"CONTROLLING MIDEAST IS KEY TO US"

First, a few quick notes gleaned from various sources.
Russia's Regnum reports that the recently closed US Kyrgyzstan air base MAY be relocated EITHER to Turkey or Georgia.
And, then, I was reading somewhere else, can't recall where now, that Turkey MAY train Iraqi troops, soon. That makes sense too IF one understands context.

Now, for that context, to turn to the featured article, headline above.

In case you have not figured it out yet after voluminous information and you happen to have returned recently from living on planet Mars or the dark side of the moon, the above/below heading/article states,
"Controlling Mideast Is Key to US":

http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidGN_06032009_10291863/lok000000090306

And, the flip side of this process are the results you see everywhere else.
Planned Western economic obsolescence, depression, sellout and selloff at bargain basement prices, union busting, etc.
On that note, alittle update from Greece:

http://www.libcom.org/news/antifascist-protest-marches-end-riots-neonazi-hqs-torched-ground-athens-05032009

Other info available about strikes in Eygpt, etc. on the above website.

And, now as part of the above, a slight digression from the usual and a SMALL, MINOR discussion of a BIG, LARGE subject.
In the following, a few profound questions are raised in the midst of cultural, linguistic and helpful political insight.
There is ONE question in particular I want to highlight or address AFTER reading the following:

http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2009/03/dialogues.html

And, here's what I want to highlight:

"...- so my fifth point is a question that I and other Iraqis keep asking ourselves.Could it be that the Americans have been so stupid and reckless in conducting this invasion and occupation or is that a continuous deliberate plan to tear the Iraqi fabric into sects and ethnicities, so that Iraq remains some mirage, a loose country with no identity and no weight in Middle Eastern and World politics ?..."

To really answer the above, I, or, one would have to do something called history.
That is, I/one would have to go through primary source material, research, classified documentation, witnesses, testimony, etc.
That would be the only way to really answer the above.
The rest is speculative, hypothetical deduction.
But, in lieu of such a history project, I will take a stab at the question anyway and the way it is posed.

First of all, what happens/ed in Iraq and Iran is NOT isolated, circumscribed, self-contained, applicable to Iraq and/or Iran only, in a hermetically sealed bottle.
So, the answer to the above question is:
BOTH are correct.
It is NOT an either/or "stupid and reckless" versus "continuous deliberate plan..."
It is BOTH.

Rule number one.
War does NOT necessarily achieve its desired outcome.
It's a crap shoot, a throw of the dice.
Hitler certainly did NOT achieve what he had been hired or expected to do, i.e, finish off the Bolshevik Revolution.
He failed miserably, altho nonetheless enriching himself and many others in the short term.
Instead, the very opposite occured, the Soviet Union EXPANDED!
And, global revolution with it.

That is the reason why many smart people advise NOT to go to war.
Only fools rush in where angels dare to tread.
Once having done so, however, they are now committed to achieving the desired outcome by any and all means necessary.

This requires LOTS of adjustments from the original game plan to a changing, dynamic, fluid situation with many moving parts and variables.

As you recall, since Rafsanjani's name was mentioned, recently, the initial game plan called for Rafsanjani to be elected in Iran and Allawi as PM in Iraq.
And, certainly, Putin pulled some BIG and unexpected surprises and punches in the midst of all this with Yukos, Gazprom and Khordokovsky.
And, initially, Turkey did NOT allow US troops to transit its region.
That was another problem.

But, again, rather than a long laundry list, making a complex subject very brief, just a few more points.

Most importantly, significantly, this is the VERY FIRST MAJOR WAR/INVASION that the US INITIATED/INSTIGATED ON ITS OWN, BY ITSELF, on the Eurasian land mass, continent.
This was/is big time STUPID!!
That's error number one, first and foremost.
Iraq is NOT an isolated island, entity, not a banana republic, NOT geographically contiguous or nearby to the US, NOT a part of its "sphere of influence," etc.

And, for those of you who recall Vietnam, the US did NOT initiate that war.
It was France. The US adopted Vietnam as its own.
As in Korea and Vietnam, both were extensions, outcomes, continuums from the events of WWII, which represented a profound world upheaval.
And, in both cases, above, the US had to retreat.

And, then, more recently, AFTER the demise of the Soviet Union, in Yugoslavia, it was NATO, not the US acting alone.
Nor was there a US ground invasion.
Once again, they had proxy forces.
Likewise, in Gulf, Iraq War I, it was an "overwhelming" military force.
And, still, then, they did NOT pursue Iraq proper with a land invasion for THE ABOVE REASONS.

