Kurdish Attack on Assyrians Leaves Two Dead in Syria

GMT 4-10-2007 17:43:49
Assyrian International News Agency
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Derik, Syria (AINA) -- Two Kurds lost their lives and another four were seriously injured as a Kurdish youth gang attacked Assyrian youth in the city of Derik, in the traditionally Assyrian section of northeast Syria, 10 kilometers from the Turkish border. The fighting broke out on the first of April. According to Assyrians living in Derik a group of young Kurdish men assaulted Assyrian girls and challenged a group of young Assyrian men to face them.

The Kurdish and Assyrian youth met outside of town to settle the score, equipped with knives and metal bars. In the fighting that followed two Kurdish boys were killed and four seriously injured. No Assyrians are reported to have been seriously injured or killed.

Syrian police stopped the fighting and called an army division from the area of Rmelan to take control of the town and impose a curfew. That did not stop the Kurdish inhabitants in Derik from retaliating by attacking and burning shops, houses and cars belonging to Assyrians. The Assyrians have remained in their homes for several days, afraid of sending their children to school.

Many Assyrians from northeast Syria suspect a hidden Kurdish agenda behind the attack. An Assyrian community leader from Derik says that the Kurdish leader in Iraq, Massoud Barazani, has secretly donated tens of million US dollars to the Kurdish inhabitants of Derik, urging them to drive out the remaining Assyrians in order to Kurdify the town. The plan is to make life difficult for the Assyrians so they will want to leave the area. Those that do not leave would be bought out with the money donated by Barazani.

The attack on the Assyrians of Derik comes just weeks after an Assyrian teacher at the local school was shot dead by an Arab from a tribe which is known to have intermarried with local Kurds. The Assyrians believe the two incidents are interconnected and aimed at driving out the remaining Assyrian population of the once totally Assyrian town.

Assyrian men and women living in European countries are in the process of donating money to help the Assyrian families that have been affected by these attacks.

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This is true and can be checked at

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to
get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head
off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to
Australia and her Queen at a special meeting with Prime Minister John
Howard, he and his Ministers made it clear that extremists would face a
crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted
that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did
not accept that Australia was a secular state, and its laws were made by
parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has
Sharia law or a theocratic state,then Australia is not for you", he said on
National Television.

"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing
people
in Australia : one the Australian law and another Islamic law that is false.
If you can't agree with parliamentary law,

independent courts, democracy,
and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another
country,
which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option", Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said
those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other
country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims
who did not want to accept local values should "clear off. Basically people
who don't want to be Australians, and who don't want, to live by Australian
values and understand them, well then, they can basically clear off", he
said.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he
supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques.

Quote: "IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am
tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual
or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced
a surge in patriotism by
the majority of Australians."

"However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the 'politically
correct' crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism
was offending
others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against
anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia " "However,
there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and
apparently some born here, need to understand." "This idea of Australia
being a multi-cultural
community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national
identity. And as Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our
own language and our own lifestyle."

"This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and
victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom"

"We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese,
Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our

society . Learn the language!"

"Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing,
political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian
principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is
certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God
offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your
new home, because God is part of our culture."

"We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that
you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us."

"If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don't like "A Fair Go", then you
should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are
happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't
care how you did things where you came from. By all means, keep
your culture, but do not force it on others.

"This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you
every
opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining,
and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of

Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian
freedom,

'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'."

"If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You
asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted."

Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, American citizens will find
the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths, especially our
politicians!

If you agree please SEND THIS TO EVERYBODY YOU KNOW.

Sent to all of you with the approval of my "Snopes Official Researcher"
(SOR)

A great read, especially towards the end:



ADIOS AMIGOS



Do you remember when Puerto Rico was raising heck about the US Navy

using that nothing little island just off the coast of Puerto Rico for

bombing practices, which they had used for the past 75 years?







