The Middle East & The Fire Next Time

Should sectarian religious factions in the Middle East finally be given the regional war that they so badly want and be allowed to duke it out?

Andrew Sullivan thinks so and I'm beginning to lean that way myself.

The alternative is for representatives from all the nations who have a stake in averting a regional conflagration (which includes the U.S., Britain, France and Russia) to sit down together and try to act like grown-ups.

Not surprisingly, The Decider, who is the world's school yard bully, may be the biggest problem.

After deposing Saddam Hussein, he poured gasoline onto the Iraqi sectarian tinderbox and then threw match after match onto it until he got a really good blaze going.

Now The Decider, licking his wounds behind the school yard jungle gym as the Iraq Study Group takes him to task, says he might consider talking to those ruffians in Iran and Syria, but only if they play by his rules.

Make no mistake about it. There is much that is contemptible about the regimes in Teheran and Damascus and much about their agendas that run counter to the desires of freedom loving Arabs, Jews and Christians. But then they haven't brought the entire region closer to war through the overweaning hubris and ignorance that has been the hallmark of the Reign of The Decider.

Would this school yard bully actually risk a regional war in order to save face?