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Lloyd is a friend and fellow memo reader. He was kind to send me this op ed which is true food for thought. (See 1 below.)
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Hanson discusses the new Nihilism. (See 2 below.)
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This proposed meeting fell flat and may hurt Bibi? (See 3 below.)
And:
Stratfor on Israel's upcoming election. (See 3a below.)
Finally:
Arab armies. (See 3b below.)
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Has AOC been double dealing in her political activities? This is the young bartender turned politician who told us how politics corrupts. In her case it may have been quick. (See 4 below.)
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In a recent memo I laid out a case explaining the downside of what I believe has led to the decline in America's posture both as a nation as well as in the American character.
Now, I would like to lay out a rebuttal.
First, slavery is immoral and economically it is both stupid and self defeating. Low labor costs are a positive for the employer but it also results in a significant decline in worker income and thus purchasing ability. It's benefit is economically narrow, it's negativity economically is broad and it is immoral.
Second, when slavery eventually ended it left the enslaved class in a weakened position in terms of benefiting the society that enslaved and rehabilitation costs have been enormous. The simmering resentment engendered has lasted and dictated generational attitudes we are now witnessing.
Third, in a sincere desire to rectify wrongs Democrat liberals who perpetuated slavery resorted to making amends and engaged in"affirmative action" policies that boomeranged. Perhaps to get the ball rolling "affirmative action" was necessary but I would argue it lasted beyond any benefit.
Fourth, a society that enslaves eventually enslaves itself and creates a psychosis of guilt that is harmful.
Fifth, and most importantly, any society that purposely sets about to create an underclass, poorly educated and resentful will pay in ways that no one can contemplate. As long as America allowed slavery we had no right to consider ourselves a democracy and even after we rid ourselves of the blight of slavery the aftertaste lingers to this day.
Sixth, Is there a solution to our embrace of slavery? Like cancer the effect metastasizes. I applauded the Supreme Court's decision in Brown but I was opposed to busing as the solution on several grounds. First, busing created white flight. Second, it disrupted black children's after
school activities and busing put them under the stress of a very long day.
In my opinion, I would have preferred the best educators be bused and more funds be allocated to existing black schools and black Americans simultaneously be given choice of moving rather than being required to move.
In conjunction with the above, I would have changed laws with respect to housing allowing anyone to move anywhere they chose and could afford.
Obviously we have made great strides in resolving the effect of our tainted history. I believe increasing intermarriage will ultimately resolve most residual problems.
Finally overcoming differences between a western culture and a more tribal one is going to take much longer.
In the interim, we must do everything we can to avoid throwing salt in wounds that remain open and here I continue to blame Obama, who had a marvelous opportunity to heal but he chose a different path.
One thing I staunchly believe, education must include making students aware of our history so they can compare where we are with where we have come. Second, they must be made aware that America remains a society that allows upward mobility so it is possible for anyone to make it to the top unlike, say, England where class remains an impediment. Third, we must rebuild the family unit so children grow up in a more secure economic environment and are exposed to the parenting of both sexes.
Finally, the eternal verities that make up American uniqueness must be re-instilled.
Cynically, I do not believe the Democrat party truly wants to allow the black population to break their bonds. If they did they would push for better education and choice, They would restrict illegal immigration which keeps wages low, they would restrict welfare and they would go after the spread of drugs.
As for Republicans, they favor doing what is best for the black population,they just do not know how to relate and feel uncomfortable in a black church, for instance.
Far be it for me to have answers. The best I can do is come up with some ideas and be willing to express them, as I have done. The one affirmative thing I am doing is mentoring my friend who recently graduated from Savannah State and he was my guest to hear Bossie and Lewandowski as he was when Bolton spoke last year. I know he is going to make it because he has what it takes and the ambition and drive to make it happen.
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Dick
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1) A Very Dangerous Path
Commentary by Lloyd Thompson
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin once said, “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seeds I have sown will never be uprooted.”
[The indoctrination of our youth is well underway]
Lenin, like other dictators, or would be dictators, are masters of manipulation and deception. Here are some other things he said. Now, think if you have recently heard similar thoughts coming from the mouths of Democrats.
