Friedman: Political Islam without Oil(?)

Thomas Friedman, wondering how political Islam can flourish (specifically in Egypt) without oil, noting that Egypt has virtually none whereas two major states dominated by Islamists (Saudi Arabia and Iran) are able to survive as Islamist states because they have so much oil.

Oddly, no reference to Gaza (governed by a freely elected Islamist group, Hamas) or Turkey (governed under a freely elected Islamist party that admittedly professes loyalty to the secularist underpinning of the modern Turkish republic.

TF also claims that both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian salafist an-Nour party were "stunned" by their success in Egypt's recent elections.  Seems a bit improbable that they were stunned.  Anyone who's been paying attention would know that the MB's success, and even that of the salafists', was hardly unpredictable.

Dick Cheney Clone on Obama's "Weak" Middle East Leadership

Today's LA Times features an op-ed from John Hannah (former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and a senior fellow at the ultra-neocon right Foundation for Defense of Democracies) that excoriates Mr. Obama for the US's current "weakness" in the Middle East, where, says Hannah,

concerns run deep over the administration's lack of strategic vision, its instinct for retreat and its complicity in the unraveling of a benevolent imperium that has for decades underwritten the region's security.

To wit:

In a November article, a senior Middle East correspondent for the New York Times referred matter-of-factly to an Arab world "where the United States is increasingly viewed as a power in decline." Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, no enemy of the president, has reported from Riyadh on a new activism in Saudi Arabia's policy born of "the diminished clout of the United States." Indeed, Ignatius concludes that the Saudis consider Obama "a relatively weak leader" and no longer view the United States as a guarantor of their security — a "striking" shift in the kingdom's security doctrine, which had stood for more than 60 years.

So acute is the crisis of confidence that America's closest allies now openly question Washington's reliability and mettle. Months after Obama's rapid embrace of an Egyptian revolution that toppled the United States' most important Arab partner, Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah II was asked whether the region's leaders could still depend on the U.S. With shocking candor, Abdullah responded: "I think everybody is wary of dealing with the West.... Looking at how quickly people turned their backs on Mubarak, I would say that most people are going to try and go their own way."

No less remarkable was the alarm over U.S. policy that Bahrain's foreign minister expressed in October. Clearly unnerved by a deepening sense of U.S. irresolution, the Bahraini minister implored Obama to at long last push back against Iran's repeated provocations, including an attempted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington: "We're asking the U.S. to stand up for its interests and draw the red lines.... How many times have you lost lives, been subject to terrorist activities, and yet we haven't seen any proper response. This is really serious. It's coming to your shores now."

Isn't it obvious here that Hannah is emulating the same tone-deafness that characterized Dick Cheney's view of the Middle East?  Cheney never evinced any real sympathy for the aspirations of Middle Eastern peoples as opposed to their heads of state.  US Middle East policy was, in the Cheney/Hannah view, all about projecting American power, safeguarding American interests (oil and Israel), and preserving stability - and during a time (up to around 2004, at least) when the US military was roundly perceived as all-powerful and all-conquering and the US economy was robust and growing.

Now it's 2012.  The assumptions about US military omnipotence are toast; the US economy has teetered on the brink, and though perhaps moving slowly toward recovery, has retreated only a few steps from that brink, toward which a new shock (say, a war against Iran?) might push it again.  But most importantly, the events of the Arabs Spring/Awakening (and, for that matter, the Green Movement in Iran) have shown that the ever more informed peoples throughout the region are no longer willing to suffer and be stifled indefinitely under autocratic regimes.

Yet it is just such regimes that Hannah cites as America's now disappointed allies:

• the Saudi dynasty, which spends millions to perpetuate and disseminate an extremist version of Islam
• the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan, whose Harley-riding king has impressed so many of us with his "cool" yet remains steadfast in staving off democratization
• the Bahrain monarchy, where a Sunni rulership tortures and kills Shii citizens
• until not that many months ago, the Mubarak regime in Egypt

It's to Obama's discredit that he was so slow to disavow Mubarak, and has been reluctant to step away farther from the current leadership in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain.  But Hannah's critique only affirms the worst, and ultimately most short-sighted aspects of US policy in the Middle East.

