The Consequences of a Liberated, Democratic, and Free Iraq Despite the problems we see now in Isreal and Palestine, Iraq still looms large on the horizon as a target for liberation. The termination of Saddam Hussein's evil regime remains an admirable and acheivable goal. But what consequemces, short and long term, would we see in the Middle East? Iraq itself is a strategic location. It splits the eastern Asian Muslims from the Arabian Muslims by dint of geopraphic location. The Persians (Iran), Pakistani, and Afghanis are a different people than the Arabs or Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and North Africa. Culturally, the people differ. Saudi Arabia has built a strong Arabian influence into South Asia, with significant success. This stems partly from the oil wealth of the House of Saud, partly from the attractiveness of the "Blame Everyone Else" philosphy embodied in Wahhabi Islam. Much like National Socialism, Wahabism preaches that the problems of the disaffected are not caused by the local regime, but rather that the problems are a product of external influences. This is amazingly similar to several racial based groups in the US as well... but I digress. Looking outward for fault prevents the Wahhabists from examining their own actions. What they do, they consider to be Righteous and a product of Holiness. Blasting Saddam Hussein into the afterworld will affect the Wahhabist wolrdview. But first, let's explore the ramifications locally. Turkey will have a mixed reponse. The elimination of a potential enemy to the south will be greeted with cheers. The potential realization of a Kurdish state will worry them to no end. The Turks already have to deal with a Kurdish separatist faction within their borders, so an outside homeland gives intense potential to a demand for "unification" of the Kurdish lands -- which means that Turkey loses a big chunk of its southeastern border. I beleive that Turkey would prefer to see Hussein fall, regardless of the Kurdish situation. The Saudis have recently gripped and grinned with Hussein. So has Jordan and Syria. These Arab states would drread the fall of Hussein -- because then they wouldn't have a neighbor that makes them look good. Jordan wouldn't really care, because they seem to be the most rational of the Arab players. Syria and the Saudis would wail and gnash tehir teeth in protest. The Saudis would demand that we remove ourselves from our Saudi bases. Fine... we'll reclaim them when we oust the House of Saud. Iran is a tough call... they have been the mortal enemies of Iraq for decades. But recently flights from Iran to Baghdad have started up, and Iraq now allows Iranian passenger jets to venture over Iraq en route to other places. Also, Iran happily allowed Iraqi jets to hide in Iran during the Gulf War. I think that Iran would be willing to take up arms in support of Iraq. That can be neutralized, however, through use of Radio Free Iran. Iran is ripe for revolution, and getting closer to it. The Iranian people are tired of the mullocracy, and will soon sound the trumpet of doom for the Ayatollahs. If Iran rises to strike at us when we attack Iraq, I beleive that the people of Iran will either neutralize that threat, or possibly even cause Iran to tumble from the throes of Theocacy. Pakistan will stay on our side. Afghanistan will stay as well. Most other muslim countries will scream bloody murder, but not act overtly. The short term effects on Wahhabism will be strong, but and widespread, but not deep. Attacking Iraq will reinforce the anti-Americanism of Wahhabist Islam, and for a while it will gain followers. However, the number of terrorists and suicidal freaks gained will be fairly small -- people who were close enough to the edge will be pushed over, but the rest will hang back. I believe invading Iraq will incite the Saudis into anti-Americanism, just as support for Isreal did in the 1970s. The difference now is that Russia will not stand behind the Arabs if they choose to act against us. We will eventually have to drive them to Democracy, but it will be a while. The Saudis know that they are vulnerable, and cannot defeat us in battle. They'll kowtow as much as they need to in order to stay in power. An Oil Embargo will fail -- Venezuala and Russia can make up for a great deal of the MidEast oil, and the Arabs now know that oil, like money, is fungible. It flows around obstacles to get where it's wanted. Jordan will remain neutral. Egypt will possibly terminate its peace with Isreal and look to resuming hostilities there. Egypt might rise to the bait of a war, but they still sting from the loss in 1967. They will be hostile but keep out of it. Syria will become more openly hostile, and ramp up support for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. That's pretty close to it. We are not beloved by the Dictators of the Middle East, whether they be Saudi or Iraqi, Syrian or Iranian. Changing one will eventually necessitate changing them all. Perhaps we'll get lucky and find that killing one dictator forces the other to change -- but I wouldn't bet on it. This is a hydra -- cutting off one head will not kill Wahhabism and Radical Islam. We need to slay the beast.

