Iraq
Slogger
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Robert Cornwall of The Independent foresees a ghastly situation
for the US and an all-out civil war; in fact, he argues that the
US
must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that
would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees,
and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil
supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington
and Iran.
He adds that this is the central recommendation of a study by
the Brookings Institution in D.C., based on the assumption that
President Bush's last-ditch troop increase fails to stabilise
the country - but also on the reality that Washington cannot simply
walk away from the growing disaster unleashed by the 2003 invasion.
Even the US staying to try to contain the fighting, said Kenneth
Pollack, one of the report's authors, "would consign Iraqis
to a terrible fate. Even if it works, we will have failed to provide
the Iraqis with the better future we promised." But it was
the "least bad option" open to the US to protect its
national interests in the event of full-scale civil war.
US troops, says the study, should withdraw from Iraqi cities.
This was "the only rational course of action, horrific though
it will be", as America refocused its efforts from preventing
civil war to containing its effects.
The unremittingly bleak document, drawing on the experience of
civil wars in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Congo and Afghanistan,
also offers a remarkably stark assessment of Iraq's "spill-over"
potential across the Persian Gulf region.
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