Demonstrations were held, Hollywood left wingers, Al Sharpton, and his

fellow demagogues went down there to demonstrate to get the Navy out?







I am sure it infuriated you just as it did me at the time. Well, here

is our revenge.







Always be careful what you ask for, you just may get it!







One of the many headaches that the U. S. has had was the Puerto Rican

Island of Vieques. In the waning years of the Clinton Administration

protesters demanded that the US Navy abandon bombing and naval gunfire

exercises that had taken place on the largely uninhabited island for

nearly seventy years.

Liberal icons bumped into one another to fly to Puerto Rico, boat over

to the island, trespass (but never on a day that there was an exercise

scheduled) and get arrested for the benefit of the New York Times or

Newsweek. They included the Reverend Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Joan

Baez, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Edward Olmos, Michael Moore and Ramsey

Clark, just to name a few.


In 2002, the bombing exercises were transferred to an Air Force

bombing range in central Florida, not far from the Jacksonville and

Pensacola Naval Air Stations. In January, many of the protesters were

back in Puerto Rico, celebrating the final bombing exercise on Vieques

and waved Puerto Rican flags and placards that read "U. S. Navy, get

out of Puerto Rico."


The following February, Rumsfeld announced that the U. S. Navy will

close the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico in 2004,

eliminating

1200 civilian jobs as well as 700 military positions. This naval

facility is estimated to have put nearly $300 million annually into

the local economy.


The next day a stunned Governor Sila Calderon, held a news conference

in San Juan, protesting the base closure as a serious blow to the

Commonwealth's fragile economy. The governor stated that "The people

of Puerto Rico don't now or never did have an interest in closing the

Vieques bombing range or the Roosevelt Roads naval base. We are

interested in both staying in Puerto Rico "


When asked, the Commander-in Chief, Western Atlantic Command, said,

"Without Vieques, I see no further need for the facility at Roosevelt

Roads. None."



So, Yankee go home? Fine. But we'll take our dollars with us. Hasta la

vista, baby!


On February 21, the Secretary of Defense also announced that starting

this year, the U. S. European Command would begin moving most, if not

all, of its active combat and support units from bases in Germany to

others being established in Poland, The Czech Republic, Hungary and

Turkey to "better position them for rapid deployment to likely hot

spots in those parts of the world."


Immediately the business and government leaders in the German states

of Hesse, Rhineland and Wurttemburg, protested the loss of nearly $6

billion US revenue each year from the bases and manpower to be

displaced. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry speculated that the

move may be "what the Americans call 'payback' for the actions of this

government in opposing Military action in Iraq ".


"Does anyone know the German translation for: "Hasta la vista, baby?"

I think "Aufwiedersehen, linesmen" is a good translation.


Oh, isn't it nice to see a government with guts and a good memory.


Also, here are some statistics and conclusions about a different

subject. If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000

troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months,

and a total of 2,112 deaths,(when this was written) that gives a

firearm death rate of 60 per

100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D. C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the

same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in

the U. S. Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in

the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: The U. S. should pull out of Washington

Power, Faith and Fantasy
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 10, 2007

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael B. Oren, a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research and educational institute. He is the author of the best-selling Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford, 2002), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award; a history of the 1956 Sinai Campaign (Cass, 1993); as well as dozens of scholarly and popular articles on history and the politics of the Middle East. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Commentary, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the new book Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776-Present. It is the first book to tell the history of America in the Middle East from the Founding Fathers to the present day in one volume.

FP: Michael Oren, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Oren: It’s a great pleasure and an honor to be here.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Oren: The idea first occurred to me when I was a graduate student in Middle East history at Princeton about twenty years ago. I was listening to a lecture on the emergence of modern Egypt and my professor happened to mention that, in the late 1860s, a group of Civil War veterans—former Union and Confederate officers—went to Egypt to help modernize its army. But when they got to Cairo, the officers discovered that most of the Egyptian army was illiterate, so they began to build a system of literacy schools. The Egyptian soldiers, though, showed up to class with their children, and so these veterans of Vicksburg and Gettysburg got into the business of teaching Egyptian children to read and write. And while they were at it, they also taught American values: patriotism, civic duties, and democracy.

