Bright Spot In The Middle East

[Valin]

Via Meadia: Walter Russell Mead

6/4/12

 

The Middle East is looking pretty dismal for the Obama administration right now. That peace process he was going to revive between Israelis and Palestinians? No US president since Richard Nixon has gotten less done on that front. The Arab Spring that was going to open a new era in US-Arab relations and turn power over to liberal, social-media empowered activists? Hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood or massacred by Syrian goons. The “good war” in Afghanistan, the “war of necessity” that a brilliant and wise Obama strategy would rescue from the bungling neglect of those Bush-era lunkheads? The less said about it these days, the better. The peace process with Iran? In tatters, as the Iranians crush our hopes for a breakthrough time after time.

 

But there is one bright spot in this dismal region, one country where US efforts have borne fruit. Unfortunately for the president, that country is — Iraq.

 

As a story in the New York Times over the weekend informs us, Iraqi oil production is booming. Last year Iraqi oil production averaged 2.5 million barrels per day — enough to put it among OPEC’s top producers and, crucially, enough to prevent the oil sanctions against Iran from spiking world oil prices and devastating western economies.

 

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Iraq continues what seems to be its historical mission of making American foreign policy experts look like idiots. After the absence of WMD and years of unexpected violence and war discredited the decision of the Bush administration and Tony Blair decision to go to war, the surge and the development of a somewhat stable Iraqi government discredited all the American experts (and they were legion) who said that Iraq was finished, kaput, and that the war was so hopelessly lost that ignominious retreat was America’s only option.

 

Now the Iraqis are continuing their streak. Those who said that the new Shiite Iraq would be a mere cats paw of Iran must accept the reality that on vital interests like oil production, the Iraqis are charting their own course. Those who said that civil unrest would permanently paralyze the country are watching oil production boom. Those who hoped for Iraqi democracy remain chagrined by a messy, corrupt and authoritarian government — while those who predicted failure and endless civil war have, so far at least, also had to eat their words.

 

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But granted all that and more, and not forgetting the terrible human toll among Americans, allies and above all of the Iraqis themselves, there is one more thing about the Iraq War that students of foreign policy need to get clear in their heads: the strategic aims of the war have been largely achieved. Nine years after the invasion, an independent Iraq has a military that is linked to the United States. The Arab world is moving against the autocracies and incompetent kleptocracies that at once blocked development and generated waves of hate against the US and the west. The dangerous minorities of the Shiite and Sunni communities who are radical terrorists and nutjobs are more focused on their hatred of each other than on their hatred of us. The Sunni Arab world has united with the US against Iran and its allies. Despite the alienation caused by the Iraq War and the execrable way it was launched, our closest European and Arab allies are working more effectively and in a more united way against Iran than ever before.

 

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Darn That George Bush!!!