The presidential pageant has now risen full in the sky and is blocking out the sun.
He's gonna expound on the glory of Democracy in Action?
Until November, we dwell in a weird half-light, stumbling into spooky shadows but shielded from the harsh glare of the nation's actual circumstances.
Oh. Sorry. Guess he's not. He's gonna whine...
Down is up, fiction is truth, momentous realities are made to disappear from the public mind. The 2004 spectacle is not the first to mislead grossly and exploit emotional weaknesses in the national character. But this time the consequences will be especially grim.
Translation: the Left is losing again, and knows it.
It's doubtful it's going to be close enough to try to steal this time...
The United States is "losing" in Iraq, literally losing territory and population to the other side.
Except that we aren't, but don't let that stop you. This is the Left's meme-of-the-week.
Careful readers of the leading newspapers may know this, but I doubt most voters do. How could they, given the martial self-congratulations of the President and relative restraint from his opponent?
Yeah, $60 million in spending by the Democrat 527's and no one accepts the "real story" in Iraq. Go figure.
It's prob'ly because Bush doesn't wear a tin hat. The Nation expects Bush to appear on a reviewing stand out in front of the White House any time now, wearing a polished tin hat and a gaudy uniform, to review the Old Guard as they go goose-stepping by kinda like the footage Fox runs every time they talk about North Korea. For some reason, The Nation seldom mentions North Korea. I dunno why...
High-handed minded pundits tell us not to dwell on the long-ago past. But the cruel irony of 2004 is that Vietnam is the story.
It is at The Nation. To the rest of us, the story alternates between 9-11 and Britney's breasts...
The arrogance and deceit--the utter waste of human life, ours and theirs--play before us once again. A frank discussion will have to wait until after the election.
That sentence makes no sense. "The arrogance and deceit" referring to Bush? A minor leaguer next to Kofi, Sammy, Bashir in Sudan, the Ayatollahs in Iran, the princes and holy men in Riyadh. Oh, he's mean enough and tough enough to handle the likes of Qazi and Fazl and Sami and Yasser and probably Bashir in Syria, but it takes a team effort to deal with the terror drivers. The "frank discussion" is going on even as we speak blog, in places like this. The Nation and William Greider just isn't paying attention. The Bush team can't engage in "frank discussion" like we do here for fear of giving away their intentions to the heavy hitter terrs.
Yep, all Vietnam, all the time. It's the last time the Left thought critically about a war.
Several Sundays ago, an ominous article appeared in the opinion section of the New York Times: "One by One, Iraqi Cities Become No-Go Zones." Falluja, Samarra, Ramadi, Karbala, the Sadr City slums of Baghdad--these and other population centers are now controlled by various insurgencies and essentially ceded by US forces.
Some sections are tough for us right now. The enemy does get a vote. But 85 to 90% of the country is at relative peace, and that's pretty good.
In 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces there are virtually no U.S. casualties. If it wasn't so blasted complicated in HTML, I'd put up a map with colored dots showing the locations of attacks and the number of casualties. Further, the vast majority of casualties are from skunk attacks roadside bombs, rockets, mortars, and car bombs. We lose very few guys in whites-of-their-eyes shootouts. But like I say, William Greider isn't paying attention. So why should we listen to his opinion?
This situation would make a joke of the national elections planned for January.
All it really means is that the dummies end up without a vote.
I've always had difficulty with the idea that people who don't believe in democracy, who regard it as a Jewish plot, should be allowed to vote.
Yet, if US troops try to recapture the lost cities, the bombing and urban fighting would produce massive killing and destruction, further poisoning politics for the US occupation and its puppet government in Saigon--sorry, Baghdad.
He hasn't been paying attention to how we fight, since that would conflict with his world view.
Like I say, he hasn't been paying attention at all...
