Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Gardner on Iraq

David Gardner, writing in the Financial Times, provides about the best one-paragraph summary of the situation in Iraq that I've read yet:

So, in sum. Having upturned the Sunni order in Iraq and the Arab world, and hugely enlarged the Shia Islamist power emanating from Iran, the US finds itself dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, yet unable to dismantle the Sunni jihadistan it has created in central and western Iraq. Ignoring its Iraqi allies it is arming Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda. And, by selling them arms rather than settling Palestine it is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance (Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) with Israel against Iran. All clear? How can anyone keep a straight face and call this a strategy?

And yet our foreign policy gurus go on cable and defend this mess with straight faces everyday, and no one ('cept us lonely bloggers) calls them out on it.

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