You Know You're A ObamaBot If...

Created by my good friend and Councilmate Bookworm at Bookworm Room and posted on American Thinker.

A Game Change In Syria

The situation in the Syrian insurgency has changed in an interesting way.

We started out with the Obama administration actually supporting Bashir Assad - remember Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referring to Assad as a 'reformer' and Senator John Kerry shilling for U.S. aid to him?

The next twist in the road was the Obama administration supporting the insurgents, consisting of the Syrian National Council(SNC) and the Syrian Free Army, a group put together at the insistence of President Obama's closest friend among foreign leaders, Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamist Turkish government. The U.S. government has been supplying them with arms and some training via Turkey and Jordan while Qatar and the Saudis have been supplying most of the funding.

Of course, the problem is that the SNC and the Syrian Free Army are controlled in their entirety by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafists, some of them outright al-Qaeda affiliates like Jabhat al-Nusra. Apparently this troubling fact just came to light in Washington.

So the next step was to put together yet another insurgent group of Syrian 'moderates' to back, the Syrian Opposition Coalition,(SOC)and the associated Joint Military Council because, in President Obama's words, it was "now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population, that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime."

Except that there are just a few problems. Mere details.

This new coalition, formed in Qatar is only two thirds composed of members of the Muslim Brotherhood or their affiliates.

The leader of the SOC is one Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib, former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and - wait for it - a religious cleric closely allied to the Damascus branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another troubling detail is that the SOC and their affiliated Joint Military Council are mostly located outside Syria, and it has few boots on the ground if any, let alone weapons. Thanks to the Obama Administration,it is the Syrian National Council and the Syrian Free Army who have the fighters and the weaponry, some of it reportedly taken from deposed Libyan leader Moamar Khaddaffi's armories, although that part of the sordid Libyan story has yet to be proven conclusively. If that's what actually went down, I suppose we could call it Fast and Furious, Middle East style.

As you might guess, the SNC and the Syrian Free Army aren't taking kindly to a bunch of ferenghi in DC and the EU dumping them and telling them whom represents the resistance and whom doesn't, especially when it's been them doing the fighting and dying against Assad's forces.

The ace in the hole for the newly formed and recognized Syrian Opposition Coalition is that they're going to be the main recipient and control point of Western economic aid. That ought to buy them a seat at the table.

But let's not make the mistake that this is going to end up with a moderate, pro-western government.

The SOC is just as anti-western, just as anti-Israel and almost as Islamist as the SNC.They will almost certainly come together and deal to put together a sharia go0verned Islamist state.

It's the Muslim Brotherhood who has the clear agenda, a disciplined corps of followers subject to an organized hierarchy and the ruthlessness to take over in Syria. The Brotherhood has Qatar and Turkey backing it, and they are ultimately the best bet to be Syria's next government.

What's left of Syria's Christians are already fleeing, mostly to Lebanon, the only Arab country that still has a sizable Christian population.

If the Russians cut Assad loose (and there are some signs that they may now be leaning that way), Assad would be unable to put together a northwestern redoubt as I discussed here. The Shi'ites and Alawites, those that stay, can look forward, at best, to being marginalized if not ethnically cleansed.

The Kurds, meanwhile, are keeping to themselves and consolidating their strength in the northeast, the area adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan. The odds are good that they may merge in a de facto union with their fellow Kurds just over the border as a precursor to a free Kurdistan.It is the one positive development out of this entire mess.

Syria, like Iraq is an artificial country, some lines in the sand created out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. And like Iraq, it was a seething mass of ethnicities ruled over by an iron fisted dictator, until we kicked it over.

Given the coming showdown between the Sunnis and the Muslim Brotherhood versus the Shi'ite Iranian bloc, it's fascinating that in Iraq we midwifed a transition from a Sunni-ruled dictatorship to a Shi'ite one that is essentially becoming an Iranian colony, while in Syria, we're engaged in doing the exact opposite, transforming an Alawite Shi'ite dictatorship into a Sunni one.

