In his latest article in the New Yorker, veteran reporter Seymour Hersch explores the complex geopolitical calculus in the Middle East.  The article is long and deep, and I had to read it twice to follow Hersch's underlying narrative.  That narrative might be summarized as:  the Bush Administration's new strategy in the Middle East is to use Iran, and the Shi'a, as a convenient foil.  If true, this marks the advent of a third phase in the U.S. war against Islamic radicalism.

The "Existential Threat" -- The grounds for the war against Islamic radicalism are essentially two-fold.  The U.S. and the Western democracies are largely dependent on Middle East oil.  Islamic radicalism threatens to disrupt the flow of oil and thus unhinge the U.S. and Western economies.  In addition, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict offers both a recruiting motive and a vulnerable target for Islamic radicals.  Note that this definition of the threat does not distinguish between the various bases of or motivations for "Islamic radicalism."  It paints all jihadists with a single brush.  This fundamental flaw crippled both the Clinton and Bush-Iraq strategies.  The identification of those different varieties and causes of Islamic radicalism is the basis for the Bush-Iran Strategy (see below).

The Clinton Strategy: Chasing Ghosts -- The strategy of the Clinton Administration has been described as "chasing ghosts."  It was primarily and intelligence and law enforcement strategy seeking to identify, infiltrate, interdict, and imprison terrorist cells and their members.  Patterned after the FBI operations against the KKK and other groups in the 1960s and '70s, this strategy proved to be inadequate for its new task, for three reasons:

• First, it relied on hand-in-glove cooperation between U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, many of whom were (and are) of dubious reliability.  Those operational relationships hinged on the coincidence of convergent interests.  Radical groups that attacked the government's political rivals would be protected, unless and until they targeted the government's own supporters.
• Second, the groups were ephemeral, forming here under one name to conduct an operation against one target, then evaporating ... only to form there under another name for another operation.  This was often to secure the local government's protection for the first act, and thereby evade detection for the second.
• Third, and most importantly, the strategy failed to appreciate the diverse motives and agendas of such groups.  Muslim nationalists in Indonesia were lumped in the same database alongside the dissident Muslim Brotherhood seeking to depose the secular regime in Egypt, or Palestinians fighting for what they considered their homelands in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.  This created a "needle in a haystack" situation where "the enemy" (as if they were one enemy) could appear anywhere, anytime.  Chasing ghosts, indeed.

Bush and Iraq: Bait and Destroy -- The Bush Administration, both pre- and post-9/11, intended to pursue a different strategy.  Rather than "chasing ghosts," what then National Security Director Condoleeza Rice described as "swatting flies," the new strategy would be one of "bait-and destroy."  Under the guise of fighting "state-sponsored terrorism," the idea was to invade and occupy a "suspect" country in the Middle East, where our troops would then provide an irresistable bait for Islamic radicals.  "The enemy" (again, as if it were one enemy) would concentrate around our occupying forces, and our military could defeat them en masse rather than "chasing ghosts."

While 9/11 provided a convenient political pretext for launching this strategy, documents from PNAC and other associated groups suggest that some pretext would have been found regardless.  And that pretext would have targeted Iraq, for reasons of operational convenience.  The U.S. had substantial military assets on Iraq's borders, and a U.N. resolution authorizing regular overflights of Iraqi airspace, essential for gleaning detailed military intelligence.  Saddam's bluffing game regarding WMDs, trying to convince his regional rivals that he was still a force with which to be reckoned, gave a specific pretext for the bait-and-destroy mission.

The bait-and-destroy strategy failed for three reasons:

• The post-Saddam planning was focused on crushing a concentrated foreign insurgent force, drawn to the bait of U.S. troops in a war zone, and did not plan on a (much more widespread) indigenous insurgency.  That indigenous insurgency subsumed the operations of Al Qaeda and other foreign actors, providing cover by the magnitude of attacks, and also offering a friendly (or at least sympathetic) local populace into which foreign operators could disappear.
• U.S. counter-insurgency operations were clumsy and heavy-handed.  From ignoring the rioting after Saddam's fall, to U.S. corporate profiteering at the expense of Iraqi businesses, to the horrific images from Abu Ghraib, the U.S. repeatedly lost the "hearts and minds" battle that might have enabled us to quell the indigenous insurgency in its infancy.
• Finally, again, U.S. planning failed to appreciate the diverse nature of "Islamic radicalism."  But  Al Zarqawi did not, and very quickly turned Al Qaeda's efforts toward sparking a sectarian civil war.  Ignorant of the long-standing hatred between Sunni and Shi'a radicals, U.S. forces failed to recognize that Iraqi Sunni and Shi'a had gone to war with each other.  An IED was an IED was an IED, no matter who had planted it or against whom it was targeted.

Bush and Iran: Divide and Conquer -- The new strategy, which Hersch calls "redirection," is a deadly and dangerous game of divide-and-conquer.  It (finally!) notes the many divergent strains and sources of radicalism in the Islamic world, and seeks to turn them against each other.  In this analysis, the much-hyped threat of an Iranian-Shi'ite hegemony is not so much to justify a U.S. attack on Iran -- which we lack the capacity to carry out in any decisive way -- but rather to provoke and redirect radical Sunnis to attack radical Shi'ites.

The theory seems to be that radical Sunnis (e.g.: Al Qaeda) and radical Shi'ites (e.g.: Hezbollah) hate each other more than they hate Israel or the U.S.  As a Saudi source in Hersch's article says, "We don't mind [radical Sunnis] throwing bombs.  We mind who they're throwing bombs at [U.S. forces in Iraq]."

This strategy is yielding a seemingly bizarre rapprochment between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  The plan is that the Saudis will lean on Hamas to stop terrorist acts against Israel ... and target (Shi'ite) Hezbollah in Lebanon instead.  Similarly, the Saudis will urge Al Qaeda and other Sunni groups in Iraq to stop targeting U.S. forces, and instead to focus on "cleansing" the Sunni Triangle and Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad.  "The Shi'a will get Iraq," one Saudi source told Hersch, "but they will go no farther."

In Hersch's analysis, the goal of the U.S./Israeli saber-rattling against Iran is not so much to build support for a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran, but rather to provoke Iranian leaders into making ever-more-radical statements and actions ... so as to incite increasing distrust and resistance in the Sunni Arab world.  By holding up an Iranian Shi'a "boogeyman," the Bush Administration hopes to redirect Sunni radicalism.  If the Iranians and Shi'a can be portrayed as a threat equivalent to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- the thinking goes -- perhaps the U.S. and Osama Bin Laden can be allies once again ... this time in a mujahadin-like struggle against "the Shi'a Crescent."

If this is indeed the new Bush strategy, it's at least imaginative, and it's not simply "staying the course."  But I tend to be wary of policies that amount to poking sticks into two adjacent hornets' nests, and then trying to convince the hornets in each nest that the stick came from the other.  Violence does not breed peace, even when you've pitted one group of malcontents against another.  A lot of innocent people will die in the crossfire, and their children will not hold us above reproach when the body count is completed.

Ultimately, strategies that are grounded in deception -- not merely deception of the enemy, but of one's own people and one's allies -- are doomed to failure.  The truth will out, and both we and they will hold the liars accountable once it does.  That is the essence of blowback.

Crissie