The Neoconservatives and the Islamic State

As the neoconservatives asked the American government to engage in pre-emptive war to protect the United States from aggression, they applied this policy to protect themselves from those who blame them for the Iraq War and its consequences, which stretch to the emergence and exacerbation of the Islamic State. It is an axiom of that war that their role was decisive. They had the greatest impact in dissolving the Iraqi army, and thus in opening the Iraqi door to the various forms of terrorism.

When we return to the facts and beginnings of the war, we find they strove to restrain and disable all serious discussion of the situation in Iraq and in the region after the war. They considered this effort a form of obstruction of the war, and they undervalued the consensus that called for good preparation, including sending a sufficient number of ground forces, over three times those that participated in the Iraqi campaign.

Americans who remember these facts and build upon an attitude toward the neoconservatives and toward the economic and ideological interests they represent will begin to discount them and critique their attitudes and influence on American public life. Therefore, it was necessary to keep the door of repudiation open and to recently re-enter it. Especially at the moment of the dramatic development of the Islamic State in the Arab region, which highlights another aspect of the errors and falls that accompanied the war on Iraq in its various stages. Especially when the occupation authority decided to dissolve the Iraqi army and create a security vacuum that has benefited the Islamic State group and all similar terrorist organizations.

To deny these mistakes and throw responsibility on others, and out of a desire to repeat the role played by the neoconservatives and extremist supporters of Israel and its supporters in the United States in a new and acceptable way, Richard Perle, a famous neoconservative theorist and strategist, has made a press release to Prospect magazine (in August 2014) in which he strongly criticized the American administration, and even the West in general, whom he blames for the development of the Islamic State group and similar phenomena.

Perle believes that the main mistake committed by the West in dealing with the region is the exaggeration of the importance of the territorial unity of the Arab state. Moreover, according to his opinion, it crystallized in a time the region was gripped by separatist movements as floods and hurricanes swept the open land.

Now the United States repeats this mistake as it tries to prevent the disintegration of Iraq. In this context, the Prince of Darkness (as they call Perle in Washington) wears the clothes of advocates defending the distance of “parties from the center” and supports regional independence from the capital without having a ceiling to specify the extent of this independence. In this regard, he says that the American delegates to Baghdad were begging Kurdish leaders to agree to put the pesh merga under the Iraqi command as part of the Iraqi army in its war against the Islamic State. But he advised Kurdish leaders during his recent visit to Erbil not to commit a great folly by agreeing to the American advice. Perle is consistent with himself and with the neoconservative point of view of Iraq and the Arab state when he says that his support for the demands of Sunni tribal leaders is not less than his support for Kurdish aspirations in the north.

Perle and his neoconservative fellows are looking to spread these opinions, and to convince the decision-makers in Washington and its political body that the principles that govern American policy toward other regions in the world does not necessarily serve as a basis for dealing with the Arab region. Why? Because “the Middle East is part of our region.”

Perle does not offer a clear explanation for this putative link between the Middle East and “the region.” Perhaps it allows for the citizens of Middle Eastern countries to contribute to the upcoming American elections, but it is unlikely that Perle reaches this level of enthusiasm for the special links between the United States and the Middle East! Most likely the neoconservatives consider that Washington's relationship with the Middle East is as important as U.S.-Israel relations. This relationship will legalize American intervention in regional issues, and allow it to work on building a new Middle East composed of small-sized countries with limited potential, modest aspirations and limited goals. These terms of reference are applicable to the Arab countries, but not Israel. While these conditions are required to give the components of Arab societies the right to autonomy or independence from countries such as Iraq, Syria, Sudan and others and, if necessary, societies with a pluralistic nature, no conditions apply to Israel.

The moral and intellectual influence of the neoconservatives has declined in the United States today since the presidency of George W. Bush before the Iraq War. Many have abandoned the activists and thinkers who believe that George Bush and the neoconservatives really wanted to build a democracy in Iraq, and then discovered that they were not on that path. Many abandoned them when they discovered the realities of the Iraq War, and when the real loyalties of those were put at stake. But memory may betray the public opinion often, especially in the absence of awareness of the seriousness of repetitive mistakes and many opportunities given to those who do not deserve them. Even if someone got up to do the job, the damage caused by the neoconservatives of the Arabs and the United States will most likely be repeated.