The Iranian nightmare

[not systems]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH11Ak01.html

Aug 11, 2005


The Iranian nightmare
By Michael Schwartz

In 1998, neo-conservative theorist Robert Kagan enunciated what would become a foundational belief of Bush administration policy. He asserted, "A successful intervention in Iraq would revolutionize the strategic situation in the Middle East, in ways both tangible and intangible, and all to the benefit of American interests."

Now, over two years after Baghdad fell and the American occupation of Iraq began, Kagan's prediction appears to have been fulfilled - in reverse. The chief beneficiary of the occupation and the chaos it produced has not been the Bush administration, but Iran, the most populous and powerful member of the "axis of evil" and the chief American competitor for dominance in the oil-rich region. As diplomatic historian Gabriel Kolko commented, "By destroying a united Iraq under Hussein ... the US removed the main barrier to Iran's eventual triumph."

...
In a memorable insight, historian and writer Rebecca Solnit has suggested that the successes of social movements should often be measured not by their accomplishments, but by the disasters they prevent:

What the larger movements have achieved is largely one of careers undestroyed, ideas uncensored, violence and intimidation uncommitted, injustices unperpetrated, rivers unpoisoned and undammed, bombs undropped, radiation unleaked, poisons unsprayed, wildernesses unviolated, countryside undeveloped, resources unextracted, species unexterminated.

The Iraqi resistance, one of the least expected and most powerful social movements of recent times, can lay claim to few positive results. In two years of excruciating (if escalating) fighting, the insurgents have seen their country progressively reduced to an ungovernable jungle of violence, disease and hunger. But maybe, as Solnit suggests, their real achievement lies in what didn't happen. Despite the deepest desires of the Bush administration, to this day Iran remains uninvaded - the horrors of devolving Iraq have, so far, prevented the unleashing of the plagues of war on its neighbor.

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