An American in Turkey

Alright, I'm about to leave on a bus for Istanbul and I've found time to make one last blog entry before getting back to the states. I'll make a full blog entry from the US reflecting more on my time here as a whole later next week. Last weekend was spent up in the Black Sea town of Amasra. This completes one of my travel objectives to visit every sea that touches Turkey. The town itself is very quite, as it is way out of tourist season. The scenery there is beautiful with lots of cool cliffs and small islands. There is something really cool about knowing there is only a thousand miles of water between you and the Crimea. To think at one time this gigantic body of water was essentially and Ottoman lake! Aside from the scenery, smells and sounds, there isn't a ton to do in Amasra besides eat fish and shop for trinkets. The fish there is quite good whether it is Hamsi (tiny sardine like fish) Mezgit (slightly larger fish) or the famous Istavrit (mackerel).

The other large event of the past week has been the passing of one of my teachers the great Stanford Shaw. He died on Friday after suffering a brain aneurysm a few days earlier, he was 83. It came as a shock to a lot of people in this community, surely this was a man of great importance to Ottoman history. He was the first outsider to be able to access the Ottoman archives, the founder of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and a fantastic teacher at UCLA, Harvard and most recently Bilkent. What surprised us most though was that this man did not let age stop him from working. Every morning before our 8.40 class he would get up at 3 and work on his still unfinished book on the Turkish War of Liberation and the early years of the republic. As a teacher and friend he was incredibly approachable, and lectured as if he were some sort of walking dictionary. He was very successful at relating the life of the Ottoman Empire to his Turkish students, often posing such questions as "Do you know what the old name of Istiklal Caddessi is?". Most certainly his work must be continued and taken as a model for the rising class of Turkish historians.

Well, its just about time for me to get going. I'm staying one night in Istanbul and getting on the 4.30 flight tomorrow to Heathrow, from where I will transfer to New York. I really do miss all of you and hope to share some cool stories and pictures.

Noel Kutlu Olsun (Merry Christmas)
Mutlu Yıllar (Happy New Year)

This weekend was a bit more low key than usual. I went on a day trip to Konya with my Islamic Art and Architecture class for a tour of Selcuk era monuments and artifacts. Konya is about three hours or so south of Ankara smack in the middle of the south central Anatolian region and is, I think, the fifth largest city in the country (behind Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana respectively) with a population around 700,000. Konya is known to be a bit more conservative politically and socially, and that at least is evident when one looks at its history. The Selcuks ruled for a few centuries (10th-12th AD) from this central location and brought with them a long cultural heritage from Iran and a longstanding rivalry with the Ayyubids in Syria. Their place in history marks them as the clear predecessors to the Ottomans, indeed the progenitors of Osman ruled in the province that bordered Byzantium in the northwest. The two most impressive sites in Konya are the Alaeddin Camii, built for the longest ruling and most prolific sultan Alaeddin Keykubad II. This mosque is wuite odd as it most likely began as a church and then was added onto several times over the course of sixty years. The most interesting peice of decoration is perhaps the main portal to its courtyard which features a black and white marble interlace that is characteristic of teh Selcuk's Syrian rivals. The second site, which is a bit later, is the Mevlana Türbesi complex. Inside this ornate complex lies the tomb of Celaladdin Rumi, who usually goes by just Rumi (not Rummy like the ex-Secretary of Defense, Roomie, like that guy that sleeps in that other bed in your room). Rumi is best known outside the Islamic world as a prolific poet, perhaps the most famous Islamic literatuer (its close between him and Ömer Khayam who wrote the Rubbayat). Inside the Islamic world, however, he is most famous for founding the famous Sufi order of Mevlevi, who are known in the West as the "Whirling Dervishes". Sufi is actually short for the Arabic word which transliterates as faylasuf, or philosopher. Sufis and dervishes are the center of the mystical portion of Islam and are roughly equivocal to Monks and Saints of Christianity. The Mevlevis believe one can have a personal connection with God through their particular dance in which they whirl, furiously dizzying themselves to the point of euphoria. The order is essentially banned under Republican Turkish law, but dance troops who respect the heritage are allowed to perform the ceremony for the public. Under normal circumstances, an actual Sema (the ceremony in which they whirl) cannot be viewed by the public, so the performers you might see today probably aren't actual Sufis. Aside from these two sites we saw a couple of old medreses that are now tile museums with artifacts from the surrounding Selcuk excavations. We also paid a visit to the nearby Saadettin Caravansaray. The Selcuks were quite prolific overland traders and are credited with firmly establishing the Silk Route in Anatolia.