I was fascinated by this story—like many Americans, I believe my country’s involvement in the Middle East began just after World War II—and I rushed to the library to read more about it. Yet, to my disappointment, I found that while there were many books on the history of British and French involvement in the Middle East, there was not one volume on America’s experience in the region. There was certainly no comprehensive history that would place these officers’ extraordinary story in any kind of meaningful, historical, context.

Flash forward some years to the aftermath of 9/11. Suddenly, it seemed to me, Americans were being asked to make some profound decisions in the Middle East—decisions that would impact not only their security but that of much of the world—but they lacked an historical framework for making them. And so, when my editor asked me “what’s the one book about the Middle East that must be written but that hasn’t?” I did not hesitate a moment. I told him: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.

FP: What are the origins of America’s support for Israel?

Oren: The roots of American support for Israel go back hundreds of years—indeed to the day that the first buckled shoe alighted on a rock along the Massachusetts shore. The owner of that shoe, William Bradford, proclaimed “Come let us declare in Zion the word of God.” Bradford was a leader of the Puritans, a dissenting Protestant movement that suffered greatly at the hands of the Church of England, and which sought strength in the books of the Old Testament. There the Puritans found a God who spoke directly to His people, in their language, and who promised them to rescue them from exile and restore them to their Holy Land.

The Puritans appropriated this narrative—they became the New Israel and the New World became the new Zion. Consequently, the Puritans and their descendents developed a strong sense of kinship with the Old Israel—the Jews—and an attachment to the Old Promised Land, then known as Palestine, part of the Ottoman Empire. Many of them concluded that, in order to be good Christians and Americans, they were obliged to assist God in fulfilling his Biblical promises to restore the Jews to their ancestral homeland. So was born the notion of restorations, which became an immensely popular movement in eighteenth and nineteenth-century America. John Adams declared that his fondest wish was that "100,000 Jewish soldiers…would march into Palestine and reclaim it as a Judean kingdom," and Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that the dream of restoring the Jews was dear to a great many Americans and pledged to help realize that dream after the Civil War.

Perhaps the greatest expression of restorationism occurred in 1891, when real estate mogul William Blackstone submitted a petition to President Benjamin Harrison urging the United States to spearhead an international effort to take Palestine from the Turks and return it to the Jews. The Blackstone Memorial, as it was called, was signed by 400 prominent Americans, including John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and William McKinley. Restorationism proved instrumental in moving Woodrow Wilson to endorse the Balfour Declaration, recognizing the Jewish people’s right to a national home in Palestine, and in convincing Harry Truman, a strict Baptist who had nearly memorized the Bible, to be the first world leader to recognize Israel in 1948.

Of course, the fact that Israel is a democracy struggling for survival in a profoundly undemocratic environment plays a role in America’s support of the Jewish state. So, too, does the extensive cooperation between the United States and Israel on military development, intelligence sharing, and training. But the core of the U.S.-Israel alliance lies in the faith of the American people, which remains—in contrast to Europe—intense.

FP: Human rights and social equality appear to be alien notions and un-existent realities in the Islamic Middle East. How come?

Oren: Concepts of human rights and social equality do exist in the Middle East but they are interpreted much differently then they are in the West. Under Islam, men are accorded rights that are denied women—in divorce proceedings, for example—and those strictures are stringently applied in many Arab societies, such as in Saudi Arabia. Similarly, there are no provisions for children’s rights virtually anywhere in the Middle East, no affirmative action, no bill of rights. Homosexuality is considered a capital offense by many Middle Eastern governments, including Iran and the Palestinian Authority. And yet, in response to charges of sexual repression and systematic rights denial, Middle Eastern Muslims often point out the exploitation of women in the West, the breakdown of family values, and widespread use of alcohol and drugs. Where we see progress and modernity, they see decadence and the trampling of age-old traditions. This is the fundamental source of friction between the West and the Middle East. It is a clash not merely of civilizations but of entire worldviews, of incompatible universes.

