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From a very dear and long time friend and fellow memo reader in response to previous posting re Gitmo release: "Why nobody in our so called “free country” states the truth.
Releasing Gitmo prisoners, that we paid with blood capturing, is TREASONOUS and the Impostor that occupies the White House should be brought to JUSTICE FOR TREASON. Freeing them means cutting your throat with your own knife.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY ?
MY HEART CRIES FOR MY COUNTRY !
My response: "Obama is a humanitarian and it is Christmas for Muslims."
YouTube video - 05:05 (Dec 14, 2015)
My response: "Obama is a humanitarian and it is Christmas for Muslims."
YouTube video - 05:05 (Dec 14, 2015)
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Palestinians either believe stabbing Israelis will bring them prosperity or simply enjoy killing Israelis as a sport. Either way they will pay a heavy price but not because the West gives much of a damn about the immorality of such.
Meanwhile, indiscriminate bombing by Russia and even ourselves does not raise a whimper but if Israel's IAF was engaged in precision bombing and some casualties occurred the world would be outraged.
Fighting hypocrisy is far more difficult than fighting Arab and Muslim terrorists. (See 1 below.)
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Economics and necessity can often be the mother of surrender and diplomatic relations. (See 2 below.)
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Putting a bankrupt legacy ahead of everything . (See 2 and 2a below.)
If, on occasion, you receive a memo more than once I apologize but I send so much I am often blocked and get confused as to who received what.
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Why isn't this kid running for president? Too young and too smart? https://www.youtube.com/embed/l5VfejeNGsU?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0
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Former American Ambassador scopes out the Middle Eastern conundrum any future president will face. (See 3 below.)
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Hagel and his private interview. (See 4 below.)
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Former American Ambassador scopes out the Middle Eastern conundrum any future president will face. (See 3 below.)
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Hagel and his private interview. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
1)
Can Palestinians Pay War’s Price?
More than two months into the so-called “stabbing intifada,” Palestinian violence against Israelis continues. But as the toll of casualties mounts, two things are becoming clear. One is that the decision of so many Palestinians to risk their lives in order to inflict violence on any Jew may be rooted in the failures of their own society and leadership that has little or nothing to do with Israeli policies. The other is that Palestinians are going to have to make a choice about whether they really want to pay the price for launching a new war which will hurt them more than Israel.
As Ben Caspit noted in Al Monitor, the questions of figuring who the individual terrorists are in this wave of violence and why they are doing it is puzzling Israeli authorities:According to Israeli security experts, Israel is now “paying” for things that it is not even guilty of, such as Arab society restricting women and depriving them of equal rights. Also, the economies of the Arab states in general have long been weak, and the Palestinian economy in particular cannot give its youths any real hope of improvement to their standard of living, economic security and employment.
The new Palestinian is unaware that compared to the other Arabs in the Middle East today, his situation is relatively better than theirs. The only Arab region in which electricity is available 24/7 is in Judea and Samaria. The same is true regarding infant mortality, the standard of medical care and many other statistical facts.
The fault for the Palestinians’ woes is widely attributed to Israel but complaints about the “occupation” only go so far. It’s true the Palestinians won’t to be free of Israeli rule. But as Daniel Polisar wrote last month in Mosaic magazine in his study of Palestinian public opinion, their goal isn’t so much a two-state solution as it is the elimination of the Jewish state. Their dissatisfaction is wrongly attributed to the failure of the peace process. Their real problem is not so much with negotiations that always end with Palestinian refusals of Israeli statehood offers (as Arafat did in 2000 and 2001 and Mahmoud Abbas did in 2008) or an unwillingness to negotiate seriously (as Abbas has done for the last seven years despite U.S. support for his demands) but rather with the failure of the Palestinian Authority to wage an effective war against the Jews.
That’s why Abbas resorted to inciting violence over mythical Israeli plots to harm the Temple Mount mosques. Starting what amounts to a religious holy war wouldn’t seem to be in his interests but since he needs to compete with his Hamas rivals, it was the best tactic he could come up with.
Of course, in the absence of a satisfying conflict, Abbas and the PA could have spent the last decade trying to improve the lives of Palestinians but that was never their priority. While we’ve been hearing predictions of the PA’s collapse for years, it remains to be seen how long a bankrupt kleptocracy that survives on a vast patronage scheme that runs on foreign cash will last.
