Free Republic

The Arab League summit that began Thursday in Baghdad has illuminated the political and religious divisions splitting with Arab world, while powerful eastern non-Arab neighbor Iran looks on and tries to pull Iraq's strings. One of those fractures is between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, branded a would-be dictator by domestic rivals, who is sitting down with the new leaders of countries that have overthrown tyrants in the often-bloody Arab Spring revolutions. The meeting of Arab leaders in the cavernous Republican Palace built by Saddam Hussein is the first such gathering since those political convulsions began in Tunisia in January...

The shouting match that broke out at the March 1 Arab Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, was instructive on a number of levels. What it mostly confirmed was that even Arabs don't like [or trust] Arabs. Behind all the wrangling are some stark economic facts about the Middle East that go largely unreported. [1] Arab economies are performing very poorly due to the structural weaknesses of inadequate growth, high unemployment, and governments that don't manage their finances well. [2] The second part of the equation is the way Arab states spend lavishly for defense and security...