U.S. military officials are now saying that yesterday’s reports of the capture of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, were somewhat premature.
U.S. military officials were surprised about the report of Abu Ayyub al-Masri’s capture — first reported by Iraqi media and picked up by The Associated Press. And intelligence officials said they were skeptical, even though Iraqi officials said al-Masri was already in U.S. military custody.
Al-Masri (”the Egyptian”), also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, took the reins of the Iraqi al Qaeda offshoot in June 2006 after a U.S. missile strike killed his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
You may recall that announcements have been made over the last year or so that al-Masri had been captured three times, killed twice, and horribly injured once. It is somewhat reminiscent of the revolving door position of the “number three man in al Qaeda” who seems to be routinely killed and/or captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan every six months or so.
The position al-Masri holds clearly makes him one of the more dangerous, high value targets in our fight to get al Qaeda under control. The man is apparently part feline in nature and is using up his nine lives quickly. For the time being, though, it seems the hunt goes on.
As the Bush era draws to a close, Europeans are anxious to know what about American policy will change when he’s gone - particularly if a Democratic victory occurs as planned.
“In view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? … All three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force.”
“Clearly, a Democratic victory in November would undoubtedly open the door to a more left-wing America. But it would be a kind of American left, certainly not modeled on Europe. Both candidates have rejected a “single payer” system for health insurance, like the Canadian and European models. The change ahead will not mean the end of the American exception, but the end of American triumphalism.”
LEADING ARTICLE
Translated By Kate Davis
May 8, 2008
France - Challenges - Original Article (French)
All countries are exceptional. But the United States gladly considers itself exceptionally exceptional, different from all other developed countries in its social organization and its fundamental values. The State is less extensive and the distribution of wealth more unequal. The United States is also more strongly committed to what Margaret Thatcher called the “Victorian values:” individualism, voluntarism, patriotism.
Thus the Bush government, which supports conservative values domestically and demonstrates an unlimited self confidence externally, is the most “exceptional” known in recent years. But at the end of Bush’s mandate, isn’t the United States entering a new cycle, characterized by the rejection of conservatism and a convergence with Europe’s standards?
In reality, three quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and for example, vigorously support a system of universal health care. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have promised to address that. They also want to improve their image in the world. The next government will certainly initiate significant reforms, such as closing Guantanamo or adopting a more rigorous environmental policy in order to address some of the country’s more aberrant characteristics.
Yet in view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? John McCain won the nomination of his party despite strong internal opposition. Barack Obama is the leader of an uprising against the Democratic old guard.
All three preach a patriotism specific to the United States. John McCain boasts of his service in Vietnam. Barack Obama claims that there is no red or blue, but only one America united by common values. The three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force. John McCain sings, “Bomb, bomb [bomb, bomb bomb] Iran.”
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. elections.
In his book, Schecter makes the case for why, although he supported McCain in his run in 2000, McCain no longer deserves support and in fact, his candidacy should be fought actively, without hesitation and on all fronts. Schecter outlines his reasons for these sentiments and fills in those reasons with more details than you may be able to absorb. Schecter draws a portrait of both McCain’s political trajectory and the parallel trajectory of how his political choices since 2001 are a thumbing of his nose at the very people who got him to the presidential precipice in the first place.
A couple of disclosures before I offer you my phone interview with Cliff: I’ve never been a McCain supporter. And I haven’t known of Schecter that long either - here’s the first post I ever wrote about Schecter. However, it was fascinating talking to someone with a seemingly vast knowledge base about someone whom I’ve never really studied.
JMZ: You argue on behalf of former McCain supporters who should be able to realize that McCain isn’t what he once was. Who, then, is the alternative and why?
