Published: March 29, 2008 10:38 pm            

The age of simple sound bites

In response to the piece written by Brian Essex of Jackson published in the sunday "Your Views" section, I was tempted to dismiss the entire piece as another partisan rant from Brian but it does offer an opportunity to inspect some of the dynamics in the middle east.

The factual basis of his piece regards a talking point repeated by John McCain while on his recent middle east visit, where his speech writers lumped together bad actors in the region ignoring religious affiliations. This oversimplification to the point of inaccuracy is an artifact of this age of manufactured "sound bites." A candidate sticks to simple brief talking points hoping to manage the press reportage from a given event. In this case the factual error from this over simplification is the sense that Iran a predominantly Shia country would never support al-Qaeda an extremist sub-faction from the Sunni branch of Islam. While politics often makes strange bedfellows following the thesis "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," I am not aware of clear evidence of a significant Iran/al-Qaeda connection. There does appear to be evidence that Iran has actively supported Iraqi Shia insurgents in their sectarian and anti-US fighting. While literally not the same as supporting al-Qaeda the dead or maimed soldiers and civilians don't see much difference.

Just to expand upon the complexity in just Iraq, there were even anti-Iranian fighters taking shelter in Iraqi territory, not unlike the anti-Turkish fighters taking refuge in Iraq's northern Kurdish region. You need a dance card to keep all the militant groups straight, and this doesn't even start to address Hamas and Hezzbollah activity in the wider region.

There is long and convoluted history between us and the countries in the middle east, as well as their history with each other. Don't expect simple easy answers and be wary of political spin. We are in an election year, so expect to be showered with simplistic sound bites. Caveat Lector.



John Roberts

Hickory

        

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