Syrian uprising reaches the edge of Damascus, according to the Washington Post. Hanin Ghaddar argues that Israel actually prefers to keep Assad in power as a lesser evil to a possible Islamist takeover. And so too does Hezbollah! As perhaps does Russia, according to the NYT. But despite this, Assad’s regime is looking more and more shaky by the day.
According to the Washington Post, Hamas is looking for a new sugar daddy in Turkey and is distancing itself from Iran. “Hamas is developing new relations with Turkey, according to new reports coming from the region. The arrangement includes opening an official Hamas office in Turkey in a matter of weeks and a reported Turkish pledge of $300 million to help re-build Hamas-controlled Gaza. … ‘Far better a Sunni sponsor with growing influence than a Shia paymaster that is an international pariah under growing sanctions. One has to wonder how the Turkish role affects the internal dynamics in Hamas, where the Gaza hierarchy appears to be pushing aside the formerly dominant outsiders, led by Khaled Meshal from Damascus.’”
The New York Times reports that Hamas leader Khaled Mashad has appeared in Jordan to announce he is no longer associated with Syria. “AMMAN, Jordan — Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, made a rare and pointedly low-key visit to Jordan on Sunday, days after Hamas officials signaled that he had effectively abandoned the group’s base in Damascus, the Syrian capital.” The NYT believes this indicates a growing confidence among regional capitals that Islamist parties will soon come to dominate the Middle East, with Amman positioning itself as a “go between”.
Jordan wants to restore relations with Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls Gaza, because the group is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Islamist allies are forming new governments around the Arab world, and because Jordan wants to remain an influential go-between in the region, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Jordan does not want to damage its relationship with Hamas’s chief rival, President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, nor to anger Jordan’s allies, Israel and the United States, which consider Hamas a terrorist group.
The word “go between” is a much nicer one than the term “fixer”. All the real money in the Middle East seems to stem from either causing trouble or getting paid not to cause trouble. You can even earn a handsome some by simply hosting discussions between extortionist and extorted. But in the scheme of things, Jordan’s position is relatively benign. After all, what would do without go-betweens?
But by the looks of it, President Obama’s transcendent vision for the Middle East, uttered with such intensity as he uplifted his chin during the height of the Egyptian overthrow of Mubarak, has eventuated in a somewhat less noble outcome. Israel has a new set of enemies to replace the old. The Sunnis and Shias are at daggers drawn. Democracy advances, such as it can under Islamist wings. American citizens are hunkered down in the US embassy in Cairo. And Iran is still its way to build a nuclear bomb. Maybe progress in the Middle East consists simply of watching the merry-go-round turn one more time.
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So, what would happen if the hoi polloi in Egypt decided to follow the example of the “Iranian students” of 30 years ago and take hostages at the US Embassy? Talk about the Merry-go-Round turning…
The US needs to focus on the western pacific. They have no interest in the Middle East. Let Turkey, a key US ally with excellent STEM universities take over all interests in the region. KSA is buying 60 billion of US defense products for the sole purpose of propping up the US economy. Stop sending money to the joos.
That Victor
/sarc
It’s Assad sad day in the Middle East
You’d think that things would at the very least
Be somewhat friendly what with common foes
That’s how the MENA goes
The Sunni Shia are at daggers drawn
Hamas and Fatah swear they’ll meet at dawn
And everybody wants Israelis dead
But harder done than said
A thousand years they’re here what do we find
A thousand years they’re here and still behind
No art no science not a thing to show
It’s time for them to go
I am assuming, Annoy, that you are just beating Victor to the punch to get it out of the way.
What we really need to do is to downgrade the importance of the Middle East and drill massively for oil right here, right now. Cut off the flow of cash to the middle east and the money for making trouble largely goes away.
Hamas: this _is_ the word in the Old Testiment for man’s violence done on the earth during the days of Noah. Don’t even think about coming to terms with that 8^|
#5 Unsk
Cut off the flow of cash to the middle east…
The hostility of US administrations to domestic oil recovery suggests that some kind of deal was cut with the Sauds a long time ago. Obama is the worst of the bunch but by no means the only POTUS do just about everything possible to keep massive amounts of money heading to despotic regimes.
If there is such a deal where is the upside of the bargain for the US? Could it be as simple as the millions of dollars waiting at the end of the rainbow for former administration officials and congress critters?
