In Case of Failure…

“If Iraq ultimately fails to gel as a rule-of-law democracy, America can go home.  Washington will eat a few plates of humble pie, then work it off in the strategic gym.  But the Middle East would be left with a terrorist homeland at its heart and the Arab world would have damning evidence that it can’t compete in the race for the future, that authoritarian regimes remain its only choice.  That hopelessness would leave millions more unemployed young Muslim males as prey for terrorist recruiters.  Operation Iraqi Freedom did not so much create a wave of new terrorists as it drew out the legions of dead-enders bred during the West’s long neglect of the extremist menace.” – Ralph Peters, New Glory, p.224-225.