The Republican Party will not survive its invasion of Iraq, its commitment to open borders, and its pandering to preferred minorities.

An invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history. It has the support of only two overlapping small groups: neoconservatives infused with the spirit of 18th century French Jacobins who want to impose American "exceptionalism" on the rest of the world, and foreign policy advisers who believe that the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy is to make the Middle East safe for Israel.

No one else sees the point of the pending conflict. Abroad there is no meaningful support. Nuclear powers Russia and China are in opposition, as are NATO allies Germany and France. The Bush administration is reduced to boasting of support from Hungary and Poland.

What is the invasion all about? The administration's answer strains credulity: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that threaten the U.S. These weapons are yet to be discovered by the UN inspectors who are combing the country. The paucity of evidence caused the Bush administration to declare a few empty artillery shells found in a bombed out bunker to be the evidence necessary to launch an invasion.

The back-up excuse is that Saddam Hussein is a bad man. No doubt he is a brute, but any secular ruler, who has to sit on three separate groups (Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds) ready to split Iraq apart, is likely to resort to harsh measures.

With or without casualties, U.S. military forces can overthrow Saddam Hussein. But what comes next? What government takes over? How does that government remain in power? How do we get out?

The American invasion of Afghanistan radicalized politics in nuclear-armed Pakistan and in Turkey. Will another American invasion of a Muslim country further radicalize the Muslim Middle East? What about Egypt? How stable are the secular rulers of the Middle East sitting on Islamic populations?

Consider, too, that there are millions of Muslims spread throughout Europe and the U.S. Many of these Muslims feel oppressed by the European cultures in which they reside, and some of the Muslims are radical. Remembering the trouble a few IRA terrorists caused Britain, imagine the turmoil if Muslims in Europe and North America go on the terror path.

If Bush needs a war, he should pick North Korea. There are not a billion North Koreans spread over the world to be stirred up by an American invasion. If any country's people are mistreated and ready for liberation, North Korea's are. Unlike Saddam Hussein, the North Korean leader explicitly threatens us with bellicose statements and a visible nuclear weapons program.

Attacking Iraq will destabilize the Middle East. It will also confirm the propaganda picture of the Arrogant American Hegemon drawn by Muslim leaders and by anti-American intellectuals in Europe and North America.

"Regime change" is a dangerous concept, particularly when neoconservatives are declaring their intentions of changing every Middle Eastern regime and deracinating Islam as well. These expressed intentions have radicalized Pakistani general Aslam Beg, previously a voice of moderation. Last week he called for an immediate Pakistani military alliance with Iran in order to protect their nations from the Bush Doctrine, which he compares to Hitler's legitimization of "war as a weapon of national policy."

President Bush can increase U.S. subsidies to Pakistani President Musharraf, but when Musharraf's own mentors and geostrategists define the U.S., not India, as Pakistan's dangerous enemy, it is powerful evidence that the Middle East is being destabilized by the "get the Muslims" claque.

An American invasion of Iraq can succeed easily, but the aftermath can go terribly wrong. When it does, Democrats will hold the neoconservatives and the Republicans responsible. The same media that is helping Bush whip up war against Iraq will help Democrats whip up war against Bush.

While President Bush prepares to violate Iraq's borders, our own are being overrun by people who are legally defined by the federal government as "preferred minorities." The "preferred" designation means that new immigrants, legal or illegal, by basis of skin color are preferred to native-born white people in university admissions, federal contracting, private employment and promotions. This unconstitutional policy of reverse discrimination against native-born whites has been growing in magnitude for almost four decades, and no administration has done anything to stop it.

Sooner or later whites will wake up to the realization that they are being marginalized in their own country, and they will cease to support the two political parties that have marginalized them.

It wasn't Saddam Hussein who made white Americans second class citizens in law. And it is not Saddam Hussein who is overrunning our borders. Bush finds it easier to go to war than to deal with the attacks on American identity at home.

Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

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