“Maybe progress in the Middle East consists simply of watching the merry-go-round turn one more time.”
While hoping that SOB reaching for the brass ring falls off and gets ground up in the gears.
The numbers are against Assad. Strategypage guesses that 10% of Assad’s army has deserted. That means everytime he sends them out to shoot civilians, he makes his enemy stronger. This is the third world. They are ignorant, not stoooopid!
At some point, the deserters will outnumber the loyalists. Then Assad jumps in his helio and heads for the coast and a Russian canoe. So every soldier in the Syrian army has to be thinking on when to change their coat.
If no one else will say this I will.
I will admit to quoting from the children’s book “The Little Prince” where the Little Prince made a pact with the venomous snake in the North African desert. The way it worked in the story is that the Little Prince had to die to return home as when he died he would fall back towards his native planet much as when we die we fall to Earth. I expressed the view to someone of Middle Eastern heritage that it was sad that people in Libya had to die so they could in effect “return home” from the tyranny they were under to the land of their birth.
“Walt” and his verse do not rise to the literary merits of Antoine to Saint-Exupery, whether in the original French and English translation. I am beginning to find the incessant expression in rhyming verse a response to everything our host Richard Fernandez comments about in seriousness to be annoying. What is taking place in Syria, whatever one’s opinion about whether Mr. Assad should stay or go, is no light matter.
This is a serious topic; people in Syria are dying with every hour in pursuit of their freedom from a tyrant, and I don’t appreciate the literary merits about putting that situation into hurried verse.
PM – Lighten up. We laugh because if we couldn’t we would just cry. We don’t change governments here, we just talk about them. Pass the hat or pass the ammunition.
As the Shah could tell you, once gunfire reaches the capital there is only ONE end game.
Assad is economically besieged.
He doesn’t have a patron able to paper over his sins.
I’d say that the reporters are WAY behind the curve — and that it’s the interdiction of Assad’s mobility that is telling.
He’s headed for a Cornwallis/ Yorktown ending… and he’s not even on the coast.
“He’s headed for a Cornwallis/ Yorktown ending… and he’s not even on the coast.”
Actually he is. Or at least his power base is. There was an excellent map in Foreign Policy last month that broke Syria up into religious areas. The sect that is the Assad core, his center of gravity if you will, is mostly the coastal area north of Lebanon.
That is his final redoubt.
If you are going to kill citizens to maintain power, half stepping never works. Stalin knew. You don’t round up and shoot a few dozen, you round up and shoot a few million. Daddy Assad, when faced with the same problem killed everything in the city of Hama. Estimates vary between 15 and 40 thousand. Shock affect.
Baby Assad, by killing a dozen at a time, gains nothing from the murders.
Drudge is linking to reports that Assad can’t even get his family to the airport….
If any part of that is true, Assad doesn’t have even a week to hang on.
Even the Duck of Death had enough moxie to get his women out of harm’s way.
It smells like someone is tapping into his communications.
i wonder if vanity faire will do a sequel piece on ms assad, after the fall. my advice to baby assad: put a phone book down the back of your pants.
7. Peter Boston
<>
I have read that both Bush presidents are on the Saudi payroll. NUMEROUS others, as well, including elites on both sides of the aisle.
My own opinion is the Saudis may be our number 1 enemy. Beside 9/11 they (the Wahabbi’s) are building mosques around the world which preach hatred for the West. Serious stuff that the Bushes should answer for.
SirWalt @ 15: “My own opinion is the Saudis may be our number 1 enemy.”
Come, sir! Our #1 enemy is within US borders, not outside. Some individual Saudi citizens may hate America, but so do some individual US citizens. And too many of those America-haters are in the US government, US academia, and US media.
You will see more American cars on the streets of Riyadh than on the streets of San Francisco. Doesn’t that tell us something about where the US’s real problem lies?
PM/9: Dude, you have to chillax. Walt has a unique gift. He not only gets it, he gives it –with unique skill. I’ve read a lot of verse (and tried to write some, too) and I think he is unmatched for clarity of thought, fidelity of rhyme and meter, speed of execution, humor or other wry twist. He has a huge talent and adds enormous value to every thread. The Bard of BC.
So don’t be dissing him, ‘kay?
k @ 16: You will see more American cars on the streets of Riyadh than on the streets of San Francisco. Doesn’t that tell us something about where the US’s real problem lies?
