It is a Friday in August and the Olympics are underway. But the good old days when politics took a breather are long gone. Barack Obama is doing his best imitation of an overconfident candidate and taking off for nine days in Hawaii. (Is this a good idea? Well at least he’s not doing a swank fund-raiser with bigwig donors. Oh, never mind.)
Back on the trail, John McCain continues to hustle for attention and votes in the heartland. (The line about tire inflation being a “public service announcement and not an energy policy” is remarkably on point. Tire inflation is fine, but it’s no excuse for rejecting a try-everything energy plan. Ask Paris Hilton–she knows.)
I think it’s fair to say that the “celebrity” theme isn’t going away anytime soon. The latest John McCain ad makes two points: Obama is an out-of-touch star and he’s going to raise taxes. What is clear is that just as he did on energy McCain thinks he can win on the merits. Drilling beats non-drilling. And low taxes beat high taxes. That’s not rocket science. But then Repbulicans are dumb according to Paul Krugman so maybe the American people in their infinite wisdom will find that protectionism and hikes during an economic downturn on income, corporate, capital gains, payroll and estate taxes are a grand idea.
And finally, following Russia’s actions in Georgia (and in contrast to the “everyone just calm down as Georgia’s sovereignty is being ignored” comment from the White House), McCain calls on Russia to “immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.” His statement also included calls for the EU and and UN Security Council (good luck with that) to pressure Russia to reverse course, for NATO to assess its options and for a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia. Obama? Sounds like he’d get along fine with the State Department: he’s urging “calm.”
Well, if McCain is going to insist on campaigning hard, sounding resolute on national security and beating the energy drum, then the next nine days might be good ones for him. Nah, the race is already over. You saw the chair, right?
Fatah is also a terrorist organization directed against Israel and Jews.
One Iran is dealt with, it’ll be back to business as usual.
‘Hamas’ is blowback against Egypt. They largely created and supported the ‘palestinians’ as a perfect weapon against Israel – the most effective one they ever fielded. Now that the latter has been seized upon and reshaped by Islamic fundamentalists into a double edged sword, they’re not as much fun, and in fact quite a bit of potential trouble for the Pharaoh and his prince.
“Arab governments blamed Hezbollah for sparking the conflict and didn’t complain about Israeli behavior until later.”
yeah, what a surprise. the unelected tyrants who oppress their people came down on the side of the US and Israel.
too bad they represesnt no one but themselves. you think sunni arabs across the middle east were AGAINST hamas? that’s ludicrous and you know it
Read the whole article, Lester.
“They constantly blame the miseries of our people on the Jews and the West and the Crusaders and the infidels and the Zionist lobby and the imperialists. ”
he is putting the cart before the horse. the arab street doesn’t hate israel or the US because their leaders tell them too. the leaders express these opinions to appear of one with their people.
“Otherwise their people might rebel, and God forbid they might demand reforms and democracy.””
they are perpetually rebelling in most of these states but the united states support keeps them in place. saudi arabia, egypt regimes would have been consigned to the dustbin a la the shah were it not for our support.
they are perpetually rebelling in most of these states but the united states support keeps them in place. saudi arabia, egypt regimes would have been consigned to the dustbin a la the shah were it not for our support.
You mean, like what happened in Libya and Syria?
And what support, exactly, does the US give to those governments, that you think is critical to their continued survival? Can you back that up with anything, besides the rantings of some slightly unhinged tenured professor?
Today, Michael Yon published a piece to help Americans understand what went wrong in Afghanistan; where so much treasure has been spilt, Americans have been seen as “Uncle Sugar.”
Michael Yons words were so interesting and informative, that it would teach us about the whole Mideast; if we just learned the first lesson: Michael Yon points out that “Afgahnistan is a guant, thorny bush, growing in [a very inhospitalble environment].” It’s been growing this way for thousands of years, because the bush drops seeds. And, here you see how something so backward in time, still exists. And, is NOT amenable to money rewards. Which Yon likens to “fodder.” As if we lay gold at the tree, and something new will sprout up.
I think more Americans than you know have learned this lesson. There’s no “regime change” that is worth it. And, then Yon closes with the obvious: We must alter our expectations (insert country). There are bigger problems afoot. The ice is melting, banks are melting, and the prestige of great nations that do great things is melting, all because they thought they could transform a thorny bush into a tree.
Words teach. Eventually. Because people want to know why we’ve been spending so much time on Wahabbism. And, all the cults that suffer from nihilism.