Next weekend I'm supposedly going to the southeast, particularly Urfa and Harran. I might post before then, I might not.

Güle Güle

I'm sorry I've been neglecting the blog recently, so here's a round up of events since Efes:

The Pope: I know a lot of you were curious about how I fared in my attempt to "see" the Pope last Tuesday, so here is how it went. I planned on catching him near Anıt Kabır (Ataturk's Mausoleum) as he was supposed to give the obligatory wreath laying ceremony there immediatley after arriving in Ankara. Me and about fifteen other students went. We were denied access to the monument, which was expected, so we decided to wait along the motorcade route, just to see what would happen. What followed was actually quite unexpected and somewhat odd. The motorcade route, as expected, was heavily gaurded by almost a thousand police officers with various types of weapons, ranging from the automatic to blunt force variety. We saw a group of at least four snipers on top of a building that had a good line of sight with the parade route, surely the Turkish government was anticipating some kind of riot. Paradoxically my group of fifteen or so students was far and away the largest civilian assembly of any kind along the route. There were several stragglers who were out walking their dog or eating at a local döner stand, but certainly noone who posed any sort of threat. As time went on, three more busloads of police in riot gear unloaded right in front of us. We were also subsequently interviewed by a few of the local TV stations that were there, presumably those without the high media credentials to get inside the monument. We were asked pretty general questions through translation about why we were here or if we thought the Pope coming was a good idea, all pretty innocuous. Then the security started to tense up a bit and a few cars come down the road, followed by the Vatican motorcade at about 30-40 mph. The Pope was in the third car back, something resembling a Lincoln Towncar, and quite visible, which is odd because one would think a motorcade for a head of state would have tinted windows. In all, I got a glimpse of the Pope and witnessed the rediculousness of the media firestorm that preluded the event in the Western media. In all the biggest protest of the day no doubt came from working mothers in the city who were stuck in long traffic gridlock caused by the Pope's motorcade (my own bus home was stopped dead for 30 minutes).

I've made two trips the last two weekends, one to the north central river town of Amasya and a return to Istanbul this past weekend. The Amasya trip was interesting because this is a town that every civilization to ever rule in Anatolia from the Hittites to the Ottomans has held. The town is smushed in between two rock faces which are dotted with giant rock tombs which date from the Pontic era. There are a few Selcuk era mosques there that are of note, particularly the Gök Medrese-Camii complex which has an interesting conflation of Anatolia-Syrian and Iranian structures. Istanbul was a lot of fun, I went back to Topkapı Sarayı and got to see the Harem, or the living quarters of the Sultan and his wives. It was fascinating to see these rooms in relatively good condition even though the elements pose a big threat to this unheated, uninsulated group of rooms. This was followed by another trek in the Kapalı Carşı (Covered Bazaar) where I finished up my Christmas shopping.

Most of my time the past few weeks has been spent researching for my paper. I've been looking into education reform in the reign of Abdulhamid II in the late 19th and early 29th centuries. One thing I've noticed as I examine how this Sultan tried to save a dying Empire, I've noticed subsequently how Imperial Britain and the modern "post-imperialist" United States have all run into similar problems, particularly Iraq. So far my assessment notices a common thread, all these governments tried to stuf ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag. This is pertinent because of the newly released Iraq Study Group report (for the love of God, don't waste your money on Amazon, download it for free at www.usip.org). I've only gotten a cursory look at the report, but there are a few issues that need to be raised. While the commission was certainly high profile (aside from Lee Hamilton and James Baker, it features Ed Meese the Attny General under Reagan and Sandra Day O'Connor), but throughout the process of interviews (of which there were at least 50) only one university professor and one Turk were consulted. By and large this was compiled by think-tank types who have spent little time studying the history of the region, its language or engaged thoroughly in its religious conflict. That said, you all would be well informed to read it because it does provide a lot of basic information about the situation there that most Americans don't know or comprehend. So read it, but don't stop there, pick up Stanford Shaw's The Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol. II, or Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong?, or if you're short on time, just watch Lawrence of Arabia! America needs to wise up to Islam and Middle Eastern history or else we're in for a long, dark, bruising experience with no end in sight.

