The New Middle East
Washington has finally convinced itself that the Syrian regime is doomed and that its plan to shape the post-Assad outcome through the UN is, and perhaps always was, a fantasy. However, the administration is still trying to limit its involvement to diplomacy, including efforts to close airspace to reinforcements bound for Damascus and working with a wide spectrum of Syrians through NGOs.
For his own part, Assad is fighting for time to create an Allawite rump state on the Mediterranean coast; a bastion to which he, the Russians and the Iranians can cling and from which he can continue to support Hezbollah. That brood is now in disarray, like a colony of ants with a dead queen. Reports from Lebanon suggest that the Shi’ites who supported Hezbollah despite loathing its politics now fear they will be left adrift in a Middle East once again riven with sectarian conflict.
The New York Times describes the administration’s rude awakening. “The Obama administration has for now abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Syria, and instead it is increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad, American officials say.”
The White House is now holding daily high-level meetings to discuss a broad range of contingency plans — including safeguarding Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities — in a sign of the escalating seriousness of the Syrian crisis following a week of intensified fighting in Damascus, the capital, and the killing of Mr. Assad’s key security aides in a bombing attack …
Administration officials insist they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already financing those efforts. But American officials said that the United States would provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces in their widening, sustained fight against Syrian Army troops. It’s also possible the rebels would receive some intelligence support, the officials said.
The Wall Street Journal has additional details. “The U.S. has been mounting a secret but limited effort to speed the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without using force, scrambling spies and diplomats to block arms and oil shipments from Iran and passing intelligence to front-line allies.”
A centerpiece of the effort this year focused on getting Iraq to close its airspace to Iran-to-Syria flights that U.S. intelligence concluded were carrying arms for Assad loyalists—contrary to flight manifests saying they held cut flowers. The U.S. has also tried to keep ships believed to carry arms and fuel for Syria from traversing the Suez Canal, with mixed results …
Skeptics within the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill, however, say U.S. pressure is hit-or-miss and comes too late to ensure U.S. influence over any post-Assad future. Many Syrian opposition leaders complain the U.S. hasn’t done enough and say the efforts of regional allies such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, in some cases to ship arms, are more significant.
And of course, the administration is continuing to work through the moderates by inviting them to seminars to talk about the post-Assad successor state(s). “For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government. The project, which has not directly involved U.S. government officials but was partially funded by the State Department, is gaining increased relevance this month as the violence in Syria spirals out of control and hopes for a peaceful transition of power fade away.”
The project has also tried to identify regime personnel who might be able to play an effective role in the immediate phase after Assad falls.
“There’s a very clear understanding of the Syrians in this project that a transition is not sweeping away of the entire political and judicial framework of Syria,” Heydemann said. “We have learned an enormous amount about the participants so that we can actually begin a very crude vetting process.”
There is always the danger that any Syrian opposition leader with the time to attend seminars in Germany is by definition a nobody in the Syrian opposition on the ground. Just who the State Department winds up influencing remains to be seen. Events in Syria are now being managed through the latest version of our old policy friend, “leading from behind”.
The administration is understandably reluctant to get involved in leading from the front in Syria. “In the past, White House and State Department officials have said they are reluctant to send weapons to the rebel fighters because the weapons could end up in the hands of extremist groups or even terrorist organizations. In an interview Friday, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said 25 percent of the opposition has ‘extremist ties.’”
But that doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar will be similarly restrained. Those countries may not be as shy handing out weapons to those with extremist ties, and in fact may be giving the goodies to precisely those sorts of people.
Lee Smith writes that what those who opposed the US involvement in Iraq ultimately proved is that sectarian loyalties trump any loyalties to the central government. Assad wanted to make a special point of it by supporting the Sunni insurgency against Baghdad. And in one of ironies of history, the very same Sunni sectarians are marching on Damascus.
By facilitating the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, Bashar hoped to show Syrians what lay in store for them should they embrace the Americans’ freedom agenda—not democracy but civil war. Instead, what Assad’s policy illuminated for Sunni Arabs was the sectarian nature of the region. No matter how much the Assad regime waved the banner of Arab nationalism and cursed Israel, the Sunnis’ most pressing hostility was with the minority clique that they decided, on reflection, had no right to rule them. By the time Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans had moved to topple their regimes in the spring of 2011, the Iraq war had already primed Syria’s Sunni population for a much bloodier conflict than any of the other Arab Spring countries experienced.
It’s hard to grasp the concept that you might have to flee from your best friends simply because they belonged to another religion or sect and seek sanctuary with strangers who are at least your co-religionists. During my trip to Lebanon a friend advised me to “head for the Maronite Christian heartland” if trouble breaks out, even if you don’t know anybody there. You will be protected, because you are Christian. I thought the idea was ridiculous. But I see now that it might be true.
As Hanin Gaddar points out from Lebanon, many Shi’a who sought refuge with friends in Syria during the 2006 war with Israel now find they cannot reciprocally shelter their Sunni friends simply because they are not safe in the Shi’a areas of Lebanon. What changed was that back in 2006 the sectarian dynamic was not in ascendancy. Today sect is becoming the main thing.
“When the war started in 2006, I left with my family to Damascus, where we stayed with another family whom we did not know,” says Imad from Bint Jbeil. “We had common friends who took us in. They were so welcoming and shared their food and house with us. We stayed in touch, and today they contacted me to see if they can come over for a few days until the clashes in Damascus subside. They are Sunnis, and I am not sure if they are going to be safe here in the South, so I told them the truth and put them in touch with my friends in Beirut. I don’t know if they will go, but I feel so bad and ungrateful. Why does it have to be that way?”
“Why does it have to be that way?” It has to be that way because the failure to bring Western democratic concepts to the Middle East meant that when authoritarianism fell it could not default to democratic forms. With the door to that model closed, it fell back instead on an earlier, more primitive and bloodier format: tribal warfare.
Now the only safety is the safety of the tribe. The consequences of this paradigm shift are immediate. Lee Smith explains that Assad has now realized that as President of Syria, he is president of a fiction. As the leader of the Allawites, however, he has a sporting chance of leading a very real tribe.
As Tony Badran, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has documented, the regime seems to be waging a campaign of sectarian cleansing in order to carve out a rump state along the Mediterranean coast, reflecting the geographical contours of the traditional Alawite heartland, with its capital in Latakia. The regime has lost the -hinterland and may be on the verge of losing Damascus, but it is still counting on survival. If Assad can’t have all of Syria, then he and his Russian and Iranian backers will console themselves with an Alawite state on the Mediterranean. The Obama administration should ensure that this doesn’t come to pass.
