In June 14 elections are supposed to be held to elect Iran’s new president. The outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tumultuous time in office has left many dissatisfied especially since he has mismanaged the economy and made Iran’s international situation worse by his provocative behavior.

Now, however, the election process  itself may have broken down or at least is developing very much to the regime’s dislike. With less than a month to go before the elections–the campaign is only three weeks long to make things harder for the opposition–it isn’t even clear who the candidates are going to be. The six-member Council of Guardians has not yet decided who will be allowed to run. This council is controlled by the country’s real ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the complex maneuvers leading up to the election have given him a huge political headache.

The core of the problem is that there are three factions. Khamenei doesn’t want two of the factions– the super-hardliners and the reformists—to win, while the third group, the hardliners, are having trouble picking a candidate.

The super-hardline faction’s candidate is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad’s son-in-law and man widely seen as a puppet for him. Khamenei hates Mashaei and it is quite possible, though not inevitable, that Mashaei will be disqualified. At any rate, Mashaei won’t win the election

The potential “reform” candidate is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani but one must hesitate to call him a true reformer. Rafsanjani is an insider, indeed a former president (1989-1997), who used to be an ally of Khamenei but now is a fierce rival. Rafsanjani is pragmatic and reportedly conspicuously corrupt. He does not want to overturn the regime but change its direction, keep it more out of international trouble, and find some way to shed the sanctions imposed to stop Iran’s nuclear program. He would try to pull Iran back from international confrontations.

The 78-year-old Rafsanjani is a dubious hero. He is not part of the reform movement yet he is the best bet they have. The Iranian ruling elite hates him, too. There are genuine differences between him and Khamenei about the country’s direction. But even if he were to be allowed to win, there is the precedent of the relatively moderate President Muhammad Khatami who served eight years and was unable to change a single thing.

The first question is whether Rafsanjani would be seen as a real alternative by those who are discontented with the country’s current situation.  The second question is whether he would be allowed to run. The third question is whether he would be allowed to win if he received the most votes.

So far that means two “oppositionists,” though both could be considered part of the broader establishment. But who does the elite want to win? The problem is that they are not united and if that doesn’t change they would split the “conservative” vote.

There have been three potential establishment candidates. Perhaps the most likely consensus candidate and eventual winner is Saeed Jalili. He is very close to Khamenei and has been his head negotiator on nuclear issues. He is a former deputy foreign minister and member of Iran’s national security council who was badly wounded in the Iran-Iraq war.

Other possible Khamenei picks are former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and former speaker of parliament Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, both of whom are also close to the supreme leader.

Will Khamenei get his political troops in line? Can voters be intimidated or Rafsanjani be credibly smeared? Things are going to get very messy and the results are hardly likely to improve Iran’s image.

If Jalili wins, any attempt to portray him as a moderate will be ridiculous. He might be less provocative than Ahmadinejad, who seemed to delight in stirring up antagonisms and making statements that even Western leaders had to brand as provocative but the differences will be meaningless. And Jalili  or the other Khamenei loyalists will not retreat one step on pushing Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program.

Ironically, the main impact of the Iranian election may be on the West where articles and arguments are already appearing claiming that a post-election Iran will be more moderate and that the next Iranian president would be willing to abandon the regime’s subversive foreign policy and the nuclear weapons’ program. The idea of giving Iran a chance to show it has changed will probably take up Western negotiating policy for the rest of 2013 and into next year.

“So fragile was the structure of their reality that a single unsubsumed consciousness, a solitary ripple in their little pond was enough to roil the waters into a frothing, burbling foam.”—Norman Spinrad, The Void Captain’s Tale (1985)

Consider five factors that had no effect on the very warm reception given by President Barack Obama to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

– While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama, while being hosted by him, that he is going to defy the United States.

This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time, and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet, the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama — and for U.S. policy nowadays — and how little Obama will do about it.

– Equally bad: Erdogan directly promised Obama that he would conciliate with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooperated, because Obama asked him to do so. That’s what U.S. allies do. But immediately Erdogan showed he would pay no attention to the agreement he made.

His negotiators subverted it in several ways, including with demands for ridiculously large amounts of money, the delay in the promised return of the Turkish ambassador to Israel, and the continuation of legal action against Israeli officials involved in the Mavi Marmara affair, when Israeli soldiers were attacked by Turkish terrorists demanding to sail to Gaza to deliver equipment to Hamas.

