I made a little note here of something that (US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay) Khalilzad said to you a moment ago. He said the region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized. It’s the one thing nobody talks about. Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq, but they forget about the fact that, if US troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between the Sunnis and Shia.
And the region, in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil and, you and I have talked about this before, natural gas. So the idea of pulling out of there and letting the region — I mean, letting the national civil war expand into a regional civil war, is something the United States cannot allow to happen. . .
If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn’t connect the dots.
Twenty-four years ago, the pre-cursors of Hezbollah blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983, 241 Americans killed. In the interim, between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the USS Cole, you had the bombing of the two US embassies in East Africa.
This war’s already been going on for 24 years. We were just a little bit slow to recognize it.”
HIGGINS: It’s simple economics, Turner. There’s no argument. Oil now. Ten or fifteen years it’ll be food or plutonium. Maybe sooner than that. What do you think the people will want us to do then?
TURNER: Ask them!
HIGGINS: Now? (shakes head) Huh-uh. Ask them when they’re running out. When it’s cold at home and the engines stop and people who aren’t used to hunger — go hungry. They won’t want us to ask. They’ll want us to get it for them.
All one has to do is look at how Iran is trying to stir up hate sentiment for everything not Iranian to see what will happen when the US pulls out.
ABF: ah yes, our good friend Iran. Yes indeed. What will their next moves be?
BZ
Who will try to stop Iran when they decide to overrun Iraq and Kuwait? Will the libs decide that its Iran’s right to annex and occupy them?
WMD: excellent question.
BZ
Not the ‘precursor’ to Hezbollah, it was Hezbollah being stood up by Iran and Syria together. The First Foreign Legion of Iran.
Reading more on Michael Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy one of the surprising things, amongst many, is the roots of Arab Nationalism coming from the Christian schools and universities put down in the Middle East by American evangelicals. I had never thought that Pan-Arabism had an American root to it! In some ways what we see today dates back to that influence and the division of the Ottoman Empire after WWI… where Arab Nationalists were put against Muslim Fundamentalists and the resultant mess of that would divide across the Middle East between those who believed in Nations to have religion and those who wanted Religion with no Nations.
That same problem that started to manifest in the last years of WWI are *still* there today. President Wilson was unable to take a clear and definite side in the Middle East, and stayed out of the war *there* when the Allies expected the US to help fight there against the Ottomans. Trade trumped human rights… and now we pay for that trade then, in blood now.
I am coming, very much, to dislike those who put money before freedom. It is showing to have bad ends when implemented… and it *starts* with Wilson and the Ottomans in the Middle East.