The Shia militias in Iraq might stay on side. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq could remain a bulwark of democracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Brits might withdraw from the south in good order, or hunker down, leaving Badrists and Sadrists to fight it out with each other. And if there does happen to be some kind of blowback in Iraq, well, the ‘surge’ of 21 500 more troops might be enough to hold the line.
I’m not saying that doesn’t add up to a lot of things that could go wrong, any one of which could flip the world on its back, but hey. It could work. The Islamic Republic could fall, or fold, and the US bestride the Middle East like a colossus.
That victory would be the moment we’d some day look back on, and say, ‘And that was when our troubles began.’ Fortunately for America and its allies, such a victory is unlikely. What is far more likely is an ever-widening catastrophe across the Middle East if not beyond. But if a US victory does come about, the rest of the world would find itself facing a lone superpower that had successfully carried out an attack, perhaps even a nuclear attack, on a country that had no nuclear weapons and that had not attacked or threatened it. From then on we would all be living in interesting times; and on borrowed time.
The time to do what we can to stop this is now.