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FACING UP TO FAILURE IN IRAQ
Since Bush cannot deal with the failure of Iraq ~ let's deal with the F word and clearly see the havoc we have wrought in the Middle East through the eyes of the Arab world's outstanding Link TV : Allen L Roland
Sometimes its refreshing how outsiders can clearly see America's dilemma while we cannot see beyond the trees.
As such, I turn to Link TV's David Clark to give us an Arab perspective, as well as a 4 minute video, of our Iraq debacle.
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/04/11.html
Iraq: Facing Up To Failure
Bush posing as a carrier pilot ~ one of his many pretenses of the past four years .
By David Clark / Link TV
The search for a viable policy towards Iraq and the wider Middle East has to start from an honest acknowledgement that the Anglo-American strategy of 2002-3 has been comprehensively defeated.
The removal of Saddam Hussein was supposed to create a new regional dynamic in which the twin menaces of Islamist terrorism and secular Arab despotism would be forced into retreat by an American-sponsored regime change that unleashed the Middle East's latent democratic energies. Iraq would become an exemplar of freedom and progress, providing a liberal democratic answer to the popular resentments that fuel support for al-Qaida.
Washington would no longer be forced to depend on disreputable allies like Hosni Mubarak and the House of Saud. A new wave of pro-western governments would forget about the Palestinians and recognise Israel. Anti-American rogue states planning to acquire weapons of mass destruction would take the hint and follow Colonel Gadafy's example by disarming. At a bare minimum, the Iraqi people would be liberated from a cruel and murderous regime.
In every single respect, these hopes have been falsified by events. The new Iraqi regime, far from being infused with the Jeffersonian spirit, has become a sectarian project for asserting the communal ascendancy of the country's Shia majority.
Its interior ministry forces, charged with upholding the rule of law by day, take to the streets at night with electric drills and other instruments of death. Religious militias, both Shia and Sunni, enforce theocratic rule under the noses of coalition troops. Human rights abuses are now worse than at any time since the suppression of the Shia uprising in 1991.
Al-Qaida has been handed a lifeline after its defeat in Afghanistan and terrorism is on the rise again, as the Bush administration's own intelligence assessments make clear. Iran has seized on America's moment of weakness and overstretch to accelerate its nuclear programme while Bush has been forced to acknowledge North Korea's nuclear status. Saudi Arabia is back in the saddle as Washington's indispensable Arab friend, and even Syria is being gradually brought in from the cold. Saddam's removal was supposed to be a means to various ends. It is only now that those ends have failed to materialise that it is spoken of as an achievement in itself.
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OpEd columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments & interviews. ( allen@allenroland.com )
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio . | 
