Demagogue

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune, retired Army Colonel E.W. Chamberlain III voices frustration that the Bush administration remains convinced that it can impose a stable, lasting democracy in Iraq:

Our goal of bringing democracy to Iraq, while worthy, is unattainable. The Shiite clerics won't stand for it.

The clerics, who have taken on the same titles as those used by the Iranian Shiite clerics when they toppled the Shah, have won the elections ... The Iranians already have visited the newly elected clerics, and it will be but a short time before some agreements between the two countries are formalized.

Washington persists in seeing Iraq as, well, full of just Iraqis. Washington doesn't differentiate between the religious sects in Iraq, nor does it understand that the concept of a state called "Iraq" was arbitrarily devised by the British and the French ...

People in Iraq and Iran are Shiite first, and Iraqis and Iranians second.

And what Chamberlain sees in the future is not pretty:

Probably even before the U.S. withdraws, the "democratically elected" Shiite government in Iraq will be aligned rapidly with Iran ... The Saudi Arabian government will continue to support the Sunni insurgency, as it does today, but the support will become open.

The Sunni insurgency eventually will lose as the full weight of a Shiite Iraq and a Shiite Iran overwhelms it. Numbers alone, coupled with a real war of attrition that does not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants or follow any rules of engagement, will result in horrific casualties and defeat.

... The remnants of the Sunni insurgency will flee to Saudi Arabia. There they will foment discord because the Saudi royal family did not do enough and allowed the Sunnis to be defeated in Iraq. The royal family will be overthrown in a violent revolution in Saudi Arabia led by Sunni clerics who long have chafed under the pro-Western rule of the House of Saud.

The Sunni clerics will emerge as the dominant power in Saudi Arabia.

Americans and all other Westerners will be killed or, at best, ejected from Saudi Arabia, which has enough native petrochemical engineers and knowledgeable oil field workers, and can find other non-Westerners to run the oil fields. No Westerner need apply.

... The only thing bin Laden ever said he was after was to remove the Westerners from Saudi Arabia, the Land of the Holy Places. This will be done when the clerics assume control of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden will win the war on terrorism by achieving his goals with our unwitting help.

Far-fetched predictions? Maybe. But this is a volatile region, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq has made it all the more volatile.