Hi Neocon; Interesting thesis: "I may be mistaken about this, but my guess is that the Administration does not intend a major war or occupation of the country, but instead hopes to have a swift incursion that neutralizes retaliatory capacity, encircles loyalist elements (ie, the Revolutionary Guard), and terminates or incarcerates Saddam and his entourage. Then, we will install a transitional regime from among Iraqi dissidents resident in the West, and stay long enough for them to become entrenched, and for us to seek and destroy the WMD infrastructure. ... The biggest test would be whether the Kurds and Shi'ites took advantage of the situation to partition the country, how brutally the new regime reacted, and whether Turkey and Iran were sucked into the hostilities."
Ah, another betrayal of the Kurds. It would be kind of odd to see the US quit defending the Kurds (again), and start supporting the (new) Baghdad regime in its policy of national unification.
The alternative would be real democracy, but with Iraq (as in Afghanistan now), that would likely lead to fragmentation, which would be against US interests in keeping Iran balanced, and against Turkish interests in keeping the Kurds divided.
-- Carl |
