On Sat, 17 May 2008 03:47:56 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
<dirk.bruere@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Joe wrote:
>> BikeFan wrote:
>>> Bush went cap in hand to his masters in Israel and then tried
>>> to strongarm the Saudis to pump more oil. Oddly, they refused.
>>> http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/16/bush.saudi.arabia/index.html
>>> I guess he's more scared of what the Federal Reserve can do to the US
>>> than Saudi.
>>>
>>
>> wrong again, but I'm sure u r used to that. saudi's increase oil
>> 300,000 barrels a day thanks to the greatest president in history.
>
>And Iran is doing a longterm oil deal with the Chinese, in Euros.
>I bet someone won't like that...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/363292_friedman16.html
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/363292_friedman16.html
We'll lose a Cold War with Iran
Last updated May 15, 2008 4:41 p.m. PT
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
The next American president will inherit many foreign policy
challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the Cold War. Yes,
the next president is going to be a Cold War president -- but this
Cold War is with Iran.
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the
struggle for influence across the region, with the U.S. and its Sunni
Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state
allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian
daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there
are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."
For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come?
The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb
and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other
questions?
The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to
take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in
West Beirut, focusing particular attention on cru****ng progressive
news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah's propaganda machine could
dominate the airwaves. The ****ite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly
to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned
around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran.
All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel's best Middle
East watchers, calls "Pax Iranica." In his April 28 column in The
Jerusalem Re****t, Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has
built around the Middle East -- from the sway it has over Iraq's prime
minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all
the ****ite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a
force -- with 40,000 rockets -- that can control Lebanon and threaten
Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to
strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored
Israeli-Palestinian peace.
"Simply put," noted Yaari, "Tehran has created a situation in which
anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take
into account that this will lead to bitter fighting" on the Lebanese,
Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated
strategy of deterrence.
The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America
in the unique position in the Middle East where it is "not liked, not
feared and not respected," writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast
negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in
his provocative new book on the peace process, titled "The Much Too
Promised Land."
"We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace
in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George
Bush over how to make war there," said Miller, and the result is "an
America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot
abandon."
Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the
Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in
February, Vice President Dick Cheney went in March, the secretary of
state went again in April, and the president is there again this week.
After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as
low as ever. As Miller puts it, America right now "cannot defeat,
co-opt or contain" any of the key players in the region.
The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over
whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has
been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn't
whether we talk or don't talk. It's whether we have leverage or don't
have leverage.
When you have leverage, talk. When you don't have leverage, get some
-- by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and
pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to
ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-a-vis
Iran.
The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so
drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge
or is so divided it can't make a fist to protect its own interests --
or both.
We're not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see
the U.S. and Arab friends so weak they can't prevent one of the last
corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from
being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. Giving me succor is the knowledge
that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone has triggered
a backlash and failed.
"Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus,
without bringing everybody in," said Lebanese columnist Michael Young.
"Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects." In the
Mideast, he added, your enemies always seem to "find a way of joining
together and suddenly making things very difficult for you."
Thomas L. Friedman is foreign affairs columnist for The New York
Times.
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