Reason Writers Around Town

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Young takes the temperature of Sunni Muslims.

Comments

[James]

I don't dispute any particular point, but offer the suggestion that this may be the logic that underlies the surge. As predicted by my high-school dropout girlfriend in 2003, the Iraq War has put the whole region in play.

The US, having gleefully pursued a petty, pointless vendetta with Iran and lost Iraq, is now being warned by the Saudis, of all people, that their support is not open-ended. Hence the new enthusiasm for attacking the Shiite militias in Baghdad.

And now we find why the US policy of "stability" was the norm for the last fifty years. Pushing the Saudis or any other government to adopt "democracy," is only going to convince them that the time has come to launch a holy war of their own.

[spur]

"Only democracy could prepare Arab states to withstand Iran without recourse to sectarianism. But the Bush administration seems to have abandoned that inventive undertaking for the region."

Isn't is ironic that Iran is the only functioning democracy in the region...

[James]

On the same topic:

http://tinyurl.com/3x337x

The author argues that US Middle East policy has reverted to realpolitik: Iran is the enemy, and the friends are whomever is against Iran.