The head of the snake now lives in Iran, and his name is Mahmoud. Cut off the head of the snake(metaphorically speaking, of course) by deposing Mahmoud, and the threat to a developing Iraq is eliminated. Iran and Iraq will be on equal footing, in the sense that they will both be in the process of evolving into modern countries, however clumsily, and Syria will be dancing all alone with no one at their back, and Israel at their front door. Should clear things up a bit. As far as the oil business is concerned, it will become to everyone’s advantage to keep it flowing, since it is the region’s only real source of income. Western economics suddenly becomes more appealing, because it is the way to prosperity, not just for the ruler, but for the emerging popular rule. It’s a thought.

Carrick: Good post. It’s nice to read something on here with substance for a change.

Rober108:
“The head of the snake now lives in Iran, and his name is Mahmoud. Cut off the head of the snake(metaphorically speaking, of course) by deposing Mahmoud, and the threat to a developing Iraq is eliminated”
Bold words. Care to explain how this will be done when we’re right next door tied to the whipping post, surrounded by millions of Shiites?

No such cease fire agreement exists – or could exist unless someone brings al Qaeda to the bargaining table – in Iraq

ARE you saying Hezbollah is more rational than I thought it to be? ..how ’bout their Israel must be destroyed posture? …their support from Elmadmendijad, aka the Zionist and Western world must be destroyed?

Anon, Hezbollah isn’t at the bargaining table in this instance. This agreement is between Israel and Lebanon as brokered by the UN.

You and I both now Lebanon would not had signed to this ‘peace’ deal if it didn’t have the blessing of Hezbullah. Hezbullah constitutes/is ~1/3 of the Lebanese government after all!

Hezbullah has a lot of pull within the Lebanese army, which considers it a legitamete and essential resistance force and protectorate of Lebanon’s sofereignty. A crucial part of the defence of the motherland.

EXCERPTS from this Time magazine article higlighting the ‘duality’ of Iraq’s political environment:

Politicians, especially Shi’ite leaders with ties to Iran, have issued predictable broadsides against Israel; some, like the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have blamed the U.S. too. He orchestrated a large pro-Hizballah demonstration in his Sadr City stronghold last week–a protest against the bombing in Lebanon but also a piece of political theater designed to showcase the strength of his support (and a response to a muscle-flexing rally organized earlier by a rival Shi’ite leader).

Why I have been a skeptic of Al-maliki from the start:

Relieved, the Bush Administration announced that the participation of all groups, especially the recalcitrant Sunnis, would allow al-Maliki’s government to succeed where the U.S. military had failed, in bringing to heel both the Sunni insurgency and the rising might of the Shi’ite militias. Never mind that the Prime Minister was himself a Shi’ite partisan until his nomination–whereupon he sought to reinvent himself as a nonsectarian leader–and that his party had stronger ties to Tehran than to Washington. An ornery figure, al-Maliki is a backroom politician plainly ill at ease in public; few Iraqis had even heard of him, and few are convinced that his rancorous all-party government can last the year, much less its full four-year term.
… Shi’ite and Sunni politicians may now sit together, but their mutual hostility is undiminished, undermining the government–and al-Maliki can only look on helplessly. A political lightweight and compromise candidate, the Prime Minister doesn’t have the clout to bash heads, much less deliver on his promises to pursue insurgents with “no mercy” and crush the militias “with an iron fist.” ..

police controled by the Badr Organization and other Shiite militias:

For Sunnis in Baghdad, the sight of policemen is cause for concern rather than reassurance. Traffic checkpoints are especially perilous. Recently three TIME staff members–brothers, all Sunni–were detained at a police checkpoint for five hours. They began to worry when a Shi’ite friend who had been riding with them was allowed to leave. When the men showed their media badges, issued by the U.S. military, the cops accused them of being American spies. “We’ll send you to the Interior Ministry,” a cop said, obviously enjoying their discomfort as he bundled them into the back of a pickup truck. “You may be released or jailed, or maybe somebody will use an electric drill on you.” In the end, the TIME men were able to talk their way out of captivity after the owner of a shop near the checkpoint vouched for them. “The police realized that if we disappeared, the shopkeeper might be able to identify them as the ones who captured us,”

bad times makes for weird bed fellows:

Almost every Sunni family I meet seems to have a horror story that starts with a policeman at a checkpoint asking for identification. It’s profiling, Iraqi style. The harassment ranges from getting insulting, sniggering comments (“Nice car. Where did you steal it?”) to being handcuffed, blindfolded and hauled off to prison or, worse, a torture chamber. The most vulnerable are those who have obviously Sunni names, such as Omar. I have interviewed more than a dozen Omars, including two of Mahmud’s nephews, who have endured varying degrees of persecution from police or militias. As a precaution, many Sunnis are buying fake ID cards with safe Shi’ite names.
Feeling the heat from the militias and security forces, Baghdad’s Sunnis know their best hope for protection lies in the Americans, the very occupying forces they have despised for toppling them from power