Under the Assad regime, after all, Syria has been a state sponsor of terror, one that has directed its energies against the United States and American allies. The regime’s survival even in reduced form would serve Iranian interests as well, since Assad is a key link in the chain connecting Tehran to its terrorist asset in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
If Assad does not succeed in marching the Allawites to a sanctuary on the coast, they may be doomed to suffer reprisal. But not only them, the Shi’a in Lebanon, who have of late been ascendant through Hezbollah, will find themselves vulnerable to reprisal to those whom they have lately oppressed.
Are the Shia ready to pay the price of another war? Are they ready to remain the human shield behind which Hezbollah hides? In his last speech, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called slain Syrian Defense Chief Assef Shawkat “a comrade in arms and resistance.” No Lebanese can deny his crimes in Lebanon or how many Lebanese suffered because of him and his regime. Are the Shia willing to suffer the consequences of the war Hezbollah declared against the Syrian people?
Probably not. But the Shi’a in Lebanon will be only one among many targets of pent-up resentment. They’ll have plenty of company in misery. In the new Middle East it may be Sunnis vs the Shi’a vs the Sunni vs the Kurd vs the Turks vs Kurds vs the Allawites vs the Sunni vs … you can keep going. Into that barroom brawl you could insert the Druze and the Copts and Maronites in the corners somewhere. Maybe they could play the piano while people break chairs over each others heads. Come one, come all.
To a certain the degree the current crisis ironically validates the centrality of Israel in the Middle East process. But their importance was always misunderstood. They were not, as the Left never tired of saying, the bringers of the Apple of Discord into the Middle Eastern paradise. In fact they were the opposite. The real function of the Jew was to provide an object of hatred strong enough to keep other minorities from killing each other.
Now that the different sects have rediscovered how much they really loathe one other Israel is for the first time in sixty plus years nothing but a bystander. If it were not for the threat of missiles, they might well break out the popcorn and watch it all play out. Unfortunately the countries in the Middle East are all too close together for this to be a realistic option. Still the resolution of the Israel problem — via its marginalization — may prove the only foreign policy achievement of the administration, though not in the way they had intended.
Belmont Commenters
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$64,000 question: What happens to Assad’s WMDs during and after his regime implodes?
Likely scenario is he’ll want to go out in a blaze of glory and be stupid with the Israelis. The Syrian people might rally around Assad if he could convince the Israelis to launch a counter attack. I have no clue why but antisemitism seems to trump all other forms of hatred.
The WMDs? Yes, one wonders where those came from. The Israelis bombed a nuclear facility in the Syrian desert. They had a nuclear program?
Damascus supposedly has the world’s biggest stockpile of VX. A drop the size of Lincoln’s eye on a penny would kill a man in minutes. Of course the only known combat use of VX in modern history may have been Saddam against the Kurds. You know, from the gas stockpiles he didn’t have?
So where does Syria manufacture its gas? And what does it really have. One thing it has a big stockpile of missiles, many of which can reach any part of Israel. Who’s getting a hold of that?
The whole place is a mystery.
We were told in 2007 that Iran stopped its nuclear program. Now we are told they are only a couple years from weaponizing. We were told Assad was a reformer, his wife was in Vogue. Today he’s Jack the Ripper and Jeffrey Dahmer all rolled in one. It’s possible that the politicians have been economical with the truth in the past
The $64,000 question is if the esteemed politicians even know what the truth is any more. Maybe they’ve poisoned the information well so thoroughly that there’s no really no rational basis for policy any more. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Richard Fernandez @ 2 said:
“Maybe they’ve poisoned the information well so thoroughly that there’s no really no rational basis for policy any more.”
Thirty years ago, all our political information came from CBS/NBC/ABS/NYT/Time/Newsweek. It was mostly liberal/MSM propaganda but since we did not have alternative information sources, the ruling elite could lie to use with impunity (ignorance was bliss). Now we have the Internet and know that we’re being lied to. Unfortunately that’s all we do know, i.e. that we’re being lied to. The signal-to-noise ratio for the Internet is so poor that nothing on it can be assumed to be true. We can go to places like Belmont Club in some hope for learning the truth. However even in Belmont Club there is the problem of the echo chamber and confirmation bias. It’s clear that absolute truth is illusive.
On the subject of lies: The DJIA was amusing. Europe is on the threshold of implosion and there is no reason for the markets to go anywhere but down. The DJIA initially dropped 220 points as HFT but has slowly been working its way up on terrible news. It’s amazing what the Fed and PPT can do with infinite paper money to throw at the markets. Everything has become a lie including our financial system.
Im convinced the US is behind the entire Arab Spring. We financed and supported and lead the uprising in Syria from the beginning, just as we helped push over Tunisia and Egypt – does anyone, for example, really believe some dork from Google sparked this whole thing, and the rest of The New York Times/Newsweek narrative invented for Apple addicts? That Islamists are coming to power is no counterargument – the State Department has been addicted for decades to the concept that actual administration of an actual government will cool and hamstring the most ardent utopian revolutionary fantasist.
The real problem, behind this whole damn thing, is the Sino-Soviet bloc. We are dismantling their network of states by means other than kinetic warfare, which only yesterday was proved such a political liability. The Arabs are completely immaterial even to themselves. Where there is no evident superpower sponsorship, there is squalor; where there is, there is prostitution, with all its gaudy displays of “independence.” The UN is just as much a show for US policy makers and warfighters as it is for every other government involved. Don’t misled by charades of partisanship on Capitol Hill: that too, in most respects, is a show. The real war is secret war, not this schlock devised for publicity for reality TV addicted idiots.
The administration is understandably reluctant to get involved in leading from the front in Syria.
State is paralyzed by the whole Arab Spring, and the White House is paralyzed by fears of offending Russia and/or China. And/or leftist voters. IOW, all the communists.
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egg @ 3: On the subject of lies: The DJIA was amusing.
No shiite. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Lead from behind, get left behind. And now the US is basically hostage to events in the Middle East. Somehow the “smartest” President ever to sit in the big chair in the Oval Office didn’t think that would happen. Smartest? Don’t make me laugh. With every passing days it becomes painfully obvious that he is most clueless President ever. You would think that he would have at least one “smart” person around him that would say, “Umm, Mr. President, that is a really bad idea.” The reality is he has surrounded himself with a clown posse just as witless and clueless as he is. Twenty years from now folks are going shake their heads in amazement that he was able to con his way into a position that he clearly lacked the experience or temperament for.
However even in Belmont Club there is the problem of the echo chamber and confirmation bias.
