Barry Rubin Looks at U.S. Middle East Policy He finds Insanity and Danger It is a cliche to say that we live in dangerous times, but it is nonetheless true. The dangers to the US, arising from Islamic jihad, are far greater than anything that has occurred during or prior to the cold war. Unfortunately, many would have us believe that this is simply fear-mongering instigated by those who have a hidden agenda. This stance ignores history and current experience. One of the clearest, coherent, and rational voices on events in the Islamic world is Barry Rubin. He has been commenting for some time on the insanity of US policy, as it relates to Egypt, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Lebanon, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel. Below are two of his recent columns. In the first, he examines the pronouncements of the US Secretary of State in a press conference and uses her own words to clearly show a policy that is incoherent, ahistoric, and dangerous. In the second article, he discusses the roots of this insanity and how it might be cured. LWW <http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-middle-east-policy-becomes.html > U.S. Middle East Policy Becomes Clinically Insane By Barry Rubin Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's latest pronouncements are just plain horrifying. Consider what she said in this interview <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/04/162945.htm> : On Egypt: "QUESTION: Should we fear the Muslim Brotherhood? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we don't know enough yet to understand exactly what they're morphing into. And I'm - I mean, for me, the jury is out. There are some Islamist elements that are coming to the surface to Egypt that I think on just the face of it are -- QUESTION: Coming out of jails, in fact. SECRETARY CLINTON: Coming out in jails, coming out of the shadows that are inimical to a democracy, to the kind of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience that was the aspiration in Tahrir Square." "We don't know enough...." Really? Read any speech or interview by the leader and deputy leader of the Brotherhood, full of Jihadist rhetoric, genocidal rage against Jews, insistence on making Egypt an Islamist state, and loathing of America. What's morphing? Those people "coming out of jails" They are openly holding joint meetings and demonstrations with the Muslim Brotherhood. I know it, why doesn't she know it? "The jury is out" And when will the U.S. government see the danger of the Brotherhood, after it takes power and starts down the road to war with Israel and open enmity to the United States? The jury is as much out on the Muslim Brotherhood as it is on Usama bin Laden. 2. Syria And here's another equally horrifying interview <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/05/162817.htm> : "Q: At this point, [Syria] is a country where they have killed most people in the street. "CLINTON: Well, I don't have that comparison, but what I do know is that they have an opportunity still to bring about a reform agenda. Nobody believed [Libyan leader Muammar] Qadhafi would do that. People do believe there is a possible path forward with Syria." So the U.S. government still hopes that President Bashar al-Assad will be a reformer? I won't bother to once again list all the evidence to the contrary both in his past performance and in understanding his interests. But here is something remarkable. Clinton mentions Qadhafi. Yet Qadhafi did "reform" his foreign policy after he was scared, following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, that he'd be next on the list. So pressure showed successful results in Libya while the Obama Administration's appeasement of Syria failed totally--and will continue to fail totally. 3. Hamas But apparently the "jury is still out" on Hamas, too. What, we don't have enough information to evaluate that group? Perhaps it is "morphing?" The Obama Administration strongly criticized Israel for withholding the transfer of tax revenue tothe Palestinian Authority. Of course, that money is only due to be handed over according to the Oslo agreement, which the PA no longer observes. American officials said the administration, is, "Waiting to see what this reconciliation agreement looks like in practical terms, before we make any decisions about future assistance." Memo to Obama Administration: A country doesn't just watch and wait as others trash its interests. It does something. When one of your clients, who you are ceaselessly helping and to which you are giving large amounts of money, joins forces with an openly genocidal terrorist organization allied with your worst enemies, how long do you have to wait to see what's going to happen? >From Clinton's first interview: "We are losing the war of ideas because we are not in the arena the way we were in the Cold War." Well, if you cannot define the Muslim Brotherhood and Syria as hostile you certainly are not in the arena. Imagine the Cold War in these terms! How long would the United States have been saying the "jury is out" on the nature of the Soviet Union? But Clinton isn't that stupid. She's stuttering so much because she has to follow the president's political line, and that is very stupid indeed. And much worse, it is very dangerous. <http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/05/roots-of-us-policy-insanity-in-mid dle.html> The Roots of U.S. Policy Insanity in the Middle East and the Cure This article is published <http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/05/12/the-roots-of-u-s-policy-insan ity-in-the-middle-east-and-the-cure/> in PajamasMedia. By Barry Rubin Why is U.S. and European policy toward the Middle East so off-base, and why do policymakers believe the strange things they think and the crazy things they do are good strategy? I'll focus on the U.S. government but you can adapt, as appropriate, this analysis for various European countries. They believe--partly due to White House ideology and partly to the CIA (I don't know why the Agency is pushing this idea) that al-Qaida and perhaps much--but not necessarily all!