Monday, January 16, 2006
Pundit RhetIraq: David Hurst
Who: David Hirst, Guardian UK Reporter from 1963-2001
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From Opinion article titled, "Iran and Israel will be kings of the Middle East jungle"
In March 2003, before US troops reached Baghdad, Middle East scholar Volker Perthes wrote that while the risks of this "illegitimate" war were enormous, those of "a US failure to stabilise postwar Iraq would be even higher". With those words looking increasingly prophetic, no one, in picturing the implications of such failure, is now more lurid than the Bush administration. The direness of the prospect has become its strongest argument for "staying the course", but for others it is already a given, amounting to "the greatest strategic disaster in US history", in the words of the retired US general William Odom.
A general US retreat from the region, with troop withdrawal at its core, is no doubt a prerequisite for, and yardstick of, the emergence of a healthy, self-reliant new Middle Eastern order. But, with the kind of ignominious scuttle from Iraq that failure would presumably entail, the region won't just revert to the status quo ante. Instead of Iraq becoming a beacon of all good things it will become the single most noxious wellspring of all the bad ones the invasion was supposed to extinguish - and new ones to boot.
... no one invested greater expectations in the Iraqi adventure than Israel. US success, it thought, would transform its strategic position. But with US failure, Israel will grow more repressive against the Palestinians, and more ready for military action against Iran. Should the US itself deal with Iran in the same violent and partisan fashion as it did Iraq, the adverse consequences of that new adventure will outstrip those of the earlier one. For there is no reason to doubt that Iran's response, from both itself and its strengthened Shia and Islamist allies in the region, will be the devastating one it constantly promises.
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From Opinion article titled, "Iran and Israel will be kings of the Middle East jungle"
In March 2003, before US troops reached Baghdad, Middle East scholar Volker Perthes wrote that while the risks of this "illegitimate" war were enormous, those of "a US failure to stabilise postwar Iraq would be even higher". With those words looking increasingly prophetic, no one, in picturing the implications of such failure, is now more lurid than the Bush administration. The direness of the prospect has become its strongest argument for "staying the course", but for others it is already a given, amounting to "the greatest strategic disaster in US history", in the words of the retired US general William Odom.
A general US retreat from the region, with troop withdrawal at its core, is no doubt a prerequisite for, and yardstick of, the emergence of a healthy, self-reliant new Middle Eastern order. But, with the kind of ignominious scuttle from Iraq that failure would presumably entail, the region won't just revert to the status quo ante. Instead of Iraq becoming a beacon of all good things it will become the single most noxious wellspring of all the bad ones the invasion was supposed to extinguish - and new ones to boot.
... no one invested greater expectations in the Iraqi adventure than Israel. US success, it thought, would transform its strategic position. But with US failure, Israel will grow more repressive against the Palestinians, and more ready for military action against Iran. Should the US itself deal with Iran in the same violent and partisan fashion as it did Iraq, the adverse consequences of that new adventure will outstrip those of the earlier one. For there is no reason to doubt that Iran's response, from both itself and its strengthened Shia and Islamist allies in the region, will be the devastating one it constantly promises.
