[Dean's World] Dean:

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Posted by Dean:

http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1143627222.shtml


   Amir Taheri notes:

     Hassan Abbasi has a dream--a helicopter doing an arabesque in
     cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are
     the last of the "fleeing Americans," forced out of the Dar al-Islam
     (The Abode of Islam) by "the Army of Muhammad." Presented by his
     friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," Mr. Abbasi is "professor
     of strategy" at the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps
     University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign
     policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical
     administration.

     For the past several weeks Mr. Abbasi has been addressing crowds of
     Guard and Baseej Mustadafin (Mobilization of the Dispossessed)
     officers in Tehran with a simple theme: The U.S. does not have the
     stomach for a long conflict and will soon revert to its traditional
     policy of "running away," leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, indeed the
     whole of the Middle East, to be reshaped by Iran and its regional
     allies.

     To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S.
     could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last
     helicopter." It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam
     War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing
     from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of
     eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters
     carried the corpses of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a
     Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the
     helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman
     Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein's generals, who
     could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their
     domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton's helicopter
     was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American
     soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

     According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an
     "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and
     no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of
     an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have
     concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W.
     Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds
     him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to
     extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans
     appear to understand.

   He goes on with a long and depressing look at changes in the political
   landscape in the Middle East. But:

     But how valid is the assumption that Mr. Bush is an aberration and
     that his successor will "run away"? It was to find answers that
     this writer spent several days in the U.S., especially Washington
     and New York, meeting ordinary Americans and senior leaders,
     including potential presidential candidates from both parties.
     While Mr. Bush's approval ratings, now in free fall, and the
     increasingly bitter American debate on Iraq may lend some credence
     to the "helicopter" theory, I found no evidence that anyone in the
     American leadership elite supported a cut-and-run strategy.

     The reason was that almost all realized that the 9/11 attacks have
     changed the way most Americans see the world and their own place in
     it. Running away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan
     and Mogadishu was not hard to sell to the average American, because
     he was sure that the story would end there; the enemies left behind
     would not pursue their campaign within the U.S. itself. The enemies
     that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago, however,
     are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it
     today.

   I suspect he's right, but I suggest you [1]read the whole thing and
   come to your own conclusions.

References

   1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008154