The blessings of Passover I am married to a lovely Jewish family. My In-Laws are terrific people. Last night we celebrated Passover with a seder, where I got to read a little and learned a lot. My wife and I, her parents, her Oma, and her dad's Uncle Henry were all there. Uncle Henry and Oma both fled the Nazis back in the 1930s, both giving up a lot in the process. They were from a fairly wealthy family, and eventually came to the US to live in near poverty, working to start all over again. Henry's wife, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, lived in teh wilds of teh Phillipines for a year after fleeing Germany. Jessica's grandfather was in the process of becoming a doctor when he fled Germany. He ended up selling shoes in Norfolk. VA. And last night we sat together and celebrated the liberty that the Isrealites earned some 4000 years ago. It's almost unusual to celebrate something so long in the past. Our family has much to celebrate in the recent past. Just surviving the Nazi regime is a blessing. The losses of the era were tremendous -- homes, farms, clothes, food, everything. Many of those imprisoned and enslaved (those who were not killed outright) came out of the War with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But they managed to survive... somehow. This is the strength of Isreal. Then I read this morning of the bombing of a Seder at a hotel in Netanya. And there you can see the difference between a Palestinian and an Israeli, as clearly as it can be seen. Palestine strikes in offense. Isreal strikes in defense. Palestine kills children, women, and other civilians indescriminately. Isreal strikes at the terrorists, their leaders, or the autocratic state that supports them. Palestine chants for the death of Isreal and the Jews. Isreal comes to the table looking for peace, if it can be had with trust. This is a battle between good and evil. Good does not intentionally take the lives of innocents. Good does not strike at children. Good does not wish death on its enemies, but will allow them to live in peace if they can. Evil does none of this. And that is why it must be confronted and destroyed.

Say hello to the Techniban

Back to the Oscars... I was thinking about the Oscars over the last few days. I actually didn't watch the presentation of more than a few of the awards, but I did see Halle Berry's evocative acceptance speech yesterday morning on the Today show. I didn't really pay attention, nor had it registered that both Denzel Washington and Halle Berry are black -- I've never thought of them as anything other than very good actors. Denzel Washington has been a favorite of mine since Glory, way back when. Washington and Berry are the cream of the crop in Hollywood right now, as good as or better than any other actors in the business. So that got me thinking.... Sunday night, the Academy Awards honored a great actor -- Sidney Poitier. Mr. Poitier won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1963, and was instrumental through the late 50s and into the sixties and seventies for breaking down the color barriers in Hollywood. Like Jackie Robinson, he changed the world in a good way, through his incredible talent and through great courage. Mr. Poitier deserves the accolades he recieved through the years, including sunday night's award. Well, I got thinking... what would be more appropriate for the night Sidney Poitier was honored than for two other great black actors to be honored for their work? I know it sounds conspiratorial, and maybe it is. But maybe it's just Hollywood's collective guilt percolating to the surface. Hollywood is more racist than the rest of America -- it's endemic to an environment where looks matter more than anything else, where people are important because they're pretty, and picked first and foremost because they look the part. Face it, Rene Zellweiger was picked for Bridget Jones because she's a good looking woman, first and foremost. The fact than she can do a passable Brit was gravy, and that she can actually act was even more gravy. Well, since the first thing Hollywood does is look for someone who looks the part, they care far more about race than the rest of America. Stella in How Stella Got Her Groove Back most certainly would not have been cast to a white woman. Nor would Bridget Jones have gone to a black woman. Race matters so much to Hollywood because race is Hollywood. For the msot part, the rest of us don't give a damn about race.

China's High Rollers Find a Seat at Table -- in Vegas (washingtonpost.com) -- Chinese gamblers losing millions in Vegas... I guess the trade deficit has a way of balancing out every time...

Victor Davis Hanson on War on National Review Online -- A must read. Septmber 11, 2002 bears closer resemblence to September 10, 1939, than it does to Dec 7, 1942, in my mind. More on this later...

Insight on the News -- Possible Iraqi involvement in the OKC bombings... (original link special thanks to Instapundit). Here's a passage that interests me a little more than just the Iraqi involvement in OKC --

The evidence could take the CIA and the White House to both Middle Eastern states, as Tenet made clear. "The distinctions between Sunni and Shia [Islam] that have traditionally divided terrorist groups are not distinctions you should make anymore because there is a common interest against the United States and its allies in this region, and they will seek capability wherever they can get it," he said. Saddam Hussein and his governing Baathist elite are predominantly Sunni, while neighboring Iran is majority Shiite. Both have helped Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, U.S. counterterrorism officials now believe.

