In the above illustrated interview Charlie Rose conducted in 2006 with Henry Kissinger, who is very close to the ruling elite in the U.S and is actually an unofficial advisor to Neo-conservative ideological intellectual administration, Kissinger admitted that the outcome of the Iraq war up till then was unfortunate, yet he refused to condemn the situation in Iraq at the time-which is much the same as the situation nowadays-simply because he viewed it as an “evolutionary” process that would govern the future of the entire Islamic world. He clearly stated that his support of the invasion can be justified on the grounds of preventing, what he calls in his own words, “the revolutionary fervour sweeping the Islamic world from reaching Iraq.. and his resources”. To my humble ears, that sounds like saying that the resources of Iraq are ours to decide who should get access to them and who shouldn't. No comment.

Anyway, let's Shed aside this moral argument regarding the right of the U.S to decide on behalf of people of other countries which political factions ought/ ought not run their resources, and stick to what is actually “being done” in light of the prevalent power relations. Thereby, we read Mr Kissinger as saying that the U.S invaded Iraq to prevent the resources of Iraq from falling into the hands of Islamists. One would think, having listened to this strong statement, that Islamic revolutionary movements are taking over the Arab world, well, think of Jordan, Syria or, Saudi Arabia- the strong ally of the U.S, do these aforementioned states seem on the verge of handing power over to Islamic guerrillas or even the relatively more moderate politically pragmatic Muslim brotherhood? Of course Dr. Kissinger- the Middle- East expert- who took part in shaping the history of entire the Middle- East knows very well that Iraq was the most secular state in the Arab world when it was ruled by Saddam's regime which had been ensueing drastic grass root modernisations in Iraq ever since the seventies ( actually the main reason behind Saddam’s decision to retaliate to the Iranian harassments by escalating tensions into a full war was Iran’s viscous resistance to Iraq secular modernist project in the south where religious fever is strong, especially after the retrograde destructive revolution of the demagogue Ayatollah Khomeini had taken place). Furthermore, if we agree that there is revolutionary wave taking over the Arab world, why pick up Iraq? Why not Lebanon for example- an easier military target by far, where there is an anti-American pro-Iran Islamic group that is engaged in a state of war with Israel and is classified as a terrorist organization. Needless to add, the strong links it shares with Sunni political movements all over the Arab world.

Rose poked Kissinger by quoting Bob Woodward claiming that Kissinger advocated the invasion of Iraq because U.S must “teach them a lesson". Kissinger who has a charming laid back attitude mixed with an intellectual unease, is a man with an assertive look that is subtly snobbish while it hides itself behind sleepy eyes. A man like Kissinger- with such remarkable history of successes in American policy engineering, think of the Egyptian Israeli war in 1973 , the Vietnam war, the Ping-Pong diplomacy with China and when water gate affair was on top in Amrican news , he was the real president of the U.S- is not to be intimidated or cornered easily, especially with his articulate use of intelligent vocabulary that can always find him a way out. Never the less, he got hectic and cracked down on those who are not careful when they are quoting others. Well, fair enough. No wait, listen to this, Kissinger stated that aim of the war is not teaching them a lesson, but rather, in his own words, "making a point to those who challenge the U.S that the consequences would be disastrous". The man was only objecting at quoting him using that sort of popular vocabulary which is not up to the standards of the star of American political academia!


What is worse, the laid back Dr. Kissinger with a charming continental accent panicked when Rose made ( deliberate) a slip tongue and said Iran instead of Iraq when he was asking him about his reasons for supporting the war and emphasised that had never said Iran. So Iran is untouchable, “no way I would have said so”, but the destruction of the Arab Iraq is O.K. Wait a moment here, isn’t Iran, the revolutionary Islamic state that calls the U.S big Satan and is supporting the Hezbollah’s in its campaign of launching ineffective childish rockets on Israel? Mr. Kissinger, haven’t you just said that you want to check the Islamic revolutionary fervour in the Islamic world? have you? Rose insisted on knowing whom Kissinger sought to make a point. Kissinger answer was "the insipient movement that was spreading through the region of which 911 was an expression". Rose: that is primarily Al-Queda? Kissinger: well It was executed by Al-Queda but now it is taking other forms. Bravo Mr. Kissinger. You have done the impossible. You have shown that the huge heap of evidence and consensus of all reports that Iraq had no link to Al-Queda to be a worthless lot of toxic scrap metal. The war on Iraq was a actually a war on Al-Queda.

