Coming War In Middle East

Charles Krauthammer
Greg Sargent

"Republican Congressman Phil Hinkle, who voted to ban gay marriage, was caught propositioning a male prostitute. Hinkle said, 'Well, I wasn’t going to marry him.'" – Conan O'Brien

"Michelle Bachmann paid $30 each for 6,000 voting tickets in Iowa and got 4,800 votes, so 1,200 people stole her $30. It’s funny that someone who doesn’t believe in government handouts paid 6,000 people to vote for her." – Jimmy Kimmel

"President Obama is touring the country in a bus, because nothing inspires hope in the economy like the president riding in a bus." – Jimmy Kimmel

The two opinion pieces I have linked at the top of this post is to Charles Krauthammer's tired reciting of the conservative talking points against Barack Obama, while accusing Obama of doing the same to them, and Greg Sargent's piece also criticizing Krauthammer. Charles is one of those writers that should have retired about 10 years ago, and is just typing it in...

How incredibly bizarre is Middle Eastern politics, especially in the Summer, when temperatures fry brain cells at 120 degrees or more. Mix in the emotional ups and downs of having to fake a fast for a month, and crazy behavior is bound to happen. We begin with the implosion of all reason with Bashar al Assad in Syria, his whacked-out military sending in tanks and using the Navy last weekend to bombard Palestinian refugee camps in the port city of Latakia. It's bad enough that these camps have been there since 1948 and none of their Arab brothers have ever bothered to help them, even Hamas and Hezbollah have been twiddling their thumbs, betting that the Assad government will survive and later reward them for their failure to react and support their countrymen. The historical analogy is that they are acting the same way that the Zionist Jews did when collaborating with the Germans, in order to gain support for a country in Palestine further down the world war road...

The Palestinians in Gaza respond by firing off rockets at Israel and sending a militant splinter group to the border to bomb three mini-vans filled with soldiers and civilians on their way to work. The Israelis respond in their usual heavy-handed fashion, killing all fleeing militants and then bombing their headquarters in Gaza, probably killing its leader. While they were in the region, they bombed a few Hamas buildings. too. Hamas has responded by firing a constant barrage of cheap rockets into Israel... It looks like Palestine has just given up their poker hand, losing credibility when they go to the UN next month to ask for recognition as a separate state within Israel. Perhaps Mr Assad is secretly in the CIA's payroll...

We now have a situation that could easily drag the entire region into armed conflict, and there's nothing as vicious as Sunnis against Shias. Iran can just sit back, then pick up the pieces during the aftermath, annexing Iraq and Syria as part of the "new" Iran, run by the Revolutionary Guard. They have been out of the spotlight for several months, even though they still have been threatening to put their nuclear plants into full operations; its just that nobody but Russia seems to be paying attention... Of course, now that the Revolutionary Guard has successfully taken over the country by having one of its own appointed oil minister, they might be out of practice... In fact, to celebrate the latest business victory in the oil ministry, the CIA and the Mossad blew up the oil pipeline that goes to Turkey. Or, the Kurds did it so that the Iranians wouldn't raid them in Kurdish Iraq, while there's a steady stream of tanker trucks filled with gasoline driving into Iran...

A new kindler, gentler crackdown on the old dissidents has been taking place in Tehran, going back and re-arresting those who were jailed before, and often passing sentence on them and hanging them without public acknowledgment. The problems that Iran and Syria faces is that the old school dictator-style way of ruling worked well when most of the population was uneducated and had little exposure to the world outside of their villages. That the people of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain all wanted the same kind of freedoms and human rights is a condemnation of that style of ruling, and hopefully, the Middle East can transition into a more liberal, peaceful way of life before the famine and droughts take hold... Of course, it may take people starving to death to get the Syrian government to put down their guns and help pick up the plow. The Shabob learned this cruel lesson in Somlia, they didn't have it in them to shoot and kill starving children, o they have let in the relief organizations, content to let the local warlords steal 80% of the food and sell it in the marketplace instead of giving it away to starving citizens. After all, I'm sure that Ayn Rand would approve, right?

The end may be in sight in Syria, even though its military has taken over just like the Revolutionary Guard did in Iran. Turkey and Saudi Arabia may invade as the logical next step to their warnings about stopping the violence. We may have a chess match with Tehran trying to resurrect the Persian Empire, playing against the rising Ottoman Empire, played out at the end of Ramadan a couple of weeks away. Hillary Clinton is wisely staying away, we'll see who Russia and the Chinese have given their blessings to soon enough... The moving pen, having writ, moves on...