"The Middle East at a tipping point" by Nicholas Burns | Globe Columnist July 03, 2014
American interests are in jeopardy in a Middle East consumed by revolution, violence, refugees, and war.
This is a pivotal moment in the history of the modern Middle East.
I know. It is why I want to stop reading and reporting on the Globe and start to work on my historical documentary for posterity titled: World War III on Blog. It is to be saved for future generations to find as an accurate historical record, be they surviving humans or alien visitors like long, long ago.
Just three and a half years after the outbreak of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere, nearly all of the 22 Arab states are worse off. Tunisia and Morocco may be marginally more democratic and stable. But Egypt, the region’s keystone state, has gone from toppling Hosni Mubarak to overthrowing the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, thereby executing a 360-degree return to authoritarian military rule. The Syrian civil war has grown so vicious that close to half of its 22 million people are homeless. This heartbreaking humanitarian crisis may worsen before it gets better, as Syrian President Bashar Assad and ISIS are in a fight to the death. Syria’s cancer has metastasized and now threatens Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Yeah, ISIS Al-CIA-Duh (talk about blatant propaganda) is prompting AmeriKa to get deeper involved in the Middle East.
Hey, I don't blame these guys anymore. They have 9/10 of their project completed and they are going to crown the capstone even as the base os dissolving. This thing should last about as long, maybe even a lot less, than the Third Reich.
Israel’s security has worsened dramatically. It faces serious threats on all its borders and renewed hostilities with Hamas following the murder of three Israeli teenagers outside Hebron in the West Bank and, on Wednesday, the apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian youth. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned this week that “radical Islam” is on Israel’s doorstep.
Yeah, yeah, I got that narrative plenty. Thanks.
I didn't know radical Islam came in the form of little girls.
These events have produced forces that carry ominous long-term implications for the entire Middle East. Foremost among them is ISIS's declaration of a radical caliphate spanning northern Syria and western Iraq; if ISIS control there endures, it could destabilize the region for years to come.
And only what, AmeriKan military occupation can quell it? Been there, done that!
In reaction, the Kurds, whose Peshmerga forces have taken the strategic city of Kirkuk, may now pursue the independent state they have long desired and long been denied.
Maybe they should have it, although Israel endorsing such an idea is reason to oppose it.
Meanwhile, the savage Sunni-Shiite war may lead to an expansion of Iranian influence in Baghdad and southern Iraq.
That was the plan all along.
In the worst-case scenario, the converging pressures could lead to the breakup of Iraq itself, thereby endangering the modern state system in the Middle East.
Or the best case, depending upon which prism you want to view it. The former Bush Administration State Department official should know that.
The United States faces many difficult and dangerous challenges in responding to these events.
Are we responding, initiating, or both?
Obama is scrambling to get back into the Iraq influence game he spurned following the withdrawal of American troops in 2011. He and Secretary of State John Kerry are smartly applying diplomatic pressure first, instead of force, in the hope that Iraq’s embattled prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, will be forced to resign.
And now we have lost a nominal ally.
Kerry is also leaning heavily on the Kurds to stay within a unitary Iraqi state and to join a new unity government.
Why would they want to do that, and what is with the hypocritical contradictions?
U.S. was out there arguing Crimea had no right to vote independence, blah, blah, blah!
Kosovo gets it, Kashmir does not?
What's up with that?
Sudan is allowed to split off, Serbs bombed because they want to?
What's up with that?
Obama is right to resist redeploying ground forces to Iraq.
Yeah, except he did deploy "special forces troops," blah, blah, blah! C'mon Nic!
But if ISIS continues to advance, he may be forced to use American air power to save a weak and discredited government in Baghdad.
Ah, the but followed by another AmeriKan president reluctantly smashing some nation to bits because they don't like the government. Never wanted to do it, but had to destroy it to save it.
Good thing ISIS stalled marching toward Baghdad, huh? Remember when that was the flash-in-the-pan headlines?
The turmoil in Iraq should serve as an important reminder for the Obama administration and for all of us.
Oh, pay attention now.
As the strongest outside power in the Middle East, we can’t afford to opt out of the hard, frustrating work in Iraq of diplomacy backed by US military power, as we have often done in recent years.
And we can't afford to opt in, either.
Wow. Look at the position Burnsy and the rest put "us all" in!
All this is occurring as we mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I.
??????????????
Not to shut out such things but
HA-HA! Propagandists denied as they are all almost dead (if they are even Nazis; all that is needed now is an accusation).
A "fresh look" at history that is just the same stale s***!
Now for something very old:
"Let me show what happened while you were -- I don't want to wear that out --- let me show what happened while WE were all asleep. I'm including myself with you. We were all asleep. What happened?
World War I broke out in the summer of 1914. Nineteen-hundred and fourteen was the year in which World War One broke out. There are few people here my age who remember that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia; and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. What happened?
Within two years Germany had won that war: not alone won it nominally, but won it actually. The German submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from the Atlantic Ocean, and Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her soldiers, stood there with one week's food supply facing her -- and after that, starvation.
At that time, the French army had mutinied. They lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was defecting. They were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed.
Now Germany -- not a shot had been fired on the German soil. Not an enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany. And yet, here was Germany offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis. That means: “Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war started.”
Well, England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that. Seriously! They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally defeated.
While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to the British War Cabinet and -- I am going to be brief because this is a long story, but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make if anyone here is curious, or doesn't believe what I'm saying is at all possible -- the Zionists in London went to the British war cabinet and they said: “Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally.”
The United States was not in the war at that time. We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we were powerful. They [Zionists] told England: “We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war.”
The root of all the troubles today. Incredible. No wonder my Jewish war paper is celebrating the centennial.
And 100 years later, we are in World War III with Zionists trying to extend their dominion over the globe.
Suddenly, everything seems to be changing. Israel openly supports an independent Kurdistan. US and Iranian interests are converging over the defense of Baghdad. Fanatical ISIS fighters continue to march. Borders may melt away.
It’s a Middle East turned upside down.
It’s almost Shakespearean....
Except it is not a play on stage. Those are real bodies being put to rest and in hospital in Gaza.
--more--"
Nice bit of fiction to start, wasn't it (notice how that propaganda was flushed quick once US got troops back in)?
Related: A Cold War lesson for Iran
Why would anyone take advice from that guy?