FP: What were the most fateful decisions made by U.S. Presidents vis-à-vis the Middle East?

Oren: Many historians would probably list Harry Truman's recognition of Israel in May 1948 as one of America's most fateful decisions in the Middle East. While Truman undoubtedly provided a major boost to the morale of Israeli forces fighting for their lives against invading Arab armies, in fact he provided no concrete assistance to the nascent Jewish state, and even imposed an arms embargo on it. The United States would have eventually recognized Israel, as did virtually all Western states, over the course of the following year. The Arab-Israel conflict, meanwhile, became a reality.

A far more influential event was, to my mind, Woodrow Wilson’s decision not to declare war against Turkey in 1917-1918. Remember that the United States entered World War I in April 1917, opening hostilities against Germany and Austria-Hungary, the two major members of the Central Powers. Wilson then had to decide whether to go to war against Ottoman Turkey, the third member of the coalition. Both houses of Congress staunchly supported the move, as did Teddy Roosevelt, the popular ex-president, who claimed that the slogan “making the world safe for democracy” would become nonsense if America ignored the tyrranical Turks.

But Wilson was also lobbied by Protestant missionaries and their supporters. If the United States went to war in the Middle East, they argued, the Turks would destroy nearly a century of American good works, hospitals, and schools. Moreover, they would massacre the missionaries much as they had the Armenians.

Wilson ultimately supported the missionaries. The grandson, son, and nephew of Presbyterian ministers, the president was closely associated with the missionary movements and greatly admired its success. And so the United States never went to war against Turkey and the ramifications of that decision were immense.

By the time of the armistice, in November 1918, Great Britain had nearly a million troops deployed between Cairo and Istanbul. French forces also occupied strategic positions in the area. The United States, by contrast, had not a single soldier stationed anywhere in the Middle East. The results of that vacuum soon became apparent at Paris, where the Allies gathered to draw the map of the new Middle East. Though his ideas for the region's future differed substantively from that of Britain and France, lacking military leverage, Wilson was powerless to prevent the British and the French from dividing the Middle East between them. Among their creations were Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestine Mandate - later to morph into Israel.

Another decision of massive ramifications was Dwight D. Eisenhower's support for Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1956 Suez Crisis. Though Nasser had plotted against Arab moderates and had violated international agreements by nationalizing the Suez Canal, Eisenhower sided with the Soviet Union - this while Soviet tanks were crushing freedom-fighters in Hungary – to rescue Nasser from certain defeat at the hands of Britain, France, and Israel. A vastly strengthened Nasser proceeded to turn his Soviet-supplied arms against Arab moderates and ultimately aimed them at Israel. But imagine if Eisenhower had just stepped back and let Nasser fall. The Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 might have been averted. There would be no occupied territories, no intifadas or Hamas. Minus Nasser, the Middle East might look radically different today.

FP: Shed some light for our readers on why the word “Fantasy” is in the title of your book.

Oren: Fantasy relates to the highly romantic, and often erotic, image of the Middle East in the American imagination. The roots of that myth are quite deep, many of them stemming back to A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, that collection of ribald Persian tales which, after the Bible, was the second-most popular book on the American colonial bookshelf. The myriad Americans who read this book, and had no other reliable information on the Middle East, took it as truth: there really were flying carpets, genie-haunted lamps, and veiled but available harem girls. Such myths lured many Americans to see the Middle East for themselves.

