Saturday, in London, there will be a protest about the current war in the Middle East by leaving childrens' shoes outside Tony Blair's place. I note that
Blair is staying around instead of vacationing in order to be involved in ceasefire negotiations.
This war started asymmetrically, after the capture of two soldiers leading to a breathtakingly fast and disproportionate response. The underlying long term pressures on the small nation of Israel surrounded by Arab states become part of a rationale for escalated actions of the Israeli warplanes.
I don’t want to take sides; I have visited (and worked in) both areas and have friends in both areas. This makes it all seem close. But I do want to comment that we now seem to have relatively indiscriminate missiling and bombing of civilian populations in both territories.
The rest of the world is aghast but only responding quite slowly whilst the attrition clicks onward; Rice has made visits and the Bush machine is making “Hezbollah equals Iran” type noises in the background.
I am concerned that we are actually watching the ‘Iran proxy’ war as a precursor to a switch to another conflict. If America’s Defense Intelligence Agency really have an Office of Special Plans and a covert “lets do Iran/Syria” blueprint, then this is the sequencing for when it would be played as part of a long term regime change in Iran and a border defence for Israel.
It’s a reasonable assumption that information has leaked between the various players in each of the main countries involved. The Middle East works a lot on connections and the trade of information would probably be fair game. It’s also a reasonable bet that dissident support is receiving offshore funding in some of the targeted territories.
And for Iran, lets look. Condoleeza is on recent record saying "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”
Bush's ambassador to the United Nations is saying the U.N. “must be made aware that if it (Iran) continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences." Both pre conflict type statements.
So Blair’s vacation change could be significant; stop it; delay it or let the next escalated war play occur. We will know soon enough.
