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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Losing Petraeus, Losing Iran
The general was one of few who understood that Iran was at war with the U.S., and no bargain could be struck
But perhaps the most significant question we’ll be left asking once the tawdry details stop leaking is: What happens to U.S. foreign policy when it loses a man of Petraeus’ experience, perspective, and institutional memory? For all of his peerless expertise regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, the question is especially relevant regarding Iran.
According to former Petraeus aides, leading military officials, policymakers, and analysts close to the four-star general that I spoke to this week, Petraeus understood, more than anyone else in our national-security apparatus, that the Islamic Republic is at war with the United States. By Petraeus’ reckoning, they said, it’s not possible to strike a grand bargain with Iran over its nuclear weapons program because the larger problem is the regime itself, whose endgame is to drive the United States from the region. And no arm of the regime is more dangerous than its external operations unit, the Qods Force, whose mastermind, Qassem Suleimani, is considered by Petraeus to be a personal enemy.
In seeing Iran as a threat to vital U.S. interests, Petraeus bucked the mainstream of more than 30 years of U.S. foreign policy. Presidents and legislators from both parties, as well as military and civilian officials, have tended to downplay the Iranian threat, seeking engagement with Tehran in the vague hopes of reaching a deal that might lead the regime to finally call off its dogs and leave us in peace. Petraeus, on the other hand, fought the Iranians.
As commander of American forces in Iraq from February 2007 to September 2008 and in Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011, Petraeus fought Iranians’ local proxies and frequently the Iranians themselves, often drawn from the Qods Force. As head of Central Command from October 2008 to June 2010, the general had a large area of responsibility that afforded him an overview of Iranian activities throughout the region, in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, the Persian Gulf states as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. During the course of almost a decade, Petraeus became Washington’s institutional memory of all of Iran’s activities directed against the United States and its allies.
“He understood the Iranians’ modus operandi, and their mentality,” said one intelligence analyst who worked in Iraq and saw Petraeus’ work up close. “No one has dealt directly with the Iranian threat the way he has. We’re losing someone at the highest levels of government with the historical knowledge and ability to counter the Iranians.”
Before the adultery scandal that forced his resignation on Friday, Petraeus was most famous as the commander who implemented the “surge” in Iraq, which is often credited [2] for changing the course of the war. Petraeus’ campaign employed a large escalation of combat troops and a controversial counterinsurgency, or COIN, doctrine. Both the man and the idea were subjected to sharp criticism inside and outside military circles (including by this writer, whose understanding was faulty [3]), which is hardly surprising given the acclaim heaped on Petraeus—or King David, as some rivals sarcastically referred to the general.
COIN’s basic premise is to the win the “hearts and minds” of a local population by providing it with protection and thereby cutting off an insurgency’s base of local support. COIN advocates explain that this account is too simplistic. “There’s this idea that COIN is about showing up in a village with a bag of money,” Lt. Col. Joel Rayburn, an Army intelligence officer who worked with Petraeus from 2007 to 2010, told me. “But from the start, the idea was to interdict lines of external support, politically and militarily.”
While the surge is usually believed to have focused all its energies against al-Qaida and Sunni militants, there was also a significant campaign against Iraqi Shia groups like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi. Targeting their external lines of support—including money, weapons, and advisers—meant going after Iran. “When Petraeus came back to Iraq and took command in February 2007, my impression was that one of the things that struck him most was the level of Iranian involvement and its influence over the Iraqi government,” said Rayburn. “He clearly had a sense the Iranians were sponsoring killing our soldiers in Iraq and conducting operations against some of our allies.”
Others told me that the Iranians were always a factor in Iraq, but there was little political will to do anything about it before Petraeus took command. Many U.S. military and civilian leaders, in Washington and on the ground in Iraq, simply chose to ignore it. Gen. George W. Casey, who commanded the multinational forces in Iraq before Petraeus, was, according to one senior military official, in “denial” about Iranian involvement. “They downplayed it—and you can understand why,” he said. “If the strategy is to hand security over to the Iraqi government, then it is problematic to be told that it is infiltrated by Iranian agents. If that’s true then the fundamental assumption is wrong, and you need to change your strategy.”
When George W. Bush realized that he was in danger of presiding over an American defeat, he tasked Petraeus with the job of turning the Iraq war around. That meant looking at Iraq with fresh eyes and seeing Iran’s role clearly. “With the Iranians, there was a multipronged campaign to root out their operations in Iraq,” said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who observed Petraeus in Iraq and later in Afghanistan. “That went from gathering intelligence, to arresting Iranian operatives, and pushing back Iranian influence.”
