Iraq is rich enough and developed enough and has the human resources to become a great force for democracy and economic reconstruction in the Arab and Muslim world.

But most Arabs are in a state of denial. The gulf that opened up between Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world that began with the 1991 Gulf War has reached a kind of crescendo with the current crisis.

Out of the Iraqi opposition - as difficult and fractious as it may be - could emerge a new kind of Arab politics. One that I believe is far healthier than the politics that dominates the Arab world today
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Part of the driving force of Arab politics since 1967 is the attribution of all of the ills of one's own world to either the great Satan America or Israel.

Arab and Muslim resentment of the West is grounded in many grievances, some legitimate, others less so. Without question, the West has blundered in its dealings with the Arab world.

But the kind of thinking in the Arab world today has led to an impasse, where people are blind to failures close to home - specifically the absence of democracy among Arab nations

Arabs politics is a self-destructive politics that has no way forward - it is epitomised by the Palestinian suicide bomber.

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Some commentators warn that a US backed war in Iraq will cause the Arab street to rise up in anger. But this much vaunted 'Arab street' is a fiction - it doesn't exist. It is a creation of nationalist intellectuals of my generation, who lived through war in the Arab world and never learned from the mistakes of the past.

During the Gulf War and, more recently, the Afghan war nothing came of the fears of the Arab world.

All we saw in Afghanistan were people cheering in the streets. I expect Iraqis to do the same - to throw sweets and flowers at the American troops as they enter our towns and cities.

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