If there's anything good to be said for George w. Bush, it's that he has but 18-months left to run roughshod over our planet and an angry Congress that isn't willing to play along any more. The frat boy's administration has caused more damage and suffering, at home and abroad, than any president in decades, perhaps ever. He will leave the United States a much worse place than it was when a court anointed him president.
Bush/Cheney also leave the Middle East in flames. Don't expect the next US president to make everything right. Sometimes things are too broken to fix. Maybe it's best to leave the people of the Middle East to themselves fix what the West has done.
But what lies ahead? Here's Gwynne Dyer's assessment:
"With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, post-occupation Iraq will have close ties with Iran, but there will be no Iranian troops there. Nobody in Tehran is crazy enough to volunteer Iranian troops for counter-insurgency duty in Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, and Iran lacks the military capability for adventures in the further reaches of the Arab world even if it had the desire.
"The Sunni Arab parts of Iraq have been turned into a training ground for Islamist extremists from all parts of the Arab world by the American invasion. Once the American troops are gone, however, the action will soon move elsewhere, for the US defeat in Iraq has dramatically raised the prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world and beyond.
"That is where the price of America's Middle Eastern adventure will be paid: not in Iraq itself, but in the Arab states that still have secular and/or pro-Western regimes. The main (and generally outlawed) political opposition in all these countries – Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,Libya, Algeria and half a dozen others – has been Islamist revolutionaries for many years already, and now some of them are going to win.
"It's not possible to predict WHICH Arab states will fall under Islamist control, and they certainly aren't all going to: the pipe-dream of a world-spanning Islamic empire remains precisely that. But it will be astonishing if one or more of the existing Arab regimes does not fall to an Islamist revolution in the next few years.
"Islamist-ruled STATES are not the same as bands of freelance fanatics. If they have oil to export, then they will go on exporting it, because no major oil producer can now do without the income that those exports provide; they need it to feed their people. And they would have little incentive to sponsor terrorist attacks outside the region, for they would have fixed addresses, and interests to protect.
"For Israel, however, the situation has changed fundamentally. For the first twenty years of its existence, Israel was a state under siege. For the past forty years, since the conquests of 1967, it has had the luxury of debating with itself how much of those conquered lands it should return to the Arabs in return for a permanent peace settlement. (The answer was always "all of them," but that was not an answer many Israelis would hear.)
"Now the window is closing. Before long, some of the Arab states that Israel needs to make peace with are likely to fall to Islamist regimes that have an ideological commitment to its destruction. (Hamas's capture ofthe Gaza Strip is a foretaste of what is to come.) Israelis trying to evade hard choices have long complained that they had "nobody to negotiate with." It is about to become true.
"It is a mess,and it's too late to fix it."
Bush/Cheney also leave the Middle East in flames. Don't expect the next US president to make everything right. Sometimes things are too broken to fix. Maybe it's best to leave the people of the Middle East to themselves fix what the West has done.
But what lies ahead? Here's Gwynne Dyer's assessment:
"With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, post-occupation Iraq will have close ties with Iran, but there will be no Iranian troops there. Nobody in Tehran is crazy enough to volunteer Iranian troops for counter-insurgency duty in Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, and Iran lacks the military capability for adventures in the further reaches of the Arab world even if it had the desire.
"The Sunni Arab parts of Iraq have been turned into a training ground for Islamist extremists from all parts of the Arab world by the American invasion. Once the American troops are gone, however, the action will soon move elsewhere, for the US defeat in Iraq has dramatically raised the prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world and beyond.
"That is where the price of America's Middle Eastern adventure will be paid: not in Iraq itself, but in the Arab states that still have secular and/or pro-Western regimes. The main (and generally outlawed) political opposition in all these countries – Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,Libya, Algeria and half a dozen others – has been Islamist revolutionaries for many years already, and now some of them are going to win.
"It's not possible to predict WHICH Arab states will fall under Islamist control, and they certainly aren't all going to: the pipe-dream of a world-spanning Islamic empire remains precisely that. But it will be astonishing if one or more of the existing Arab regimes does not fall to an Islamist revolution in the next few years.
"Islamist-ruled STATES are not the same as bands of freelance fanatics. If they have oil to export, then they will go on exporting it, because no major oil producer can now do without the income that those exports provide; they need it to feed their people. And they would have little incentive to sponsor terrorist attacks outside the region, for they would have fixed addresses, and interests to protect.
"For Israel, however, the situation has changed fundamentally. For the first twenty years of its existence, Israel was a state under siege. For the past forty years, since the conquests of 1967, it has had the luxury of debating with itself how much of those conquered lands it should return to the Arabs in return for a permanent peace settlement. (The answer was always "all of them," but that was not an answer many Israelis would hear.)
"Now the window is closing. Before long, some of the Arab states that Israel needs to make peace with are likely to fall to Islamist regimes that have an ideological commitment to its destruction. (Hamas's capture ofthe Gaza Strip is a foretaste of what is to come.) Israelis trying to evade hard choices have long complained that they had "nobody to negotiate with." It is about to become true.
"It is a mess,and it's too late to fix it."
3 comments:
History will record Bush as a fop, a patsy and a moron. Let's hope the likes of Chaney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld have their noses rubbbed in their foul legacy until the day they die.....then Hell can have them.
Anon, what makes you think Hell would want the likes of these clowns? Even Satan has to have some standards.
The Middle east was a shit hole before, and will continue to be for as long as we live, With or without idiot Bush's help
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