The man in charge of Iran’s Iraq policy [4], and most of their foreign operations, was and remains Qassem Suleimani [5], the 55-year-old major general who commands the Qods Force[6]. According to Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor’s new book The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama, Suleimani answers directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khameini. With the job of advancing the Islamic Republic’s interests through warfare and clandestine activities, Suleimani is perhaps the second-most important figure in the regime’s power structure. Recently he’s helped to shore up Bashar al-Assad’s besieged Syrian regime and participated in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. In a 2008 letter [7] to then-Defense Sec. Robert Gates, Petraeus called Suleimani a “truly evil figure.”
For the entirety of Petraeus’ tenure in Iraq, said Rayburn, “pushing back on Suleimani’s political and military influence was a key concern for him. He didn’t say it explicitly, but I believed he considered himself to be in war of wits against Suleimani.” The intelligence analyst agreed: “Petraeus saw Suleimani as his main adversary. We’d whack them, and then they regenerated because they had safe haven. But then he gave Suleimani an ultimatum, that he’d go after Qods Force.”
In January 2007, U.S. forces captured five Qods Force operatives in Erbil, which was Petraeus’ way of sending a message to Suleimani. “After that, they no longer sent in their senior guys, they sent in proxies,” said the analyst. The Erbil Five were eventually released, which is to say that Petraeus’ campaign against the Iranians hardly amounted to a rout, especially considering the amount of influence Iran today exercises in Iraq, including its relationship [8] with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
And yet, Petraeus did considerable damage to Iran’s project in Iraq. “The Iranians tried to force us back down in 2006,” said the analyst. “But their militias were pushed out of Baghdad. By the end of 2008, all Iranian-backed militia leaders were dead or trying to take a taxi back to Iran. Ultimately they did not achieve their goals there. They want to project the image that they have more control than they actually do in Baghdad. It’s like when they photoshopped [9] those ballistic weapons to make themselves look more powerful. It’s how they operate.”
According to the sources I spoke with, many of the programs that Petraeus implemented, and the tools he used to push back against Suleimani and the Qods Force, are going concerns. Those will continue. But as far as having someone at the top levels of government who understands the Iranian’s tactics, and has fought them up-close, Petraeus will likely be impossible to replace.
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Monday, November 12, 2012
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Sunday, November 11, 2012
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Published: November 11th, 2012
Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.
The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted. At the time of this writing (election day), with almost all the votes counted, President Obama has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten million off his own 2008 total.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate. The notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.
Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
Imagine two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last. Few – including me – could resist the attraction of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.)
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral Obama team) of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That suggests the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that, as Winston Churchill stated so tartly, “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Voters – a clear majority – are easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. Said another way, too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich. Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending. How could Obama get away with such rants to squealing sign-wavers? See Churchill, above.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!" Truer words were never spoken.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico (even if they came from Cuba or Honduras), and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. How could he do and say all these things ? See Churchill, above.
One might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar deficits. “Taxing the rich” does not yield even 10% of what is required and does not solve any discernible problem – so what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the U.S. are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won again, to the detriment of American life.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply disappeared from the map. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America, in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.
A second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual Congressmen. Go figure.
The mass media’s complicity in Obama’s re-election cannot be denied. One example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted – famously – during the second debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was “terror” (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism – on the day after the attack – clinging to the canard about the video. (This snippet of a “60 Minutes” interview was not revealed - until two days before the election!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the media’s disregard of any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.
One of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus, odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal states – like the bankrupt California and Illinois – and other states with large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare apparatus, like New York, New Jersey and others – give any Democratic candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New Jersey, for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some economists have pointed generally, and it resonates here even more, the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the election. It is an irrational act. That most states are uncompetitive means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was, and will never be again.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the U.S. will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative.
That Obama’s top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. The U.S. will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality. As Obama has committed himself to abolishing America’s nuclear arsenal, it is more likely that that unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in obstructing Iran’s plans.
Obama’s victory could weaken Netanyahu’s re-election prospects, because Israelis live with an unreasonable – and somewhat pathetic – fear of American opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat – or a diminution of its margin of victory – is more probable now than yesterday. That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone, and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you count Jordan) Palestinian state. A new U.S. Secretary of State named John Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well.
Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken Israel – an Oslo III. But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled – from the Greeks and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.
The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under Obama, America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look excellent. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
Two bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose in the morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel. We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake.
America was always the land from which “positive” aliya came – Jews leaving on their own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young people the high cost of Jewish living in America. Those costs will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate conclusions.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.
