Last Day of Peace?

Posted on March 17, 2003

Well, the “coalition of the willing” has spoken and it looks like 24 hours from now the bombs may be falling on Baghdad.

Let’s hope that, if that’s the case, that things play out the way the Wolfowitzes and Perles have been predicting: a short, mostly bloodless conflict that results in a flowering of democracy in the Middle East. Let’s hope that’s how things shake out — because the alternatives are mostly dreadful.

When I lived in Egypt, I learned early that the favorite expression of the average Egyptian was in’shallah — “as God wills it”. It’s an expression of the futility of man’s actions in the face of whatever the larger plan of the universe is. It’s an expression that seems pretty relevant right now; maybe the Administration’s plans will turn out to be right after all, in’shallah. We shall see.