Chris Mathews has made the argument that the Iraqi invasion will bring about 1,000 years of hatred of the west by Arabs. For a variety of reasons, I don’t buy this argument. The war will be short enough and even a botched reconstruction will result in a better outcome than Saddam. It won’t win us many friends either, but wars generally don’t.
Josh Marshall has written an excellent article that explains the neo-cons plans for the Middle East and sums it up quite well:
The audacious nature of the neocons’ plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan’s just crazy enough to work."
But like a TV plot, the hawks’ vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes’ heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks’ vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.
How are these two bits connnected? Well, the neo-cons apparently like to do things big, such an effort would not lead to 1,000 years of hatred, but 2,000.
Of course, this entire endeavor would be the US alone. Blair and Great Britain seem to have some sense of history and remember when they got booted out of the region and they aren’t looking for a rematch. Beyond that it is hard to imagine such an effort being tolerated by the US public. Iraq was a tough sell and trying to convince the public that the entire Middle East is a threat isn’t going to go very far.