Word: baghdad
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...fever pitch after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Sunni politicians regularly call their Shi'ite rivals tools of Tehran. If Iraq's Shi'ite leaders want the Sunnis to end their insurgency, they'll have to seriously distance themselves from the mullahs next door. If they don't, the Baghdad government will lack influence over large chunks of the country, since even with Iran's help, Iraq's Shi'ite militias won't easily defeat a Sunni insurgency stocked with Saddam's former officers and bankrolled by oil money from the gulf...
...fact, Tehran probably fears an Iraqi civil war more than it relishes calling the shots in Baghdad. One big reason is the Kurds. The more Iraq unravels, the closer Iraq's Kurds will edge toward outright secession. And the closer they get, the more likely it is that their Kurdish brethren across the border--who make up 7% of Iran's population--will try to join them. As non-Persians (and Sunnis to boot), Iran's Kurds get nothing but abuse from their Shi'ite masters in Tehran. In July 2005, Iranian police killed a Kurdish opposition figure, strapped...
...column, all this might be cold comfort. But the truth is more complicated. Though many Sunnis won't admit it, Iraqi nationalism runs deep among their long-repressed countrymen. As historian Reidar Visser has observed, Iraq's Shi'ites have never launched a broad-based movement to secede. When Baghdad and Tehran went to war in the 1980s, Iraq's Shi'ite soldiers fought fiercely, especially after Iranian forces crossed onto Iraqi soil. It's true that one major Shi'ite party, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa, took refuge in Iran during Saddam's rule. Another, SCIRI...
...help defend freedom and liberty throughout the Middle East. They could rebuild their nation into an economic dynamo, just as Japan did after World War II. A united Iraq would have no fear of external threats and would be able to fend off Islamo-fascism from within and without. Baghdad was once the cradle of civilization, and it can rise from the ashes of war and tyranny to become great again...
...respect, not too much has fundamentally changed since then; China's economy is still racing along, car bombs are still exploding in Baghdad and Americans are still hooked on their gas-guzzling SUVs. But one crucial thing is changing: oil prices are actually falling. Crude oil futures fell below $50 a barrel Thursday afternoon, their lowest level since May of 2005. Gasoline prices are down too, to around $2.25 a gallon on average, from a peak of just over $3 last summer. It's all good news for the economy, since lower energy prices traditionally help tame inflation and could...