When do we ever learn? When do we finally say... I've seen this movie before? In America, in the 21st Century perhaps never. The word leaking out from the ISG is that we should gradually 'draw down' our troops in Iraq and we should engage Iran and Syria in multi-lateral talks. No timetable exists for the draw-down and no incentives exist for Iran and Syria to come to the table and, quite honestly, what do we have to offer, so why should they? We have treated them like just so much shit on our shoe for the last six years but now we need to talk. I seriously believe that we should engage all the hostile parties in the Middle East but in order to do that we need to address the ancient problem - Israel and Palestine - therein lies the root of all our problems, an artificial state in a sea of artificial states... but not just a state, Israel is a state of mind, for us Judeo/Christians, Israel represents a benign, controllable buffer in a Holy Land beseiged by the infidel, for Arabs it is a twisting knife in an open wound. So how do we placate a fertile crescent of hostility while ensuring the continued existence of a predatory, expanding, will-o-the-wisp hegemony? Beats the crap out of me! Perhaps, though, we should have some fresh thinking on this one because what we are experiencing now is quite possibly the worst acid flashback an old drug addled hippy could ever imagine. Seeing Baker front and center, and Bush in complete and utter denial and an administration incapable of sticking to the script is giving me the most uncomfortable case of political reflux one can imagine. Now, these people were supposed to be the 'grown-ups' and under their careful, experienced tutelage America would enter a new golden age of prosperity and global respect... well that went real well... so the grown-ups called in or were forced to accept the 'old-grown-ups' to clean up quite a bit of a mess. But the OGU's were responsible for their own quite a bit of a mess and some of us still remember that and trust them about as far as we could projectile vomit them and, get this, the GU's feel about the same way, still recalcitrant after all these years. So they will ignore the ISG, make up their own shit and carry on as if none of us will notice. As Atrios would sat Na Ga Appen... we're all over them like flies on shit. I don't trust Baker and his Study Group and I have never trusted Bush and his bunch of NeoCon incompetents. We need fresh ideas and some real thinkers... so who are they? - suggestions.
2 comments:
Fresh ideas and new thinkers?
My first suggestion would be to look at the ISG'ers - Was any one of them under 70 years old? I wonder what their report would have been like if they had gotten someone young -- say, a "kid" of 50!
Rumsfeld was one of those oldsters. So is Cheyney. Old views of a new world: look where that has gotten us.
It might have been a help if any of this tired old bunch knew a damn thing about the Arab world and Islam... Not a single expert, not one of them with any idea about what they were deliberating upon. It's scandalous... really.
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