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”
[ The national media has become the voice of the Democrat agenda]
“We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us. Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice.”
[ Identity politics rules and free speech is suppressed]
“America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.”
[Villification of the wealthy]
“One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers Communist and the disarming of the bourgeoisie the middle class.”
[Gun control and ultimate confiscation]
“But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.”
[Create division everywhere. Make the charge that every action and utterance is racist]
"The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother.”
[Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving in the Democrat Party]
“All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes.
Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.”
[Infiltrate the churches, ridicule religious practices and beliefs]
[Infiltrate the churches, ridicule religious practices and beliefs]
“The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.”
[Take over the health care industry and close all private insurance companies…]
And, make no mistake about it “the goal of socialism is communism.” Lenin.
The Democrat Party has become the willing vehicle for a socialist, or worse, takeover of the country. Sadly, they have become the enemy within.
Like any other enemy to freedom, they must be soundly discredited and defeated. I believe this will happen. Lloyd
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2)The New Nihilism
As the 2020 election nears, there is as yet no coherent Democratic response to the Trump agenda. If Trump himself is unpopular and polarizing, his agenda is for the most part in sync with a majority of Americans who like the 3% annualized GDP growth; near-record peacetime unemployment; record natural gas and oil production; young, scholarly and constructionist justices; pro-Israel Mideast politics; and realism about NATO laxity, the flawed Iran Deal, and the Paris Climate Accord, Chinese mercantilism, and the past inability of the U.S. to translate battlefield victories abroad into lasting security and strategic advantages.
Yet hatred of Trump himself, as well as fear of a successful Trump agenda, has unhinged his opposition. From 2017-19, progressives sought to abort the Trump presidency through furor at his person and often pathetic attempts to invoke the Emoluments Clause, the 25th Amendment, the Logan Act, Articles of Impeachment, the Mueller special counsel investigation, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s counter-intelligence investigation of Trump, and cherry-picking federal justice to stay Trump initiatives. All failed. Now the Left has decided to offer not just invective, but a new array of alternatives—often of a radical sort that we have not seen or heard about since the 1960s.
The Democratic Party is now in the hands of newcomer establishment figures such as Senators Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono; socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; newly elected representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib; and activists like Linda Sasour, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and the usual Hollywood celebrities—all of whom Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and former Vice President Joe Biden futilely try to appease.
The result is that on almost every issue, the answer to Trump is neither liberal nor progressive, but nihilistic. The logical extreme alone ensures revolutionary purity even as it would result in chaos and destruction.
The new Democratic idea of Medicare for all is tantamount to Medicare for no one. Abolishing private insurance would crash the health-care system. Once everyone is let into the Medicare system--despite never having contributed to it--the entire notion of a generational and legal bond is shattered. If birth is to be rationed by radical abortionists, soon life will be too—and on the same premise that a supposed defective or unwanted infant is as much a burden to the family and society as is a sick or unproductive senior.
The left wing rebuttal of Trump’s economic agenda is apparently not now a return to Obama tax schedules. Much less is it a point-by-point refutation of Trump’s efforts to reduce regulations and taxes.
Instead, new Democrats are calling for an unconstitutional “wealth tax” on the accumulation of already taxed income. They propose a radically new estate tax to confiscate already taxed income. And they envision new rates of 70% to 90% on the top brackets—on the logic that if the government does not get your savings account, or your estate, it can at least take your income.
The logic is again nihilistic: if lower taxes have created rare 3% per annum growth and near-record unemployment, then far higher taxes would do what exactly? Stall the economy to ensure a recession where everyone might be more equally poorer?
The country has long been divided on abortion, which has been legal by court decision for nearly half a century, with well over 50 million abortions performed since 1973. Half the country would still allow it; half want it ended.
A fourth of Americans would forbid it under all circumstances including rape of the mother; the other quarter of the public would allow it to the point of delivery—or even after.
