The Wa Po has an editorial that isn’t quite ENTIRELY wrong. I consider these developments encouraging, and hope for further improvment.

LIKE THE Lebanon war of 2006, Israel’s battle with Hamas in Gaza is producing a schism among Muslim states. Iran and its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have joined Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership in calling for a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel — and also against the governments of Egypt and Jordan, which are accused of silently supporting Israel’s air attacks. Those governments, along with the West Bank Palestinian administration of President Mahmoud Abbas, have issued rote condemnations of Israel. But they have also accused Hamas of triggering the conflict by ending a ceasefire — and they have responded harshly to the Iranian camp, which has “practically declared war on Egypt,” as Cairo’s foreign minister angrily put it yesterday. Far from encouraging an uprising, Mr. Abbas’s police broke up demonstrations by West Bank Palestinians on Sunday. Egyptian security forces have forcibly prevented Palestinians from crossing the border from Gaza.

Israeli and U.S. officials see this divide as encouraging. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has frequently spoken of an emerging coalition of “mainstream” or “moderate” Arab states opposing Iran and its “extremist” allies. One problem with this analysis is that the split is more sectarian than ideological. Among those counted in the moderate camp is Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, which shares Hamas’s fundamentalist creed. And among those joining in the unmitigated denunciations of Israel yesterday were the Shiite rulers of Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

It will be noted that it is correct, in part, because the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, virile Ball Gunner said most of it, yesterday.

What we’re witness now is the phenomenon Randy Newman referred to as “♫ BIIIIG HAAAAT NO CATTLE ♫” The various mid-East countries pumping their fists at each other. Iran could not prosecute a successful border war against the T-ball league military of Iraq, much less declare war on Egypt. Jordan has made a decades-long policy of tactical disentanglement with the region. Syria hasn’t enough wild hairs to look cross eyed as Israel and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has found a balance between stoking ignorant hatred with the Muslim brotherhood and making good dough with the Jewish brotherhood across the way.

Saudi Arabia, which is to moderate camp like the Detroit Lions are to the Super Bowl is not in the habit of making overt actions not blessed by the Powers That Be in D.C.

The Wa Po concludes with this assessment:

Yet, as in Lebanon, no decisive military victory is likely: Israel will not be able to topple Hamas unless it fully reoccupies Gaza, and it will probably not be able even to stop the rocket attacks on its cities without some kind of political settlement.

I’m going to conclude that this national-paper scouping Ball Gunner needs a raise.

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Good news from the NY Times in a world dreadfully short of it: The Marines are leaving a peaceful Fallujah:

FALLUJA, Iraq — In Falluja, a town that rises abruptly out of the vast Syrian Desert an hour west of Baghdad, nearly every building left standing has some sort of hole in it.

Mosques are without their minarets. Apartment walls have been peeled away by artillery shells. A family’s kitchen is full of tiny holes made by a fragmentary grenade.

Of all the places fighting has raged since the American invasion nearly six years ago, Falluja — the site of two major battles and the town where American security contractors were killed and their bodies hung from a local bridge — stands out as one of the bloodiest and most intractable.

This month, as the last American marines prepare to leave Camp Falluja, the sprawling base a few miles outside of town where many of the American troops who fought the two battles were stationed, Falluja has come to represent something unexpected: the hope that an Iraqi town once at the heart of the insurgency can become a model for peace without the United States military.

I’ve expressed doubt before about whether the Iraq military mission will be successful, and I think the utopian vision of Iraq as a western democracy is a castle with foundation firmly rooted in the clouds, but an Iraq that is stable and at least benign is vitally important for global security.

With the credit crunch likely spurning a period of retrenchment, a failure in Iraq would place the U.S. entering the new era already in retreat. Hope springs eternal that the U.S. will be able to pull off a successful withdrawal and let the nation continue its evolution; whatever happens after we leave is no longer on our hands. Rumblings from the President-Elect seem to be backpedaling on promises of a rapid withdrawal. This is, in my opinion, the worst possible decision. A time will soon be presented for us to leave Iraq gracefully, if we do not seize it then we will leave Iraq, regardless. There is gratitude in Iraq for our work, certainly, but Iraq is not Germany, they will not be content to house troops of a Christian nation on their soil indefinitely.

Let us see what the New Year brings. Onward, yon Ball Gunnerettes.