The Next War

With one and a half years left in the war against Germany, Winston Churchill remarked to Harold MacMillan, “Germany is finished, though it may take some time to clean up the mess. The real problem is Russia.” To hijack the great man’s formulation: Afghanistan and Iraq are finished, though it is taking some time to clean up the mess, and the problems now are Iran and Syria.

The thinking on which the Afghan and Iraq Wars was based was never, “Afghanistan, then Iraq, then stop.” It entailed kicking the Syrian Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad out of Lebanon, then out of Syria itself, finally confronting the Libyan regime that founded state-sponsored Islamic terrorism, and somehow undoing the Iranian theocracy that gave radical Islam its own state and armed forces, with North Korea as a troublesome sideshow to be contained and prevented from becoming the arsenal of Islamic terrorism.

Syria did for the most part leave Lebanon after the “Cedar Revolution” uprising of the Lebanese people, following the first Iraqi elections in the winter of 2005. Libya reformed itself -- or made a start toward reforming itself – a year earlier, after Libyan dictator Mohammar Gadhaffi saw Saddam Hussein pulled by U.S. forces from a dirt hole. But that still left Syria and Iran.

There was hope that toppling the first one or two dominoes might render further military action unnecessary, as the people of other Mid Eastern nations followed Afghans and Iraqis in building the sort of free societies unlikely to cause us harm. But that has gone only as far as Libya and Lebanon, plus some half-steps in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.

The thinking was that the West had no hope of a secure future unless the entire Mid East was overhauled, “1945-style.” Like fighting a mosquito plague by draining the swamp they breed in, rather than just swatting at the things when they buzz past our ears. It was wildly ambitious, and it seemed for some time that the practical application of it could go only to “Step Two”: Iraq.

And maybe Iraq is where the Western drive to reform the region will end. But one wonders if, in view of the flaunting provocation of recent remarks and actions, the new Iran-Syria Axis might ultimately provoke a Western counterstrike that would have the effect of continuing the mission left off after Iraq.

This war is not ready for the history books yet.

Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and Tulsa, Oklahoma