Iran and Iraq

Globe and Mail: Iran begins to enrich uranium (sigh) We have now arrived at the point I feared we would since the US began its campaign to invade Iraq in 2002. Iran is rushing headlong into a nuclear weapons program that the west is pretty much powerless to stop. The United States has pretty much exhausted its political capital. There is not an ally in the region who would be willing at this point to deploy any diplomatic, economic or military means to confront or head off a frightful escallation of Irans nuclear weapons program. Pakistan with its own covertly incubated nuclear weapons program has neither the moral authority nor the political will to confront its neighbour Iran. Iraq and Afghanistan have been bombed into the stone age. Turkey is more worried about Kurdish nationalism. The Gulf states have hung way to much on the line supporting the US in the Gulf War and Iraq War. Saudi Arabia and Jordan and similarly constrained by domestic unrest and anti-americanism. The United States now has no credible threat of military action - it is spread too thin already. 150,000 troops tied down in Iraq, falling enrollment, poor morale and war fatigue, the most powerful military force on the planet has been squandered on a meaningless war while the real menace lurks next door. Now thanks to a foolish Danish cartoonist, and race riots in France, the EU has lost its honest deal broker roll in the muslim world. We might as well resign ourselves to it, an extreme totalitarian fundamentalist Islamic regime will within a matter of months possess weapons capable of annihilating whole civilizations. Or infidels as they call us. God help us all.