Faithful reader (if s/he indeed is faithful) is probably disgusted with this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© lately, as we've been rehashing good old stuff rather than creating good new stuff here.

As I reflect on my lethargic approach to blogging this past week, my analysis finds that it's partly due to the demands of the bill paying occupation, and partly my failure to extricate from the zillions of new pages popping up every day in said 'Sphere a nugget of insight upon which to build.

Didn't really want to write about the Democrats' Clinton/Obama soap opera. Although, I commend to your attention Eric Zorn of yr (justifiably) humble svt's hometown Chicago Tribune on why Sen. Clinton is the wrong running mate for Obama.

So that left me with -- what? Reruns, and this during sweeps month, too!

Tonight though, finally, revelation. Christopher Dickey of Newsweek makes a thought connection regarding the cesspool that is our Iraq adventure that makes such great sense that one is tempted to slap oneself, saying "it's so obvious -- why didn't I think of that?"

I didn't. Dickey did. Read and learn.

Slaughterhouse Beirut

Lebanon's chances for meaningful reconstruction are diminishing by the day. And despite Bush's bravado, it's going to be the same in Iraq.

Newsweek.com |Christopher Dickey | May 13, 2008 | Updated: May 13, 2008

If you want to know what Iraq will look like 25 years from now, look at Lebanon today. The similarities and differences—but mainly the similarities—raise a lot of painful memories and questions for
Americans.

This fact hit me once again when I was talking to Mike Sheehan, who is one of the more clear-eyed analysts of terrorism and the way we react to it. The subject came up of Beirut as it is now, a bloody mess, and as it was when Mike and I first focused on it a quarter-century ago, when it was even bloodier.

Back then President Ronald Reagan waded into the Levantine quagmire, quickly understood that he had made a big miscalculation, and withdrew. "Some counterterrorism experts argue the Reagan pullout from Lebanon was a mistake and emboldened future terrorists," says Sheehan. "I never bought this analysis, then or now. I think it was one of the smartest things Reagan did during his tenure—to get out of the Lebanese civil war. To stay in any war to 'make a statement' has never made sense to me. You have to have well-defined interests and achievable goals when you put American soldiers in harm's way; both seemed to be missing in Lebanon. Reagan recognized it and withdrew."

Aha! Lebanon. Filled with religious factions, armed to the teeth. Filled with proxies of foreign nations with mischief on their minds eager to fill the ever present power vacuum (read: Syria and Iran). And the scene of U.S. intervention, that failed in a bloody and ultimately ignominious fashion.

A dysfunctional "state" for many, many years, and, as Dickey observes, not likely to improve.

And yet, whether the United States stays in Iraq or goes, "Lebanonization" is the most likely result: a foundering half-failed state where neighbors fight proxy battles through sectarian militias and through the many factions in a government that is unable to govern at all. There will be times of war when life seems to go on almost as normal, and times of peace when it seems not to. There will be spurts of investment, maybe even tourism. There will be festivals of democratic excitement. And then sudden storms of savage violence will sweep through the streets of the capital, only to subside, then erupt in smaller cities, and subside. And erupt again. And so it goes, to borrow the old refrain from Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five." If the world pays any attention at all, the span will be brief. The fighting and the failures to govern will have gone on so long that nothing seems new in that news.

We failed to fix Lebanon; perhaps it is permanently unfixable. Did we learn from that experience, strategically, politically, militarily?

On the day the last Marine combat unit pulled out of Lebanon in 1984, a television interviewer asked then-Secretary of State George Shultz if that meant a victory for the bad guys. He could not but equivocate: "This is a kind of warfare, really, that is something different for us … We have to improve our intelligence capability, and we have to think through how, within the concept of the rule of law, which we hold so dear, we can take a more aggressive posture toward what is a worldwide and very undesirable trend." That was 24 years ago, and we're still thinking it through.

Finally! Now it's possible to understand Iraq.

Religious factions and militias, armed to the teeth, bent on senseless slaughter. Units on the ground that are proxies for mischief making states and anti-Western cells.

And the scene of U.S. intervention that, despite egregious losses of blood and treasure, shows no signs whatsoever that what ails Iraq will ever be permanently fixable.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Dickey: Why Iraq Will End Up Like Lebanon | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

To all those who say: "you can't just up and leave!" I can now respond: your great hero Ronald Reagan up and left Lebanon all those years ago.

Lebanon didn't get better when we arrived; it certainly has gotten worse since we left.

Okay: what have we learned tonight?

1. Iraq is an ugly example of a political entity, artificially created by a European power with arbitrary borders disdainful of hundreds of years of tribal and religious sectionalism, whose creation thus contained the seeds of its own destruction, now playing on a CNN broadcast near you. Doubt this? Take a close look at Lebanon. Some dysfunctional states are unfixable.
2. And, keep an eye out for what's going on in Africa, filled with nations like Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe, artificially created by a European power with arbitrary borders disdainful of hundreds of years of tribal and religious sectionalism, whose creation thus contained the seeds of its own destruction, now playing on a CNN broadcast near you. Let's try not to intervene militarily too enthusiastically there, please.
3. Come November, let's send old 100-year war McCain slinking back to his comfortable Senate seat where his pointlessly dangerous testosterone can be contained.
4. Let's get our boots out of Iraq's pointlessly dangerous dust and safely home, soonest.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

--MUDGE

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1. "John McCain’s “100 Years” -- putting the controversy to rest", Moira Whelan, posted at Democracy Arsenal (30 April 2008) --  This gives McCain's actual words on the war, at various times and places. 
2. "In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims", Washington Post (29 April 2008) -- Another decline of the State special report. 
3. "Bluff and Bloodshed", Christopher Dickey, Newsweek  (1 May 2008) -- "The Persian Gulf is more dangerous than ever. Will the U.S. and Iran go to war at sea?"
4. "Barack in Iraq", Michael Crowley, The New Republic" (7 May 2008) -- "Can he really end the war?" 
5. "At least we know how the US financed its trade deficit in April (and March too)", Brad Setser, RGE Monitor (2 May 2008) -- "Record central bank financing continues."
6. Four important new articles about the food crisis, including one about about Wheat Leaf Rust appearing in the US.

