Doom and gloom

Just browsing through the Sunday morning op-eds, man, there's a lot of unhappy people out there. This little conflict in Lebanon is sure raining on some parades? I reserve special consideration for those who, contemplating the 4 prior existing UNSC ruling think another one will somehow help. But the NYT has problems of it's own, so that's probably a cheap shot anyways. Talking about Lieberman in Time magazine, Joe Klein throws out words like the 'Mesopotamian disaster' quite casually. One of the guys who I've generally liked, Tom Ricks at the WaPo, has a gloomy story about problems in Iraq. Andrew Sullivan writes some confusing piece about 'neocon's' which, despite the fact that I am one, I still don't understand what they are (and I even read Strauss because that's what I thought that's what neocons do, man!). Always interested to compare British/European press, they love the ideological distinctions and buy into the neocon thing big-time. Of course, even libertarians are divided about the war, who can blame 'em.

I look at it, and like I wrote below (since I'm back writing for a little while), it could get a lot worse. Looking at the problems of the world through our rich, powerful and stable perception will always be distorting- trying to understand how people live in the poor conditions they do. But that is not reason to be depressed for me- while war is tragic and awful, it could always be worse. You could be living in one of those Middle Eastern countries where the only news you get is from your imam, and he's telling you about the Jews and the Americans eating Muslim children, or whatever the story du jour is.

It crossed my mind, though, now would be a great time to triangulate Syria against Iran (not exactly what this guy meant, but similar). It would be difficult, we'd have to compromise on some of our stated ideals of democracy (why do I think that those who are always pushing for 'engagement' would not be suppportive?). But it could dramatically change the power relations of the Middle East. Further isolating Iran- as we're coming to accept is not a 'party for peace', etc...

Are we capable of making such a bold and risky move? At the moment, I rather doubt it. So I'll settle for the second best option, Israel killing terrorists so we don't have to. Hey, if there's a better idea, I'm all ears.