The Orwellian Obama Presidency by Bret Stephens

...To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

Bret Stephens..
Wall St. Journal..
23 March '15..

The humiliating denouement to America’s involvement in Yemen came over the weekend, when U.S. Special Forces were forced to evacuate a base from which they had operated against the local branch of al Qaeda. This is the same branch that claimed responsibility for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo and has long been considered to pose the most direct threat to Europe and the United States.

So who should Barack Obama be declaring war on in the Middle East other than the state of Israel?

There is an upside-down quality to this president’s world view. His administration is now on better terms with Iran—whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,” just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president—than it is with Israel. He claims we are winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.

He treats Republicans in the Senate as an enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad’s war on his own people by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.

He was prepared to embrace a Muslim Brother as president of Egypt but maintains an arm’s-length relationship with his popular pro-American successor. He has no problem keeping company with Al Sharpton and tagging an American police department as comprehensively racist but is nothing if not adamant that the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” must on no account ever be conjoined. The deeper that Russian forces advance into Ukraine, the more they violate cease-fires, the weaker the Kiev government becomes, the more insistent he is that his response to Russia is working.

To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

Hillary Clinton's Role in Obama’s Mideast Disasters

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
16 July '12..

The Washington Post trod over some familiar territory this past weekend with a 7,000-word retrospective on the Obama administration’s Middle East peace process misadventures. The account strives to put President Obama in a favorable light. But even the most sympathetic narrative of this period must come to grips with the president’s blundering, most of which was rooted in his determination to distance the United States from Israel in a vain attempt to score points with the Arab world. For the first three years of his presidency, Washington was focused on pressuring Israel, a policy that alienated the Jewish state but did nothing to nudge the Palestinians to make peace.

The Post’s lengthy rehashing of the president’s Middle East follies is part of the paper’s series of pieces evaluating the history of the last four years. It is worthwhile for the way it places in perspective the administration’s election-year Jewish charm offensive that has walked back some of the previous stands. It also makes clear that while President Obama deserves the lion’s share of the blame for the way he made a bad situation worse, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also ought to be held accountable for her role in the ongoing debacle. That’s a not unimportant point considering that Clinton is in Israel this week as part of an attempt on Obama’s part to smooth over relations.

Though the president’s surrogates continue to try to portray him as Israel’s best friend ever to sit in the White House, the Post provides a reminder for those who care to remember the truth that he arrived in office determined to put an end to the closeness between Israel and the United States that had developed during the Bush administration.

Ettinger - The problem with US mediation

Yoram Ettinger..
Israel Hayom..
07 May '12..

Well-meaning U.S. mediation between Israel and its Arab neighbors began in 1949 in an effort to advance peace and enhance U.S. leadership and influence in the Middle East and beyond. This mediation has failed on both accounts, and has dealt a blow to vital U.S. economic and national security interests.

U.S. mediation has yet to produce a single Israel–Arab peace treaty – and moreover, the only two Israel–Arab peace treaties were initiated directly between the parties without U.S. participation.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin initiated the 1979 Israel–Egypt peace treaty that was then embraced by President Anwar Sadat, in defiance of U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s preference for an international conference over direct Israel–Egypt negotiations. Carter at first attempted to derail the initiative – by pressuring Israel on Jerusalem and the Palestinian issues – but then jumped on the peace bandwagon and played a critical role in sealing the peace treaty.

The 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians was introduced by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, surprising U.S. President Bill Clinton, who then facilitated the signing of the agreement. Similarly, the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty was the brainchild of Prime Minister Rabin, adopted by King Hussein and codified by President Clinton during the signing ceremony.

In contrast, several U.S. peace initiatives not only failed to produce peace, but inadvertently fueled Arab belligerence. They were based on the morally wrong and strategically flawed “land for peace” concept, which rewards aggressors instead of penalizing them, thereby fueling further aggression and punishing the intended victim.

Tobin - Failed Middle East Theories? Look in the Mirror, Tom Friedman

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
25 March '12..

Thomas Friedman’s rants about foreign policy on the op-ed page of the New York Times are generally predictable if not particularly insightful. But today’s installment is original in one respect. In it he references an article in the National Review by respected conservative scholar Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson gives a laundry list of American foreign policy failures in the Middle East and concludes that maybe America should just realize that all of the existing theories about deal with the Arab and Muslim world are fatally flawed. Hanson is generally right but what rings false about Friedman’s praise for the piece is that in doing so he fails to acknowledge his own support for some of those failed approaches. He also slyly tries to include one other aspect of American policy in the list of failures that was conspicuous by its absence from Hanson’s article: support for Israel.