What will Americans look like, ahead? When their eyes reflect back on the perverts, their full anger? PC is dead. And, the language, ahead, will be much more fluid.
craig- “And what support, exactly, does the US give to those governments, that you think is critical to their continued survival?”
billions of dollars.
Lester: “saudi arabia, egypt regimes would have been consigned to the dustbin a la the shah were it not for our support.”
Yeah, and we all saw just how well the deposing of the Shah went, especially for the Iranians, themselves.
On the other hand, if Iran does get the bomb, does Israel get to become the Shield of Sunni Islam?
Can Israel extend a nuclear umbrella over the Arab world in return for peace and reabsorption of the palestinian poison pill into the arab world that created and maintained it?
A mildly interesting thought experiment, that, unlikely as it is.
It assumes Iran can be deterred with MAD -which seems far from clear.
Boy, that is an overly generous characterization of what went down.
Even if we assume you mean the ‘Jordanian’ absolute monarch instead of the majority palestinian population when you use the word ‘Jordan’, that sentence is just not consistent with history, Michael.
He may have been duped into joining the fight by Nasser’s lies, but he was eager for spoils. Very eager. He put his armed forces under Egyptian command, for heaven’s sake.
His effort was not token, or symbolic.
As for the jordanian masses, well, we know what they wanted. Same thing they do now.
billions of dollars.
That is a non-answer, lester. For one thing, the Saudis already have more money than they can spend, and for another money doesn’t stop revolutions. Can’t you do better than that? And you glossed over the fact that Arab tyrants the US is in opposition to haven’t had much trouble staying in power, either.
Neocomrade M. Totten’s assessment of the entire correlation of forces strikes me as questionable bordering on erroneous. Both the Tel Aviv regime and all the tame Arab regimes are a good deal more secure than he thinks. Chatter about “toppling” is pretty silly at a time when it appears that everybody actually in possession in the neo-Levant will have less trouble than ever disposing of all comers.
Why, the Hamas even remains in possession at Gaza! (To be sure. M. de Netanyahu has promised to put a stop to that arrangement.)
Happy days.
lester – “Billions of dollars” is keeping the Egyptian regime afloat? That’s crazy – US support to Egypt is in the Billions, but is still only small fraction of Egypts government resources. US overtly worked against Sadam Hussein for 12 years and still the Iraqis themselves couldn’t do anything about him. If the US disappeared tomorrow, Mubarak would still be there for a long time, unfortunately.
13: Are we to understand that “neocons” (whoever they are) are in control of the “neo-Levant” (whatever that is)? Swift and Joyce weep to be proven so right so often.
…and “correlation of forces”! Never thought that neo-Brezhnevites were still haunting the globe.
Some more reasons to the Egyptian deep semi-pro-Israeli involvement in the Gaza war:
In the last several years Israel is working on separating between Gaza and the West Bank. The rational is that Gaza is hopeless in the foreseeing future, but there is still a chance for some level of normalization in the West Bank.
Israel is trying to back-off Gaza but still considered as the main responsible to Gaza’s population. Egypt is the other neighbor of Gaza, but as Gaza was traditionally under the occupation of Israel, no one expected from Egypt to support the population needs (at least, not in the level that Israel is expected to doing so).
When Gaza will become an independent entity, Egypt will be expected to be its closest neighbor (Arab solidarity etc.). The Egyptians are sharing with the Israelis the opinion that Gaza is hopeless; so they want to avoid becoming is closest allay, or at least delay it as much as possible.
Because of that, Egypt has a strong interest to prevent Israel from becoming an ultimate enemy of Gaza. If Israel will still be a partner of Gaza then Egypt would not be expected to take charge in this messy place.
There is another Egyptian interest:
Egypt is a country that works by the old Arab Nationalism model. They have a strong opposition which is part of the Global Islam, and they are making a lot of efforts to suppress this opposition.
Hamas – the organization who ruling Gaza – is part of the Global Islam, and in fact considered as a branch of the Egyptian opposition. Fatah which ruling the West Bank (more or less) is more a National-Arabism kind of organization.
A Muslim Gaza will suit the Egyptian interests much less then a National Gaza. It will remain independent entity and support the Egyptian dominant power structure. It encourages Egypt to present Hamas as the bas guys and promote involvement of the Fatah as part of the solution.
In a sense, the Middle East suffers from too much stability of regimes. While monarchies have been toppled — in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia — other regimes, not so much.
“Secular” nationalism has failed in the sense of being defeated by Israel, in creating corrupt regimes and in economic failure. But it has shown resilience as a form of rule–surviving a brutal civil war in Algeria and the assassination of Sadat in Egypt. It does not follow, however, that such resilience will continue indefinitely. Particularly as it is doubtful that it has much appeal into the younger generations.
