Sunday papers look at the Middle East

The NYTimes' Week in Reivew section today devotes lots of space to the Sunni-Shiite dynamic in the Middle East, a subject we've been writing about a great deal in recent weeks, and yesterday.    

Their main story talks mostly of Cheney's "Shiite tilt" theory, an idea that seems to be getting the appropriate amount of cold water thrown on it in Washington.  A second piece offers lots of good insight on how to think about Iran.  And a third gives some basic background on the Sunni-Shiite split. 

It is refreshing to see American elites beginning to come to terms with the complexity of finding a better path forward in the Middle East today, a process greatly accelerated by the Iraq Study Group Report.  But at the same time this complexity, and the utter mess our Iraq policy has brought, seems to be causing a dangerous paralysis in the White House.  As the Washington Post reports this am, and has been confirmed in many other stories, our President seems to be rejecting any new thinking on the Middle East, and will end up deciding to ride out his current failed strategy.  

No matter how they dress up this version of "stay the course," progressives cannot for one moment accept a "new path forward" that is not a better one.  All of us need to prepare for what is shaping up to be a major and sustained debate about the objectives of American foreign policy and a new strategy for the Middle East early next year.