Plan to remake the Middle East

Nicholas Lemann, a national correspondent with the Atlantic Monthly, did a two part series with the above title on the Middle East, with links here and here.

It has the best summation of "Why Iraq?" and "What happens in Iraq after the invasion" from an Administration official that I have seen in print:

People in the Administration are quick to explain that, where the Middle East is concerned, they don’t mean immediate, American-style electoral democracy but, rather, a deliberate building of “civil society” or “democratic institutions,” like a free press, political parties, open markets, and a system of written laws and courts that administer them, with national parliamentary elections as the final, and somewhat distant, step. That seems a worthwhile project, but if it takes place in the aftermath of a war it should be understood as involving the making of choices and the use of power by the United States, rather than merely polite encouragement. In search of a plausible scenario for the post-war future of the Middle East, I recently spoke with two Pentagon officials who have a reputation as leading hawks in the Administration: Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, which is the job that Wolfowitz held in the first Bush Administration; and Stephen Cambone, who entered this Administration as Feith’s deputy, and is now in charge of evaluating weapons systems and other Pentagon programmes.

Feith, a crisp, bespectacled man in his late forties, works in a large suite of offices in the E Ring of the Pentagon, with a sweeping view across the Potomac River to Washington. The door to his reception room is kept locked, which underscores the impression that business unknown to the public is conducted within. Feith bustled in from another appointment, and we sat down. I asked him what he thought the after-effects of the war would be. He smiled amiably and said, “Walking you through exactly what is going to happen is difficult. I think it was Samuel Goldwyn who once said never make forecasts, especially about the future. So I don’t think I want to attempt to walk you through exactly how it’s going to play out. But I can tell you what I know about some of the thinking on the subject.”

And the killer 'graph:

I asked Feith whether an American military victory in Iraq could help curb terrorism by organisations like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, which operate with the support of other countries in the region. He nodded. “One of the principal strategic thoughts underlying our strategy in the war on terrorism is the importance of the connection between terrorist organisations and their state sponsors,” he said. “Terrorist organisations cannot be effective in sustaining themselves over long periods of time to do large-scale operations if they don’t have support from states. They need a base of operations. They need other types of assets that they get from their connection with their state sponsors — whether it’s funding, or headquarters, or, in some cases, the use of diplomatic pouches and other types of facilities. And one of the principal reasons that we are focussed on Iraq as a threat to us and to our interests is because we are focussed on this connection between three things: terrorist organisations, state sponsors, and weapons of mass destruction. If we were to take military action and vindicate our principles, in the war on terrorism, against Iraq, I think it would” — he paused, looking for the right word — “register with other countries around the world that are sponsoring terrorism, and would perhaps change their own cost-benefit calculations about their role in connection with terrorist networks. I think this process got under way with Afghanistan. There you had a regime that was ousted because of its support for terrorist operations against the United States. If the Iraqi regime gets ousted because it ultimately proves unwilling to disarm itself in a co-operative fashion with the UN, and if the United States leads a coalition and overthrows that government, I think that the combination of those two actions will influence the thinking of other states about how advisable it is for them to continue to provide safe harbour or other types of support to terrorist organisations.”

Never let it be said that the Administration did not make the case for Iraq.

The people who are against we war with Iraq don't want to listen and scream down or ignore intelligent arguements like the one above.