Middle East prediction

ChrisCam talks about a prediction he made for the middle east about three years ago:

About 3 years ago, I was having a discussion with my father about Iraq. I made the statement that I thought the President and his team had nothing short than reshaping the entire Middle East as their primary foreign policy goal. This would be the 21st Century version of the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. A broad, sea-change in that region that would allow its people to live freely and under liberal Democracy instead of under the thumb of the few. This, I said, would be America's generational committment to ensuring that a 9/11 would never happen again. Iraq, I said, was just part of the equation. The whole picture involved Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt, for starters. It would involve toppling regimes by force if necessary, by fostering grass-roots reform if possible and by diplomatic pressure if effective.



I think I was prescient.

You weren't prescient, Chris. I'm on record as predicting the same thing. It's just that we were both paying attention to what the President was saying, and realized he meant it, something that for some reason very few people believed until after the Iraq invasion when Libya decided to play nice just to be on the safe side. Saddam Hussein obviously didn't believe he meant it. Most of europe didn't believe he meant it. I'm absolutely certain that except for maybe a couple of the smaller states, the arab world didn't believe it.



And that's probably just as well. If those despots had really thought our president meant to install a democratic government in Iraq, our troops would have had a much harder time of it.



One of my favorite (and most parallel to true life) movie scenes is in The Shootist, where John Wayne's character is explaining to Opie Ron Howard's that technical competence is only a small part of the game. Far more important is being willing and mentally ready. Most of the time, by the time the other party figures out that you actually intend to shoot them, you've already done it. It is no less true strategically than tactically.