Tomgram: LeVine on Playing the Chaos Card in the Middle East

Believe me, as of yet we hardly know what chaos is. Imagine -- from the perspective of Plame Week in America -- an administration whose leading neoconservative figures believed a short few years ago that the card to play in the Middle East was indeed chaos. They then played it in Iraq, and it should come as no surprise that what they got in return was more chaos than they ever counted on.

Now, a slightly altered line-up of officials in Washington threatens to play that card again in Syria. Call it madness – or call it what passes for American policymaking. As Paul Woodward comments at his War in Context blog, "If there's one lesson learned in Iraq that the Bush administration wants to apply to Syria it's that it's much easier to bring about regime change than it is to deal with the consequences." Only the other day, reports at his Syriacomment.com blog, Joshua Landis revealed that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley called the president of the Italian senate to ask "if he had a candidate to replace Bashar al-Asad as President of Syria. The Italians were horrified. Italy is one of Syria's biggest trading partners so it seemed a reasonable place to ask! This is what Washington has been up to." That's the "spread of democracy," Bush-style, for you. Juan Cole suggests, reasonably enough, that the obvious successor candidate in Syria would be the violently repressed Muslim Brotherhood and that then a "fundamentalist crescent" might become a reality for Washington.

In the meantime, of course, chaos has been making its dramatic debut here and, post-Iraq, post-Cindy, post-DeLay, post-Frist, post-Katrina, post-Rita, post-Wilma, post-the Miers nomination, post (later in the week)-Patrick Fitzgerald's indictments, a perfect storm of chaos is threatening to blow like some category five hurricane from Baghdad and points east back into Washington and whack the Bush administration. (Call in FEMA!) What was that saying about those who live by the sword and chaos…?

Historian and Middle Eastern expert Mark LeVine, whose blog can be found at the invaluable History News Network website, has been a student of Washington-inspired "sponsored chaos" for some time. Having just returned from the ever more chaotic Middle East, he considers the uses of chaos in Iraq and Israel/Palestine. Tom

Where Chaos Is King

By Mark LeVine

Within twenty-four hours, on October 16-17, the New York Times ran three stories about the threat increasing chaos posed to emerging, still fragile political orders in Iraq, Palestine, and the Sudan. In all three cases, the chaos afflicting these societies was described as an unintentional and negative consequence of ill-conceived policies put in place by the various governments involved: the U.S. in Iraq, Israel as it withdrew from Gaza, and the Sudanese Government as it finally tried to restrain marauding Janjaweed militias in Darfur. In no case was the chaos viewed as intentional or beneficial to one or more of the forces competing for control of these countries.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq in particular has been judged a failure by its critics almost from the start because of the chaos it has generated. Even with the approval of the constitution, "experts" are arguing that, as long as American and other foreign troops remain in Iraq, the situation "will become more chaotic," or in the words of Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, will continue to "destabilize the Middle East."

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