ZGram - 10/9/2002 - "Charley Reese: Consequences of War"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 9, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Another fine summary on standing on the brink of war from the pen of 
Charley Reese:

Consequences Of War

Our problems will begin after King George the Younger's war against 
Iraq is concluded. Like all wars, those who profit from it won't die 
or suffer in it, and those who die or suffer in it won't profit from 
it.

The United States will win the war. The same country, Iraq, that is 
presented to the American people as a mortal peril and threat to the 
United States - and even the world - is in reality a Third World 
country with nothing but obsolete Soviet weapons and a wrecked 
economy. No matter how bravely the Iraqis fight, they won't be able 
to win against a superpower and its fifth-rate sidekick, the United 
Kingdom.

And there we will be, in the ruins of Baghdad, responsible for 22 
million souls divided into factions that hate each other, are hated 
by their neighbors and that all hate us. The king's counselors seem 
to have convinced him that we will simply divide the spoils among the 
American and British corporations and then wash our hands of the 
whole thing, leaving an American stooge in charge.

It won't be that easy. Putting Afghanistan back together, which we 
have yet to accomplish, will be seen as a cakewalk compared with 
restoring and maintaining order in Iraq. From which faction will we 
draw our stooge? The Republican Guard? The fanatic Shiites eager for 
close ties with Iran? The Kurds who want their own separate country - 
which, if they try to produce it, will spark a war with Turkey? Far 
from democratizing Iraq, we will end up imposing a dictatorship. As 
is the case in Afghanistan, we will find it harder to get out of Iraq 
than it was to get in.

In the meantime, we will bear the moral shame of having launched an 
aggressive war against a weak opponent. We will bear the moral blame 
for all the dead, maimed and impoverished Iraqis who, like American 
soldiers, have to pay the price for their leader's folly. Our 
grandchildren and their children will have to live with the terrorism 
that this aggressive war will spawn, not to mention the hundreds of 
billions of dollars that will be added to the national debt.

And that's the best-case scenario.

The worst-case scenario is that before we have defeated Iraq, the war 
expands to include Lebanon, Syria and Israel, and that the Arab 
street rises up and overthrows those Arab governments that have been 
servile servants of America's new imperialism. One of several 
strategic blunders our youthful and inexperienced King George is 
making is failing to understand the difference between secularism and 
Islamic fundamentalists.

Secular governments, like Saddam's, want to survive. They would 
rather live with us than die with us, and therefore all our 
differences are negotiable, even subject to settlement with bribes. 
Islamist governments, however, consist of people who would rather die 
with us than live with us. Nothing is negotiable. No agreement or 
compromise is possible. The effect of the Bush war will be, in the 
years to come, to place more and more of the world's 1 billion 
Muslims under Islamist, rather than secular, leadership.

Next to King George, the single most enthusiastic and delighted 
person backing a war against Iraq is Osama bin Laden. He wants a war 
of Islam against the West, and George Bush, who is not a subtle or 
sophisticated thinker, is strutting straight into his trap. Rather 
than making the Middle East safe for oil companies and Israel, as he 
imagines, Bush will make the world unsafe for Americans.

To paraphrase one of his own macho sayings, he will have started 
something. Others will finish it.

[END]