The Oil Drum | JHK: "A Hard Place"

266 comments on JHK: "A Hard Place"

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Glenn on October 2, 2006 - 6:43pm

I hate this war as much as anyone. I was against it from the beginning and I recently lost a good friend who was a proud Marine Reservist. I believe there were lies galore and probably some outright high crimes committed by the current administration. They made a huge mistake in dismantling the Iraqi Army. etc. etc. But all that's not a path forward.

What we need is a rational idea of what we can do to exit it soon without leaving it more of a mess than we are currently making it.

Joe Biden (D-Del) has at least been talking about some new ideas, even if they may have certain flaws

The settlement Biden has in mind is the division of Iraq into highly autonomous regions, dominated, respectively, by Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. That solution was the subject of last week's parliamentary deal, which postponed any action until 2008. A new reconstruction aid program would be launched; an international conference would commit Iran, Syria and other neighbors to a nonaggression pact. International peacekeepers would be recruited to patrol cities such as Baghdad. Meanwhile, most U.S. troops would be withdrawn by the end of next year, except for a residual force that could intervene against al-Qaeda.

So, let's brainstorm some ideas on the way forward...

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

elwoodelmore on October 2, 2006 - 7:10pm

well it is doubtful the current administration will come up with a plan there are some political scientists who believe that if the democrats gain a majority in congress impeachment will follow it's a start

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Prof. Goose on October 2, 2006 - 9:40pm

honestly, it depends on the margin of the victory in a few weeks. If the margin is really close in the House (which after Foley is only 14 seats away), we could see party control of the chamber switch sides on a daily basis with #218 switching sides to appease and get pork for his/her district and the like. We could have a D speaker one day and an R speaker the next.

Also, if the Ds don't get control of the Senate, impeachment would be a moot exercise. And if that's the best they can do as an alternative agenda to the Republicans, they don't deserve to win...and I mean that.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nate Hagens on October 2, 2006 - 10:42pm

question and a comment. question first:

- how can the speaker change daily? you mean the day after the election results are final or literally daily?

comment -personally, i dont think democracy works, or was designed to work at populations greater than the tribal level(100-200) - democrats and republicans are both primarily influenced by big business, perhaps democrats slightly less so. we really do live in a world of $1 dollar 1 vote. Bush is a knucklehead, but we are kidding ourselves if Kerry or Gore would have made that much of a difference - geology, overpopulation and other woes would have taken the same path, perhaps slowed somewhat by lefter leaning policies. we need to be accountable ourselves and stop relying on (or blaming) a particular political party.

Ultimately we need a new party based on science, run by engineers or some such and headed by a 'benevolent dictator'- but our populace is not conditioned to vote for truth - charisma and abstractions 'feel' better.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Prof. Goose on October 2, 2006 - 10:52pm

if the partisan balance is 218-217, and #218 on day 1 decides to be a Democrat, then the next day decides to be a Republican, procedural votes can (not necessarily will) be taken to have a new speaker/party control. It's a majority vote and procedural thing. Could be fascinating, especially if favors buy off #218. I'd love to live in #218's district, eh? (of course, there can be a LOT of #218s...)

You're not wrong Nate, I've often told my classes that representative democracy probably works a lot better when your MoC only represented 10k or so compared to the 700k represented by every MoC today...of course, the problem with that is that the size of the House has been capped at 435 since 1929 and the House Reapportionment Act.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nick on October 3, 2006 - 1:17am

What system would you suggest instead??

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

jkissing on October 3, 2006 - 2:59pm

We have the best system but, like the former soviet union, it is too stable. Gerrymandering has become a science that perfectly places party majorities in nearly all districts, with very few truly competitive ones. In this system the critical thing is to get the majority party's nomination, and follow this by avoiding an explicit sex scandal; you are guaranteed reelection forever, or at least until the next gerrymandering exercise. So, we end up with left and right wing extremists in the US house, who of course have little polite things to say to each other.

The public has so far been resistant to changing from this system, generally with a compromise (with at least a modest number of competitive districts) occurring only when one party controls the statehouse and another the governorship. Obviously, extremists in general, and most elected officials themselves, have a strong interest in the status quo.