I hope everyone back home had a great Thanksgiving, and in case you were wondering I had a pretty decent one. My group and I went to the American-Turkish Association and had turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie (something you really can't find here). I know everyone back home likes to joke about "eating turkey in Turkey", but the truth is it isn't called "turkey" here, its called "hindi" which oddly enough is also what they call "India". So, I have really been eating India in Turkey, and truth be told I've also eaten a good bit of Egypt, seeing as the name "Mısır" is also applied to that countries main agricultural export -- corn.

I mentioned in my last post that there was a request to post about what I'm studying here, so here are my thoughts from both a specific view of what I am studying in particular, and what the Ivory Tower is like half a world away from home.

Needless to say a lot of my time here is spent learning Turkish, which is a surprisingly easy language to learn, especially since Atatürk changed the script from Arabo-Ottoman to modified Latin. There are also many cognates I've picked up on from my Arabic classes over the past two years, though I wish I was able to keep up with that language more than I have.

I've also been taking a class on Islamic Art and Archaeology from the 8th through the 13th centuries, covering the Umayyad dynasty through the Anatolian Seljuks (predecessors to the Ottomans). The class has been very interesting and has certainly given me a new appreciation to the arts and in particular the plethora of mosques and palaces I've seen here in Turkey. It also sparks another travel bug in me that makes me want to go to places like Spain to see the Great Mosque of Cordoba or to Syria to see the Great Mosque of Damascus. These two in particular mosques strike my fancy because they both have rich histories in both the Islamic and Christian faiths. The Great Mosque of Damascus is seen as the oldest surviving mosque in the world and evolved from the church structure that was the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Byzantine times (indeed for a time the Muslims shared the area with the surrounding Christians, opening the Basilica to them on Sundays for mass). The mosque even still has a large shrine in its prayer hall that houses the head of St. John the Baptist, and was visited by Pope John Paul II (imagine that! a Pope praying Christian prayers inside a mosque). The Great Mosque of Cordoba is an example of the opposite effect. When the Umayyads were thrown out of Syria one of their family fled through north Africa, gathered a force of Berbers and led an invasion into Andalusia thus establishing the Umayyad (or Moorish) dynasty of Spain which lasted about 300 years. The mosque itself is a fantastic exemplar of intricate architecture, horseshoe arches and splendid mosaic. Some time after its completion Christian forces were able to push out the Umayyads, this process became known as the reconquista. The citizens of Cordoba would not let this jewel be destroyed as the Spaniards wanted, and so a compromise was made and a large Cathedral was built smack in the middle of the existing structure so that in order to reach the prayer hall of the mosque you must walk through the Cathedral.

This has been very exciting to study this sort of art, but truth be told is hasn't been my primary focus. I've been doing a lot of research this semester on the modernization of the Ottoman Empire. In particular I've been studying the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, who ruled from 1876-1909 and by all accounts was the last Sultan to harness any real power before the Committee on Union and Progress (CUP) took over and led the empire into World War I. Abdulhamid was a very dynamic character. He was a shy and aloof child who grew into sort of an antisocial young prince. He was convinced that his father Abdulaziz (who was forced to abdicate because he would not install a constitution) had not committed suicide, but was murdered. He ascended to the throne after his brother Murad V who was labeled as insane, left him as the last member of the House of Osman. His reign is often characterized as that of a violent, autocratic reactionary who pushed policies of Pan Islam, destroyed the Constitution and lost an awful war with Russia. There is a good bit of truth to these accusations, but they only address one side of the story. Abdulhamid was arguably the only Sultan to realize the Ottoman Empire was falling apart on all accounts. He realized that more important than securing the borders and fending off feasting Imperial powers in Europe, he must modernize the countries infrastucture and society while unifying it under the only banner he had, Islam. Indeed he was acting on a survival instinct, which made him quite paranoid of bureaucrats and kept a tight circle around him. He suspended Parliament before the war with Russia in 1877 (though in all technicalities he did not suspend the Constitution, he knew it would eventually be important to bring that back, though it didn't happen until almost 40 years later), and went about reforming the education system, building railroads, instituting the telegraph and participating in world cultural affairs, such as the Columbia Exhibition at the 1892 World's Fair (which, of all places, appeared on the Midway in Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago had just been founded). In many ways Abdulhamid's reign was the first turbulent step towards a modern, democratic Muslim country, the kind the Republic is today and how we hope the rest of the Middle East may someday turn out to be.

