“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” – Douglas Adams
Last Sunday I put up the Doonesbury cartoon for that day. The cartoon honored those who had fallen in the past year. Unfortunately, due to the excessive number of fallen troops, the cartoon was to be continued today. I wanted to put up that cartoon as well.
Today’s Doonesbury cartoon continues to honor the dead in Iraq and adds the dead in Afghanistan. Due to time constraints, Trudeau’s list was from April 26, 2006 to April 18, 2007. His cartoon recommends going to icasualties.org for updates.
Nope, that’s not a headline meant simply to attract or repel readers. It actually happened.
The U.S.’s government has been spending $63 million a year to run the al Hurra television network in the Middle East. The station is the U.S.’s attempt at “public diplomacy broadcasting.”
There’s one not so slight problem with the network, though. None of the executives or officials who run al Hurra actually speak Arabic.
Critics of al Hurra have claimed that al Hurra has been caught broadcasting terrorist messages. One of those messages included an “hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence” by a senior Hezbollah figure.
Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted that neither he nor any other member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors spoke Arabic. Blaya also told a congressional panal that al Hurra had no assignment desk and decisions about the network’s content were decided by “hastily-hired Arabic-speaking journalists with insufficient understanding of Western journalistic practices or the network’s pro-Western mission.”
Because no one thought that it would be a good idea to have a United States provided Arabic speaker, we the taxpayers have helped to fund terrorist’s messages on television in the Middle East. Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? 
Doonesbury had a great Memorial Day cartoon yesterday. I thought I’d share it with you all in the remote chance you didn’t see it.
Sadly, there are so many names in a little over a year that this will have to be continued next week.
A year ago this Memorial Day I posted a very lengthy but simple post to honor those who had fallen in Iraq or Afghanistan. All I did was post the year headings and then all the names of those who had died. It took three days to compile the list and was over 2,500 names for both wars combined.
Since that Memorial Day a year ago, 980 troops have died in Iraq alone. Bush has promised that this summer will be “bloody.” He’s not the only one promising a “bloody” summer.
Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of a group that spent weeks in Iraq assessing the situation for Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, agreed that more American deaths were likely.
“The biggest change in their (insurgent and militia) tactics is that they’ve changed to exploit the vulnerabilities we’ve opened ourselves up to. They see a new, small American base in their neighborhood, three blocks away, and they’re going to car bomb it,” said Biddle.
“We’re going to see a spike in the short term,” said Biddle. “But the likelihood is that in six months we’ll see a drop in casualties as these areas become more secure. The problem is, what about the rest of the country?”
I can’t even think of anything else to write at this time.
This is a report from a British think-tank. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve begun looking for my news on Iraq from sources outside the United States. I just feel that I’m more likely to get a more complete picture of what is happening from outside sources than I could ever hope for from U.S. sources. Yes, even from our supposedly “liberal” media.
This is a report published by Reuters on Thursday. I’m just going to post the article here. Right now I’m way too tired to try to summarize anything I read. (I can’t wait until school is out on Tuesday.)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think-tank said on Thursday.
Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but “several civil wars” between rival communities, and accused Iraq’s main neighbors — Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — of having reasons “for seeing the instability there continue”.
“It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation,” it said in a report.
“The Iraqi government is not able to exert authority evenly or effectively over the country. Across huge swathes of territory, it is largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic and political life.”
The report also said that a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad launched in February has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have just shifted their activities outside the capital.
While cautioning that Iraq might not ultimately exist as a united entity, the 12-page report said a draft law to distribute Iraq’s oil wealth equitably among Sunni Arabs, Shi’ites and ethnic Kurds was “the key to ensuring Iraq’s survival”.
“It will be oil revenue that keeps the state together rather than any attempt to build a coherent national project in the short term,” the influential think-tank said.
The oil law, among benchmarks Washington has set Baghdad as critical steps to end sectarian violence, has yet to be approved by parliament. Ethnic Kurds, whose autonomous Kurdistan region holds large unproven reserves, oppose the draft’s wording.
Rather that one civil war pitting majority Shi’ites against Sunnis nationwide, the paper said Iraq’s “cross-cutting conflicts” were driven by power struggles between sectarian, ethnic and tribal groups with differing regional, political and ideological goals as they compete for the country’s resources.
The author of the report, Middle East expert Gareth Stansfield, said instability in Iraq was “not necessarily contrary to the interests” of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
“(Iraq) is now a theatre in which Iran can ‘fight’ the U.S. without doing so openly,” Stansfield said, adding that Iran was the “most capable foreign power” in Iraq in terms of influencing future events, more so than the United States.
The rise to power of Iraq’s long-oppressed Shi’ite majority has caused concern in Sunni Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, which deeply distrusts non-Arab, Shi’ite Iran’s influence in Iraq, Stansfield wrote.
Should a U.S. withdrawal herald the beginning of a full-scale Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in Iraq, Saudi Arabia “might not stand by”, the paper said, “with the possibility of Iran and Saudi Arabia fighting each other through proxies in Iraq”.
I will make one comment. I think this goes a long way toward proving that Jimmy Carter is right. George W. Bush is the worst president ever when it comes to foreign policy.
