Email from a pal of mine:
See the front-page story in The Times today about how Washington is “furious” that the Kurds are making oil deals with Turkey without going through the central government of Iraq? How dare they.
I suspect there are wheels within wheels on this one. One of the big wheels is Israel, which really would like to dismember all the Arab states, including Iraq. I think that was really the point of the recent war, more than anything else.
Now that it’s backfired and Iraq is in the Iranian sphere of influence, the Kurds, once again, are the most useful of idiots.
US imperial ‘realists’ value stability and would like to find a rapprochement with Iran. The Zionists, however, want instability and war with Iran. And there’s a kind of uneasy entente on this topic between Israel and the Sunni Islamist states (including Turkey) — the latter have gone all jihadi on Iran’s ass, for their own reasons.
The recent flap over Syria, ending as it did, was certainly a defeat for the Zionists and may have strengthened the realists’ hand, for a time, anyway. They’ve been on the defensive for quite a while, but the Israel Firsters may have overreached. Bound to happen sooner or later, I guess. Ὕβρις, ἁμαρτία, νέμεσις. If so, not a minute too soon, and serve ’em right.
“US imperial ‘realists’ value stability and would like to find a rapprochement with Iran.”
I don’t believe there is such a thing, at least in any positions with any real power. The Zionists get away with as much as they do because they have a definite purpose and they’re not going anywhere. Elected politicians have a shelf life and they are hyper aware of it. It’s get in, grab what you can and try to find yourself a private parachute. Oh, the Israeli lobby wants something? Sure, why not, they gave a shit load of money and the DNC is on my ass. Who wants to deal with headaches? This is obviously a rough sketch, but I like its general outline.
Foreign policy is not made by politicians
But by corporations and bureaucrats
The Yankee dragon is resting
And resting comfortably
All this chit chat about a slipping hegemon
is wishful thinking
The shift toward a harder circle around china
And a softer circle around Iran
Blends well with
More involvement in sub Saharan Africa
and less involve in Slavic Europe
These re weightings
All have their reasons and reasonableness
But its all nothing like a tectonic shift
wrt Iran. They have it fixed now. US signed a deal and immediately violated its spirit and if Iran doesn’t thank the US for peeing on it, then it is Iran’s fault. So, it wasn’t a 50% chance of success, but a 0% chances. While old analysts are busy studying reality, the US is busy redefining reality to achieve the military path to “success” that is the only truly American way to success.
btw I figured out capcha. there needs to be an outlined box to show where to type it for the genuinely ignorant types such as yrs trly, Boink.
This made my morning: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/john-podhoretz-storms-off-stage-at-92nd-street-y.html