A Shining Beacon on a Hill
Iraq and Israel/Palestine

The Neoconservatives promised us that an American-dominated Iraq would become a model for the rest of the Middle East.

Iraq has been turned, by the mismanagement of Bush and the Neoconservatives at the Department of Defense, into a hellhole of suicide bombings and subterranean campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Another 14 Iraqis were killed in guerrilla violence on Wednesday. And, groups like the Association of Muslim Scholars charge the Shiite Badr Corps with waging a "campaign of extermination" against Sunni Arabs. Hard line Shiites launch the same accusation at Sunni Arab extremists. Suicide bombings planned out from Sunni Arab cities draw retaliation in the form of US air raids.

But you know what? At least the Neocons were right about "Iraq the Model."


Therewas a gruesome suicide bombing in Israel which the Palestinian al-Jihad al-Islami said that it carried out to avenge the Israeli murder of its leader on the West Bank last Monday.

So then the Israelis bombed Gaza in retaliation.

Then on Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stole the Iranian election last June, talked about wiping Israel off the face of the earth." His (stupid and monstrous) speech underlined what kind of trouble Ariel Sharon's policies of annexing all of Jerusalem and gradually cleansing it of Muslims is likely to cause in the Middle East. So we have the same language about ethnic groups being wiped out, as in Iraq.

Yup, suicide bombings, retaliatory air strikes, charges and counter-charges of ethnic cleansing, and genocidal threats.

Iraq has become the model for the Middle East.

Or, was it the other way around?