I should be in bed...

... as it's 11:43 pm on a Wednesday evening, but thoughts of the future of the world are keeping me awake. Not awake as in "Oh My God We're Doomed" awake, more like "I can't believe the world is blind to the coming massive Middle East conflict" type of sleeplesness. The things that concern me are the same things that are concerning pretty much everyone else these days - Iran, Iraq, Isreal, and the rule of unintended consequences.

Iran, the concern. I didn't watch the Mike Wallace interview with Amahgonajihad the other night, so maybe I heard wrong. But did Mr. Wallace really say that Amahgonajihad seems like a nice guy??? This, after all the proclaimations by the Iranian leader about his goal to nuke Isreal off the map??? Next thing you know the guy is gonna apear on next months cover of "Homes and Gardens"? Did Wallace not get the memo?

Iraq.

My little brother is going to smile when he reads this. I now (ouch) painfully agree (ouch) that our action in Iraq (ouch) has become a failure (ouch). Ahhhh. That feels a little better. I still believe that the need to remove Saddam was pressing, even without the WMD's. But as should be obvious to all / most by now, this policy was doomed to fail without the help and cooperation from the world community. The critics were right. We didn't have enough boot on the ground from the get go, And of coarse without a very large multinational force to ensure stability, the violence, now mostly in the Sunni triangle, is sure to spread. Why won't it. Who is there to stop it. I was sooo hoping that the killing of Al Zawkari would settle things down, but the seeds of sectarian voilence that he helped plant, along with the Sad'r brigades, was already in full bloom well before we off'd him. This dreadful thing is going to spread now that we disrupted the power equalibrium between Iraq and Iran, as the latter has filled in the gap nicely, thank you very much.

Isreal. Unless the world gets off its collective butts and puts its foot down against terrorists groups, Isreal is doomed. On paper, the latest skirmish btween Isreal and Hezbolla is a draw. In real life, Hezbolla won. The modern terror war is as much a propaganda war as it is military. Hezbolla is aparently doing great PR work by quickly repairing damaged hospitals and schools, and rebuilding the damaged infrastructure. Of coarse Hezbolla also benefits directly the former because it aids in healing the wounded fighters so they can fight another day, and provides future soldiers through the teaching of the evils of jews and the west thus ensuring a steady supply of recruits for the next go around in the holy war. and the latter makes weapons aquisitions more efficient. Meanwhile, Isreals reputation as being inpenetrable is gone. They couldn't get anywhere near the goal of destroying Hezbolla's capabilities. Terrorists groups never have to win in a classical sense. For them, a non-loss is a win - "See, You cannot destroy us"! And the world can't, won't take any action that prevents Hezbolla from getting even stronger, since the latest brilliant cease fire provides no realistic means of stopping Iran and Syria from rearming Hezbolla and upgrading their weaponry. Nope. The world will not take decisive measures against terrorism until Tel Aviv is vaporized by a nuclear blast.

I will give credit to Bush for at least recognizing and having resolve to take strong actions to try and change the tribal nature of the Middle East, a strong catalist in the making of radical groups. Too bad our actions in Iraq has made things worse in the Middle East.

I will write more in a couple of days, but now that this is off my chest, I'm tired and am going to bed. And I know there are spelling errors galore. It's very late and I don't feel like running a spell check. So there!