Three days later, the story hit page one when anonymous Pentagon officials confirmed the reality. Not to worry, they said: The United States is training and expanding the infant Iraqi army so it can do the fighting for us. That's the ticket--Vietnamization. I remember how well General Westmoreland articulated the strategy back in the 1960s, when war's progress was measured by official "body counts" and reports on "new" fighting forces on the way.
Vietnamizing that war might have worked if the Democrats hadn't cut off the funding. And it was Abrams that made the strategy go.
But this time Washington decided the United States couldn't wait for "Iraqization," a strategy that might sound limp-wristed to American voters. The US bombing and assaults quickly resumed.
Oh, so we can go to these places after all?
The Bush White House is thus picking targets and second-guessing field commanders, just as Lyndon Johnson did forty years ago in Indochina.
Not according to what I've heard. The suits are involved, of course, because the military operation that kicked Sammy out is over and done with, mission accomplished. Iraq is now "sovreign," and we have to accomodate the pick-up team running the country. If we were imperialist hegemons, we'd just level the places that give us trouble, sow the ground with salt and call it peace that's what I'd have done before handing over power. But I'm not in charge and neither, thankfully, is William Greider.
Bush is haunted by the mordant remark a US combat officer once made in Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
Except that it wasn't a military officer, it was Peter Arnett.
Bush is a lot more haunted by the image of planes crashing into New York and the Pentagon, another time when William Greider wasn't paying much attention...
Meanwhile, Bush's war is destroying the US Army, just as LBJ's war did. After Vietnam, military leaders and Richard Nixon wisely abolished the draft and opted for an all-volunteer force. When this war ends, the volunteer army will be in ruins and a limited draft lottery may be required to fill out the ranks.
Which is why both the Army and the National Guard recruiting quotas are being met.
The professional Army (and Marines and Air Force and Navy) form an unstoppable military machine. At this point in history (and everything eventually changes) there's not an army in the world that can stand up to them. Because they're a professional force, they're not as large as the cannon fodder draftee armies of the past. The support functions and some of the maneuver functions, are filled by reserves and National Guard. They're the ones taking the brunt of it right now, while the maneuver divisions refresh and refit.
After Iraq, men and women will get out of uniform in large numbers, especially as they grasp the futility of their sacrifices. Yet Bush's on-the-cheap warmaking against a weak opponent demonstrates that a larger force structure is needed to sustain his policy of pre-emptive war.
Nothing of the sort is demonstrated.
Kerry says he wants 40,000 more troops, just in case. Old generals doubt Congress would pay for it, given the deficits.
And Kerry wouldn't have those 40K do anything useful anyways.
Iraq is Vietnam standing in the mirror. John Kerry, if he had it in him, could lead a national teach-in--re-educate those who have forgotten or prettified their memories but especially inform younger voters who weren't around for the national shame a generation ago. Kerry could describe in plain English what's unfolding now in Iraq and what must be done to find a way out with honor. In other words, be a truth-teller while holding Bush accountable.
Kerry hasn't yet said anything in plain English, but I suppose it could happen.
Kerry won't go there, probably couldn't without enduring still greater anger. His war-hero campaign biography inadvertently engendered truthful slanderous attacks and still-smoldering resentments.
Yeah, wonder why all those vets still hate his guts?
If he hadn't done what he did when he came back, maybe people would have bought what he said he did while he was there.
Kerry, like other establishment Dems, originally calculated that the party should be as pro-war as Bush, thus freeing him to run on other issues. That gross miscalculation leaves him proffering a lame "solution"--persuading France, Germany and others to send their troops into this quagmire. Not bloody likely, as the Brits say.
Finally got one right.
Bush can't go near the truth for obvious reasons.
He already has.
If elected, he faces only bad choices--bomb the bejeezus out of Iraq, as Nixon bombed Vietnam and Cambodia, or bug out under the cover of artful lies. The one thing Bush's famous "resolve" cannot achieve is success at war. Never mind, he aims to win the election instead.
Afghanistan is won. Iraq, with all the problems, is much closer to won than lost.
So this presidential contest resembles a grotesque, media-focused war in which two sides skirmish for the attention of ill-informed voters.
They're "ill-informed" because they don't agree with dickless here.
Bush won big back when he got Iraq off the front pages and evening news with his phony hand-off of sovereignty and his chest-thumping convention. But then his opponents--the hostile insurgents in Iraq--struck back brilliantly like all the dead Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive and managed to put the war story back in the lead on the news (might we expect from them an "October surprise" of deadlier proportions?).
Sure, if they have a death wish.
I'm sure there will be an "October surprise," actually a string of them. I think Kerry's going to bring out the big bucket of slime they've kept in reserve all this time I have no idea what it is, and I'm hoping Rathergate was it. I think the terrs in Iraq are going to burn a lot of hard boyz to enhance the odor of quagmire that people like William Greider are so eager to sniff MoveOn.org's using the word itself in its latest commercial. I think the Swifties might have their own October Surprise lined up for Kerry, and probably Bush has something planned. So it should make for an eventful month.
In this fight, Kerry is like a bystander who might benefit from bad news but can't wish for it. Most combat correspondents, with brave exceptions, hesitate to step back from daily facts and tell the larger truth. Maybe they are afraid to sound partial.
Hasn't stopped Dan Rather.
Or Robert Fisk...
The timing of events in Iraq does not fit propitiously with the election calendar. A majority has already concluded that it was a mistake to fight this war, but public credulity is not yet destroyed. A majority still wants to believe the strategy may yet succeed, that Iraq won't become another dark stain in our history books. During Vietnam, the process of giving up on such wishful thinking took many years. The breaking point came in 1968, when a majority turned against the war. LBJ withdrew from running for re-election. Nixon won that year with his "secret plan" to win the peace. The war continued for another five years. US casualties doubled. This time, public opinion has moved much faster against the war, but perhaps not fast enough. People naturally are reluctant to conclude that their country did the wrong thing, that young people died for a pointless cause.
Since we didn't, and they didn't, it will certainly be a long time.
If the war story does stay hot and high on front pages, a collapse of faith might occur in time for this election, but more likely it will come later. Nixon won a landslide re-election in 1972 with his election-eve announcement that peace was at hand, the troops were coming home. In the hands of skilled manipulators, horrendous defeat can be turned into honorable victory. Temporarily at least. When the enemy eventually triumphed in Indochina, Nixon was already gone, driven out for other crimes.
Democrats never paid for theirs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/19/2004 1:30:36 AM ||
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#1
The Nation *spit* sucks like an F5 on a bender. This nest of vipers wouldn't recognize honor if it bit them back. The rag of propaganda whores and socialist apologists, it approaches truly great absurdity and parody when it tosses out words such as "we" and "our", pfeh. I look forward to the day when I can frog-march its staff and true believers to the border - East or West would suit.
#2
Frog-marching's too mild for these traitors. They and their intellectual ancestors have been trying to destroy this country for the past sixty years, and post-9/11, smelled OUR blood in the water. More and more I find myself hoping that, after GWB wins big in November, the LLL decide to get violent. This society is WELL overdue for a housecleaning. Have faith...there are many more of us than of them, and we are much better armed.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
09/19/2004 2:27 Comments ||
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#3
They and their intellectual ancestors have been trying to destroy this country for the past sixty years
Actually The Nation started publishing in the 1860s, around the start of the First Communist International.
#4
Kerry says he wants 40,000 more troops, just in case. Old generals doubt Congress would pay for it, given the deficits.
Most voters doubt Kerry would actually do anything but reduce the defenses and national security of the United States.
Iraq is Vietnam standing in the mirror.
You wish. When we passed the 1,000 death mark, you could almost hear the left mourn that more were not dead.
John Kerry, if he had it in him, could lead a national teach-in--re-educate those who have forgotten or prettified their memories but especially inform younger voters who weren't around for the national shame a generation ago.
Yeah, man. We could bring a bag and a bong, pass it around with a little help from our friends, listen to Hendrix...
John Kerry is the national shame along with the left who endangered US troops during Viet Nam.
Bush won big back when he got Iraq off the front pages and evening news with his phony hand-off of sovereignty and his chest-thumping convention. But then his opponents--the hostile insurgents in Iraq--struck back brilliantly like all the dead Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive and managed to put the war story back in the lead on the news (might we expect from them an "October surprise" of deadlier proportions?).
If ever there was any doubt about where The Nation's loyalties lie, it is gone. They want the enemy to kill Americans, and it matters little to them if they are in New York or in Bahgdad.
During Vietnam, the process of giving up on such wishful thinking took many years.
You must mean deliberately poisioning support for the war.
The breaking point came in 1968, when a majority turned against the war. LBJ withdrew from running for re-election.
No, LBJ would not cave in to his party's left wing over the war.
Nixon won that year with his "secret plan" to win the peace. The war continued for another five years. US casualties doubled.
Let's see, Tet was just finished in Spring 1968 and LBJ decided not to run because the party was taken over by its leftwing. Maybe our enemies became emboldened by the left's perfidy? Maybe the left is responsible for those increases in combat deaths. I believe they were and NVA General Giap admitted as much.
#5
If elected, he faces only bad choices--bomb the bejeezus out of Iraq, as Nixon bombed Vietnam and Cambodia, or bug out under the cover of artful lies. The one thing Bush's famous "resolve" cannot achieve is success at war. Never mind, he aims to win the election instead.
The whole article was just too annoying, but I liked this quote. So if Kerry gets elected, what's he going to do? How's he going to solve this? The previous paragraph said his lame solution was to get Germany and France involved. They already gave him the middle finger. So, seriously, what's Kerry going to do? Is he going to send his two new Army divisions in? Where and when's he going to get the people trained and ready to accomplish this? Will he use the Guard and Reserves in the short-term, like old, scary, secretive Dubya? Please.
Make these assclowns go away with their negative, no-solution spewing garbage. All they do is sit and commiserate over their failed beliefs and candidate.
#6
bad / nada - it is rather amusing, heh... If we took him at his most-often stated position, the one that he thinks makes him look tough but anti-war (don't delve too deeply, it's a nuance thingy), picked out of the mass of positions spewed thusfar...
Skeery wants 40,000 new troops at the same time that he says he'd bring everyone home from the hot-spots where they actually do what they were trained to do - in a good cause, but he'd leave those stationed in Cold War bases, twiddling their thumbs and shining their boots, which he would keep there because, well, because it's good for the economies of those foreign leaders he likes / wants to suck up to.
He doesn't say what the returnees would do when they all got back. Sit in their barracks, I guess. Studying their navels. Perhaps they'd get sensitivity training. Or French lessons.
All I can say is it's pretty bad when "madTV" makes fun of John sKerry. There was a skit on last night where he was flip-flopping on who got the plane tickets (between him and Edwards) to the next destination in "The Amazing Presidential Race." Not the best show, but this was pretty good satire.
Oh yeah, and your comments are right on. I couldn't believe (well, yes I could) he went against Dubya's future policy of bringing back the soldiers from these archaic Cold War stations. His campaign strategy: wait for a Dubya policy, and go against it. Then go against it again, so he's right back where Dubya started.
My apologies for skewing slightly off the original topic, but I couldn't help it.
#8
Lol - sorry I missed it! Never, at least in my lifetime, has there been a more clueless absurdity posing as a major party candidate for President. I wish I had confidence that stupidity and cluelessness wasn't endemic - here and world-wide. Sigh. I'm not.
#9
"Never, at least in my lifetime, has there been a more clueless absurdity posing as a major party candidate for President."
Sorry to say, I think you're right-- though Mondale, as an absurdity, was a pretty close second to Kerry and AlGore a not-so-distant 3rd.
As for this noxious piece of defeatist tripe in The Nation, I can never quite make up my mind: are people like William Greider simply stupid and hysterical? Or are they devious, left-wing totalitarians hiding behind a "peace" philosophy?
If the former, they need to be slapped, HARD, to shock them out of their blubbering ninnitude. If the latter, I'm in favor of just hauling them outside and shooting them in the back of the head.
ALL of them.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
09/19/2004 11:45 Comments ||
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#10
Never, at least in my lifetime, has there been a more clueless absurdity posing as a major party candidate for President.
Agreed.
As I commented on LGF this morning:
Kerry's has got to be the most monumentally stupid and inept campaign in the history of the US, and possibly the world.
Pass the popcorn. :-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/19/2004 14:34 Comments ||
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#11
The Nation *spit* sucks like an F5 on a bender.
Sucks in more ways than one. Upon reading that first sentence, any competent editor would've sent that article back to Grieder in a ziploc bag (preferably one that used to hold a tuna-fish sandwich).
Mark Steyn
The other day, the BBC interviewed Kofi Annan. Don't ask me why. But, in the course of the programme, the United Nations Secretary-General said that the liberation of Iraq did not conform to the UN Charter and therefore was "illegal".
The best response to that comes from George W Bush, after Gerhard Schroder made a similar point last year: "International law?" said the President. "I better call my lawyer. He didn't bring that up to me."
As the Australian Prime Minister John Howard (not to be confused with Michael Howard, ever) observed, the problem with the UN is that it's "paralysed", and that paralysis favours the bad guys, whether in Iraq or Iran, where perpetual International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring seems to be barely a hindrance to the full-steam-ahead nuclear programme.
In Sudan, the civilised world is (so far) doing everything to conform with the UN charter, which means waiting till everyone's been killed and then issuing a strong statement expressing grave concern.
As for Iraq, the UN system designed to constrain Saddam was instead enriching him, through the Oil-for-Food programme, and enabling him to subsidise terrorism. Given that the Oil-for-Fraud programme was run directly out of Kofi Annan's office, the Secretary-General ought to have the decency to recognise that he had his chance with Iraq, he blew it, and a period of silence from him would now be welcome.
He's not the only voice from the lost world of September 10, 2001 weighing in. John Kerry, the doomed Democrat, has abandoned any talk of "victory" - in Iraq, I mean; he's still hopeful of holding New Jersey. But instead he is promising to let America's troops "come home", which is another way of saying "surrender".
Then there are the naysayers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who, as we now know, were claiming before the war that nothing could be done, nothing would go right, patently absurd to think Iraq can ever be a democracy, old boy. Topple Saddam, install his replacement, and pretty soon Iraq would be reverting to type. "Military coup could succeed coup until an autocratic Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests. With time he could acquire WMD."
I have no problem with that. If the best-case scenario is that Iraq winds up as agreeable as my beloved New Hampshire, the worst case was laid out by yours truly in this space three years ago, on September 27, 2001, when I acknowledged that a post-Saddam Iraq might wind up merely with "a thug who's marginally less bloody.
But a new thug is still better than letting the old thug stick around to cock snooks at you. If Saddam had been toppled, the nutter du jour would have come to power in the shadow of the cautionary tale of his predecessor".
That's still the bottom line. It is the stability of the Middle East - the stability of the Ba'athists, Ayatollahs, Sauds, the Arafats and Mubaraks - that has enabled it to export its toxins. At a bare minimum, we need a kind of Sam Goldwyn Doctrine: I'm sick of the old dictators-for-life. Bring me some new dictators-for-life.
But in Iraq we are already way beyond that. After the predictions of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe and wall-to-wall cholera and dysentery all failed to pan out, the naysayers fell back on predictions of imminent civil war. But the civil war's as mythical as the universal dysentery.
There is a problem in the Sunni Triangle and in certain Baghdad suburbs. If you look at the figures for August, over half the 71 US fatalities that month died in one province - al-Anbar, which covers much of the Sunni Triangle.
