a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Sunday, April 20, 2003 Lebanon RisingSteve at Golgonooza seems to think Syria makes a good point about weapons of mass destruction: If we want to rid the entire Middle East of nuclear bombs and mustard gas and sarin, fine, but start with Israel. In principle I agree, but it's an obvious ruse by Syria to keep out arms inspectors. Bush's argument will be that Damascus is hiding the weapons we can't find in Iraq the very same weapons! built by our enemy! imagine that! which are now a step closer to the nasty Hezbollah. And he'll probably be right.The trouble is that Hezbollah itself grew out of Israel's war on terrorism in Lebanon (and occupation of the Golan Heights), which is the sort of mini-imperial quagmire we now want to avoid in Iraq. If we'd stuck to hunting the perpetrators of September 11, I'll argue, instead of charging into Iraq with a half-earnest cry of "Find the weapons!" a portable excuse for war that should travel nicely from state to state in the Middle East and ruin what's left of the U.S.'s good name in the process we'd have more of the moral authority Bush needs to make his case in Syria and many other places that are clearly standing in the way of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Instead, he faces the dangerous problem of a cache of weapons stashed by Damascus and a restless population in Iraq that seems to want us to leave already. So Iraq may turn into another Lebanon before we get a chance to stabilize it, which presents us with a fateful choice: Leave, and abandon a failed state to fundamentalists and strongmen, or stay, and risk becoming a serious empire? Not a decadent empire, like Rome, or even a trade empire, like Britain, but a kind of paranoid global octopus that shuffles Marine bases around the world, cutting deals with local leaders in the name of freedom and democracy but following through only as far as necessary to keep our cities from being bombed. What do you think Bush will say? And what, really, is the safest thing? Josh Marshall thinks the noises about Syria made by Washington are just a warning. He doesn't think we're about to spread the war. Maybe not. But the exact demands we make on Damascus will reveal a lot, as Marshall writes, about "whether we're pursuing a minimalist or maximalist plan for remaking the Middle East," and at Radio Free Mike we're none too optimistic about the answer. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:48 AM | |
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