By Barry Rubin
1. One of my readers remarked that what we need to study now is the use of fifth columns to subvert and overthrow countries rather than the 1940-era conventional warfare blitzkrieg. Actually, and this was well-known at the time, the Germans used a very sophisticated strategy of ideological and institutional subversion. It is surprising how much this has been forgotten. Political parties and militias were set up or subsidized; newspapers bought up; German minorities organized. If any of you are interested in this I will provide examples in future, some of which I described (using U.S. intelligence archives) in my book, Istanbul Intrigues.
2. Turkey is now going to sell Egypt both unmanned aircraft and swift patrol boats. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since both are U.S. clients and, according to the Obama Administration, allies. But this is something to watch in the future. Remember that the relatively moderate military commanders in both countries are on their way out and will be replaced by ideologically motivated (or opportunist) officers who will attack whatever they’re told. With excitable, reckless, and anti-American Recep Edrogan running Turkey and excitable, reckless, and anti-American Amr Moussa perhaps soon to be Egypt’s president, old American friends may soon be attacking other old American friends, or even U.S. forces.
Have you noticed that its increasingly difficult to distinguish between remarks about Israel by Erdogan and those by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
3. I like U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen. He gets it. And he has to because his forces have the mission of fighting future wars and threats created by mistaken White House policies. Never forget that the official Quadrennial Review of U.S . military plans, 92 pages of Politically Correct pap, doesn’t really mention Islamism, terrorism, Iran, and other real-world threats. Mullen’s 3.5 page letter at the end deals with all the real issues.
Now Mullen has had to say something pretty amazing. In Senate testimony he reported that “the Haqqani [terrorist[ network… acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.” Imagine: America’s highest military officer explains that the intelligence agency of a country receiving massive U.S. aid runs a Taliban-linked terrorist group that, on September 13, attacked the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. Twenty-five people died.
Can you imagine the uproar this should cause in any normal circumstance? There would be demands for congressional inquiries, front-page stories every day, and attacks on a president who could run such a policy.
Instead: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Add this to previous U.S. Defense Department warnings based on reliable intelligence:
–Iran is protecting and helping al-Qaida.
–Iran is training Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
–Iran is training and supplying training, weapons, and explosives to kill Americans in Iraq. Mullen also spoke about that. He said: “They (the Iranians) have been warned about continuing it … that if they keep killing our troops, that will not be something we will sit idly by and watch.” Um, wow, does that raise the possibility of an armed confrontation with Iran? What is the White House going to do if Iran continues killing Americans–as I’m sure they will. My prediction is that they will do nothing. You know what that kind of empty threat followed by inaction does to credibility?
–Syria is running a war against America in Iraq.
But White House policies don’t want to deal with these issues.
Congress, do you have any response?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Experts, any response?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Media, any response?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
4. Michael Ledeen has written an excellent article well-worth reading about the hunkered-down White House and its Ripley’s Believe it or Not policies. But I can’t resist adding a bit. Ledeen writes that the White house is awaiting, “The happy moment when Assad falls and Obama takes credit for it and Erdogan calls the White House to get his orders.”
Alas, most people in the region don’t think that Erdogan will be calling the White House to get his orders–the idea of anyone ordering around Erdogan doesn’t fit with his personality–but with Erdogan telling Obama how he’s arranged a great interim government in which the Muslim Brotherhood has all-too-much power.
5. Libya’s new Western-installed leader first announced that Sharia will be “the main source” for Libyan law in future, then a week later met with Obama who praised him as a great guy. A brief guide is in order here about how Muslim-majority countries do this sort of thing:
Option 1: Secular, based on Western law. You know, like Turkey used to be.
Option 2: Sharia is “a source” of legislation, not too bad, like Egypt used to be.
Option 3: Sharia is “the main source” of legislation. Uh-oh.
Option 4: Sharia is “the sole source” of legislation.” Is that a chador you’re wearing or are you just glad to see me? (Yes, I know that it doesnt make sense but this take-off of the famous Mae West line is sort of funny, I hope.)
Now, Turkey is moving from 1 through 2 and perhaps eventually to 3. Egypt from 2 to 3 and perhaps eventually to 4. Libya is starting off at 3. Iran and the Gaza Strip are at 4 with a bullet. That last point is record industry slang for a song headed up the charts. In this case it means, literally, a bullet in your head if you step out of line. Some time next year remind me to do a chart of where every country is at. One thing is for sure: they’re all headed in the same general direction.
6. Here’s the problem with the international community and with the “peace process.” The Palestinian Authority demands full UN membership without doing anything to deserve it, as an alternative to negotiations with Israel. The United States opposes; almost every other country supports. So France comes up with a compromise: Make them a non-member state, in other words moving them up a level. But the problem is not having Palestine as a UN member so much as it is having Palestine as a state, which can do whatever it wants in terms of foreign alliances, buying arms, inviting in foreign troops or advisors, and condemning Israel as occupier and aggressor if it defends itself from cross-border attacks or doesn’t leave all claimed Palestinian territory immediately.