Juan Cole on the Islamists' Emergence in Egypt's Elections

Very interesting post by Prof. Cole, followed by some lively critiques and exchanges.  All in all, far more robust and honest discussion than Thomas Friedman's essay in today's NYT, where he basically admonishes all of us to sit back and enjoy the show, because no one knows where it's going.

Dennis Ross' Way Forward in the West Bank

Yesterday's WaPo featured a Dennis Ross essay that suggested a way forward for the "peace process": allowing Palestinians access to the stone quarries located in what the Oslo Accords designated Area C in the West Bank - areas that remain under control of the IDF.  Such a move would perhaps boost the West Bank economy, as well as signal to the Palestinians that the current Israeli government ultimately has good intentions toward them and indeed looks forward to a negotiated overall settlement.

I'd be curious to hear reactions of current GOP presidential contenders (perhaps "pretenders" describes them more accurately) Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.  In Perry's hyper-Christian view, God has already given the West Bank to Israel; in Santorum's, the IDF's control of the West Bank is akin to the US's subjugation of Texas and the American Southwest.

But what's especially telling in Ross's suggestions is that nowhere does he allude to the problem of Israeli settlement building (and settler violence) in the West Bank.  Unless my re-scan of the text missed it, Ross nowhere even mentions the word "settlement."  At least Elliot Abrams is honest (or at least open) enough (in what seems to me an idiotic take on the issue of the West Bank) to posit that Jewish settlements are not the real problem.  But Ross seems to ignore them altogether, at least here.

Much to America's benefit, Dennis Ross is away from Foggy Bottom and the halls of the DoS.  Unfortunately, he is once again safely ensconced at the Washingon Institute for Middle East Affairs (AIPAC's think-tank, for all intents and purposes), where he likely possesses an even bigger megaphone.  At a beer garden in Prague several years ago, I witnessed a rowdy, inebriated German tourist pouring beer into a tuba-player's instrument (as he was playing it).  Would that someone could do the same (metaphorically speaking) for Ross's megaphone.

Are Cooler Heads Prevailing in Bomb-Iran Debate?

From Patrick Seale (in Gulf News) comes an argument that in both Israel and the US, those opposed to attacking Iran (most of them in the military and intelligence establishments) are prevailing in the debate surrounding the issue.  (As one bit of evidence, Seale cites the departure of Dennis Ross from Obama/Clinton's Dept of State to the more hospitable environs of WINEP, AIPAC's Siamese-twin think-tank in D.C.  That Ross left was a plus for American interests; that he went to WINEP should have spoken volumes to any who doubted that he was, in fact, one of Israel's chief negotiators in the so-called "peace process.")

But Seale also points out:

Even if none of the parties — Israel, the US and Iran — actually want war or seriously anticipate it, there is always the possibility that war might break out by accident. Targeting Iran’s Central Bank and threatening to boycott its oil exports, as some western nations are proposing to do, create a climate of hysterical nationalism that could trigger a clash. Iran has tried to call the West’s bluff by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, but a serious attempt to do so could set the whole region on fire — which is almost certainly the last thing Iran or the US would want. In my view, not too much should be read into Iran’s recent naval manoeuvres in the Gulf, or its testing of new missiles. It has carried out such exercises in the past.

Containment and deterrence are clearly better policies than war-mongering. But they are not without difficulty. Establishing the rules of a system of mutual deterrence can be tricky. The first months, or even years, can prove dangerous until the system is perfected and the rules fully understood by both sides. For the scheme to be safe, a ‘hot line’ between the parties would need urgently to be established.

And, again, as I noted recently, the demonize-Iran rhetoric will be ratcheted up to the max as the November elections approach. Seale suggests that the point will be to win Jewish votes.  Perhaps; but the far more valuable target will be the votes of those millions of Christian evangelicals in whose closed little minds Israel is the US's 51st state - and with the holiest landmarks, at that.

Seale's excellent piece is here.

Remember Libya?