This time, however, the US INITIATED and placed itself BASICALLY ALONE, big time, big scale, into a major military adventure, incursion, smack dab into the center, middle, hub, the fulcrum of the Great Game and a complex geopolitical web of competing cultures, borders and languages with ancient and recent antipathies, militaries, contested and competing empires and power struggles with TENUOUS equilibrium and balance in all the above.

And, of course, Iran had initiated an 8 year devastating war with its immediate neighbor, Iraq.
Thus, it is absolutely extraordinary and incomprehensible that ANYONE could possibly present the Iranian occupation of Iraq as a "liberation."
One might as well say, which 'they' did at the time, Nazi Germany "liberated" France.
Anyway, returning to the main theme.

The US broke that delicate regional, geostrategic balance to which I refer above when they launched their military escapade.
As "they" said, if you break it, you own it.
This set into motion a complex chain of events and cascading results, the dominoe effect.

Then, comes the necessity for mopping up to try to repair the competing, conflicting military and economic interests and geopolitical damage from the "law of unintended consequences" of destabilizing military action/war, about which I have commented in previous blogs.

This process continues today.

It is MY own, personal contention, when history books look backwards, THE fatal military flaw, tactical, political mistake, blunder, outside of the initial invasion, was the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal's collaboration, alliance, association and dependence upon Iran.
The latter, however, served as the enabler, justification and intrinsic ingredient of the former's decision to invade and occupy.
It was the lunacy of Nazi insanity and war on the cheap--utilizing Iran.
And, everyone knows what happens when one is penny wise pound foolish.

Anyway, this is THE shortest response I can give to an otherwise very, very long answer.
And, the story is hardly over.

Each and every step of the way, however, the United Suckers and Assholes nation digs themselves deeper and deeper into the above competing, conflicting and contradictory quackmire with NO end in sight due to multiplying, many, manifold contradictions unleashed.

BUT, EVERY TIME opportunity exists, presents itself, to positively alter and significantly change the balance of power equations, the ersatz Opposition here, and, many other places, does/did NOTHING, ranging from NO support whatsoever for Turkey's vociferous, militant, Opposition to their Nazi, privatizing, psuedo-Islamic AKP to denial and fictionalization about Iran's role in Iraq and the Middle East AND the orchestrating comparable Swiss role of the GCC speculative bubble, Western pension fund investments, Nazi Citigroup Obooma, etc.
Of course, "they," the ersatz Opposition, always find the convenient Israeli distraction, but, NONE of the rest.
This is a long laundry list.

RELATED domestic considerations exist, too many to itemize, ranging from non-existent universal, single payer health care, here, in the US, to an INTENTIONALLY sabotaged and aborted, INDEPENDENT million worker march and the CONTINUED anti-Communist, Cold War policies of their umbrella labor leadership, hierarchy, the AFL-CIO(CIA), and, now, Andy Stern's SEIU mafia organization.

I have highlighted some of these major points on my blogs past and present.

Consequently, the United Suckers and Assholes and their nominal class representatives dig themselves and, thus, all of us, deeper and deeper into the INEXORABLE logic and existential economic dependency of the above with no exit in sight because THEIR OSTENSIBLE LEADERSHIP EXERCISES NO INDEPENDENT CLASS POSITIONS AND HAS NO INDEPENDENT CLASS DEMANDS.
"With enough shovels..." they continue supporting the above policies.

They represent NO substantive alternatives.
They HAD/HAVE opportunities for INDEPENDENT political action.
They did and do NOT exercise those opportunities.
They continue functioning as handmaidens to the above agenda.
And, the existential, intertwined economic dependency hole in which everybody finds themselves as a consequence grows ever deeper and deeper.

If this is not self-destructive class betrayal, denial and stupidity, I do not know what is.

So, in short, the answer to the above question, I would characterize them OBJECTIVELY as "stupid, reckless..." and arrogant precisely BECAUSE OF their insane, totally destabilizing and feckless policies which now necessitate "amelioration."
They are in a cul-de-sac, an impasse, a conundrum of ticking time bombs, a crescendoing upwards spiral of numerous, multiple contradictions of their own making
which they are attempting to juggle and keep from spinning completely out of their control.
In so doing, it actually escalates, feeding upon itself.

So, this is a VERY SHORT response to a very valid, profound question, above, and a necessarily long answer which I cannot give.