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    Want to know more about the issues discussed in the weekly World Watch Preview and Review? Try using Dennis L Hitzeman’s News Reading List.
Iraq
    The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people continues to move forward, with the cynical insurgents and sectarians insisting that the divides between the Iraqi people can only be resolved by civil war, while the disunited members of the nation’s first democratic government still stumble slowly toward the final formation of that government.
    Iraq, it seems, is neither in the clutches of a civil war nor in the clutches of democracy. Instead, it is in the clutches of the painfully complex politics of the Muslim-Arab Middle East. In this world, nothing is resolved quickly or without the shedding of blood, yet in the end, everything seems to reach resolution from a historical sense.
    So too will go Iraq. While this latest chapter of violence, both sectarian and insurgent- and that distinction is growing more artificial everyday-, is disheartening to those of us comfortably ensconced in the free, liberal West, it is the way things are done in places like Iraq.
    In the coming weeks, watch for a decrease in the violence in Iraq following the breakthrough formation of a central government, likely with a new prime minister. Watch also for a sudden increase in the visibility and force of Iraqi security forces. These developments will not mean that Iraq is yet stable, but they will be decisive steps in that direction.
France
    The labor riots in France just will not go away, now potentially followed by economy crippling nationwide strikes. These events reveal the dark, seething underbelly of the social-liberal system that has produced 20+% unemployment, double digit inflation, massive tax burdens, a birth rate that has declined below 1%- effectively negative according to the anthropologists- and entire sectors of the French society that have been so marginalized that they feel their only outlet is violence.
    It is these very kinds of factors that help breed the reactions to social-liberalism, things like radical religious zealotry and totalitarianism. France is a fruit ripe for the picking of neo-Nazi extremism and radical Islam. In the next few weeks, this latest upheaval will likely settle down, but in its ashes will be found the sparks of the next. How many times can the house of France burn before the whole thing collapses into a flaming wreck?
Israel
    Hamas rules Palestine, and the notoriously fickle Israeli voters are going to the polls. Meanwhile, Israel presses ahead with its unilateral determination of its borders- minus the occupied territories.
    One might assess that, if there has ever been a time in recent history, Israel is in a fighting mood. With Hamas in its own back yard and Iran building nukes against it a few hundred miles away, Israel is feeling the strain of being the most hated nation in the Muslim world. This is not to say that Israel will ever strike first, but there is some question as to whether Israel might let the events of the day carry everyone toward a fight. The developments of this region are definitely something to watch.