CS: Well. There’s always, “What we have versus what we’d like to have.” I’m an Obama supporter and he has a lot of appeal to Independents. But he hasn’t done it the way McCain did it – by attacking his own party in big speeches. Obama has done it by standing up, not by splitting. Obama talks about rising above partisanship and reaching out to all people on all sides and getting past the muck where politics has gotten so nasty. Obama says, I’m going to talk to you like an adult. And that’s what McCain had called “straight talk” – but he hasn’t given us much of that [this election cycle.] Read the rest of this entry »
While at WORLDMEETS.US, we have seen a good deal of support for John McCain in the Portuguese-speaking countries ofBrazil and Portugal, chiefly due to McCain’s promise to include Brazil in the G8 and his relatively liberal trade policies, this op-ed from Portugal’s Jornal de Negicios is decidedly concerned about what might happen under a McCain presidency.
After examining some of the specifics of McCain’s foreign policy plans, including his plans to create a “League of Democracies,” “expand NATO to include all democratic states,” exclude Russia from the G-8 and include Brazil and India, João Carlos Barradas writes for Jornal de Negocios:
“McCain’s plans are frightening in their incoherence, total lack of realism and underestimation of economic and financial constraints. … Even before Beijing or Moscow put the heat on the eventual Republican president, the apprehension of allies in Berlin, Tokyo and Riyadh would be such that either McCain will have to change course or he will condemn the United States to a proactive interventionism capable of bringing even greater misfortune.
After six years at Guantanamo Bay prison, the only journalist yet to be incarcerated there, Sami Al-Hadj, was released last week. The case of Mr. Al-Hadj, who was a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, has sparked renewed outrage around the world.
It’s not easy reading for an American, but a good sampling of the emotion in the Arab world over the case can be found in this article from Algeria’s French-language Le Quotidien d’Oran.
“The United States is indeed a democracy: Within its own borders, the rule of law is enshrined. But beyond its walls, only the law of the jungle prevails. Read the rest of this entry »
There is angst on North Africa - otherwise known as the Maghreb - over the second-class treatment meted out to the region by the Bush Administration.
And since this is where the Pentagon intends to headquarter its new African Command - and since it hosts a blossoming al-Qaeda presence - this is not an inconsequential matter.
In the latest in a series of articles WORLDMEETS.US has translated that one might call “we can’t get no repect,” Read the rest of this entry »
There are 796 more reasons why the folks who declared the Surge a success should hang their sorry heads in shame. That is the number of Americans (52) and Iraqis (744) killed during the month of April in an uptick in violence that was going to occur sooner or later because the Surge has not been a “success” by any appropriate use of that term.
As I noted back on February 1 and has been noted by others far more sage than I am since then, war is not a linear thing, but rather something that ebbs and flows in stops and starts. This is especially true in Iraq, which is why the military gains of the Surge were not only temporarily, they were illusory.
Spencer Ackerman, one of those sage heads, references OODA, a jargony mouthful coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, to make the point. OODA stands for “Observation / Orientation / Decision / Action,” and the bottom line is that the combatant who can achieve a faster OODA than his enemy can disrupte his enemy’s OODA Loop:
Ackerman explains that:
“At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That’s not to say that there weren’t discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of them. But those developments are coterminous with the concept of the Loop — you adjust and inflict pain on the enemy; but the enemy does so faster and more powerfully. Once Operation Phantom Thunder (the Surge) began in the late spring of 2007, lots of people on the right and on the fake-left declared, without using Boyd’s term, that Petraeus and Odierno had finally broken the enemy’s Loop.
” . . . what Petraeus and Odierno actually did — and it is not a small achievement — was disrupt the insurgencies’ Loops more than any other U.S. commanders were able to. They kept the insurgencies in a state of confusion for months and prevented successful orientation. But the rise in U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties demonstrates that the insurgencies’ Loops have now closed. To cash it out, the U.S. military under Petraeus and Odierno bought as much calm as possible, and Iraq has been so horrific for so long that half the horror could seem like paradise to the hopeful American. But even with half-the-horror, no strategic goal was achieved. And no strategic goal can be achieved now that the insurgencies’ Loops have closed.”
Ackerman further notes that by any definition there cannot be victory in Iraq, only mitigation. To which I would add, 100 years of mitigation in John McCain’s case.
Please click here to read the rest of this roundup at Kiko’s House.
