The Axis of Evil's A and B teams
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 at 11:29PM ■"Ayatollah Orders Review Of Ban on 2 Iran Reformers," by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A6.
■"Syria Stops Cooperating With U.S. Forces and C.I.A.: Growing strains between Washington and Damascus over the Iraq insurgency," by Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A10.
■"Dragnet Arrests In Zimbabwe Send Warning Amid Disorder," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 24 May 2005, p. A8.
Small but significant sign from Tehran: Khamenei orders the watchdog Guardian Council to review its decision to disallow two presidential candidates, one a former minister of education and the other being a current vice president-for crying out loud.
The Guardian Council banned a bunch of parliamentary candidates last year, and all it earned them was a massively low voter turnout, increasing "both apathy and anger, particularly within the huge bloc of young voters. About two-thirds of Iranians are younger than 30."
Think time is on our side or the mullahs'?
Meanwhile, Syria's Assad regime is getting scared about internal stability. When you withdraw like that from a puppet state . . . remember what happened to the Sovs.
The insurgency in Iraq will claim more regimes as victims all right, but not inside Iraq itself, where the U.S. military commitment is too great.
The only question now is how Assad loses power.
So the Big Bang keeps a' rumblin' along. But you have to get past the A Team of North Korea and Iran before you can concentrate your powers more fully on the B Teamers like Syria and Zimbabwe. Mugabe's regime is clearly a failed state. When state-sponsored terror against the masses becomes the norm, watch the transnational types show up over time.
Not an if but a when.
As always for the Pentagon, the question will really be: What does the military get out of the inevitable intervention? A better SysAdmin force or a more burned-out one? That choice is definitely ours.
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