It’s true that, as Hanson points out:

Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan.

Scheinmann - Reassessment: Why 2011 should force a 2012 American Rethink of its Middle Eastern Military Relationships

Gabriel M. Scheinmann..
JINSA Visiting Fellow..
11 January '12..

It is an odd situation when your strongest ally finds itself surrounded by increasingly hostile forces whose militaries you arm and train. And yet, this is exactly the state of U.S.-Israel affairs. 2011 witnessed the decline or fall of many of America’s Middle Eastern allies. Islamist groups made major gains in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt. The “partner for peace” Palestinian Authority (PA) concluded a reconciliation agreement with the terrorist group Hamas, Iran extended its domination of Lebanon through its Hezbollah proxy, and the Iraqi government took a pro-Iranian authoritarian turn following the American withdrawal. The common thread to all these regimes: the U.S. has continued its military aid, assistance, or training to all of them despite these substantial negative political changes.

Take Egypt. The United States has been Egypt’s prime military benefactor since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978, providing $1.3 billion in military aid in 2011 and selling it many of its heavy arms systems including M1 Abrams tanks, which are assembled in Egypt, and over 200 F-16 fighter jets. Following the fall of the Mubarak regime last February, Egypt has permitted passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal, been unable to secure the Egyptian-Israeli border from increased terror attacks and arms smuggling into Gaza, and was unwilling to prevent a mob attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Most recently, radical Islamist parties, with an anti-Israel if not anti-Semitic agenda, have won an overwhelming victory in lower house parliamentary elections, promising to put the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord to a popular referendum. Israel could soon face a situation where it is being threatened by radical, Islamist regime whose military is American trained and armed.

Comparable developments have occurred in the West Bank. Since 2007, the United States has overseen the training of a 5,000-man Palestinian Authority Security Force in Jordan. At a cost exceeding $500 million, the effort is intended to train Palestinian forces to fight terror in the West Bank. Although Israel has largely been supportive, Israelis reiterate that these forces cannot be counted on to operate independently following a potential full Israeli withdrawal. 2011, however, saw major changes in the PA’s commitment to fighting terror. First, in April, a U.S.-trained PA battalion opened fire on a group of Jewish worshipper’s at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, killing one Israeli. Second, Fatah, which controls the PA and is purportedly the moderate, secular pro-peace wing of the Palestinian movement, signed a political reconciliation agreement—yet to be implemented—with Hamas, the genocidal terrorist group. Third, it embarked on an international campaign to contravene the Oslo Accords, to which the United States is a signatory, and unilaterally declared statehood. Washington is once again training a military force that could soon be commanded by an Islamist group that aspires to destroy Israel.

Glick - Gingrich's fresh hope

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
12 December '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/12/gingrichs-fresh-hope.php

Last Friday, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, "who are in fact Arabs."

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the "Palestinian people" was artificially carved out of the Arab population of "Greater Syria." "Greater Syria" included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term "Palestinian people" only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic "Palestinian" identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism.

Since Gingrich spoke out on Friday, his factually accurate statement has been under assault from three directions. First, it has been attacked by Palestinian apologists in the postmodernist camp. Speaking to CNN, Hussein Ibish from the American Task Force on Palestine argued that Gingrich's statement was an outrage because while he was right about the Palestinians being an artificial people, in Ibish's view, Israelis were just as artificial. That is, he equated the Palestinians' 91-year-old nationalism with the Jews' 3,500-year-old nationalism.

In his words, "To call the Palestinians 'an invented people' in an obvious effort to undermine their national identity is outrageous, especially since there was no such thing as an 'Israeli' before 1948."

Ibish's nonsense is easily dispatched by a simple reading of the Hebrew Bible. As anyone semi-literate in Hebrew recognizes, the Israelis were not created in 1948. Three thousand years ago, the Israelis were led by a king named David. The Israelis had an independent commonwealth in the Land of Israel, and their capital city was Jerusalem.

The fact that 500 years ago King James renamed the Israelis "Israelites" is irrelevant to the basic truth that there is nothing new or artificial about the Israeli people. And Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, did not arise in competition with Arab nationalism. Zionism has been a central feature of Jewish identity for 3,500 years.

Debating the Middle East Debacle

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
23 November '10

Politico devotes part of its Arena discussion to Ben Smith’s compelling report on Obama’s Middle East blunders. What is interesting is that, aside from the executive director of the notoriously anti-Israel group the Jerusalem Fund, no one from this ideologically diverse bunch differs with the premise of the article (Obama has made things much worse) or cheers the president’s latest desperation move.

From David Aaron Miller: “[I]n the face of this difficult situation, the administration came out loud, hard and fast — focused largely on a settlements freeze it had no chance of producing or sustaining. Twenty months in, the president — a wartime leader with a Nobel Peace Prize (only the second in American history) finds himself with no freeze, no negotiations, no agreement and no process to get there.”

Bob Zelnick adds: “It takes some effort to mess things up as quickly and completely as the Obama team. But if you let settlements — a final status issue — put in a position to queer the whole deal, if it takes 20 fighter planes to make sure Netanyahu shows up for class, and if you have no coherent plan to build on the diplomatic path plowed by George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the chances are you will not get the parties to move much beyond their opening positions and that those at the table will begin to view your opinions as having little more than nuisance value.”

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First, name the conflict

Fresnozionism.org
04 November '10

The midterm elections in the US made it clear that many Americans are unhappy with the performance of their leadership. Of course, most of the unhappiness is due to the poor economic situation. But not all of it.

I think that many of us believe that we haven’t come to grips with the challenge posed on 9/11. We are involved in two hugely expensive wars, seriously stressing our volunteer military, wars which are certain — because of the way they’ve been financed by borrowing — to cause further economic problems in the future. And the fact is that these wars have been inconclusive at best. After nine years, Osama bin Laden is still at large, Baghdad is in the throes of a violent terrorist attack as I write, and we appear to be looking for a way to surrender safely in Afghanistan.

The US is in full retreat from the Middle East, apparently unable to challenge Iran which every day moves closer to establishing its domination of the region. We’ve allowed Hizballah to rearm and Syria and Iran to subvert Lebanon. We’ve stood by and watched as one of the most powerful states in Middle East, Turkey, moved from being a Western ally to joining the Iranian axis.

It’s always dangerous to make historical comparisons, but the best analogy I can think of is the period of ideological competition, diplomatic maneuvering and vicious proxy wars that characterized the “Cold War” between the West and the Soviet Union. There is one major difference, though:

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Outside the box, or out of their minds?

Michael Young
The Daily Star (Beirut)
08 July '10

A perennial shortcoming in America’s interactions with the Middle East is that they tend to emerge from insular discussions. Policy is the result of calculations that usually rotate around Washington. Consequently, regional realities are frequently ignored, poorly understood, or bent out of shape to fit a favored agenda.

This was the case in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Disagreements between different government bureaucracies, civilian and military, played themselves out through media leaks. Intellectuals, too, hotly debated the merits of war. However, the Iraqis were marginal in the commotion, which is why so many Americans were taken aback by what happened once Baghdad fell.

The latest twist on this failing comes from the exchange now taking place in some American policy circles and the military over whether to engage Middle Eastern militant Islamist groups, particularly Hizbullah and Hamas. Last week, Mark Perry, author of a book advocating talking to Islamists, published a blog post on the Foreign Policy website saying that a recent “red team” report by senior officers in US Central Command had proposed a new approach to Hizbullah and Hamas. The officers cast doubt on the current American isolation of the groups, Perry wrote, and they recommended “integrating the two into their respective political mainstreams.”

The officers also revived the idea of incorporating Hizbullah and Hamas into their government-backed security forces, arguing: “The US role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities – the government of Lebanon and Fatah – that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.” (Italics in the original.)

Perry noted that while the officers acknowledged that Hizbullah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” they added that the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.”

Here was a controversial example of “thinking outside the box” on Hizbullah and Hamas, Perry opined. It was precisely the opposite. A bevy of Americans essentially made assumptions with no grounding whatsoever in the reasoning of either of the two Islamist groups. Worse, the officers lazily lumped Hizbullah and Hamas together, even though both have different aims and operate in significantly different political contexts. This was thinking made in Washington, directed at Washington, based on terms largely defined by Washington. It was the pure product of a closed Washington box.

