He who feeds the Iranian crocodile may be eaten last, maybe

...Today the policy has become almost entirely pro-Iranian (in the past, it was mostly pro-Saudi). This is because the Obama Administration is presently held hostage by Iran. Despite the US’s ability to deploy massive amounts of force, the administration feels constrained by political and economic considerations against using it. It is also deterred by the ability of Iran, a superpower in the field of terrorism, to both strike directly at the US homeland (Hizballah has many resources in South America, and our southern border is porous) and at the world economy, which is still dependent on Middle East oil.

“An appeaser is one who feeds a
crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”
 — Winston S. Churchill

Fresnozionism.org..
05 January '13..








From the NY Times:

…the bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing: the emergence of a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds.

Amid this vacuum, fanatical Islamists have flourished in both Iraq and Syria under the banner of Al Qaeda, as the two countries’ conflicts amplify each other and foster ever-deeper radicalism. Behind much of it is the bitter rivalry of two great oil powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose rulers — claiming to represent Shiite and Sunni Islam, respectively — cynically deploy a sectarian agenda that makes almost any sort of accommodation a heresy. …

The Obama administration defends its record of engagement in the region, pointing to its efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis and the Palestinian dispute, but acknowledges that there are limits. “It’s not in America’s interests to have troops in the middle of every conflict in the Middle East, or to be permanently involved in open-ended wars in the Middle East,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, said in an email on Saturday.

The incompetent Obama Administration is incapable of stopping the deluge of blood that is inundating the Mideast, though great power polices over the years set the stage. Obama’s withdrawal of the US from the region has opened the floodgates, but the cynical trading of weapons and technology for oil, which has now placed the most fearsome weapons of all in the hands of seventh-century cultures with the moral intelligence of chimpanzees, has been going on for decades.

The US role in all of this has been various. We supported Saddam Hussein as a countervailing power against Iran, until he got too big for his britches and went after our pals in Saudi Arabia. Then, in effect, we switched sides, smashed the chains holding Iraq together, and left — at which point it became a battlefield for Iran and radical Sunnis like the ones that attacked us on 9/11. Together with the Europeans, we removed Gadhafi from power in Libya, leaving multiple radical groups contending for power and destabilizing weapons scattered throughout the region.

We encouraged a revolt in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak, then supported the radical, anti-Western, anti-Christian and Jew-hating Muslim Brotherhood (yes, we really did that!) and got egg on our face when it was overthrown by the army, which had originally put Mubarak in power. Now the Egyptian economy is in shreds, the army is fighting Salafist rebels and repressing the Brotherhood, and no side in Egypt trusts us.

In Syria, we initially pretended that the vicious Bashar al-Assad was a ‘reformer’ and tried to get Israel to surrender the Golan heights to him. Then we provided a small amount of help to some groups opposed to him, and — after it became impossible to ignore the killing of more than 1000 Syrians with poison gas — allowed the Russians to turn this crime into a reason to keep him in power. By now, between 100,000 and 200,000 have been killed, mostly civilians, in a proxy war which pits Saudi-supported Sunni Islamist militias against Assad’s forces, Hizballah, and even Iranian Quds Force troops.

Talking about Iran, we opened a diplomatic process that provided the regime with time to move closer to nuclear weapons capability, prevented Israel from carrying out a plan to attack its atomic facilities, and began to weaken economic sanctions. In other words, we facilitated the Iranian weapons program rather than stopping it. This infuriated the Saudis, who understand that the Iranian goal is to replace them as the dominant regional power; and made it clear to Israel that it could not depend on US promises to stop Iran.

Deadly Fictions

The classified diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks are the Pentagon Papers of the pro-Israel right

Lee Smith
Tablet Magazine
29 November '10

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has positioned himself as a left-wing whistleblower whose life mission is to call the United States to task for the evil it has wreaked throughout the world. But after poring through the diplomatic cables revealed via the site yesterday, one might easily wonder if Assange isn’t instead a clandestine agent of Dick Cheney and Bibi Netanyahu; whether his muckraking website isn’t part of a Likudnik plot to provoke an attack on Iran; and if PFC Bradley Manning, who allegedly uploaded 250,000 classified documents to Wikileaks, is actually a Lee Harvey Oswald-like neocon patsy.

