It’s fun and scary to speculate on the future and "what if" scenarios.
I’d love to see this scenario played out in a movie. Hate to see it played out in real-life.
The author concludes that the (unnamed) intelligence insiders who spun out the scenario "also say there is no more important objective for the Bush administration than repairing transatlantic relations."
Seems to me that if the scenario shows anything, it shows just how much the world needs the U.S. and how urgent the need is for the Axis of Weasels to suck it up and get with the program. Things fare badly for the U.S. in the scenario, but not as badly as for the rest of the world.
Of course, the scenario won’t happen. Some elements of it are manifestly implausible (particularly where the scenario mentions bin Laden, who is dead the moment he emerges from his spider hole). But even "what if" scenarios can be informative.
You know, AdB has been writing, well, interesting stuff for a long time. I could live with some of this. Anyway, I spent some time in Australia a couple years back, and I heard more than once, “Goodbye USA, goodbye freedom in the world.”
It is true that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawi Moslem but the Alawites are not Shi’ites. They are an offshoot of Shi’a Islam but that division happened in the 9th century. The Shi’ites didn’t even recognize the Alawi as true Moslems until 1974. (I suspect the Sunnis still don’t).
I’m missing the logic connecting the demise of the global cop with the rise of nuclear-armed terrorist states. It just seems to “happen.”
Next step : why US needs the world.
Well, why we need each others, in fact….
Agreed.