Iraq five years from now

A column in the New York Times points to the alarming truth that Bush's foreign policy since 9/11 has actually had an opposite impact on democracy than intended:

..the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfoundShiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranianinfluence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out theend of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.

"Itfeels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we neverwent through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor inchief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate."Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine beliefin change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure bythe international media and the U.S."

Yesterday's Baltimore Sun newspaper referred to a report from the International Crisis Group about the affect that pro-Iranian Shiite dominance will have on future Iraq:

A recent report by the International Crisis Group found that Shiiteinfluence in the region "is fast becoming the paramount concern. Thisperception triggered Jordan's King Abdullah's warning ... that if Iraqwere to be controlled by pro-Iranian parties, the result might be a'crescent' of dominant Shiite movements and governments stretching fromLebanon through Syria, Iran and Iraq to the Gulf."

The link between Shiites in Iraq to the government of Iran is debatable among different circles of academia.  But most importantly, what we might have eventually is an ethnic civil war that will spill over into other parts of the Middle East, which as I wrote in a column last August could have an enormous impact on the stability of oil -- eventually hurting the wallets of American consumers.  Just think: all of this because of terrible postwar planning.  What a shame.