Given that mosques are the only serious alternative organising point, that has meant that various form of Islamist politics dominate opposition. In the case of Sudan, Iran and Gaza, it has broken through to power. In Algeria, it was stopped by the aforementioned brutal civil war. But it is a brave call to say it cannot break through elsewhere. Particularly given there seems no strong basis for any other sort of opposition politics.
I think Michael is right to be dubious about the long-term survival of many Arab regimes. After all, a de facto alliance with Israel is the ultimate statement of the bankruptcy of their politics. The original offer was anti-Zionism instead of democracy (or much development). Now they have no democracy, economic failure and a de facto alliance with the “Zionist entity”.
If Iran gets the bomb then the Sunni Arab states will be desperate to get it too, although they may just try to buy some warheads from Russia or China rather than embarking on costly development programmes of their own. They will all want an independent nuclear deterrent for protection against each other as well as Iran, and the Iraqis will want one for similar reasons. Pretty soon the Middle East will look like Europe in 1914, but with nuclear weapons.
siddartha- “Yeah, and we all saw just how well the deposing of the Shah went, especially for the Iranians, themselves.”
I assume you are kidding? the shah was a dictator. we are trying to promote democracy remember?
and I’m supopsed to believe you care about iranians? the people you probably want to nuke for opposing israel
18- who cares?
craig- we “supported” the shah of iran. that means a number of different things, miliatry, political finanicla support. when we stopped supporting him he fell.
we are supporting the unelected regimes in egypt, jordan, saudi arabia and other places. get it?
Lester, you’ve gone from “illogical” to just plain “silly”.
craig- we “supported” the shah of iran. that means a number of different things, miliatry, political finanicla support. when we stopped supporting him he fell.
You are skipping the fact that rather than just ending our support, we and the Europeans began to actively support his enemies. An equivalent would be if the US dropped Mubarak and started empowering the Muslim Brotherhood.
we are supporting the unelected regimes in egypt, jordan, saudi arabia and other places. get it?
And we are opposing unelected regimes in Syria, Libya (not so much as before), Iran, etc. There’s no observable difference in the abilities any of those unelected regimes to stay in power, with or without US support. That might change if the US switched to actively supporting the opposition, but as long as the only viable opposition is even more repugnant than the existing regimes are, that isn’t going to happen. We learned our lesson, with Iran.
“We learned our lesson, with Iran” we certainly didn’t learn any lesson, that’s why we are still coddling dictators in the region
“There’s no observable difference in the abilities any of those unelected regimes to stay in power, with or without US support.”
sure there is, the ones we oppose have way more popular support.
You are a very obstinate person, lester. I thought it was conservatives who were too stubborn to admit when they are wrong? lol.
“We learned our lesson, with Iran” we certainly didn’t learn any lesson, that’s why we are still coddling dictators in the region
We are still “coddling” dictators, precisely because of that lesson, lester. Jimmy Carter turned on the Shah for humanitarian reasons. Or so he said. And the result of the Shah being deposed was a humanitarian catastrophe.
What do you think would happen in KSA if the government fell, there? What do you think would happen in Egypt? What do you think would happen in Syria, or Jordan? You can’t possibly be such a fool as to think they would embrace secular democracy, can you?
“There’s no observable difference in the abilities any of those unelected regimes to stay in power, with or without US support.”
sure there is, the ones we oppose have way more popular support.
Irrelevant… popular support or lack thereof hasn’t as of yet made any difference in their ability to stay in power. In addition to being irrelevant, it’s inaccurate. Or are you neglecting to include Iran in your statement? Why do you keep changing the recipe whenever the previous one is inconvenient? Don’t you think that is intellectually dishonest?
“And the result of the Shah being deposed was a humanitarian catastrophe.”
first of all, again you don’t care abuot iranian people so spare me your sympathy for their “catastrophe”. and Iran is a nice please. you shuold go and visit. they have free and fair elections, not exactly up to jeffersonian standards but not too shabby for the region, certainly better than some of our allies in china and saudi arabia who really have none to speak of. the shah had “the” in front of his name. come on, how can the US support that?
“What do you think would happen in KSA if the government fell, there? What do you think would happen in Egypt? What do you think would happen in Syria, or Jordan? You can’t possibly be such a fool as to think they would embrace secular democracy, can you?”
who cares? the people are conservative and islamic by and large. let them have their muslm caliphate. it’ll fail like it did before. we live on the other side of the earth and they HAVE to sell their oil to someone or they will starve.
