremer and company actually mean to impose on them some absurd and unwieldy coalition government designed to keep them from oppressing Saddam Hussein's Sunnis -- and could you think of a bunch more deserving of some healthy revenge?

Instead, all we have to do is cut Iraq into three pieces.

Oil-rich southern Shiastan would become our friend overnight. Don't bother "teaching them about democracy." Sign oil development treaties and get the hell out of there.

The new nation of Kurdistan would have a few problems -- though it has some oil wealth of its own. For one thing, it might need help defending itself against Turkey and Syria. So, sell them arms. Put some skilled Americans back to work turning out state-of-the-art weapons for the new Kurdish army. Sell them the stuff for oil ... or even oil futures. They're going to need a lot of stuff just carving an access corridor to their new capital ... Aleppo.

(Some may palpitate that this could lead to "instability." Well, what's so good about the "stability" of the Middle East's current oppressive satrapies, holding their people down and churning out suicide bombers? And what misbegotten expert on Argentine loans convinced this nation that our goal should be "stability," anyway? Our goal is freedom, a tree requiring occasional nourishment with the blood of patriots and tyrants.)

That leaves a really pitiful little land-locked third nation stuck in the middle of the desert, centered on a now-familiar triangle between Baghdad, Samara and Fallujah.

Awww. The rump state of Sunnicrapistan.

Build a wall around them. Set up some military fortress/watchtowers to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't become the new al-Qaida training center. If they do cause any trouble, use their settlements as bombing ranges for 1) the Shiastani Air Force, 2) the Kurdistani Air Force, and/or 3) the U.S. Air Force.

Otherwise, ignore the gibbering Sunni lunatics, and let them sink back into the well-deserved cultural oblivion they've been enjoying for the past 500 years.

Everyone keeps talking about how their big guy -- Saddam Hussein -- was such a ruthless dictator. Well, yeah. But don't let that distract you from what's even more significant: These people chose as their ruler an illiterate thug who -- given billions of dollars to work with -- decorated his "palaces" to look like some dumpster-furnished double-wide in Quartzite, Ariz.

Bringing them "civilization" isn't worth the life of a single U.S. Marine.

Independent Shiastan! Independent Kurdistan! Bring the boys home for Christmas!

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us.