On January 7, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan confidently predicted that "the Arab masses and their vanguard forces" will rise up to confront an American-led invasion of Iraq "by any available means."1 While Iraqi officials have been known to miscalculate in the past, similar predictions have been made by senior government officials throughout the Arab world. During a televised speech last year, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak went so far as to warn the United States, "If you strike at the Iraqi people because of one or two individuals and leave the Palestinian issue [unresolved], not a single ruler will be able to curb the popular sentiments . . . a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region."2

While the predictions of Arab officialdom are notAmerican war in Iraq are informed by three considerations. First, anti-American sentiment is at an all-time high in the Arab world (along with much of the non-Arab world). Second, most observers make explicit or implicit comparisons to the first Gulf War, when mass demonstrations erupted in many Arab countries. Even in Mauritania, on the political and cultural fringe of the Arab world, some 20,000 demonstrators marched on the American and French Embassies in January 1991. Hospitals throughout the Arab world delivered children with names like "Scud Hussein," while street vendors sold out of mass-produced desk ornaments, lapel pins, and wristwatches bearing the Iraqi leader's likeness. Third, pundits point to (relatively) large-scale anti-Israeli demonstrations that have erupted around the Arab world during the current Palestinian uprising against Israel as