I second that.
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Tarn…
It’s the post turtle effect.
Policy rots from the head down.
Wretchard’s post raises a ton of questions. Like:
• Assuming Assad retreats to some sort of Alawite State along the coasts, then who controls the new Syria remnant?
It’s getting tiresome saying it, but we can be sure Christians will be losers in the outcome.
…at least there aren’t that many countries left, so I can quit repeating the sad fact.
Hillary’s Helper Huma, John McCain, and The Brotherhood
Since Mrs. Clinton has been secretary of state, with Ms. Abedin as one of her top advisers, the State Department has strongly supported abandoning the federal government’s prior policy against dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood. State, furthermore, has embraced a number of Muslim Brotherhood positions that undermine both American constitutional rights and our alliance with Israel. To name just a few manifestations of this policy sea change:
The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures.
The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.
Secretary Clinton personally intervened to reverse a Bush-administration ruling that barred Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood’s founder and son of one of its most influential early leaders, from entering the United States.
The State Department has collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia proscriptions against negative criticism of Islam.
The State Department has excluded Israel, the world’s leading target of terrorism, from its “Global Counterterrorism Forum,” a group that brings the United States together with several Islamist governments, prominently including its co-chair, Turkey — which now finances Hamas and avidly supports the flotillas that seek to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas. At the forum’s kickoff, Secretary Clinton decried various terrorist attacks and groups; but she did not mention Hamas or attacks against Israel — in transparent deference to the Islamist governments, which echo the Brotherhood’s position that Hamas is not a terrorist organization and that attacks against Israel are not terrorism.
The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the parliamentary elections.
The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian territories notwithstanding that Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch.
The State Department and the administration recently hosted a contingent from Egypt’s newly elected parliament that included not only Muslim Brotherhood members but a member of the Islamic Group (Gama’at al Islamia), which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization — so that providing it with material support is a serious federal crime. The State Department has refused to provide Americans with information about the process by which it issued a visa to a member of a designated terrorist organization, about how the members of the Egyptian delegation were selected, or about what security procedures were followed before the delegation was allowed to enter our country.
On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military junta currently governing the country, to surrender power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official. She also visited with Morsi; immediately after his victory, Morsi proclaimed that his top priorities included pressuring the United States to release the Blind Sheikh.
Quite apart from the Brotherhood’s self-proclaimed “grand jihad” to destroy the United States, which the Justice Department proved in federal court during the 2007–8 Holy Land Foundation prosecution, the Brotherhood’s supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, publicly called for jihad against the United States in an October 2010 speech. After it became clear the Brotherhood would win the parliamentary election, Badie said the victory was a stepping stone to “the establishment of a just Islamic caliphate.”
This is not an exhaustive account of Obama-administration coziness with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is just some of the lowlights.
Senator McCain is an incorrigible vacillator. It is to be expected that he has “evolved” from last year’s claimed opposition to the Brotherhood to a new position, more aligned with that of his friend Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration. Some of us, however, really are “unalterably opposed” to the Muslim Brotherhood. The five House conservatives are asking questions to which the State Department’s own guidelines, to say nothing of common sense, demand answers. Answers not just about Huma Abedin but, far more significantly, about the government’s policy toward virulently anti-American Islamists. Americans deserve nothing less — even if the usual GOP spaghetti spines would prefer to give them nothing, period.
— Andrew C. McCarthy
(read the whole thing to see yet another classic performance by crazy John)
Reality can be very inconvenient, especially for career politicians and bureaucrats. To admit that a serious problem exists leads to the public conclusion that something must be done to address that issue. And down that path is the possibility that whatever action is taken might screw up most royally, potentially ending the career of the politician or bureaucrat. And that is to be avoided at all costs.
That, in my humble opinion, is the root of the rot in the current political class in the West. Standard Operating Procedure is to simply deny that problems exist at all. Only pay attention to data that suggests that the potential crisis, like Iran building nuclear weapons or the impending insolvency of Social Security, doesn’t really exist. As we all know all you have to do with a problem is to ignore it for a sufficiently long interval of time and it will go away.
Yeah, right.
Wretchard,
The Assad Regime just threatened the outside world with bioweapons as well as VX gas.
See:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-07-23/Syria-violence-rebels/56425402/1
The Syrian regime threatened Monday to use its chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, in its first ever acknowledgement that it possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi stressed, however, that Damascus would not use its unconventional arms against its own citizens. The announcement comes as Syria faces international isolation, a tenacious rebellion that has left at least 19,000 people dead and threats by Israel to invade to prevent such weapons from falling into rebel hands.
The Noo Yauk Tymes is guilty of believing its own BS once again. Seriously, why would the Obaminoids give a rat’s rear end about Syria?
The Won clearly has no time for Israel, so a spill-over of violence from Syria to Israel would not matter to him. He has no time for Arab Christians, so a pogrom would not interfer with his campaign schedule. He has never shown that he even knows the Kurds exist. As for R2P, he obviously does not care about the ongoing murder of people of color in various places in Africa; why should he care about Arabs?
The President doesn’t really seem to see anything wrong with Russian or Iranian expansionism. Syria has little oil, so there is not much pressure from EUnuchs to have Obambi trade American blood for it. And just how many voters in the US are going to think better of Obumble if he does get the US involved financially or militarily in Syria, whether leading from the back or the front?
There is nothing in Syria for Soetero. Just get the daily coffee klatch attendees to send a few press releases to the NYT to make the Upper East Side liberal campaign contributors think he cares; then back to the golf course.
High Level not to include POTUS:
“The White House is now holding daily high-level meetings to discuss a broad range of contingency plans — including safeguarding Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities — in a sign of the escalating seriousness of the Syrian crisis following a week of intensified fighting in Damascus, the capital, and the killing of Mr. Assad’s key security aides in a bombing attack.”
From a previous thread, I quoted:
Obama Headed to Site of Colorado Shootings
President Obama will depart for Aurora, Colorado Sunday to meet with families of the shooting victims and talk to local officials.
Obama will leave the White House a 2:15 pm ET and arrive in Colorado at 3:40 pm MT, spending two hours and twenty five minutes on the ground before leaving for San Francisco, where he had been scheduled to arrive Monday.
The Aurora appearance will offer Obama a chance to present himself as a healing unifier, even as he has waged a slash and burn campaign that has featured unsubstantiated charges against Mitt Romney, elements of class warfare, and suggestions by Vice President Joe Biden and other surrogates that Republicans are practicing racism.