US companies design cars that appeal more to customers whose idea of luxury is a camel?
–
egg @ 19: I endorse your story for the most part, but the previous relationship between the Bush’s and the Sauds is also highly suspect. Mostly it wasn’t any official Saudi policy to attack the US militarily at that time. Etc.
sirWalterRalegh @ 15 said:
“My own opinion is the Saudis may be our number 1 enemy. Beside 9/11 they (the Wahabbi’s) are building mosques around the world which preach hatred for the West. Serious stuff that the Bushes should answer for.”
The situation regarding the Saudis was very complex with regards to 9/11. It is generally believed that Osama bin Laden’s main strategic objective with 9/11 was to induce the United States into attacking Saudi Arabia as a response to 9/11. This in turn would have triggered a deep, violent and visceral reaction in the entire Islamic world against the United States since Saudi Arabia safeguarded the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It is to George W. Bush’s everlasting credit that he saw through bin Laden’s strategy and immediately signaled bin Laden’s failure by withdrawing American troops remaining in Saudi Arabia. Because Saudi Arabia was in fact a “no go zone”, this left George W. Bush in a strategic dilemma in terms of his response towards 9/11. Simply driving the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan into Pakistan was insufficient. An appropriate response for 9/11 demanded that the United States deliver some sort of punishment directly upon the Arabs. Saudi Arabia was off the table as was Egypt (Mubarak was an American ally even though Egyptian Moslems tended to be sympathetic towards al Qaeda). Yemen was politically insignificant and the Iranians were not Arabs. There were various neutral Arab states like Kuwait and Jordan but attacking them would have been stupid and pointless. By the process of elimination, Iraq was really the only appropriate Arab state left to serve as the target of American displeasure. The argument to invade Iraq was further strengthened by the failure of the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the conclusion of the Persian Gulf war and Saddam Hussein’s success in bribing the Europeans into adopting a policy of appeasement. Although Saddam Hussein was not directly responsible for 9/11, he ended up bearing most of the punishment resulting from 9/11. The lesson learned by the Arab world including the Saudis was if they failed to control their religious fanatics then punishment would be administered to some member of the Arab world depending upon how it best served America’s own strategic interests.
“If you are going to kill citizens to maintain power, half stepping never works. Stalin knew. You don’t round up and shoot a few dozen, you round up and shoot a few million. Daddy Assad, when faced with the same problem killed everything in the city of Hama. Estimates vary between 15 and 40 thousand. Shock affect.
Baby Assad, by killing a dozen at a time, gains nothing from the murders.”
Good one. Stalin often went one step further, however, by taking the surviving population and relocating them to some dismal place a thousand miles away. They were so busy trying to survive in a hostile environment that revolting was the last thing on their minds.
I’m not sure that would work in Syria, though. It’s far smaller than the former Soviet Union. It’s also probably far too late for such drastic action. Assad probably doesn’t have the manpower to pull it off.
PM @9,
If you go back and look at #4 you will notice the name is Wlt (the “A” is missing). So I suspect you may have accused the wrong person. In addition, even though I’m not as learned as most of the contributors to BC, the prose is not as refined as the “real Walt”.
Evacuating to a Western embassy works so well, as the NYT knows. What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFQY1H7TVV8
cjm 14,
It was Vogue. Has Baby Assad lost Vogue?
1968 Lyndon Johnson – “If I have lost Walter Cronkite then I have lost Middle America.”
2012 Chinless Eye Doc – “If I have lost Vogue then I have lost the pinhead elite.”
@ 19. eggplant.
Thanks for the memory reboot. Most of us knew that but in the heat of the moment let it slip down our memory holes.
Josh….
The Saudis favor American machines for one overwhelming reason: the best air conditioning systems — going way back.
The fact that they use a lot of gasoline is a complete non-factor in Arabia.
They pay no fuel taxes of any kind.
The high powered American style air conditioning systems would be ruinous if installed in Europe.
That’s also true in Japan.
That’s why German and Japanese engineers treat air conditioning systems as second class projects.
The Alawites have a lot of enemies.
#19, interesting theory. I agree about not attacking Saudi Arabia (I doubt there was any chance we would have, but that is something Bin Laden would have thought up). Iraq was done as payback for Saddam’s past treachery but mostly because of its oil reserves (Cheney knew how critical they will be in the long run). And the idea that overthrowing Saddam could help destabilize Iran (in a good way). But if just punishing Iraq was the goal, we could have done that without years of bloody insurrection.