So a second time, Erdogan betrayed Obama and make the president look foolish (that is, had anyone in the mass media pointed it out). Again, there was no U.S. criticism of the move or apparent pressure to make Erdogan keep his promise.

Three other ways that Erdogan has subverted U.S. interests with minimal costs (in fact, the Obama administration has usually furthered this behavior):

– Some small U.S. diplomatic protests were made about the growing internal repression in Turkey and human rights’ violations there. Increasingly, the country lives under a reign of intimidation even as the Western media mostly ignores this situation. Since the United States keeps praising him, Erdogan can demoralize his opponents, who cannot hope for foreign help even as he carries on a policy of spreading anti-Americanism in Turkey.

The political power of the Turkish armed forces — the traditional guarantor of the republic and stability in the country — was dismantled by Erdogan with U.S. approval. The Turkish media was subverted with only an occasional American squeal of complaint. Now he’s destroying the independent judicial system, the last barrier to his assault on democratic rule. The U.S. embassy in Turkey consistently warned about what has been happening; the White House ignored this information.

– With the Obama administration’s permission, the Turkish government violates the sanctions against Iran with ever-larger trade and major bilateral cooperation projects. Erdogan’s consistent defenses of Iran’s policies (though the two countries are at odds over Syria) have been forgiven and forgotten by the White House.

– In many ways, the Turkish government has been taking the lead on setting U.S. policy toward Syria. It was Erdogan who largely determined that the official opposition exile leadership would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, a path followed by Obama. (I can’t prove it — but I’ll bet that Turkey’s regime promised Obama that if he would declare support for the rebels verbally and let them be armed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia then Assad would easily fall. I’d also bet that Erdogan assured Obama that if the president helped the rebels a moderate government would emerge in Syria.)

Meanwhile, Obama has praised Erdogan unstintingly. Obama thinks Erdogan is the very model of a “moderate Islamist”, and since Obama’s strategy is to support such people in much of the Arab world, Erdogan has been his guide to the region, though this has meant supporting the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Especially ironic: Obama believed that Erdogan’s goals were essentially the same as those of the United States, while Erdogan was in fact following a profoundly anti-American policy designed to bring hostile Islamist governments to power. Remember this is no longer the old Western-oriented Turkey of previous decades, but a radical — if concealed — Islamist regime.

As I’ve noted, Libya is starting to fall apart and the Benghazi scandal cover-up prevented the Obama administration from taking serious action in regard to that country, including retaliation against the terrorist group that the United States knows was responsible.

In the last week, there was a car bomb and four attacks on Libyan military posts in Benghazi. The al-Qaeda affiliate that murdered four Americans controls parts of the city and is unchallenged by the central government, which has been too weak to confront those who reject its authority.

Al-Qaeda still controls part of the city’s entrances and the hospital where the U.S. ambassador’s body was taken by them last September 11. It has faced zero retaliation by the U.S. government and no pressure from Washington for the Libyan government to crack down on it.

Remember that the U.S. government’s attempt to make people forget the scandal and the insistence that the attack was caused by a demonstration against a video gone wrong have prevented the highlighting of the actual murders and any action taken against the perpetrators.

Also read: Obama Aide: ‘Irrelevant’ Where the President Was During Benghazi Attack

There is a passionate, but somewhat academic debate, over the following issue: Which is the greater threat, the Sunni Muslim Islamists (Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza Strip, and perhaps soon to be Syria) or the Shia Muslim Islamists (Iran, Lebanon, at the moment still Syria)?

I would say the answer would be the Iran-led Shia bloc. But two reservations: the margin isn’t that big and it also depends on the specific place and situation.

To begin with, Iran is still the greatest strategic threat in the region. It is moving as fast as it can toward nuclear weapons and it is still the main sponsor of terrorism. At the moment, it is still, too, the most likely state that would initiate an anti-Western war, though that possibility is smaller than often believed. It has lots of money.

What has gone largely unnoticed is that it is almost the middle of 2013 and the Obama Administration has barely begun negotiations with Iran that will probably drag on without success for a year or more. In addition, after Iran’s June elections, which will presumably pick a radical who is less obviously extremist than current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the U.S. government and mass media will probably proclaim a new era of Iranian moderation.