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A little rain on the Palestinian parade

Nathan Brown
Foreign Policy
01 July '10

Since June 2007 -- and the split of the Palestinian Authority in two halves, one running Gaza and one running the West Bank - U.S. policy has banked heavily on an attempt to back the West Bank half, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. When the Obama administration took office in January 2009, it doubled down on the U.S. bet on Abbas and Fayyad. Fayyad has responded with an ambitious program that is designed to provide the institutional basis for a Palestinian state. His unassuming style, honest and capable administration, and sometimes soothing words have led to a host of international paeans to "Fayyadism." Salam Fayyad is held to be quietly building a Palestinian state rather than waiting for international actors to deliver one.

There is no doubt that Fayyad as an individual has some real virtues: a measure of personal integrity, an ability to convey an attitude that politics is about public service rather than personal aggrandizement, and a shift from revolutionary rhetoric to practical action. But is Fayyadism building a Palestinian state?

No.

And in a recent trip to the West Bank, I could not find a Palestinian who thinks he is. I report more fully on my findings in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that was released today.

There are those who admire and participate in Fayyad's efforts to be sure. And there is much to admire in Fayyad. But even those participating in his project would be the first to admit -- along with Fayyad himself -- that the effort cannot be sustained unless it is supported by a diplomatic process that also points to Palestinian statehood. And nobody believes there is such a viable process right now. The only question that most serious observers debate is whether hope for a two state solution is dead, dying, or merely in hibernation.

But there are three other problems with pinning our hopes on Fayyadism as the basis of a two-state solution.

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U.S. Policy and Debate on the Middle East: Whatever Happened to Adult Supervision?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 July '10

If you take any given 24-hour period, it is amazing to see the drumbeat of silliness and misinformation prominently displayed and distributed by (formerly?) prestigious institutions. Let’s take just four examples in the period just finished.

First, Thomas L. Friedman is an expert on the Middle East. Unfortunately, however, he is only an expert on the Middle East as seen by the Washington DC establishment at any particular moment. This fact also requires him to jump around between contradictory positions.

His gimmick this week is, “The Real Palestinian Revolution.” Now one might call the way Hamas threw Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) out of the Gaza Strip and turned that territory into a radical Islamist state is a real Palestinian revolution. Or one might say that a real Palestinian revolution would take place when Fatah, the PA, and Palestinian public opinion really changed toward accepting a two-state solution.

Instead, his “real revolution” is merely a matter of image, as in the following paragraph:

“It is a revolution based on building Palestinian capacity and institutions not just resisting Israeli occupation, on the theory that if the Palestinians can build a real economy, a professional security force and an effective, transparent government bureaucracy it will eventually become impossible for Israel to deny the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem....It is the only hope left, though, for a two-state solution, so it needs to be quietly supported.”

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A Turkey of a Policy

Elliot Abrams
The Weekly Standard
Vol. 15, No. 38
Week of 21 June '10

The Gaza flotilla incident is not over. American demands for some “international role” in investigating Israel’s conduct (but not, it seems, Turkey’s) and for a new system of getting humanitarian aid to Gaza will be imposed on Israel one way or another before the episode will be behind us. But however they play out, this incident clarified several major trends in the region—all of which are dangerous for the United States and for our allies in the Middle East.

First, it’s obvious that our formerly reliable NATO ally Turkey has become a staunch supporter of the radical camp. In the flotilla incident, it not only sided with but also sought to strengthen the terrorist group Hamas—a group that is anathema not just to the United States and Israel, but to the governments of Jordan and Egypt. The recent photo of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad in Damascus is an emblem of this change, and Turkey’s work to undermine U.N. sanctions against Iran shows its substance. Turkey’s U.N. Security Council vote against the newest round of sanctions this past week put it in Iran’s camp against Europe, the United States, Russia, and China. That’s quite a realignment for a NATO ally.

Perhaps even worse is Turkey’s push to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious war. A column in the leading Istanbul newspaper Hurriyet well described the new Turkey:

As for the images from Turkey that were reflected across the globe following last week’s incident, it was a purely Islamic one, with headscarved and turbaned protestors chanting Islamic slogans under Islamic banners, and invoking the name of Allah for days on end in front of Israeli missions in this country.

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Barack Obama, Voting Present in the Middle East

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
09 June '10

The question of the hour is whether the Obama administration is actually going to sit on its hands and do nothing as the Middle East edges closer and closer toward a major conflict.