With all due apologies to Oliver Stone (and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey), what the Wikileaks documents reveal is not a conspiracy of any kind but a scary and growing gap between the private assessments of American diplomats and allies in the Middle East and public statements made by U.S. government officials. The publication of these leaked cables is eerily reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed a decade-long attempt by U.S. officials to distort and conceal unpalatable truths about the Vietnam War, and manipulate public opinion. The difference is that while the Pentagon Papers substantially vindicated the American left, the Wikileaks cable dump vindicates the right.

Here are eight of the most obvious examples from the initial trove of documents that has appeared online:

1. While the Israelis are deeply concerned about Iran’s march toward a nuclear program, it is in fact the Arabs who are begging the United States to “take out” Iranian installations through military force, with one United Arab Emirates official even proposing a ground invasion. Calling Iran “evil,” King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urged the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” by attacking Iranian nuclear installations.

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What Obama Has Done Wrong in the Middle East

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
21 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

In a fascinating interview, former Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, who oversaw George W. Bush’s Israel policy (remember — when we treated our ally with affection and respect?), details Obama’s errors regarding Israel (yes, it’s a lengthy interview), gives some insight into the Bush administration, and offers some predictions and suggestions. The program should be watched in full or the transcript read, but there are certain sections that are especially noteworthy.

Topping the list of Obama’s errors, Abrams explains, is the peace-process fixation:

First, I guess, and — and — most significant. They seem to think that peace between Israel and the Palestinians comes top-down. It is created someplace at a conference table in — in Taba or Camp David or Annapolis or Geneva. And that’s wrong. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be created between them, on the ground, in the real world. And it will depend on essentially what happens on the West Bank, on creating the institutions of Palestinian — self-government. And the fight against terrorism, I guess — critical things on the Palestinian side. So — concentrating on diplomacy, concentrating on the settlements is just wrong. That’s not what’s critical. What’s critical is what happens in the so — in the West Bank.

This leads to a glimpse inside the Bush White House:

I thought Annapolis was a mistake because — obviously, President Bush didn’t agree with me. I thought they were not going to reach an agreement. It seemed to me that — that if you look at the terms that were out there, neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders were ready to accept those terms. I thought we were putting the emphasis in the wrong place, again, on conferences and conference tables and flying flags and all, rather than on the pretty — undramatic but critically important work of building institutions on the ground.

(In a prior interview with the Jerusalem Post, Abrams made clear that Condoleezza Rice pushed for the peace process, failing to provide the president with a full array of options.) It is a candid admission that presidents of both parties have fallen prey to peace-process-itis – the ailment characterized by a deep aversion to candidly assessing reality. But unlike the current president, Bush, to his credit, did not make a settlement freeze the cornerstone of his policy or escalate the issue of Jerusalem:

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America's Shiny New Palestinian Militia

Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
March 16, 2010

"The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken" – last year that's what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally.

First, a primer about the program, drawing on a recent Center of Near East Policy Research by David Bedein and Arlene Kushner:

Shortly after Yasir Arafat died in late 2004, the U.S. government established the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator to reform, recruit, train, and equip the PA militia (called the National Security Forces or Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani) and make them politically accountable. For nearly all of its existence, the office has been headed by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. Since 2007, American taxpayers have funded it to the tune of US$100 million a year. Many agencies of the U.S. government have been involved in the program, including the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Secret Service, and branches of the military.

The PA militia has in total about 30,000 troops, of which four battalions comprising 2,100 troops have passed scrutiny for lack of criminal or terrorist ties and undergone 1,400 hours of training at an American facility in Jordan. There they study subjects ranging from small-unit tactics and crime-scene investigations to first aid and human rights law.

With Israeli permission, these troops have deployed in areas of Hebron, Jenin, and Nablus. So far, this experiment has gone well, prompting widespread praise. Senator John Kerry (Democrat of Massachusetts) calls the program "extremely encouraging" and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times discerns in the U.S.-trained troops a possible "Palestinian peace partner for Israel" taking shape.

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