Iran is also the main backer of Islamist revolution in Bahrain (where it has failed); Lebanon (where its Hizballah clients are the strongest force); and Syria (where its regime ally is in serious trouble).

One final point is that Tehran is having some success in drawing the Iraqi (Shia) government into its orbit. Baghdad is certainly cooperating with Iran on defending the Syrian regime, though one should not exaggerate how much Iraq is in Iran’s pocket. At any rate, nobody would want the Iraqi regime to be overthrown by the al-Qaida terrorist opposition.

So a strong case can be made that Iran is the greatest threat in the region.

On the other hand, however, a Great Wall of Sunnism has been built to prevent the extension of Iranian influence except for Lebanon. The Sunni bloc contains few Shia Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood, the even more radical Salafists, and other Sunni Muslims (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, for example) have said that the Shias are a worse threat than Israel.

Perhaps the fear of Iran provides some common cause with the West. But this is also a scary proposition since the Obama Administration’s promotion of Sunni Islamism (Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and even Turkey) could use this point as an excuse. Perhaps America could be said to be building a united front against Iran but at what price? Turning over much of the Arab world to repressive, anti-American, and antisemitic Sunni Islamism as Christians flee?

There is also another weakness of Sunni Islamism, however, that also makes it seem relatively less threatening. In contrast to Iran, the Sunni Islamists do not have a wealthy patron comparable to Iran. They can depend on money from Qatar and to some extent from Libya but they have fewer resources. Sometimes the Saudis will help Sunni Islamists but only if they tone down their warlike and anti-Western actions. There is no big banker for Sunni Islamist destabilization of the Middle East.

Equally, they do not have a reliable source of arms, in contrast to the Shia who have Iran and also at times Russia. True, in Syria the Sunni rebels have U.S. backing to get weaponry and arms from Libya and elsewhere paid for by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Yet Syria is an exceptional case. The Saudis are not going to finance the Muslim Brotherhood and its ambitions. Bahrain has declared Shia Hizballah to be a terrorist group even while the European Union refuses to do so.

So arguably one could say that the Shia Islamists and Iran are a bigger danger. But a second danger is a U.S. or Western policy to promote Sunni Islamism as a way to counter the Shia, a strategy that has intensified regional dangers and the suffering of Arab peoples. Then, too, there’s the fact that al-Qaida is a Sunni Islamist organization, and the al-Qaida forces are getting stronger in Syria.

One would have to be very foolish to want to see Sunni Islamism make further gains, to overthrow the monarchies in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, or Bahrain, as well as the Algerian regime. One would also have to be foolish–but here the Obama Administration is so–to want to see Muslim Brotherhood regimes succeed in Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, and Syria.

What we are seeing, however, is that Islamism is becoming entangled at present with the power it has gained, especially in Egypt. The country is innately in economic difficulties and these are being intensified by Muslim Brotherhood misrule. Rather than raise their countries to the peak of military-economic efficiency, the Islamist regimes are wrecking them.

But there are some very significant wild cards in the deck:

–If Sunni Islamist regimes in Egypt and Syria face significant problems with instability and economics, they might adopt the time-honored, traditional tactic of Arab dictatorships by stirring up foreign quarrels and promoting anti-Americanism. This could unleash future Arab-Israeli wars.

–Sunni Islamist regimes in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and probably Syria would give extremely radical Salafist forces a free hand in attacking Christians, moderates, women’s rights, foreign embassies, and possibly Israel. Human rights in these countries—if anybody in the West cares about that—are going to suffer severe hits.

–Hamas will probably attack Israel in future, perhaps with at least some Egyptian backing though the Egyptian regime is now trying to restrain Hamas in order to consolidate rule at home and get Western money.

–Al-Qaida is gaining strength in Syria and for the first time its possible takeover cannot be ruled out, at least in alliance with other Salafist groups.

–The stronger the Sunni Islamists the more uncooperative the Palestinian Authority (PA) will be with attempts at a “peace process.” It is possible that the PA would face a considerable challenge from Hamas on the West Bank while forces within Fatah, the PA’s ruling party, might form alliances with Hamas. Israel should be able to keep the PA in power—a situation wrought with irony—but its stability could crumble.

