Democracy in the Middle East

We are not the first to see that the seminal event which destroyed the notion of a divine right to rule and birthed the spirit of consensual government, a people sovereign above all else - the execution of Charles I of England in 1649 - provides in fact a template or blueprint for the Middle East. The parallels are indeed striking. Then as now there was brutality directed by the King upon his very own as Charles jailed his enemies and waged war upon his subjects. Then as now there were intense religions rivalries, intense ethnic hatreds. There was the clash between political and religious authority, resulting eventually in the doctrine of separation. Finally, there was a France and Spain (just as there is a Syria and Iran now) which tried to rescue Charles in desperation that the revolution might soon be visited upon them.

Realists have maintained that the Middle East is the least hospitable place in the world for a democracy. Nonsense. What is true is that for the past 45 years a civilization gap has continued to widen between this region and so many other parts of the world. The reason: Arab countries have aped western ideas but sought to implement these through state power - capitalist dictatorships that don’t work. The inevitable decay and failure, the brutality of rule have together bred a growing yet sub-surface counterculture of resistance. It is this reservoir of internal pressure and agitation, before constrained or crushed by ruling thugs that now will be married to an enlightened US agenda, ultimately transforming the entire region. One need only witness recent success in Iraq to understand the process.

On the stage of world events, fate and luck often trump the best planning of the most gifted leaders. Women under the cro-magnon Taliban led a miserable life. Would the US have come to their aid if bin Laden had failed in his plan? If Saddam had not directly aided and abetted terrorists (the key reason for the invasion) would the torture chambers still be full today? If Arafat (who was thoroughly corrupt, stole hundreds of millions intended for his people, abolished elections and enforced violence) had not died would we ever have even the presentation of a genuine window for peace? We’ll leave these answers to the sage; it is enough that we are there. And as a by-product to America’s initiative to see to Her own welfare She will see to the welfare of millions of others.

Robert Craven

IRAN

Mideast tension fueled primarily by Iran’s ambitions and the perceived US/Israeli response now commands center stage, world media. Our task at this center is to anticipate change in this region, change that may affect the security of the United States; that is, close the pattern ahead of most other observers. What follows is extracted from our June and December 2007 posts.

Clients were alerted November 2004 that Iran’s nuclear ambitions would become the key issue on Rice’s plate. Then in a sketch of May/06 we predicted the following: The International Atomic Energy Agency would continue to suffer from impotency, the same malady affecting its parent; Russia and China would remain squeamish, for the near term blocking any meaningful sanctions birthed by the Security Council and finally, that the US, the UK and a coalition would decide to impose sanctions outside the UN framework. One of these (we hoped) would be the blockage of gasoline imports.

It is far more effective for us to target Iran’s economy, to go on the offensive and undermine the Ahmadinejad government in that manner than to select the military option. This is directly out of Reagan’s book. The Iranian people become the proxy for (now pathetic) Western diplomacy. This is a radical change in approach - target societies and let them do the work for you. See our sketch of Feb/07 and that of Mar/07 for more on this process but it is not cosmic in dimension or complexity, does not take more than an hour or so away from the ball game to understand.
We recommended then the complete blockage of gasoline imports by the US Navy Fifth Fleet. Iran has no capabilities to stop us. The government would not survive the economic catastrophe. The blockade would be lifted when the new government adopted complete transparency in 1) abandoning their nuclear ambitions and 2) ceasing any complicity in Mid Eastern affairs, those of Iraq and Lebanon in particular. The Iranian people would see to that. Unfortunately there are some of our "allies" who disagree, Russia chief among these. In addition to selling Iran a $1 billion nuclear plant and being a major supplier of arms and aircraft, Russia was then, through a private banking conglomerate (Alfa Group) looking to invest $300 million to develop Iran’s infant cellular-phone industry. Being who they are the Russians are naturally anxious to water down any sanction which may curtail this activity.

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate, 2007, temporarily conspired to dislodge the Iranian nuclear threat from center stage. The NIE’s facile conclusions, actually a coup engineered by ex-State officials who have been chronic appeasers, had to be accepted by the Bush administration because if not the report would have been leaked and the administration would have been accused of a cover up.Very little had changed. Our view Dec/07 was that Iran has simply delayed warhead production so it can buy time for the more difficult task of enriching uranium. That’s the hard part. Once you have the fuel any fool knows you can make the bomb in months.

Finally, we noted that 1) although we and others had been a paladin for tough sanctions all along, the release of the NIE gave both Russia and China the excuse to back away from meaningful sanctions, and 2) that this piece of dagger diplomacy made an Israeli attack even more likely.

And that is exactly what has transpired.

Robert Craven

NATIONAL SECURITY

Judgement and the Commander in Chief

Seemingly out of nowhere comes a certain Barry Durham - half African, half white, with a libertine mother who’d married a polygamist from Kenya, and he is running for president of the United States against John McCain. And although Barry’s handlers admit that he has little experience they maintain that his judgement will compensate. We want to believe that; as commander-in-chief Obama will husband a central responsibility to all of us, that which eclipses all other responsibilities - national security. And so in spite of his dealings with a convicted felon, his near life-long allegiance (until such an allegiance became a political liability) to a pastor preaching victimization, his campaign’s employment of a Mr. Johnson (recently fired) who had sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, the very same firm Obama criticized for its role in the mortgage meltdown, his cuddly relationship with terrorist bomber William Ayers, his obsequious posturing to various lobbies of the left, his incestuous romp with trial lawyers, and, gaffe after repeated gaffe - "tornadoes killed 10,000 people in Kansas / "I’ve been in 57 states, one left to go"- we reserve hope, suspecting that we must be missing something.

So we decided to look at the current conflict at hand. Specifically, how would Obama have handled the Iraqi situation in 2006 when that situation was approaching meltdown? Is this not the perfect petri dish, the perfect test? Obama then sat on the Foreign Relations Committee, McCain on the Armed Services Committee. McCain recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which he introduced in the Senate and which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq, spring of 2008. Obama predicted the surge would fail, telling Larry King that he "did not see anything in the president’s strategy that would make a significant dent in the sectarian violence."

Bush ordered the surge - 5 Army brigades and 2 Marine battalions. The US forces partnered with Iraqi troops precisely as McCain had suggested. Sectarian violence as of this writing has stopped almost completely. Al Qaeda in Iraq was dealt what CIA director Hayden now assesses as a "a near strategic defeat." If indeed Obama’s bill had passed, Al Qaeda in Iraq would have continued to gain strength, the fragile Iraqi Security Forces would have collapsed and militias would have flourished; the US would have departed under fire accepting a humiliating defeat that any fool knows would have reverberated globally.

How in the world can we have a better test than this? The military strategist Fred Kagan, respected by both sides of the aisle, noted recently that, "When American strategy in a critical theater was up for grabs, McCain proposed a highly unpopular and risky path, which he accurately predicted could lead to success. Obama proposed a popular and politically safe route that would have lead to an unnecessary and debilitating American defeat at the hands of al Qaeda."

Certainly we can understand why Islamic medievalists support the Obama campaign. It is a stretch however to understand how literate Americans can come to do the same.

Robert Craven