Fouad Ajami, a noted Middle East scholar from Johns Hopkins was not too keen on this idea during an interview with Lou Dobbs this afternoon. He said that while this seems like a good idea politically, and therefore one that the admin. will pursue, that it is not a good idea practically. The Jordanians are Sunni (I believe this is what he said) and that they will not be welcomed by the Kurds or the Shi'a. Also, they view the Shi'a holy sites as, I think his word was, 'abominations.' What wasn't brought up was that if a predominantly Shi'a nation also volunteered troops, this could work by having the Jordanians work the Sunni triangle, and the Shi'a nation work the non-Sunni central and Southern regions.
It wasn't brought up because Iran is the only country (not counting Iraq, of course) with a shi'a majority.
Could it still work without a Shi'a nation if the Jordanians were assigned only to the Sunni Triangle? If it could, great.
*buzzer* Azerbaijan is also a mostly Shiite country, they already sent a small number of troops to Afghanistan AND have offered to send peacekeeping forces to Iraq.
Talk about nitpicking. Azerbaijan has a miniscule military and the majority are not religious in the least. Oh, I left out Bahrain too, if you think they can help.
It would have been nice to have Arab support before the war, but I have always felt that Jordan is a key to peace in the region, so I welcome their offer. It is telling that he kept saying that Jordan is probably not the right country to be providing security. The other thing that really struck me was this: In his interview, King Abdullah also warned the US that lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was undermining America's hopes of being seen as a peace-maker in the Middle East. "Because people don't see the movement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, they look at Iraq and... they're very suspicious and they feel that this is just another extent of occupation." US Under-Secretary of State John Bolton rejected the charge. He said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not the root cause of unrest. "I don't think that is the only cause of terrorism. I think that that's a convenient excuse for a lot of the terrorists. I think much of it is aimed against the West in general and the United States in particular," Mr Bolton said. First, I remember thinking it was a huge blunder when Bush took over for the US to pull all the way back from the peace process. They need us in the middle if there is any hope. The key word is "middle." When Bush finally engaged in the process, he has been way to supportive of Isreal. Isreal is our ally, and we should support their interests up to a point, but we have to be more of a mediator that also supports the legitimate interests of Palestine for this to work. Second, I am continually struck by the arrogance of this administration. King Abdullah says "X" and immediately, a Busheep is out there contradicting him while using the term "I think" way too much. Jordan is our friend. The King of Jordan -- who has a huge Palestinian population in his country -- discusses openly the reasons why there is distrust of the US in the Arab world, and this clown says, "no King, you are incorrect about the attitudes of Arabs"???? Unbelievable.
That's interesting. The Arab countries that were against the statement of human rights and democracy to be made by the Arab league are nowhere to be found. Those who were for it, have offered to join the effort to modernize Iraq. BTW, Chris, The actions of Al Zaqari can't be explained by the Palistinian situation. See, he's a palistinian who would like nothing more than to kill King Abdullah. He wants to overthrough the government of Jordan. Our secretary was 100% right to tell the Arabs to stop waiting on Israel to make peace. It's no different than US blacks waiting on the white man to improve their lot. Arabs need to stop making excuses and move forward. This is what UBL is trying to do. Move forward on Arab politics, except he wants to do it at the point of a gun and install an extreme Islamist ideology.
Some potentially very good news out there - for getting our USA butts out of Iraq. Yeah, its complicated between the shia and sunni and kurds, but this does put more of an international flavor to things.