In short, while one can make the case for Shia Islamism being the more dangerous—at least as long as Iran might get nuclear weapons—one must very carefully examine the implications of that judgment in every specific case. Promoting Sunni Islam is no panacea but rather substitutes longer-term for shorter-term threats.

The painting below is Moritz Oppenheim’s “The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs.” It was the painting I wanted to have on the cover of my book, Assimilation and its Discontents, but was overruled by the publisher in favor of a post-modernist monstrosity.

[Assimilation and its Discontents, a history of Jewish assimilation and identity debates, can be found here.  For downloading instructions see the end of this article.]

The painting shows a Jewish soldier who had fought for Prussia against Napoleon. Now the war was won, the land liberated, and he returned home to his family, presumably in 1814.

He is the center of attention for, presumably, his loving parents, two older sisters, and younger brother. The second brother is examining something else. I’m also surprised to see, in this Orthodox Jewish family, a cat emerging from under the table.

So even if they still follow the “old customs,” that is a pious Judaism, they have modernized already to some extent. Notice the clothing which is quite contemporary and the furnishings. This is a German middle class family very much attuned to the surrounding society which is also an Orthodox Jewish family.

Thus it is not quite true that Oppenheim, one of the greatest German painters, sees them as fully traditional. Of course, by saying the “old customs,” he is implying that they are outdated customs. The theme of the painting is the contrast between the two role models, the two paths that Jews could take: complete modernization, secularization, and German patriotism versus a traditional Jewish life, built around religion and keeping some distance from the surrounding society.

Yet Oppenheim thought it possible to combine the two. He was highly honored by both the existing German elite, during a time when antisemitism was at a relative low, and the intellectual leaders of Jewry.

Oppenheim was born in Hanau in 1800 and died in Frankfurt in 1882. In his own life, he balanced out the Jewish and German worlds. At the time, the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement which sought to study Judaism with scholarly methods to both preserve and modernize it. While those involved didn’t know it, by rethinking Jews as being a people with secular aspects, too, they were forerunners of Zionism.

The New York Jewish Museum’s description of the painting points out two significant factors.

First, he has been wounded in the defense of his country, thus having shed his blood for his country.  And he is wearing the Iron Cross, a German medal but also as a cross a symbol of the conflict between his Jewishness and the Christianity of the state he has served.

Second, he has just arrived home by traveling on the Sabbath, thus breaking a major tenet of Jewish law. His family, delighted to have him back alive, doesn’t seem to care about that point.

The painting was made in 1834, at a time when anti-Jewish forces were beginning to rise again and seeking to restrict Jewish rights as citizens. It was intended as a pointed reminder of Jewish services and loyalty to Germany, of attempts to assimilate without necessarily losing their distinctive characteristics. It was not making a case for Multiculturalism but rather for pluralism.

At any rate, the project of German Jewish assimilation failed, in part because it was too successful, and German Jewish sacrifices in World War One did not avail them two decades later. Indeed, Adolf Hitler’s lieutenant during the war was a Jew, who the Nazi dictator later did spare.

There are, however, two additional ironies related to the painting’s story. Napoleon was, in fact, the liberator of the Jews and Prussia was the oppressor. The soldier proved his patriotism while fighting against his real interests.  As soon as the Prussians had won, they began restoring discrimination against the Jews.

The second is a story that fascinates me and I think should be emblematic for these issues. It concerns a young man who was the real-life contemporary of the soldier in the painting, Moritz Itzig.

One day in 1811, Itzig’s aunt, Sarah Levy, a highly cultured woman with many connections among Christians, held a concert in her home. One of the guests was the wife of Ludwig Achim von Arnim, a 30-year-old Prussian writer. Von Arnim came to pick up his wife and insulted several Jewish guests with antisemitic slurs.

Itzig, then 24 years old, wrote a letter challenging von Arnim to a duel. The aristocrat rejected the challenge, responding with a bunch of signed statements from his peers that since a Jew had no honor he could not be engaged in a duel and adding additional insults.

One afternoon, Itzig came up to von Arnim and beat the larger man with his cane. Von Arnim, who whined for help rather than defending himself, turned over the matter to a court, which ruled that since Itzig had been provoked he was not guilty of any crime. Itzig’s family even persuaded some of those who had provided von Arnim with letters to retract them.

