"So,
let me just say, it went bad for us over there, but that was our job.
That's what we did. We didn't complain about it." –Former Navy SEAL
Marcus Luttrell
The
Obama administration is engaging in over a dozen failed operations in
the Middle East, and reason shows just why they're failing: The Islamist
philosophy is totally different from theirs. The Islamists are
indifferent to the cost of victory, but this makes them not give up.
"Hopelessness
really never came into it," Luttrell said, "… Because there was never a
point where we just felt like we were hopelessly lost or anything like
that. We never gave up. We never felt like we were losing until we were
actually dead."
Clearly,
the Obama administration does not understand Middle Eastern regimes and
terrorist organizations, and if it doesn't, it will meet miserable
defeats. Luttrell understands the minds of the terrorists and how to
bring victory–at least as close an approximation as there can be–to the
Middle East.
The
terrorist does not begin to calculate a winning strategy just because
he believes in an ordained victory from Allah. He will not engage in
strategy or tactics that are troublesome. For example, do you think that
September 11, 2001, will lead to victory or advancement? That depends.
It is shaping the regional issues, the play of what has been happening,
lives and deaths, political situations, and designation of resources.
Just because you have a strategy without a victory doesn't mean that the
strategy will not have long-term effects.
It shapes the rules of the game.
In
addition, the Obama administration's goals have not been consistent. If
you can't depend on someone for consistency in times of trouble, you
can't depend on them at all. The United States has become an
untrustworthy ally, as many Middle Eastern regimes can attest to.
Let's
look at how Egypt has played its cards over the last three years. You
could say, as probably a Western statesman like Vice President Joe Biden
would, that the Muslim Brotherhood "couldn't win." But wait, all they
need to do is do enough to block others' victories. If the Muslim
Brotherhood, or al-Qa'ida for that matter, never gave up, they defied
the enemy victory. That is a strategy for triumph.
After
having published an article on the Muslim Brotherhood, in which I
generally analyzed their situation, I received a very nice critique from
Egypt's chief Muslim Brotherhood magazine, which completely understood
it and yet concluded that the Brotherhood strategy was right. They
understand us more than we understand them. If they never despair, they
spend all the blood and treasure that is required, and Allah–in addition
to other measures–will give them victory.
So let's explain why Obama and his administration do not understand the Middle East.
Obama
sees Egypt as a huge conventional military power (He doesn't want it to
obtain nuclear weapons). Egypt can easily call the United States'
bluff. Egypt must make certain compromises, but with popular support and
going to great lengths through use of violence, the army knows it can
win. Egypt's new government has mass popular support, unity of the army,
and inside national security.
Also,
there are some key factors that Obama doesn't see, such as the
alternative of Saudi aid and Russian arms. As I said when Egypt's Army
was originally going to go out of power in 2011, "the Arab and Egyptian
warriors, they cannot compromise on some issues." Ultimately, they were
bold soldiers, not politicians.
Theoretically,
they would rather commit hara-kiri then betray their people for the
wrong reasons. But again, note the following: By supporting the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood, Obama shows he is not a trustworthy ally. And
besides, Obama has shown that he runs away from Russian arms and has
been outbid by Saudis. Who is going to break, Egypt or Obama?
This leads to an important factor: He who wins is he who will compromise less, not he who is willing to compromise more.
This
principle is the same everywhere in the Middle East. Iran is willing to
risk having the negotiations fall apart, and so is Karzai's government
in Afghanistan. Remember, he who is willing to let the negotiations fall
apart will win, like a game of chicken not a game of bridge, like a
game of backgammon not like chess.
A
new story has just come out in Tunisia in which the government fell
apart due to the army's pressure. Quietly, that was the end of the
Tunisia's democratic dream. And in fact, all true Arab, Turkish, and
Iranian democracies have fallen apart.
The
same has been true of the Iraqi democratic dream. Iran, not the United
States, is the country that has played the game well there.
This is a game of chutes and ladders.
In
another example, the West thinks the Syrian political opposition,
politicians, and terrorists actually care how many people they are
willing to sacrifice, when in fact they are willing to sacrifice
millions. The West simply cannot understand that these people are
fighting for different stakes. They think that materialistic
consideration and pragmatism will determine their decisionmaking.
Yet
everybody who knows the Middle East knows the problem is that you need
to think the Middle Eastern way, not the Western way. Or perhaps to cite
another Western leader, "You come with a rock, we come with a knife.