Starting with John Ledyard, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson who became the first American explorer in Egypt in 1788, Americans flocked to the Middle East. By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans had surpassed the British as the largest group of tourists in the area. Among them were Elizabeth Cabot Kirkland, the wife of Harvard’s president, an African-American former slave named David Dorr, and the Civil War heroes William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant. And while many of these travelers wrote devastating portraits of the Middle East, debunking the myths of A Thousand and One Nights, Americans remained enchanted. By the early twentieth century, Hollywood had seized on the Middle Eastern myth, producing such blockbusters as the Sheikh of Araby (1921), which rocketed Rudolph Valentino to stardom. There followed an almost endless series of Thousand and One Nights knock-off movies, followed by smash hits such as Indiana Jones and Sahara—all Middle Eastern fantasies.

Fantasy also had a profound impact on policy. Back in 1788, John Ledyard looked at the Bedouin of the desert and likened them to the pioneers of the American frontier. These were lovers of liberty who, unfortunately, were languishing under Ottoman tyranny. Remove that tyranny, Ledyard speculated, and the Arabs would rise up and naturally embrace democracy. Such myths played an influential role in America’s policy-making toward the Middle East—many Americans might have wondered why, on 9/11, these picturesque nomads would leave their oases to hijack civilian airliners—and in the decision to invade Iraq.

FP: Who were some of the more memorable characters and figures in America’s history in the region?

Oren: Among my favorite characters are George Bethune English, Harvard Class of 1807, who traveled to the Middle East as a Marine, jumped ship in Cairo, and converted to Islam. Later, as a general in the army of Egypt’s ruler, he led an expedition against Sudanese bandits in Darfur. He ended his career—and indeed his life—acting as President John Quincy Adam’s special agent in the Middle East, secretly mediating a treaty between the United States and the Ottoman Empire.

Another outstanding character was Philip Dickson, a crusty old Yankee from Groton, MA., who moved with his wife and twin daughters to Palestine in 1855. On a barren hilltop, optimistically christened Mount Hope, the Dicksons established a colony dedicated to teaching the Jews how to farm and so preparing them for eventual statehood. The Dickson daughters married two German Lutheran brothers, Frederick and Johann Grossteinbeck, and together the family struggled to overcome disease and hunger in order fulfill its mission.

In December 1856, the Dickson farm hosted an usual visitor—the author Herman Melville. He had come to the Middle East in search of an inspiration for his next novel; his last one, Moby-Dick, had sold a disappointing 3,000 copies. Melville lunched with the Dicksons and the Grossteinbecks, and later wrote rather disparagingly of them in his diary. The following month, the farm was attacked by Bedouins. Philip Dickson was struck mortally on the head while his wife and daughters were brutally raped. Frederick Grossteinbeck was shot in the groin and died an agonizing death. The only member of the colony to escape unscathed was Johann Grossteinbeck who, according to consular records, left Palestine and relocated to California.

Melville would allude to the attack on the Dickson colony in his 24,000-line epic poem, Clarel, but so, too, would Johann Grossteinbeck’s grandson, in his biblically-toned novel, East of Eden. John Steinbeck’s grandfather had met Herman Melville in the Middle East, in a colony created by Philip Dickson.

No favorite list of characters in American-Middle Eastern relations would be complete without mentioning Mark Twain. Still going by his real name, Samuel Clemens, Twain was a relatively unknown humorist in 1867 when two American papers commissioned him to report on his travels aboard the steamship Quaker City, bound for the Middle East. The steamship and its lackluster passengers visited Istanbul, Tangiers, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Twain’s observations of these lands and their inhabitants were ruthless. The Syrian women, he sneered, were so ugly that they “couldn’t smile after ten o’clock Saturday night without breaking the Sabbath.” Shocked by the cost of a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee, he snorted, “no wonder Jesus walked.” Yet Twain was no less brutal in lambasting his countrymen, especially those who took sledgehammers to ancient monuments and knocked off fist-sized souvenirs. “American vandals,” he called them.

The Middle East made Mark Twain. Using his new penname, he published his collected dispatches as Innocents Abroad, which became the largest-selling book of late nineteenth-century America. “It sold more books than the Bible,” Twain characteristically quipped.