Also -- The government did not inflect African-Americans with Syphilis in the Tuskegee study.  See the Wikipedia entry for details.  How astonishing that this pernicious lie is so widely believed!

The articles, with excerpts

I.  "John McCain’s “100 Years” -- putting the controversy to rest", Moira Whelan, posted at Democracy Arsenal (30 April 2008) --  This gives McCain's actual words on the war, at various times and places.  McCain would like to stay in Iraq for 100 years so long as there are no American casualities, and appears willing to fight as long as it takes to achieve that situation.  Read his actual words, as their logic is difficult to sumamrize.

II.  "In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims", Washington Post (29 April 2008) -- Another decline of the State special report.  Excerpt: 

This prison is majority Muslim -- as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country's prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country's population.

On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.

"The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France," said Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system.

In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.

III.  "Bluff and Bloodshed", Christopher Dickey, Newsweek  (1 May 2008) -- "The Persian Gulf is more dangerous than ever. Will the U.S. and Iran go to war at sea?" Excerpt:

... looking back at the last undeclared war with Iran, who is reminded of what, precisely?  The challenge is to draw the right lessons.For those who've forgotten those naval operations with computer-generated names like Earnest Will, Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis ... the best history I've read is "Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-1988," by Harold Lee Wise, which came out last year from the U.S. Naval Institute Press. It's not only thoroughly researched, it reads like a Tom Clancy thriller-or, rather, better. And Wise too is worried about what's happening now.

As he sees it, any war with Iran today is going to involve a major naval component. Forty percent of the world's oil supply passes through the gulf on vulnerable tankers, he points out, and that would come under direct threat.

Wise, in a paper he sent me this week, argues there are three basic lessons to be gleaned from the fight 20 years ago:

1. Even if outgunned, Iran will not back down from a fight.
2. Low-tech weapons are effective in naval conflict.
3. Fight fire with fire.

... as tensions mount, so does the potential for tragic mistakes, including accidental escalation and widening war. This isn't a prediction, of course. Just a reminder.

IV.  "Barack in Iraq", Michael Crowley, The New Republic" (7 May 2008) -- "Can he really end the war?"  This asks if Obama will withdraw all US forces from Iraq, or leave a 10 - 50 thousand troops.  I think the his supporters are kidding themselves if they expect a full withdrawal.  Perhaps even a large withdrawal is an unrealistic expectation.

V.  "At least we know how the US financed its trade deficit in April (and March too)", Brad Setser, RGE Monitor (2 May 2008) -- "Record central bank financing continues."  How do we intend to pay back this money?  Or do we, deep in our hearts, intend to default?  The answer will reveal much about America.  Excerpt:

The US likely needs to attract a net capital inflow of roughly $65b a month to finance its current account deficit.

... Pick how you want to do the math. $68.3b in average monthly purchases works out to around $820b a year. $17.1b in average weekly purchases (over the last 8 weeks) works out to more like $890b annually. Either way, it is more than enough to finance the (expected) US current account deficit if US investors don't add to their foreign portfolios and existing foreign investors don't abandon the US.

Incidentally, the $8.7b in average weekly purchases of Treasuries over the last 8 weeks would - if sustained -- be enough to finance a $454b budget deficit without selling a single Treasury bond to private investors. Sometimes I think the US should drop the façade of auctioning off Treasuries and just negotiate private placements with the People's Bank of China and the Saudi Monetary Agency.

What's more, all this financing was provided more or less unconditionally, with the United States creditors taking on the risk of future dollar depreciation. Further dollar depreciation against the euro - and, perhaps more importantly, the risk of further dollar depreciation against their own currencies.

VI.  Important new articles about the food crisis.

"The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.  The realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate changes suggest that high -- and volatile -- food prices will be with us for years to come."
From "A Challenge of Economic Statecraft", speech by Robert B. Zoellick, President of The World Bank, at the Center for Global Development (2 April 2008)

“From 2004 to 2007, global maize production increased 51 million tons, biofuel use in the U.S. increased 50 million tons and global consumption for all other uses increased 33 million tons, which caused global stocks to decline by 30 million tons.
From an analysis of public policy options in responce to the food crisis: “Rising food prices: Policy options and World Bank response“, World Bank (April 2008).

The following articles are posted in the  comments of Higher food prices, riots, shortages - what is going on?:

1. “Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer“, New York Times  (30 April 2008)
2. "Leaf Rust Poses a Serious Threat in 2008", Kansas Wheat (29 April 2008) -- Wheat leaf rust appears in Kansas.  Not a good time for more crop damage.  This is a different fungus than UG99 stem rust.
3. “Meat vs Fuel: Grain use in the U.S. and China, 1995-2008“, Jim Lane, Biofuels Digest  (April 2008)
4. “Surplus U.S. food supplies dry up“, USA Today  (1 May 2008)

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