Another fine mess, chaps

[Sticky]

By Mike Carlton
November 1, 2003

As the Bushies lurch deeper into the horrors of a protracted guerilla war in Iraq, it is instructive to look back at the overweening hubris which got them into the morass.

In a sabre-rattling speech to Korean war veterans in San Antonio, Texas, in August last year, the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, said this of the conflict he was so eagerly pushing: "The freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab 'street', the Middle East expert, Professor Fouad Ajami, predicts that after liberation, in Basra and Baghdad the streets are 'sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans'. Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991."

Deary me. Fouad Ajami, a Shiite of Lebanese origin but now an American citizen, is professor of Middle Eastern studies at the renowned Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. An arch-conservative, he is the Bushies' favourite tame Muslim, often quoted as predicting that the streets of Baghdad would be strewn with rose petals when its American liberators arrived.

This cheery optimism (let alone the rose petals) might not be shared by the American grunts on the ground, who are now dying in tragic numbers. At last count 357 have been killed, 219 of them since George Bush's vainglorious declaration of "mission accomplished" as he strutted the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln last May.

MORE:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/31/1067566085160.html