A little score keeping.\u00c2\u00a0 No surprises, but some helpful guideposts:<\/p>\n
1. Rice’s Diplomatic Outreach to Iran<\/a>: Right Zionists… very upset<\/a>; Right Arabist establishment… quite delighted<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Cheney’s visit to Pakistan<\/a>: definitely looking like a crackdown on the Taliban<\/a> (about which I was initially skeptical<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 There are some signs<\/a> that Russia and the US are both competing for the loyalty of the so-called “Tajik clique” that currently “governs” Afghanistan.<\/p>\n 3. A pro-Shiite Tilt in Iraq<\/a>: more howls of protest from the pro-Sunni political elite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A little score keeping.\u00c2\u00a0 No surprises, but some helpful guideposts: 1. Rice’s Diplomatic Outreach to Iran: Right Zionists… very upset; Right Arabist establishment… quite delighted. 2. Cheney’s visit to Pakistan: definitely looking like a crackdown on the Taliban (about which I was initially skeptical).\u00c2\u00a0 There are some signs that Russia and the US are both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,6,3,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}