A War of Proxy Wars

CIA Director Michael Hayden conducted a Q&A at Kansas State University on Wednesday, and busted out some comments worth analysis.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Wednesday that Iranian policy, at the highest government level, is to help kill Americans in Iraq, the boldest pronouncement of Iranian involvement by a U.S. official to date.

Hayden made the statement in response to a student question while delivering the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University.

"It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq," Hayden said. "Just make sure there's clarity on that."

It is very difficult to prove "it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq" which is why he begins the sentence with "It is my opinion." We observe Directory Hayden to be a sharp guy, and as CIA Director he unquestionably has access to more information that we do on the topic. In essence though, his opinion becomes that he believes the government of Iran has declared war on the United States military in Iraq.

The story continues.

Military commanders in Baghdad are expected to roll out evidence of that support soon, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate.

Another senior military official said the evidence will include mortars, rockets, small arms, roadside bombs and armor-piercing explosives - known as explosively formed penetrators or EFPs - that troops have discovered in caches in recent months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the evidence has not yet been made public, said dates on some of the weapons were well after Tehran signaled late last year that it was scaling back aid to insurgents.

This is much easier to prove. Origin of military equipment can be determined by scientific means, hell origin of any hardware can be done this way, and is not really subject to a political opinion. The politics arrives after an accurate revelation. We know too many folks both in Iraq and who have been to Iraq who have first hand accounts on this subject, and we do recognize that some of the military equipment is sourced to Iran, and in particular the really nasty modern stuff.

While there are a lot of people who are under the mistaken impression Iran is going to go away when Bush leaves office, we see Iran, not Iraq, as the enormous foreign policy burden Bush will leave the next president. Iraq was contained, constrained, and only empowered through the broken corruptive nature of the UN, a series of corruption driven programs we believe screwed Saddam just as much as it was screwing legitimate sanctions. As we have said many times on this blog, we did not support the invasion of Iraq, believing at the time Bush was attacking Iraq to avoid addressing the problem with Iran. However, now that we are in Iraq we do not support withdrawal from Iraq until an exit strategy is developed. We see the political rhetoric in this election to be very tactical, as stuff like surge or withdrawal does not strike us as very strategic.

We find it very plausible that Iraq represents the same strategy for both Iran and the United States. While we are leveraging Iraq as the battlespace to fight a proxy war against Al Qaeda and other extremists "over there," it seems very plausible Iran is fighting a proxy war against the United States "over there" as well. Either it is time to discuss a peace treaty for the proxy war, or time to shift the proxy war to a real war. We really do not see another option for the United States, as the present situation does not provide stability as long as Iran is involved. We note that Iran has the same two options for a conclusion to the stalemate, but they have one more, time is on their side.

We believe the exit strategy out of Iraq goes through Iran. We do not know what that strategy should be, but with rhetoric like what we see from General Hayden here, it does not appear the United States knows either. One thing that is also clear, the conservative "bomb, bomb, bomb..." approach and the progressive "get our troops out now" approach both strike us as unproductive, and neither appears in line with our national economic interests.

Iraq has become a war of proxy wars. Whether it is this president or the next, the war will not end until the proxy aspect of the war ends. We see the development of strategy to that end as the exit strategy. We don't believe the only ways and means to reach those ends are military, although we acknowledge they may need to be.