“NOTHING TO SEE HERE…”

12/1/10

One begins to suspect that what has the Bush/Obama administration so incensed about the recent batch of diplomatic cables’ having been disseminated by WikiLeaks is not the revelations of U.S. diplomats’ estimation of foreign leaders contained in those encrypted e-mails. The most lurid of those, if not the most surprising or revelatory, are

--Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is “feckless, vain, and ineffective,” is effectively Russian Prime Minister Putin’s mouthpiece in the West, and doesn’t get enough rest because he has a penchant for “frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard.” (I’ve always kind of liked Berlusconi, but the WikiLeaks revelations have intensified my admiration, or envy, really, for the man. But I digress.)

--Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as an “exceptionally dangerous” Islamist influence on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

--Russia is a “virtual mafia states” in which President Dmitry Medvedev plays Robin to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Batman.

--The brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai (who used to operate a restaurant not far from Wrigley Field, I believe.) is “widely understood to be corrupt.” A member of a privileged Afghan family who spent time operating a heavily regulated business in Chicago is corrupt? Saints preserve us! I digress again.

No, it is not these gossipy piffles that have the Bush/Obama administration upset with WikiLeaks. What really makes these guys angry is the revelation that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have largely succeeded in their efforts to gain enormous influence in Iraq, efforts that were spawned by the U.S. invasion of the former Mesopotamia. In fact, it looks like Iraq is well on its way to becoming “economically dependent and politically subservient” to Iran, according to the leaked cables, largely due to the efforts of General Qasim Solei, commander of the Qods force, the Guards’ paramilitary and espionage arm, with generous assistance from George Bush and Barack Obama. Apparently, General Solei “enjoys longstanding close ties” with, inter alia, such Bush/Obama favorites as Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the ironically, in this case, named Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It would be tragic to think that George Bush and Barack Obama have spent so much American blood and treasure on an effort to provide Iran with the gift of a client state on its west to act as a buffer against an increasingly hostile Arab world. That is exactly what the WikiLeaks material is telling us. No wonder the Bush/Obama Administration is so embarrassed…and enraged.

Speaking of the growing hostility of the Arab world to Iran, another inconvenient truth WikiLeaks may have revealed is that the Bush/Obama administration is banging the drums for another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran, an Iran, ironically, having been made stronger by Messrs. Bush’s and Obama’s earlier, and continuing, efforts in Iraq.

The advisability of keeping the government small and its actions limited does not end at the water’s edge.