Where is the administration on Turkey’s dangerous provocations and outrageous rhetoric? Where does the administration stand on the Israeli blockade of Gaza — for it or against it? What does the administration think about the impending arrival of three Iranian “aid” vessels in the Mediterranean that intend to break that blockade? What does Obama think about the rising tide of eliminationist rhetoric coming from Bashar Assad, one of the primary beneficiaries of Obama’s “outreach”? Now would be a good time for the president to clear up where America stands. Instead, we have sunk to such a sordid and embarrassing place that the Obama administration’s representative to the UN Human Rights Council said nothing after the Syrian representative promoted a blood libel about Jews during the council proceedings.

What Barack Obama clearly is not learning is that his campaign to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel is creating serious strategic risks: it is an invitation to the region’s dictators and terrorists to test just how far they can needle and provoke Israel, knowing that when they push too far — such as we saw last week with the flotilla — there will be no consequences from an American president who has proved himself virtually incapable of speaking with moral clarity about the enemies of Israel.

Over the past few months, the Turkish prime minister has staged an Islamist coming-out party, with a display of thuggish bravado matched in the region only by Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad — and Obama says nothing. Syria is supplying ever more dangerous weapons to Hezbollah, and Obama not only says nothing but is also trying to reward Syria by returning the U.S. ambassador to Damascus.

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The Obama Administration's Middle East Disaster: A Brief Summary

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
17 May '10

Every day I wake up hoping to have good news to report about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. There are some positive things—regarding U.S.-Israel bilateral relations—but other than that it is hard to find anything but failure and incompetence.

We are now one-third of the way through the Obama Administration and, regrettably, it has not learned very much at all about understanding the world situation and correcting its mistakes. The time for wishful thinking is over: if it hasn't made major corrections by now, the Obama Administration is very unlikely to get any better during the rest of its term.

I hope you, dear readers, don’t get tired of this theme because this is indeed both the most important thing that’s happening and it’s happening on many fronts. The Israel-Palestinian one is the least problematic compared to the others.

Here are nine huge problems going on right now that are not being addressed by the U.S. government and are barely comprehended by the U.S. debate and large portions of the mass media. I defy anyone to show that any of these points is inaccurate. You can claim they are exaggerated, but not by much. You can claim that the U.S. government lacks options, but it is not even trying to find or develop them, nor is it telling the public the truth about these issues.

1. Iran again outmaneuvers the United States, undercutting sanctions. It’s now the second half of May, do you know where your sanctions are? The problem isn’t just that Tehran now has a new plan to ship out half its enriched uranium (only leaving it with the other 50 percent for building bombs!) but that this scheme was engineered by two countries the Obama Administration has extolled as friends: Turkey and Brazil. Despite constant assurances to the public (illusions it also believed and which misled its policy), the Obama Administration cannot depend on Russia or China to support sanctions. What is going on is a diplomatic battle between Iran and the United States to see which can have more influence on the positions taken by other countries on the Iran nuclear issue. Here's what's really amazing: Outside of Western and Central Europe, Iran is winning this competition.

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Syria, Iran, and Turkey Openly Defy Obama, as Russia Regains Mideast Influence

Barry Rubin
Pajamasmedia.com
13 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

The world is getting into the habit of making Obama look inept.

The U.S. sends a delegation to Damascus to wean Syria from Iran, and Syria promptly responds by inviting Iran’s president to the country and tightening the relationship. The U.S. praises Pakistan and sends billions in aid, and Pakistan responds by being less than cooperative in dealing with the Times Square bomber.

Now it’s Russia’s turn. Just hours after the Obama administration praised Russia for allegedly cooperating on sanctions against Iran — to justify pushing forward a bilateral nuclear weapons limitation agreement with Moscow — Russia eagerly responded by subverting U.S. Middle East policy.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev visited Syria and Turkey, taking a very large entourage with him to work on trade and military cooperation agreements. In effect, these meetings marked another step in the creation of an anti-American alliance in the region with Russian backing.

How do we know about this alliance? Because Turkey, Syria, and Iran are openly declaring its existence. How do we know Russia is backing it? Because Medvedev is openly claiming this.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a “friend,” and that Iran is using its nuclear program “for civilian purposes only.” He also said that Israel, not Iran, threatens regional stability.

Syrian government newspaper al-Baa’th declared, in so many words, that the Middle East is coming together in an alliance to reject Westernization, artificial borders, America, and Israel, while embracing various anti-Western conspiracies. What countries are in this new alliance?

Syria, Iran, and Turkey, with their great peoples and their lively peoples and their rejectionist [the Syrian term for radical, anti-Israel, and anti-American] policies are moving toward brotherhood.

The comments from Iran? President Ahmadinejad declared:

[The Americans] are forced to leave the region. … [The U.S.] government has no influence [to stop] … the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties, and Iran-Turkey ties. God willing, Iraq too will join the circle.

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Obama Administration Embraces Russia As "Helpful"; Moscow Stabs U.S. in Back

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
13 May '10

If America's Middle East position collapses in the forest will anyone hear it? The answer is either: apparantly no, or just barely. As I've predicted Russia is coming back into the region and it is going to play a very bad role. Moscow is linking up with the emerging Islamist alliance of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration praises Russia for allegedly supporting sanctions against Iran. Russian support, at best, consists of throwing a bucket of fluid over the sanctions' plan to water it down.

[Don't miss the amazing Russian statement cited at the end of this article.]

Back in the real world--the Middle East, not Washington discussions--let's begin with Syria. The Obama Administration says it is going to pull away Syria from Iran, but the two countries are coming closer together. Syria's open goal is to pull the United States away from Israel, but meanwhile Syria is finding still another ally to back its ambitions.

The recent visit of Russia's President Medvedev with a huge entourage was a major step toward reestablishing the old Soviet-Syria relationship. There were broad economic talks, including the possibility of Russia building a nuclear reactor for the Syrian dictatorship.

Acording to Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Russian parliamentary foreign liaison committee, quoted in the Syrian newspaper Tishrin, May 12, the visit, "Is a clear indication to everyone in the Middle East region and on the regional and international level that Syria was and will remain a strategic partner to Russia...."

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The shape of things to come with Iran

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
11 May '10

Just as Egypt’s judiciary handed down convictions in the case of a Hezbollah cell that it uncovered, reports surfaced that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps cell had also been broken up in Kuwait. 


This type of Iranian action, while hardly new, is a harbinger of what’s to come once Tehran, which is seeking hegemony over the Middle East and senses an American retreat from the region, crosses the nuclear threshold. It also highlights the precariousness of any containment policy against Iran and its regional proxies.
 


The Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas first broke the story almost two weeks ago, and Kuwaiti and Saudi officials have since confirmed the existence of the cell. While officials have remained publicly tight-lipped about the specifics of the story, and an official order has been handed down forbidding the publication of any further information, several of the details in the newspaper reports are of interest. 
 


The members of the cell apparently included two stateless citizens (known as al-bidoun), a Lebanese citizen who acted as the cell’s liaison with the Iranians, as well as several military officers. One report in Al-Qabas, quoting informed sources, claimed the spy network extended to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – which was roundly denied by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz. The Kuwaitis, however, are demanding an overhaul of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) security agreement (which Kuwait had previously refrained from signing) in light of “new challenges,” likely meaning the threat of Iranian security breaches.
 


Kuwait has had something of a history with Iran and Hezbollah. In the 1980s, Kuwait suffered attacks and two infamous airliner hijackings at the hands of Hezbollah (in cooperation with the Iraqi Al-Daawa Party) and Imad Mugniyah, the man who would head the party’s external operations network until his assassination in 2008. 
 


After Mugniyah’s assassination, a commemoration rally was held for him in Kuwait, praising his legacy and absolving him of any wrongdoing against the state. Shia parliamentarians involved in the rally were expelled from their parliamentary bloc and placed in custody on suspicion of belonging to the Kuwaiti Hezbollah. The Kuwaiti authorities deported foreigners who had participated in the rally, which reportedly included Bahrainis, Lebanese and Iranians. 
 


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Differences Between U.S. and Israeli Strategic Calculations Cannot Be Ignored

JINSA
Report #: 986
12 May '10

The 2010 JINSA Flag & General Officers Trip to Israel took place during a period of political frustration between the United States and Israel on several fronts. The JINSA group, comprised of six recently retired American Admirals and Generals plus two JINSA officers and a staff professional, spent 10 days traveling the country and meeting with the highest echelon of Israel's defense and security establishment.

