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To: TobagoJack who wrote (49992)	5/14/2004 4:00:02 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Dissecting: Philip Stephens: The looming catastrophe By Philip Stephens Published: May 13 2004 21:20 \| Last Updated: May 13 2004 21:20 Tony Blair is swept away in October. George W. Bush loses in November. President John Kerry and prime minister Gordon Brown rush to pull US and British troops out of an Iraq descending into civil war. The Saudi monarchy falls before the triumphant march of Islamist extremism. The oil price breaks through $60 a barrel and the world economy heads for stagflation. America's growing isolation in the world makes way for the return of American isolationism, globalisation for global protectionism. ELMAT: You can see here the brain -feeling eminent danger- adding its 98% None of the above is a prediction. I hesitate to characterise them as probabilities. But it is a measure of the perilously fragile nature of the international order that each and every doom-laden scenario somehow seems entirely plausible. We could easily add other chilling possibilities: a new terrorist atrocity on the scale of September 11 2001; a coup in Pakistan putting nuclear weapons within reach of al-Qaeda. Journalists, I know, have pessimism in their genes, but I cannot recall a moment when I have been quite so fearful about what may happen next. It feels as if we are standing at the very edge of the cliff. ELMAT: Spain's bombing didn't instigate that fear in an European, but the last developments did. That teaches us how fear works. During the past week or so, the brutality of the Iraq war has filled our television screens. Revulsion at the debauchery of US guards at Abu Ghraib prison has been followed by the sickening shock of the filmed decapitation of the young American Nick Berg by self-styled Islamists. A conflict that seemed appalling enough, but still somehow distant, has now forced itself into the front of our minds. Earlier this week, someone said to me that we should thank the internet for bringing home the full horrors of war. Maybe. But there is something utterly revolting too about being directed by e-mail to a website promising the full unexpurgated recording of the murder of Mr Berg. ELMAT: You can see how one single life lost raises much more fear than 190+ in Spain. Beyond such immediate horrors lies the dawning realisation of the strategic significance of the looming catastrophe in Iraq. We can argue all we like about who is responsible. To say all this is the inevitable consequence of American hubris, of Mr Bush's Manichaean fundamentalism or of Donald Rumsfeld's incompetence is to miss the point. Those who believe that Mr Bush deserves to be defeated in Iraq - and, increasingly, that seems to be most people - cannot escape the dire consequences of such a defeat. ELMAT: I was the only voice that saw it coming even before it started. If you ask me today. Are you worried? I would say, I am laughing at all those idiots that thought that the adventure would be a walk in the park! Because I'm a harsh guy? No! Because man must learn the hard the way, even when the outcome is clear to discern. Mr Blair thinks that there is still a window of three or four months in which the position might yet be recovered. The key, the British prime minister believes, lies in the restoration of a semblance of security in tandem with the transfer of sovereignty to a caretaker Iraqi government at the end of June. That in turn depends on an accelerated programme to transfer responsibility for security to Iraqis. ELMAT: People should be at the Downing Street 10 asking for him to resign! But that process cuts both ways. It worked in Falluja to the extent that it avoided the bloodbath that would have followed an American assault. But putting security in the hands of locally led forces also sharpens the dividing lines between groups preparing, psychologically at least, for civil war. A myriad collection of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish militias does not constitute an Iraqi army. ELMAT: Who was the "genius" who disbanded an army of 400.000 men and expected that they would go home to drink tea an smoke cigarettes? No one can quarrel with the idea that security is a sine qua non. Politics will not work as long as the insurgents can spread terror and mayhem at will. But thus far neither Mr Bush nor Mr Blair has been ready to admit the intimate connection between security and political authority. The notion that Iraqis can be asked to police the country while substantive political, as well as military, control remains with the US would be risible if it were not so dangerous. It invites Iraqis of all colours to define their legitimacy in opposition to the US-led occupation. ELMAT: There's no one to do the dirty work for the US to collect the laurels Visiting Washington last week I caught the occasional shaft of light. Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, suggested that it would be well within the remit of the interim Iraqi government to call the international conference needed to bind the entire global community to the goal of a stable and democratic Iraq. Mr Armitage even sounded as if he thought such a conference a good idea. But his is a rare voice of reason in the cacophony that passes for policy dialogue in Mr Bush's administration. ELMAT: First they went all alone, plus Vanuatu. Now they want the global community to taken them out of the pit? OK. Lets start with the contracts that the Russian, the German and the French had with the Saddam regime. And beyond the inter-agency infighting is the growing feeling that the battle has already been lost. American voters are not prepared yet to admit that it was an outright mistake to depose Saddam Hussein. ELMAT: I told it was a mistake even before it started. But the latest polls show a majority believe the war has not been worth the cost. The same message is carried by Mr Bush's declining ratings. Mr Kerry, it is often said, is an unimpressive opponent. That will matter not a jot if voters blame Mr Bush for taking them into the wrong war. ELMAT: Bush is lucky not have Howard Dean as the opponent!!! In Europe, too, you can hear the case for withdrawal: the US can now never recover its credibility in Iraq. With only 150,000 troops it is impossible to re-establish security in such a large, lawless and abundantly armed country. How long is the US prepared to stay? Surely it is better to get out soon before the situation gets much worse. ELMAT: The facts are in control.The US no longer controls the facts. The facts are in control now. The neat way of putting this, of course, is to say that the Americans are now an obstacle to peace; (ELMAT: This guy is a radical!! ) as if the GIs are all that prevent Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Islamist insurgents alike from throwing down their weapons and joining hands to raise the national flag of a new Iraq. For all that, it gets harder to refute the brutal realism of withdrawal. Mr Bush can do so only if he shows he is willing, if necessary, to pour into Iraq tens of thousands of additional troops and many billions of dollars more in aid; and simultaneously to surrender political control to the United Nations. There is no sign of that. ELMAT: Easy: just revert the mistake of the British to have bundled the country together: Split the country into three autonomous provinces: Kurd, Shiite and Sunni. At this point I fall into the deepest gloom. Defeat for the US in Iraq would not simply represent a momentous triumph for al-Qaeda or a bloody nose for the sole superpower. The Iraq war was both cause and effect of the destruction of the international security system that brought peace and prosperity to much of the world after the second world war. Nothing has been done since to retrieve anything from the rubble of the settlement. ELMAT: IT is tough to be a British guy and live off the security provided by the US. You go along them blindly and then when it backfire you are in trouble. Yet the threats - al-Qaeda terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed and failing states - are still there. Leaving Iraq to a future of violent chaos would multiply them many times over. Paradoxically, America, even in defeat the richest and most powerful nation on earth, alone has the capacity to retreat behind a tall stockade. How safe will the rest of us feel then? ELMAT: Riding the US coat tails is no good. Once things get hot, you are on your own while the US can retreat.