Perhaps, in those states with term limits, the officials could be bribed with a temporary increase in term in exchange for a permanent change in how districts are created. The public must be bribed, too, because they like term limits and the current reapportionist system.

So, my proposal for a CA ballot initiative "Eficiency in Government": change the legislature from bicameral to unicameral (single house) with total legislature spending to decline in proportion with the change in total elected officials, and with half the savings going to schools and the other half a reduction in sales tax; allow a new clock for term limits for the new senate; and, most important, invite various groups, inncluding, say, the black and hispanic legislative caucuses, the league of women voters, each party, the legislature and the governor to each submit a redistricting plan to teh CA supreme court, with the court determining which plan has the largest number of competitive districts. In the case of ties, the court would select the one most likely to result in representation of minorities in proportion to their share of CA population.

CA has sufficient US representatives to also have the number of state senators be the same as the number of US representatives, and could therefore have coincident districts.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nick on October 3, 2006 - 3:25pm

So, what you're saying is 1) we have too little democracy, not too much (due to gerrymandering), and 2) we need reform to eliminate gerrymandering, and 3) we need fewer representatives to save $. Do you feel an increase in district size will also promote democracy?

I understood Nate Hagens to be saying we needed less democracy, and that we need a scientific ruling elite - Prof Goose seemed to agree, and then to say that we needed more representatives.

I have to say I'm baffled by the idea that we need a scientific ruling elite. I don't think it's an exaggeration (or even disproportionately inflammatory) to say that it sounds like something from 1920's fascist literature, or 1890's socialist literature. I think scientists like Andrei Sakharov would strongly disagree.

Prof Goose: Do I understand you correctly? And, if so, what do you suggest as an improvement?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Prof. Goose on October 3, 2006 - 4:47pm

Actually, no. I was saying that representation is so diluted in our current democracy (by having a representative for every 700k in the HoR) that it just further reinforces/allows elite governance.

The problem with democracy, as Madison put it, is that the public will is so subject to emotional decisionmaking that, sooner or later, it will make a decision that is fatal if left to its own devices, hence the creation of the representative republican system.

In my opinion, we need smaller districts/MORE representatives, which would mean concomitantly a MORE representative government, if we're going to stay with the system we have now that is.

I would not favor a pure technocracy, though I think that's where we're heading. A technocratic and corporate elite that controls the massive behemoth of government, whether it's fascist or socialist or whatever, we can all debate that.

Either way you look at it, the size of government is continuing to grow...and the growth that has occurred in the past five years is all attributable to the maintenance of order. Let's see, let me look up the word "reactionary" and "fascist."

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nick on October 3, 2006 - 11:56pm

"The problem with democracy, as Madison put it, is that the public will is so subject to emotional decisionmaking that, sooner or later, it will make a decision that is fatal if left to its own devices, hence the creation of the representative republican system. "

Of course, Madison was just guessing, as no one had any experience with real democracy at that point. The original design had senators appointed by governors, the franchise limited to a small % of the population, etc., and yet an expansion of participation has, I think, been clearly an improvement. Has there ever been any real evidence that there can be too much democracy?

I agree that our recent problems with the "current occupant" have been the result of too little democracy, not too much.

"we need smaller districts/MORE representatives" an intriguing idea, and it kind've makes sense to me. OTOH, I wonder why the Senate now seems to be the moderating influence over the much larger house?

"the growth that has occurred in the past five years is all attributable to the maintenance of order. "

And yet, it seems clear to me that all this growth of "maintenance of order" has been counterproductive. The long-term interests of the US would clearly have been better served had we never tried to control the Middle East, starting 60 years ago. The sooner we give up the illusion of control, the better.

The example of Japan seems illustrative. They've prospered with no extension of military power at all, just a mercantilist approach.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Jack on October 4, 2006 - 12:59am

Good post. I have to quibble with this though:

The example of Japan seems illustrative. They've prospered with no extension of military power at all, just a mercantilist approach.

So now if the U.S. can just get someone else to spend their money to protect them, they can follow the same path.

I think it is inaccurate to suggest the Japan or Europe would have stay unmilitarized if the US wasn't providing their security servcies for them.

