Does the high cost of peace in Iraq come from an Israeli pocket?

I had believed British Prime Minister Tony Blair made an incredibly boneheaded comment by suggesting a peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis could be morphed into peace in Iraq. Perhaps it’s not as boneheaded as I originally presumed but just a little off the mark.

Ynet News is reporting this;

WASHINGTON – The Sunday Times reported that Syria is expected to demand American help in securing the return of the Golan Heights from Israel as the price of cooperation over Iraq. Ayman Abdel Nour, a leading reformer in the ruling Ba’ath party, told the Times that Syrian President Bashar Assad wants America and Britain to use their influence with Israel to raise the return of the Golan Heights, seized by the Israelis in the 1967 war. “It will be the top demand,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

I was a supporter for the invasion of Iraq. But my reasons were not exclusive to the weapons of mass destruction argument though it did play a part. I perceived Iraq as just one battlefield before moving on to what I perceived the next front against international terrorism; Syria. After Syria came the showdown with Iran. Tactically, it would not make sense to leave Saddam in power at your back as one moved on to a confrontation with either Syria or Iran and Iraq also represented a geographical key to an effective tactical position for moving on Syria or Iran.

It would represent horrendous military incompetence to leave Saddam’s regime in tack with his weapons programs potentially able to be reconstituted at any given moment. Furthermore one could not count on Saddam staying out of the fight in his backyard either openly or covertly. To assume that Iraq was an ineffectual country filled with camel drivers or sheppards is just baseless bigotry and ignores the strongly educated technocratic population element or the number of men Saddam could field.

In Mid-East politics it’s the height of folly, to presume that because one country has enemies today that those same countries will have the same enemies tomorrow, as alliances shift like the sand in the desert. Study the Lebanese civil war if you need perspective. To leave Saddam unscathed was to ignore the potential for harm and malice he could cause to a western coalition as one entered into the lairs of the Terror Masters of Tehran.

By the late fall of 2004 when the Syrian malice was well known, I fully expected to see the US lead coalition forces rolling into Syria at the latest by late spring of 2005. This was necessary in order to kill any Syrian-Iranian alliance so that a full mobilization US Coalition forces would have the Iranians surrounded with no hostile belligerent forces at the Coalition backs.

When the spring of 2005 came and went and the Syrian invasion was nowhere in sight, I was flabbergasted to say the least. It was hard to comprehend that the Bush Administration fully intended to lose Iraq and the death of some many Iraqi’s was to be nothing more than mere cannon folder to whatever tyrant rose to the top of the heap to rule Iraq next. By the spring of 2006, it was painfully obvious that the Bush Administration had no intention of tackling the Terror Masters of Tehran head on and will instead seek to feed Iranian crocodiles.

To say that I was disillusioned with the Bush Administration is an understatement. Not only did the Bush Administration fail to live up to their rhetoric and promise but the administration was guilty of being every bit as incompetent and short-sighted as the legions of detractors and critics had vociferously denounced them to be. My only saving grace is that the opposition showed every sign and promise of being even worse. The only current scenarios I perceive of a US lead coalition moving openly against the Terror Masters of Tehran will only come to pass if a nuclear device of some kind is exploded on US soil.

I have often wondered what changed the Bush Administrations vision and resolve. There are two distinct possibilities. They are as incompetent and ineffectual as their detractors painted them to be or the US Administration has received intelligence which points to Iran being much further down the nuclear path than is widely presumed; hence the failed North Korean strategy being utilized with the Iranians.

Successive Israeli administrations have gone to bed so often with the Americans that they are now in a position of weakness and unable to act independently in their own national best interests. Furthermore, the current Kadima administration represents the single weakest Israeli administration in its history, and has allowed itself to be nothing more then the lapdog of American strategic interests. What is in the best interest of the Americans, is not necessarily the best interest of Israel.

In the coming weeks or perhaps even days, I fully expected to read that Olmert has once again forfeited Israeli national security and best interests by agreeing to American demands and allowed an armed PLO militant force from Jordan to supplement the Mahmoud Abbas’ Force 17 militia. Furthermore, I suspect the Olmert government to officialy announce a plan to ‘disengage or converge’ from a large swathe of Judea and Samaria (commonly referred to as the West Bank) in exchange for a tentative “hudna” for the next 10 years or so with the unified Fatah-Hamas government.

It will be heralded vociferously as a new day dawning in Israeli Palestinian relations but it will spiral out of control just as Oslo Accords has and will in fact make Israeli security the stuff of dreams. While the day-to-day reality for Israelis will be a waking nightmare for years to come and may represent the beginning of the end for the Israeli state. Into this nightmare scenario comes the Golan Heights card.

Just how desperate is the Bush Administration to salvage Iraq? The Syrians might not be trusted but if there is a opportunity to break the Syrian-Iran alliance with the potential to halt outside insurgent support in Iraq; can the Bush Administration really afford not to play that card?

Enter into the mix of a lack of Kadima coalition backbone to tackle the Iranian nuclear nightmare alone and shackled by a weak Israeli leadership and demoralized IDF. Can anyone really see Ehud Olmert standing resolute (other than his wife) in Israeli best interests when faced by unwavering American demands and possibly sweetened with a pie in the sky promise of full American support on the Iranian nuclear issue?