Yet the new Democratic position, as we see from efforts in New York and Virginia and in other states, is well beyond extreme. As Virginia governor Ralph Northam articulated the new laxity: the mother and doctor after birth could in theory and in mutual consultation agree to kill the delivered infant—a position shared only by a few countries such as North Korea and China where it de facto occurs. Endangered species of snails, worms, and rodents in theory earn more protection from radical progressives than do third-trimester unborn babies and delivered infants, who can be deemed without legal protection.
Vastly expanded natural gas and oil production has ended the Persian Gulf stranglehold on US foreign policy. Cheap fuel has empowered the middle classes and helped to expand the economy as well as created trillions of dollars in national treasure.
Yet “The New Green Deal”, within a decade after its passing, would call for the end of the internal combustion engine, without ensuring that Americans have reasonable ground, air or sea transportation, affordable methods to heat and cool their homes, or the means to replace the sources of 83 percent of our generated electricity. Is the point to make power and fuel so expensive that few can use it—on the theory that the planet in 1840 was preferably cooler than it is now?
Again, these proposals are anarchic. They strain the imagination to find the most radical means necessary to destroy the very fabric of modern life as we know it, as if Venezuela, Cuba, and the old Soviet Union have taught us nothing.
According to a recent Yale-MIT joint study, nearly 20 million foreign nationals are currently residing in the U.S. illegally. In many places, the border is wide open. Local and state agencies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to provide housing, food, education, legal counsel, and health care subsidies to those who crossed the border unlawfully. They do so often at the cost of shorting care to needy American citizens.
When immigration is illegal, en masse, non-meritocratic, and not diverse, then assimilation and integration lag, social tensions rise, and identity politics and tribalism are the result. Cynicism spreads among Americans who cannot, as illegal aliens do, pick and choose which federal laws they find inconvenient. Legal would-be immigrants are considered veritable dunces, who wait years in line as lawbreakers cut in ahead of them.
What is new the Democratic solution for open borders? Forbid any border fence or wall, although border barriers were mainstream Democratic tenets during the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006? Abolish the bureau of Immigration and Custom Enforcement, currently the only impediment between an additional 40-50 million illegal arrivals, given that international polls suggest as many as half the populations of Central American and Mexico would prefer to emigrate to the United States?
Currently, students and graduates owe collectively about $1.5 trillion in school debt, largely as a result of spiraling college costs.
Universities have long jacked up the rates of tuition, and room and board, above the rate of inflation. The assurance of government-backed student loans has proved a narcotic for prodigality, especially given that such ensured obligations were never predicated on the applicants’ ability to repay such indebtedness.
The responsible bipartisan solution might be to work with higher education to reduce costs. More competition is needed in the financial market place. More online education, and on-the-job training and trade schools, can offer alternatives to traditional higher education.
Radical reforms within universities might include truth in advertising about the costs versus the benefits of a bachelor’s degree. Tenure should be replaced by periodic contracts. A national exit exam is needed for the granting of a BA—a sort of exit ACT or SAT to ensure the degree means something. Future teachers should be able to substitute an academic MA for the School of Education’s monopoly over the teaching credential.
In contrast, the nihilist approach would be to cancel all student debt, and make college “free” for all. Thereby, we would send a message to those who forewent college and have been working since 18 that they must shoulder the burden of the educational debts of their peers.
Universities would feel little need to reform. Students would be even less pressured to finish their studies in a normative four years or to concentrate on curriculum choices that guaranteed literacy and fact-based education.
Why has the Democratic Party veered so sharply to the hard Left to the point of anarchism?
If Donald Trump is the catalyst, the genesis of the new radicalism preceded him. The half-century obsession with identity politics, especially tribal identification and victimhood, taught an entire generation that one’s essence is defined by superficial appearance or lineage, not innate character.
For about a half century, universities have eroded inductive and empirical education. Instead, deduction and advocacy took its place—and to such a degree that to question man-made global warming, the dogma of racial separatism and chauvinism, radical abortion, or gay marriage became taboo and proof of near criminality.