On Monday, Obama will begin a previously scheduled West Coast campaign swing that will take him to Reno, Oakland, Seattle, New Orleans and Portland, Oregon before he returns to the White House Wednesday.
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Cleaning and upkeep on the Oval Office must be minimal, so that’s something to be thankful about.
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# 127. blert said…
Doug…
The only item getting any use is the prayer rug — oriented towards Brussels, natch.
Well, now we know what happens when there is no superpower, no hegemon who has the will and power to keep order in the Middle East. The result is not peace but a murderous Hobbesian war of “each against all”. And why not? The tribes see that only what what they can take for themselves in the here and now matters and no one will stop them. So let the Sunnis, the Shias, the Christians,and the Kurds fight. From the perspective of US national interests this is by no means a bad thing. Let the Muslums bleed each other white. The US has neither the power nor the will to intervene, so we might as well make the best we can of the situation.
Of course, it did not have to be this way, but an impotent, powerless USA was what the people of the region (and the world, for that matter) wanted, for the most part. Now they have it, and I hope they and the European liberals who hated and resented US power enjoy the world they willed into being.
Here is something a little different;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDXggDfgQp4
It’s called VICE news and it’s WWW based and uses a lot of cell phone material.
The above URL is to their article on the situation in Greece.
They cover many other topics.
What I found interesting is that the Greeks are actually more pissed off then the Syrians were to start. Syria didn’t really launch until the Army started murdering citizens. The Greeks use riot police armed with clubs and shields.
That turns the protests into something like a sporting event. Tear gas and a riot baton upside the head are not nearly as bad as a light machine gun firing 7 times a second working over the mob. Plus the mob uses stones, sticks and the occasional Molotov Cocktail.
A pretty fair match, all things considered.
4. Dan ‘Im convinced the US is behind the entire Arab Spring.’
But what is the goal of Arabs’ spring? Is it a planned failure, or something more hopeful?
12. Kinuachdrach ‘Seriously, why would the Obaminoids give a rat’s rear end about Syria?’
Syria and Iran both have Superdollars – counterfeit money that’s so real, you could almost say it was printed in the U.S.A. We can use this money to save Europe or Social Security, if their leaders are willing to lend some of it.
Perhaps instead of providing direct aid to the Syrian rebels obama could arrange for holder to allow them to be somehow walked to the rebels through a series of straw purchasers and accidentally lost. It seeems to have proved very effective for killing mexicans and American le.
O/T sad news: Sally Ride, first American female astronaut has died from pancreatic cancer at age 62. Her Ph.D. adviser was Art Walker. He was my astronomy teacher and a very nice man. He also died young at age 64. A couple years ago I showed symptoms of pancreatic cancer (enlarged pancreatic duct) and was bouncing off the walls in worry. Fortunately for me, it was a birth defect (I was born with an enlarged pancreatic duct). I can’t imagine the nightmare Sally Ride must have gone through to have that horrible disease and then die from it. It would have been better for her to die gloriously (and quickly) in space as did the Challenger and Columbia astronauts.
Stoi…
The Athenians merely brought back the phalanx.
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Folks, the muslim middle east is massively over populated based upon its own agriculture, industry and whatnot.
The edge of the Petrie dish have been met.
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The American corn drought is a global disaster if the Wan doesn’t IMMEDIATELY stop bio-fuels conversion of this food stock.
Well, it is apparent that Iran fears what is happening in Syria since they tried to refocus attention of the Muslim street on Israel by murdering Israelis in Bulgaria. Kudos to the Israeli leadership for slow-walking a response. This keeps the focus on intra-Muslim conflict which is truly the fundamental conflict in the mid east at this point. Modern Israel has always been the latest proxy for Muslim anger originally directed internally throughout the various sects of Islam which have been squabbling for at least 1,000 years. One of the reasons that restoration of the Caliphate or even the apocalyptic return of the Mahdi has reached febrile proportions among Muslims is precisely magical-thinking that such an event will snuff out apostate Muslim-Others, leaving only one purified Dar al-Islam. For Sunnis, Hezbollah-Shiite-Allawites-etc. will be eliminated, for Shiites, Sunnis will disappear. For the Answar Dine in Timbuktu it will be those idolatrous Sufi Orders.
The more the Sunni vs. Hezbollah-Shiite-Allawite-etc. conflict takes center stage in the middle east the better for Western traditions of liberty and human rights. These sectarian and tribal conflicts could have the same effect that the 30-Years War in 17th century Europe had. At the end of that truly horrible war emerged the Peace of Westphalia, which although imperfect, signalled the end of perennial, destructive wars and the beginning of a peaceful and prosperous period in Europe. Perhaps we can hope for something like that coming out of the dangerous sectarian conflicts in the mid east right now.
I pray that the Christians in these lands will be able to find some hope and peace as the days ahead darken.
Eggplant:
But then she would have missed 30 years of precious life.
My wife had 3 or more years stolen by doctor’s negligence.
What I would give to have those back…
4. Dan ‘Im convinced the US is behind the entire Arab Spring.’
Half right. The US Government isn’t but American citizens and NGO’s are. Directly. Indirectly, most of the ‘students’ ( Taliban in Farsi) were educated at American universities. The rest were educated in England.
I still think the Arab Spring will end up well. The Muslim brotherhood will take control for now but they are much weaker then the Army and will be easier to clear out in a few years. Still one man one vote one time stuff but the second go around will be better. It might take several generations but Democracy WILL be established. In the end the people will not settle for anything less.
In the short term, the USA will get hosed. Well, they say if you can’t avoid it, relax and enjoy it.
Aren’t we counting our chickens before they hatch?
AS of today Syrian Army units have taken back much of the rebel gains,
and- much more importantly- the Assad govt has announced it will
“only use its WMD chem-weapons in case of foreign intervention”.
The definition of foreign intervention being theirs alone, of course.
So there it is. The UN, the supporters of the opposition are being plainly told:
” Let Assad kill enough of his own people to cut his way back to power or we’ll kill them all”.
And who has the resources, or the guts, to call him on it?
I’d be willing to bet Assad is back in the saddle this time time next year, more firmly in charge than ever. And Kofi Annan will have moved on to a no-holds barred expose’ of the LAPD meter maids.
I don’t think there is any room to gloat. The collapse of Syria would have been a good thing if it led to an improved situation. But who is going to keep this from moving to all out conflict with the Saudis in a leading position?
Can we count on KSA to play the statesmen of the Muslim world and give the Christians, Allawites and Shi’a their due? Or is it only reasonable to expect they intend to subjugate their sectarian rivals? And what about Iran, is there some prospect the Ayatollahs will suddenly extend the hand of magnanimity? If there is, it is slender.
That was the role of the outsider. The outsider, like Lawrence in David Lean’s movie “belonged to no tribe” and therefore could mete out justice without incurring a tribal debt. As infidel America could do things that no Muslim or Arab could do.
To some extent the Jew is in the same position. Probably the reason the IDF was allowed to bomb the Syrian nuclear facility without anyone, not even the Sunni arabs, remarking upon it was because they were so outside the Pale, so far beyond the circle of acceptability that they could do the dirty work, and neither be thanked nor blamed for it.
It was obvious from the first that Obama’s plan to abandon its role in the Middle East so that he could fund his permanent majority at home would be fraught with danger. How much danger we have yet to tally.
You can go to Youtube and watch the President’s trip to Cairo, where he gave his “historic” speech to the Muslim world, almost literally dancing down the steps of Air Force One. What did he see as the major problem between the Muslim and outside world? Colonialism.
What was the main problem within the Middle East? Israel. “The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.”
What was he going to about the region? Remove nuclear weapons. “The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.”
How was he going to do it? By promoting democracy, but not the way George Bush pushed it. “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
And why was he confident he would succeed? Because of Islam’s well known traditions of tolerance.
Finally, he was there to bring them prosperity. “Finally, I want to discuss economic development and opportunity.”
In every single one of these areas his policies have signally failed. I think the root cause of his failure stems from the catastrophically erroneous basis of his actions, a basis rooted in the academic and left-wing convention wisdom. The Middle East is backward because of colonialism — a world that went from the Ottoman to the British empire in the last century — which was tormented by the aggression of the Jews; which was misunderstood by America; whose tolerance was legendary and whose capacity for economic development was unbridled.
It didn’t work out that way, but the failure was due in part to the belief you could drill holes in the hull of the ship to let the water out.
Doug @ 21 said:
“But then she would have missed 30 years of precious life.
My wife had 3 or more years stolen by doctor’s negligence.
What I would give to have those back…”
My condolences concerning your wife.
Sally Ride was lucky not to suffer the fate of Judith Resnik who died on board Challenger. However Resnik’s death was quick and probably painless. Pancreatic cancer is an ugly way to die.
Death is unavoidable so a quick and painless death is the best we can hope for. In the case of Judith Resnik, her death was quick, painless and heroic.
Well it looks like it is going to be a desert called peace only this time it isn’t going to be just one city state salted down. Tribal warfare with high tech weapons, famine, disease, financial collapse, Mopery with an attempt to gawk on a steam boat landing. Ah yes a leader who is a behind. But at least he has gravitas, though I may be spelling that wrong. Ah a failed and flailing Middle East Policy,he indeed did build that. Keep him out of the Pottery Barn, the taxpayers couldn’t afford that bill either.
Wretchard, either Obama was a lair, or if he really believed his words in Cairo, a fool. However, it does not matter now. Obama has removed the outsider, the leviathan, from the equation. The British empire is gone, as is the Ottoman empire (unless the Turks try to revive it). Now, the Pax Americana has followed suit. What happens now will happen due to the will of the parties involved, and that is as it should be. Neither the Saudis nor the Ayatollahs are known for mercy, so the result will be a test of strengh and proxy war – or full war, as the case may be. In any event, Obama has decided he would rather rule a welfare Mexico than a superpower, and in November we will see if the people agree with him.
And perhaps it is petty, but I consider myself perfectly entitled to gloat. I have seen Muslums wage terror war against the West and Israel for decades, all the time decrying the presence of Western colonial powers in their midst. Well, all the colonial powers are gone now, and they are on their own. If they end up in their own version of the 30 years war, that is their choice.
“….sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities …”
As Bill Murray might say, “That’ll do it. Thanks, Egon.”
The assertion that Israel was the real problem in the Middle East was an nearly universally agreed to curtain to hide everything else. Support dicators? It’s Israel. Look the other way on multiple issues in Arab states? It’s Israel.
Israel was the horse that would learn to sing if the con artists only had a little more time.
I thought the US was behind the Arab Spring in the form of Twitter and Facetube, much as the Soviets fell as much from Knight Rider, Xerox and Panasonic as from anything else. Culture War.
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Geez Egg let’s go easy on that glorious death business. Doug, sympathies about your wife, don’t even get me going on doctor’s negligence.
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w @ 24: The collapse of Syria would have been a good thing if it led to an improved situation.
I mean seriously, what are the odds of the “collapse” of X leading to an improved X? We don’t even really know what it is that might have succeeded instead of X, and (my favorite cliche:) you can’t beat something with nothing.
Western, pluralistic, secular democracy? Not sure *we* still have that, especially in Californistan, get back to me in about 120 days and we’ll have some more data to crunch.
Some kind of demi-technocratic, elitest paternalistic maternalistic hee-haw? Seems to be the current trend.
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b @ 19: The edge of the Petrie dish have been met …
… and he is not theirs. But it *is* what’s been the werd at BC for the last year, isn’t it? Coincidence?
Washington is now the Dishonest Broker distrusted by everybody. At the same time the credibility of the UN has sunk to such a level that the only people interested in hearing from them are hoteliers barkeeps and working girls. This may be a condition that forces antagonists to talk to each other directly, since Uncle Sugar is not available to manage their crisis process. Of course everyone always did talk off camera. For example Walid Jumblatt’s address book may be considered a natural resource. If the conversations are driven into daylight we can expect Obama, and a bevy of misery leaches from the NGOs, to attempt to hoover in and claim credit.
Why have the Lebanese Shia proven to be so backwards? Iran is despite the excesses of its government a functioning culture with potential to become productive. What evidence is there that the Arab as opposed to Iranian Shia can succeed? They have created social conditions and a culture of violence that resemble the most lurid prejudices that protestant Estate Agents harbored towards the rural Irish peasantry. Getting stuck with the Levantine Shia is the booby prize.
The massive aridity, in the intellectual sense, of Sunni Arabs is certainly a concern. When tied to the pretensions of the Salafi/ Muslim Brotherhood they are a threat that needs to be dealt with. Alternatively the conditions that produced Hezbollah are an ongoing and an immediate threat. Which community presents a more intractable problem?
The temptation is to divide all conflicts into good guys and bad guys, or at least bad guys and worse guys. That is a logical fallacy. Which of these adversaries do we want to see fail first? What is in our interest in the long term?
The NY Times is reporting that the Obama Administration is now trying to over throw the Assad regime.
It strikes me that trying to overthrow a crumbling declared bioweapon armed state is a bad idea in the ‘Sampson in the Temple’ sense.
