You left out the funniest panel of the GYWO strip. "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL READING US? DOES JUDITH MILLER HAVE TO KILL YOU HERSELF?"
For some reason, this result depressed me more than any of the many objectively-worse things happening elsewhere in the region.
Possibly because in this case actual good could have been done, and easily, but wasn't.
So the public won't be very receptive to foreign aid for Arab countries, but will be perfectly o-kay with four bucks a gallon (or more, if we're being serious here) for gas?
Running at it from a Middle East perspective: You'd need (better or worse) at least one of Israel's founding fathers, maybe Herzl or Chaim Weizman or Jablotinsky (not sure on that last name) and maybe Ben Gurion or Menachem Begin or somebody else more modern; Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; Gamal Abd-el Nasser; definitely Khomeini; maybe Arafat; probably Um Kalthoum and Naguib Mahfouz. I know people who would argue for Ziyad Rahbani. Bin Laden didn't have a real effect until after the 20th century was over. That's only nine or ten, but that's still way too many for a not very significant part of the world.
It occurs to me that someone with Lexis-Nexis access and some time to kill could play "compare and contrast" with quotes from, say, the Cincinatti riots of a few years ago, and from the Baghdad riots today.
Weird to hear liberals calling for law and order while the conservatives say it's just a bunch of oppressed victims blowing off steam.
I'm sure that most of the lurkers are Gulf states that don't support the war but do allow use of massive basing facilites.
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