If the US withdrew from Asia, Japan's view of self defense would change very quickly, as would that of every other country in the region.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nick on October 4, 2006 - 11:43am

What I was referring to was the projection of power: the use of military power to influence, dominate or replace foreign governments, such as Guatemala, Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Iraq, etc., etc.

AFAIK, the US defense of Japan really has been defensive, leaving the corporations of Japan on their own to negotiate with other countries. That has worked very well for Japan economically: their Self-Defence Force has stayed at roughly 1% of GDP, and yet their corporations have been extremely successful. Contrast that with the pre-WWII Greater Japan Co-Prosperity Sphere, or the US's counterproductive projection of power post-WWII.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

jkissing on October 4, 2006 - 2:21am

The senate is more moderate, with fewer extremists from the left and right, precisely because senate seats cannot be gerrymandered. Senators must appeal to at least some of the middle to be elected in most states.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

alistairC on October 4, 2006 - 4:47am

I imagine that Madison was thinking of the Athenian experience. That remains (if we agree to overlook the slave-owning aspect) probably the apogee of direct democracy, and it is extremely well-documented (I recommend reading the plays of Aristophanes to get the flavour of it. It reads like something absolutely contemporary, full of anecdotes about corrupt politicians and hypocritical sexual morals. And it's funny as hell).

It's with respect to the conduct of war that democracy posed the biggest problems to the Athenians. They did best when they appointed a dictator for the duration; and they did disastrously badly when the democratic institutions conducted the war themselves.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

jkissing on October 4, 2006 - 2:29am

The bicameral sysem does not provide more democracy, only more a) checks and balances, or b) more obstruction. In CA, at least, one senate seat is precisely two house seats; the same voters are represented in both the house and senate.
My main point is to do away with gerrymandering that creates non-competitive districts. Changing from 40 senators and 80 representatives to 53 senators is not increasing teh size of senate seats, but reducing their size. And, it matters not that representatives have smaller districts since the more powerful seneate remains less democratic.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nagorak on October 3, 2006 - 3:04am

I think this is pretty far fetched. It's not unheard of for congress to have close numbers and it hasn't resulted in control changing hands on a daily basis. I actually think the idea is pretty much ridiculous as the turncoat would quickly end up being blacklisted by both parties.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

neon9 on October 3, 2006 - 11:43am

I wouldn't be so sure. Lincoln Chaffee voted against the party line many times yet the national party supported him when election time came around against a much more conservative candidate.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

DavidM on October 3, 2006 - 1:04am

Bush is a knucklehead, but we are kidding ourselves if Kerry or Gore would have made that much of a difference - geology, overpopulation and other woes would have taken the same path, perhaps slowed somewhat by lefter leaning policies. we need to be accountable ourselves and stop relying on (or blaming) a particular political party.

Bush is more (and less) than a knucklehead, but I agree with your basic point.

I think this is the wrong direction, however. This sounds too much like Technocracy. The technofix is not the answer to our problems.

We as a culture need to learn to value cooperation rather than domination, people rather than profits, sustainability rather than growth, cutailment rather than consumption, relocalization rather than globalization, and giving birth to creative ideas rather than creating more babies.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Magnus Redin on October 3, 2006 - 5:12am

We as a culture need to learn to value cooperation rather than domination,

Otherwise we cant afford to build the apropriate technofixes.

people rather than profits,

We need to build technofixes that people both want and need otherwise the products will end up being useless and the profits will be pissed away at marketing.

sustainability rather than growth,

We need technofixes for the long haul.

cutailment rather than consumption,

Good technofixes need to be recycleable so that we can technofix for hundreds of generations and beyond.

relocalization rather than globalization,

We cant build technofixes for all, some people and production will need to move, perhaps a lot of people and production. Fortunately global shipping via electrified rail and nuclear container ships will be fairly cheap to run in the post peak oil world.

and giving birth to creative ideas rather than creating more babies.

Yes, we will need a lot of new technofixes. And babies, the world would be depressing withouth young people.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Jack on October 3, 2006 - 1:17am

Ultimately we need a new party based on science, run by engineers or some such and headed by a 'benevolent dictator'- but our populace is not conditioned to vote for truth - charisma and abstractions 'feel' better.

Nate - This is nuts. Firstly, to believe in a benevolent dictator, you have to think that power doesn't corrupt. Sure there have been a few instances of successful benign dictators, but it is hardly the rule.

I actually live in a country with a hugely successful benevolent king (Thailand). He is loved and respected because of his committment to thai people. However, almost no one thinks this is a model for other countries. Just great luck.

I have to go with Churchill on this one:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Oilfall on October 3, 2006 - 1:52am

Jack, I patiently await an email from you. thanks

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Jack on October 3, 2006 - 2:41am

OK. I did remember that I had promised to email and forgot. I'll try today. - Jack

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nagorak on October 3, 2006 - 3:07am

Are you kidding? If Gore had been elected we wouldn't stupidly be in Iraq. We might still have the same oil reliance problems, but things would be a hell of a lot different. If democracy doesn't work it's because people in general are stupid, it's not a size issue. But let's be honest: dictatorship and monarchy don't work either. Both eventually produce idiots, even ones who are much stupider than Bush (hard as that may be to believe), and often actually result in a succession of idiots until everything is in flames. Saying democracy doesn't work is silly. I agree it doesn't work well, but the alternatives over the long run are even less appealing.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

elwoodelmore on October 3, 2006 - 6:48pm

is the gop a magnet for butafuco's ? a few months ago we had jeff gannon male prostiture oops i mean male escort naw i meant prostitute pitching softballs in white house press conferences and now this mark foley what's next

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

GLT149 on October 2, 2006 - 9:12pm

I likewise hate this war. I cannot think of one good thing it has brought the US. Biden's approach is good as it at least is an attempt to come up with a palatable solution. I do not believe, however, that the split into autonomous regions that includes an autonomous Kurdish region will go over well with Turkey or Iran. They will not permit this unless offered some serious concessions. It is interesting that, frm what I read, the US just announced its support fot Turkey to become part of the EU. That is perhaps the kind of concession Turkey might accept (membership in the EU)as a trade off to not opposing a Kurdish autonomous region.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Hurin on October 3, 2006 - 3:08am

I don't suppose the fact that a large majority of the people in the EU really don't want to let Turkey in means anything?

How would people in the US feel in the EU demanded that Mexico be made the 52 state.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

tstreet on October 3, 2006 - 10:52am

Underlying these discussions about what to do from here is the implicit assumption that the U.S. is holding Iraq together and that without our presence it will devolve into chaos. Project yourself living in Iraq with the incessant violence, death, and total insecurity. Any moment you can expect to be killed by, say, a power drill. Imagine not being able to leave your house at any moment except under extreme danger and duress. Imagine electricity and water just a few hours of day. Apparently things are much worse than even the press has reported.

I don't know but it doesn't seem like the U.S. is adding anything positive to the equation. Come up with a solution, any solution, but get the hell out within less than a year. If the Dems take over, pass a resolution calling for a planned withdrawal. In the mean time, impeach both the Pres and Vice Pres. I'm sure it won't be difficult coming up with a bill of particulars since it has already been written.

President Bush has stolen our Republic, not to mention democracy. He has gotten himself exempted from his previous crimes and misdemeanors. But he can't get exempted from impeachment.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Syntec on October 3, 2006 - 6:09pm

The US is not leaving

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Alfred on October 3, 2006 - 12:16pm

The USA has been promoting Turkish membership of the EU for many years - this is not something recent!

Frankly, if is a waste of time. Just like there is a huge cultural difference between Eastern (i.e. Kurdish) and Western Turkey, there is a huge gulf between Western Europe and Western Turkey. This is not just about religion it is all-encompassing.

