Americans can now debate: 'Who Lost the Middle East?'
Business Times - 27 May 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AFTER the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong won the civil war in China in 1949 and forced Chiang Kai-shek and his pro-American Chinese Nationalists to flee to Taiwan, US Congress and the press started to debate the question: 'Who Lost China?' Conservatives blamed the 'China Hands' in the US State Department, who were accused of exhibiting pro-communist sympathies, while liberal critics argued that Washington's long-time support for the corrupt Nationalists ended up producing an anti-American blowback in China. Considering the continuing decline in US influence in the Middle East - from the Persian Gulf, through the Levant and to the Holy Land - is it possible that sometime during the first or second term of the next occupant of the White House, when Iran, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons and supported by its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, emerges as a dominant regional power, lawmakers...