Doing a smash, grab, and leave with extreme prejudice might work…but that is against the NGO Secular Religion of the Obama Administration.
I hate living in a John Ringo novel, and _CENTURION_ at that.
Failing to bring democratic concepts to the MENA was not the problem.
There was no place for them to land.
In the west, certain traditions go back to classical Greece and republican Rome. Others to Magna Carta. The centrality of the individual and his value.
Fertile fields for democracy. And even then it was a rough go.
Putting democracy on people for whom hate is a combination of duty and recreation was a non-starter.
I believe it was Jay Leno who inquired if there’s an Arab phrase for “lighten up”.
My wife had a student, born in America, whose parents were Saudi professionals making it pretty well here. Thought studying el Cid would demean her faith. Wonder where she learned that. We would think that’s about as nutty as somebody named Godwinson who thinks his family ought to be on the throne of England and is going to blow up a nursery school because…just because of the unfairness of it all.
Different is what it is. It’s possible that our being the hegemon delayed and thus exacerbated the next, if not the last, step.
On other topix: What if Assad’s WMD have Saddaam’s initials on them?
I don’t disagree that the movement is oblique, but I don’t think that it was any less deliberate or coordinated for all that. Consider: the Soviet Muenzenberg method of “innocents clubs,” morphing into World Peace groups and all the other sundry NGOs provoked into being their American counterparts – the Cultural Congress for Freedom or whatever, and etc. But we did not intend, as the Soviets did, to subvert and destabilize various cultures for the purpose of creating an entre for a Bolshevik style coup-as-revolution – our groups supported the existing hierarchy, helped create a liberalizing alternative narrative for the existing government to accommodate the already-partly-successful Soviet surrogates trained at Lamumba or wherever, who’d galvanized some of the non-ruling leaders that their rights were being violated. This little dance went on for awhile, until finally there were no more overt Soviets. Then wham! 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, global BDS, straight out of the Soviet hymnal. Obama, a creature of the Comintern, comes to fulfill Bezmenov’s narrative, word for word. Yet he finds the Permanent Government has already found Osama, has already perfected the drone weapon, has an army of thoroughly liberalized CIA- and State-sponsored individuals and groups – a foothold into these societies. These very brittle societies. These very brittle, stupid, tribalized, weak societies which make nothing and know nothing that every other society doesn’t also know – but the big difference is there is no Soviet, and theres no competing Soviet “democratic republic of bullshit” style Communist appeal. The Iraq War made us an easy target, but the stupid media can be provoked into their own “Soviet lite” version of events easily, because that’s all these political prostitutes Ever do. So with these educated witting or unwitting professional subverters all over the place educated at johns Hopkins or whatever and living in societies absolutely and totally at the mercy of USA for material means of maintaining the elites, elites which we have known for years – how hard would it be to convert all these techniques into useful succession crises-as-revolution into a rolling offensive weapon, an “Arab Spring,” that can be used to divest Russia and China of their state-sized terror assets in the Middle East? Anyway that’s what I think is going on. Think whatever you want.
It seems to me that our dog in this fight is the chance of WMD or whatever Syria possesses in bio or chemical weapons, could wind up in the wrong hands and we could be attacked with it. That seems to be the overriding concern for us. As far as overthrowing the Assad regime, what will replace it? As ugly as it is, these ME folks need to sort it out on their own. They will not listen to us.
If we need to perform special operations, let’s keep the objectives limited. Let the so called Arab Spring make its own fruit and reap its own harvest. They might or might not learn, but they will have to live with its consequences.
Wretchard,
Do you think that Obama believes everything he said in that fiasco of a speech he gave in Cairo? I had forgotten the historical and cultural howlers he burbled then. For example, the statement you quote, “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition …” confuses events separated by hundreds of years. The height of Muslim rule in Andalusia and Cordoba occurred around 1000 A.D., while the Inquisition was established in 1480 A.D., almost five-hundred years later. Since these events were hundreds of years apart Obama’s statement makes a hash of history.
Does Obama really believe in this sort of loopy history? Where big bad scary colonialism, a thoroughly evil force, erupted from Western fissures to batter and torment an innocent non-Western world? Where prior to this disruption, the non-Western world was a utopia, a dream-time land of unchanging love and satiety? Even those academic historians most enslaved to the ideology of “subaltern” historiography don’t go this far. This is simply a loopy tall tale, devoid of sense.
This is not just an error-riddled pastiche of “academic and left-wing conventional wisdom,” it is an intellectual travesty. A Harvard grad, editor of the Law Review, and he believes this?
Or is he a clever liar, knowing that he has the MSM on his side and won’t be held accountable for lies and racketeering for the anti-American cause? A socialist schemer taking a page or two from Trotsky’s approach to manipulating the populace?
Do you think that Obama believes everything he said in that fiasco of a speech he gave in Cairo?
I think he believed a lot of it. Many men, both morally evil and good have gone through life lumbered with questionable nostrums. Hitler had all these factoids about race that he picked up from God knows where; but Churchill too habitually thought in racial terms. It was the done thing in the early 20th century. Look at Ian Fleming, who wrote in the 50s and 60s. All his villains are either half-breeds (Dr. No), uppity blacks (Mr Big), Jews (Goldfinger), oriental madmen (Oddjob), lesbians (Rosa Klebb) or brutal Irishmen (Red Grant) when they aren’t Nazis like Blofeld. And nobody noticed.
As a long as a person is fundamentally sane, these foibles don’t matter. Churchill may have thought the white man the apex of evolution, but he still regarded everyone as human and deserving of human treatment. He wasn’t about to gas anyone. Hitler by contrast, did not see people as deserving a basic level of respect.
The Left is blind to the fact that they too are in the thrall of strange ideas, ideas no more rational, and perhaps less so that Tom Buchanan’s famous lines in the Great Gatsby:
The left has its equivalent irrationalities; the only difference being that the content of their irrationality is different. They think the oddest things; that you can print your way out of debt; that everything on earth is the fault of Europe or Christianity and that Communism is the wave of the future. Remember that Korean economist, Oh? He was so convinced that Communism was superior he actually defected to North Korea. And boy, was he surprised.
So yes, it is perfectly possible that in the universe President Obama inhabits, formed as it was by quasi-Marxism, critical race theory and economic mumbo jumbo, that he actually believes an incredible amount of nonsense quite sincerely.
We always think that we are unbiased, when in fact most of us are biased to an immense degree. But as Shane says, “the difference is, I know it.” The left believes it is unbiased and enlightened. In fact it your average Marxist activist is as bigoted as David Duke, and he doesn’t even know it.