But advocacy for generations of youth also came at a price of not learning history, languages, science, math, and literature, the age-old menu of broad liberal arts education. And the result is reified by the emergence of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose arrogance and ignorance are emblematic of the worth of a costly Boston University degree. Never have self-professed radicals been so class-conscious in self-referencing their degrees from bourgeoisie institutions, and so vehement in espousing agendas about which they can provide no logical arguments or data.
Most of the nihilistic positions are also funded by wealthy Americans on behalf of poor Americans. Rich left wing activism reflects a an almost Medieval desire for penance and exemption. Progressive philanthropists virtue-signal their class solidarity without real costs to their own privilege, while assuaging abstract guilt. In other words, never have the representatives of the very rich and the subsidized poor been so eager to make the middle classes pay for their agendas.
Finally, the new nihilism is often advanced through social media and the Internet. These are frighteningly intrusive media in which millions can electronically and anonymously bully, pontificate, and slander without consequence, and in the expectation that the more radical, the more instantaneous, and the more polarizing an argument, the more likely it will gain attention from the internet mob. We saw the dangers of the electronic mob in the smearing of the Covington high schoolers and the supposed “hate crime” against Jussie Smollett.
Force-multipliers of this new thumbs-up/thumbs-down electronic absolutism are the providers themselves, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple. In various ways, Silicon Valley has been caught censoring traditional views, warping searches to promote progressivism, and banning participants in asymmetrical partisan fashion.
In sum, the emerging alternative to Trump is not Democratic pragmatism, but an angry nihilism that is as incoherent as it is destructive.
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A quarrel about the Holocaust and victim status is an avoidable tragedy between two countries that should be allies.
At a time when many of America’s traditional allies are alienated from the United States because of President Donald Trump’s stand on issues like Iran, a few have grown closer to the United States because of him. Some Eastern European nations, like Poland and Hungary, that are governed by populist conservative governments have applauded Trump. That’s also true of Israel, where Trump’s reversal of President Barack Obama’s desire for more daylight between the United States and the Jewish state, plus decisions on Jerusalem and Iran, have made him very popular there.
Israel and these Eastern European nations have found common ground on many security issues in recent years, especially when contrasted with the highly critical stance Western Europe has taken with regards to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning on hosting a follow-up meeting to last week’s Warsaw Summit where the Eastern Europeans and Israel found themselves aligned with the United States, but the conference has been called off due to a growing crisis between Poland and Israel.
The reason for this has nothing to do with the issues that brought these U.S. allies together. Instead, it is a rerun of past quarrels about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust that, in theory, both Warsaw and Jerusalem had vowed to transcend. While the problem began with a foolish Polish decision, statements coming out of Israel have now compounded it. Cynical politics, rather than ongoing differences about a history in which both Jews and Poles have suffered greatly, have, at least for the moment, derailed a rapprochement that should benefit the United States as well as the two countries involved.
The dispute between Poland and Israel has its immediate origins in Polish parliament’s passing a 2017 law that made it a criminal offense for anyone to suggest the Polish people were in any way responsible for the Holocaust. Jews saw this an attempt to deny history and responded with the outrage that is always engendered when the Holocaust becomes part of any contemporary debate.
Poland’s motivation was rooted in their justified resentment when Auschwitz and other Nazi death factories are referred to as “Polish death camps,” which is a gross historical error. But the original text of the bill went beyond that and said “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich … shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.”
The law was amended to exclude imprisonment but still allows civil suits. Either way, this sounded an attempt to deny the long history of Polish anti-Semitism, the fact that some Poles helped the Germans kill Jews as well as the hostile and sometimes violent reception Jewish survivors got when they tried to return to their homes after the war.
Why Did Poland’s Government Adopt Such A Law?
The current nationalist government thought whipping up anger about perceived slights to Polish honor was in their interests. At a time when many on the continent are understandably resentful about the impact of globalization and the outsized influence of the European Union (of which Poland is a member), anger about the actions of Germans, past and present, or critics of Poland is a political winner. That’s true even if it does nothing to help the country in its struggle to preserve its independence against the ambitions of the current Russian government.
