Sand to Blood

"The Americans must leave Iraq and they will leave Iraq, but they can't leave Iraq and that is the equation that turns sand to blood... The reality now in Iraq is the project is finished. Most of Iraq, except Kurdistan, is in a state of anarchy."
--Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the Independant, speaking at a debate this week in London.

No mincing of words there. With all the evidently fizzling hype about an eleventh-hour deal to bring the Sunni leadership onside with the constitution, you almost wouldn't know there is a war still going on. Once in a while, I wander over to sites like Baghdad Burning and Empire Notes to see other perspectives than what the Western media has to offer. I usually go away wondering if the U.S. and Britain will ever regain any moral authority in the world for this criminal endeavour.

Apart from feeling smug about my own country's fateful decision to spurn the Bush administration by not joining the coalition, I can't help but sit back and wonder where it's going from here; and whether Turkey, Iran, Syria and other neighbours will eventually be pulled into a regional war.

What could that mean for the world? If the mid-east oil spigot is turned off for any length of time due to instability, then it becomes a world-wide supply problem that could conceivably spiral into... well, let's just say, uncharted waters for the international economy.

The fact the head of the Arab League went ahead and used the term civil war in the same sentence with Iraq tells you they're as good as there now. (Just see how many hits you get on Google news using the word combination Iraq civil war.)

Iraq, the United States and the Middle East are looking over a very steep cliff. And even if Canada and most of Europe is looking the other way, we stand to lose a great deal if the others cannot somehow turn back.

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