In the meantime, the Palestinians complain about both Abbas and Israel. As the New York Times reports in an article today, many in east Jerusalem and the territories are unhappy about the efforts that Israel has made to clamp down on areas that are producing daily terror attacks. Some of it involves small measures like crackdowns on minor illegal activity that usually goes unnoticed in Arab neighborhoods of the capital. They are also setting up more checkpoints around the capital to make it more difficult for terrorists to move easily or freely around the country.
About this we are hearing the usual litany of complaints about Israeli beastliness and about how such measures are fomenting more terrorism. But such arguments are risible.
Whatever one may think about Israeli settlements, this latest surge in terror has prove again that the conflict has little or nothing to do with the presence of Israelis in the West Bank or the country’s negotiating positions. Palestinians are seeking to murder any Israeli they meet on the street not because of some abstract argument about borders since even the supposedly incorrigible right-winger Netanyahu has offered to withdraw from almost all of the West Bank in exchange for peace. The Palestinians are raging about “stinking Jewish feet” polluting holy places sacred to both peoples not a state alongside Israel they’ve shown no interest in building.
Or course, these facts are old news but many on the left still refuse to accept the truth. Today the Times’ Roger Cohen recycled the same myths about Netanyahu killing peace today in a piece that was as out of touch with the reality of the Middle East as most things the paper has published. It is barely worth the effort to refute his argument that Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination was the turning point that ended hope in the region. That misunderstands Rabin’s own skepticism about the Palestinians as well as the fact that the collapse of Oslo was completely the work of Arafat and his belief in terror and refusal to make peace. It was Arafat who elected Netanyahu in 1996 after Rabin’s death. And it was Arafat who killed the peace movement as a viable political force in Israel with the second intifada. At this point the vast majority of Israelis have no faith in peace because they know the political culture of the Palestinians make it impossible no matter what they might offer in return. The complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 that led to the creation of the current Hamas-ruled terrorist state in the strip stands as warning to any Israeli politician that another such experiment in the West Bank would be madness. And no amount of foreign pressure from a world that is growing bored with Palestinian intransigence regardless of its antipathy for the Jewish state can make Israel make such a mistake. The fault with Cohen’s absurd writing isn’t so much his blindness as it is the way it shows how Western elites refuse to put the blame for the standoff where it belongs: on a Palestinian culture that won’t allow its people to end the conflict.
In the end, the choice remains with the Palestinians. If they don’t like the price of war as they suffer the ill effects of measures intended to prevent more terrorist attacks, they can stop killing Jews and condemn rather than honor — as Abbas and the PA does — those who engage in such wanton slaughter. If they don’t like being governed by Abbas and Hamas (and they shouldn’t), they can try their own Arab spring and try new leaders that might work to better their existence and seek peace rather than wasting their time in futile if atrocious attacks on Israelis.
But what they must understand is that its no good waiting for the world to pressure Israel into appeasing them or for their leaders to come up with a war plan against the Jews that might work after a century of failure. If they want peace, they can have it along with statehood provided they are prepared to be reconciled with the permanence of a Jewish state. But if they persist in wanting war and being satisfied with leaders that can offer them only suffering, then that is exactly what they’ll continue to get regardless of how much the rest of the world sympathizes with their plight.
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2) When All Else Fails, Call Israel
The announcement of the restoration of Israel-Turkish relations should be seen in the context of Turkey having nowhere else to go.
2) When All Else Fails, Call Israel
by Shoshana Bryen
Gatestone Institute
Gatestone Institute
The announcement of the restoration of Israel-Turkish relations should be seen in the context of Turkey having nowhere else to go.
Turkey's relations with Israel have been strained, to put it mildly, since 2010 when, through a non-profit organization, Turkey funded the 2010 Gaza Flotilla aimed at breaking the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
After a bloody confrontation, which ended in the deaths of nine Turks, Turkey demanded that Israel be tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and subjected to UN sanction. The ICC ruled that Israel's actions did not constitute war crimes. In addition, the UN's Palmer Commission concluded that the blockade of Gaza was legal, and that the IDF commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara ship had faced "organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers," and were therefore required to use force for their own protection. The commission, however, did label the commandos' force "excessive and unreasonable."
