Well well. I see Sahib Sebastian Gorka is finally making useful himself to John Batchelor's audience.

I did not listen to the Sahib's Friday night chat with John on account of my blood pressure already being high enough for that day. But it turned out the one time I didn't tune in he presented a perfectly respectable and informed analysis of Obama's Iraq exit strategy. Happily John summarized Gorka's points in a post (see below), which boil down to the leader of the world's lone superpower nation squirting WD-40 on the floorboards so they won't squeak when he orders the U.S. military to tiptoe out the back door.

So. Provided Gorka stays away from discussing again what Pakistani generals and high-level Afghan officials tell him the United States should do in Afghanistan I might sheathe my claws in future. However, I have advice for the Sahib: the next time Pakistani generals tell him about their red-line issues in Afghanistan, he's not supposed to pass along their caterwauling. He's supposed to sneeze in their faces.

Five Years from Iraq
by John Batchelor
August 7, 2010

Spoke to Sebastian Gorka [Foundation for the Defense of Democracies] re the Obama administration policy for Iraq and learned that there is no policy after the withdrawal of combat troops.

POTUS Obama asserts that he is keeping a campaign pledge to move the US out of Iraq. This is not the same as establishing a policy with goals and alternatives. POTUS and VPOTUS are satisfied with quitting a fragile state that is easily pulled apart by the usual thugs.

Gorka asserts that AlQ will be first to take advantage of our exit and will rally the usual Sunni Baathists. The Kurds easily reject the Baghdad crowd. The Shia of the south are well under the wing of Tehran. The current PM Maliki is a viceroy of the IRGC.

Five years from now? A client state of Tehran, contributing troops, ships and rhetoric to the witches brew cooked up by the Twelvers of Tehran. POTUS knows some of this, and yet continues to assume that his diplomacy will win over the Twelvers and their sadistic military cult, the IRGC. This is delusional planning at best.

Five years from now, Iraq will mount missiles that can reach Israel and the Arabian oilfields. Five years from now, Russia will be doing big business in Iraq with energy and arms. Five years from now, POTUS and VPOTUS will be avoiding the question, "Who lost Iraq?" I remind myself with Colin Powell's famous proverb, You break it, you own it.

We broke Iraq. We interrupted Iraq's self-loathing; we introduced another kind of fate; we banished the wretchedness of the Saddamites. We broke the savage Iraq. We own it.