But as wrongheaded as this bill is, rather than take the bait, Netanyahu initially chose to try avoid a quarrel despite the desire of his domestic political opponents, as well as historians associated with Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, to pursue the argument with the Poles.
Sadly, Jewish attitudes toward Poles are still more the product of historical memories than the generally good relations that exist today between Israel and Poland. Jew hatred was widespread in the independent Polish republic that was destroyed by a German invasion in 1939. It was also officially sanctioned by the government and rooted in centuries of religious prejudice whipped up by many in the Catholic Church.
But those who harp on these facts would do well to also remember the extent of the Polish suffering at the hands of the Germans. Talk of “Polish death camps” is inaccurate. The phrase shifts blame from the Nazis who perpetrated the Holocaust to the invaded nation where the bulk of the murders took place.
The Holocaust was the fault of its German perpetrators, not the Poles. The fact that the death camps were located in Poland was a function of logistics, not a belief that the Poles would help the Nazis kill Jews. Germans and collaborators from elsewhere in Eastern Europe, not Poles, staffed the camps where many of the three million Polish Jews who were killed in the Holocaust died.
The Occupation Of Poland Was Bad For Everyone
The plight of the Poles under German occupation was not as dire as that of the Jews, all of whom were marked for death. But Poles were victimized more than any other occupied nation. At least 1.5 million Poles were deported to Germany for forced labor. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned in concentration camps and at least 1.9 million Polish civilians were killed during the war, including many who were murdered by Soviet Communist occupiers.
The extent of Polish resistance to the Nazis also deserves to be remembered. The Poles fought bravely against impossible odds both at the outset of the war and in 1944 when they rose against the Germans. That revolt was brutally crushed in a defeat that was enabled by the cynical refusal of the advancing Soviets to help, and resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 Poles.
Although some Poles helped the Germans or were hostile to Jewish victims, many thousands also risked their lives to save Jews. Among them was Jan Karski, the heroic Polish officer who brought word of the death camps to the West and was ignored by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his pains.
That doesn’t excuse the massacre of Jews by Poles at Kielce or at Jedwabne in 1941. But those who lump them in with the Germans need to understand that Poles have every right to be considered victims, not perpetrators. Moreover, Poland’s victimization didn’t begin in 1939 but stretched back centuries as the great powers of Europe treated it as a pawn in their wars.
For Jews and Poles to fight over the Holocaust is also particularly sad because it ignores the progress made to bridge the gap between the two peoples in the postwar era. The efforts of the late Pope John Paul II to combat endemic anti-Semitism both in his own nation and among Catholics everywhere deserve to be remembered with honor. The post-Cold War government of Poland also should be given credit for maintaining friendly relations with Israel. Support for and interest in Jewish culture among Poles also testifies to the way Poland is changing.
Yet after doing so much to avoid conflict with Poland and being bashed for it by his critics who have accused him of not caring about the Holocaust or history, Netanyahu and his government were responsible for reviving this pointless dispute, and for the same reason the Poles began it: politics.
Reviving Disputes For Political Reasons
When Netanyahu was asked about the Polish Holocaust law last week, he flippantly replied that “The Poles collaborated with the Nazis and I don’t know anyone who was ever sued for such a statement.” By implying that all Poles collaborated when this is clearly not the case, Netanyahu infuriated Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his government, which had pledged to reopen discussions about further amending the law due to pressure from Israel and the United States.
If that wasn’t bad enough, newly appointed Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz followed it up with a statement in which, citing his background as a descendant of survivors, he piled on Poland by quoting the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said in 1989 that Poles sucked anti-Semitism with “their mother’s milk.” While Shamir, who grew up in Poland during its worst period of pre-war anti-Semitism, might have been forgiven for saying that, there was no excuse for Katz or for Netanyahu not to rebuke him for speaking in that manner.
Why is Netanyahu willing to bash the Poles after defending them for a year? He’s attempting to win a fourth consecutive term as prime minister in April and doesn’t want rivals to claim that he’s soft on the Holocaust. So instead of continuing to nurture the alliance with the Poles, he’s sabotaged it and blew up a conference that would have been to the interest of both nations and their mutual ally: the United States.