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already shown hostility towards Israel. Already in 2009, then-Prime Minister Erdogan denounced Israel's President Shimon Peres publicly at the Davos World Economic Forum. "When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill. You know very well how to kill." When Hamas was thrown out of Damascus, Erdogan invited Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh to put the terrorist organization's "West Bank and Jerusalem Headquarters" in Istanbul.
Speaking at the Paris rally in January 2015, after the murderous attack on the Charlie Hebdooffices and the terrorist murder of four Jews in a kosher supermarket, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "Just as the massacre in Paris committed by terrorists is a crime against humanity, Netanyahu... has committed crimes against humanity." Erdogan, speaking in Ankara, said he could "hardly understand how he (Netanyahu) dared to go" to the march in the French capital. Just last month, Davutoglu told an audience, "Israel kneels down to us."
Not exactly.
Turkey's foreign policy choices and current crises have combined to make Erdogan reach out to Israel for help. Erdogan came to office as Prime Minister in 2003 with a policy of "zero problems with neighbors," but has since led Turkey to problems with most, if not all, of them. Alon Liel, former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministrysaid, "Turkey didn't do very well in the last five years in the region. Turkey needs friends."
That is an understatement.
Turkey helped Iran evade international sanctions, but has since fallen out with the Islamic Republic of Iran over its support of Syria's Bashar Assad. A Muslim Brotherhood supporter, Erdogan was close to Egypt's former President, Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi, and has been an outspoken adversary of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Turkey was and remains a conduit for arms and money for various parties to the Syrian civil war. The U.S. hasdemanded that Erdogan seal Turkey's border with Syria, which he has not done. Turkey also has bombed Kurdish fighters; deployed its forces to Iraqi territory and declined to remove them; and sold ISIS oil on the black market. There are allegations that the Turkish government knew sarin gas was transferred to ISIS across Turkish territory. In November, Turkey shot down a Russian military jet, in the biggest move down the current slide of Turkish-Russian relations, which began when Vladimir Putin stepped in to prevent the collapse of Syria. [This is on top of historical animosity between Turkey, the successor to Muslim Ottoman rule, and Russia, the self-proclaimed defender of the Christian Orthodox Church.]
Russia, furious at the downing of its plane, instituted a series of economic sanctions against Turkey, the most important of which is suspension of the TurkStream project, designed to boost Russian gas exports to Turkey. Turkey is the second-largest importer of Russian gas, after Germany.
As a corrective to all of Turkey's "problems with neighbors," Erdogan raised the possibility of renewed relations with Israel -- which is currently finalizing the mechanism for developing large offshore natural gas fields. Erdogan told Turkish media last week that normalization of ties with Israel would have benefits for Turkey. Insisting that Israel must still end the blockade of Gaza (not happening), apologize, and pay reparations for the flotilla, Erdogan nevertheless made clear his desire for progress -- or at least for Israeli gas.
 Which way will Turkish President Erdogan go on Israel?Left: Erdogan (then Prime Minister) shakes hands with then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on May 1, 2005. Right: Erdogan shakes hands with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on January 3, 2012. |
It's not as if Turkish-Israel relations were ever entirely severed. Since the flotilla confrontation, Turkey-Israel tradedoubled in the past five years, to $5.6 billion. While arms deals signed prior to 2010 have been put on hold, trade in civilian chemicals, agricultural products, and manufactured goods has increased. And, in one of those "only in the Middle East" stories, Turkish businesses have been shipping goods to Israel by sea, then trucking them across the country to Jordan and beyond, in order to avoid having to ship overland through Syria.
The basis for increased trade, including gas sales, is there, and Israel has weighed the price and found it acceptable. Israel will pay Turkey $20 million; Turkey will expel the Hamas leadership from Istanbul and will purchase Israeli gas.
After entering office in 2003, Erdogan offered Turkey as a model for democratic governance in a Muslim country. President Obama called him one of the foreign leaders with whom he was most comfortable. But Turkey's was always a double game. The restoration of relations with Israel is less a political reconciliation than an admission of the utter bankruptcy of Turkey's last five years of diplomatic endeavor.
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Legacy or bust
Last Saturday, Barack Obama gained the second jewel in his foreign policy triple crown: the Paris climate accord. It follows his Iran nuclear deal and awaits but the closing of Guantanamo to complete his glittering legacy.
