Iraq: The USA's great game of risk

There have been quite a few posts around the blogosphere in the last couple of days on the subject of the reasons, motivations and legalities of the Iraq invasion, and related topics. Since we discovered that there were actually no WMD still in Iraq as was claimed by the Coalition, which was their chief reason for going to war, there has been speculation about what the real reasons for the invasion actually were.

The Australian's Frank Devine has now thrown another explanation into the ring. This article is quite old, dated 26th November, and I'm surprised no one has blogged on it yet. I'd be quite interested to see how some of the more established bloggers respond to it.

In his column he draws attention to a book by George Friedman called America's Secret War. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, a private, subscription-financed global intelligence service, the information gathered from which he uses as evidence for the claims in his book. Claims that are likely to interest anyone wanting to know why there are still thousands of troops in the middle of the Iraqi desert.

The invasion and speedy subjugation of Afghanistan staggered the jihadists. But the US, having succeeded only in dispersing al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, rather than eliminating them, believed it needed to strike another heavy blow.
By then it had identified the jihadist campaign as "a Saudi problem". Most of the September 11 suicide attackers had been Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi money trails were everywhere. An invasion of Saudi Arabia presented the tactical problem of waging war against a country of vast area and the strategic one of disrupting the world's oil supplies.
The Americans had established and then strengthened a military presence in countries surrounding Saudi Arabia - Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Invasion of Iraq would complete the encirclement.

Ergo, the point of the US invasion of Iraq was not a method of freeing the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime, nor was it for more oil, for Bush to follow in his father's footsteps, or to impose democracy on another middle-eastern nation, but to put pressure on and confound the Saudi terrorists and their logistical supporters, and as a show of strength and defiance. Iraq was treated just as another territory in a game of Risk, one that would grant a strategic boon if the USA were to hold it.

Thousands of American servicemen and Iraqi civilians died and many more were displaced so the US could have a strategic advantage to use against the Saudis. Was it worth it?

"...the measured actions of the US during the past three years, including its strong military presence in the Middle East, have caused significant moderation of the position on global jihad of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim regimes."

I'm not so sure about that. The world is now undoubtedly not a safer place as a result of the Iraq invasion, admitted even by America's staunchest supporter in the Arab world, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. But it's early days yet.

"The strategy of the jihadists has stalled: "Not a single regime has fallen to al-Qa'ida ... There is no rising in the Islamic street. [There has been] complete failure of al-Qa'ida to generate the political response they were seeking ... At this point the US is winning ... The war goes on.""

Guess we will have to wait for the next few turns to see if the Iraq move was worth it.