When war with Napoleon restarted, Itzig volunteered to fight for Prussia and was killed in 1813. Von Arnim stayed on his estate and did not fight at all. He lived until 1831.

The irony of the patriotic Jew and the cowardly poser who hypocritically impugned the former’s noble nature and love of country has been repeated many times. In fact, I can think of some good contemporary examples in another country across the seas from Germany.

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A forgotten element in the Benghazi scandal: if Obama had said it was a terrorist attack back in September of 2012, he would have had to do something about it.

Now — not just on that one day of September 11, 2012 but for seven months thereafter (!) — the U.S. government has done zero about the murder of four American officials.

Consider the Benghazi scandal from the standpoint of Benghazi — where the militia that murdered the Americans is one of the most powerful forces in the city — and Libya itself. Suppose that from the beginning on September 11, 2012, the U.S. government announced that the U.S. facility was under attack by a militia group linked to al-Qaeda: it would have had to explain why it had hired members of that militia group to guard the facility, a scandal in itself.

We know, 100 percent, that this is true, but it hasn’t become an issue.

Next, there might have been a rescue attempt and a firefight between American forces and that militia group in which casualties would have occurred on both sides. (Note that, as far as we know, the militia took no killed or wounded, meaning that in its own eyes it achieved a total victory at no cost.) At any rate, the United States would then have been in a military conflict with that militia. It would have to demand that the Libyan government take action and cooperate with U.S. efforts to punish it. On one hand, that would have been a headache for the Libyan government; on the other hand, it might have brought welcome aid to suppress a troublesome militia and help in getting control of the anarchy in the country (see below).

Congress would have given full bipartisan support to punishing those found responsible by a quick and conclusive FBI investigation, support including putting forces on the ground in Benghazi.

Instead?

In practice, U.S. policy is still acting as if it believed the attack was due to a video creating a spontaneous riot and not a terrorist attack!

Note — and this is pivotal — the scandal is not restricted to what happened on September 11, 2012, and the Washington cover-up that followed. It extends to the result of cover-up.

As a result of the cover-up, there has been no effort made to punish those who we know have murdered four Americans.

Think about that point. You cannot punish the terrorists if you haven’t officially deemed them responsible for the attack, and when an Egyptian-American provocateur who is supposedly the real guilty party is in prison already. Meanwhile, Libya is suffering serious problems that are undoing whatever good the Obama administration’s intervention to overthrow the old regime achieved.

Even as the Benghazi scandal is growing in the United States, the situation in Libya is deteriorating further. Ignoring the actual threat of revolutionary Islamist militias and attributing problems to a video, plus the botching of the investigation of the attack due to the cover-up, led to mishandling post-attack U.S. Libya policy. As a result, the terrorists who murdered four Americans are going free and the group that carried out the attack is still enjoying popularity and even playing a role in running Benghazi.

Libya itself was the biggest donor to the Muslim Brotherhood-led, U.S.-handpicked Syrian opposition, and is a source of a massive outflow of arms to terrorists.

In other words, as a result of the policy failure and cover-up, Libya faces a much greater threat of a revolutionary Islamist takeover, anarchy, and even becoming an al-Qaeda base. (Imagine, for comparison, the situation if the U.S. government had denied al-Qaeda involvement in earlier terrorist attacks.)

Here’s a program on the Canadian Broadcasting Company interviewing me about Syria and the extremely complicated situations and very difficult options facing intervention into that civil war.

But I should add that this debate is largely academic. The United States and Europe aren’t going to intervene in Syria, at least not to do more than send more weapons, spend more on refugees, and dispatch humanitarian aid.

There is no will to do so, too much can go wrong, and the Obama Administration isn’t going to risk having its own equivalent of the Iraqi intervention. It wants to keep a priority on domestic issues and knows the public doesn’t want another war-type situation. The last three (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) are still quite controversial.

Moreover, a good excuse is offered because Russia and China would veto large-scale intervention in the UN Security Council.

ncidentally, it should be kept in mind that the rebels are very far from being defeated. They control the countryside in eastern Syria and a large part of Aleppo and other places. The government is holding onto the west–especially the northwestern section where the ruling Alawites live–and most of Damascus.

