Balance of power strategy superficially suggests supporting weaker parties. Shiites are weak minority in the Sunni Muslim world. Consequently, the US has to stand by the Shiites and Iran. Wrong. Germany was weaker than the rest of Europe combined in 1937, but Britain, traditionally playing the balance of power strategy, supported France. Balance of power calls for supporting a threatened, not just a weaker side.

Sunnis are not inherently good, but just not threatening. By far most Muslims are Sunni and they engage in myriad brotherly conflicts without taking time to significantly repress the Shiites. For their part, Shiites could not afford to be aggressive – until Iran mobilized them for Persian imperial needs. Huge, powerful, and smart Iran poses a threat – incidentally, a Shiite threat. Iran, as any other Muslim state, is a moderate military risk: it could not overcome Iraq (admittedly, assisted by the US and the USSR) in eight-year war. Persians have reputation of cowards even among the Arabs who are less than determined fighters themselves. Iran might not win a major war with Arabs, but could destabilize the fragile balance in the world of Islam and unleash the Shiite guerrilla movements and peripheral wars. Iranian policy is unstable and depends on a leader. Shiites, aligned with Iran, are a weaker side in the Islamic equation, but credibly aggressive and thus deserve containment, not collateral support which the US offers them in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia, not quite a beacon of liberalism, so far deals with its Shiites efficiently. Lebanese Christians, given enough American weapons, are also able to check the Shiite threat. Syria is too ambitious to succumb to Iranian influence though it will accept Iran’s protection. By mindlessly invading Iraq, America destroyed a major check on the Iranian military. The US could not fight the huge Iranian infantry. Faced with a similar problem in Japan in WWII, America responded with nuclear bombings. That is one option in Iran, but perhaps too drastic since we don’t want to entirely remove the Iranian military threat from the Muslim power equilibrium. Re-establishing mild Iraq-Iran belligerency is a more feasible solution. To do that, the US has to stop playing in democracy in Iraq, but bring the Sunnis, preferably whatever secular Baathists could be still found around, to power, and arm them against the Iraqi Shiites and eventually against Iran. Besides that, America has to leave Iraq immediately: occupational forces face no positive prospects and legitimize the Iranian guerrilla activities, now ostensibly against the occupiers rather than specifically the Sunnis.

I would normally say that a country has to have unified war policy, and whatever mistakes president makes, parliament and media need not abet the enemy by trumpeting them. In case of Iraqi war, the errors are structural, impossible to gloss over. Uneasily, I have to agree with the Congress which seeks to curtail the war effort, even though it falls short of ending the invasion immediately. It is sickening to see most Republicans not voting against the obviously wrong Bush’s strategy because of the remunerative party discipline. The lives of American soldiers are evidently less important to them.

The helicopter crashed in Iraq belonged to Blackwater, a mercenary corporation, and covered the US embassy convoy. With 130,000 troops in place, what except the corruption explains mercenary involvement?