Monday, February 26, 2007
Finesse In International Relationships and Grounding In Reality
Here's what Kevin Drum has to say about Sy Hersh's report in The New Yorker that the Bush administration has decided to take its attention away from the Sunni terrorists who hit us on 9/11, take the side of Sunnis in the overall Sunni-Shiite conflict in the Middle East, and start backing Sunni terrorist organizations and Al Qaeda wannabes in Lebanon and other places in the region (except for Iraq, of course) in the hopes that they'll hurt Shiite powers like Iran and Shiite terrorist organizations like Hezbollah:
Drum issues a final warning about the report: "buckle your seat belts."
Indeed.
Pat Buchanan has been saying for months that he believes the Bush administration is not going to leave office without taking care of the "Shiite Crescent" of power that currently rests in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But backing Sunni extremist groups with ties to Al Qaeda - the same people who attacked us on 9/11 and inaugurated the official start of the War on Terror in the first place - in order to do it seems counterproductive and dangerous to me.
Oh, well. I guess that's why I'm a high school teacher and Dick Cheney's VP of the United States. He knows what he's doing in these matters.
Right.
Is this true? Who knows, since the sources mostly seem to be Hersh's usual anonymous cast of ex-spies, ex-consultants, and ex-diplomats. But the story is plausible. Having never really believed in the threat of non-state terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in the first place, the Bush administration may now have come full circle from 9/11, tacitly teaming up with Sunni jihadists in the hope that they'll help us take out the state-based terrorist threat of Iran -- after which, presumably, the jihadis will all go home to watch TV and raise their families. Just like they did after the Afghanistan war.
Lovely, no? And one more thing: Hersh says the covert side of this plan is being run by the vice president's office. Which means, of course, that it will be handled with the same finesse in international relationships and grounding in reality that Dick Cheney is famous for.
Drum issues a final warning about the report: "buckle your seat belts."
Indeed.
Pat Buchanan has been saying for months that he believes the Bush administration is not going to leave office without taking care of the "Shiite Crescent" of power that currently rests in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But backing Sunni extremist groups with ties to Al Qaeda - the same people who attacked us on 9/11 and inaugurated the official start of the War on Terror in the first place - in order to do it seems counterproductive and dangerous to me.
Oh, well. I guess that's why I'm a high school teacher and Dick Cheney's VP of the United States. He knows what he's doing in these matters.
Right.
