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Sunday, June 24, 2007 |
Harper's: "If you're not concerned about the prospects for another war in the Middle East in the near future, consider that you may be a sleepwalker. There is every reason to be concerned. The prospects are numerous. In the Gaza Strip and the West Bank a brutal conflict has erupted between forces which reflect two different generations of Palestinian radicalism. In Lebanon, foreign intrigue and assassinations continue, sucking Syria, the United States and Israel into one of the region's oldest communitarian conflicts. The prospects for another summer war in Lebanon, likely involving one or more foreign participants, have to be seen as excellent. Syria itself is in the crosshairs in Washington. Olmert's Government in Israel, still licking its wounds from last summer's expeditionary catastrophe, wants to take the temperature down a few degrees and start a dialogue with the Syrians - but this initiative has given the last diehard neocons in Washington a conniption. Then of course we have Iraq, where Washington's 'surge' operations continue without conclusive result as a September deadline draws closer.
And yet none of these conflicts is the coming war that I see looming on the horizon. The coming war pits the United States against Iran. For the dead-ender neoconservatives (and indeed, neoconservatives are by their psychology just the sort of people who make excellent dead-enders), the solution to the current dilemma - a catastrophic failure in Iraq, badly miscast plans in Lebanon, an increasingly angry American electorate - is simple: we need a new war. Nothing focuses the mind and silences the opposition quite like a good little war, they believe. And while times may be difficult for the neocons generally, not to worry - they still have the key man. One man is the 'decider' on questions respecting Iran. His name is Dick Cheney."
10:50:09 AM 
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© Copyright 2007 Hetty Litjens.
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