The infusion of Hizballah forces–less than 5,000 compared to around 50,000 worse-organized rebels–has scarcely turned the tide but merely allowed the government forces to hold onto the Damascus-Lebanon border-northwestern corridor.

So whether or not it is a good idea to do far more to defeat the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship there is no chance of that happening.

“You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.”

—Dougray Scott

I am amazed at the current U.S. debate over Syria. Those urging intervention may be driven by humanitarian intentions, to end the fighting and ease suffering. But whatever they are proposing—no-fly zones, safe havens, direct supply of weapons to rebels, etc.—have they actually considered how four highly visible, recent precedents turned out?

Afghanistan:  There is no question but that after September 11, 2001, the United States had to invade Afghanistan, destroy the al-Qaeda infrastructure there, and overthrow its Taliban partner. Yet today, twelve years later, U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan! The delusion of rebuilding that country has predictably failed. About 2,200 Americans have died, many of them killed by Afghan “allies.” The Afghan government is not exactly “grateful.” The Taliban is still strong. Again, that war was necessary, but how expensive and difficult has it been for the United States to extricate itself! Even after four and one-half years of Barack Obama U.S. soldiers are still there.

Egypt: U.S. intervention in Egypt overthrew an ally. Many Egyptians now see, despite the talk about democracy, that they are worse off. Talk about freedom quickly turned into domination by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist mobs. The economy is going down the drain. Christians are under siege. Women’s rights are shrinking. Other than a free media, it is hard to see what Egyptians got out of it. Certainly, this intervention was a strategic defeat for the United States.

Iraq: Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, about 4500 American soldiers have been killed.  Tens of billions of dollars have been spent. Whether the war was worthwhile can still be debated. The Iraqis have suffered greatly yet have also gained the most of the four cases cited here, but it is still estimated that about 200,000 Iraqis have died, mainly in sectarian fighting, which still continues today though at a lower level. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein unleashed a Sunni-Shia war of terrorism that could be dwarfed by what might happen in Syria. The U.S. forces needed, it was said, to remain in the country until a new Iraqi army was trained.  On strategic grounds, Iraq has turned around sharply, though it is still too friendly with Iran for U.S. tastes and supports the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. It is also a country where the vice president had to flee after the prime minister charged him with terrorism.

Libya: In this case, U.S. involvement was indirect and caused no U.S. casualties. While the overthrow of dictator Muammar Qadhafi would have been a boon to U.S. strategic interests in earlier years, by the time it actually happened Qadhafi was relatively neutralized.  Being governed by an elected regime may be counted as a gain for Libyans, but anarchy, rule by militia, and extremism are still strong. Arms from Libyan arsenals were smuggled to terrorists in different countries. And of course the murder of four Americans in Benghazi shows the continued existence of terrorists—even al-Qaeda—the weakness of the government, and the unpredictability of Libya’s future.

This is a complex picture. Four dictatorships have been overthrown and four elected governments replaced them. How to measure the change?

U.S. strategic gains? It is true that the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein—two of America’s most active enemies—was a clear gain. But once having said that, it is not clear that these four governments contribute much to real U.S. interests.

Egypt’s change is negative. Libya is a client state, yet its main usefulness has been to funnel arms and money to opposition Islamist groups in Syria. Iraq is not helpful on two priority U.S. interests, Iran and Syria. Afghanistan is still angry at the United States and continues to be a playground for Pakistani intrigues with anti-American Islamists. Plus the fact that Pakistan had obtained billions of dollars in U.S. aid while giving safe haven to the very al-Qaeda leaders that the money was going to help catch.

Now there come demands for an escalated U.S. intervention in Syria, as if none of these precedents need to be considered. Yes, the advocates of involvement usually don’t seek direct military action. True, they are upset at the death of 70,000 people, with the number certain to rise higher. This is not a partisan issue. The Obama government’s policy helped create this mess by helping to build up an Islamist leadership in Syria. But the Obama administration’s current apparent reluctance to escalate involvement is a good idea, though perhaps motivated by the wrong reasons.

Yet what are the arguments on the other side?

● Does the United States want to fight on some level to install a radical Islamist regime in Syria that is certain to be anti-American?

● How will Americans feel if their aid and weapons are used in the future to murder Alawites and Christians, perhaps some day invade the Kurdish autonomous area, help terrorists in other countries, shoot down civilian airliners by such terrorists, and suppress moderate Sunni Muslims?