The government is sending out a one-time $130 billion gift to American taxpayers in hopes this will reanimate the U.S. economy. It’s a nice gesture but not an especially fair one. Washington should be gifting us to the tune of $150 billion a month. Every month.
Consider. We’re spending $12 billion a month supporting Iraq and its people. That country’s population being 24 million (we’ll overlook the millions who have fled since we arrived), that comes out to $1 billion a month for every 2 million Iraqis. There are 300 million Americans. So a comparable monthly donation made to us would total $150 billion.
I’m not suggesting that our government should support its own people at a more generous level than we now support the people of Iraq. Heaven forbid. But as a simple matter of equity, might we not at least get an equal per capita dollop of Washington’s largess?
What’s poses the greatest danger to NATO’s effort in Afghanistan? According to Dutch Scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, the answer is clear: Afghanistan’s birth rate.
“In 2008, there are 4.5 million male Afghans within the traditional warrior age of 15 to 29 years. Out of that group come the insurgents that the approximately 35,000 NATO soldiers are now dug in to confront … and behind Read the rest of this entry »
April 30th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This Guest Voice post is by watchingamerica.com translator Dorian de Wind, who is also a retired U.S. Air Force officer. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of TMV and its writers.
John McCain’s One Hundred Years in Iraq
by Dorian de Wind
Presidential candidate John McCain during a recent town-hall meeting said that it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years.”
He qualified such a breathtaking level of comfort with the war in Iraq by adding that it would be fine with him as long as Americans are not killed or injured.
A few days later in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, McCain added: “So what I believe we can achieve is a reduction in casualties to the point where the Iraqis are doing the fighting and dying, we‘re supporting them…”
But, John McCain has consistently refused to give the American people any indication as to when this war may be over, or may be “won.” When he expects that it will be only the Iraqis that “are doing the fighting and dying.” When he believes that our troops will no longer be killed, maimed or injured. When he thinks that we will be in Iraq just “supporting them.”
As we all know, this is the country with the largest reserves of drinking water in the world. And where is the water? In the Amazon! Read the rest of this entry »
As Frederick Kagan spins Neo-Con daydreams of “turning a corner,” McClatchy reporters on the ground are telling a different story:
“One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.”
Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, as “Tehran’s point man on Iraq,” is manipulating election of pro-Iranian politicians, meeting often with Iraqi leaders and backing Shiite elements in Iraqi security forces in the torturing and killing of Sunni Muslims.
According to American and Iraqi officials, Suleimani is Iran’s Petraeus who has succeeded, among other things, in slipping into Baghdad’s Green Zone in 2006 to orchestrate the choice of a new Iraqi prime minister and building intelligence networks in Iran’s embassy while providing Shiite Muslim militias with generalship, cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the US Embassy and advanced roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.
The more things change the more they stay the same, and that’s downright scary when it comes to Blackwater Worldwide.
If you’re under the impression that this most right-wing of defense contractors has been laying low since its goons mowed down 17 Iraqis last September, you would be wrong.
Despite the outcry, Condoleezza Rice’s State Department dutifully renewed Blackwater’s contract to guard diplomats in the war zone and the North Carolina-based company has been hard at work burnishing its stateside credentials.
Erik Prince, Blackwater’s chairman, former Navy SEAL and messianic right-winger with close White House and Pentagon ties, has been tight lipped about his company’s plans, but they obviously include expanding its already major presence as a trainer of military personnel and private contractors on the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern California.
Blackwater last month received a permit for a training facility for Navy personnel in south San Diego after abandoning its controversial proposal to build a larger one elsewhere in the area. The site will have a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms, but the city’s Development Services Department granted the permit without public hearings so the project is on hold.
An argument can be made that firms like Blackwater are needed in this day and age, but as has been the case in so many other areas, the Bush administration has taken the involvement of private contractors in the business of war to extremes.
Blackwater alone has billed taxpayers over $1 billion for its work in Iraq and much of what it does was once and should still be the domain of Military Police units. (Think about all those M*A*S*H episodes when Hawkeye and Trapper were pounced on by MPs.).