So this is how it works: You don’t give the Palestinians everything they want as a unilateral concession; you just give them half of what they want as a unilateral concessions. Saving the rest as a unilateral concession for the next time they make a demand.
7. The great peace initiative contest! What can Israel give to prove it wants peace and isn’t sabotaging a diplomatic resolution? Come up with ideas. Important rule: Israel cannot ask for anything in exchange because if it does then the Palestinians will reject it and we are back where we began.
Warning: failure to come up with an entry means you are a right-wing extremist who opposes peace and is clinging on to an untenable status quo. Only unilateral concessions will be considered! In case of near-duplicate entries the proposal in which Israel gives up more in exchange for nothing will be judged the winner.
8. As for Israel being isolated and on the ropes, the IMF has just increased its positive evaluation of the Israeli economy to predict it will grow at a rate of 4.8 percent this year. That’s triple the average for the developed economies and is number three in the world (after city-states Hong Kong and Singapore). There are, of course, problems (it wouldn’t be Israel if there weren’t) but this detailed evaluation in Businessweek is quite upbeat. (h/t Martin Kramer).
Meanwhile, a number of Arab states–notably Egypt–are facing major economic problems and there are some very dire forecasts for Turkey. I wish everyone was doing well and countries with economic probles can resort to war and aggression as a way out. Still, Israel’s prosperity means it will continue to be strong. What about the social protests (prices too high; wages too low)? We will see if the government takes corrective action but Israel is not going to follow the Greek model, that’s for sure.
None of the unilateral concessions so far have been productive. They were only justified by the hope that they might, in some heroic optimistic way, be reciprocated in some positive manner. So, there is only one thing left to offer: concede, unilaterally, that this particular hope was a mistake, never to be repeated again.
The hope that some individuals in the territories may at some point reject the validity of their ancestral genocidal designs may still be rational, but the hope that their leadership is anywhere near ready to do so is pure fantasy. They have to be cornered as well: No renouncement of the principle of elimination of Israel, no talks.
This means that anyone who truly understand the impossible situation Israel has been pushed into must speak up and defend Israel on the basis of moral arguments. Of course these arguments fly in the face of the mainstream narrative, and this is precisely why they must be made. We don’t need to be Israeli, not even Jewish, we just need to speak up, and make some of our friends also feel pushed into the corner of having to explain why the only people in the Middle East who accept every other faith on their land should be precisely the one that deserves rejection.
A great number of folks still don’t realize that smuggling a Bible into Saudi Arabia is a crime. What’s wrong with educating them? You got to start somewhere!
….” What’s wrong with educating them? You got to start somewhere!”
What’s wrong….is the massive stone wall erected by Islam blocking out all that we in the West call “rationality”.
Islam and the West simply aren’t wired in any way which will produce any “commonality” after we Westerners try winding our way through that hall of mirrors called Islam. I mention “we Westerners” because it’s beyond stretch-iness to suppose an Islamist will ever approach any one of us for a rational discussion about obtaining Peace.
Islam has made, and continues to make it clear that they are a closed book, [no pun intended]…this was signaled most recently via television during Obama’s talk at the U.N. when that grey haired Palestinian delegate was caught by the camera slowly shaking his head negatively while Obama spoke.
Netanyu summed up the whole U.N. experience neatly this afternoon at that same podium after summarizing the bizarre things said concerning Israel…when he said, approximately: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
So, I think that all evidence since 1948 shows without doubt that any hope of these Palestinians being in any way educated to our way of thinking is a waste of time.
At best, we can support Israel during an “armed truce”.
This is a beautifully organized graphic…..
….see, “Roger’s Rules
A little history lesson (division of Palestinian rejectionism)” right here at PJM.
Charlie,
I’m not talking about changing the mind of the Islamists. That is not a reasonable task. I am talking about the few Arabs who try to react against their traditions, which takes a lot of courage, because they can be accused of apostasy by the fanatics, which can justify a death sentence by their lights.
The same applies to the brave American Muslims, most notably women, who advocate acceptance of our laws over the Shariah system. They take great personal risks by challenging the supremacy of the tradition they come from, and deserve whatever support we can give them. I’m not talking about those who pretend to be “moderate” while secretly harboring the project of subverting our society, I’m talking about those who openly challenge their co-religionists, which is something else altogether.
About What’s wrong with education them? I’m not talking about educating the fanatics. Again, this is not realistic. I am talking about the great number of people of good will in the West who have not come to realize what we are up against, yet. They can easily commit a sincere error of projection by assuming that all pieties are as benevolent as the one they are familiar with.
