Back to the Future in the Middle East
If Gen. David Petraeus can’t stabilize Iraq by autumn — or if Americans decide to pull out of Iraq before he gets a fair chance — expect far worse chaos eventually to follow. We will see ethnic cleansing, mass murder of Iraqi reformers, Kurdistan threatened, emerging Turkish-, Iranian-, and Wahhabi-controlled rump states, and al Qaeda emboldened as American military prestige is ruined.
And then what new American Middle East policy would arise from the ashes of Iraq?
Past presidents and statesmen as diverse as Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Brent Scowcroft have weighed in with various remedies to our supposed blunders in the Middle East since September 11.
Apparently, Americans are supposed to forget these supposedly brilliant strategists’ dismal records of dealing with Middle East terrorism, Islamic radicalism and murderous dictators. However, their three decades of bipartisan failure helped bring us to the present post-9/11 world.
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