The al-Ahram Weekly, of Egypt, contained an opinion article this week that ventures certain dark predictions regarding the impending US-led war on Iraq. At the same time, the article claims that the American objective in the war is not just Iraq, but it is “the most ambitious plan to redraw the political map of the Middle East since the 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty by which Britain and France carved up the Ottoman-ruled region between themselves after World War I.”
Seeking further analogies, the author, Mohammad Sid-Ahmad, writes, “The regime change policy espoused by the current administration is in fact a revamped version of the Eisenhower Doctrine, by which America sought to replace Britain and France as the dominant power in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Suez crisis. It is also a more ambitious version of the Doctrine, seeking not only to assert America's control over the Middle East and its vast oil reserves, but its preponderant position in a unipolar world order.”
However, Sid-Ahmad warns, “the outbreak of war can ignite a number of hot spots simultaneously.” Among them, he believes, is “the border area separating Iraq from Turkey.... The threat of fragmentation is very real: we might well see the country broken up into a Kurdish state in the north, a Shi'ite state in the south and a Sunni state in between. If Turkey does take part in the war the Kurdish region in the north will become particularly explosive, with Kurdish-Turkish, and possibly Kurdish-Iranian tensions reaching critical levels.” Other dangers that the Egyptian columnist sees are “if Saddam decides to use the 6,500 gallons of anthrax Bush insists are still unaccounted for, or if Israel respond to an Iraqi attack with a nuclear strike...”
The al-Ahram Weekly article further warns of America’s possible actions in the war, referring to yet another historical event: “11 September 2001, was not the first time America's sense of invincibility was shattered. A similarly traumatic event was the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941. In response to that slap in the face, America dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Will the war on Iraq, which is justified in the name of 11 September, produce equally cataclysmic scenarios...?”
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Spend Passover with Arutz Sheva at a resort in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Kfar Pines (near Hadera). Click here for info.
Seeking further analogies, the author, Mohammad Sid-Ahmad, writes, “The regime change policy espoused by the current administration is in fact a revamped version of the Eisenhower Doctrine, by which America sought to replace Britain and France as the dominant power in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Suez crisis. It is also a more ambitious version of the Doctrine, seeking not only to assert America's control over the Middle East and its vast oil reserves, but its preponderant position in a unipolar world order.”
However, Sid-Ahmad warns, “the outbreak of war can ignite a number of hot spots simultaneously.” Among them, he believes, is “the border area separating Iraq from Turkey.... The threat of fragmentation is very real: we might well see the country broken up into a Kurdish state in the north, a Shi'ite state in the south and a Sunni state in between. If Turkey does take part in the war the Kurdish region in the north will become particularly explosive, with Kurdish-Turkish, and possibly Kurdish-Iranian tensions reaching critical levels.” Other dangers that the Egyptian columnist sees are “if Saddam decides to use the 6,500 gallons of anthrax Bush insists are still unaccounted for, or if Israel respond to an Iraqi attack with a nuclear strike...”
The al-Ahram Weekly article further warns of America’s possible actions in the war, referring to yet another historical event: “11 September 2001, was not the first time America's sense of invincibility was shattered. A similarly traumatic event was the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941. In response to that slap in the face, America dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Will the war on Iraq, which is justified in the name of 11 September, produce equally cataclysmic scenarios...?”
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Spend Passover with Arutz Sheva at a resort in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Kfar Pines (near Hadera). Click here for info.