These cynical political maneuvers should remind both peoples that Jews and Poles don’t need to be enemies anymore. To the contrary, given Poland’s complicated strategic situation and the ongoing attacks on Israel, they have much in common. So rather than engage in mutual condemnations, both peoples should speak with the same understanding and compassion for each other’s suffering and sensibilities that they demand for their own history.
The Polish Holocaust law was a foolish mistake. But it would be a pity if arguments about history were to undo the progress that has been made to heal the historic rift between Jews and Poles as well as to further a necessary alliance that the United States wishes to encourage.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributing writer for National Review. Follow him on Twitter.
3a) How Israel's Elections Will Shape Its Regional Strategy — But no matter who wins the next election, Israel will no longer be able to rely on many of its tried-and-true methods of navigating regional threats, such as unquestioning U.S. support. Link
Iran, China: Tehran Looks East for a Buffer Against the West — As the noose of U.S. sanctions tightens, Iran looks for economic wiggle room through its partnership with China. Link
Malaysia, China: Kuala Lumpur Gets Back on Track With the Belt and Road — Concerned about China's influence, Malaysia suspended a massive rail project last year. But now that Beijing has sweetened the deal, Kuala Lumpur is having second thoughts. Link
Geopolitical Calendar — Stay informed about the significant meetings and events the Stratfor team is tracking. Link
Global Perspectives
Will an Economic Reckoning Follow Turkey's Local Elections? — Stratfor contributor Sinan Ciddi writes that Turkey's president and his ruling party have branded next month's vote as crucial to Turkey's future, but their ability to control their country's fate without international help is diminishing. Link
Stratfor Graphic
Iran's regional strategy of building and maintaining political and militant proxiesto grow its influence beyond its borders poses a challenge for the next Israeli government, particularly in Lebanon and Iraq.
Forums
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China's military has reportedly established a military outpost in Tajikistan's far east near the Afghan border. There are few details on the outpost, which, according to reports, has existed for roughly three years, though Beijing appears to have established it to counter smuggling and militancy near its western frontier. In addition to clearing a path for China's ambitious Belt and Road initiative, an increased Chinese presence in Central Asia could enable the United States, which has been at war in Afghanistan for over 17 years, to reduce its security footprint in the region.
3b) Arab Armies Under the Microscope
Even when they win, they lose. So miserable was the performance of Arab armed forces during the last century that even a few examples of victories tended to be defeats in one respect or another. When Egypt took Israel by surprise in 1973 and was able to cross the Suez Canal, it still achieved only limited success.
In Armies of Sand: The Past, Present and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness, Kenneth Pollack charts the history of Arab armies and seeks to diagnose how they came to be what they are. A military analyst concentrating on the Persian Gulf at the CIA and National Security Council as well as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, his new book is comprehensive and a welcome contribution to our understand of the region and its war fighters.
Pollack starts with a series of questions. Why did the Iraqi Army collapse in the face of the ISIS assault in 2014? How did Libya manage to lose to Chad in 1987? While large conventional Arab armies have often been hobbled on the battlefield, in the last decades a plethora of extremist groups have proved to be threats to the Middle East and the world. This includes Hezbollah and ISIS. It might also include the Houthis in Yemen and other groups that have appeared capable of outwitting militaries that have more resources and power on paper.
Tackling such a large subject would appear exhausting and possibly impenetrable for a reader. Yet Armies of Sand is incredibly approachable, because the author is not only passionate on the subject but also straightforward about what he wants to explain.
"I cannot possibly present all of that history, country by country or war by war, in chronological order in this book and still have the space to discuss the sources of Arab military problems," he noted. "I can't possibly make a reader wade through all of that."
He solves this by comparing the challenges facing Arab militaries with problems of other militaries. While he summarizes important conflicts, experts will find new details unveiled. Who even recalled that Israel struck Iraq's Rutbah air base in 1967, destroying 31 Iraqi aircraft in the air and on the ground?