“while the Inquisition was established in 1480 A.D.”
Factually inaccurate, sir;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Inquisition
1184 A.D. Methinks you are speaking (typing?) to the Spanish Inquisition, which was just the worst, not the only.
From 1184 until 1860, torture and murder were established ritual in the Roman Catholic Church.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
An ugly fact is still a fact. It is another fact that torture and murder were within the law of those times. Human Rights were centuries in the future. Not to excuse anyone but I’ll bet people in the future look back on the current LEGAL practice of murdering unborn babies with as much horror as today’s humans look at the Inquisition.
About a week ago I was talking with a friend about the futility of trying to impose democracy in the Middle East. We agreed that the success of democracy ultimately depends on what the people believe and what they value.
Then he said something that may have been more insightful than either of us realized.
He said: “that’s why Cuba will never recover. The good people have all left, and that’s why it will be so bad after the Rapture, all the good people will be gone and there will be nobody left to keep evil in check.”
It has recently occurred to me that the expulsion of Jews and Christians from the Middle East, or in the case of Egypt the marginalization of Christians, has eliminated the of Judeo – Christian tradition from the Middle East. Chaos has become the norm. That is with the exception of Israel.
Not every one believes in the Rapture but here’s something to consider. Maybe what’s happening in the Middle East now is a dry run; a warning shot across the bow.
34. Alaska Paul
America’s dog in this fight is the Not Exactly A War we are waging against Iran. Sanctions have been called ‘A cowards war’, since you have to be strong enough to win a war for sanctions to hold. Plus Syria has attacked the USA several times in the past. They are too weak to risk an outright attack, so they work through proxies. At the same time they are a proxy for Iran.
With fracking and deep drilling techniques, there is a chance for the human race to experience a “Golden Age”. The twin pillars of such an age will be Consensual government and the Pax Americana. It will be a long hard slog (the rest of this century and part of the next) but the rewards will be worth the effort.
WE need to do something about the ME. Bad as Syria is, Egypt will be much worse. If America intervenes successfully in Syria, it will make Egypt much more mellow when their turn comes.
In most civil wars, there are a handful of people that stand to gain. Everybody else would rather be left alone. Kill that handful and you save many lives.
The aftermath of colonialism depended on the colonized at least as much as on the colonizers.
Rhodesia – after independence becomes the garden spot known as Zimbabwe.
India – after independence becomes the largest democracy in the free world.
In Cairo, Obama played the complete fool.
1) Confirmation by Syria’s Foreign Minister that Syria DOES in fact have substantial stores of WMD pretty well puts to rest the liberal slander of Bush that “THERE WERE NO Double-you-em-DEEZ!”
Shouldn’t that be “Double-youz-em-Dee?”
(Hmm. Reminds me of President Urkel’s phrase “Miami Heats…”)
Okay, seriously, most… er, Many… um, well, a FEW folks will recall that in the several months between Bush’s Ultimatum to Saddam, and the actual invasion, a number of convoys – identified as columns of Russian Trucks – were photographed by satellite taking on loads at factories and depots connected to the manufacture and storage of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION – Nerve gas, biotoxins, nuclear, whatnot.
Those Russian truck columns were tracked conveying their cargo across the Iraqi desert to the Syrian Border, then coming back for more. Since early in the Cold War Russia has been the primary sponsor of first Hafez Assad, then his ophthalmologist-cum-slaughterer son Bashar. So, with at least SIX FULL MONTHS’ WARNING, Saddam probably had to accept bargain basement prices to get Bashar to take the evidence off his hands. Sorta like the advanced fighter jets that “defected” from Iraq to Iran in that same period.
The same folks who accused Bush of Lying about the WMD later scoffed at the articles from the German Magazine “Die Welt” about a planeload of Syrian Military advisors carrying nerve gas weapons and helping the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed Muslim terrorists deploy those weapons against Black African animist tribes in and around Darfur.
The Foreign Minister’s confirmation rather tends to confirm the truth of that story as well.
Don’t expect anyone in the Leftward Hurtling camp to ever acknowledge their shitty lies, though. Might as well hope to argue comets out of their orbits.
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p.s. to Kinuachdrach, about your #12
At the risk of needling, I gotta mention that the Syrian desert is the locus of vast deposits of URANIUM-containing phosphate evaporites, from which they likely were quite possibly extracting the fissionable fuel for their Al-Kibar plant.
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p.p.s.
Is it Not true that in the 5,000+ years of known history of the middle east, there has not been any culture remotely close to a republic or democracy OTHER than Israel? As far as I’ve found in my undisciplined readings, they’ve all otherwise been Authoritarian states, rule by one man or one family, with occasionally a city-state ruled by a hereditary council (i.e., Tyre???)
Corrections to my ignorance would be welcome.
—-
Finally (what comes after pps?) THANKS for the laugh, Hassan Chop!
Is it just me or is the silence from a certain secretary of state baffling to you guys too? Wasnt Hilary suppose to be the Smart one in the room at the white house as far as FP is concerned?Ya, thats what I thought too,PFHT!
Thank goodness things are going well in Egypt… Oh oh.
Wretchard: It didn’t work out that way, but the failure was due in part to the belief you could drill holes in the hull of the ship to let the water out.
Only at low tide my friend.
Will the US benefit from the total chaos in MENA? It seems likely.
Is there any area–any area–domestic, economic, foreign policy, social, etc…, where Obama is not totally in over his head?
@46…
Bracketology.
“Islam” means submission.
That explains everything.
Are there any of them with a snowball’s chance in Tuscon of hatching a functional society? I’m at a loss to see it.
Wretchard says:
Probably the reason the IDF was allowed to bomb the Syrian nuclear facility without anyone, not even the Sunni arabs, remarking upon it was because they were so outside the Pale, so far beyond the circle of acceptability that they could do the dirty work, and neither be thanked nor blamed for it.
The Israelis and Saudis are defacto allies.
I don’t get why the obvious is so invisible. Because it is not official unless there is an exchange of foreign ministers? Hint – in Operation Cast Lead a Saudi in the foreign ministry said – good thing – to Israel. A signal. And then the Saudis came out and said – “he doesn’t speak for us”. Yeah. Right.
The Saudi policy is: officially we hate the Jews. Behind the scenes we are working hand in glove with them.
===
On another note: the wars of the 20th Century were in part wars to determine who controls the illegal drug trade. Another case of the obvious.