The bigger problem with Blackwater is that it’s nefarious. It lies and misleads and when caught out asserts that it is not merely above the law but is a law unto itself. As it is, Blackwater went out of its way to hide its identity in the case of the San Diego facility by filing for a permit under the name of a subcontractor.
Okay, so Blackwater doesn’t rent out pony rides for kids’ birthday parties. A reasonable amount of circumspection and secrecy comes with its territory. But there is a cottage industry of sane people, along with some wingnuts, who believe that Blackwater is in cahoots with Uncle Sam to train local security forces should martial law ever be declared, as well as other nefarious activities.
How do Iraqis feel about Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the fact that for the past three years, it has been permitted to operate as a de-facto part of the Iraqi state - in the process driving away a good portion of Baghdad’s non-Shiite population? Now that Baghdad seems serious about putting a stop to the Mahdi Army, Fateh Abdusalam asks in Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:
“One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years … Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” … Why is a person who was above the law three years ago, now wanted by the law? What has changed: the person or the law or the ones in charge of overseeing that law?
By Fateh Abdusalam
Translated By Nicolas Dagher
April 24, 2008
Iraq - Azzaman - Original Article (Arabic)
There’s a king of perverse equality in Iraq, which is that no one has a right to ask questions. Or everyone has a right to ask questions, according to Democratic theory, but not everyone who asks a question has a right to an answer.
The same can be said about questions on political matters. There are those who excuse this situation and exempt the Iraqi government from any responsibility on the grounds that, ‘the eye cannot overcome the will” … or the American administration of Iraq, where the file of outstanding problems remains suspended in the Pentagon.
One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years - and especially the last two years - since the eruption of sectarian strife [since the bombing of the Golden Mosque] and the failure of the notorious government of al-Jaafari, which showed leniency toward all parties involved and failed to control the strife, all of which only served to pour oil on the fire?
Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” The public airwaves reported on these “authorities” as though they comprised part of the new Iraqi state - until three-quarters of Baghdad’s original population comprised of various sects and groups were forced to flee because they weren’t “loyal” to those who prevailed in the street … or to those who prevailed in the secret/or open headquarters of public authorities or armed parties.
Why does the Mahdi Army remain silent about the “renegades and infiltrators” who used its name and address for years, through the consent of alliances and friendships. … until a crisis of “existence” and “authority” broke out with a party that was smarter and better equipped logistically [the Badr Brigades of al-Hakim?] and which caused all parties to expose the dirty laundry of their opponents.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated coverage of the Iraqi side of the war.
Why is it that Iraq’s wealthy Arab neighbors refuse to forgive its debts or restore full relations with in the country, while Western and Asian countries have forgiven billions and long ago reopened their Baghdad Embassies?
“One can understand their reasons. The damage done to many of them during the years of the Saddam Hussein regime was simply too great, despite the fact that today, Iraq is ruled by a different regime. … one would have though that this page would have been turned long ago. … However, Iran stated in the conference’s final communique that relations with Iraq during the dark past would not prevent it from developing new relations with Baghdad. And it is here that we see the true cause of Arab reluctance. It is Iran’s influence on the new Iraqi Government, which largely represents the Shiite community, that is making the Sunni-led governments of Iraq’s Arab neighbors so reluctant to develop new ties and cancel its debts.”
By political commentator Maria Appakova
Translated By Igor Medvedev
April 23, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
MOSCOW: For some reason, the outcome of the Third Expanded Ministerial Conference of the Neighboring Countries of Iraq, in Kuwait City on April 22, which was designed to combine the efforts of countries interested in stabilizing Iraq, has instead created a sense of unease.
The opening speech by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the final communiqué released by the conference raises the question of who needs Iraq more - its neighbors or the West (and Russia, for that matter).
The Kuwait conference was already the third event of its kind in the past year. The first meeting of Iraq’s neighbors, with the participation of other concerned nations, was held in May 2007 in Egypt; the second, in November in Turkey. And in that intervening year, very little of the underlying intrigue in regard to the U.S.-Iran standoff has changed, nor has the agenda of these meetings - discussing the possibility of writing off Iraq’s debts to other Arab countries and the reopening of their embassies in Baghdad.
