Are Iraq's neighbors softening?
Arab potentates may now be regretting having neglected Iraq for the past five years. The neglect was partly an ill-conceived way for the potentates to punish the new political order in Iraq. They may have thought that diplomatic relations are a sort of reward. In that they seemed to be aping the Bush administration that considers meeting others and establishing a diplomatic dialog as some form of reward- it is not now, maybe in the next administration.

All they did by staying away was to allow Iran a freer hand in Iraq. Today Iran is Iraq’s biggest trading partner, and Iranian investments are pouring into the country, especially in the southern provinces.

There was anger among some Arab leaders, expressed in the Saudi and pro-Saudi Gulf media, at the visit of Ahmadinejad to Iraq last week. Some commentators in the Saudi-owned press called it an insult to Arabs- not sure how a head of state visiting another is an insult to anyone.
Some got misty-eyed and said it was an insult to all the Iraqis who died fighting Iran during the 1980s war and those who have died since the invasion. There was no mention of the fact that Arab regimes funded that long war and facilitated the invasion of 2003 and the initial war that has been raging since. There was also no mention of the Arab nationalities of the Salafi terrorists who for almost five years have targeted Iraqi civilians, thus weakening the unity of the country's social fabric, nor is there any mention of their sources of financing.

The anger is understandable, but it should be directed inward, toward those same regimes: they helped create the diplomatic vacuum that Iran has taken advantage of.

Now it looks like they may be having second thoughts- and about time. There has been renewed talk of opening embassies: there has been such talk for several years. When it comes to Iraq, as with other regional issues, the Arab regimes seem paralysed, incapable of acting, waiting for someone else to point the way. That someone else is usually non-Arab.

Speaking of trouble spots and fences:
It seems that walls and fences are the vogue in the Arab world as well these days. Just as they are among some U.S politicians during election years, as well as in North Korea.

Arab media report that Egypt has already started building a fence along its entire border with Gaza. The wall is supposed to be 3 meters (well over 10 feet) high. If this is true, it is the fastest the Egyptian bureaucracy has ever worked on starting anything. That is why I am doubtful.
Israel has had a partial fence built around the Palestinian West Bank for some time.

Then there is the Mother of All fences: the long fence project separating Saudi Arabia from Iraq that will eventually cost many billions of dollars- it is a Saudi fence, of course, not an Iraqi one. And there is a proposed fence between Kuwait and Iraq which is being talked about, as well as the various little fences separating Iraqi communities themselves. The way things are going now, it is possible that eventually the only countries that will not wish to build fences along Iraq's borders will be her non-Arab neighbors, Turkey and Iran.

Congressman Tom Tancredo, a noted lover of border fences, may be gone from the limelight, thank God, but his ghost has reached the Middle East and hovers over all Arab borders these days.

Luckily, once the November elections are over (in America, not in Arabia- they are never over in Arabia), the issue of a fence will be DOA in the United States, not to be revived for another four years. I can imagine Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs forming a new CNN Border Patrol Party to challenge the major parties that have sold out border security for the price of dubious and inequitable free trade.

Dobbs worries mostly about trade and jobs, which are reasonable worries- just look at the economies around some regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. His beef with illegal immigrants and NAFTA has mainly to do with loss of American jobs, not necessarily with a fear of having to file his tax returns in Spanish.

Beck, on the other hand, apparently couldn't tell Karl Marx from Milton Friedman- hint: one was quite hairy, while the other was as smooth as an eraser as well as being a perfect egghead. Both were extremists in their own zone of the economic electromagnetic spectrum, and both had the same roots.

Beck keeps losing sleep over terrorists, usually hailing from the moderate New Middle East, sweeping across the Mexican border and doing harm to Lake Mead or Sea World. And in the process further confusing Mr. Beck as to who is the enemy, and who is not, over there.
Of course they have to get into Mexico first and then across it, not an easy task for many, especially a Salafi Jihadist who would never touch a carne asada that is not kosher.
I believe that Beck is also terrified of someday having to file his tax returns in Spanish- pobrecito.

Ken Starr Redux?
Senator Clinton’s campaign has tried to revive the ghosts of the 1990s, again. The latest was accusing the Obama campaign today of using 'Ken Starr tactics'. It was a call to arms to the Democratic faithful, most of whom have not been faithful to Clinton. The call seems odd, quite surreal now that such bogeymen as Gingrich and DeLay are not around. It is like watching another president set a new goal of landing another man on the moon by, say, 2016.
What next: the famous black beret?
Cheers
Mohammed