Most of the remainder were killed dispatching young Sadr's goons in Najaf or in operations against other Sunni Triangulators in Samarra, with a couple of isolated incidents in Mosul and Kirkuk. In 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces, not a single US soldier died.
Do you remember that moment of Fallujah-like depravity in Ulster a few years ago? Two soldiers were yanked from a cab in the wrong part of town and torn apart by a Republican mob. A terrible, shaming episode in the wretched annals of Northern Irish nationalists. But in the rest of the United Kingdom - in Bristol, in Coventry, Newcastle, Aberdeen - life went on, very pleasantly.
That's the way it is in Iraq. In two-thirds of the country, municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory. This summer the Shia province of Dhi Qar, south-east of Baghdad, held the first free elections in its history, electing secular independents and non-religious parties to its town councils.
The Kurdish North, which would be agitating for secession if real civil war were looming, is for the moment content to be Scotland. The Sunni Triangle, meanwhile, looks like being the fledgling Iraqi federation's Northern Ireland for a while to come.
That's a pity. But, if you can quarantine it, the difference between it and the rest of the country will become starker, month by month.
The "insurgents", meanwhile, so admired by Michael Moore, John Pilger and Tariq Ali, are rather short of supporters closer to home, which isn't surprising given that they are killing many more Iraqis than Americans.
But the beauty of handing over "sovereignty" to Ayad Allawi is that the new Prime Minister has more freedom of manoeuvre than Paul Bremer ever had, and, as he doesn't have to give press conferences on CNN every morning, there will be fewer questions afterwards.
What I find odd about the gloom'n'doom crowd at the FCO is that, for all the condescending cracks about how these blundering Yanks haven't a clue about this colonialism business, it is the Foreign Office wallahs who seem to have lost their collective imperial memory.
The Malayan "emergency", to take one example, lasted from 1948 to 1960, and at the end of it Britain midwifed what can reasonably claim to be one of the least worst Islamic states in the world. The nellies briefing Jack Straw seem to have lost all historical perspective.
That is not to say there are not serious questions about both short-term tactics (Fallujah, Najaf) and long-term goals (a democratic Iraq). But neither the newly parochial post-internationalist Left, unable to get past its "BLAIR LIED!!! PEOPLE DIED!!!!!" nursery rhymes, nor the snob Right - the Max Hastings/Douglas Hurd/Crispin Tickell crowd - has any useful contribution to make to this debate.
Instead, all the discussion is within factions of the American Right - between the "neocons", with their plans to democratise the Middle East, and the more traditional "assertive nationalists", whose hopes for a foetid region are a little less ambitious. That's worth arguing over, but it is not an argument you can enter if you have got no useful proposals of your own.
And, in the end, the reality is this. A few weeks ago, Prof Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, told Die Welt that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century". That seems demographically unavoidable.
Given that much of what we now know as the civilised world will be Muslim, it seems prudent to ensure that what is already the Muslim world is civilised. And, for those who say that Islam is incompatible with democracy, we might as well try to buck that in Iraq today than in France, Scandinavia and Britain the day after tomorrow.
Although its desire to spread hard-line Islam abroad has waned somewhat since the Khomeini revolution a quarter of a century ago, Iran remains an ideological state. But apart from Islam, it is Shiite doctrine that defines Iran's religious leadership and its worldview.
Before Sept. 11th, 2001, and its immediate aftermath altered the regional balance of power irrevocably, Iran was well-placed to project its influence beyond its borders. In Afghanistan it was arming and funding the Shiite Hazaras and the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud in their resistance against the Sunni Taliban. Shiites in Central Asia were being given scholarships to study theology in Iran's seminaries, and Shiite armed groups in Pakistan were being helped by Tehran in their fight against Sunni terrorists.
