No Shit, Sherlock Part Two
Another reason my blogging has tapered off is that so much of what’s going on in the world can be reduced to one post, over and over and over again: “No Shit, Sherlock”:
As Barack Obama appeared on television Tuesday to declare the end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq, were viewers happiest in Baghdad, Washington, D.C., or Tehran?
The obvious answer would seem to be Washington or Baghdad. In fact, some analysts believe the real winner of the war in Iraq is neither the Iraqis, nor Americans, but the Iranians…The spring’s election and its aftermath, Bazzi said, underscored how effective Iranian influence has been, especially with maneuvering between Iraq’s Shiite factions. “I’d argue that Iran started filling the political void that the U.S. has left in Iraq years ago, and now it becomes even easier with fewer U.S. troops,” he said, noting that the 50,000 U.S. troops that will remain on the ground concern the Iranians. “On a political level, Iranians have played politics in Iraq much more effectively than the U.S. Part of that is that all the Iraqi factions recognized that Iran is not going anywhere, but the U.S. was going to leave, but the Iraqis are stuck with their neighbors.” The Iranians, he said, are “getting a little concerned about the political stalemate in Iraq.”
Iranians, Bazzi said, are “keen on playing this role of the political broker.” To that end, they called almost the entire Iraqi leadership to Tehran right after elections. “The Iranians view their strategic interest in Iraq on several levels. Immediate, of maintaining a friendly government in Baghdad, because they don’t want to go back to the days of Saddam where there was an extremely adversarial threat next door. The Iranians will want a friendly, Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and they see that as the new reality.”
A weak Iraq is also in Iran’s interest, Bazzi explained. “If Iraq is not as dominate as it once was, if it is friendly and compliant, then it enables Iran to maintain regional dominance in the Persian Gulf.” Finally, he said, Iraq has become a “bargaining chip and a proxy in their conflict with the United States.”
You wanna know how many times people like me pointed this out this likely outcome? More fucking times than I can count. And you know, I’m not some kind of foreign policy genius. I’m not a diplomat or a career employee of the state department or an ambassador. I wasn’t educated at some ivy league school. I’m a common, run-of-the-mill idjit.
And it’s like this for everything: the economy’s not picking up steam? Well maybe the stimulus shouldn’t have been weighted so much in favor of tax cuts. People are pissed about the shitty health insurance reforms we got instead of the health care reforms we were promised? Ya don’t say: maybe you should have had that public option that 66% of the country favored. The Democrats are perceived as weak? Well gee, maybe it has something to do with letting the Republicans steamroll you without fighting back.
You watch these institutions makes predictably bad decisions over and over again, and you don’t care to write about it anymore. The fact that people like Tom Friedman and William Kristol still have jobs says all I need to about the state of our discourse and our national conversation.
In short, it’s one driven by dishonest hacks who may be smart but don’t seem to know anything about anything, abetted by a media that’s more interested in spinning stories and ginning up opinion debates than in reporting actual facts.
And that’s why it’s getting difficult to keep up a steady stream of bloggery: every post boils down to “duh gee, no shit, sherlock.”
September 3rd, 2010 at 9:56 am
If you were a run-of-the-mill idjit, you wouldn’t notice all the obvious details. You wouldn’t be so frustrated by the face slaps delivered by our representatives and the crowds of sheeple folowing them. You wouldn’t be pulling your hair out when you hear the tea-baggers repeat “Obama’s a Communist-Socialist-Fascist Muslim Kenyan.”
In spite of all of this dumbery, there are still sane people here. Don’t stop blogging, even if it’s just easy reading. You share important parts of everyday life that we all experience, and some of us aren’t as articulate as you. We appreciate your voice.
K