The British government is one of the few that is genuinely in favour of Turkish accession to the EU - just another of these poodle Blair attitudes.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

alistairC on October 3, 2006 - 7:32pm

<i>there is a huge gulf between Western Europe and Western Turkey.</i>

Rubbish. The cultural differences are not that great. And if you don't want people of Oriental culture in the EU, what on earth are the Greeks doing in here?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

maram on October 4, 2006 - 4:01am

Very true. And while we are at it, seems funny why the Europeans should follow a Middle Eastern religion. Last time I checked, Iesu and his disciples were not of (West)European stock ... then again, being from Asia, who am I to comment on the three "exclusivist" Semitic religions?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

shepseskaf on October 2, 2006 - 9:23pm

The settlement Biden has in mind is the division of Iraq into highly autonomous regions, dominated, respectively, by Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Biden's ideas aren't new. The so-called "Three-state solution" was proposed back in Nov. 2003 by Leslie Gelb in a New York Times op-ed piece. I think its a non-starter, though the international press comes down on both sides of the aisle.

In Hong Kong's Asia Times (May 12, 2004) an op-ed piece by Sadi Baig mocked the proposed solution: "Some conservative leaders are already talking about a three-state solution. The U.S. and subsequently the United Nations plan is designed to engineer a divide by having a president and two vice presidents, each representing the three divisions of Kurd, Shi'ite and Sunni. A U.S. equivalent of it will be to have a white president with two vice presidents, one African-American, and the other a Latino. The U.N.-sponsored solution will not be very different than the weakly federated states of the Balkans that are held together by U.N. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces."

My solution: pull the troops out within a three-month period, then let the Iraqis decide what kind of government they want for themselves. After that, pay reparations for the indescribable amount of damage that's been done to the country's infrastructure.

Of course we know this will never happen volutarily because withdrawal was never an option, even from the very beginning. You know, with those "permanent bases" and all. However, the same sort of bases were built in Vietnam as well.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

JustZisGuy on October 3, 2006 - 1:00am

"My solution: pull the troops out within a three-month period, then let the Iraqis decide what kind of government they want for themselves. After that, pay reparations for the indescribable amount of damage that's been done to the country's infrastructure."

That's a good start, and well beyond what I expect we'll ever see, but it still is rather insulting to Iraqis. How much is human life worth in the United States? More than zero. Typically the actuarial value is on the order of a million dollars. So, let's say a million times a hundred thousand lives - that's only another hundred billion dollars. Well within the US government's ability to print money. After all, more than that has already been spent on destroying the country.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

airdale on October 3, 2006 - 8:42am

After that, pay reparations for the indescribable amount of "damage that's been done to the country's infrastructure."

Why does this idea of paying keep surfacing? We rid them of an evil dictator and did rebuild quite a bit so why shouldn't they pay us instead?

We wage war on an enemy and are supposed to then repair the effects of that war? When did this ever start? To me it always seemed that looting was the outcome. Fine, we don't loot, maybe warlords and others did, like perhaps Mohammad, but we don't, at least to any measurable degree--a few war surveniors perhaps.

So why pay? Seems the malcontents are doing a lot of damage as well.

I don't see the US citizens paying for this. If its all just about oil? Then take it, seize the country as well and quit lying about it. Old fashioned occupation which involved colonization which I might add that now 3rd world countries who once were not in such bad shape are now devolving into chaos, starvation and being overrun by local despots and warlords.

I don't read a lot of history anymore and I could be incorrect with the 3rd world countries but paying for damage? Also I don't think our military should be 'care givers'. Their job is to protect and defend , not hand out condoms or whatever passes these days.

But to sum it all up. They are no longer being beheaded, beaten and the women do have some freedoms they never had before. If they want to go back to that , rule by the Quran, then let it be so but lets not give them the money to do so. We are on a fast downhill slope. We need to quit trying to be the worlds shining knights and take care of biz at home.

Airdale-- Can I get an Amen on that?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Bryant on October 3, 2006 - 9:38am

"and men hang their laundry out to dry under the twin moons of the planet Zembar"

Dave Barry

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

airdale on October 3, 2006 - 10:26pm

In your world perhaps they do.

I don't hang mine out. I let my slave girls do that.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

GliderGuider on October 3, 2006 - 9:47am

They are no longer being beheaded, beaten and the women do have some freedoms they never had before.

You are kidding, right? A hundred people a day are being executed by death squads of one sort or another, in the most grotesque ways imaginable. Attacks on women in particular have accelerated recently, especially around Mosul.