The Obama Administration goal, to all intents and purposes is to establish yet another Muslim Brotherhood regime in the Middle East.Or to put it more bluntly, The U.S. is now backing what is essentially an anti-western, Islamist takeover of Syria

And not just in Syria, of course. President Obama and his team believe that the solution to our conflicts with the Muslim world is 'daylight' between the U.S. and its ally Israel ( the president's own words) while we encourage Islamist regimes to take over, as they have in Egypt and Gaza, and may soon take over in Libya, Syria, the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria and Jordan.

This is the start of the Caliphate Hassan al-Banna dreamt of, when he started the Muslim Brotherhood back in the 1920's.

In later years, we're going to find out exactly what a huge act of folly this was.

Ehud Barak Splits From Israel's Labor Party

My latest is up on American Thinker:

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has formed a new faction and split off from the Labor Party. Apparently he and Bibi Netanyahu had this planned for a while.

Barak plans to set up his new faction with Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, Deputy Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Orit Noked and Knesset Member Einat Wilf.

The new faction will be named Independence,(Atzmuat) according to what Barak told a press conference at the Knesset today.

"We are setting up a faction, a movement and later on a party, which will be Zionist, central and democratic, and will follow David Ben-Gurion's legacy," the defense minister said, promising that the new faction would put Israel first.

"Then comes the party and then come we," he added. "The motto will be what is good for the State of Israel."

"We are facing difficult challenges, focusing on the peace process with the Palestinians, security-related and economic and social challenges. We are ready and willing to deal with all these challenges."

"We are leaving a party and a home we like and respect… Many of its members have experienced over the years the difficulties of daily life and the ongoing and unhealthy situation in the Labor Party, and they too were victims of the ongoing squabbles, the troubling drift to the left."

Barak slammed Labor members who he said "have been dragged to the Left, to post-modernism and post-Zionism."

(You can read the rest of my analysis here)

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Hezb'allah Forces Collapse Of Lebanese Government

My latest on Lebanon is up at American Thinker:

Hezb'allah and its allies forced the collapse of Lebanon's year-old unity government when its 11 ministers resigned en masse while Lebanese PM Saad Hariri was out of the country, meeting with President Obama.

The reason for the walkout is fairly simple. The U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Saad's father is scheduled to deliver its findings and will almost certainly indict high ranking members of Hezb'allah for the murder..and Hariri thus far had refused to follow Hezb'allah's diktat that he disavow the tribunal.

There's also been speculation that a number of high ranking Syrians will be implicated, including members of Syrian dictator Basher Assad's family.

Hezb'allah, which is controlled by Iran and Syria, has denounced the tribunal as an "Israeli project" and urged the Western-backed prime minister to formally reject any findings by the tribunal even before it announced any indictments. In the end, this was simply an Iranian decision.

Since he has refused so far, they simply pulled off what amounts to a coup.

Read the rest here.

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Why Israel Is Losing The Information War

Many people who are informed about what's actually happening in the Middle East constantly wonder why Israel fares so badly in the information wars. The following example gives us a pretty good idea why.

Jawaher Abu Rahmah, a 'Palestinian' activist, died on January 1st. Saeb Erekat, the right fork of Yasser Arafat's tongue, claimed that she died during a demonstration in the 'Palestinian' town of Bil'in, killed by "poison" contained in tear gas fired at the demonstration by Israeli soldiers after it deteriorated into what could best be termed a riot.

'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas called Abu Rahmah's death a "new Israeli crime carried out by the occupation army against our helpless nation."

She was given a martyr's funeral as a victim an Israeli "war crime", with crowds of mourners and the usual Palestinian stringers who work for the dinosaur media in attendance.

The story was almost instantaneously reported around the world as fact by the AFP, the Guardian, The AP, The Independent, UPI, Voice of America, and even the Jewish Telegraphic Agency among others, while TIME's resident Israel basher Tony Karon got off a piece celebrating this as the occasion of an alliance between 'Palestinian' activists and Israeli Leftists.

The real story? According to the IDF, there's no evidence Abu Rahmah was even at the Bil'in demonstration, nor does she show up on any of the videos. There's no evidence that she died from inhaling tear gas ( if it was in fact 'poisonous' why weren't there other deaths?) and the death certificate shows the cause of death as "Inhaling gas of an Israeli soldier according to the family."

This is an indication that no doctor actually examined Abu Rahmah, but that the death certificate was simply filled out by a nurse or orderly. And the accounts of her actual health are contradictory.