In his speech, Nouri al-Maliki appealed to creditor countries to forgive Baghdad’s debts - a legacy of the government of Saddam Hussein. And he asked Arab countries to re-open their embassies in Baghdad.
According to Maliki, it’s difficult to understand why they have yet to restore diplomatic relations with Iraq, while many other countries have reopened embassies in Baghdad despite ongoing difficulties in the security sphere. With regard to Arab countries, they seem to be biding their time - Saudi Arabia promised to reopen its embassy a year ago, but still hasn’t implemented its intentions. Now Kuwait and Bahrain are making vague promises, careful not to mention specific dates.
On the one hand, one can understand these Arab countries. The first attempts some of them made to reopen embassies in Baghdad ended tragically - in August 2003, during a terrorist attack mounted against Jordan’s diplomatic mission, 17 people were killed. In 2005, several Algerian and Egyptian diplomats were abducted and killed. And then, for example, there was the murder of Russian Embassy staff in 2006, although this was not used as a pretext to close the mission.
Granted, security is a sensitive issue. But what prevents Arab countries - and these countries are not poor - from easing Baghdad’s debt burden?
Over the past three years, $66.5 billion of Iraq’s $120 billion debt burden has been forgiven. Along with Russia’s $12 billion in debt relief, the Paris Club waived a total of $42.3 billion, while non-Paris Club members cancelled another $8.2 billion under the same conditions as the Club. Commercial creditors relieved Iraq of $16 billion. Of the remaining amount - between $56.6 and $79.9 billion - about half is owed to the nations of the Arab Gulf, which seem in no hurry to help.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the War in Iraq.
One of the ongoing tragedies of the Iraq war is Washington’s refusal to allow Iraqis who have actively helped the American effort into the U.S. in all but the smallest numbers, exposing them to possible persecution and death.
The fate of many of the Hmong mountain people who fought against the communist-nationalist Pathet Lao in Laos at the behest of the CIA on one of the more obscure fronts in the Vietnam War was somewhat better. After the Pathet Lao victory in 1975, thousands fled to Thailand and many were resettled in Western countries, including the U.S.
But now those Hmong allies who remain in Laos are being hunted down and exterminated by Laotian and Vietnamese military units, according to a Center for Public Policy analysis.
Richard Fernandez, better known as Wretchard the Cat at the Belmont Club blog, writes at Pajamas Media that:
“The Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (LPDR) regime, in cooperation with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), has issued a new order and drafted a comprehensive strategy to mount a major military offensive to exterminate thousands of Hmong in hiding in the jungles and mountains of Laos. The offensive will involve special battalions of troops and special operations commandos from Vietnam who are now being deployed to the closed military zones of operation. The reported object is to eliminate and exterminate some 15,000 Lao Hmong in hiding in key areas of Laos by the end of April 2008. Hmong in Laos are bracing for these new anticipated attacks by Laos and Vietnam, which are expected to be massive and ruthless.”
The Laotian government views the Hmong as “bandits,” denies that there is a campaign of persecution against them and predictably rejects calls for independent international monitors as “interference from the outside.”
It’s hard to see the Bush administration leaning on the Laotian and Vietnamese governments considering the attitude that it has copped regarding Iraqi civilians and its lousy human rights record overall.
Complicating the situation is that the use of the Hmong mercenaries was secret.
Unlike in Vietnam, the U.S.’s involvement in Laos was covert (and highly illegal) and no American troops were sent to try to prevent a Communist takeover. But while the war is a sad chapter in American history that many people would sooner forget, Americans have an obligation to not forget the Hmong.
Readers of the Moderate Voice and WORLDMEETS.US won’t be surprised to hear that people in Europe find this election to be particularly baffling. But the post-Pennsylvania death-lock that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are presently engaged in has only served to make the apparent chaos even more pronounced.