Everywhere the group went, their hosts thanked them deeply and sincerely for coming to Israel. In each place, the closeness of U.S.-Israeli military and intelligence ties was made clear, even if there are differences that require "ironing out" at the political level. It is hard to underestimate the importance Israelis attach to the security relationship and the abiding friendship they have for those who come to listen, learn and share their experiences.

Iran, hybrid war, Hezbollah, Hamas, the "two state solution," Lebanon, Syria, missiles, defensible borders and the Goldstone Report were recurring topics of conversation, and all of them contained threads of military and political policymaking that resonated with JINSA's military guests. In fact, the very resonance of the themes and the differences in detail may account for some of the frustration between two countries that are and should be allies in defense of the Western values we share.

Close as the United States and Israel are, there are differences that cannot be ignored.

(Read full report)

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Rosner's Domain: Lee Smith on why the US should not "hazard its human and financial resources on democracy promotion in the Middle East"

Lee Smith

Shmuel Rosner
Rosner's Domain/JPost
07 April '10

Lee Smith's The Strong Horse is a "clear-eyed analysis" in which "Smith explodes the many myths permeating Americans' understanding of the Arab world: colonialism spurred the region's ongoing turmoil; Arab liberalism is waiting for U.S. intervention; technology and democracy can be transforming. In response to these untruths, Smith offers what he terms the "Strong Horse Doctrine" - that Arabs want to align themselves with strength, power, and violence".

Smith is a Middle East correspondent for The Weekly Standard and also has written for Slate, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and a variety of Arab media outlets. I read his book (highly readable, entertaining, not too long, recommended!) and sent him a couple of questions:

1. You wrote that, "We took 9/11 too personally. The result is that we've come to see our multiple engagements in the Middle East - from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to our contentious relationship with Iran - in the framework of a clash between Western and Islamic civilization". Please explain to those readers who haven't yet read your book, how it is the "clash of Arab civilizations" that is the real cause for Middle East (and world) trouble?

Most of us are accustomed to looking at the region as a massive sea of some 300 million Arabs, and 9/11 suggested they were all squared off as one against the West. Thus, an Iraqi Shia and a Lebanese Christian presumably all share the same convictions, hopes and fears as a Sunni living in the Egyptian capital. This is not the case, a fact documented in the history of intra-Arab conflict: civil wars in Lebanon and Yemen; wars between regimes and their insurgent opponents in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Jordan; sectarian conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And yet despite all the bloodshed, the Arabs are not a warlike people, as the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi told me, but are rather a feuding people. What keeps the Arabs from making total war against each other is in effect a tribal covenant: the purpose of Arab nationalism is to bind the Arabs as one in order to keep them from destroying themselves while projecting their enmity on an alien tribe. The two most popular targets, as we know, are Israel, and America. And so, as I write in the book, "What was extraordinary about the attacks on lower Manhattan and the Pentagon was not the carnage - certainly not compared to some of the most vicious intra-Arab campaigns over the last several decades - but that the Arabs had shifted the field of battle to the continental United States." September 11, "is the day we woke up to find ourselves in the middle of a clash of Arab civilizations, a war that used American cities as yet another venue for the Arabs to fight each other."

2. You write that "the Americans had taken the wrong side" in the Middle East "war of ideas". How so?

Since the Muslim reform movement of the 19th century, the central question in the Middle East's war of ideas has been whether or not Arabs and Muslims should accept the cultural values of the West.

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The U.S. Military Looks at the Middle East: Bows to the White House But Knows Its Mission, Too

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
14 February '10

The Department of Defense has just released its new Quadrennial Defense Review Report for 2010. What does it say about the Middle East? Far less than you’d expect in terms of space but still some extremely important points about what might involve the United States in future wars there.

Aside from some scattered references on the need for more civilian nation-building experts, funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and energy conservation efforts (that's an area, no doubt, where money could be saved), that region takes up less than two pages, about two percent, of the 97-page report.

In comparison, about one-quarter of the four-page note from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, attached to the report, spends 25 percent on the region and sounds far more sensible.

I read this gap as suggesting that the uniformed military (which prepared the admiral's note) is concerned about Iran and terrorist groups but that the text’s main body, by the secretary of defense and designed to please the White House, puts more emphasis on climate change, green energy, and the use of the military as a community-organizing type force to make civilians in places like Afghanistan more friendly to the United States.

But there are significant points of interests in both sections. Let’s start with the report itself which basically makes three points.

(Read full article)
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