Comments for Why the Surge will push us into a War with Iran at http://pacificfreepress.com , comment 0 to 2 out of 2 comments http://pacificfreepress.com Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:42:56 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/884/81/#pc_1153 The Peters map presented last June and then to a NATO college in Rome in September tends to confirm some of the above guest's suggestions. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061116&articleId=3882 It is imperialist foreign policy strategy. Blue - a guest Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:39:34 +0100 http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/884/81/#pc_1151 You have put together a well-crafted piece on why the “surge” might effectuate war with Iran. The copious open source material supports a cogent position. I disagree with you on one fundamental, subtextual tenet: There is an overarching theory governing US foreign policies that I believe you have jettisoned short-shrift. The Anglo-American military-industrial-petroleum-intelligence-axis will not allow any nation-state in the Caspian Basin or the Persian Gulf to attain hegemonic status. Ipso facto, Iran's regional ambitions will be challenged by the Anglo-American condominium. This might mean a conventional conflict or a series of proxy wars. The theater of operations radiates from Iraq into Iran including Syria, Lebanon, the rest of the Gulf States and the Levant. By extension, this theater also subsumes interests in the Horn of Africa, the Caucuses and the Caspian Basin. The mainstream media are only able to hold up a mirror and reflect half the story. One must know the history of the region and the dynamic tensions that exist to see what is transpiring. Sound bites about "lies" and secret dodgy dossiers are red herrings - pablum for the hoi polloi. Geostrategy, geopolitics, international relations, and geoeconomic considerations are far too complex to be reduced to the phantasmagorial schizophrenia of the 24 hour news cycle and ephemeral literature. This transcends the tendentious rhetoric of the Washington elite as well. US foreign policy is crafted and perpetuated regardless of which party ostensibly holds power. I proffer here for consideration the Carter Doctrine. Carter propounded: "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." To attack the basis of the Bush Doctrine, one must first confront the realities of the aforementioned Carter Doctrine. The two are inextricable linked and share a common foundation. I believe this evinces a continuum in foreign policies across presidential administrations. Rhetorically, Carter and Bush are antipodal; however, in the sphere of national security, their weltanschauungs run confluent. Carter’s abdication from this stance after leaving office is ancillary and inconsequential. His ability to shape and prosecute foreign policy ended with his ouster from office. Regional suzerainty has been the declared US stance in the Middle East for more than a generation; the lineaments of this structure may have been augmented and updated, but the broad brush strokes remain the same. The Anglo-American axis will continue to pursue and preserve hegemony in the Persian Gulf and its logical peripheries: Africa and the Caspian basin. With this I believe we are witnessing the prosecution of a grand foreign policy scheme rather than a reactive, autistic attempt to extricate our forces from the Middle East. The antecedents run deep and the goal is clear: A fragmented Middle Eastern checkerboard with no clear hegemon with the Anglo-American condominium as suzerain. I invoke Bernard Lewis’s hypothetical map of the theater as an example. (http://www.daanspeak.com/IranAttackBernardLewisMap.html) While I adduce Lewis's map as a paradigm and not a foreign policy strategy, I believe this highlights the nature of the guidance that underpins the planning of the Anglo-American axis. In furtherance of this idea, I would invite one to research the Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999 (http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/regional/silkroad.html). This is codified proof of US ambition in the South Caucasus and Central Asia that transcends unexpected geopolitical developments such as the events of September 11, 2001 as well as administration transitions. - a guest Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:08:00 +0100