Ils commencent à mesurer l’ampleur de la catastrophe, — l'exemple de Holbrooke

Une communication de Richard Holbrooke, le 10 mai lors d’un séminaire américano-turc, est remarquable par la tonalité alarmiste qu’elle montre, et indique que l’establishment washingtonien prend de plus en plus la mesure de l’ampleur de la catastrophe irakienne. (Holbrooke, diplomate d’expérience après plusieurs postes de haut niveau dans l’administration Clinton [Bill], est donné favori comme secrétaire d’Etat d’une autre administration Clinton [Hillary], si Hillary est élue en 2008.)

Holbrooke estime que la situation en Irak est pire qu’elle n’était au Vietnam (il y fut en poste comme jeune fonctionnaire). D’ores et déjà, il s’agit d’une “guerre civile hors de contrôle” («a civil war raging out of control»). C’est, pour lui, la pire crise de politique étrangère de l’Amérique moderne, et il est probable qu’elle ne sera pas résolue par l’administration GW Bush, laissant au successeur de l’actuel président une crise épouvantable dès le premier jour de son mandat.

Selon Reuters, le 10 mai :

«Richard Holbrooke, a former senior U.S. diplomat and a possible Democratic secretary of state, on Thursday described Iraq as a “civil war raging out of control” and a foreign policy crisis worse than Vietnam.

»Holbrooke, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as the top U.S. diplomat for Europe and for East Asia, said it would likely fall to the next U.S. president to decide whether and how to extricate America from the conflict.

(…)

»“Iraq already presents us with the worst situation internationally in modern American history. Worse even than Vietnam,” Holbrooke added, noting he served in Saigon and worked on Vietnam in Washington and at the Paris peace talks. “I never thought I would say anything was worse than Vietnam but Iraq, my friends, is worse than Vietnam,” he said, voicing hope that the current U.S. offensive will succeed but saying the chances of this “are not high.”.

(…)

»“If it does not succeed, then the United States will face an even more difficult set of choices,” he added, describing these as increasing troop levels, holding them steady, trying to disengage from “the battle of Baghdad” while fighting al Qaeda elsewhere in Iraq, or simply withdrawing. “You can assume, safely, the current administration will reject the last option ... and look for ways to salvage something from the wreckage of its own misguided policies,” he added.

»As a result, he said Bush would bequeath his successor the war in Iraq, the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan, where about 26,000 U.S. troops confront a renewed Taliban insurgency, as well as the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.

»“We must assume ... that the next president will inherit the most difficult foreign policy challenges ever to land in the Oval Office on day one,” he said.

»“Whoever it is, the odds are very high that disengagement from Iraq — unless the war is clearly being won — will be a very high priority,” he said. “Any withdrawal ... should not be done precipitously, of course, but no one can predict now what the next president will actually confront.”»

Mis en ligne le 11 mai 2007 à 13H26