winterbadger | Aug. 11th, 2006

Not surprising, considering I have tremendous admiration for the source...

A reverse domino theory may be playing out in the Middle East

Gen. William Odom says Vice President Cheney has it all wrong when he warns that the U.S. must stay in Iraq because failure there could prompt collapse elsewhere. In fact, now it looks like a new Arab-Israeli war could be breaking out precisely because our actions in Iraq have emboldened Iran and Syria.

read the whole piece here

I think he's right. I also think, judging from Vietnam, that life is going to get a lot worse (no, really) for Iraqis before it gets better, no matter *what* we do. And that it will probably be a generation (or two) before life gets back to normal in Iraq.

Let's remember: this was something *we* started. Vietnam was kind of a horrorshow left over from the last act of the play of classic pre-war colonialism. We inherited it from France. The Iraq war has been entirely the creation of the US and its allies.

I checked a couple of human rights sites the other day, because I was curious. It doesn't appear that as many Iraqis have been killed in the war (of three years' duration now) as were killed by Saddam Hussein's regime between 1979 and 2003. Yet. But the fact that it's even in the same ballpark is disturbing, and really puts the lie to most of the current surviving US rationalizations for the war.