Was Abu Ramah the victim of an honor killing exploited by the PA? It certainly wouldn't be the first Pallywood production we've seen.

And really, none of the facts matter at this point.

Run with me for a second.Let's say that evidence surfaces that Abu Ramah was never at the demo, and that this was an honor killing rather than death by teargas. What changes?

By the time the truth comes out, the Palestinian propaganda machine and their allies have already publicized their version, it's gone around the world and the media has already gone on to the next story. The Muslim world will certainly never hear the truth, Israel's enemies in the West will simply take the Pal version as factual and the media circus has moved on

And that's the core of the problem.

Jews culturally are geared toward parsing facts and evidence, which is one reason so many of them are attracted to the legal profession. Anyone studying the Talmud or Gemara (commentaries on Jewish Law as given in the Torah)essentially receives a legal education in miniature.

But what happens when you're up against people that care nothing for facts and everything about impact and propaganda? What happens when you fight an information war against people who care nothing for the truth and merely want to consume your flesh?

In today's media climate, you're left foundering trying to decipher the facts while the other side has already made its impact.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you play defense instead of offense..the other side controls the game and you're limited to reacting.

That's why Israel has been losing the information war.

Israel would be far better off going on offense by publicizing the Palestinian Authority's inherent corruption, the status of women and homosexuals, its official endorsements of terrorism against Israel's civilians, and its refusal to make a single concession in any negotiations

As for Abu Ramah, instead of reacting to the 'Palestinian' narrative with frantic attempts to dredge up facts, Israel would get a lot further by going for impact and simply calling out Erekat and Abbas for lying, challenging them to prove Abu Ramah was there and that the IDF killed her, and reminding the world of all the other fairy tales the Palestinians have spun over the years.

Cross posted at American Thinker and Big Journalism.

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The Age of Obama - Government By Diktat

In view of the Senate passing Obama's 'financial reform' disaster, there was an interesting story in the July 15^th Pravda-on-the-Hudson that spoke volumes about the real and detrimental changes the Obama Administration and its Democrat allies in Congress have been able to impose on America.

It's an innocuous enough story...just a short piece way, way back in the paper on page a-16, in a story that purports to be about health care. Note the opening paragraph:

The White House on Wednesday issued new rules requiring health insurance companies to provide free coverage for dozens of screenings, laboratory tests and other types of preventive care.

This means no more co-pays or deductibles for things like lab work, tests, screenings, routine vaccinations, prenatal care, and regular wellness visits for children and infants. It even extends to counseling for smoking obesity and AIDS tests.

But the most important thing is where these 'new rules' originated. There are a whole slew of newly created government bureaucracies in both ObamaCare and the new financial reform bill that have no legislative oversight and are answerable to no one except the White House. And they can arbitrarily decide to stick their hands in the pockets of private businesses as they deem fit with new rules and regulations, exactly as they're doing here.

But wait - isn't making this kind of preventive care free supposed to reduce costs by making it more affordable and accessible?

Aside from the fact that argument ignores the Constitutional principles involved (governmental taking of private property for starters), it's also factually bogus. Never forget that, as the Obama Administration itself finally admitted, ObamaCare is designed to be a tax bill and a transfer of wealth to people the regime feels are more deserving.

What happens when you own a hot dog stand and announce you're giving away free hot dogs every day, all you can eat? Everybody shows up, including people who normally don't bother with hot dogs or choose to spend their money elsewhere. Hey, why not? It's free, isn't it?

You get a lot more 'business' - but it doesn't put a single cent in your pocket. As a matter of fact, it substantially ups your cost of doing business because of the increased use of utilities, materials, wear and tear on your facilities and increased payroll because your employees have to work longer and harder to satisfy the new demand. Some of them actually quit because of the increased workload and stress and just do something else.

This increased ‘business’ will also undoubtedly affect your quality, as you look for ever increasing ways to buy cheaper materials and hire cheaper labor to try and survive and offset what it's costing you to stay in business.

Even worse, your real customers, the people who used to like to come to your stand because you provided quality hot dogs at a very reasonable price with good friendly service start avoiding your business like the plague. Because it now takes literally hours to get a hot dog from a rude and harassed staff, parking is a nightmare because of the crowds and the hot dogs themselves now smell and taste like cheap canned cat food.



