Whenever the United States experiences an obvious defeat, even an overwhelming one, certainly a group of people comes out in Turkey and say: “Everything is under American control. All these were known before and they were set up. Americans create an image of the defeated on purpose.” What's more interesting is that all those “U.S. advocates” claim they are anti-American. When you raise an objection and say that the U.S. could lose too, you will be labeled as “pro-American.”
No need to look far away. A number of those who believe that a network called al-Qaeda do not exist and Americans set up Sept. 11 are considerably high. Even today, those who claim that the difficulty the United States faces in Iraq is just another American trick and they earnestly say: “When Bush uttered the word of democracy, he was lying. What's he is really after is oil and to dwell in the Middle East for that. To reach his goal, he had to divide Muslims. And that is practiced in Iraq now.”
Strangely enough, some who have not-bad relations with the Bush administration make similar assessments in the United States. The most famous of these personalities is an expert in strategy, Edward Luttwak. In his op-ed titled “Two Alliances” published in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 10, Luttwak accepts that Bush set off to bring democracy to Iraq, but has failed. On the other hand, he says that some countries alarmed by the Shiite awakening such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan get closer to Washington, then continues, Iraqi Shiites see the United States as an ally. According to Luttwak, these two alliances and the revival of Sunni-Shiite conflict prove that the Bush administration was successful, though it was accidentally.
That is a lie. With the most optimistic statement, it is wishful thinking. There is no such thing and never will be. For instance, Luttwak terms the visit of Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim — leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who lived in exile for a long time and declaimed "death to America" on many occasions — to the White House as pocketing his pride. However, we could read this backward and could assess that Bush was a drowning man clutching at straws. Similarly, what will we say if the United States launches direct talks with Iran and Syria? Could it be, “America pressured so much that these two countries stepped back from ‘radicalism?'” Or could it be, “Bush was pushed in to the corner and he sit at the table perforce?”
Recently, I listened to Luttwak at the New America Foundation. He said the Iraq issue has been solved and Iran is next. According to him, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Belujis and other minorities are awfully disturbed by the regime. That is, there is no need to sit at the table with Tehran. If Washington supports opposition in Iran, the mullah regime will no longer live.
Luttwak look-alikes exaggerate the power of the United States to the brim and oddly underestimate Muslims. They give over-importance to the unorthodox groups in the Islamic world and think that they could control everything by instigating these opposition forces.
That is to say, they are both ignorant and arrogant. For this reason, they often go wrong and continue to do so. Luttwak types caused the birth of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the past. We will learn what kind of seeds they have sown in Iraq soon enough. Even more so, if they attempt to intervene in Iran, they will pay an unusually vehement price. In brief, the United States is losing and losing bad. Moreover, if continues with such ignorance and arrogance, America will lose more.