Before the US led invasion of Iraq, I watched a Democratic pundant warn of the consequences of invading Iraq. Among them he (and I wish I could remember who it was) warned of destabilization of the middle east and of civil war in Iraq.
The destabilization would come, he said, because of the shift in the balance of power and to fueling of anti-western sentiment.
This now makes more sense to me than it did at teh time it was said,
Consider the events after...

• Iran thumping its chest without the fear of Saddam blowing them to bits.
• Hammas elected on strong anti-western policies
• Unification of Muslim extremists against the common enemy.

Couple this with the US depletion of resources, the rapid influx of cash to Muslim states (through higher oil), it seems the invasion has set a horrible chain reaction into work.

Debate...

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?
Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?

Besides any other point one could draw up it has at the least changed the course of human history in ways we wont fully understand a hundred years from now fully and of course changed the environment in the mideast in ways currently we probably do not understand.

Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?

I don’t know by how much it kept the middle east in any holding pattern, I do however wonder if the desire of the Hussein regime to make contacts with terrorist to not only be an extension of wanting to protect itself from a rising power if not get on the bandwagon at the same time, seems rather calculated to give money to the families of suicide bombers in the mideast, more so when people like bin laden openly say they hate you, and at one point even wanted to go to war against you, and that your nation previously held US aid while at war with iran.

Yes. And in our favor. The previous "balance" did nothing to protect the long term interests of the USA. We had BOTH Iran and Iraq funding anti-American terrorists like Al Qaeda along with explicit state sponsorship/harboring from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It's a false premise that there was some sort of "stability" in that region and that our moves there upset the "apple cart" and threw the region into chaos. There was order in that region, all right. And that "order" was the alignment of forces against the US and the west in general.

Hussein kept them all at bay? Yes, from attacking Iraq but not from attacking the US and our interests. They were allied in that effort to remove the US from the region completely militarily, economically, and culturally.

Doing nothing would have further enabled that coalition. Our moves to break them up have resulted in a reaction (fully expected) but don't change the justification for it or the long term agenda which is the defeat of radical Islamist Jihad and the containment and eventual transformation of the head of that beast which is the country of Iran.

Until I see one shred of evidence that Iraq funded Al Qaeda, this is nothing but wishful revisionist history. You’ll have a hard time since the 9/11 commission failed to find the link. Funny how you and the Bush suporters always seem to "forget" the funding and involvment of the Saudi's (Bush Family & Co's best friends).


I must have missed that. You’re on a roll with the hyperbole. Hussein must also be responsible for the current heat wave.


How so, by not attacking us? So next on Hussein’s/Iran’s list is/was Quatar and Jordon?

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?

I don’t know about the balance of power in region, as gordo stated, it may be a while before the repercussions of the invasion are fully understood. But the invasion has no doubt altered the face of the Middle East

Who is/was Iran’s number one enemy? Probably a toss up between Israel, the US and Iraq and one of the reasons we make the list is our support of Israel. So the US takes a commanding military presence in one of their other enemy’s country’s, possibly setting up permanent military bases (who knows for sure) that just happens to be right next door.

So, what are Iran’s options?

Scare the crap out of the rest of the world thumping their chests with threats of nuclear proliferation and continue to play puppet master by providing Hezbulla (which Iran created) with missiles and money to wage war against Israel. Make no mistake about it Iran has their hands all over the current Israeli situation.

And I just now read bucket’s new post that Turkey and the Kurds may be going at it soon.

With the chaos in Iraq looking more like a civil war every day where Sunni/Kurd/Shi’a frictions ripple through the entire region, I’d venture to say we’ve more than changed the face of Iraq.

And then consider that the invasion was “in the name of democracy”. And yet we probably blew any chance of democratic credibility with the mess at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, taking prisoner to foreign countries to be tortured, and US soldiers raping and killing innocent civilians. If you’re a poor, uneducated Iranian, and this is your only impression/news of the US and democracy, then I’d say your Middle Eastern face is probably permanently soured.

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?
Yes and that change of balance has been in our favor. It is now impossible for an Iraq with WMD to send the region into chaos as they did when they invaded Kuwait. It is no longer possible for Saddam to train or arm terrorists to kill Americans. Has it curtailed Iraq and Syria? Somewhat but, as we can see, not completely.

Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?
No. If fact the “arms race” between Iraq and Iran is IMO the source of the strong desire of Iran to be a nuclear power. An ambition they seem reluctant to give up on.

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?

No. What has really changed since Saddam left? Not much. I think the major issue is the lack of the US presence in the middle east as a peacemaker.

Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?

Saddam wasn't that influential in keeping the peace, IMHO.

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?

Yes, but its removed any balance of power rather than upset it. As Iraq descends into civil war between the Sunis and Shiites, it will drag in other countries on one side or the other, whilst Turkey battles the Kurds in the north. There won't be much we can do other than watch and wait to see where the chips fall. Israel may have helped a little though by reminding all the Islamic factions that they hate jews more than each other. The naming of Iran as part of an 'Axis of Evil" pushed forward their Nuclear program (as in North Korea) as a bargaining chip with the US.

Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?

Yes. He was like Tito in Yugoslavia, holding together a fractious country by force. The region wasn't idyllic by any means, but it was under control.

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the blance of power in the middle east?
Yes certainly the illegal invasion altered the balance of power in the Middle East. Armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands tend to do that to particular areas. Now, I don't think the balance of power has tipped against the US and Israel mind you. The Planners have things well under control.
Did having the Hussain regime in place keep the other countries at bay?
This is a subject which, if the results weren't so catastrophic in the human sense, would be hilarious in its entirety. In 2002 and even late 2001 the US foreign policy frontmen were busy generating fear among the US population, fear in the form of phantom WMD which were, as you will soon see, based on blatant lies.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm
In 2002, while Powell, presenting the "evidence" to the UN, was praising the "fine paper" which the world now knows was based on lies, no one knew what he was saying about Iraq's capabilities not even a year before the UN evidence fiasco.

Not only that, Condi Rice also had something to say about Iraq's capabilities:

There you have it. Four to seven months before 9/11--and just 15 to 18 months before the drive to attack Iraq seriously revved up--the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor trumpeted that Iraq had a decimated military, no "significant capabilities" regarding WMD, and was so feeble that it couldn't even threaten the countries around it with conventional military power.

The “balance” was forever altered when Iraq invaded Kuwait. What followed was the disarming of Iraqi nuclear program (to the Delight of Iran). I am sure Iran now feels they can be a dominant (nuclear) power in the region. Saddam under UN resolutions was not going to threaten Iran and would not have nukes until the sanctions were lifted.

Hammas was elected on hatred of Israel. We had little to do with this IMO. But we can be sure our support for Israel is the primary reason the US, above all others, is hated in the Middle East. Thus Israel and the US were always the target for Muslim extremists. Having a free Iraq will actually help in that the extremists will have less of a foothold there.

Saddam kept no one at bay and only added to the turmoil.

Has the invasion of Iraq altered the face and upset the balance of power in the middle east?

Taking Bush at face value, I would say that he seemed to have some great idea about going on a regime overthrowing spree all over the world, and that the idea has basically died, because the Iraq war has put us back into post-Vietnam War syndrome, and 180,000 of our troops are tied down.

His mistake was trying to make Iraq a total democracy, instead of a partial democracy like Lebanon, where Christians (despite making up only a minority of the countries populace) are given half of the control, and muslims the other half. Currently, the Shiites won't give the Sunni's what they want, and don't need the Sunnis in order to get things done.

The insurgency was pre-predicted by a few people, including Barack Obama who as a State senator said in 2002 that an occupation of Iraq after the war would come at an "unknown cost" and last an "unknown duration", due to ethnic infighting.

Bush is frankly incompetent. Idealistic like Clinton, but less intelligent/wise, and less of a good talker. He was on the the right tack though; it's just to bad he didn't go some place that would have had a more united and welcoming populace, like North Korea. Hundreds of thousands of them were and are starving, and as far as sects go...their atheists! So they don't havem.

Anyways, do I believe that we've upset "the balance of power" by invading Iraq?

The Hamas election had nothing to do with Iraq. During elections most of the Palestinians wanted negotiated peace with Israel (this is proven via polls). Hamas won on economics and Fatah's corruption.

Iran was bad to begin with, but now it doesn't need to worry about Saddam attacking it to stop it from getting nukes which he would have felt threatened by. Iran has been most worsened by the last election though and that has little to do with Iraq, at least ostensibly.

Yes, Iraq has hurt the USes image in the Middle East, and has provided a focal point for terrorist attacks.