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There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a single example of successful social engineering via military force such as is being attempted in Iraq. That is my first reason for distrusting not only the optimistic forecasts we are hearing from Bush, but also his claim that one reason for the invasion was to liberate the Iraqi people.
The second reason is that the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ite moslems who therefore have a natural affinity with Iran. No US administration would permit free and fair elections in Iraq, knowing that the near inevitable outcome would be to bring Iran and Iraq closer together. That would fly in the face of everything the US has been doing in the region for the past 80 years and such an alliance would hasten the demise of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. What US politician in his right mind would encourage the scenario that within 5-10 years the countries that are home to the world's four largest oil reserves, would all be strongly anti-American?
US intervention in Iraq as a de-stabilising move is far more consistent with past foreign policy in the region. That has been the thrust of all American activity in the Middle East since the 1920's. Whatever else they may be, the people in the White House are not stupid, so I don't believe for one moment they have any expectation of a peaceful Iraq. Either after a decent interval they will leave Iraq to descend into chaos, or they intend a permanent US military presence there.
The other thing which makes a farce of most discussion about Iraq as part of the "War on Terrorism", is that we talk of terrorists as if they exist purely out of sheer perversity or because they are evil people. There is close to zero recognition of the reality that US foreign policy is responsible for arab terrorism and for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
We put the CIA into Iran to train the Shah's secret police. We used and abandoned the Kurds. We set Iran and Iraq at each other's throats and helped prolong the war. We support Israel. We support the highly unpopular regimes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And much more. In short, we handed the imams and others all the arguments they needed to convince new recruits.
We have actually managed to make enemies of the people in a region which, as the crossroads for trade between Europe and the Far East, had been hospitable to foreigners for centuries. The ties were so close that it wasn't until the 1960's that some of these countries claimed independence from Britain. Wealthy Arabs were often educated in Britain and their officers attended Sandhurst. Through the 70's and 80's in particular, thousands of Arabs vacationed in Europe or sought medical care there. Lebanon, now in ruins, was once known as the Riviera of the eastern Mediterranean and it was a popular destination for French holidaymakers.
Arab terrorism is the price we are paying for cheap oil. Now we are losing our freedoms and our soldiers are losing their lives and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it, because we have backed ourselves into a cul-de-sac. We depend on Arab oil and we are still doing very little to reduce that dependence. We are in a so-called war that we cannot win, but the option of talking to the "terrorists" passed perhaps 20 years ago. There might be no more bombs or suicide attacks if we dropped all our activities in the Middle East, but imagine the impact on our economy if unfriendly countries started raising oil prices or cutting supplies. In short, we are screwed whatever we do...
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