Tony Karon with an excellent analysis that reminds us that Libya, far from being a done deal and NATO shining hour, remains on the knife's edge:

The problem, of course, was that the Libyan rebels were never an army; they were patchwork of small local militia units, deserters from the regular army, and a smattering of former exiles with military experience. Moreover, the recognition extended by foreign powers to the NTC was far in advance of the extent to which Libyans, even many of those in the forefront of the battle to oust Gaddafi, were willing to accept its lead. The fact that the rebel leadership had not established an alternative power center meant that the collapse of Gaddafi also meant an effective collapse of state authority. The challenge now facing the rebels is to build a new state on the ruins of the old, and the first order of state-building business is establishing a monopoly on military force within its borders. The NTC is struggling to meet that challenge.

Read on here.

The Dangers of Obama's New Military

Both the NYT and the WaPo run reports on Obama's announcement today of plans for a leaner US military, a direct consequence of billions of dollars of funding cuts necessitated by the recent economic downturn.  Both the Army and the Marines will be downsized - but the Navy will retain all of its huge aircraft carriers, and the enormously expensive Joint Strike Fighter program will keep perking along (much to the relief of the Lockheed Martin corporation, its plant employees, and the congressmen of the states where those plants are located).

Not to be cut, however, are cyberwarfare programs, and - take special note - Special Forces, which have already become primary actors in US military ventures, especially in Afghanistan but also in places where we seldom are told about their doings.  I speak, for example, of Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan - all places for which we have cryptic reports of Special Forces' activity.  Their teams move in, do their thing, kill people, blow up villages, terrorize the locals.

We've come a long way from doughboys and GI's - the conscripted ordinary-citizen armies of World War I and the World War II "greatest generation."  After the humiliation that was Vietnam, the Pentagon decided that the draft was politically messy (and the draftees militarily unreliable).  Hence, the all-volunteer army of Desert Storm and down to the present - and with it, a new American militarism that spawned a cult of American Rambo-style warriors who could be sent off to fight faraway wars while the American public carried on.

And now, a new model - one that couples expensive high-tech weaponry with super-elite Special Forces whom the public will be set up (as, indeed, they already have been) to idolize as America's best.  And, truly, didn't we see this coming when Mr. Obama took General David Petraeus - the most touted and media-savvy US military commander of this generation, hero of the "Surge," godfather of COIN - and set him up as the director (read, commander) of the CIA?

Yet these warriors, their officers - and the CIA officials who will run much of their show - will be completely unaccountable to the American public.  Why?  Because their missions will be - well - "special ops": secret, completely off the public's radar, classified, unreported (and unreportable) by the US and world media.

Iran, Israel, and the 2012 Elections: Be Very Afraid

Holiday travels (and extremely limited internet access) have kept me from blogging over the last few weeks (anybody miss me?), and the impending start of a new semester (and a new graduate colloquium) is likely to limit blogging time even more.  Too bad, because there's SO much to reflect upon, and to be concerned about: Iraq's possible fragmentation, Syria's lurch toward sectarian civil war, Egypt's halting progress toward democracy (and personally, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that one - but might consider holding my nose, because the situation there, quite frankly, stinks, what with SCAF's obvious determination to keep a choke-hold on the governing of that ancient land).

But it's Iran that seems to be grabbing the headlines, inciting the usual suspects in the US and Israel to bang the war-drums and providing lots of fodder for GOP campaigners eager to flap their cheeks about America's power and its God-given imperative to lead the world, and to protect Israel from those nefarious, mad Persian mullahs.  Meanwhile, the US promotes sanctions that are pounding Iran's long-suffering people and sends warships to intimidate them.  In effect, we're pushing Iran's leaders into a corner, and as Paul Pillar recently noted, making it extremely difficult for them to even meet us halfway.

The United States has made it almost impossible for Iran to say yes to whatever it is the United States is supposedly demanding of Iran. . . .   A peaceful Iranian nuclear program—as Tehran contends that its program is—has broad and strong support among Iranians. Any feasible change in Iranian policies that could be the basis of a new understanding with the United States and the West would include a continuing Iranian nuclear program, very likely including the enrichment of uranium by Iran. The substance of any such understanding would involve technical details about inspections and safeguards. Such details would need to be negotiated. Feasible arrangements that would provide the minimum assurances to both sides could be negotiated, but they are unexplored. They remain unexplored because the United States has abandoned negotiations and has made its policy toward Iran solely one of pressure and sanctions.