FP: So what role should the U.S. be playing in the Middle East today and in the near-future? What must it do in Iraq and how can it best fight the terror war in general?

Oren: Americans must understand that they cannot disengage from the Middle East. Iraq is not Vietnam. Americans withdrew from Vietnam in 1975 confident that the North Vietnamese would not pursue them to American cities. By contrast, the United States can evacuate it soldiers from Iraq--and it will, eventually--but the Middle East will pursue. Americans cannot detach themselves from the Middle East because the Middle East will remain for the foreseeable future attached to the United States. Elements in the region will continue to seek to harm American citizens and vital American interests. Leaders in Washington will still be called up to try to resolve Middle Eastern disputes. And the U.S. economy will remain intertwined with that of the oil-producing Gulf.

The question is, then: how can the United States interact with the Middle East in a more prudent and effective manner?

And the answer, I believe, can be found in America's centuries-old history in the region--the legacy of power, faith, and fantasy.

To defend themselves against persistent Middle Eastern threats, Americans will still have to employ power in the area. But at the same time, they must realize that power has its limits in the Middle East. Following Thomas Jefferson's example of first fighting and then concluding a peace treaty with the Barbary pirates, American leaders must learn when to strike back and when to negotiate.

They must realize that military power, alone, cannot remake and sustain Middle Eastern states riven by tribal and ethnic hostilities. They must develop new forms of power to meet the rapid-changing dangers from the Middle East--familiarizing a generation of American servicemen and women in the languages and cultures of the region and strengthening economic strictures against the financiers of terror.

Americans must maintain their faith in the Middle East, especially their civic, secular faith in democracy, equality, and human rights. The United States should enhance its support--flagging of late--for Middle Eastern democratic movements and distance itself from the region's autocratic regimes.

It must act according to its own principles and ethic codes and so avoid atrocities such as those committed at Abu Ghraib. At the same time, though, Americans must realize that their concepts of liberty may not be appropriate or transplantable to the Middle East, where ideas such as sexual freedom and unbridled free speech are alien if not abhorrent.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Americans must learn to distinguish fantasy from reality in the Middle East.

They (the USA) can offer to assist the region to democratize, but without the illusion that its inhabitants are desperate to rise up and embrace American-style freedoms.

They can open channels of communication to the enemies, such as Iran, but without believing that those enemies share America's interests in stability and peace or that they care about their citizens' safety in the same way America does.

They can invest heavily in efforts to resolve conflicts between Arabs and Israelis or Shiites and Sunnis but all the while understanding that the United States, alone, cannot effect rapprochement among the region's adversaries and that some of these disputes will continue to roil indefinitely.

The United States should and must reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and seek to develop alternative forms of energy, yet it must realize that oil will remain the determinant commodity for many years to come, and that the Middle East will still rank among its principal suppliers.

In short, the United States will continue to be involved in the Middle East--extensively and perhaps also existentially--but will hopefully be so in a more resilient, flexible, and sober manner.

FP: Michael Oren, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Oren: Thank you for this compelling and stimulating opportunity.

Please enjoy this excerpt from Stratfor's 2007 Second Quarter Forecast. Stratfor Members receive quarterly forecasts that address critical geopolitical issues. As a Stratfor Member, you will be privy to a full range of intelligence products, including the full Second Quarter Forecast.

The Maneuvering Before the Storm: Second Quarter Forecast 2007

The second quarter of 2007 will brim with fury and froth as two states attempt to challenge the geopolitical order imposed by others to stem their expansion, in hopes of regaining their long-lost position as major powers. Throughout the quarter, these two states will seek a louder voice and a stronger hand. The real conflicts, however, will come later.

For the first country -- Iran -- the more aggressive tone is part and parcel of the diplomatic dance with the United States. Both countries realize that their ideal for Iraq -- unified and pro-American for Washington, unified and pro-Iranian for Tehran -- has slipped from the realm of possibility. The two will now negotiate furiously to keep their respective worst-case scenarios -- for the United States, a shattered Iraq in which Iran controls the south; for Iran, a Sunni-run and American-armed Baghdad -- from becoming reality.