You come with a knife, we come with a gun." The closest thing in
American politics to Middle East politics is that of Chicago or Boston
with its bridges and outlets.
Western policy is deemed to flourish in compromise; Middle Eastern on victory.
No
extent of compromise is going to cause radical nationalists and
Islamists to make real peace. Yes, Islamists can be and are often
pragmatic, particularly in order to obtain millions of dollars of trade
and nuclear weapons; but that is only if they not required to give much
in return.
Here's
an anecdote. A Western intelligence agent was interviewing captured
Afghan terrorists. He said, reasonably, "Why did you come here?" They
responded "To kill you," and attacked him with a knife. Several people
in the camp were killed.
If you don't know why the Muslim Brotherhood will not make peace with Arab regimes, you cannot understand the Middle East.
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The Gates of Hell: Obama and Clinton Are Cooked
Posted: 12 Jan 2014 08:04 AM PST
For the last five years, I have waited for the other shoe to drop.
In
2008, the American people elected an incompetent and foolish president,
Obama. President Obama knew that he could only trust such a hand-cuffed
politician and loyalist, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state. He
then later appointed the pompous John Kerry to fill this capacity. Yet
this "gang that couldn't shoot straight" was a ticking time bomb.
Three strikes and you're out. Let me list them:
Imagine former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates–who recently published a book Duty Memoirs of a Secretary at War,
in which he criticized Obama and his administration–seething.
Certainly, he never would have gotten as far as he did if he hadn't been
an opportunist, but U.S. interests, not politics, was his duty. He knew
that Americans were being sacrificed uselessly to make the situation
"work."
Gates
feels that he has a personal responsibility to the American public.
Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, are pure politicians, and for all
they try, they cannot get rid of their "me-first" mindsets. In other
words, Obama and Clinton don't want to be rid of "how does it benefit
me?" as their first priority, while Gates cannot get rid of that squeaky
little voice asking, "What about America's interests?" and probably,
"What stupid thing will Vice President Joe Biden say next?"
Here
we have to remind everyone that politicians have to deal with the
future of politics, post-Obama. And those future careerists like Gates
need to be quiet and disciplined, because they know that they cannot
risk offending other political interests, from whom they might need
future support.
Career officials need supporters, especially in order to rise up the ladder.
One
day, as a fourteen year old, I was riding the bus in Washington, D.C.
Of course, where else? I overheard two men, who were obviously
government officials, talking. One said, "These people are so stupid.
They don't know what they are doing. They all make the wrong decisions,
but after all they and I will just go into retirement."
Almost 50 years later, I still haven't forgotten this.
Washington,
D.C., is an endless game of thrones. But for once it came to what may
be more commonly called a perfect storm. Gates was the one knight who
had nothing to lose in publishing his memoirs, except reviews–which
could only increase readership. On the one hand, he could have done the
noble thing; on the other hand, he could act in his own interests. His
interests and the public's, however, were congruent.
Gates
could see himself as finally achieving genuine, national self-interest,
as a real protector. He wasn't able to do any better, and it wasn't his
fault; it was fault of the American people for not electing a competent
president.
For
example, Gates knew that the Iraq policy around 2007-2008 was the best
idea. He knew that Kerry, Obama, and Clinton opposed it for the wrong
political reasons. He knew that he would lose his fight against them and
would have to confine that to the loneliness of the voter's box. Then
he would have to support their decisions loyally.
Most
people do not face such a situation, and it is very difficult. Men
would die, U.S. interests would be abandoned, and terrorists would be
strengthened while Gates had to listen to unpatriotic sentiments such as
those from Joe Biden. He even wrote that he considered resigning due to
Biden. "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy
and national security issue over the past four decades," Gates wrote in
his memoirs.
Yes, everyone would consider resigning. But you can only resign once.
Notice the timeline.
He was deputy director of the CIA from 1986 to 1989.
He
accepted the job of CIA director in November of 1991 and then
permanently resigned in January 1993. He never returned to the CIA.
He
became Secretary of Defense in 2006 under George W. Bush. On December
1, 2008, President Obama announced that Gates would remain in his
position as Secretary of Defense during his administration, at least for
the first year. When he retired in 2011, Gates said, “I think that it
would be a mistake to wait until January 2012… This is not the kind of
job you want to fill in the spring of an election year.”