● Do Americans really expect gratitude or friendship or strategic cooperation from revolutionary Islamists for their help in winning the civil war?

● Is the United States then going to give billions of dollars to rebuild Syria’s economy for an Islamist regime?

● Does the United States have the necessary influence and leverage to force Jabhat al-Nusra’s (Syrian al-Qaeda) allies to abandon it? No. It already tried to do so and failed miserably.

● Despite all the vague talk about moderate fighters, how many such people actually exist? Ironically, most of them are defectors from Assad’s army, who don’t have such a pro-democratic record. But the main drawback is that they are very weak and disorganized. Talk of setting up a zone under their control is absurd. In fact, the latest trend is the massive defection of soldiers from the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, which is the great hope of U.S. policy, to al-Qaeda!

There is something terribly and tragically and importantly symbolic about the Benghazi attack that may be lost in the tidal wave of details about what happened on September 11, 2012, in an incident where four American officials were murdered in a terrorist attack. This point stands at the heart of everything that has happened in American society and intellectual life during the last decade.

And that point is this:

America was attacked once again on September 11, attacked by al-Qaeda in an attempt to destroy the United States — as ridiculous as that goal might seem. Yet: the U.S. government blamed the attack on America itself.

Other reasons can be adduced for the official position that what happened that day was due to a video insulting Islam rather than a terrorist attack, but this is the factor of overwhelming importance. It transformed the situation in the following ways:

– Muslims were the victims of American misbehavior, a point emerging from the administration’s wider worldview of U.S. aggression and Third World suffering, as in the lectures of all those left-wing anti-American academics and the sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

– “Hate speech” and racism (as “Islamophobia” is often reconfigured) were the cause of troubles.

– While freedom of speech and such liberties should be defended, they must be limited in some ways to prevent further trouble.

– America’s proper posture should be one of apology, as in the advertisements that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made for the Pakistani and other media.

– The “misblaming,” to coin a word, of the video showed terrorist groups that not only can they attack Americans, but they can do so without fear of punishment … or even of blame! As the House of Representatives’ hearings show, the misattribution of responsibility also delayed the FBI’s investigation, perhaps conclusively so.

– The exercise of American power has been the cause of America’s problems, not an excess of appeasement. The chickens — in Wright’s phrase — are merely coming home to roost. Yet once the video was blamed — the video which few in the Middle East were aware of — there were in fact further anti-American riots in different countries, now over the video which Clinton and others made known, in which dozens of people died. This showed that appeasement and apology caused worse problems.

– The solution to these Middle East conflicts required a change in U.S. policies in order to avoid further offense. This meant distancing from Israel and even historic Arab allies, showing respect and encouragement even for “moderate” Islamist movements, and other measures.

In short, this is the stance of blaming America and exonerating its enemies that has seized hold of the national consciousness. Of course, parallel responses met the Boston bombing, as the mass media and academics scrambled to give alternative explanations to the terrorists’ motives.

The truth is, however, extremely simple: the United States faces a revolutionary Islamist movement that will neither go away nor moderate itself.

To understand this movement and its ideology, how it is and is not rooted in Islam, its weaknesses and divisions, the forces willing to help combat it, and the ways to devise strategies to battle it is the prime international need for the moment. It is as necessary to do these things for revolutionary Islamism today as it was to do the same things regarding Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s and for communism in the 1940s and 1950s.

Yet the U.S. armed forces and other institutions are forbidden from holding this inquiry.

The following articles from the GLORIA Center are now available on Scribed:

CHINA’S STRATEGIC SHIFT TOWARD THE REGION OF THE FOUR SEAS: THE MIDDLE KINGDOM ARRIVES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

THE RISE OF NATIONALISM AMONG IRANIAN AZERBAIJANIS: A STEP TOWARD IRAN’S DISINTEGRATION?

ISRAELI-AZERBAIJANI ALLIANCE AND IRAN

WESTERN INFLUENCE ON ARAB MILITARIES: POUNDING SQUARE PEGS INTO ROUND HOLES

THE 19TH KNESSET ELECTIONS: LACKLUSTER ELECTION, SIGNIFICANT RESULTS

TWILIGHT LEBANON, 1990-2011