As westerners, it is our duty to affirm our values, and rationally examine other systems of values, and in some cases how and why they are incompatible with our ways, and can even challenge them, existencially. Just take a look at http://www.jihadwatch.org, for instance. (there are many other good sites on which to study the basic tenets of Islam from various respectable scholars)
Prof. Guvinoff…..I’m a subscriber to Jihad Watch which is indeed enforcing my view that we’re being stonewalled by Islam…until it is Islam’s pleasure to change their tactics of subversion and inch-by-inch “lawfare” achievements. That’s simply not going to happen.
Re: not aiming to educate the fanatics…..”I am talking about the great number of people of good will in the West who have not come to realize what we are up against, yet. They can easily commit a sincere error of projection by assuming that all pieties are as benevolent as the one they are familiar with.”
We disagree.
Such people are so malleable as to be like jellyfish on a tide. I think it’s idealistic to suppose that this abject minority of unsung women and Arabs who’re making an effort to live “right in the middle”, as it were, can make significant changes in such Islamic rigidity, a rigidity ruthlesly enforced by bloodshed. That force will remain ovewhelming to these few sincere women and thoughtful Arabs trying to cope with our opposing cultures. They will continue to be stonewalled, or stoned…no pun intended.
Islam seems to make it imperative that they are “with” Islam or “against Islam.” If passive and struggling inwardly, aren’t they apostates in the view of their Imams? Then, they are candidates for throat slitting or beheading. What a horror.
Re: your thought, “…and can even challenge them, existencially…..” will be my personal preference in our war with Islam.
Charlie,
Thanks for bringing clarity to the point on which we appear to be so laboriously disagreeing. Please allow me to try to shake our one-on-one debate vigorously enough to see whether our disagreement is indeed substantial, or merely the product of an accidental misunderstanding due to differences we have overlooked between our respective frames of reference?
Barry Rubin is focusing our attention on how the conspiracy of lies, from the Palestinian authority, the UN, the left propaganda narrative, Islamic doctrine, etc… taps into a large reservoir of antisemitism in the modern world, to push Israel into a corner where she has no good option left, as far as political initiatives go.
My sense is that, if Israel is deprived of options, that does not give us an excuse to fall in the trap of fatalism, despair, and any other mode of intellectual paralysis. So the question is, for those of us who are not Israeli, not even Jews, what are the options we can exercise to bring the support they need to the Jews in general and Israel in particular? I don’t mean to be patronizing, just to make sure we turn all the stones. If there is indeed something we can do, we have a moral duty to do it, that’s all!
So in practice, is there anything we can do counter the forces of antisemitism?
I see one thing we can do: Look for those people of good will who fall for the antisemitic arguments out of sheer ignorance, and help them understand what Islam is about, and how it might in fact be the original source of antisemitism, why it is so bad to emulate it. I can remember as child, educated into the catholic doctrine, noticing that the priest was against Israel, without even bothering to explain why. I could not successfully argue with him, of course, but I kept a mental note to myself: maybe some day, when I grow up, I will understand whatever his reasons were.
Today, some 55 years later, I think I got it: His anti-Zionist position was not something he felt the need to explain: It was purely axiomatic, as much as the antisemitism that permeates the Islamic scriptures, once I managed to get curious about them, which easier than ever before, thanks to the Internet. To me, his stubborn attitude does not mean that all catholic are bad people, it only means that one of the human foibles is our capacity for joining some bandwagon, even a rotten and ultimately evil one!
So my proposal is to gather the courage and the patience necessary to educate the folks who fall in the trap of opposing Israel simply because everyone else they know does it! Well, what if they also know you, and you are willing to take the risk of losing “the good vibes” by trying to open their eyes? That’s all I am proposing. It may seem hopelessly minuscule in proportion with the enormity of the threat to Israel, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it.
Professor Govinoff:
RE:”So my proposal is to gather the courage and the patience necessary to educate the folks who fall in the trap of opposing Israel simply because everyone else they know does it! Well, what if they also know you, and you are willing to take the risk of losing “the good vibes” by trying to open their eyes? That’s all I am proposing. It may seem hopelessly minuscule in proportion with the enormity of the threat to Israel, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it.”
Now, there’s a proposal I can agree with!, and not hopelessly miniscule. Peer influence is indeed effective.
Hopefully those of us who watched Abbas and his Orwellian, warped pitch for “statehood” compared with the eloquence of Netanyahu saying, “You can’t make this up!” pointing out the idiocy of anti-Israel debate at the U.N. will use this contrast to show the need for reason.
Elsewhere, I’ve suggested folks use Google “Images” to bring up copies of Goya’s “la sueno de razon”, or “The Sleep of Reason” which is a pretty good metaphor for the “United” Nations, which we Americans pay approximately 20% of the operating costs.