“Republican candidate John McCain must be radiating with joy. … From one state to another, millions are spent in a fratricidal struggle that will last until June. Perhaps even longer if the outcome of these primaries ultimately depends on the “super-delegates” and their obscure machinations. What a windfall for John McCain, that atypical Republican, the outsider septuagenarian who is now credibly “presidential!”
“One has to admit that from this side of the Atlantic, it’s hard to comprehend an American presidential election. The candidate (he or she) matters more than the program. Charisma is more important than political commitment. You “support” one candidate or another as if you were a “fan” of a pop singer or a football star.” Read the rest of this entry »
Like many guys, I don’t like to shop. The Dear Friend & Conscience, on the other hand, loves to shop and just the other day we went out to drop off an old wrought-iron lawn chair at a repair shop so that it could be spot welded and came home with three new bras and an omelet pan.
Now the DF&C needed bras and I needed an omelet pan because the old one was beginning to look like a Superfund site. But my point is that what was an enjoyable hour or so for her was painful for me.
Which got me to thinking about a larger painfulness as we strolled through an enormous but nearly deserted manufacturers’ outlet store complex:
Shopping has become an ordeal for the increasing number of people who don’t have a couple of hundred bucks to spend at the supermarket to keep their brood in Wheaties and peanut butter as food and gasoline prices skyrocket and they still have to make mortgage payments and fulfill other financial obligations.
In yet another sign that things are bad and getting worse, no less a capitalist bastion than the Wall Street Journal suggests that it may be time for Americans, who as it is spend far less on food than in most other countries, to begin stockpiling.
You’ve seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they’re a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.”
Now I’m not an economist, nor do I play one on TV. But it is obvious that there are several reasons for food shortages (principally rice, which is now being rationed by another capitalist bastion, Sam’s Club) and evidence that some Americans are indeed stockpiling.
The reasons for the shortages include dwindling food and fish stocks (duh!), inflation, climate change and the siphoning off food crops for fuel production. But the big engine is soaring oil prices, the Iraq war is the major cause for that and the Bush administration is of course the culprit.
No, this is not another exercise in Blame The Decider For Everything because this shoe fits.
One of the Forever War’s greater ironies is that we were led to believe that the fall of Saddam Hussein would, among other great and noble things, result in a windfall in U.S. oil imports and a more stable Middle East.
Just the opposite has happened, of course. Iraq is still struggling to bring production back to pre-invasion levels, a substantial amount of that oil is siphoned off for the gray and black markets, and the war has caused profound instability in the region, which has helped trigger ever higher crude oil prices.
Meanwhile, Barry Ritholtz, who is an economist and plays one on TV in talking head appearances on MSNBC and elsewhere, blames food shortages on the Federal Reserve’s “irresponsible bailout” of Wall Street bigs in a post at The Big Picture, for my dinero the best economics-oriented blog. (He also does some great stuff on jazz, typically on Fridays.)
So what’s the U.S. to do?
Getting the heck out of Iraq is the no-brainer solution, but that’s not going to happen. Taking the food crisis seriously would be a good start, but just as the Bush administration is only beginning to whisper that the U.S. economy might be in recession, it is nowhere near prepared to ask Americans to make sacrifices — be they for war or waffles.
How frustrating is it for Iraqis, caught militarily and diplomatically between America and Iran?
For Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper, Fateh Abdusalam laments, “For the past few months, U.S. officials and candidates for the presidency have done all they can to avoid linking progress in the Iraq War to the possibility of talks with Iran. Instead, Republican candidate John McCain, a foreign policy hardliner and a warmonger since the Vietnam War when he spent four years in captivity, tried to give a ‘a new lease on life’ to the issue of the Iranian danger by discussing the threat Iran poses over the next five years - roughly the next President’s term of office.”
“Whenever it detects the slightest softening from Washington, Tehran goes one step further and discloses the completion of yet another “nuclear” milestone, reassured that the danger has passed and that it holds more winning cards than America does.”
“Iraq today finds itself stuck in a purgatory of no-war and no-peace between Iran and United States. Until it extricates itself from this state of affairs, Iraq will fail to establish its new status as a free nation..”
![[Al-Ahram, Egypt]](http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/889/fathi2.png)
