Watching nervously


Sharon's stroke and the fall of the Egyptian border escalate matters in the Middle East.
With Sharon out of the picture for the time being, things are about to get very dicey in the Middle East. I'm not familiar enough with Israeli politics to guess what is going to happen.

This shows every sign of spilling over beyond Israel and Palestine. Egypt doesn't have a first tier army, but they do have a fair second tier one.

I can already hear the proclamations in the United States already. The Republicans will claim that the situation would be worse without the intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democrats will claim that American intervention in Iraq stirred up the disaster and now we face the results of an illegal war.

Both sides are wrong.

The Middle East situation is a direct result of huge piles of money and the Cold War. Because the United States and it's allies were playing to stalemate the Soviets, very few nations in that area ever developed a rule of law and almost no one except Israel ever accepted the consequences of their actions.

Within the Middle East, there are several things building towards explosive consequences. President Bush's gamble has been to introduce enough pieces in play to relieve some of the pressure and hopefully allow internal struggles to defuse the rest. It was never a matter of controlling, it was always a last minute emergency repair.

Maybe if Mr. Reagan had zagged instead of zigged, or if Mr. Johnson had his feet a little more firmly planted, we wouldn't be facing this now. But "what ifs" aren't going to get the world out of this.

Here is what we have.

A very nervous Iran with tremendous internal pressure for change. The Iranian leadership is trying to divert that by confronting Israel and the United States with nuclear weapons. One of the demands will almost certainly be an unconditional US withdraw from the Middle East. Although they will make noise about destroying Israel, Iran can't afford to be destabilized any further by Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile part of the "Iraqi insurgency" is almost certainly Syrian and Iranian agents.

Syria has lost Lebanon, probably for good. Lebanon was the real "first Arab democracy," and as they clean house, I expect they will take steps to make sure that they can't be invaded and occupied again. Syria also has a huge border with Iraq, many of it's citizens have relatives there. Relatives whose income and freedom are rising very quickly.

Mr. Sharon's condition has put Israel into the question mark category. All of his cabinet was urging a unilateral attack on Iran.

There are several secondary concerns, but I think these are the flash points.

I haven't the faintest idea what can be done about them though. I know that pulling out will only escalate things more.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 5, 2006 at 04:50 AM  Tag


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