Looks like someone else wants to play with The Precious:
Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs.
Hey… at least they’re willing to help rebuild, right? Unlike The French…
I suppose the best we can hope for — geostrategically speaking, if course — is that they’re as incompetent with the reconstruction as the U.S. Perhaps we should loan out few dozen Heritage Foundation staffers who will help them teach the Iraqis that it’s more important to ban abortion than provide security and economic development. That’ll help.
Seriously though? We’re f**cked.
Now Playing: Episode 355
Democrats in Denver, Republicans in St. Paul, and Iraqis in Anbar.
Links Mentioned: Robert Caro on Obama … Americans hand over Anbar … John Kerry’s surprisingly good convention speech … Sarah Palin’s governing problems
It’s amazing. U.S. hegemony has always been girded by our substantial soft power assets. Bush has so completely f’ed us up that the Iranians are projecting soft power into a space in which we should be dominant. This is a classic judo flip, something of which Sun-Tzu himself would’ve been proud — “make your enemies strengths his weaknesses.”
You’d think that a guy who likes to play dress up with military unis to the extent that our Great Leader does might’ve at least bothered to check out the reading list of one of the service academies.