Two Items in Today's NYT Have Jolted the Ruminator Out of His Holiday-induced Dormancy

First, the DOD has announced that it will proceed with sale to Iraq of F-16’s, M1A1 Abrams tanks, cannons, armored personnel carriers, body armor and helmets, and lots more. This to a government led by Nuri al-Maliki who in the past couple of months has had 700 Sunni opposition leaders and local officials arrested; issued a warrant for arrest of his nation’s Vice President (a Sunni) who is being sheltered by the Kurds; refused to honor his pledge to appoint independent ministers of defense and internal security, thus centralizing power in his sole hands; has fired his Kurdish attorney general for looking too intently into corruption; and is openly supporting Assad in Syria!

We are watching an attempt to create a Shiite autocracy, much to the liking of Iran. Who knows whether Maliki has the cojones to pull it off. And Maliki is being openly challenged by a would-be Ayatollah, Muqtada al-Sadr, who believes even more strongly in a Shiite, theocratic autocracy – also much to the liking of Iran.

What the hell are we thinking?!? Arming this instability is like selling hand guns to drunks and mental deficients. (Oh, oh that’s right. We, uh, we do that don’t we -- as American as apple pie and Mom’s Glock.)

Second item: the Egyptian Central Bank, like the ECB, needs funds to lubricate a near-stall speed economy and encourage its commercial banks to start lending again. Solid, American-style economic thinking. So, who has come forward to supply funds to the Egyptian Central Bank? The Army! No, not ours, theirs. The Egyptian military is lending $1 billion to the bank. What the….?

Imagine if the Pentagon had lent the Federal Reserve $100 billion during the financial crisis of 2008. That would be the equivalent, but even if it had been only $1 billion…. Mightn’t that have raised some eyebrows!

What sort of government has this Egypt? Who’s in charge over there? And this is the same military that yesterday raided 17 foreign NGOs suspected of helping establish civilian control, three of which are US funded, and that for three decades has been the second largest recipient of US foreign aid.

Perhaps the proper question is what sort of government have these United States? This all is enough to drive a sane man to Ron Paul….