Substitute your local HMO, Medical Insurance plan or health care provider for the hot dog stand and health care for the hot dogs and you've just gotten a preview of what's going to happen to your health care. Only with two important differences.

In the example above, if our fictional hot dog stand owner lowers quality and service past a certain point, people vote with their feet and go somewhere else. But under ObamaCare, all the hot dog stands are going to be forced into circumstances that result in the same lousy service and poor quality, so there's nowhere else to go.

And it's not like you can simply avoid patronizing any of the hot dog stands. Under ObamaCare, you'll be fined and penalized stiffly if you try.

Even worse, since the HMO and medical insurers are going to be forced to take a huge hit because the government is mandating this raid on their wallets and we all know there's no free lunch, they'll will try and ride this out by creating revenue and making cuts in other areas, like curtailing opening new facilities, buying new medical equipment, sponsoring research or hiring more employees to deal with the increased demand.

And the insurance companies will be charging more for premiums, especially because a lot of the new 'customers' taking advantage of the freebies won't be paying premiums or anything else for the care they're getting. Obama's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius estimates that premiums will rise an average of 1.5%. Given the Obama Administration's famous accuracy in predicting what their wild-eyed schemes will cost, tripling that figure is probably a safe bet.

And that's on top of the new taxes on employer provided health care the bill mandates. Which, of course, you are legally required to have.

Eventually, most if not all private insurers will go out of business, which was always Obama's idea in the first place. So we'll all be getting our execrable hot dogs at one antiquated, understaffed government hot dog stand where it takes months to get served no matter how hungry you are, because there isn't anywhere else. And you’ll be fined heavily if you don’t eat there.

All you have to do if you think I'm exaggerating is take a peek across the pond at Britain, the national health care model for Obama and his prospective apparatchnik-in-charge, Dr. Donald Berwick. Costs have spiraled out of control to the point that even routine procedures are now rationed, doctors are in short supply, and wait times to see a physician are astronomical.

Ain't Obama-style socialism grand, tovarich and tovarin?

This government by diktat extends to the Dodd-Frank 'financial reform' bill, aptly named after two Congressmen who arguably did more to bring on the current financial crisis than anyone else in government. It too is essentially a tax and wealth transfer bill, and provides for numerous bureaucracies and special interest groups with little or no oversight who can impose new rules and costs on businesses any time they feel the urge, and mandate who gets hired and who goes on the corporate boards that run these companies.

For instance, the bill creates more than 20 "offices of minority and women inclusion" at the Treasury, Federal Reserve and other government agencies with the sole job of monitoring businesses to make sure they avoid hiring or giving contracts to white males.

And the new and all-powerful new consumer protection agency that will have American business under its thumb that the bill establishes could justifiably be dubbed the ACORN and Democratic Party Full Employment Act. What this provision will do to employment in the financial sector is something else again.

There is one rather large silver lining in this particular cloud. You have the opportunity in a couple of months to vote for people who will repeal these and the other legislative monstrosities Obama and the Democrats have foisted on us.

-selah-

This article appeared in a slightly different form in American Thinker ( they moderated my tone a bit and you know they'd never run that graphic!).

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My Latest At American Thinker: "Government By Diktat"

Barack Hussein Obama signed the ill-named Financial 'Reform' bill today, a massive tax increase and socialist piece of legislation Zero had the nerve to sign in the Ronald Reagan Building.

Increasingly, we face government by diktat at the expense of our freedom, and my latest at American Thinker takes this head on, using ObamaCare and the financial 'reform' bill as prime examples:

The Obama administration and its Democrat allies in Congress have been able to impose serious detrimental changes on America virtually by fiat, with comparatively little notice. I found out about it in an innocuous enough-seeming story...just a short piece in the New York Times, way back in the paper on page a-16, in a story that purports to be about health care. Note the opening paragraph:

The White House on Wednesday issued new rules requiring health insurance companies to provide free coverage for dozens of screenings, laboratory tests and other types of preventive care.

This means no more co-pays or deductibles for things like lab work, tests, screenings, routine vaccinations, prenatal care, and regular wellness visits for children and infants. It even extends to counseling for smoking obesity and AIDS tests.