Iraq was never a threat to the USA, and the invasion was illegal under interational war (the bad boys condemned at Nuremberg were charged with "waging a war of aggression", which sounds uncomfortably close to the Iraqi circumstances). The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

It seems to me that in this situation paying reparations is the least the USA should do.

No amen from this corner.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

GliderGuider on October 3, 2006 - 9:52am

Abover sould read, of cource, "illegal under international law".

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

GliderGuider on October 3, 2006 - 9:53am

Sigh.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Leanan on October 3, 2006 - 10:14am

I don't read a lot of history anymore

That is painfully obvious.

Women have far fewer freedoms now in Iraq than they did before. Women in Saddam's Iraq were free to go out on their own, pursue just about any career, wear western fashions, etc.

No more. Women are afraid to go out without an escort. They must cover their heads and arms. They are banned from working the jobs they used to.

Riverbend has a heartbreaking entry on her blog, about what happened when she tried to go back to her office and take up her old job as a computer programmer after the war.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

tstreet on October 3, 2006 - 10:57am

Yes, people need to read Riverbend to get an understanding how truly fucked Iraqi women are in Iraq. Not to mention Afghanistan. Anyone who believes Iraqi women have been liberated have drunk the Bushian Kool Aid.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Leanan on October 3, 2006 - 11:01am

Hair salons are being bombed. Because if you're wearing a hijab, like a decent woman, you don't need to get your hair done.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

JustZisGuy on October 3, 2006 - 10:20am

"We need to quit trying to be the worlds shining knights and take care of biz at home."

If that's what you're trying to do then you're doing a really really really really really bad job of it. Hint #1: killing people does not make you their friend. Hint #2: destroying a country's infrastructure so that the inhabitants have worse access to the basics (water, shelter, electrical power) does not make you their friend. Hint #3: unilaterally ignoring international law does not make people predisposed to trust you. I could go on, but there's little point as your world view is obviously not fact-based.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Syntec on October 3, 2006 - 6:12pm

Vietnam didn't have oil. The US is not and has no intention of leaving. Ever.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

fleam on October 3, 2006 - 6:40pm

Vietnam had and has, RUBBER TREES !!!!

I thought natural rubber was a quaint, boutique, product. Not so! Military tires are all natural rubber, and civilian tires are partially natural rubber. Rubber was a big cause in WWII and everyone was familiar with the saying "The Army moves on a sheet of rubber". Read up on this stuff, it's fascinating! Sure, the Germans came up with "Buna", artificial rubber, but the natural stuff is essential and "buna" can only be used to stretch (lol) the supply of natural rubber.

Rubber just doesn't get any respect! This shit is important! And with global warming, will we have rubber problems? (Or be too busy engaging in the big Dieoff party we're all invited to).

The Vietnam War suddenly makes sense one you read up on rubber.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

dinopello on October 2, 2006 - 9:32pm

Biden has made a lot of sense on the middle east situation for a while. I would consider him for president. This energy speech shows he understands the problems surrounding oil too and has thought about them, but his 'solutions' I find not too satisfying.

http://uniteourstates.com/about/speeches?id=0010

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

DavidM on October 3, 2006 - 12:14pm

This article explains one reason why dividing Iraq into 3 autonomous regions could be very dangerous.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2055380.cms

Oil transformed the region. Saudi Arabia discovered the biggest oilfields in the world. But 70% of its oil lay in the Shia-majority region on the Gulf shore. This made the Saudi royal family paranoid about the possibility that these Shias, abetted by Iran (and now Iraq), would secede and take the oilfields with them.
...Events in Lebanon have further worried the Saudis. Hezbollah, the Shia party of Lebanon, has gained de facto control of the southern part of the country. It has been armed by Iran and is too powerful for the Lebanese government to disarm.
...Hezbollah has become a hero to Muslims throughout the Middle East, even Sunnis. This makes Sunni rulers uneasy. The have long relied on Sunni-Shia antagonism to keep Iranian machinations at bay. But if Iran and Hezbollah attain heroic status among all Muslims in the Gulf, Sunni rulers fear loss of authority, and maybe of their oilfields too.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.