View from the Throne
Posted by Pierre Igot in: SocietyApril 9th, 2003 • 4:33 pm
Important column by Robert Scheer on what’s ahead of us now that the Saddam Hussein regime is pretty much over.
“The View from the Throne” by Robert Scheer, AlterNet.org
… the most dangerous days are ahead for the U.S.
This battle is for the hearts and minds of Iraqis, Americans and the rest of the world, and the traps we’ll face are much greater than those posed by an ill-armed, poorly led regime. As an occupying army in a nation with which it has no cultural affinity, the U.S. has to accomplish miracles…
Of course, it’s easy to dismiss such articles as “more whining from anti-war columnists who don’t know what else to say now that the war has been easily won.” But serious anti-war writers have always said that the danger in this war was not the war itself, but what would come after. Already we are witnessing a dangerous level of lawlessness and anarchy in “liberated” cities. If the Bush administration is not held accountable for what it has promised to do (i.e. rebuild Iraq as a free, democratic nation), then things could go very wrong indeed. (Remember Lebanon? And just how well is it going in Afghanistan these days?)
The price of failure will be more terrorism, more death of innocents, more damage to the U.S. economy, renewal of a global arms race and the potential for a chaotic regional war. We have won nothing yet.