Charlie Rose switched to direct offence and confronted Kissinger with the claims that there is world- wide view that the war was a proof of American combined arrogance and incompetence- an effect, in Charlie's’s own words, that is quite the opposite of what Kissinger had intended.

Here Kissinger played the Idiot by saying that he hadn’t thought the process would unfold in this direction, however it is not practical to go over mistakes that might have been made in the past. In other words, forget about the hundreds of thousands of slain Iraqis and the destruction of a country just for the sake of giving way to a highly hypothetical evolutionary process, using his own terminology, that has started to unfold. That reads, we are creating a new Middle- East order, so some slain Arabs are not really significant when set against a background of such a “noble cause”. He justified his miscalculation on the premises of his being surprised to find out that they were trying to democratise a society that is not a NATION. Poor Kissinger, the American strategic genius of the 20th century, the creator of new historical paths in the Middle east in the seventies, hadn’t known that Iraq was not a nation. So a country where 85% of population, according to CIA fact book, is made up of Arabs, a country which has the oldest history on earth, one which fought as one an 8 years ferocious war against the much bigger Iran and eventually brought down Ayatollah Khomeini on his knees- is not a nation. On the other hand, Iran where the so called Persians are only 50- 60% of the population while the rest are Turks, Belluchis, Arabs and Kurds is a nation. I wouldn't even dare to discuss the case of Israel where a religious identity is the sole glue that welds a society of divergent elements of numerous ethnic backgrounds into a nation that is one of a kind on earth. It seems that Mr. Kissinger has got his unique very special definition of the concept of nation-state.

This reading of Kissinger’s words is reinforced by the fact that throughout the interview he had been emphasising the emerging new world order where Globalisation and weakening of traditional nation-states is the goal of the U.S, whereas the opposing force is the rise of religious forces ( especially Islamic ones) that are working towards the same goal of changing the present nation-state based world order but in favour of religious based confederations instead.

In line with the previous reading, Kissinger responded to a question about the interests of U.S in the region apart of oil- in an implicit reference to Israel as Rose later on, in a different context, confronted him with the criticism directed at the big influence of the Jewish lobby in shaping the Middle-Eastern American foreign policy which made Kissinger seem uneasy, yet he provided the most politically correct answer- by stating: checking proliferation ( without specifying what kind of arms he wanted to check their proliferation). And to my own bewilderment, he went on and gave another reason that for me, at least, sounds quite bizarre, that is, fighting the growing trend of independent entities growing within the borders of Middle-Eastern nation-state based system, he named the Shiite Militias in Iraq, Hezbollah while Rose added Hamas. I hope you could see the paradoxical nature of Kissinger's statements here; wasn’t Iraq a secular nation-state that contained these centrifugal forces he claimed to be opposing? And aren’t numerous American policy papers talking about a new Middle east with new entities for Shiites, Kurds, Lebanese Christians and Copts? Moreover, isn't the discourse on bringing those groups- that are indespensible and integral parts of the current order- up to the surface as opressed minorities exactly works against this strategic goal? Didn't the U.S adminstartion use the protection of these groups as a moral qualification manipulated to the American public, which are self-contained and too much ill-informed on Arab and Middle eastern issues, so as to elude the huge public criticism after the collapse of the heavy set of lies it had put forward? Definetly these groups have got issues, but nothing that could not be handled within the frameworks of their legitmate nations. Taking a compartive perespective on the issue, would inevitably lead us to a clear-cut assertion that the status of these groups is satisfactory. Alas, there is no space in this article to shed light on the status of ethnic and religous minorities in China, Muslims in India, Red Indians and Mexcicans in the U.S...etc.

