Does he know where it's leading?

摘要

"Do we turn right or left?" Such was the exuberant question-whether to press on to the north-east and chase the mullahs out of power in Tehran or head north-west and oust Bashar Assad from his dynastic throne in Damascus-on the lips of many of President George Bush's exultant neo-conservatives, as the marines burst through the gates of Baghdad in April two years ago. Next came the no less exhilarating assertion of many neo-cons that "the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad", meaning that, once a pro-American democracy was entrenched in a grateful Iraq, the region's awed and admiring Arabs, Palestinians included, would be cajoled willy-nilly into an accommodation with Israel. Under the tutelage of the American hyper-power, peace, harmony and democracy would break out over the region.