That’s of course another thread which we could use to weave vast canvasses…..
It is all related to the Koran and Mohamed and Mo’s “prophecies”.
“They will not fight you (even) together, except in fortified townships, or from behind walls. Strong is their fighting (spirit) amongst themselves: thou wouldst think they were united, but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of wisdom.” (Surah 59:14).
These are the words Gabriel told Mo, which mean the Jews will never unite to fight against Islamic armies and never become a nation. Surely according to history this prophecy is an epic fail but acknowledging its failure will acknowledge Mo is not a prophet which is impossible with the Koranic ideology.
And that’s the problem with the Koran (the most perfect book ever written) and Mohamed (the most perfect man to ever have lived): one single crack, no matter how tiny will destroy the entire religion and that’s the problem when you declare something or someone as infallible.
So it is the duty of all the Muslims who believe Mohamed was a prophet, to fulfill his prophecies. If there are Muslims who do not believe Mohamed was a prophet, the most perfect human being whose deeds need to be imitated, then they are the moderate ones. If not, then you have this:
“…of them are those who listen eagerly to lies. . . . for whom the will of Allah is that He cleanse not their hearts; for them there is a disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter a great torment.” (Surah 5:41).
“You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews till some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O ‘Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.’”
So it is rather simple: recognizing Israel will deny Mohamed as a prophet.
EXACTLY! I have been thinking about this lately, the fact that until the Jewish people are eradicated the Mohammedans can assume the mantle of the leader of the monotheistic religions. Sort of like a Shakespeare play where the heir cannot be King until the King dies or is killed. So to destroy those who first received the word of god is the only way to legitimize that sharmuta pig named Mohammad and his Nazi like followers. Just my opinion as I am still allowed to have one for now.
An excellent article on the difference between Islamists and Muslims here at PJs.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/when-muslims-are-more-%e2%80%98radical%e2%80%99-than-%e2%80%98islamists%e2%80%99/
It seems to me that withdrawing incentives from the PA would be more effective in getting them to negotiations, assuming of course that a palestinian state would bring peace. Since it wont of course but rather lead to the death of Israel this should be a good time to get out of this two state nonsense.
By attempting to gain statehood unilaterally they have violated the 93 accords with both Israel and the US, at least arguably. The Arabs who formerly resided in Israel refused their only chance at an independent state when they refused partition in 1948. The Israelis didn’t recapture the Gaza strip from palestinians they reclaimed it from the Egyptians. The didn’t repossess the West Bank from palestinians they recovered it from the Jordanians. They didn’t reclaim the Golan Heights from palestinians they recaptured it from the Syrians.
It is impossible for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. The problem is that the Palestinians insist that Israel must be destroyed and the Jewish People exterminated as the sole outcome of the Palestinian Israeli peace talks.
Obviously the Israelis must refuse this outcome, but since the Israelis for whatever reason refuse to specify that this is why the talks have failed, indeed, the Israelis have refused to make the genocidal Palestinian position a minor issue, the Palestinian narrative of victimhood and suffering rule the media.
Thus any Israeli peace initative will perforce fail and so long as Israel fails to make publicly clear that she will not commit national or demographic suicide, or permit a Palestinian genocide of our people, Israel will continue to lose the public relations war.
Of course given the general deterioration of the economic, military, and social situation in the Middle East, another war to destroy Israel is definitely on the horizon and there is nothing Israel can do to prevent it.
The Obama White House and the US State Department, well they can do a lot of things to keep this deterioration from happening but they are so obtuse and indifferent, that they probably won’t.
Barry
Will you please provide an URL for the official Quardennial Review of U.S . military plans, 92 pages of Politically Correct pap, and especially for Adm. Mullen’s 3.5 page letter at the end, which deals with all the real issues.
Are you Barry both (splitting) American and Israeli? This cuts has cut in out
you like you relatively levered by? Your brilliance? Hard work player rule US
for self interest that is (my opinion in my opinion) your deceit. Democracy a
sham extolled by America her relatives in crony state capitalism including US
dollar denominated stakeholders (you and yours!) aver Christians crusaders is
a regretable past vav Islamic jihad is current threat so. You your circle ate
eating too much (subsidized by Americans devalued also Muslims devalued asset
as in debt indentured servants) desperate desires want having it too. Empires
go and return. Time your American realize US$ imperium out of gas so? Kingdom
Israel return. Time your Jewish id reify. Wall St. kowtow = Israel dhimmi end
means? Return! Time earthlings concede we Israel Land Torah G-d is truth. One
particular who authors time itself veiling justice behind natural orders. So!
All previous notion US an honest broker is butt a joke sow Muslims alike Jew.