--the Taliban is a terrible enemy of America that must be combatted because it attacks America directly with terrorism. But since Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Syria don't launch terrorist attacks on American soil and installations (I'd add sarcastically: on a regular basis) they can be reasoned with and either won over or neutralized as an anti-American force. >From a narrow counter-terrorist perspective this may make some sense. But as a strategic doctrine it is disastrous. What's worse: al-Qaida committing a few terrorist attacks or the fact that those revolutionary Islamist groups and their allies rule with more than 100 million people (Iran, 78 million; Syria, 23 million; Gaza Strip, 1 million plus); with billions of dollars in assets and Iran en route to getting nuclear weapons. Revolutionary Islamists now have the prospect of adding another 86 million people through the control of Lebanon and potentially Egypt (4 million, Lebanon; 82 million, Egypt) and are also allied with the current regime in Turkey (78 million people) which is Islamist and seems headed toward reelection. That means that as many as 265 million people live under regimes allied against the United States and promoting a revolutionary Islamist ideology. I don't mean to exaggerate here so you can take the above figures as pretty shocking even if not one hundred percent fully indicative of the situation. Moreover, we don't know yet what will happen in Tunisia and--despite ample U.S. involvement--Libya. That seems pretty serious and qualifies as the leading strategic threat to the United States and the world. Over the last 30 years the region has seen: Iran's Islamist revolution and the seizure of American diplomats as hostages; 1982 Israel war with the PLO and Syria; Iran-Iraq war; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; civil wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing war; the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban and ensuing war; the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war; two Palestinian intifadas coupled with rejection of a compromise peace agreement that would give them a state; popular revolutionary upheavals in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain; and massive terrorism of which the September 11 attacks are only the largest single example of many. I think even the above list isn't complete. Virtually all of these events have been generated by revolutionary Islamism or, to a lesser extent, radical Arab nationalism which is sometimes allied with Islamism. In the face of these facts, to ignore revolutionary Islamism as the main threat to America, the West, and the world is a pretty phenomenal conclusion. To do things like helping destabilize regimes so that the Muslim Brotherhood threatens to take over, accepting a Hamas regime in Gaza and standing by and watching a Fatah-Hamas deal, and viewing Iran as only a direct military threat that can be dealt with by conventional deterrence is suicidal. Yet this is the road the U.S. government and much of Europe is taking. They seem to think that if they show how much they respect Muslims in general, distance themselves from Israel, and engage the radicals in dialogue while making concessions to them, this will defuse the problem. Amazing. How bizarre is the situation? I have to beg people to consider that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a radical group even though every single statement of its leadership in Arabic is full of jihad, anti-Americanism, threats to wipe out Israel, and calls to make Egypt an Islamist state. I have to explain that Hamas has in fact not accepted a two-state solution but merely will accept a Palestinian state to use as a base to wipe Israel off the map. With this two-state strategy Hamas has now come up to the level of moderation shown by the PLO...in 1974. We know from Wikileaks that the U.S. Embassy in Turkey warned about the pro-Islamist and anti-American policy of that government yet this had no effect on U.S. policy. Even the obvious disastrous mistakes made in Egypt earlier this year has not turned around the White House and much of the mass media to understand what's going on. If not for a valiant battle by wiser people in the State Department, the administration would have blithely cooperated in the overthrow of Bahrain's government and replacement by largely (though not wholly) pro-Iran forces. And all the Defense Department's efforts to talk sense to the White House didn't stop the Libyan intervention. And so on. Consider the Usama bin Ladin funeral. A whole elaborate scenario was devised to persuade Muslims that America respected Islam. (I suspect that the president's advisor on terrorism, John Brennan, who is responsible for a large amount of this idiocy, was the source of this idea.) Yet what happened? The funeral and burial at sea was denounced by virtually all Islamists and even mainstream clerics as a moral crime and against Islam. This strategy just doesn't work, yet when it fails the dominant policy elite doesn't even seem to notice. What's needed is to stop throwing allies under the bus; recognize the revolutionaries as enemies; and work with moderates who oppose the spread of revolutionary Islam. Is this really so hard to understand? Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia <http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/> http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/. 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