To: stockman_scott who wrote (73153 ) 2/11/2003 7:27:10 PM From: frankw1900 Read Replies (1) | Respond to I think, Scott, this is a pretty good picture of what the US government has in mind. As Lehman says, it probably won't play exactly this way, but the article has the basic strokes prettly clear. An American invasion of Iraaq has consequences and some can be seen fairly clearly - destabilization of Iran and Syria and finally great vulnerability for Hezbollah, either from lack of funding or attack by Israelis, or both. Another consequence of invasion is that the US will have options, and obligations both to it's own citizens and to Iraaqis, and to some of it's allies (and vice versa).For Wurmser, the larger enemy is the ideology of Pan-Arabism, which he presents as the Middle East's version of the various forms of totalitarianism that swept across Europe in the twentieth century. The true choice in the region is between "the traditional Arab elite and revolutionary Arab nationalists." In the latter category are Saddam Hussein, the Assad family of Syria (who, like Saddam, subscribe to the Pan-Arabist ideology of Baathism), and the mullahs of Iran?even though those countries have, at times, been mortal enemies. Bringing down Saddam, Wurmser predicts, would have the happy effect of destabilizing both Syria and Iran. "A collapse in either Syria or Iraq would affect the other profoundly," he writes. "Ideologically, a failure of Ba'thism in one implicitly indicts the regime of the other as well." As for Iran: "Launching a policy and resolutely carrying it through until it razes Saddam's Ba'thism to the ground will send terrifying shock waves into Teheran." In Wurmser's scenario, a post-Saddam government in Iraq that includes meaningful participation by Iraq's Shiite majority will remove the Iranian mullahs' most powerful claim to legitimacy, which is that they represent the only regional power center for Shiites. ...it differs greatly from the vision of the future of the Middle East that will prevail among liberals, both here and abroad, after the war in Iraq. It treats Pan-Arab nationalism as illegitimate. It does not accept the widespread assumption that no regional good can follow the fall of Saddam unless peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority begin immediately. And it sees the fall of Saddam Hussein less as the end of a great diplomatic and military effort than as a step in an ongoing process
