The Best Case Scenario

28 Aug, 2002 by John Hawkins

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The Best Case Scenario: So far the Bush administration has been able to “turn” some of the terrorist supporting regimes out there without having to resort to using military force. We’ve seen significant progress on that front in Pakistan, Cuba, Yemen, Libya & Sudan among others. However, there are at least three leaders who will have to be “disposed of” in one way or the other because it seems unlikely that they’ll ever willingly stop supporting terrorism. Those leaders are Saddam Hussein, Ali Khamenei, and Yasser Arafat.

We’ve been knocking heads with Hussein since the Gulf War and if he was going to stop supporting terrorists, he would have done it by now. Arafat is a career terrorist and he’s about as likely to stop supporting terrorism as he is to convert to Judaism. Khamenei is a true religious fanatic who’d rather risk being overthrown than turn away from an almost inevitable conflict the United States.

We’ll have to remove Hussein with military force because even if he were assassinated, it looks likely that one of his sons would take over and continue his work. That means we’re going to have to rip Hussein’s whole filthy regime out by the roots. The Israelis are perfectly capable of handling Arafat if it becomes necessary but ideally the Palestinians will kick him out themselves when they have an election. Then in all likelihood they’ll elect someone more likely to make peace or someone who’s an out and out terrorist. Either one would be preferable to Arafat who pretends to be the former while actually being the latter. Khamenei is holding on by his fingernails in Iran and after we take Iraq, it will be very difficult for him to continue to control his nation with US forces on his border supplying Iranian revolutionaries with weapons, supplies, moral support and if necessary military aid.

That still leaves Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. In 1998, Hafez al-Assad of Syria was intimidated by Turkish troops massed on his border into cutting off support for the terrorists in the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). If we control Iraq, we are capable of putting troops on the Syrian border and intimidating his son in exactly the same way. Lebanon is a pathetically weak puppet state of Syria and if Syria decides the terrorists in Lebanon are going out of business, their days are numbered. Crown Prince Abdullah in Saudi Arabia strikes me as a cynical & self-interested tyrant who’ll allow the terrorists to roam free or crack down on them based on whatever he believes is in his best interests. After we take Iraq, the equation will change enough that I believe he’ll start to see us as a bigger threat than the terrorists which will lead to a the type of Saudi crackdown we wanted and expected after 9/11. North Korea is still a wildcard but they are talking to us which is encouraging and if we sweeten the pot enough and if they think there is a real possibility of conflict with us, they may very well be willing to deal as well.

So although we’d have to at least be willing to invade multiple nations if necessary, it’s possible that we may only need to invade one more nation (Iraq) in order to end the state support of terrorism. Of course, that is a BEST CASE SCENARIO and there are a thousand things that can go wrong. But after we take Iraq, a whole new realm of possibilities will open up that have nothing but positive connotations for the region.