Here’s the question of the week: is Iraq in a state of civil war? Here’s my answer:

I remember there was some discussion a year or two back about how Bush’s bold action in Iraq had cracked the ice in the Middle East and there was going to be a cascade of regime changes. Well, maybe something like that is happening, but not the way the Bushies who coined this theory were thinking. Instead, in the next ten years or so we are going to see some intra-Muslim conflict, of which the “civil war” in Iraq is the beginning, from which will arise some kind of pan-Islamic government with a lot of oil and nuclear weapons.The conflict between the Sunni and the Shia is not that deep. It’s more like the Catholics and the Protestants. When it comes to the Crusaders, they’re on the same side - As Osama well understands.  We will just have to deal with it, since there is nothing we can do about it. Let us hope that humanity then finds a way not to end it all rather than to obliterate itself in some final Tarantino-like Mexican standoff, which it just might do, with something like Bush at the helm. These emergent great powers - the U.S., Europe, India, China, the Muslims, Japan, maybe South America, can they find a way to cooperate on the basis of mutual equality and respect? Can they reform the United Nations to make it effective? Stay tuned.

In the meantime the killing goes on, the suffering goes on, the treasury is drained. Yet the idiocy prevails, rules the day with relentless bull-headedness, blinded by pride we will continue the course until when?

Sad to say but this Iraqi fiasco makes me utterly embarrassed to be an American citizen.  I’m ashamed and fear the generations of justifiable hatred we’ve so recklessly created across the globe.  Impeach Bush now!.

Iraq. Its needless suffering is the shame of a lifetime.

Well, I would say Osama has played the Bush Administration like a violin. His strategy to unite the Muslim people and kick out the Crusaders is succeeding beyond his own wildest expectations.

What we should do is implement the following policies: (1) we formally end military alliances with all countries in the Middle East, including Israel. (2) We remove all military bases from the area (3) We cease to sell arms to any Middle Eastern country, and (4) we cease to send warships to any Middle Eastern port. In short, we cease to behave like an empire in that part of the world.

Do you think that would make Osama happy? It would certainly make me happy. What will happen there? Who can say for sure? Maybe Osame will succeed in restoring something like a Caliphate, some sort of pan-Islamic federation. In any case, whatever political system emerges will be happy to sell us oil, so why should we worry? Those obscene oil profits that Exxon-Mobil, etc. are getting might go to Osama instead. Do you have a problem with that? I don’t.

But what, oh what will happen to Israel? Somehow it seems to me that it’s better if it’s their problem, not ours. As far as I’m concerned they are welcome to emigrate to Texas, if they want. Israel was a terrible idea to begin with, and some day this fact is going to have to be admitted.

Should never have gone in the first place.

However, while the effects of the Iraqi invasion have had disastrous consequences for the United States, the State of Israel couldn’t be happier.

According to Israeli television and radio journalist Michael Karpin:"From Israel’s point of view, the war that the United States declared on international terrorism, the end of the Saddam dictatorship and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. coalition, had caused some favorable changes. They wiped away the eastern front that had threatened Israel for years, expedited the waning of the Palestinian armed uprising, and accelerated the pace of the peace process.” (page 341 The Bomb in the Basement:How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World, Simon & Schuster, 2006)

This state of affairs will last indefinately until the grip of the Isreal lobby--a coalition of American Zionists, fundamentalist Christians, defense/security contractors and politicians of both parties--is loosened from U.S. Middle Eastern policy. Peace in the Middle East can never be achived if Israel is accorded the special privileges, through tacit agreement by the United States, of non-compliance with the UN International Atomic Energy Commission and the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty.