You mistakenly assume that a war on Iraq will merely be a replay of the war in Afghanistan, that is, a "picnic" (as far as US casualties are concerned) that will be over in a matter of weeks. But the fact is that, in the Afghan case, the US had already won the war BEFORE any US troops were deployed in Afghanistan! Remember Clausewitz's quote: war is but the continuation of politics through other means...
Indeed, the Afghan crisis was already settled POLITICALLY before US soldiers were sent in to chase after Bin Laden and the so-called Taliban... Colin Powell successfully rallied ALL the key players of the region --Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Turkey, even Iran! A consensus was brokered between the various Afghan factions that called for the return of the last king (from Italy) and the appointment of Hamid Karzai as the head of the government... Hence the mopping-up of the Taliban remnants turned out to be just a formality.
Contrariwise, the US has no political support in the Iraqi case --everything that was agreed upon ANTE-BELLUM in Afghanistan has been postponed to a grandiose, POST-BELLUM reshuffling of the whole Middle East!
Furthermore, the war will not be restricted to the Iraqi theater proper... Do you really expect Arabs and Muslims around the world to just sit and watch Iraqi civilians bombed day and night by the US war machine? BTW, how will you call the war? Here's a suggestion: "Operation Target Rich".
Gus |