“Don’t you think that is intellectually dishonest?”
look, ask anyone you know if our support of egypt and jordan are relevent to their survivals and i’m sure they will answer in the affirmative. ask any neocon or realist or whatever. we have a significant amount of power as a nation and our support is tangible.
lester, any small chance there was that I was going to try and continue hitting your moving target went out the window when you decided what I do or don’t care about, for me
dude, I’m sorry If I somehow offended your internet dialogue sensiblities, but the bottom line is your point is just nitpicking.
the US has significant power in the middle east. US support is not meaningless. our support of egypt is significant.
you are trying to say it’s not.
Also, muslims, arabs, all over the world terrorists or non terrorists generallyhate us foreign policy. millionaire muslims on wall street, janitor muslims in finland, men women and children in iraq and yemen really resent us doing things like keeping the shah in power, keeping the saudi royals in power, keeping the mubarak regime in power and , yes, supporting israel.
this isn’t an opinion they are force fed from despots or terrorists. the terrorists and despots say it to win their support.
You are skipping the fact that rather than just ending our support, we and the Europeans began to actively support his enemies. An equivalent would be if the US dropped Mubarak and started empowering the Muslim Brotherhood.
Factually incorrect, at least in America’s case. We pressured the Shah substantially, but we had almost no contact with any opposition in Iran, much less active support. No way. The Shah ran a police state and was very, very paranoid about American “double-crosses”. And our policy, despite our pressure on him, was to back his rule 100% until days before he collapsed.
If we had put a combination of support, dialogue and pressure on Iranian opposition actors between the Shah’s fall and the Constitution, Iran might have turned out okay. Our only chance to have any influence in Iran was to side against the Shah before the end, but we stayed publicly behind him until the last day.
Big mistake.
As a result, everyone in Iran hated us in 1980, fundamentalist or not. Our name was mud.
Glasnost, you are repeating the story as the Carter Administration told it, for public consumption. It is not the TRUE story. What really went down is pretty well documented, now, if you really want to look into it.
Our only chance to have any influence in Iran was to side against the Shah before the end
No, we never had any chance at all, regardless of what we did. Same as former Government officials and Army officers never had any chance, even the ones who turned on the Shah at the end. And same as the Communists who helped with the Shah’s overthrow, never had any chance. Khomeini’s fervent dislike of the US was a result of his revolutionary fervor, his desire to export his Islamic Revolution globally, and the fact that the US was literally the “Great Satan” that stood first and foremost in his path.
As a result, everyone in Iran hated us in 1980, fundamentalist or not. Our name was mud.
Somebody should have told the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who were trying to find a way to get to the US in 1980, eh? And the millions more who decided they’d really like to find a way to leave Iran, in the following years? Pick any Arab country at random right now, glasnost, and there is more hostility against the US than there was in Iran in 1980. By a very large margin.
Somebody should have told the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who were trying to find a way to get to the US in 1980, eh?
In 1980? I quite doubt it. Link? Slash that by a factor 100, and yes, everyone hopelessly entangled with the former regime security forces wanted to leave quickly..
Pick any Arab country at random right now, glasnost, and there is more hostility against the US than there was in Iran in 1980. By a very large margin.
You must be kidding. The whole country detested the shah – nonviolent revolutions lacking foreign sponsors do not succeed unless the guy is loathed, and I have literally never heard an Iranian claim otherwise. And all of his weapons had our names and dollars on them. You might as well be claiming that nobody hated the USSR in Afghanistan in 1980.
In 1980? I quite doubt it. Link? Slash that by a factor 100, and yes, everyone hopelessly entangled with the former regime security forces wanted to leave quickly..
Glasnost, are you TOTALLY divorced from reality? lol. I’m not even going to discuss this with you anymore. I assume you aren’t old enough to remember, and that you’ve selected some particularly one-sided presentation as your true story. That seems to be the norm for you. As Fox Muldar says: The truth is out there
nonviolent revolutions
I missed that little gem! Non-violent, was it?
Totten represents the other side of Western naivete about the Arab/Muslim world. One side postulates that democracy and the trappings of the the West will win them over. Totten’s side believes if we play our cards right – and the ends against the middle – we can stimulate the Muslim masses to rise up against the despots – all somehow redounding to Israel’s and the USA’s benefit. Pity this is a game with which Israel and the USA are unfamiliar. In the meantime, while this futile two-sided discussion proceeds, the Mullahs are going about their business, working diligently and unimpeded to develop their Bomb and the means to deliver it. Can you say “eureka!” in Farsi, Micheal?