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Seems the Washington politician’s & the media’s sense of history only goes back to yesterday’s breakfast. Claudia, especially while the winds of appeasement are suffocating Blair & the returning Bush-I bumbling bunglers, you do an important service by reminding the world of Syria’s & Iran’s chain of past crimes designed to destabilize the region. European denial & delusion was a challenge for Churchill, as well. May I also applaud you for your valiant attempts to keep the UN honest & transparent. Please keep ranting, LOUDER & LOUDER.

First of all, I agree with Judith, 100%.

Second, I’m very concerned about a train of events that may be pure coincidence, but my conspiratorial heart tells me is probably not.

1) Dems, widely perceived as being anti-war and favoring withdrawal from Iraq based on a timetable rather than an endpoint, win both House and Senate, an outcome openly welcomed by the Radical Islamists, Syria, Iran, nutty Shia militias, and everyone else hoping for a US retreat from the area.

2) Rumsfeld summarily “resigns,” to be replaced by Robert Gates, who appears to be more predisposed to negotiating with Syria and Iran than holding their feet to the fire. (I read this as a Bush cave-in to the “realists” — those who, like Baker, think they can talk Iran and Syria into being Good Citizens.)

3) Maliki makes kissy with Syria and Iran. (My read on this is that he believes that the US has gone wobbly and will give up, and wants to hedge his bets with the two countries which are sponsoring chaos in Iraq. This is a perfectly reasonable move on his part, if he believes he’s being abandoned by the US.)

4) Gemayel is cut down by assassins, probably Syrians or Syrian sponsored, thus effectively halting the Lebanese move towards democracy and increasing the chances for civil war or an out and out takeover of the Lebanese government by Hizbollah. (My read on this is that the Syrians are now emboldened more than ever before . . . they sure don’t have to worry about the UN, and now, they believe they don’t have to worry about the US either. And with reason.)

I hope I’m wrong, but if not, hang on folks . . . the ride has just begun . . .

Brian

Just found your blog CR. BIG fan of yours developed while listening to your reports on HH.

Will enjoy your blog now also.

Just wanted to add that I saw J. Baker on some interview (pre-commission) talking about how he and George-I avoided the toppling of Saddam because THEY saw it as un-winnable. Wish I remembered the exact words however it was not really the words but how giddy he was in saying them…that turned my stomach.

It’s not entirely facetious to say that “stability” is a bad thing for the Middle East (unless it’s Taranto saying that Arafat “remains in stable condition”). Actually, stability is the last thing the M.E. needs these days, considering the form it takes there, and Kofi is flat out wrong to call for it at this point. The ascendant religious and political culture there has been stable for over a thousand years: stable in its violent antagonism toward all non-believers, stable in its oppression of women and enslavement of a peasant class, stable in its denial of civil justice and individual rights, stable in its promotion of regimented conformity.

It took a good bit of instability - Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and a pile of revolutions - for the West to shake off its medieval past and establish the rights and freedoms we enjoy today. Truly democratic and free countries are stable not in their customs, culture, and demography, but in the underlying principles that allow those things to change and evolve without posing a threat to the common good. In the Middle East, “stability” means dictating individual behavior - speech, attire, daily rituals - in order to prop up an obsolete and moribund governing order.

Undeniably, it will take a protracted fight to change things. Kofi’s rhetoric of moderation and restraint only gives the bad guys cover to pursue their agend insidiously. Why not let them do it openly - and then fight it openly? Rather than promoting stability for its own sake, anyone who believes in humanistic ideals should be prepared to endure the long process of upheaval and uncertainty required to usher the Middle East into the modern world. Only then will we see the true stability conferred by constitutional democracy, rather than the tyrranical stability of forced subjugation.

As Bush backs away from the scary disorder in the Middle East, he makes it ever more likely that his own legacy will become “stable,” like his father’s. That would be a shame - not for him, but for the millions who might have lived in freedom.

Your clarity of expression is refreshing.

Chrchill type required. Exactly!

Bush and the think tanks seem to have no concept of the game of chess.

Not usual for the US. Let*s hope there is better to come in hidden agenda, besides avoiding an oil induced market crash and an election loss one and a half years forward.

The oil disruption is coming anyway. It would be better to face it on our timetable, not Ahmadinejad*s. = TG

Depose Assad: email, phone, mail, blog post, asking US (Bush, Rice) to: Drop 12 small GPS guided bombs 30 metres from Assad’s bedroom, on his palace grounds. Give him 24 hrs notice before hand. Then drop the 12 bombs, 2 minutes apart, all in exactly the same grassy spot. Then give Assad 24 hrs to be in Tunisia, where he can live the rest of his life. Something similar worked for Khadaffy (because psychopaths fear only for themselves). Ask big blogs to help.