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Ed said at
the end of his email.
I agree, but that will only be the first step in something that will go one
for a very long time.
Arthur,
It is
probably already going on. The list of casualties in the militant Islam
vs. west war is already quite long. Sept 11 was an escalation. And,
yes, it appears that it might go on for some time.
Ed,
At 15:35 09/09/02 -0400, you wrote:
>What I have trouble
figuring out is why the US singles out Iraq on grounds
>of being
controlled by a madman who may have weapons of mass destruction.
>Iraq
is not the only volatile place where weapons of mass destruction
may
>exist. And there are plenty of madmen in present or potential
positions of
>power. After George Bush "gits" Sadam, will he then
proceed to stamp out
>the other madmen one by one? For each madman
he stamps out, might not
>another one (or more) emerge to take his
place?
I've been trying to explain in the past few weeks why the Bush
chose to
single-out Saddam -- he's by far the best pretext in order to put
pressure
on Muslim fundamentalism generally and the Wahhabi sect of Saudi
Arabia in
particular.
If my argument doesn't count for much then
you've possibly missed the
extract from last week-end's article in the FT,
"Smoke on the horizon" by
Sir Michael Howard, President of the
International Institute for Strategic
Studies, and formerly Professor of
Modern History at Oxford U. which I
posted yesterday. See the fourth
paragraph in particular:
Keith, I know
all that. I've been busy, but I've followed at least some of the stuff
people have put on the list about Bush's intentions. The point I was
trying to make was that the number of people who hate America is growing and
spreading, as is the ability to manufacture weaponry of mass
destruction. It's like sowing dragons teeth. Git Husain and a
hundred more Husains will spring up. Pakistan, a place seething with
anti-western feelings, now has the bomb and God knows what else and the US
hold on Pakistan is very tenuous. Remove Musharraf and someone far less
friendly may take over. Before its collapse, the Soviet Union had
advanced mass destructive technology. Surely much of that is still
around somewhere.
In general, Sir Michael Howard notwithstanding,
there is no single specific adversary. There are millions and perhaps
potentially billions of them. My fear about what Bush may be unleashing
is something that will fester for centuries. In a previous posting, I
suggested that the US attack on Iraq will begin an endless chain of body
bags. Someone shot me down by saying no, no, no, the Americans will very
quickly beat up on Husain. I agree, but that will only be the first step
in something that will go one for a very long time.
Ed
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