Iraq recently allowed Iran overflight and even connecting flights through Baghdad. This eases Iran's access to the rest of the Middle East. Iran and Iraq share a huge border. A free and democratic Iraq, either as a single country, or split into a Sunni southern nation and a Kurdish northern nation, threatens Iran's theocracy. I suspect that both nations have been thinking things through -- if the USA takes out Saddam, Iran could follow shortly thereafter (the Domino Theory in reverse). Iran has an interest in keeping Saddam in power. Yes, the Sunni and Shia militants are traditional enemies, but war makes strange bedfellows. We tolerated an alliance with Stalin to help eliminate Hitler. Saddam could handle an alliance with Iran to help him stay in power. My thoughts -- if Saddam feels close to being ousted, or killed, he'll flee to Iran and Iran will aid and abet to some degree. I don't think they'd try to take us on in the field of battle, but they could sneak in suicide bombers and other forms of terrorist both in Iraq and in the USA to try and abet Saddam, to try and break the will of the USA as Hanoi once did. I don't think that Iran would send anything directly against the US. September 11, 2001, showed that we have a President who doesn't take attacks against the home soil lightly, so I suspect that the primary form of attack would be the constant, harrassing attacks such as those by the Palestinians against Isreal. On a side note --Isreal has not responded as I wish they would. They'd treated the attacks almost as criminal matters -- the Lone Gunman Syndrome -- treating the attack as though there was no political entity behind them. This is the wrong approach. Let's think it through. What if there were a shadow Canadian government, a pseudo-governmental organization that professed a hatred of the United States, and received money and supplies, including arms, from the Canadian government. What if the Canadian government also organized deliveries of various munitions for this group from various suppliers. Now, in general, there would be nothing we could do about this Canadian organization if it never hit the streets of America. If they sat in Toronto and chanted and protested, lynched members who disagreed, and generally shot each other we wouldn't and couldn't do much against them. Now, what if this organization had a member sneak across the border and deliver a truck bomb in Toledo, and the next day a suicide bomber blew himself up in Detroit, and the day after a gunman from this group shot up the Mall of America. What would we do? Under a good President (like Bush is, more or less), we'd tell the Canadian government to shut down the organization, or face the consequences. If Canada said that they couldn't do anything about it, we'd tell then "Fine -- we'll handle it!", and take the steps necessary to kill off that violent arm. Bombs would drop, missiles would be fired, and Special Operations troops would bloody the terrorists as much as possible. If the attacks continued, we'd invade and stop them however we could. We would not let Canada claim that "We don't have any control over them" while supplying the terrorists with weapons and funds. We'd kill of the Canadian government if need be, not necessarily by killing the member of Parliament, but by driving them from power. Isreal faces such a delimma. Arafat refuses to stop acquiring arms, to stop Hamas and Al Aqsa from bombing, to stop the snipers from shooting, to stop the glorification of "martyrs". Arafat refuses to do anything to stop the attacks. So, Isreal should take out Arafat, invade the Palestinian territories, and start killing off the known terrorists and their supporters. Missiles should be fired, bombs dropped, and the Special Operations troops should start getting ready to make the terrorists pay a price -- at the top level.

Backfence: When baby arrives, movies are gone with the wind -- James Lileks at his best...

What a night! The Academy Awards! Okay, more like what a load of hooey. Please don't get me wrong -- Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, et al., are fine entertainers, and Ron Howard, et al., are fine filmmakers. But four hours+ of awards? C'mon, folks, two hours would dull the senses. They've already moved the technical awards to another night. Why not move all but the top notch Actor/Actress, Best Picture, Director, Producer, and a couple other really big ones to another night as well. Let's get it done in an hour and a half, maybe two hours. I'm also run in by the pre-/post-awards hype -- the red carpet arrival interviews, the post award interviews, the special Barbara Walter interviews, etc. etc., ad nauseum. It's ridiculous. Oh, and the only, ONLY, ONLY reason I watched any of the Academy Awards was because Fox nuked their main line up to sho "Independence Day", a fine enough piece of fluff in its own right, but not still as much fun as Futurama, The Simpsons, and Malcolm in the Middle. I had to have something on the tube while I got caught up on my motorcycle magazines and repaired a toilet (no, not at the same time!).