To be sure, Obama will not be submitting the climate agreement for Senate ratification. It would have no chance of passing — as with the Iranian nuclear deal, also never submitted for the Senate ratification Obama knew he’d never get. And if he does close Guantanamo, it will be in defiance of overwhelming bipartisan congressional opposition.
You see, visionary thinkers like Obama cannot be bound by normal constitutional strictures. Indeed, the very unpopularity of his most cherished diplomatic goals is proof of their prophetic farsightedness.
Yet the climate deal brought back from Paris by Secretary of State John Kerry turns out to be no deal at all. It is, instead, a series of carbon-reducing promises made individually and unilaterally by the world’s nations.
No enforcement, no sanctions, nothing legally binding. No matter, explained Kerry on “Fox News Sunday”: “This mandatory reporting requirement . . . is a serious form of enforcement, if you will, of compliance, but there is no penalty for it, obviously.”
If you think that’s gibberish, you’re not alone. Retired NASA scientist James Hansen, America’s leading carbon abolitionist, indelicately called the whole deal “bulls---.”
He’s right.
The great Paris achievement is supposed to be global “transparency.” But what can that possibly amount to when you can’t even trust the reporting? Three months ago, the world’s greatest carbon emitter, China, admitted to having underreported its burning of coal by 14 percent (later recalculated to 17 percent ), a staggering error (assuming it wasn’t a deliberate deception) equal to the entire coal consumption of Germany.
I’m a climate-change agnostic. But I’m realistic enough to welcome prudent hedging against a possible worst-case scenario. I’ve long advocated for a multilateral agreement (unilateral U.S. actions being climatically useless and economically suicidal) negotiated with the most important players — say, India, China and the European Union — containing real limits, real numbers and real enforcement. That would be a genuine achievement.
What the climate-change conference produced instead was hot air, applauded by 196 well-fed participants. (Fourteen nights in Paris, after all.) China promises to begin reducing carbon emissions 15 years from now. India announced it will be tripling its coal-fired electricity capacity by 2030. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is effectively dismantling America’s entire coal industry.
Looking for guidance on how the U.S. will fare under this new environmental regime? Take a glance at Obama’s other great triumph, the Iran nuclear accord.
Does the American public know that the Iranian parliament has never approved it? And that the Iranian president has never signed it? Iran is not legally bound to anything . As the State Departmentfreely admitted (in a letter to Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) of the House Intelligence Committee), the deal “is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document.” But don’t worry. Its success “will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures” and our “capacity to reimpose — and ramp up — our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments.”
And how is that going?
On Nov. 21, Iran conducted its second test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in direct contravention of two U.N. Security Council prohibitions, including one that incorporates the current nuclear agreement — which bans such tests for eight years.
Our response? After Iran’s first illegal launch in October, the administration did nothing. A few words at the United Nations. Weren’t we repeatedly assured that any Iranian violation would be met with vigorous action? No worry, again. As U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power told a congressional hearing last week, “discussions are a form of U.N. action.”
The heart sinks.
It was obvious from the very beginning that the whole administration promise of “snapback” sanctions was a farce. The Iranians knew it. Hence their contempt for even the prospect of American pushback: two illegal missile launches conducted ostentatiously even before sanctions are lifted and before they receive their $150 billion in unfrozen assets early next year.
Why not? They know Obama will ignore, downplay and explain away any violation, lest it jeopardize his transformative foreign policy legacy.
It’s a legacy of fictional agreements. The proliferators and the polluters are not bound. By our own volition, we are.
Only Guantanamo remains. Within a month, one-sixth of the remaining prisoners will be released. Obama will not be denied.
2a)
The Iran Nuke Deal Is Not Even Signed!
When is an agreement not an agreement? When Obama negotiates it.
Deal or no deal?
As Fox News Channel business analyst John Layfield recently suggested, I googled a November 19 State Department letter to U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kans.). And then, as happens too often these days, my jaw dropped.
Referring to Obama’s vaunted Iran-nuke deal, Julia Frifield, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, wrote: “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document.”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
So atop its multifarious pitfalls and Trojan horses, the Iran nuke deal is not even signed.
No American adult would buy a used Chevy without securing a signed contract from the car salesman. And yet Obama — the all-wise alumnus of Columbia University and Harvard Law School — rests the future of Iran’s atomic-bomb program on a pile of paper that is not even signed?