But the most important thing is where these "new rules" originated. There is a whole slew of newly created government bureaucracies in both ObamaCare and the new financial reform bill that have no legislative oversight and are answerable to no one except the White House. They can arbitrarily decide to stick their hands in the pockets of private businesses as they deem fit with new rules and regulations, exactly as they're doing here.

But wait -- isn't making this kind of preventive care free supposed to reduce costs by making it more affordable and accessible?

Aside from the fact that argument ignores the constitutional principles involved (government taking of private property, for starters), it's also factually bogus. Never forget that, as the Obama administration itself finally admitted, ObamaCare is designed to be a tax bill and a transfer of wealthto people the regime feels are more deserving.



What happens when you own a hot dog stand and announce you're giving away free hot dogs every day, all you can eat? Everybody shows up, including people who normally don't bother with hot dogs or who choose to spend their money elsewhere. Hey, why not? It's free, isn't it?



You get a lot more "business" -- but it doesn't put a single cent in your pocket. As a matter of fact, it substantially ups your cost of doing business because of the increased use of utilities, materials, wear and tear on your facilities, and increased payroll because your employees have to work longer and harder to satisfy the new demand. Some of them actually quit because of the increased workload and stress and just do something else.



This increased "business" will also undoubtedly affect your quality, as you must constantly look for ways to buy cheaper materials and hire cheaper labor to try and survive and offset what it's costing you to stay in business.



Even worse, your real customers, the people who used to like to come to your stand because you provided quality hot dogs at a very reasonable price with good, friendly service, start avoiding your business like the plague. Because it now takes literally hours to get a hot dog from a rude and harassed staff, parking is a nightmare because of the crowds, and the hot dogs themselves now smell and taste like cheap, canned cat food.



Substitute your local HMO, Medical Insurance plan, or health care provider for the hot dog stand, and health care for the hot dogs, and you've just gotten a preview of what's going to happen to your health care...only with two important differences.

Read it all here

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Masquerade In Iran

Are Mousavi and his followers in Iran an actual reform movement and a positive democratic change in Iran? The pictures of student demonstrators in Tehran being brutalized by the basij and Iranian security forces present a heart-rending spectacle. But there is very little evidence that the label of "democratic reform," attached to Mousavi and many of his followers, is anything but a masquerade.

Mousavi is not some democracy-minded reformer. All candidates for elective office in Iran are handpicked and only allowed to run for office by the express permission of the Supreme Council of Guardians and its leader Ayatollah Khamenei. All candidates agree to follow orders. On issues that matter to the West -- Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, threats of genocide aimed at Israel, interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Islamist terrorism and any reasonable compromises with the West on these issues -- the two candidates were virtually the same.

Mousavi is a longtime proponent of Islamist triumphalism and terrorism, a hardliner on Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and an anti-Semite who has called for Israel to be destroyed. He was a key aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution in 1979 and played a part in the decision to overrun our embassy and take American diplomats hostage. As Iran's prime minister between 1981-89, Mousavi was vociferously anti-Western and anti-American. He had a major hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. His handpicked interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, was Mousavi's liaison when the Iranian government formed and funded that terrorist group. One of Mohtashami's first major operations was the murder of 240 US Marines in Lebanon.

The reason Mousavi was on the ballot in the recent Iranian "election" was not because he is a reformer. He was there because of political differences between groups centered on Mousavi's chief patron in the Iranian government, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- and loyalists to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. All sides have a long history of political rivalry. Aside from the simple jousting of who's in and who's out, the main point of contention was whether it would be advantageous to dump Ahmadinejad in favor of a new more "moderate" seeming face to buy more time to complete Iran's nuclear weapons program.

After President Obama's self-abasing speech in Cairo and his clear signals that he had no problem with a nuclear Iran, any changes were seen to be simply unnecessary by the Mullahs. Khamenei was able to swing the majority of the Supreme Council in his favor and get his man, Ahmadinejad, back in office.

If Obama's speech had been hard line and Mousavi -- or more accurately Rafsanjani, his patron -- had taken power, absolutely nothing of importance would have changed in Iran.

There is nothing about Mousavi or his supporters that particularly merits being championed by Americans. We simply don't have a dog in this fight. And in any case, Ahmadinejad is in and he will stay in as long as he does what the mullahs tell him to.