The US smacked down the middle of this conundrum:

U.S. and Iraqi forces last month stormed some buildings in the Mahdi Army’s stronghold of Sadr City, killing several fighters and arresting a top commander. But the anticipated knockout punch was never delivered. Al-Maliki, says a senior Iraqi government official, “doesn’t want a war against Muqtada al-Sadr because it would open him up to charges of killing his fellow Shi’ites–like what Allawi faced.” After Allawi gave the green light for U.S. forces to attack the Mahdi Army in 2004, he became a political pariah to Shi’ites. And al-Maliki is loath to antagonize al-Sadr after working hard to win his endorsement of the national-unity government.
For Sunnis, the failure to smash the Mahdi Army is not so much an indictment of al-Maliki as proof of a U.S. double standard. Salam al-Zaubai, a Sunni and one of al-Maliki’s two Deputy Prime Ministers, complains that U.S. forces treat the militias with kid gloves. “When they attacked the Sunni resistance, they flattened entire cities, like Fallujah,” he says. “But when it comes to Sadr City, their approach is different. Why?” For their part, residents of Sadr City ask why the U.S. is attacking the militias–seen as Robin Hood figures–when they should be looking for the Sunni terrorists who bombed the market.

The Lebanese government defends Hezbollah. Well, Iraqi political parties defend their respective militia group:

Al-Maliki is getting very little help from other Iraqi leaders. The national-unity government is anything but unified. Shi’ite and Sunni ministers routinely contradict one another. It’s hard to get consensus even among his fellow Shi’ites. His offer of amnesty for Sunni insurgents was compromised when a powerful Shi’ite leader publicly disagreed about who should be pardoned. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said insurgents who had killed U.S. service personnel should be pardoned, directly contradicting al-Maliki’s promise that those with American blood on their hands would not qualify for amnesty. Al-Maliki’s plan was also criticized by al-Sadr. It’s probably no coincidence that al-Hakim and al-Sadr control the two largest armed Shi’ite militias, the Badr Organization and Mahdi Army, respectively.

While al-Maliki at least tries to present himself as a unifying figure, railing against Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militias, many of his partners in the government are blatantly sectarian. Political leaders express outrage over the atrocities committed against their own sect but won’t acknowledge that the other side, too, is bleeding. They often dismiss those wounds as self-inflicted. After the bombing of the Samarra shrine, many Sunni leaders told me the blast was the work of Shi’ite agents provocateurs working in concert with Iranian intelligence operatives. Likewise, Mahdi Army commanders routinely accuse Sunni insurgents of committing atrocities against their own kind and then blaming the Shi’ites.

A typical encounter was my interview with Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the seniormost Sunni in the Iraqi government. We met in his chintz-laden Green Zone office on the day of the al-Jihad murders. Many of the victims had been dragged out of their homes and shot dead in the street. As usual, the finger of blame pointed to the Mahdi Army. After al-Hashimi had fulminated about the slaughter of his fellow Sunnis, I asked whether the murdering militiamen might have been seeking revenge for the previous week’s bombing of the market in Sadr City. Al-Hashimi’s response was to claim that militiamen had planted the bomb, deliberately killing their fellow Shi’ites in order to justify revenge killings of Sunnis. “They were able to attack Sunni mosques within an hour of the market bomb,” he said. “This has to have been premeditated.”

Such bizarre logic quickly becomes received wisdom in a society in which even the highest officials in the land propagate outlandish conspiracy theories. The speaker of Iraq’s parliament, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, announced at a press conference in Bahrain that “an entire Israeli brigade has entered Iraq … trying to infiltrate various parties.” That phantom force, he continued, is “camped at Babylon, whose destruction signifies the survival of the state of Israel in their holy books.”

As Hezbullah welcomes a conflic against Israel, many Iraqi poleticians actually welcome secterian violence among Shiites and Sunnis:

Some months ago, Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlak and I chatted about the kind of leadership it would take to pull Iraq back from the brink. We agreed that there were no giants on the political landscape, and he shook his head dolefully. “Not only that,” he said, sighing, “but the political system we have created makes it impossible for such a figure to emerge.” Politicians, he said, have discovered that the easiest way to win votes is to appeal to sectarian chauvinism; they have little incentive to take the higher, more difficult road.

Rob:
What do the Democrats have to do with this ceasefire in Lebanon?
Seems like this was engineered by our current administration.

what kind of beer do you like and what’s your address?

Carrick: Good post. It’s nice to read something on here with substance for a change.

Yeah, Kermit, and you’ve added tons to the level of discourse around here.

I probably should have been more clear in my comment. Back when the Iraqi government was negotiating with insurgents and offered to grant them amnesty in return for laying down their arms i pointed out that, given the many factions that are fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq, no one group could promise a cease fire as no one group had control over all the fighters.

My point above is that the cease fire in the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict isn’t comparable to the Democrat calls for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. And, of course, I’m right.

Glad you agree.