ENDGAME # 1
Well, as planned the tanks have finally rolled in, the GIs have handed out the gum & the nylons & the grateful subjects are thronging the streets, throwing flowers. Which is, in fact, exactly what is happening (minus the flowers the gum & the nylons). So wily old wardog Rumsfedlt & canny Deputy Sheriff Chaney were right when they predicted abject gratitude from a people liberated from tyranny. Soon, no doubt, incontrovertible evidence will be found that Saddam had been busy with his chemistry set & that only the speed, tactics & firepower of the USA forestalled bio/chemical immolation. Those of us who opposed the war will find that, once again, we will be characterised as a small, cranky minority comprising recidivist hippies, unreconstructed commies & well-meaning but hopelessly myopic liberals. Once again our case will be hammered flat on the anvil of realpolitik.
And here's the real pisser: whatever moral fervour had us out in the streets before & during the war, the fact remains that a foul regime has been brought down &, if Saddam did perish in the rubble of that restaurant, not a tear will be shed on our side of the fence. That's what will peel away the last doubters from our ranks - utilitarianism, pragmatism, the democratic imperative, the persistent conviction that the world is only as complex a place as we choose to believe it to be & all that really matters is that the greater of two evils has been eliminated. Now we can move cautiously but confidently towards that most American of notions, closure.
All well & good. But now America (with Great Britain & the United Nations dancing attendance) will set about the monumental task of reconstruction. And no one is in any serious doubt that it will be implemented with anything less than breezy, brash & brutal certainty of moral & logistical rectitude. Democracy will mean what it has always meant when Western powers have brought its great benisons to less fortunate parts of the globe: our guys will get the seats indoors & their guys will be left out to fight it out on the lawns. Thus the Islamic lobby will be sidelined & all would-be Ayatollahs will be left to polish their Kalashnikovs in downtown cellars & mountain hideouts, entrenched interest groups will be ignored & the Iraqi National Congress - alleged to have amongst its founders the CIA - will be eased into place. Thus, triumphantly, history will be made.
Eased into place, however, only when American interests have been dug deep & the conduits are flowing between Middle East & Golden West. In the interim the cargo will be shifting & the balance will be tipping out of kilter right across the entire region, from Israel to Pakistan, from Georgia to Saudi Arabia. And then history really will be made, this time with a vengeance.
11:33:19 PM 
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