The Old Gang At AEI

November 10, 2004

The American Enterprise Institute, that redoubt of neocon orthodoxy, held a session Tuesday on the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and a lot of it revolved (of course) around Iraq. So many people wanted to speak that they had to cram the panelists cheek by jowl along the platform, even adding Michael Rubin at the last minute.

Rubin, who is a sort of a neocon-in-training, had just returned from Iraq, where no doubt he was getting a last look at the wonderful progress we’ve made there. During 2003, Rubin was given the unsavory job of acting as one of Ahmed Chalabi’s handlers. (That would be the same Chalabi who deliberately fed lies to the CIA about Iraqi WMD, who blabbed U.S. secrets to Iran, and who is now apparently snuggling with Muqtada Sadr in some odd-couple election strategy.) “Iraqis,” chortled Rubin, “are incredibly enthusiastic about voting.” Of course, many of them are also enthusiastic about blowing up American troops.

Rubin noted optimistically that the two big Shiite parties are “coalescing,” that Sadr might join in, and that even the two Kurdish parties are considering throwing in with one big Shiite-Kurd party in the January elections, meaning that only the Sunnis will be odd men out.

Tom Donnelly, the AEI’s know-nothing military expert and one of the heads of the Project for a New American Century, was gleeful about the Fallujah offensive. It is, he said, more than just an operation to smash Fallujah. It will “finally crush the Sunni resistance and cut it off from a variety of regimes and non-state actors.” By “regimes,” he means Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and other Sunni-led governments in the Arab world who are worried about a Shiite-led (and possibly Iran-allied) Iraq. Oh well. They bet wrong on the Iraq war. Time for some more regime changes.

Speaking of regime change, one panelist suggested that it start at home. “We might start with regime change, but regime change in the State Department,” said an Asia expert on the panel. He and others called for expanding the Iraq-style Bush Doctrine (Bush has a doctrine?) to include China as well, and several panelists suggested the Bush & Co. would be itching for a showdown with China. “A great power confrontation,” warned Donnelly, “is rising pretty substantially.”

Reuel Gerecht, a thoughtful analyst and former CIA officer, did have a word of caution for the Bush administration. Fallujah, he said, will be a test of “Iraqification,” that is, of the Rumsfeld plan to use Iraqi forces to suppress the resistance and keep order. If it works, if the Iraqi forces perform well, then maybe the situation will stabilize. But if the don’t, and so far they haven’t, the administration’s approach “will collapse,” and Prime Minister Allawi will be a “dead duck.” None of the AEI people like Allawi much, since he was allied with the more realist CIA faction of the Bush administration before the war, not the neocon Pentagon faction. But he’s the best Allawi they’ve got, now. Rubin was at pains to stress that Allawi is not popular, that he has his “hand in the till,” and that he wants to postpone the election so he can stay in power. Oh well.

Various panelists also discussed the possibility of a U.S. strike against Iran during Bush II. They mostly ridiculed the European efforts to make a deal with Iran, and suggested that a huge debate is underway in the administration over whether or not to attack Iran. Exactly what the attack would accomplish isn’t clear, since Iran is years from developing a bomb, though I suppose an attack would make it even more years away, possibly—at the cost of a really pissed-off bunch of mullahs. As Donnelly said, in almost an aside, “The line between a surgical strike and all-out war or Iraq-style containment of Iran is thin.” He said that an attack is unlikely, but Gerecht said it’s being debated seriously. My guess is, Gerecht is right—but it’s all behind closed doors. (Maybe Bob Woodward is in there, taking notes.)