Kerry shuttle diplomacy? Ha. Let's talk about what is really going on in the Middle East:
Chattanooga, Tennessee, November
25, 1863
At
the assault on Lookout Mountain, the Union advance faltered against the
Confederate lines high atop Missionary Ridge. Suddenly Union soldiers
spontaneously advanced without orders led by six flag-bearers, one of
them Arthur MacArthur, father of Douglas MacArthur. A Union officer
remembered:
“Each
battalion assumed a triangular shape, the colors at the apex....[A]
color-bearer dashes ahead of the line and falls. A comrade grasps the
flag.... He, too, falls. Then another picks it up... waves it defiantly,
and as if bearing a charmed life, he advances steadily towards the
top.”
And
so sometimes when the general is incompetent, incapable of delivering
victory, even ready to throw it away, those in the ranks must take up
the slack.
“To
those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the
silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history,
but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your
fist,” said Obama in his 2009 inaugural address."
Instead
it was Obama who, in the Middle East, was on the wrong side of history.
“Corruption,”
“deceit,” ”clinging to power,” “silencing of dissent?” That’s a
description of the regimes in Iran, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority
(PA, its refusal to negotiate or make peace), the Gaza Strip (Hamas,
which the White House protected from overthrow), Sudan, Tunisia, Syria
(where the White House courted the regime for more than two years and
then supported Muslim Brotherhood leadership over the opposition) d
until recently Egypt. Perhaps we should say: Mr. Obama, join us, get on
the right side, and tear down that wall. Then you will be on the right side of history.
It
is the proper duty of the president of the United States to clench his
fist and, in some manner, bop these enemies of America and of freedom
upside the head.
And
since, then, he wouldn’t help them defend themselves and sided so often
with their enemies, the people and non-Islamist governments of the
Middle East have now turned a corner—not the corner but a corner—toward victory. Out of self-preservation they have acted. If only they had more help!
In
Egypt, they rebelled against the Islamist regime that the Obama
Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood in partnership with many even
more extreme Salafists gave them. True, it is not an ideal situation and
the Egyptian army was--as in 2011-- the determining factor. Yet at
least the Egyptians—at least about half of them who don’t want a
fundamental
transformation of their society—will get their way. Obama was on the
wrong side.
In
Turkey they have rebelled at last they demonstrated peacefully and were
attacked by the repressive forces of another elected dictatorship. In
Tunisia despite the elected dictatorship’s assassination of their most
dynamic leader, they are trying to defend their rights. And they would
do so in Lebanon as well if the United States had not spent years
appeasing a Hizballah-Syrian puppet regime there.
As
for Israel, the real democratic government in the region was treated
with disdain for effectively defending itself, refusing to make risky
and unrequited
concessions. Sure, the words were still fine but the tone and ideas
were that these Israelis were too stupid or too mean they didn't know
what was in their own interests. For the first time ever much of the
American Jewish community, hypnotized, didn’t remember who the good guys
are any longer.
In
Iran people voted for the least of seven evils, the regime-backed
hardliner who at least signaled that he was a little less so,
unfortunately in a Tehran government-hatched bait-and-switch scheme.
The
true tragedy is Syria where, due in large part to foolish U.S. policies
that backed the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the real moderates, the
progressive forces—how ironic!—in that society were left with a choice
between a repressive dictatorship that would massacre some of them and a
would-be repressive dictatorship that would massacre others.
The
small remnant of Christians have been left on their own in Iraq, must
seek protection from an authoritarian regime in Syria, were run out of
the Gaza Strip, and face daily attacks in Egypt. No U.S. government
voice has been raised. Is a Christian-free Middle East being on the
right side of history?
Even
the Saudis and Gulf Arab states at times (except for Qatar) have tried
for their own strategic interests, been on the right side of
history, in Lebanon and Egypt if not in Iraq and Syria. With U.S.
leadership they would have done better.
But
as I showed in my previous article, the Obama Administration really
does believe that the future belongs to the Islamists, just as others on
the wrong side of history once thought that history was on the side of
Communists, fascists, Third World radical dictatorships, and Arab
nationalists.
Like defeatists and those who would trade away others freedom have always said—and as two National Security staffers recently argued explaining the words out of Obama’s mouth, any effort to defeat the Islamists would fail and turn them toward even more terrorist tactics.
Guess
one should help them win peacefully then? The film, ‘’Bridge on the
River Kwai” describes how Colonel Nicholson, British commander of World
War Two prisoners-of-war, so loses his sense of priorities that he tries
to prevent the sabotage of a bridge being his slave laborers had to
build to help the Japanese enemies’ war effort. When one of his officers
asks,
"The
fact is, what we're doing could be construed as - forgive me, sir -
collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable
activity....Must we build them a better bridge than they could have
built for themselves?"
Nicholson responds:
"We
can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency
that will put them to shame." To help them construct a better
dictatorship, a better enemy.
No.
For the last four years the United States should either have been on
the side of the freedom-seeking peoples, U.S. strategic interests or,
whenever possible, both. But if U.S. policy and misguided and
uninformed elitists who know nothing about the Middle East are on the
wrong side of history don’t help, the battle will be carried on without
the United States.
On another occasion in the "Bridge on the River Kwai" the officers' have this discussion:
Commander Shears: “You mean, you intend to uphold the letter of the law, no matter what it costs?”
Colonel Nicholson: “Without law, Commander, there is no civilization.”
Commander Shears: ”That's just my point; here, there is no civilization.”
Colonel Nicholson: “Then we have the opportunity to introduce it.”
No, this isn't going to happen.
Many
people in the Middle East—most of whom are Muslims who don’t interpret
that religion this way--reply, No Axis-style or Islamist authoritarian
civilization, thank you very much. We now know the West won's help us.
We'll have to fight for our own
survival.'Win or lose.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish
Studies, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20#.UZs4pLUwdqU
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