As
a former civil servant, he may well have been correct to state it that
way; let's see, there's Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Biden, and Harry Reid–how
could they do more danger to U.S. interests? Most of the other senior
foreign policy official experts would have said "duh." Under such
serious circumstances, I think he was sending a signal. And frankly,
almost everyone had heard the same thing privately from these officials.
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The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe
Posted: 12 Jan 2014 04:05 AM PST
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." This prophetic remark was made by Foreign Secretary Edward Grey in 1914 on the eve of World War One. The First World War marked the end of an era.
The
question is whether now, in 2014, we are in another temporary era or
whether this is a long-term shift. To answer this, we need to ask what
fundamental shifts are, what are simply factual shifts, and how they
lead to new eras.
The
current era is strikingly different from the three past eras,
particularly because it lacks truly innovative ideological growth. We
must ask why the ideological framework has grown so slowly and why it
has not caught up with the fast-growing technological framework. The
need to create new concepts and frameworks for how society should be
organized has fallen far behind technological development. Tech
"culture" exists in an ideological and strategic vacuum. What
intellectual gain is there in technology that exists in a world of
outdated, archaic social systems?
In
other words, on the one hand, the main solution of governments,
societies, and economies is to produce wealth-sharing and social
justice. But wealth-sharing and social justice dictate an inefficient
form of society and do not set up wealth creation. An example of this
progression is that there are far more up-to-date social media
applications but there is far less wealth to distribute.
There
have been four fundamental shifts in the past hundred years, beginning
with 1914 and WWI; then the end of WWI in 1918 and the creation of a new
order; followed by 1945–the turning point that created a new world; and
last, our current system.
All
of these shifts dictated new ideologies, new technologies, new
economies, and challenges. Following is an overview of the eras:
Era one, 1914:
War breaks out as Germany attempts to conquer the world. The British
and French defend their empires. America is peripheral but becomes more
engaged. There is a strategic shift to inter-continental wars, air
power, and the emergence of tanks.
Results: Germany is defeated and Britain and France win, though the United States is in fact the big winner.
Era two, 1918-1945:
Germany again fails to conquer the world. The USSR picks up the slack
and attempts to conquer Europe and Asia; this is the start of the Cold
War.
The
united Western powers are insufficient to control the world. America
begins to dominate, while in parallel, third world powers are
strengthening. This is as much a cultural battle as a political and
military one. The West believes that socialism and communism have been
"defeated."
Third era, 1945 to 2014:
China establishes a communist government. The popularity of communism
and socialism is manifest–Cuba, China, Albania–especially in the
ideological sense. Communism is vanquished in action but not in theory.
The only new recipe is seemingly socialism.
Fourth era in 2014: Western
intellectuals, politicians, and journalists simply cannot understand
why Islamism is growing while Western democracy dwindles.
The
irony is that the current era's "Western democratic culture" is a
thought system that could benefit from more of a sense of community, and
even faith. It has become culturally and ideologically stagnant as our
focus is pulled to distracting technologies. This leads me to believe
that this is not the time to conclude that theological motives–whether
Christian or Muslim–are really cynical. But many people, predominantly
in the Western world, believe that we don't need spirituality in this
era; that it is outdated.
And
Western cultures wonder why many Muslims could have beliefs so
"extreme" or different from their own. This is a perceptual gap. How
could extremists say such extreme things? Can they really believe them?
Of course, they sincerely believe them, and they have never come into
genuine contact with anything else–even in this globalized era.
Globalization,
in application, is a wholly new and radical change that has refreshed
our very idea of what communication is. This time the cold war consists
of the following forces:
Note that some groups are members of more than one bloc.
There
is no ideological challenge to the new world order, other than
Islamism, although the U.S. government does not consider Islamists–apart
from al-Qa'ida–as strong adversaries. One can predict that this foreign
policy will weaken the Western alliance, create other wars, and will
ultimately be an utter failure. Yet this policy is a current reality.
The United States and the Muslim Brotherhood have formed a seemingly
sudden alliance, a seemingly quick fix and radical change from past
relations. All the Obama administration has to do is find people to
"moderate" among the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the result of a large
ideological commitment on the part of Obamaites in the defense
department, CIA, and academia; it did not just happen.
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Monday, January 13, 2014
The Hopelessness of Victory
Barry Rubin
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