Iranian leaders respond with bluster, including threats to close the Straits of Hormuz to oil shipping and warnings to the US to not send any more aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf.  Such defiance is, of course, music to the ears of GOP candidates eager to grab hold of a voodoo doll into which they can jam verbal spikes.  Would that they might read and heed the comments of Geneive Abdo (at CNN), where she cites insider reports from Iran to the effect that Iranian bluster is essentially an attempt to save face in an increasingly precarious and highly charged situation.

Iran is not begging for a military confrontation. Its recent aggression is due, in fact, to its fear of a pending military attack. My sources inside the country say the circle of regime insiders around Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei truly believes an attack is inevitable, perhaps even before the U.S. presidential election. Therefore, to save face at home and in the region, Iran’s saber-rattling has reached a fever pitch.

In order not to appear weak in light of the pressure coming from the United States, Iran is determined to show it maintains the upper hand, which it tries to demonstrate through its military exercises, threats and hostile rhetoric. But such behavior, which Iran believes demonstrates its strength and some in the United States view as aggression, should not be misunderstood as Iran provoking the United States to launch a military attack.

The more candidates running for election in the United States publicly endorse a military attack, and the more the Obama administration is forced to appear hawkish, the more the Iranian regime works to prepare for what insiders believe will be a hit on the country’s nuclear facilities if not the population.

Yet come summer, as the campaign speeches and debates heat up and the GOP accuses Mr. Obama of trembling before the Iranians and leaving the door ajar for a second Holocaust, the bomb-Iran rhetoric will become even more fevered, as will the responses from Obama.

And, mark my word, Mr. Netanyahu will jump on this.  He will reach out to his amen chorus in Congress, zap Barack whenever and however he can, and likely impose on Obama the necessity of taking some politically expedient, but strategically damaging, action against Iran.

And don't be surprised to see, in the months ahead, Netanyahu brazenly grab more of East Jerusalem and announce new settlement construction in the West Bank.  Obama won't do a thing to stop him.

Frustrated and humiliated, Iranians and Palestinians will be pushed even deeper into their respective corners.  Their options will be to cower under the barrage . . . or to lash out in desperation.

Be very afraid.

On "Unknown Knowns"

From Geoffrey Wheatcroft (in the NYT), some sage advice as we ring in a "new year" . . .

COULD there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality? Maybe there is, and we owe it to Fintan O’Toole. That trenchant Irish commentator is a biographer and theater critic, and a critic also of his country’s crimes and follies, as in his gripping if horrifying book, “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.”

He reminds us of the famous if gnomic saying by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the United States secretary of defense, that “There are known knowns... there are known unknowns ... there are also unknown unknowns.” But the Irish problem, says Mr. O’Toole, was none of the above. It was “unknown knowns.”

What he means is something different from denial, or evasion, irrational exuberance or excess optimism. Unknown knowns were things that were not at all inevitable, and were easily knowable, or indeed known, but which people chose to “unknow.”

Unknown knowns were everywhere, from Wall Street to Brussels, from the Pentagon to Penn State. Ireland merely happened to offer an extreme case, where “everyone knew.” They just chose to forget that they knew — about the way that Irish banks ran wild, how easy credit fueled a monstrous explosion of property prices and speculative house-building. Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister at the time of the rapid economic growth, merely boasted, “The boom is getting boomier,” preferring to unknow the truth that booms always go bust.

Beginning in 2008, the skies were lighted up by financial conflagrations, from Lehman Brothers to the Royal Bank of Scotland. These were dramatic enough — but were they unforeseeable or unknowable? What kind of willful obtusity ever suggested that subprime mortgages were a good idea? An intelligent child would have known that there is no good time to lend money to people who obviously can never repay it.

Or recall how we were taken into the Iraq war. That was the origin of Mr. Rumsfeld’s curious words 10 years ago. When he murmured about “things we do not know we don’t know,” he was touching on the unconventional weapons that Saddam Hussein might — or might not — have held.