That said, academics in general here is interesting. Turkey is still developing its academic institutions and currently the academic elite is a small, tight knit group. There is a heavy emphasis on pre-professional education, by far the most popular major here at Bilkent is Management. Indeed many of the people who take classes like art or history only do so to fill a requirement, they for the most part believe there is no money to be made in these sort of esoteric subjects. These people are right to a large extent. This developing country has a lot of money for people who want to manage companies or engineer new technology. Endeavors of career academics are seen as a luxury item, someone must have money from somewhere else or expect to practice outside the country. This seems like a very natural situation for a country that has yet to build or flourish a stable economy or a democracy that is less reliant on its military. Someday, though, these sort of 'esoteric' subjects will be seen as noble pursuits for any Turk with the interest to pursue. Creativity and philosophy are important to democracy, and its something we in our own country take for granted. While in order for the country to run itself efficiently it is absolutley necessary to have business managers and doctors and lawyers, but without our artists, historians and philosophers no doubt a country loses sight of its self-worth and its creativity, thus making it more adept to a paternalistic, authoritarian regime that acts on the whim of a few and not the will of many.

I'm headed out to Amasya and the Black Sea region this weekend, so I'll post again early next week.

Over and out.

I'm now back from another weekend getaway, this time to the town of Selçuk and the neighboring ruins of the ancient city of Efes, or as its better known - Ephessus.

We arrived into town itself after about 8 hours of travelling and lucked out getting into a pansiyon owned and run by two of the nicest Turks we've met so far. The owner, Derviş by name, and his brother Osman, who runs a carpet shop, were incredibly friendly to us and their pansiyon is beautifully decorated by many items from Derviş's former occupation as a carpenter. His delightful mother cooked us a great dinner and we retired the night going to his friend's restaurant for nargile and çiğ köfte (a raw meat and cracked wheat concoction eaten with lettuce). The town of Selçuk is actually a small wonder. Ephessus is the biggest tourist attraction outside of Istanbul, and one would think that the town would succoumb to economic pressures and sell out property to large hotel chains much like other lesser tourist sites have. Yet this town has maintained its cultural integrity by only offering a clutch of nice pansiyons, thus making it unaccomodating to large tour groups who now opt to stay in slightly farther away cities like Izmir and Kuşadası.

The town itself has a few historical sites, most prominently the ruins of the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist. This former basilica is currently a very active archeological site, as we saw many workers on hand while we visited. It was certainly a massive church which is believed to have three large domes and several different compartments.

Just up the street is Isa Bey Camii, a 14th century mosque that is also undergoing heavy renovation due to earthquakes. Restoration of mosques is a much different process than churches in Turkey. The Churches are to be preserved as historic sites and with as much of the original material in place as possible. Mosques for the most part are to be restored so that they may continue functioning, thus much grander and detailed restoration and rebuilding takes place. Thus this mosque while in a very old frame, had a very modern inside. We also met with the imam there who watches over the place while it is being restored. He gave us a short history of the mosque and was quite pleasant to talk to.

The ruins of Ephessus are quite massive. Its hard to expain all that is there without pictures because there is so much. The history of this city is also vast. It is one of the Seven Churches of Asia talked about in the Book of Revelations and it and its surroundings were at one point or another home to St. Paul (of Tarsus), John the Evangelist, the Virgin Mary, and perhaps John of Patmos (supposed writer of the Book of Revelations). The most impressive of the ruins are the Theater which seats up to 20,000 people and still plays host to music festivals and plays in the summertime and the Library of Celsius whose massive façade is incredibly well preserved.

The last stop on our trip was to Meryemana. This house about 7km from Efes is believed by many to be the last residence of the Virgin Mary. It sits on a forested mountain side far out of the surrounding civilization. Today it is a simple two room chapel/sanctuary. The story behind it goes as such. A woman in about the 3rd century A.D. who bore the stigmata had visions of Mary and a house. She recorded these visions and descriptions of the house. A century or two later, a monk studied these visions and set out about Anatolia searching for the house. Ephessus and its vicinity makes a lot of sense theologically because Jesus imparted the care of his mother to John the Evangelist who was assigned Asia Minor as a province of evangelism and is also known to have lived and died there.

A busy weekend it was. We're still undecided what to do next weekend, but there has beena request for a report of what I'm doing academically here and I think it would be a good idea for a column later this week.

Görüşörüz

Some friends and I headed back west this weekend and visited the city of Bursa. We spent two days there visiting the old city and seeing Uludağ, the 2500m (roughly 8000ft) mountain that borders it.

