From Cakewalk to Quicksand

Enter Turkey

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

".....In fact, the war had hardly begun. Four years later with the failure in June 2007 of President Bush's desperate last measure--"the surge"--US offensive capability is exhausted. The US military can do no more and has less control of the situation than ever.

Perhaps the clearest indication that the war in Iraq is no longer under American control is Turkey's announcement of plans to invade northern Iraq, the home of the Iraqi Kurds. As June 2007 came to an end, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul announced that if US or Iraqi forces did not eliminate the Kurdish guerrillas that were attacking Turkey, the Turkish Army would move into northern Iraq to deal with the situation.

Foreign Minister Gul was unequivocal: "The military plans have been worked out in the finest detail. The government knows these plans and agrees with them. If neither the Iraqi government nor the US occupying forces can do this [crush the guerrillas], we will take our own decision and implement it.".....

The over-stretched American Empire hasn't any troops to send to northern Iraq. NATO, whose charter was to defend Western Europe from Soviet invasion should have been disbanded two decades ago. Today NATO functions as an auxiliary US force and has been sent to Afghanistan, where it is being defeated like the British and Russians before it.

In the midst of this unmanageable chaos, vice president Cheney, Bush's former UN ambassador John Bolton and large numbers of Christian and Jewish Zionists are demanding that the US attack Iran, and Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The unintended consequences of the "cakewalk war" are already far outside the Bush administration's ability to manage and will plague future governments for many years. For the administration to initiate new acts of aggression in the MIddle East would go beyond recklessness to insanity."