Dyer Hope for Middle East

2006 Year-Ender
18 December 2006
By Gwynne Dyer
http://snipurl.com/16a0r

It is now clear that America's moment in the Middle East is coming to an end. It has been a rather long moment -- the United States has called most of the shots in the region since the 1960s -- but recently it has turned into a classic case of imperial over-stretch. So we will soon find out if a strong American presence really was vital for all of those years to keep the oil flowing, keep the crazies from seizing power, and keep Israel safe.
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Will disaster ensue? Probably not, except in Iraq (where it has already arrived) and perhaps in Lebanon. Except for those two countries, the Middle East is a massively stable area where no regime has been overthrown since Iran in 1979. Many of the region's other countries also contain aggrieved religious and ethnic minorities, but the awful price that Iraqis and Lebanese paid when the status quo was destroyed makes people elsewhere very reluctant to consider radical change. The legions are going home, but the barbarians are not at the gates.