Middle East

I'm swamped with work, but I wanted to draw your attention to a few posts by Brad DeLong about the media coverage of the Iraq War. There are two very good comments about Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks' explanation for why the media wasn't more critical of the war progress when they had sufficient information to write about the problems (here and here). DeLong summarizes Ricks' mea culpa: He assigns blame to congress because without the aircover provided by senators asking touch questions at hearings, Tom Ricks found that his editors at the Washington Post would not let him write the…
...you know everything is fubar. I'll save the author for the end: No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage [Mad Biologist: Eight soldiers were also killed] than Israel unleashed an air war -- on Lebanon. The Beirut airport was bombed, its fuel storage tanks set ablaze. The coast was blockaded. Power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, trucks and buses were all hit with air strikes. Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah's attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon -- i.e, the collective punishment of a…
Blood red that is. At DailyKos, Hunter elegantly describes the Peter Pan Right: No beating around the bush, here: with talk of "World War III" and the blessed "opportunity" of the expanded bloodshed, conservatives and neoconservatives are positively giddy in their proclamations of who else -- which cities, which people -- need to die next, in the service of the city on the hill that can be built on their bones. A Larger War is, as I have said before, a monkey's paw. Fuck the devil; there are wishes here to be granted, if you ask for them properly. There are political futures to be determined…
...the neocons had to betray it? Granted, Rolling Stone also published crap by RFK, Jr. But there are some public-domain facts to back up the Rolling Stone article's claim that several neocons tried to prevent a detente with Iran by leaking classified information to Israel (including several indictments). From the Rolling Stone: At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications…
Can we please have one leader in the Middle East who isn't thoroughly corrupt or nutty bonkers? Iranian President Ahmadinejad has now declared a war against foreign words: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday. The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the…
Apparently, the Iraqis have moved to "Plan B", which is the dissolution of the Iraqi state. From the Independent: The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable. A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20…
Former enthusiastic neocon supporters running for cover heroically deploying towards a rearward area. Perhaps it's just human nature, but I've always disliked Johnny-Come-Latelys. It's never made sense to me how those of us who figured out that the Iraq War was going to become a pandimensional clusterfuck (and didn't require special intel or brilliant intellect to do so) are still denigrated and not taken seriously, while those who got it wrong and now admit their mistake are still considered 'serious' thinkers. And not in the sense of 'seriously stupid.' Billmon nails exactly what I…
From the old digs comes this post about how catastrophically wrong self-proclaimed 'experts' were on Iraq. I will freely admit I'm no expert on the Middle East. Infectious disease. Yes. Evolutionary biology. Yes. The Middle East. Not exactly. While I speak a smattering of Arabic, can converse in Hebrew, and have actually been to that region--which sadly, makes more of an 'expert' than many of the right-wing bloviators--I hold no illusions about expertise (in part, because I am an expert in a couple of limited areas and know what expertise actually entails). It's always terrified me how…
One of the implicit assumptions regarding Iraq and the whole militarization of U.S. society is that the bellicose neocons are manly, and those of us who opposed invading the wrong country the Iraq War were wimpy or 'girly'. This is one of the oldest tricks in the facist playbook: the 'feminization' of your opponent. So when Chris Matthews says this, I'm starting to think the wheel really has turned: We've killed 50,000 Iraqi's in a war that was supposed to be a two-day wonder. When are we going to notice that the neocons don't know what they're talking about. They're not looking at this…
In a post over at Media Matters about the right-wing's attempt to figure out if the Israeli-Hezbollah-Palestinian-My Uncle Morty conflict is World War III, IV, or V(?!), Larry Kudlow rises above the herd with this spectacular piece of ass-hattery (italics mine): Lawrence Kudlow, discussing a book by former deputy undersecretary of defense Jed Babbin, said "World War IV is the terror war, and war with China would be World War V. Note Kudlow said "would." Not could. Not might be. But would. How batshit loopy do you have to be to have planned out all of our future wars? Or as Juan…
Josh, at Thoughts from Kansas, has a superb explanation of why the blogospheric left has largely remained silent about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Matt Yglesias has been pondering why the left half of the blogosphere doesn't write more about Israel. My answer is simple: Everyone involved sucks. The Palestinians were terrorists for decades, and killing children and other non-combatants is never, ever acceptable. Accidents happen, and we forgive accidents. But targeting non-combatants just isn't OK. So they suck. But they have fair complaints: their situation is horrific and something or…
From Ha'aretz, more information about Hezbollah's capabilities: Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah may decide to use the longer range missiles in his movement's arsenal against Israel, according to Israel Defense Forces assessments. IDF sources say that use of such weapons will depend on authorization from Iran, which has equipped Hezbollah with long-range missiles and has played a formative role in shaping the character of the current fighting. If the confrontation continues to escalate, as it appeared to have done Sunday, the chances that Nasrallah's organization will launch such…