The must read for the week has to be the new Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker about the Bush administration's evolving strategy in the Middle East. Though to speak of the strategy as evolving makes it sound a lot more impressive than it actually is. The phrase "Rube Goldberg" was used at one point and it fits. Cheney and co. are in way over their heads and a lot of their recent efforts are devoted to dealing with the consequences of the mess they made just a few short years ago. It's also more than a little interesting to see how involved in American foreign policy Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia remains.
Should the Democrats make good on their insistence to resume real oversight, watch for increasing activity around the Intelligence Committee. As Hersh has it, there's been a lot of off-the-books, clandestine activity and we may actually get to find out about some of it. Some of the names will be familiar — just think Iran-Contra.
On the other hand, the whole region could blow up before the hearings start.
Go read. It's scary.
I should have realized right away that the "Iraq" troop surge, was about supplying a new front with Iran, the soldiers Bush wants in place.
admittedly off topic yet important...Vancity Credit Union, the most proegressive banking institution in the Country, is holding elections for three new Directors. Please vote! Please vote for the progressives! Please go to http://videosonvancity.ning.com sign-up and post some videos that reflect your thoughts on Vancity. Directors will listen cause they are your fellow members, but you have to speak up!
admittedly off topic yet important...Vancity Credit Union, the most progressive banking institution in the Country, is holding elections for three new Directors.
Please vote! Please vote for the progressives!
Please go to http://videosonvancity.ning.com sign-up and post some videos that reflect your thoughts on Vancity. Directors will listen cause they are your fellow members, but you have to speak up!
The article talks about the Saudis being very much into kicking Hezbollah tail because the Saudi rulership are Sunni and Hezbollah are Shiite. I find myself wondering if that's really a secondary reason. The Saudi royals probably want Hezbollah suppressed because Hezbollah threaten to reignite pan-Arab nationalism and similar radical ideas, and generally show the Saudi rulers up as US stooges. The spread of such ideas would threaten to destabilize countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, perhaps Jordan and no doubt others as well, especially accompanied by demonstrations that Israel can be successfully resisted, such as the one Hezbollah gave when Israel invaded.
US client vs. local-self-determination is probably as important a struggle within the Arab world right now as Sunni vs. Shia, but that's not a dimension of struggle we're likely to see the media comment on very much.
So well put, PLG, and I agree, except I think that American journalists are stuck with oversimplifications like Sunni/Shia -- they hardly have most of their audience following even those simplifications so far. It would be nice if someone would finally just take the House of Saud on head-on, address the power struggle as a power struggle and the Bush/Cheney/Saudi business connections as business connections, but it doesn't look to me as though even the brightest American analysts are ready to do that yet.
As companion pieces to Hersh, people should read also Glenn Greenwald's fuming this week about Dick Cheney. I haven't worked through all of it myself, but what I have read is right on.
I'm having a lot of trouble these days, switching from sober-sided reports of the new restraint Condi is supposed to be attempting in foreign policy to descriptions of Cheney's increasingly strange and frightening megalomania. Until someone corrects me, I'm assuming that Cheney is in fact the guy who is in charge in Washington, which sure has me scared.