Best I've Taken

Over the years my computer has amassed a large number of pictures from a large number of continents.

Here are the few that tickle the spine into feeling the rapture of being Alive:

Moonlight mansion in Santa Barbara, CA

Roman Waterwheel in Syria

Palmyra, Syria

Punta Huhus? Baja, Mexico

Punta Huhus? Baja, Mexico

The Bush War in Lebanon (that has yet to happen?)

One of the best blogs on the Levantine Middle East is Syria Comment. Run by Joshua Landis, the blog has an Everything You'd Need To Know mentality and prides itself in long posts, almost overwhelming the reader with thoughtful articles and well thought out analysis.

Yesterday, on Syria Comment, I read this headline:

"Obama Trapped in Bush's Lebanon War".

Landis explains:

When the neoconservatives of the Bush administration established the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2005, a number of them argued that it would serve as a ticking time bomb that would go off in the distant future and would ensure that whatever administration came after Bush would be forced to continue fighting his war. They were right. The STL means Obama must fight Bush’s war in Lebanon, despite his attempt to bury it in the name of dialogue with Syria and Iran and settling the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So basically, to get down to the meat of the matter, Obama is going to have to decide how he wants this whole Special Tribunal to work. Unfortunately for him, his ally, Saudi Arabia, just walked out of the talks.

blogging the casbah

Casbahites,

Well ... clearly you woke this morning, checked The Casbah, and said, "Creeping Jesus! That goddamn fool changed the look of the thing!"

Indeed.

And all comments are welcome. Even if you just feel like opening a bottle and questioning the meaning of it all.

Thanks again to all who have been following blogging the casbah from the start (and even those who haven't) ... it's been quite a ride.


Best,
Col. Jesse Aizenstat

This post is dedicated to Roger Cohen for writing this paraphraph

Yes. It shall be dedicated to Roger Cohen. Why not? I've never seen so few words explain something I agree more with. Here ya go:

The unseating through popular revolt of an Arab strongman is something new: It has already caused ripples from Amman to Cairo, from the Gulf to Tripoli — and it will cause more. Unseating through U.S. invasion — Iraq — did not work; it could never be a source of Arab pride. A homegrown uprising can.

Also, it should be said (for issues that are too big for me to blog about), that Wikileaks played a huge role in the "unseating."

Update: I should note that the place kicked out despots go in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia ... perhaps one of the most removed leadership-to-people regimes on Earth.

Who killed Rafik Hariri?

Lebanon has a problem: Who killed Rafik Hariri?

That will be decided as soon as, well, 2mar0. That's when the Special Tribunal is set to announce who "did it." And then, well, we shall see.

(I'd say something cheesy about how the people of Lebanon deserve better but I can't seem to feel that way right now ... and to make matters more interesting, I wonder if the organic coup in Tunisia last week has anything to do with it? Just thinking.)