If one looks at what actually passes for democracy in the Middle East, it usually consists of one election where tribalism and Islamism always wins. That's been true in the Palestinian territories, in Egypt (where Mubarak had to curtail the vote to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from winning), in Turkey, and everywhere else in the Muslim Middle East that has actually had an election. The exception was in Lebanon -- where Hezbollah was defeated primarily by Christian votes. And Islam still reigns in Iraq, although with some interesting differences I will get to shortly.

While some of Mousavi's followers might actually be pro-democracy, their viewpoint is not likely to be the one that would prevail in the event of a second Iranian revolution. A great many Iranians who supported the ouster of the Shah in 1979 learned that the hard way, when the revolution was co-opted by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his hardliners into something very different than the pro-democracy forces had imagined. Mousavi's supporters, who claim to be for real democratic reform in Iran, may have forgotten that Mousavi and his patron Rafsanjani were a key part of the process that turned the revolt from democratic freedom against the Shah into Khomeini's Villayat-e faqih, a revolutionary Islamic republic.

If Mousavi prevails, would he somehow split Iran's clerical establishment and allow for the ascendance of a more open, less Islamist society? Mousavi's entire history, the views he has openly expressed, and the basic structure of Iranian society as it now stands, say no. Mousavi's followers may be Tehran sophisticates, but they claim the Islamist color green as their emblem and shout "Allahu akbar!" as a battle cry from the rooftops. There are Iranians who yearn for liberty, but their number is dwarfed by the ones that embrace Islamist piety.

Iran is a theocracy, ruled, ultimately, by Allah and his representatives here on earth, the Mullahs. The Islamic revolution is what is important. The holy revolution trumps everything. Hoping for any kind of reform through what passes today for Iran's electoral process is an exercise in futility. True reform will only happen if the Pasdaran and the armed forces either join a revolt against the mullahs or stand aside, as they did in 1979.

The turning point of any revolution comes when the security forces of the regime begin fence sitting and wait to see which way the wind blows. So far, there's no evidence the wind has changed in Iran.

Khameini has spent years cultivating the "young guard" in the security forces, which is how he became Supreme Leader rather than Rafasjani in the first place. Given the continued patronage extended by Khameinei throughout the Iranian security forces and the personal loyalty to the regime of the Pasdaran and the basij, the idea of Iranian internal security abandoning the regime is highly unlikely.

Still, if Iran's genuinely fascist, clerical regime isn't overthrown from within, the whole sorry mess has had some value: the regime's true character has been shown to the world. The election debacle might just give the Obama Administration second thoughts about acquiescing so readily to idea of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Is Iran ready for a truly democratic revolution? One indicator may be to compare what's going on in Iran with what happens next door in Iraq. In fact, the situation in Iraq might be fueling some of the unrest in Iran. Iraq is a Shiite dominated Islamic Republic with a constitution based on Sharia and the same emphasis on tribalism and Islam found throughout the Arab Middle East, but with important differences.

Largely because of the US occupation, the various factions in Iraq were able to conduct relatively open elections. Even though those elections broke down on the normal tribal lines, the US was able to grease the various players with enough money so that America was able to midwife a federation agreement between the various factions. Our money and military presence saw to it that the Sunnis and the Kurds were never pushed to the point of violence and the ensuing break up of the country. In many ways, what the US did in Iraq was similar to what the French did in multi-ethnic Lebanon before they left. The French put together a governmental framework that constitutionally shared power among various ethnic groups. That arrangement worked quite well before Yasir Arafat and the PLO arrived to wreck the system and spark a civil war.

How long the balance between Iraq's factions will survive after we leave is an open question. But what many Iranians see when they look at Iraq is what they might want in Iran: a government that has a huge dose of Islam but is run by secular politicians, has transparent elections, and doesn't require the Iraqis to give up some of their quaint prejudices against Jews, stop persecuting Christians and homosexuals or other "undesirables," and actually be something a little closer to a western style democracy.

President Bush spent over a trillion dollars and over 4,000 American lives to build what exists in Iraq today with the idea of creating a model for Muslim democracy that would spill over into the rest of the region. What happens ultimately in Iran could very well be a referendum on how well his idea actually worked.



(This piece originally ran in American Thinker)