So the question is: what drug supplies/routes are the Arabs fighting over? And which side are the bankers backing? The bankers who make a very good living from turning black money into white. For the bankers it doesn’t matter who wins – although they may have their preferences. Threats of disruption and actual disruption of supply routes drives up profits. Very good for the bankers.
Follow the fkn money.
37. stoicheion,
Abortion has been an individual population control method for over 2,500 years. I don’t see how you stop it – given drugs and all.
It turns super double evil when governments force it. To even stop it in America you have to put the government in charge of the vaginas of America. Thus the right becomes a tool. Just the way SWAT team – only for dopers – are now an all purpose political tool. Idiots.
And on top of that abortion is mostly lefties killing their own. You want to stop that? Why?
Public morality will be the death of us. And the right plays into the hands of the controllers. Sure liberty is an ugly thing. But there are uglier things.
Wretchard,
The right is full of its own fundamental errors.
A police state used to stop drug use will never apply those methods to political questions.
Putting the government in charge of the vaginas of America will never be prone to misuse when the other party (with its Malthusian bias) gets into power.
The only antidote is Liberty. Which is no longer popular in America.
America is now a Power and Control state. Who? Whom?
“Why does it have to be that way?” It has to be that way because the failure to bring Western democratic concepts….
Um, there’s a much simpler reason, methinks.
It’s called “Blowback.” (Some prefer to call it, “Chickens coming home to roost…”, heh….)
Blowback for the hatred and the lies directed (ah, but all so understandably) toward Jews and the Jewish state (with hatred of the US and Americans a close second—-but one can pin that on the Zionists, surely: just ask that dynamic duo, Walt and Mearsheimer).
Blowback for the extraordinary Jew-hatred promulgated 24/7 by all those lovely, wonderful, hospitable, sharing, generous people (and they are, they are—one sees it all the time).
(So understandable….)
Blowback for the most amazing lies and distortions seen since the collapse of those twin evils of Stalinism and Hitlerism.
(So, so understandable….)
Blowback, pure and simple. For a carefully cultivated hatred, a cherished hatred, a beloved hatred. A divinely distilled hatred. An infinite hatred.
(No, it’s not supposed to blow back, no, no, no, not at all…. But then, how could it be otherwise?)
A small example may be glimpsed:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/egyptian-actors-freak-out-turn-violent.html
(But then, forced to make peace with the damned Zionists, the hatred of the proud Egyptians is, at least, understandable….)
File under: Genies, bottles, and fond memories of Nuremburg…
Was Syria thought to have WMDs prior to 2001?
#42
But The Secretary of State recently showed up at a conference without makeup. It was hailed as a breakthrough.
Honestly, what more do you want?
Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor and the US voted against them in the UN. Reagan suspended delivery of F-16s though he did quietly resume delivery later. Israel did not get it’s thanks until we invaded Iraq.
Bush did not believe the Israelis about the Syrian reactor and told them to do nothing. They did it anyway, calling the White House when it was underway. Finally the head of the IAEA admitted that it was a nuclear reactor 3 years later.
The astonishing part is not that the Arab governments said nothing it is that Syria did nothing.
Nobody believed them about the Syrian chemical weapons until now. It is not concern for Israel that suddenly startled the Western powers. I’ll bet the phone lines out of Ankara are burning up right now. Assad didnt say that they would be only used against Israel, did he? Israel is the least of Assad’s problems right now, Turkey is his biggest headache. If they get sucked into a war with Syria NATO gets sucked in right with them. Already twice Erdogon has run to NATO when 2 of his soldiers were shot and when the plane was shot down.
Romney will visit Israel soon. Netanyahu will say the same thing he said to candidate Obama “The three biggest problems are Iran, Iran, and Iran”. Will we really listen this time or just keep pretending?
56. spindok,
The American people are in a 1930s mood. Tired of war. You know what that got us.
Ottoman Empire 2.0
is the end game. That why Assad is trying to set up a rump state on the Mediterranean to block Turkey goal of expanding down to Beirut. If he blocks Turkey goal with a bunch of Russians Assad thinks he can save the rest.
Mark W.
Assad inherited his father’s business; running Syria. Do you think at this point he’s concerned about some future empire? I’d say he’s concerned about his ass and a rump state on the Med looks the safest, given that nobody actually likes him and so he can’t go anyplace else.
I mean, Russia has given sanctuary to some famous–and probably some obscure–spies but no turfed-out dictators. And only Russia can give a credible guarantee that you can live in fat ex-dictator style and not be assassinated. Nobody left.
The pride of the involved countries is at an all time low. Why? Because they’ve been run over by the west so many times nobody wants to keep count.
Most recently a secular strongman name Sadaam Hussein promised the “mother” of all conflicts and subsequently had his military destroyed in 48hrs by America. Found by Americans hiding in a rabbit hole, photographed unflatteringly in his underwear, and hung without fanfare by his countrymen.
And I’ll skip past the Iraq & Iran war that proved that the Islamist Ayatollah was quite willing to slaughter ~500,000 Iranians for effectively nothing. And Iran continues to live far below it’s glory days of the 70′s.
And another Islamist folk hero, Osama Bin Laden, launched a Jihad against the west in 1998, committed Al Qaeda forces to destruction in Iraq, and was ultimately shot dead by America forces while watching videos.
Arab pride is at an all-time low. Allah is not fighting for them, so they believe that Allah does not accept their Islam. Their standard of living is way behind the west. And they want American-style democracy and basic freedoms.
Military, Theocracy and Strongman governments have failed them. That’s why there is an Arab spring.
And the pride-thing mentioned earlier is exactly why America needs to stay out.
PS. It would be cool if it turns out that the VX & Mustard gas came from Iraq.
PPS. This has nothing to do with Israel.
Syria has probably had WMDs since the Yom Kippur War, around the time of the GRU coup that brought Assad to power. Russia provided them, as they had to their other main Middle Eastern satrapies, Libya, Iraq, and Egypt, to provide additional insurance – beyond the usual political deterrence – against US/Israeli action.
Obama- the Hindmost!
62 @alzaebo
The most apt nickname for Buraq that I’ve seen. Since the progs are so eager to believe in catastrophic AGW, maybe we can convince him that the Milky Way core is exploding and that he and his flock need to immediately flee at a significant fraction of c.
Hmmm..
Nessus for President…
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz185/Known_Space/Puppeteer_KevinBannister.jpg
Certainly an improvement over the messiah. Might even be better than Romney.
But all his fellows regarded Nessus as totally INSANE, you know.
He actually attacked a belligerent adversary, instead of just running away.
Clear proof of absence of self-preservation instinct.
I think I kinda like that sort of insanity.