Today Bursa is a crowded (by Turkish standards) city of one million people. It's economy has boomed recently because many European car manufacturers have set up plants nearby and have thus accented the tourism industry there. Bursa is a typical winter getaway, but not necesarily for Westerners. Arabs are known to frequent the Çekirge (grasshopper) region of the city for its exquisite clutch of hamams and proximity to Uludağ where is the best skiing in Turkey can be found. But this is all an echo of the city's historical importance.

Bursa is in fact the first Ottoman city and its capital until they crossed the Bosphorus and conquered Edirne in the 15th century. Much like the United States moved its capital from Philadelphia to New York to Washington D.C., Bursa was not large enough for the quickly growing Empire and not glorious enough to strike awe into the hearts of the world. That said there is a lot of history there in the seat of Osman, Orhan, Murad and Beyazid. First there are three imperial mosques in the town center, which I was able to visit.

The oldest of the these mosques is Orhan Gazi Camii. This is a smaller mosque which introduces the early Ottoman style of a t-shape. This mosque was built in the early 14th century supposedly under the second Sultan Orhan, but has been heavily remodeled since and seems nothing of its age on the inside.

Not more than 100 meters from Orhan Gazi is Ulu Camii, or the Great Mosque. This massive congregational mosque was built under Beyazid the first. Beyazid was leaving Bursa to campaign Europe and promised that if he returned victorious he would build twenty mosques in the honor of the Ottomans. He did return victorious, but instead of twenty mosques, he built one large mosque with twenty domes. I found Ulu Camii to be incredibly unique. It's floor space is comparable to Sultanahmet or Suleymaniye in Istanbul but it does not feature the classic Ottoman style of massive cascading and vaulted domes. Each of the twenty domes in Ulu Camii is on the same plane. The center dome is made of clear glass so there is an abundance of natural light inside. Underneath the main dome there is a large marble fountain for muslims to do their ablutions in (which I imagine is especially helpful on typical rainy Bursa days). The area around the mihrab was under construction so I did not get to see that, but there was still a lot to see inside. Ulu Camii has a prolific amount of calligraphy on its walls. Almost every space on the wall has some sort of calligraphy or inscription. The other things that struck me about Ulu Camii was that it was certainly the busiest mosque I've been in. There seemed to be very few tourists in there and even though we made a point to go outside of prayer time, the mosque was full of people praying and talking, children running about, etc. There were white boards with what seemed to be announcements on them and, in all, it seemed the most like a christian church that I've seen. This was certainly emphasized the congregational aspect of this mosque, unlike the mosques of Istanbul which were made to glorify leaders, this was certainly built with the community in mind.

The third mosque is known as Yeşil Camii or The Green Mosque. This mosque is on the order of the size of Orhan Gazi and was built in the early 15th century by Çelebi Mehmet (or Prince Mehmet, he later became Sultan Mehmet I). This mosque has a bounty of decoration, mostly in an Iranian style with the tiles and materials coming from Tabriz. The most interesting aspect of this mosque from a decorative standpoint is the Imperial Loge which sits in the back of the mosque two stories about the hall. It's decoration is hard to explain. There are many tiles that line the arched loge in a star pattern, sticking out at various levels to give the appearance of the night sky. The artist who designed this is known as Al-Majnoon which, depending on your Arabic or Persain, means "The Crazy One" or "The Intoxicated One".

Bursa was not only a religous center however. It is home to the biggest covered bazaar I have seen outside of Istanbul. The central attraction to the bazaar is the Koza Han, or Silk Market. For centuries the famed Silk Road to China went through Anatolia and Bursa was the last stop before you reached Europed. Since its construction silk worm merchants have gathered here once a year, usually in late spring, to auction off their worms and pure silk. This still continues today and has seen a bit of resurgence of late as European markets in Rome and France have declined.

That more or less sums up my trip to Bursa. There are pictures up on Facebook, but they are still not letting me post a link to them on this site. I may be setting up an account somewhere else for the remainder of the trip. This weekend we will visit Ancient Ephessus and Meryemana.

'till then, Hosça Kalın!

Let me start off this pot-luck post by letting you know that it seems Facebook has pulled its feature that allows me to give you a link on the blog. Not sure why they did this, in fact I'm not sure why they do more than half the things they do. If you would like a link to the albums I've posted I think I can email or send a personal invitation to you to view them. If not, if I ever run into you I'll be happy to set you down for the slide show.

