Ralph Peters has today’s message of hope and change:
We don’t even know how many new states will emerge from the old order’s wreckage. But the Scramble for the Sand is on, with Iran, Turkey, treacherous Arab oil sheikdoms and terrorists Sunni and Shia alike all determined to dictate the future, no matter the cost in other people’s blood.
We had our chance to extend the peace and keep both Iran and Wahhabi crazies at bay after we defeated Iraq’s insurgencies. But a new American president, elevating politics over strategy, walked away from Baghdad, handing Iraq to Iran. Now it’s too late. If George W. Bush helped trigger the Arab Spring, Barack Obama made this Arab Winter inevitable.
He’s calling it “The Arab Collapse,” which is about as accurate a shorthand as anyone could manage.
My wife and I were watching Anthony Bourdain’s new CNN show last night, the episode on Libya. Even though we’re fans of the show, we ended up skimming through much of it. There wasn’t a whole lot of food to see, and the politics and the history were just so incomplete. The story seemed to be: Gaddafi is dead and everyone is happy. Maybe the country wasn’t as safe as it could be, what with all those guns and rockets left over from the Civil War — but that was about it.
If there was any talk of Benghazi or how the Islamists are steadily working to control whatever they can (or to fester in areas no one controls), we missed it. I’m afraid most of us in the West are missing it.
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