In Iraq, the only other Muslim country with a Shiite majority, Iran's mullahs were content to play a waiting game, secure in the knowledge that Saddam Hussein, weakened after a decade of sanctions, no longer posed a threat. They had mended fences with the Gulf States and were gradually becoming more acceptable to the West. However, with Sept. 11th and the consequent American-led attacks against and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran was suddenly encircled by the United States. Worse, its president had branded the country one of the "axis of evil" together with Iraq and North Korea.
But the invasion of Iraq brought opportunities as well as dangers for Iran. For the first time since Iraq's creation after World War I, the majority Shiite population was in a position to gain power. Tehran understood that if it played its cards right, it could wield enormous influence in Baghdad after the Americans left. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seems to have decided to proceed along two tracks. The first has the firebrand Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr leading his Mehdi Army in an armed insurrection against the American occupiers. The idea is to make Iraq virtually ungovernable, forcing the Americans into an early exit. The second track consists of encouraging Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highly respected Iraqi cleric, to consolidate his power among the Shiite community.
This policy is based on the expectation of a Shiite majority in any reasonably fair Iraqi election. While the Americans are trying to finesse this possibility through safeguards for the Kurdish and Sunni minorities, it is a matter of time before Tehran's waiting game pays off.
Should a Shiite-dominated Iraq emerge from the embers of the war, it can be expected to cooperate closely with Iran. While the seniority of its hierarchy of ayatollahs would give it considerable independence, the two countries would consult closely on a wide range of matters from oil prices to diplomacy. Close ties between two of the world's leading Shiite-majority countries would make for a formidable alliance. Given their oil and gas reserves, as well as their land mass and literate populations, they would dominate the region and pose a major threat to American and Israeli interests.
The current expressions of alarm over Iran's nuclear program should be seen in the context of the West's growing concern with Tehran's ambitions in Iraq. Similarly, the continuing improvement of the range and accuracy of Iran's missiles is giving it the means to project its power far beyond its borders.
But this overt muscle-flexing is making Iran vulnerable to a joint pre-emptive strike by Israeli and American forces. Although its nuclear and missile-related assets are scattered and hidden, they are not completely immune. If the Americans can obtain a UN resolution based on the International Atomic Energy Agency findings that Iran is in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they can justify military action.
Thus, Iran may be in danger of overplaying its hand. If it waits patiently, the sheer demographic realities in Iraq virtually assure it of having a major say in that country, together with the strategic and economic implications that would flow from Shiite rule in Iraq. If, however, Iran continues to exert pressure on the Americans through Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army, while also defying world opinion by acquiring nuclear arms, it will be risking all its gains on a single roll of the dice.
All too often, revolutionaries miscalculate the reaction of pragmatic leaders to their actions. The ayatollahs in Tehran should try and put themselves in the shoes of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon: the former will not accept Iran's dominance over the world's biggest oil-producing region, while the latter would never countenance its sworn enemy's possession of nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them.
There are times when it pays to tread softly.
Irfan Husain is a Pakistani former civil servant and university president who now writes weekly columns for Dawn and The Daily Times in Pakistan, and The Khaleej Times in Dubai. This commentary originally appeared in bitter-lemons international, an online newsletter
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
09/19/2004 9:18:19 PM ||
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#1
Close ties between two of the worldâs leading Shiite-majority countries would make for a formidable alliance. Given their oil and gas reserves, as well as their land mass and literate populations, they would dominate the region and pose a major threat to American and Israeli interests.
Limiting any extension of Iranian power into fledgling Iraq is just one more excellent reason to incur immediate regime change in Tehran. Any infection of Iraq by Iranian theocracy will represent an enormous setback for freedom in the Middle East.
If bottom line oil profits are going to continue standing in the way of dealing the knock out punch to the primary mega-bankrollers of both Shi'ite & Wahhabi terrorism, then our boys & others are being placed in arms way to be targets for psychopathic Muslim madmen! There is no middle ground with the likes of those which take school children hostage knowing they will butcher them.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
09/19/2004 22:33 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