Eggplant #19:
The way I put it is this: The attack of 9/11/01 was a symbolic act, not a military action like 12/07/1941. I response was partially symbolic as well. They can come over here and knock down a few buildings. We can go over there and knock down whole countries. And besides, without Saddam in Iraq we no longer needed forces in Saudia Arabia. So a key purpose was for us to get into Iraq, a point that seems to have escaped the current “rezident” in DC entirely.
As for Afghanistan, I say again: We should have just blown the place up with nukes and been done with it. Compassionate Conservatism strikes again! I realize this makes me sound rather Air Forcey, but there ya go.
Blert #24:
I understand that after years of complaining about the company’s automobile air conditioning systems the US division took 4 German BMW engineers, stuck them in one of the cars and had them drive around West Texas in August.
Then they began to understand the problem.
Air conditioning, brilliant. As far as Iraq is concerned, let’s not forget we were already enforcing a no-fly zone, were shot upon with Iraqi surface to air missiles from time to time, and, in effect, were being played as chumps while the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire were being flaunted and Saddam himself was plotting to kill our commander in chief. It is notable that leftists complain bitterly that the only reason the US attacked Iraq is that they tried to to kill GW’s daddy. Not the president of the united states, his daddy. Dispicable.
Blert @ 24: “The Saudis favor American machines for one overwhelming reason: the best air conditioning systems — going way back.”
Nice response, but it is more than that. And fuel usage is not a factor too — the German automobiles most popular in the Mid-East are gas-guzzlers, larger and heavier than anything manufactured in the US.
No, the real reasons are deeper. One of them is the large number of Arabs who have positive feelings towards the US. Doesn’t fit the US media template, so the only way to see this is to go there and meet people. The other side is the question of why many US citizens persist in running down the US — which does fit the media template, perfectly. There is a reason that the “Greener Than Thou” Toyota Pious driver would never look at a Chevy Volt, and it has little to do with engineering.
The real enemies of the US — the ones who are actually doing long-term serious harm to the US and its people — are inside the borders.
Could someone please bring me up to speed as to when and where Assad crossed the line from “Reformer” to tyrant as far as the USDOS is concerned? I would just like to know for….um future reference.
RWE @ 26 said:
“As for Afghanistan, I say again: We should have just blown the place up with nukes and been done with it.”
This leads to conversation #37 that we’ve had more than once at Belmont Club, i.e. We have the wrong type of nukes for blowing up pestilent holes like Afghanistan.
Sure, we could have easily turned Afghanistan into a glowing crater but the fallout plumes would have drifted over China and India thus creating a far worse situation. The nuclear weapons that we developed during the Cold War were designed upon the assumption of Mutual Assured Destruction, i.e. the weapons were so destructive that we could never use them unless we were being destroyed in the process. With the conclusion of the Cold War, we should have immediately begun a crash program of developing clean nuclear weapons (aneutronic weapons with little or no fallout plume). Instead we’re left holding these obsolete nuclear weapons that are little more than a bluff when dealing with giant turds like Iran and Pakistan.
Unfortunately, rationalizing our nuclear weapons arsenal won’t become a topic of conversation until after Obama goes away. Until then, the only conversation is “stock pile stewardship” of an aging set of nuclear weapons that probably don’t work and are tactically inappropriate even if they do work.
I agree with much of Eggplant (#19) except that Bush also stated that drawing the Fanatics to Iraq and killing them in large numbers there would keep them from coming here (US) and it seems to have worked really, really well! (no homeland attacks during his 8 years) Now with the big magnet no more we can only hold our breath as the Smartest man alive and Messiah to the smartest people on earth cuts our military and outs our SOF… Yep already been several small scale attacks just wait the coming years are going to be real interesting.
Eggplant (#30) the old nukes would still be useful on China and Russia so their not totally obsolete, working is another story…
CharlesWhite @ 31 said:
“… the old nukes would still be useful on China and Russia so their not totally obsolete,.”
Actually, they’re not useful against China. Here in California, once in a while dust from
China will blow clear across the Pacific Ocean and end up in California. If China was
seriously nuked, we’d end up eating the fallout in California. The old Cold War nukes really are good for nothing and should be upgraded to weapons that can actually be used.