by Alex Evans | Oct 3, 2007 | Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
William Lind is back from his summer holidays:
If [the downward spiral of events in Europe before the First World War] reminds us of the Middle East today, it should. There too we see a series of crises, each holding the potential of kicking off a much larger war. There are almost too many to list: the war in Iraq, the U.S. versus Iran, Israel vs. Syria, the U.S. vs. Syria, Syria vs. Lebanon, Turkey vs. Kurdistan, the war in Afghanistan, the de-stabilization of Pakistan, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the permanent crisis of Israel vs. the Palestinians. Each is a tick of the bomb, bringing us closer and closer to the explosion no one wants, no one outside the neo-con cabal and Likud, anyway.
A basic rule of history is that the inevitable eventually happens. If you keep on smoking in the powder magazine, you will at some point blow it up. No one can predict the specific event or its timing, but everyone can see the trend and where it is leading.
In the Middle East today, as in Europe in the decade before World War I, the desperate need is for a country or a leader to reverse the trend. Then, the two European leaders most opposed to war, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, were able to do little more than drag their feet, trying to slow the train of events down. That was not enough, and it will not be enough today in the Middle East either.
Where do we see a leader who can turn aside the march toward war? Not in the Middle East itself, nor among American Presidential candidates, only two of whom, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, represent a real change of direction. Not in Europe, whose heads of government are terrified of breaking with the Americans. Not in Moscow or Beijing, both of which are happy to see America digging its own grave. No matter where we look, the horizon is empty.
by David Steven | Sep 26, 2007 | Off topic
Fancy taking control of a highly desirable online property? Well, get moving because there’s only just over a day left to run in the auction for iraq.com. The highest bidder has offered 600,000 euros, but the (undisclosed) reserve is yet to be met…
by Alex Evans | Sep 23, 2007 | Conflict and security
Blackwater doesn’t only provide protection for US State Dept staff in Iraq and elsewhere: they also run numerous training programs in VIP protection and other such esoteric skills. Here’s a helpful summary of how many rounds of ammunition you should bring with you if you’re fortunate enough to be attending one of their courses.
- Active Threat / Active Shooter – 750 rounds of pistol ammunition, 100 rounds birdshot or buckshot, 30 rounds rifled slug, 650 rounds of carbine ammunition
- High Risk Warrant / Hostage – 500 rounds of primary weapon ammo, 300 rounds of secondary weapon ammo. If you are only going to bring a pistol, bring 800 rounds of ammo
- Tactical Medic – 1500 rounds pistol ammunition
- Advanced Executive Protection – 1,500 rounds of pistol ammunition, 200 rounds 12 gauge bird shot, 50 rounds 12 gauge 00 buckshot
- High Risk Security Operations – 1300 rounds of pistol ammunition, 1300 rounds of carbine ammunition
Blackwater security operatives? Trigger happy? What in the world gave you that idea?
by David Steven | Sep 21, 2007 | Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
Make sure you read this article by Marc Lynch (who runs the excellent blog, Abu Aardvark). A teaser:
Much of the conventional wisdom about the Sunni areas now seems to come from the impressions formed by politicians and journalists on stage-managed visits to Iraq, or by carefully crafted press interviews with “former insurgents” hand-picked by American military handlers. But we don’t need such a mediated view. Leaders of the major Iraqi Sunni groups actually speak quite often and quite candidly to their own people, though: in open letters, in official statements posted on internet forums, in the Arab and Iraqi press, and in statements released on al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations. What they say in such statements, in Arabic, when addressing their own constituencies, might be considered a more reliable guide to their strategy and thinking. So what are the major Iraqi Sunni leaders saying?
by David Steven | Sep 20, 2007 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
Writing in Salon, Steve Clemons recalls a round table he organised 18 months ago on the prospects for war with Iran. Then an unnamed former official in the Bush administration had this to say:
The President is going to receive a memo — some time in the next 6 to 12 months — that presents a “bleak binary choice”. Either he takes action to preempt Iran from reaching a nuclear threshold and calls for a military strike or he stands down and accepts a future with Iran with nuclear weapons.
Condi’s job is to develop a “third option”. She will dance round and round, waltzing with that third option. She will dance faster and faster with it, spinning and spinning, all around she’ll go — but when she’s done she’ll see that she’s dancing with a corpse.
This President is the kind of president who believes it is his moral responsibility to address serious problems now and not to leave these tough actions to a successor.
Those are the cold, harsh realities that we face — and to me, as I look ahead, I don’t see how we come out of this without military action. Unless Iran abandons its nuclear weapons intentions, which I don’t see happening, there will be a war.
So war with Iran is inevitable, right? Clemons says no – arguing that Cheney’s influence is on the wane, the military is strongly opposed to action, and that the President’s body language suggests air strikes are unlikely:
To date… nothing suggests Bush is really going to do it. If he were, he wouldn’t be playing good cop/bad cop with Iran and proposing engagement. If the bombs were at the ready, Bush would be doing a lot more to prepare the nation and the military for a war far more consequential than the invasion of Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence that he has decided bombing may be too costly a choice.
All very reassuring. Until you reach the last few paras, that is, when Clemons starts back pedalling:
What we should worry about, however, is the continued effort by the neocons to shore up their sagging influence. They now fear that events and arguments could intervene to keep what once seemed like a “nearly inevitable” attack from happening. They know that they must keep up the pressure on Bush and maintain a drumbeat calling for war.
They are doing exactly this during September and October in a series of meetings organized by the American Enterprise Institute on Iran and Iraq designed to reemphasize the case for hawkish, interventionist deployments in Iraq and a military, regime-change-oriented strike against Iran. And through Op-Eds and the serious political media, the “bomb Iran now” crowd believes they must undermine those in and out of government proposing alternatives to bombing and keep the president and his people saturated with pro-war mantras.
We should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An “accidental war” would escalate quickly and “end run,” as Wurmser put it, the president’s diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus. It would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict — Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about.