If you haven't already heard it seems Pope Benedict XVI is visiting Turkey the last weekend or so in November. He is making what I believe is a four day excursion beginning in Ankara and proceeding to Izmir/Ephesus, and Istanbul. It is His Holiness' first excursion to a predominantly Muslim country. The purpose of the visit is rather unclear. The only certain things I can tell that he will do will be to make a pilgrimage of sorts to Ephesus and nearby Meryemana and perhaps meet with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch who resides in Istanbul. The visit, as you probably know, has been followed very closely after the remarks he gave in Germany a few months ago. People here have had various reactions. Immediatley following the speech a group of lower level government employees filed a petition to have him arrested on arrival for "insulting the Turkish Republic", this assuredly failed. Today, as there have been a few other times, there was a protest outside the Italian Embassy (not sure why the Italian embassy, I guess they all said 'hey, wait the Vatican doesn't have an embassy here, what is the next best thing?') and a man fired a pistol into the air and threw it onto the grounds of the Embassy. This apparantley followed a report that teh Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will not hold an audience with the Pope.

This event, in my mind, marks the latest in a line of events that could precipitate some rather unappetizing outcomes in this part of the world. Beginning with the Pope's remarks in Germany, following with the French Parliament passing the Armenian Genocide legislation, and perhaps ending with the impending disintegration of EU talks the West is one step at a time pushing its most valuable, trustworthy ally in the Muslim world right out the door. The sentiment here seems to suggest Turkey is starting to believe in its growing economic strength, its military prowess, and the value of its real estate and the fact that it doesn't really need the West as much as the West needs it. There are even a large group of people who think if the whole partnership with the EU doesn't work out, Turkey can just as easily turn its head East and cozy up to powers such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt (this is much easier said than done, but not out of the realm of possibility given the attitudes of Mssr. Chirac and Mdme. Merkel).

Which brings me around to the current mid-term elections in the United States. Those of you who know me, know I have a gauntlet of opinions about the current state of the government, I don't intend to bore you with opinions you've probably heard before. With that in mind, as well as the fact that I'm sitting in Ankara right now, I want to expain why a few issues are important and how Turkey fits into them.

First, there is Iraq. Turkey's relations with the US have been cool at best since it refused to allow US troops to enter Iraq through the north via its border there in 2003. Apparantley they didn't get Mr. Bush's "with us or against us" memo (you know the one that was sent to Pakistan with a nuclear threat attached to it, gotta love Bush's diplomacy!). Fast forward three years and the situation here could not be more dire and could not be more fragile. I firmly believe it was wrong to invade Iraq (have so since the beginning), however, if the situation is not handled properly now it could mean absolute disaster in this region. President Bush sure has created a mess, but that does not mean the whole country can just leave the bull in the china closet and hope he can't do any more damage. I don't pretend to have a solution for this conflict, but I can tell you a few things. First, I would avoid like the plague any diplomat who believes a three state system (Kurds in the north Sunnis in the middle and Shiites in the south). Here is how this scenario would work out (and I'm fairly certain of this): Sunni and Shi'ia violence would increase at an unprecedented pace resulting utter lawlessness in most of the country, second an independent Kurdistan would ultimately mean war with either or both Iran and Turkey (both of whom would feel quite threatened). A pull out now or pull out over the horizon plan would result in a similar situation. That leaves the current military force and the haphazard democracy in place to quell the violence and instability. But there is one stone the Bush administration has left unturned, and has done so deliberatley out of pride (ultimately the aspect of Mr. Bush that undermines all his diplomatic efforts) and that is Iraq's neighbors, particularly Iran, Turkey and Syria. Sure, we don't like Iran, but they were of service to us when we needed intelligence in Afghanistan after 9/11, and the current Iraqi PM has already beat us to the chase by making overtures to Iran to lend a helping hand with the violence. Syria is in Iran's back pocket, if but certainly we have the power to take them out of that pocket by sitting down with them and bettering economic relations. Turkey is the insurance policy. What I'm talking about would of course be a tremendous risk and would take a true genious of a diplomat. The sad thing is, we (and by we I mean Democrats for not reversing the 2004 presedential ticket AND Republicans for their blank check of support for the President), missed our chances for that diplomat to be there.

There is a reason that last paragraph is so complicated, because that is how this situation is. Its not black and white as the Republican Party would have you believe, but its not unwinnable as some Democrats would have you believe. What our country, nay the world, needs is not hardened rhetoric, we need an intelligent, flexible set of diplomats who work for a leade who knows when he needs to take a spoon full of sugar and let the medicine go down. The boastful "Proud to be and American" slogan was great for national morale after 9/11, but it has cost us more than we know.