28 September 2007
Packer, Gelb, Havel and Greenspan
In his article “Planning for Defeat,” in The New Yorker of September 17, 2007, George Packer shows how important it is to distinguish between Sunni Muslim Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and the traditional faction that has displayed the “Sunni Awakening” there. The tribal leaders of the latter sect now have adopted the occupying U.S. as their guarantee of political and economic rights in the Iraq it leaves behind. Now that Saddam is gone, they have no other choice.
Al Qaeda was attracted to Iraq in response to the American invasion. The terrorists dispute that the U.S. has a right to go where it likes in order to impose its will. Resentment of the effects of that attitude on Saudi Arabia was one of the rationales of the 9/11 attackers. As Les Gelb reminded us in his review of the book on the Israel lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt in the September 23, 2007, New York Times, it was Iranian resentment of the U.S. overthrow of Mossadegh and continued propping up of the Shah that led terrorists to seize the American Embassy in Tehran.
It is not surprising that a humanist like Vaclav Havel would agree in his new book, To the Castle and Back, that removing Saddam from the scene was justified, even necessary. But, as Alan Greenspan perceived in his book, The Age of Turbulence, the invasion of Iraq had more to do with oil than with human rights. Not the sort of concern that troubles Mr. Havel.
In his article “Planning for Defeat,” in The New Yorker of September 17, 2007, George Packer shows how important it is to distinguish between Sunni Muslim Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and the traditional faction that has displayed the “Sunni Awakening” there. The tribal leaders of the latter sect now have adopted the occupying U.S. as their guarantee of political and economic rights in the Iraq it leaves behind. Now that Saddam is gone, they have no other choice.
Al Qaeda was attracted to Iraq in response to the American invasion. The terrorists dispute that the U.S. has a right to go where it likes in order to impose its will. Resentment of the effects of that attitude on Saudi Arabia was one of the rationales of the 9/11 attackers. As Les Gelb reminded us in his review of the book on the Israel lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt in the September 23, 2007, New York Times, it was Iranian resentment of the U.S. overthrow of Mossadegh and continued propping up of the Shah that led terrorists to seize the American Embassy in Tehran.
It is not surprising that a humanist like Vaclav Havel would agree in his new book, To the Castle and Back, that removing Saddam from the scene was justified, even necessary. But, as Alan Greenspan perceived in his book, The Age of Turbulence, the invasion of Iraq had more to do with oil than with human rights. Not the sort of concern that troubles Mr. Havel.
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