Craig Murray demonstrates, in a  brief post, that the essence of conspiracy theory is not simply that occult explanations exist, but that no other explanations are possible:

It is hard not to feel happy at the discomfiture of US hubris.

Not only is the most important US/Israeli client dictator in danger of overthrow in Egypt, the last remaining rationale of their Afghan policy is collapsing, with Russia moving in on the trans Afghan gas pipeline.
http://centralasianewswire.com/Russian-TAPI-involvement-damages-Turkmenistan-US/viewstory.aspx?id=3075

Interesting times.

This holds that American support for tyrannical Arab dictators was not Kissingeresque Realpolitik, but rather that the genuine end of policy over many decades and through many different Presidents was to maintain tyrants in place.

It holds that Taliban nurturing of Al Qaeda up to 9/11 had nothing to do with the military intervention there, which was entirely to do with energy interests – and therefore a form of Realpolitik, this being a convenient explanation for one but not the other of Murray’s targets.

It’s a shame, really. One of the wonderful things the web has brought us is the chance to read the unfiltered voices of former diplomats like Charles Crawford and Craig Murray. Murray can be passionate, informed, moral and, importantly, interesting when he writes about foul dictatorships to which he was posted.

And then, occasionally, the maniac sticks his head out of the cave and bellows.

Incidentally, can hubris be discomfited?

The political fray is a stormy place, like the edge of a wild ocean where waves crash over every participant, buffeting them with challenges and hatreds and dispute. But there’s still, normally, a sense that the water is clean, that hope provides as much energy as does hate, that even those we disagree with are striving to make things better, as they see it.

This week, though, the water seemed to turn to sewage. A vicious, insane attack by a lone gunman in Tucson, Arizona, was seized on as an excuse to attack opponents in terms devoid of moral and intellectual integrity, leading to days where the political debate seemed a matter simply of wading through ordure, hurling handfuls at long-standing opponents.

Then, yesterday, President Obama went to Tucson. Hindsight will place his speech more accurately in the pantheon of great political oratory than we can in its immediate aftermath, but it was a great speech. He praised Republicans and Democrats, septuagenarian lovers dying in one another’s arms, young and old heroes who tackled the gunman, and a nine year old girl who went, full of optimism, to see her political representative, only to be shot in the back by someone for whom the word ‘ordure’ is scarcely a metaphor.

I defy you to be unmoved by this passage:

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.”  On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life.  “I hope you help those in need,” read one.  “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart.  I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today

The speech can be seen (and read) here.