In a sense, Mr. Rumsfeld was more right than he realized. Those of us who opposed the war may be asked to this day whether we knew what weaponry Iraq possessed, to which the answer is that of course we didn’t. Nor, as it transpired, did President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld or Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

But that was the wrong question. It should have been not “what weaponry does Saddam Hussein possess?” but “Is Saddam Hussein’s weaponry, whatever it may be, the real reason for the war, or is it a pretext confected after a decision for war had already been taken?” The answer to that was obvious and could have been known to all, but too many people chose to unknow it.

Then there was another unknown known: the likely consequences of an invasion. Shortly before it began, Mr. Blair met President Jacques Chirac of France. As well as reiterating his opposition to the coming war, Mr. Chirac offered the prime minister specific warnings. Mr. Blair and his friends in Washington seemed to think that they would be welcomed with open arms in Iraq, Mr. Chirac said, but that they shouldn’t count on it. It was foolish to think of creating a modern democracy in an artificial country with a divided society like Iraq. And Mr. Chirac asked whether Mr. Blair realized that, by invading Iraq, they might yet precipitate a civil war.

This has been described in a BBC documentary by someone present, Sir Stephen Wall, a Foreign Office man then attached to Downing Street. As the British team was leaving, Mr. Blair turned and said, “Poor old Jacques, he just doesn’t get it,” to which Sir Stephen now adds dryly that he turned out to get it rather better than “we” did.

At that time, Mr. Chirac was reviled in America, and his career has just ended in disgrace, with a court conviction for embezzlement. But who was right about Iraq? All the calamities that followed the invasion were not only foreseeable, they were foreseen. And yet for Mr. Blair, as well as Washington, they were unknown knowns.

One more such, bitter as it is to say so when many people have been ruined, was the Bernard L. Madoff fraud. For years, his investors gratefully and unquestioningly accepted returns that were strictly incredible. Loud warning voices sounded. Harry Markopolos, a former investment officer, exhaustively back-analyzed Mr. Madoff’s supposed figures by computer. He spent nearly nine years repeatedly trying to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that these figures were not merely incredible but mathematically impossible. And still the S.E.C. chose to unknow it. Leos Janacek wrote a harrowing opera called “The Makropulos Affair”; Peter Gelb at the Met should commission someone to write “The Markopolos Affair” as a fable for our times.

In a very different kind of scandal, not everyone at Penn State, and certainly not every fan, knew what had happened in the showers. But quite enough was known by people who could have acted. They chose instead to unknow. And so to another classic unknown known, the euro. The recent summit in Brussels turned into a silly melodrama, with a British prime minister, David Cameron this time, once more playing the pantomime villain. But Mr. Cameron was right, if for the wrong reasons, to oppose the European Union’s latest frantic (and doomed) plan to prop up the euro.

If truth be told (but it so rarely is!), the euro cannot work and could never have worked. That is, a single currency embracing countries as diverse in social culture, productivity, work practices and taxation as Germany and Greece, or the Netherlands and Portugal, is economically impossible without much closer fiscal and financial union — which is politically impossible. Anyone could have known that at the time the euro was introduced, but for the rulers of the European Union it was their very own unknown known.

“The Cloud of Unknowing” is a medieval classic of mystical writing, and unknowing still hangs over us. It will be a happier new year if we can dispel some of that cloud, try to unknow less, and know a little more.

‘Blue bra girl’ atrocity: Egyptian military police more than brutal (VIDEO) — RT

It's truly difficult to watch a video such as this, but too many Americans have been numbed by the sanitized brutality of video games, pro wrestling or "Survivor," or the inane stuff that MTV (?) broadcasts on "Ridiculousness" - where "contributors" send in "hilarious" videos that often show people either injuring themselves, or getting injured in unexpected ways (like the toddler who was sent flying by a break dancer's wayward kick).

This, on the other hand, is real brutality, inflicted viciously on completely defenseless people (in this instance, a young Egyptian woman who had come to Tahrir Square - perhaps to protest, perhaps to witness - does it really matter?)

