And it is worse, when you consider Southwest Asia as a region, stretching from Pakistan to the horn of Africa (Somalia). The US is conducting overt war in Somalia (with illegal proxy assistance from Ethiopia), Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is conducting covert warfare in Iran and Pakistan. In addition, the US has taken sides with Israel in the war of occupation against the Palestinians, employing divide-and-conquer techniques by arming the corrupt Fatah against Hamas. The US backed Israel in Lebanon last summer in the war on Hezbollah, supplying fuel and weapons (including cluster bombs).
So, what next? The monarchy of Saudi Arabia is composed of the oil barrons (the royalty and their court) and the fundamentalist Wahabbists (the ones who were actually involed in 9/11 if you believe that version of the story). The phrase "further instability" applies to Saudi Arabia too. The American colonies revolted against their monarchy, and the natural drive for liberty will play out in Saudi Arabia too.
Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski made a now-famous statement that bounced around the blogosphere back in February. Here it is again:
A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks [that is, Bush's surge fails]; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Add Saudi Arabia and Somalia to that list and you might as well call it a World War, as depicted in the map above. We're not quite there yet, but Brzezinski has laid out a formula for getting there, and the Democrats seem to be (unwittingly?) playing into it with their blame-the-Iraqi benchmark approach to Iraq.
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