Saturday, February 18, 2006
What a can of worms looks like.
The LA Times has a thoughtful piece on the changes in the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. And, despite the continuing babble of Our Dear Embattled Leader and his minions about bringing democracy to the region, none of it is going favorably for the US.
In the 1980s, Iran spent eight years and thousands of lives waging a war to overthrow Hussein, whose regime buffered the Sunni Muslim-dominated Arab world from Iran. But in the end, it took the U.S.-led invasion to topple Iraq's dictator and allow Iranian influence to spread through a chaotic, battle-torn country.Well, as Condi would say, who could know this would happen? And as I would answer, anybody who had their heads out of the sand.
Now Iraq's fledgling democracy has placed power in the hands of the nation's Shiite majority and its Kurdish allies, many of whom lived as exiles in Iran and maintain strong religious, cultural and linguistic ties to it. The two groups sit atop most of Iraq's oil, and both seek a decentralized government that would give them maximum control of it. A weak central government would also limit Sunni influence.
The proposed changes have aggravated ancient tensions between the two branches of Islam, not to mention Arabs and Iranians. Neighboring countries have historical and tribal links to Iraq's Sunnis.
"A weak Iraq is now sitting next to a huge, mighty Iran. Now the only counterpart to Iran is not a regional power, but a foreign power like the United States," said Abdel Khaleq Abdullah, a political analyst and television host in Dubai. "This is unsustainable. It's bad for [Persian] Gulf security. It's given Iran a sense of supremacy that we all feel."
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