A Pilgrim’s Digression

I think it is becoming clearer that Iraq is perhaps merely the whetstone on which the Bush Administration is sharpening the long knives to be used against Iran and Syria. A William Raspberry editorial in the Washington Post today raises the theory that the Bushies have adopted a strategy similar to beating a hornets nest in order to draw the hornets out into the open and destroy them. The idea is that war with Iraq will be so unpopular among Muslims that the result will be a broader war in the Middle East, which the U.S. and its allies will win. I suppose the hope is that after destroying the institutions of government which breed anti-Americanism, we and our allies will shape the Mid-East in our own image and thus at one blow clear out all the ‘hornets’ that have made peace in the region an impossibility.