George Bush The blind prophet

[T_i_B]

Superb article from the UK Guardian which I agree with wholeheartedly. Make of this what you will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1034488,00.html

The warning was plain. Iraq was a breeding ground of terror, an incubator for al-Qaida and a clear and present danger to "the civilised world". Tony Blair was wary of that argument, but George Bush made it the heart of his case. At his eve-of-war press conference back in March, the president cast the coming attack as the next step in a story that had begun on September 11 2001. Iraq was providing "training and safe haven to terrorists, terrorists who would willingly use weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries". The irony is that, at the time, this was not true. But it is now.

With astonishing speed, the United States and Britain are making their nightmares come true. Iraq is fast becoming the land that they warned about: a throbbing hub of terror. Islamists bent on murder, all but non-existent in Saddam's Iraq, are now flocking to the country, from Syria, Iran and across the Arab world. In the way that hippies used to head for San Francisco, jihadists are surging towards Baghdad. For those eager to strike at the US infidel, Iraq is the place to be: a shooting gallery, with Americans in easy firing range. Afghanistan is perilous terrain, but Iraq is open country. For the Islamist hungry for action, there are rich pickings.

Bush insisted that Saddam's Iraq was packed with these people, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. Proof was always thin, thinner even than the evidence of weapons of mass destruction - which is why Blair, to his credit, never mentioned it. But never mind; events have taken care of that little lacuna in the US argument. Iraq may not have been a terrorists' paradise at the start of the year - a retirement home for a few has-beens, perhaps - but it is now. Operation Iraqi Freedom blew off the gates, and Islam's holy warriors have rushed in. Like the blind protagonist of a Greek drama, Bush, in seeking to avert a prophecy, has ended up fulfilling it.

Why is the occupation going so badly wrong? Hubris and incompetence played their part. The Pentagon's civilian planners put plenty of thought into the war, but almost none into the peace. They had a hyperpower's supreme confidence in their own abilities. But ideology is surely the chief culprit. Republicans can barely spit the words "nation building", so it was a task they preferred not to think about.