The problem for Arab militaries, Pollack argues, is not a simple story of failure or disorganization. Junior officers rarely exhibited initiative or flexibility, yet Arab armies tended to be good at logistics. Was this because they were impacted by Soviet military doctrine, which played a role in various states from Syria to Egypt? Pollack asserts that the Soviet model could have worked well, and that Arab armies, such as the Egyptians, performed well with Soviet equipment. The Egyptians, after a decade of American influence, did not do well in the 1991 Gulf War, advancing at a snail's pace
Maybe failures on the battlefield could be ascribed to politicization, the degree to which high-ranking officers all had to be connected to the regime. But Pollack argues that this is not the only answer to problems that affected armies like Iraq's. He also focuses on the role of Arab culture, in formulating how officers in Middle Eastern armies make decisions.
"In Arab society, to do something wrong generally is much worse than to do nothing at all," he noted. The dominant culture therefore created a disincentive for taking initiative or action.
But there are also many examples of Arab armies and militant groups that have been effective.
Besides the case of large conventional armies, like Egypt's in 1973, there is the case of Hezbollah. In a careful and interesting examination of Hezbollah's wars with Israel from the 1980s to 2006, and then in Lebanon, the author makes the case that zeal and circumstances led Hezbollah to success. He also argues that as Shi'ite Muslims, the members of Hezbollah had some advantages over similar Sunni military institutions. He connects this partly to religious differences and to Iranian influence.
The most interesting sections of Armies of Sand are the numerous descriptions devoted to individual battles and conflicts. Because the author knew he could not tell every bit of the history, he concentrated on examples and comparisons to illuminate his points. A lengthy discussion of Soviet influence on wars in Africa, and comparing the performance of Arab armies to those of the Koreans and Vietnamese, is interesting. One almost learns more about these other examples than about some of the case studies of Hezbollah or ISIS.
For instance, only four pages are devoted to the ISIS offensives of 2014, which really should have been expanded. Those offensives were far larger than the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, both in the ground covered and the human misery caused. There are also unanswered tactical questions about how ISIS vanquished Iraqi divisions in June 2014. The level of fascinating detail that Pollack provides on some battles, such as Israel's 1967 offensives around Jenin, would have shed some much-needed light on those ISIS operations.
This is an exciting book that is timely and important, as the region goes through major changes. With the war on ISIS largely over and the Syrian conflict winding down, it is important to take a step back and look at how the Middle East got here. An examination of the militaries of the region, which have played an outsized role in almost every country in the Middle East, is a good place to start.
Pollack has written an interesting and readable account that is accessible for the average reader and interesting to experts who have studied these topics their whole lives.
Seth Frantzman is The Jerusalem Post's op-ed editor, a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a founder of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.
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4) AOC Staffing Scandal Exposed
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has been making waves, but this is the first time that she has been unmasked on the substance of her political practices rather than form or policy ideas. Luke Thompson, a GOP political consultant, has discovered that Ocasio is closely tied in with a millionaire turned progressive activist, and could be violating House ethics rules in regards to her boyfriend. Wilson explains it all here.
In summary, Ocasio Cortez received infrastructure help from a millionaire donor, Chakrabarti, who provided campaign services. However, she couldn’t afford his services and instead of the campaign taking a loan, she most likely paid out of pocket. However, Chakrabarti later hired Ocasio’s boyfriend, which could be seen as nepotistic, even he would be qualified. This could mean that Chakrabarti was paying her Ocasio’s partner while at the same time getting paid by her, in effect donating to her campaign. Not only that, but she later hired this person to be her chief of staff. For all her talk of fighting against nepotism and money in politics, Ocasio has been double-dealing.
In addition, Ocasio Cortez denied hiring her own boyfriend on her staff, despite him having a US government email address. Unless she married him within the last month, this would be highly irregular as boyfriends are not counted as spouses. Much evidence has surfaced proving that her boyfriend is indeed on staff, and paid. More on nepotism in this case.
There is an argument for Ocasio Cortez hiring those close to her to serve on her staff, but it would go against the tenets that she has explicitly defended. Politics corrupt all, and Americans should not be lulled into thinking that “new” politicians are somehow purer.
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