In order to make my point clear, lets go back to the statements of Kissinger in the interview where he provided his recipe for getting the U.S out of the Iraqi swamp that still maintained the presence and interests of the U.S in the Middle-East; as Rose reiterated fears about this war leading to the ejection of the U.S altogether from the Middle-East because of the tragic consequences of the Iraq war. In this context, Kissinger enthusiastically declared Iran as the the solution...he said that Iran hasn’t got any reasons to be scared of the U.S, all what the U.S wants from Iran is that it “ stops acting as a crusade”, which to me seems like saying Iran has to quit this nonsensical Khomeinist Jargon of exporting the revolution. He wants the Iranians to secure a safe and smooth American withdrawal from Iraq, in return they could have Iraq. That is not a conclusion of mine, Kissinger delightfully announced that Iraqi prime minister said that we [Iraqi government] are the luckiest on earth, at times of war we are protected by the U.S- while at peace the government is run by “ friends”-Iran.

He [Kissinger] further acknowledged that U.S had handed Iraq on a silver platter over to Iran by clarifying during several parts of the interview that U.S needed to implant a new structure in the Middle-East and the moderate Arab states have to realize that. He asserted there that vacuum created by the elimination of the strong Iraq, which provided space for Iran to expend must be counter filled by a new structure. What I can understand from this is that he might be wanting the Sunni Arab states to stand up against Iran which will substitute Israel as the enemy. Yet wait, Kissinger is a very articulate man who tailors his language rather meticulously.

So is it really the Arab states that are going to be the counter weight of the Iranian inflation? I can’t say so. Here, I shall recall Kissinger’s elimination of Hamas from the list of mini autonomous states functioning on the periphery of the existing nation-states. Of course any new order must not include any territorial concessions on part of Israel. Think also of exporting Hamas to Sinai where it would lock Egypt out of Middle east and isolate her in Africa rendering her inapt in countering the growing Iranian weight

Having run over Kissinger’s views as regards Iraq and Middle-East issue, has revealed the real reason behind the Iraq war. A geopolitical change in the Middle-East where Israel and Iran become the most prominent players. Whole new geopolitics that causes the most stubborn and unruly culture on earth-Arabic one to disappear and to be diluted within a set of sect and religion based weak states where Israel acts as a counter balance to the Iranian empire. Thus say goodbye to Palestinian cause-while Israel’s integration and security in the region becomes a- taken- for- granted- fact. So that's why Iraq had to be wiped off the map. It was the main obstacle to the emergence of the new Middle-East order. Don’t ever commit the mistake of thinking the Iraq war to be a war for oil, since this explanation entails inadequate understanding of the nature of political decision making in the U.S. Interest groups representing arms gurus, steel industry, oil tycoons, media and telecommunications giants, Jewish and other minorities lobbies, compete inside the power corridors of the capitol in a Darwinist fashion, within complex networks, through their representatives in the political elite circles for power over decision making processes. The power shifts non-uniformly between these groups over time, but an overall balance of the system is ensured through trade offs. In the post 9/11 era, neo-conservative and right wing intellectuals and ideologues- the students of the sixties philosopher and “cultural engineer” Levi Strauss consolidated much power to implement their ideal of cleansing the American nation of moral degeneration by bringing it back to its purtarian protestant roots where the land of Israel is the spiritual totem of the Christian nation as the resurrection of the Christ must be precedented with the rise of the nation of Israel. In fact, many evidence point that many oil companies were not pushing for the occupation of Iraq, if not opposing it. One way or the other, however, they had to be sufficiently lured into supporting the war by dangling the carrot of control over Iraq’s oil.

In light of this conclusion, what do you think is the power , or more accurately, ideology that represents the perfect antidote to this proposed new order? It doesn’t take much speculation to answer- it is Arab nationalism with its structural focus on Arab integration, renaissance and cultural independence. What was the last resort of Arab nationalism in the Middle-East? Answer is Iraq.