Predictions, updated
Just wanted to drop this in. As may be recalled, I made a prediction on the occasion of Chief Justice Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Contrary to what I would've guessed, it looks as though the first state to outlaw abortion, or "practically all" abortions, is going to be South Dakota. Who'd've thought it? And five months ahead of schedule.
As to my other prediction, on Iraq, we've got only a few weeks to go. Sage Thrasher has asserted that Iraq is already in civil war, and news less spectacular than bombings is would seem to support this. My prediction is particularly that the country will have disintegrated, or that a brutal autocrat would take charge, and neither seems likely to come to pass by mid-March -- but one never knows. As a fall-back position, I would hold that the civil war disintegration/strong-man autocracy prediction is valid for whatever point that U.S. troops leave -- no matter how far in the future that may be.
Similarly, the SD house may vote down the senate changes to the abortion ban. So let's just see what happens, eh?
Contrary to what I would've guessed, it looks as though the first state to outlaw abortion, or "practically all" abortions, is going to be South Dakota. Who'd've thought it? And five months ahead of schedule.
As to my other prediction, on Iraq, we've got only a few weeks to go. Sage Thrasher has asserted that Iraq is already in civil war, and news less spectacular than bombings is would seem to support this. My prediction is particularly that the country will have disintegrated, or that a brutal autocrat would take charge, and neither seems likely to come to pass by mid-March -- but one never knows. As a fall-back position, I would hold that the civil war disintegration/strong-man autocracy prediction is valid for whatever point that U.S. troops leave -- no matter how far in the future that may be.
Similarly, the SD house may vote down the senate changes to the abortion ban. So let's just see what happens, eh?
posted by heavynettle at 09:57
5 Comments:
Whatever happens in South Dakota, let's hope a court decision comes out prior to the '06 elections so that national apologists for the Bush agenda, "He doesn't REALLY mean...," will have nowhere to hide. I noticed the SD bill had broad support among Republicans and Democrats, interestingly enough, and that currently there's only 1 clinic in the state that does abortions anyway. Not much will be lost, except principle, should de facto become de jure. Still, a court decision against abortion rights marks the end of the Republican coalition, if Bush hasn't already driven fiscal and foreign policy conservatives out of the fold already, the dipshit.
On Iraq, wow, what a shit storm. The direction of hostilities seem to be rapidly reaching a point where the token U.S. forces on the ground are nearly irrelvant, unless they just start shooting at everyone. If the Shi'a decide to go for it and openly respond to the Sunnis murderous insurgency, the Sunnis' last card will be to create a distraction by deflecting Shi'a hostility toward any Kurdish attempt to secure claims in Mosul & related areas (Pan-Arabism?), so the Kurds may not be able to watch the Sunni-Shi'a slugfest entirely from the sidelines.
What would be really interesting would be if the Iraqi civil war expands into a worldwide Sunni-Shi'a contest, which, a la Al-Qaeda's recent murders of Shi'a in Pakistan, it already has. Iranian Basiji must certainly be training and supplying Shi'a militias, if not the government. Best hope at this point seems to be a nationally controlled Shi'a army as the best hope against Shi'a mobs. The Sunni really should have quit when they were ahead. But Ba'athism's conceits against Shi'a and Kurds are not easily set aside, even for self-preservation.
I'm not sure any of this is within our control anymore. Shi'a in Lebanon are ominously quiet these days. Hamas & Hezbollah may represent the only sphere of Sunni-Shi'a cooperation in the whole world.
If you're gonna smash the hive, it's better to kill the bees first, I always say ( or just did.)
Hmmm...this post is as incoherent as the world this week.
Wow, Sage Thrasher, I hadn't even thought to consider the global Shi'a connection -- that is, Iran. We should all remember how quick Iran was to aid its Sunni brethren in the former Yugoslavia, in a transparent effort to gain a foothold there. But with an honest-to-Allah Shi'ite population right next door, how much more rapidly will they seek to be the foreign power of choice there? Consider also the hay that Tehran is making of the ridiculous Mohammed (piss be upon him) cartoons. The Iranians no doubt want to be the big brother of the Palestinians, and the voice of Islam in the area -- and our frienldy Wahabist Saudis might not be too thrilled about that (I'm remembering all the mosques and madresehs the Saudis funded in Central Asia). It's a good time to be in an Islamic terrorist group, I guess: just pick your donor, and the money'll start rolling in.
Hmm. Wasn't invading Iraq supposed to deprive terrorist groups of support?
Iran exemplifies the whole problem with Bush's totally unnuanced foreign policy declaration of "if you're not with us, you're against us."
How much more difficult would it have been to beat the Soviet threat without the autonomous Chinese threat?
In the current case, how much harder would it be to contain Sunni extremism without the autonomous Shi'a threat? And vice versa?
And how much do we really play into the situation at all, other than as trading partners with both groups? I've seen it posited that European culture survived the invasions from the steppes relatively unscathed and that the "Dark Ages" were largely triggered by the collapse of trans-Mediterranean trade once the Near East & North Africa (and Spain) became Muslim and ceased most trade with the Christian empires. What, do you suppose, we would do if the same succession of trade occurred again? It's no accident that Hamas leaders were in Venezuela recently.
Time to put in that methane-powered water-heater I've been thinking about.
Hey, just to show you that even I don't read my own posts: I didn't predict that Iraq would have dissolved into civil war, but that it would be "in civil war." That lowers the bar considerably.
Yes, your inference is correct: I am more concerned about looking smart than about the lives and property of millions of individuals who shall be swept up into any civil war that occurs. Yay for me!
Hehe. For me, your compassion is implicit in your compulsion to analyize the root cause of the misery we see around us, and I infer nothing else.
"Dissolved" is a good word to use in describing the Iraqi civil war. Would that all the late colonial entities from Sudan to Indonesia would "dissolve" back into their more natural constituent parts and let their people free. As it is, most countries of the world are nothing more than tiny empires, in Sudan's case, a city-state empire, controlling the enslaved countrysides filled with unrelated countrymen with whom they have litle to no pre-colonial connection.
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