Open Source, an always insight­ful pub­lic radio pro­gram, aired last week a show that took a broad look at the win­ners and losers of the Iraq war. Tak­ing up a theme that was also recent­ly explored in an edi­tion of For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine, the host, Christo­pher Lydon, spoke with a pan­el of experts from respect­ed think tanks, uni­ver­si­ties, and news­pa­pers, and, togeth­er, they drew con­clu­sions about win­ners and losers, some of which aren’t so obvi­ous. Here’s a quick recap, but we rec­om­mend giv­ing the show a lis­ten (iTunes — Feed — Mp3) and tak­ing a look at its well-done blog.

Win­ners:

• Iran & Shi­ism: With Iraq, its tra­di­tion­al rival, in chaos, Iran is now free to project its pow­er across the Mid­dle East and tilt the bal­ance of region­al pow­er in favor of Shi­ite Islam. It’s part­ly because Iran is mak­ing such a strong show­ing that the hawks in Wash­ing­ton may feel the strate­gic need to even­tu­al­ly use mil­i­tary force against Iran. In this sense, the US is play­ing out a more extreme ver­sion of the strat­e­gy it used dur­ing the Iran-Iraq War that dragged on through the 1980s. Weak­en one pow­er, then the oth­er.
• Chi­na:  No one is notic­ing it now, but down the road, we might be writ­ing a his­to­ry that talks about how the US adven­ture in Iraq gave Chi­na the room to emerge rapid­ly as a new super­pow­er — a super­pow­er that could plau­si­bly present itself to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as more diplo­mat­ic and peace­ful than the US alter­na­tive.
• al-Qae­da: The Iraq war has helped al-Qaeda’s recruit­ment efforts, pre­cise­ly as many warned, and, if the US even­tu­al­ly aban­dons Iraq, they’ll feel embold­ened no doubt.
• Arab Dic­ta­tors: The heat had been ratch­eted up against many Mid­dle East dic­ta­tors, but with every­one dis­tract­ed by Iraq, they are able to per­pet­u­ate their cor­rupt rule for yet a while longer.
• Mul­ti-Lat­er­al­ism, Old Europe & the UN: They were all dis­missed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion in the run up to the war, but they’re all look­ing bet­ter and more worth­while with each pass­ing day.

Losers:

• Iraq & The Unit­ed States: Two obvi­ous picks.
• Uni­lat­er­al­ism & The Neo-Cons: The neo-con approach has splen­did­ly dis­cred­it­ed itself, but the rub is that neo-cons still sit in pow­er and they may uni­lat­er­al­ly force their way into Iran before the peo­ple get to the bal­lot box again.
• Tony Blair & the Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship between the US and Eng­land: Tony Blair is say­ing his long good­bye. He’ll be gone before too long, and, with him, may go the only oth­er sub­stan­tial mem­ber of the “Coali­tion of the Will­ing.”
• The Price of Oil: It’s a los­er if you’re a con­sumer … but not if you’re an exec­u­tive at Exxon.

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

Sev­er­al months ago, The New York Times ran a rather strik­ing piece
detail­ing how key US lead­ers
— ones play­ing inte­gral roles in the war
on ter­ror and the war in Iraq — could­n’t explain the basic dif­fer­ence between a Shi­ite and a Sun­ni. The dis­clo­sure, how­ev­er, was­n’t ter­ri­bly
sur­pris­ing. We were, after all, already sev­er­al years into fight­ing a war that was premised on see­ing only rosy sce­nar­ios, not incon­ve­nient details or
hard real­i­ties on the ground.

Real­i­ty is nowa­days com­ing back with a vengeance, talk about
civ­il war and a Sun­ni-Shi­ite divide has entered our
polit­i­cal vocab­u­lary, and we’re final­ly doing the home­work that we should
have done years ago. This week, NPR’s Morn­ing Edi­tion has put togeth­er a help­ful five-part series, called “The Par­ti­sans of Ali: A His­to­ry of Shia Faith and Pol­i­tics,”
that explores the his­tor­i­cal divi­sions between Shia and Sun­ni Mus­lims,
giv­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the Shi­ites them­selves. If you haven’t
already, you might as well bone up on this mate­r­i­al, since it will shape our nation­al expe­ri­ence for years to come, regard­less of how
many exit-plans are being drawn up right now. All pro­grams can be
down­loaded as mp3’s. A gen­er­al overview of the series (which has a lot
of good sup­port­ing mate­ri­als) can be found here. Mean­while, you can access the indi­vid­ual dai­ly pro­grams below:

• Mon­day: The Ori­gins of the Shia-Sun­ni Split
• Tues­day: The Shia Rise Amid Cen­tu­ry of Mideast Tur­moil.
• Wednes­day: The Export of Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion Spawns Vio­lence
• Thurs­day: Iraq War Deep­ens Sun­ni-Shia Divide
• Fri­day: The Unit­ed States and The Sec­tar­i­an Divide (Link to come)