Iran did not fail to sign the ObamaNuke deal because someone forgot to hand some mullah a pen. This was a deliberate act of omission.
“If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is sent to [and passed by] parliament, it will create an obligation for the government. It will mean the president, who has not signed it so far, will have to sign it,” Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said last August, as NRO’s Joel Gehrke recently noted. “Why should we place an unnecessary legal restriction on the Iranian people?”
No problem, Assistant Secretary Frifield insists: “The JCPOA reflects political commitments between Iran, P5+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China) and the European Union.”
Ah! What could be more reliable than political commitments? So the U.S. government is trusting the ayatollahs to spurn nuclear weapons based on unsigned political commitments that are as stalwart as: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.” Or: “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
How reassuring.
Frifield adds these comforting words: “The success of the JCPOA will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures we have put in place.”
Yes, these include “the extensive verification measures” at Iranian military bases, all of which are totally off-limits to international weapons inspectors. And why would anyone look for weapons at military bases? Obama’s rigorous verification techniques include letting Iran self-inspect its nucleear-research facilities at Parchin. Also, when inspectors identify a suspicious site, Iran may slap them with a waiting period of 24 to 78 days. During that time, they will be free to inspect their hotel mini bars. Many nasty things that glow in the dark can be covered up or whisked away during this three-and-a-half-week to two-and-a-half-month total eclipse of the sons of Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Unsigned, this agreement is nothing more than a press release and just about as enforceable,” Representative Pompeo remarked after receiving State’s letter. “Further, it fails to address to whom Americans should look to uphold this agreement once the Ayatollah dies, or to whom the Iranians must turn once President Obama passes from the stage. Placing our trust in the ability of these nuclear weapon-driven, radical extremists will not ease tensions, but will only get Americans killed.”
Along with Pompeo, Representative Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) is one of the House’s most vocal and effective leaders against the ObamaNuke catastrophe. He also is unimpressed with State’s revelations.
“If there is no signature, there is no deal,” Zeldin tells me. “This is just another piece of evidence that there really is no deal between the United States and Iran. Just last week, senior U.S. officials confirmed that Iran has already violated two UN resolutions when they carried out a medium-range ballistic missile test. It’s clear Iran will not abide by the JCPOA.”
Zeldin listed a few of his least favorite things about Obama’s new partners in “peace.”
Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, actively working to overthrow foreign governments, while pledging to wipe Israel off the map and chanting “Death to America” in their streets. So much wasn’t even part of the negotiations, including Iran’s continued efforts to develop ICBMs, blow up mock U.S. warships, and unjustly imprison American citizens — including a U.S. Marine, a pastor, and a reporter. This is a fatally flawed deal that paves the path to worsening instability and turmoil in the Middle East and is on track to trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.
If possible, Frank Gaffney hates the ObamaNuke deal even more than Pompeo and Zeldin do. The president of the Center for Security Policy told me that this is “the most egregious act of official malfeasance and treasonous misconduct I have witnessed in my 40 years of practicing and monitoring security policy-making.” Gaffney added: “Simply put, President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and their apologists have perpetrated national-security fraud with their abject appeasement of the Iranian mullahs, their misrepresentations to the Congress and the American people about the results of the negotiations with Iran, and the administration’s belated admission that, in fact, there is no deal with Iran.”
The ObamaNuke “deal” is an even bigger disaster than it was when Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) grossly mismanaged last September’s effort to strangle it in the upper house. He can redeem himself by asking House speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to amend the current omnibus budget bill to bar Obama from spending any taxpayer funds on implementing this calamitous “deal.”
Congress most urgently must stop Obama from transmitting to Tehran some >$150 billion in frozen assets that the atomic ayatollahs would be free to plow into global terrorism, anti-Israel carnage, and attacks on “the
Great Satan.” Translation: You and me.
— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
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3)
3)
| Middle East: Cauldron of Conflict [only an idiot would suggest Israel rely on regional arrangements?] |
[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: Read Ambassador James F. Jeffrey's assessment of the tremendous instability in the region and one thing is clear: anyone suggesting that Israel engage in a program according to which it relies on regional "partners" or "arrangements" demonstrates, a priori, such a profound lack of understanding of the region that any policy recommendation they make should be treated with extreme care and review.] Cauldron of Conflict The Cipher Brief by Ambassador James F. Jeffrey https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/cauldron-conflict The “Arab Spring” of 2011-12 has profoundly changed the Middle East, but much is misunderstood about its effects. First, it did not produce, other than in Tunisia, lasting liberalization and more democracy in the states of the region. Second, the Arab Spring was not just “Arab,” but it also had an Iranian element in the popular reaction to the rigged 2009 elections, as well as a Turkish element in the Gazi Square protests in 2013. Furthermore, the Arab Spring did not all take place in 2011-12 but over a longer period. Finally, ‘aftershocks,’ such as popular protests this year in Iraq, continue to be seen, and a definitive assessment of the phenomenon and its impact will have to await more time. But what we can say, as one analyst put it recently, is that the Arab Spring replaced ‘deep states’ with weak states. By deep states one means those semi-democratic (Turkey, Iran) or non-democratic (Syria, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen) states with engrained bureaucratic, military, intelligence, and business interests subtly dominating a supposedly constitutional system. In all but Iran, those ‘deep states’ have been decisively weakened. Libya and Yemen have collapsed, Syria is in tatters, and Egypt is politically and economically at a dead end with ever-increasing Islamist challenges including insurgents associated with al Qaeda and ISIS. The deep states survived in Iran, Bahrain and Turkey, but the election of reformist President Rohani in 2013 in Iran, and the initial defeat of President Erdogan’s party in the June 2015 Turkish parliamentary elections, demonstrate that even those two relatively homogenous states (among the few true states along with Israel in the region) have much to fear from their own populations. But elsewhere, the primary impact of the Arab Spring has been to weaken traditional, constitutional, and “deep state” generated stability without any real replacement. This development is complemented by two others, which have turned the region into a cauldron of conflict. First is the rise of pan-regional Islamic movements such as ISIS, the far more dangerous ‘son’ of al Qaeda, and an Iranian hegemon, fueled by its sense of ‘success’ winning a nuclear accord with the international community and especially the U.S., and by its twinned Shia and Persian makeup. The second complementary phenomenon is the major retrenchment of the U.S. at a time of crisis when traditionally the U.S. would be intervening dramatically and dynamically. While the Obama Administration maintains some Middle Eastern priorities, including the nuclear deal with Iran and a largely desultory air campaign now with limited Special Forces raids against ISIS, its heart is not in the Middle East. Rather, the climate accords, a pivot to Asia, the engagement/containment of China, and domestic issues dominate the Obama White House. The resulting cauldron of conflict is rapidly spreading. The traditional American ally states of the region do not have the strength to tackle the twin challenges of ISIS and Iran on their own, with the U.S. more-or-less AWOL, and most of our usual key partners—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—having to worry about domestic discord and internal conflicts (ISIS in all three, Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, and the PKK in Turkey). These internal conflicts of course are fueled by popular discontent inspired by the Arab Spring, Adding to the poisonous cauldron, the collapse of Syria and the resulting emergence of ISIS has produced yet another destabilizing element. Russia is now on the scene, ostensibly to join or ‘lead’ the anti-ISIS fight, but in fact, to shore up Moscow’s ally Assad and partner with Iran to pull down the American security system in the region as much as possible. In the eyes of many in the region, President Obama is not all that interested in serious effort and sacrifice to defend that system, further imperiling it. The current extremely dangerous and chaotic situation in the region, with every chance of growing worse, cannot be chalked up to the brave citizens throughout the Middle East who risked life and limb to march for a better future. They have been betrayed by the flaws in their own societies, the refusal of states to reform, and the forces feeding the flames (Russia, Iran, ISIS). Others relied upon for stability (the U.S. first of all, but also Europe, the UN, and the ‘international system’ writ large) have more-or-less absented themselves. Even in a world with “near peer,” anti-status quo states Russia and China on the prowl, dealing with this cauldron of conflict will be Job One for the new American President, who will have his or her hands full with this headache. ================== Ambassador James F. Jeffrey is the former U.S Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey. Currently, Ambassador Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute where he focuses on U.S. regional, diplomatic, and military strategy, as well as Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. He previously served as assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the George W, Bush administration, with a special focus on Iran. ================================================================== 4) Hagel: The White House Tried to ‘Destroy’ MeIn an exclusive interview, Chuck Hagel said the Obama administration micromanaged the Pentagon, stabbed him in the back on the way out — and still has no strategy for fixing Syria.  |
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