Stardate 20021129.1225

(On Screen): Sometimes the most interesting international events are the ones which don't happen. They're the "dog in the night". So here's one: why isn't India preparing for war with Pakistan? Why is it that even despite a major campaign of terrorism in Indian Kashmir causing dozens of deaths, there hasn't been any response to speak of?

Some of it is certainly the Pakistani nuclear deterrent. Some of it is international pressure. But I don't think that adequately explains it. I think there's more going on: I think that the government of India is in on American plans and is actually part of it, just like Israel is.

My opinion for the long-term progress of the war goes like this:

The first step is to conquer Iraq. Nothing less will do: we must move troops in and we must take over. This isn't really driven by the threat of WMDs or the need to oust Saddam, though those are issues too. The reality is that we need the use of the place for at least ten years as part of the overall strategy for this war.

During that interval, we also take large swaths of currently unused land somewhere and turn it into a massive American base. It most likely would be somewhere near Basra, to take advantage of the port there. That would become our primary base in that section of the world for the Air Force and Army. We might conceivably also develop a naval base on the Iraqi coast or somewhere on the Shatt-al-Arab.

There are a number of reasons why we do this. One of the most critical is that it will give us a stable base of operation in the region which is completely insulated from local political pressure. The Saudi experience is typical, with them waffling about whether they'd permit us to use the airbases there (mostly saying "no") for purposes of the attack on Iraq. If we have a secure base in the region which we effectively own, it drastically simplifies the situation.

Another reason we need Iraq is because in this case "nation building" is a strategic goal. That was not the case in Afghanistan. Our strategic goal there was destruction, not construction. What was important was to take out al Qaeda.

But during the period of military rule in Iraq, we will institute the rule of law based on something like our legal system. Rule will be secular, fair, and extremely benign by comparison to the current regime. The women will be liberated. We'll work to institute a mercantile culture and a free university system based on a broad and useful set of subjects (e.g. science, engineering, humanities) instead of primary concentration on study of religious texts. We'll also set up a reasonable lower-level education system.

Iraq is in many ways the best choice in the region for this, in part because it is traditionally relatively secular, and also because it actually has had a history of better education. The core of an educated middle class is still there even after 20 years of Saddam's rule, and that's who we'd work with to redesign Iraq.

The result of all this will be for Iraq to begin to bloom. The lot of individuals in Iraq will drastically improve. They will be more free, more happy, more prosperous, more healthy, and everyone in all the nations around there will see it happen, which is what we need strategically. It will be impossible to ignore, and impossible for the neighboring governments to paper over or explain away. This will lead to unrest (e.g. "destabilization") in those nations as their people demand more freedom and better economic results. Iran will be first; within no more than months of the war there will be a revolution in Iran. But in the long run you'll see a substantial movement nearly everywhere in the Arab nations, possibly aided by us overtly or covertly.

To some extent this is also about oil, and part of why Iraq is important is its oil fields. Not, as many would claim, because the Bush administration wants to reward its buddies back in Texas, but rather because when we control Iraq's oil fields (during the period of military rule) it helps the situation drastically on many levels. First of all, because of oil much of the nation building will be self-financed. Income from oil export will be used to pay for most of it.

Equally important, if we control Iraq's oil fields temporarily then it removes the other main threat Saudi Arabia has against us, and its only other major way of influencing events. It's true that right now the threat of the "oil weapon" is empty, because Saudi Arabia needs money a lot more than we need their oil, but if we control Iraq's oilfields, then at least for the short run it means that we could actually threaten to blockade their ports and prevent most Saudi oil exports, making up the difference ourselves.

Once we're firmly established in Iraq, we won't need to pretend any longer that Saudi Arabia is our best friend, and the kid gloves will come off. They will be ordered to stop subsidizing Wahhabism internationally, and ordered to crack down on the people who have been giving money to al Qaeda. They will be given other orders, too, and with no leverage over us, with us able to destroy their economy and with large American forces poised in Iraq capable of invading Saudi Arabia any time (an interesting mirror of 1990, wouldn't you say?) those threats will have teeth. Almost certainly the result would be the fall of the House of Saud.

Handled badly that might yield a theocracy, an