It's obvious that even with the protests of January and the elections of November in Egypt, and even the empowering of a new government in Tunisia, the Arab Spring is budding out, but a long way from blooming.


‘Blue bra girl’ atrocity: Egyptian military police more than brutal (VIDEO) — RT

Netanyahu declines to pen New York Times op-ed

As reported in the WaPo:

A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the leader has refused an offer to write an opinion piece for the New York Times, accusing the paper’s opinion pages of anti-Israel bias.

The unusual public refusal appears to reflect the hardline Israeli government’s increasingly prickly relations with much of the outside world.

In a letter to the Times published in The Jerusalem Post website, Netanyahu adviser Ron Dermer says the prime minister decided to “respectfully decline” penning an opinion piece. He says past op-ed articles in the Times have “vilified” Israel and “constantly distort the positions of our government.”

Poor, sad, picked-upon Bibi has taken chutzpah to a new level.  For the last several decades, the NYT has had Israel's back.  Yes, it does indeed publish a range of opinions on Israeli actions and policies, but this is the same NYT op-ed page that once had William Safire defending Israel no matter what, that still has Thomas Friedman constantly reminding us that, yes, Israel does mess up, but those Persians and Arabs (with the exception of those Arabs who, like Salam Fayyad or Anwar al-Sadat, are willing to make nice with Israel) are meshugga.

And it's the same NYT whose principal journalist on the job in Israel, Ethan Bronner, is closely tied to the Israeli establishment.  His son served in the IDF; and during that time, the NYT refused to reassign Bronner to another post.  And get this (from Wikipedia):

In September, 2011, a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review revealed that in 2009, a year after becoming Jerusalem correspondent for the New York Times, Bronner had joined the speakers bureau of one of Israel’s top public relations firms, Lone Star Communications. Lone Star Communications arranged speaking events for Bronner and took a commission on his fee, as well as pitched stories for him to cover. The revelation resulted in an number of articles commenting on conflicts of interests and impartiality and caused Bronner to end his relationship with Lone Star Communications.

Nonetheless, Bibi decides that the NYT is simply too hostile a venue for him to publish an op-ed.

Not that I feel a need to complain to the NYT about that.  But you can bet that a lot of subscribers will - and that Krauthammer and Fox News will hammer the NYT, con gusto.

Iraq, Fubar: What the US Leaves Behind

From Kim Sengupta in The Independent, a reminder of another of the myriad ways in which Boy George's Iraq Adventure left the country fubar (if you don't know, that's military shorthand for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition):

Not far from where the speeches were taking place lay grim evidence which refuted the claims that the Americans were leaving behind a land of stability and prosperity. More than 8,000 people are living in squalor in a field of mud and foetid water, with huts made of rags and salvaged pieces of wood.

The residents of Al-Rahlat camp are among 1.3 million refugees in their own country; families driven out of their homes by the sectarian violence spawned by the war. Another 1.6 million fled Iraq for neighbouring states, mainly Jordan and Syria. Those in Syria, with its escalating violence, are now having to seek another place of safety.

There is a third group who are particularly vulnerable – around 70,000 people who worked for the US military. They were promised the offer of refuge in the US, but little has been done fulfil the pledge. Barack Obama, while campaigning for the White House four years ago, berated the Bush administration over the issue, saying: "The Iraqis who stood with us are being targeted for assassination, yet our doors are shut. That is not how we treat our friends." In 2008 Congress passed a bill for special immigration visas to be issued for 25,000, but only 3,000 have been processed during Obama's presidency.

Around 450,000 of the IDPs (internally displaced persons) are living in the worst conditions, crammed into 380 street settlements scattered around the country. They have little or no access to clean water, sanitation or medical care. Many of these people, deemed to be illegally squatting, cannot get the documents necessary to register for welfare relief or take up jobs, or enrol their sons and daughters in schools. The tension and claustrophobia of such an existence has led to psychological problems, especially among children. Domestic violence is rife.

She continues with specific case studies.  Well worth reading, and reflecting on . . . .

As is this piece by her Independent colleague Patrick Cockburn about the "superpower not strong enough to set Iraq on course."