In these negotiations, neither side has a particularly strong hand. The Bush administration suffers from a lack of mandate and an overstretched military that is flat-out incapable of imposing security on Iraq. Iranian goals are utterly dependent upon the Iraqi Shia -- who, were they able to unify for any purpose, would have at least at some point in Iraq's history been in charge of their own region (they have never been). Tehran and Washington both can wreck Iraq to ruin each other's plans, but neither wants to live with the consequences. Both can work toward a compromise but are afraid of the domestic backlash of being seen publicly talking to one another. And of course there is that niggling detail that their national interests on this issue really are very close to incompatible.

The result is that each side is trapped at the negotiating table, threatening the other and hoping that something will change on the ground to give them a decisive advantage. Of course, when something appears to be that key event, the other feels obliged to change the equation. Thus the United States seizes an Iranian Consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan, or Iran detains 15 British marines and sailors. Such events will proliferate throughout the quarter as the two powers position and reposition for best effect versus each other. Expect other powers to attempt to leverage Washington's preoccupations to their own advantage -- with the Russians, by dint of influence in Iran and opportunities in Ukraine, likely to achieve the most.

This struggle will not resolve itself in the coming quarter. However, it not only will dominate the news, but also regularly will put Washington and Tehran on an equal footing in the public mind. This will not be a permanent feature (indeed, it is not even remotely accurate once one looks past the headlines) but it undeniably entrenches Iran's return as a major regional power that must be reckoned with.

Yet while Iran's rise is not guaranteed -- the negotiations with the United States could yet take a disastrously wrong turn -- the second state returning to the status of great power will be far more successful than Iran. That country is Germany.

For the past 60 years, French ideology has demanded that Paris play the pre-eminent role in European events and use that control to project power globally. Yet in late April and early May, the French will choose from among a battery of candidates one who will be their next president. For the first time since the 1940s, there is not a single candidate on the list who subscribes to the principles of former President Charles de Gaulle.

For those same 60 years, Germany has been locked in to the structures of the European Union and NATO, and has been flatly disallowed from holding nationalist ambitions independent from Europe (which in Paris' mind translates as "independent of France"). That time has passed and Germany has re-awakened. For now, its interests do continue to parallel broadly those of its neighbors, but there are clearly changes in tone and objective that identify Germany as a European yes-man no longer. With elections in France, the period of French exceptionalism will end -- this is not simply the changing of a president, this is a change of regime -- and Germany will formally take over as the leading political and economic power in Europe.

This German rise is independent of Germany's continuing terms as president of the European Union and chair of the Group of Eight -- positions that enable Berlin to set the agenda both on a regional and global level. Such institutions, which have rotating leadership, are not the true source of Germany's return to the limelight. But the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is using them to pole vault Germany to prominence. Yet, even should Germany fail disastrously in these leadership positions and squander the opportunity, the fact that Germany is back is undeniable. And should Merkel and her team succeed, Germany will have its cake and eat it too.

Elsewhere, the world -- while not sleeping -- might seem strangely quiet (except Afghanistan, of course, which is always noisy in the second quarter of the year). For most of the world, the second quarter will be one of introspection and consolidation. The long internal transition struggles in Nigeria, France and the United Kingdom will finally conclude with new leadership even as South Africa, Russia and China begin wrestling with similar changes. Thailand, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador will all seek major constitutional changes, while governments of both Pakistan and India will attempt to shore up support after last quarter's setbacks. The renegade Serbian province of Kosovo -- after eight long years in the political wilderness -- seems set to achieve a final status that will look more or less like independence. Even the global economy is in transition as the United States struggles -- we predict, successfully -- to throw off a looming recession.

The second quarter will not be the window in which the major conflicts erupt. It will be a time for preparing, positioning, maneuvering. The real fights will come after all concerned emerge from their cocoons.