The Devil You Know...

In addition to all of the justified and justifiable reasons why this country should never have entered Iraq or perhaps central to all of those reasons is that Saddam Hussein provided the world and the West, in particular, with the security that is blatantly lacking as we today face a conflagration of unmatched proportions. Sure, Hussein was a despot with dreams of asserting himself as a player on the world stage. Sure, he was a mass murderer who killed without conscience or remorse. Sure he was and is the head of a criminal enterprise intent upon gutting his own economy for personal financial gain. Sure, all of these horrific attributes are true, but Saddam Hussein was a devil we knew and understood; a big man with big dreams and aspirations but lacking the capacity to do anything more than bully his own people. In truth, Hussein posed no threat to anyone other than the Iraqis he ruled, lacking the resources and wherewithal to do anything more than draw attention to himself through his propaganda machine. What Saddam Hussein was, however, was our best protection against the spread of Islamo-terrorism in Asia and the Middle East. He was assuredly no friend of the radical Islamist. Try as Bush/Cheney might to connect Hussein with Osama Bin Laden and the attacks of September 11th, Hussein had as much use for Bin Laden and his ilk as he had for the Kurds who inhabited his northern provinces. Moreover, as a Sunni Muslim, he had and would have had no interest in aligning himself with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and likely would have viewed him with suspicion as a potential threat to the stability that he had created (albeit through terror) throughout much of Iraq. Hussein stood between Islamic radicals to his east in Iran and to his west in Syria and, with support from the west (in the form of a package of incentives that would have permitted Iraq to emerge from years of economic isolation imposed by the allies following the 1991 Gulf War), would have continued to provide a nearly impenetrable barrier to the type of regional domination by radical Islam that has pushed us toward the precipice of a global conflict.

Instead, we have and continue to bear witness to a global upheaval that is unmatched in our history. The list of failures that have come to dominate our ill-conceived venture into Iraq has become almost (quite unfortunately) clicheic. Chief among them is that Iraq predictably became a breeding and training ground for Islamo-terrorism, something that certainly never would have happened had Hussein remained. Urged on by a Bush doctrine that believed that Iraq was ready for the application of a western version of Democracy, the Iraqi people have elected a Shiite government that certainly will eventually find that its best chance for success lies with developing strong alliances with the Shiite-based governments in Iran and Syria. Regardless of the grandiose ideals which may have guided the Bush doctrine in Iraq, no one can take comfort with a Shiite government in Iraq that is likely already taking its leads from Mr. Ahmadinejad and the radical mullahs in Iran. It is likely irrelevant to the Iranians, in particular, whether Mr. al-Maliki is able to bring about a consensus among the various warring factions in Iraq and put an end to the unrelenting cycle of violence that has caused so much death and destruction throughout the country. Indeed, it may very well be that the violence is being fomented and directed from Tehran and that, in truth, the interests of both Iran and Syria are best served by chaos and not stability.

In any event, with Hussein’s removal and the events which followed and continue to unfold, the political map of the region has changed dramatically and with it, the security that so many in this country bought into by so blindly vesting in Mr. Bush et al a trust he never earned. Today radical Islamic fundamentalism enjoys control of a nearly unimpeded swath of territory that stretches from Iran’s western border with Afghanistan through Iraq and Syria to the West Bank and Gaza strip, interrupted, albeit briefly, by what remains of Israeli territory. If the Taliban are successful in resurrecting their government in Afghanistan and driving out Mr. Karzai from Kabul, this vast swath of territory will stretch all the way to Tajikstan and China. Certainly, the Chinese cannot be happy to observe Mr. Ahmadinejad and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov reaching bilateral agreements last January to share hydroelectric power as it puts the Iranian president on China’s western doorstep.

The effect of this spreading Islamic state is most readily apparent in the conflagration spreading through the Middle East. It is, after all, Iran (and perhaps to a lesser extent, Syria) which has struck the match which is having such an explosive effect in the region. Let no one believe it a coincidence that while Iran sought (innocently) additional time to respond to western proposals concerning its nuclear aspirations that this conflagration has taken root.

All that we observe in the region today is directly the result of arrogant, ill-advised and mis-guided decisions by Messers Bush, Cheney, Rumseld et al. We are now confronted with a devil (whether it be Mr. Ahmadinejad or all that he stands for) that we do not know...a devil that we have consistently misunderstood and under-estimated. The price of those decisions will be with us for a long time to come.

My Apologies

It’s been a while since I last put fingers to keyboard to vent my spleen over the state of the world. That’s not to say that I haven’t sat with my ThinkPad considering what to say and how to say it. It’s just that for so long, the story remained the same -- Over- reaching by the Bush administration, abuse of personal freedoms, trampling on the Constitution.... Having said my piece in a series of essays during the fall and winter of last year, I found myself almost exhausted by how repititious, unrelenting and seemingly unending the story had become.

For succumbing (however briefly) to my own ennui, my profound apology.