"Oil socialism is a failed experiment."

Doing my part if "fair and balanced" reporting, I bring you now the clearest framing of a paradigm that I have seen this year. (Of course the year is still less than 48 hours old, so there is still time to find another.) M. Simon is not a kissy-face kind of guy as you can see...

If you think Iraq is optional you do not understand the problem.

The problem is the coming economic collapse of the Middle East. Look at what A. Jacksonian (in the comments) has to say.

Political democracy and capitalism are the answer to that question. There is no way such a system would happen on its own. A seed needed to be planted. What better place to plant it than Iraq, a country we have been at war with since 1991 and the broken cease fire agreement?

Oil socialism is a failed experiment.

Bush has done well to not just see the problem quite ahead of the curve, but also to act on it. Islam is dying. As is the oil socialism of the Middle East. What we are seeing are just the early twitches. Iraq is of course centrally located in the middle of the mess. A good place to be if we are going to contain and possibly reverse it.

I think, Giuseppe, that it is you who do not see the wickedness of the problem. The looming mass starvation in the Arab world and the destabilization that will cause, due to the shift of oil production from oil well countries to oil shale countries.

Thank the Maker for Bush, who may yet (despite his detractors) be the rescuer of the people of the Middle East. I know that such a rescue is a fairly liberal position. So be it.

I never understood why liberalism is so weak in some liberals that Bush could turn those liberals into reactionaries. The man does have amazing powers.

Readers here will know this is not a position I endorse. But I have respect for anyone who can state a position unambiguously. And this is as clear as it gets. It places the stewardship of the entire world economy upon the shoulders of one person, the President of the United States.