Dont Get Greedy!

THAT the Bush administration views intervention in Iraq as merely the opening gambit in a vastly more ambitious enterprise has become all but incontrovertible. However desirable toppling Saddam Hussein is in its own right, in this administration’s eyes it is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a means to a much larger end—a preliminary step in an American-sponsored campaign to transform the parched lands of the Arab Middle East into a lush garden of democratic liberalism.

In remarks made in early December, Richard Haass, director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, offered the most comprehensive explanation to date of what the administration has in mind. Haass began with the striking admission that for decades U.S. policy in the Arab world had been inherently flawed. Past administrations, Republican and Democratic, had “not made democratization a sufficient priority.” Assigning a higher priority to oil, military bases, and resisting Communism, Washington had “avoided scrutinizing the internal workings of countries,” permitting the region to exist as a “democratic exception.”

AJ

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Andrew J. Bacevich

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THAT the Bush administration views intervention in Iraq as merely the opening gambit in a vastly more ambitious enterprise has become all but incontrovertible. However desirable toppling Saddam Hussein is in its own right, in this administration’s eyes it is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a means to a much larger end—a preliminary step in an American-sponsored campaign to transform the parched lands of the Arab Middle East into a lush garden of democratic liberalism.

In remarks made in early December, Richard Haass, director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, offered the most comprehensive explanation to date of what the administration has in mind. Haass began with the striking admission that for decades U.S. policy in the Arab world had been inherently flawed. Past administrations, Republican and Democratic, had “not made democratization a sufficient priority.” Assigning a higher priority to oil, military bases, and resisting Communism, Washington had “avoided scrutinizing the internal workings of countries,” permitting the region to exist as a “democratic exception.”