About the Author: Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun of Teaneck, New Jersey, and the author most recently of “Judges for Our Time: Contemporary Lessons from the Book of Shoftim” (Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem, 2009). His writings and lectures can be found at www.Rabbipruzansky.com.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Into the Fray: Abu who? By MARTIN SHERMAN
08/11/2012
It is difficult to conceive of anything more imbecilic than the debate raging over whether Mahmoud Abbas’s recent declarations are sincere.
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties [and] nations. It is the rule.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 1900)
These excerpts convey much of the dysfunctional and directionless condition into which Israel’s political system has descended. This was vividly underscored by the maelstrom of mindless chatter from a gamut of politicians and pundits across the spectrum of political opinion in Israel, which last Friday’s Channel 2 interview with the nominal head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), unleashed.
Pavlovian predictability
For the Israeli public it was (or, at least, should have been) a distressing indication of how shallow and shortsighted the discourse on issues of crucial national import has become, and a disturbing display of the predictably facile, almost Pavlovian responses of the country’s leadership to them – on both sides of the political divide.
The debate that raged in the wake of the interview centered on divergent assessments of Abbas’s sincerity as to whether he had genuinely forsaken the sacred Palestinian tenet of the “right of return” and forsworn violence as a means to achieve Palestinian goals.
Unsurprisingly, on the so-called political Left, his words were greeted with coos of rapture. Both Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni enthusiastically embraced his declarations as proof that Israel has a credible “peace partner,” and excoriated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for not seizing the alleged “opportunity” to restart the “peace process.” Shimon Peres, who as president should refrain from any contentious politically partisan issues, gushed with effusive praise, proclaiming: “His brave words prove that Abu Mazen is a real partner for peace. We need to bravely extend our hand out in peace to a leader like Abbas.”
No less predictably, figures associated with the Right were gruffly dismissive of Abbas’s ostensible moderate pragmatism.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman rejected it as ploy designed to “interfere with [Israeli] elections on behalf of the Left” – a claim subsequently substantiated by none other than Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, who only a day after the interview declared that its “purpose was to influence Israeli public opinion.”
The response from Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar was similarly negative, charging that the Palestinian leader’s statements were incompatible with his actions.
A communiqué issued by Netanyahu’s office expressed equal skepticism, saying that there was “no connection” between Abbas’s words and deeds, and discounted his rhetoric, deeming it meaningless and “empty promises.”
Skepticism well merited
The grounds for skepticism regarding Abbas’s true intentions are, of course, manifest and myriad.
Indeed, “clarifications” (read “retractions”) were issued at a dizzying pace. No sooner had Abbas expressed his much lauded “moderation,” than he began to recant.
As mentioned, on the very day after the interview, his spokesman Abu Rudeineh began frantically backpedalling. In Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official daily of the Palestinian Authority, he asserted that “the president and the Palestinian leadership will not agree to forsake the right of return.”
One day later, the paper ran the following headline: “The President: I never gave up on and never will give up on the right of return.”
In the subsequent article, Abbas makes clear that what he had said on Channel 2 was “my own personal position, and it did not mean giving up the right of return.”
None of this rapid self-repudiation saved Abbas from castigation by his Palestinian rivals. It goes almost without saying that they were vehemently rejected by Hamas, which seized on his interview with glee, declaring (with considerable justification) that his statements “are conclusive proof that the man represents only himself, and has lost popular national legitimacy.”
Al Jazeera carried a scathing condemnation of Abbas’s professed positions by Ramallahbased activist/journalist Linah Alsaafin, who charged that they “prove that he has lost touch with the Palestinian people.”
Casting doubt on Abbas’s authority, Alsaafin continued accusingly: “Considering his presidential term is expired since 2009, he really doesn’t have the legitimacy to act in the name of the Palestinians and come out with such outlandish statements.
Abbas has succeeded in uniting the Palestinian people against his words, they are united in disgust and protest.”
Denial and dysfunction
Regrettably, the Israeli response to both the retraction of his “message of moderation” by Abbas himself, and its caustic repudiation by a considerable segment of the Palestinian population, was far from fitting.
Neither the rescinding nor the rejection induced any admission on the part of the PC (Palestinian-compliant) Left that their effusive embrace of his declaration might have been a touch premature, never mind misplaced.
Undeterred by inconvenient facts or recalcitrant realities, the adherents of the two-state solution (TSS) cling to their disproven dogma with a frenzied obsession, which under other circumstances might well be considered certifiable, lest they inflict harm on themselves and their surroundings.
As the realty-resistant Livni wailed: “Whoever is interested in preserving a secure Jewish and democratic state, should embrace this interview. But peace has turned into a dirty word – whoever talks of an agreement is now considered a delusional leftist.”
And with good reason, Ms. Livni, with good reason.
Lamentably, on the other end of the political spectrum, the reaction to, and the conclusions drawn from, this episode have been no more appropriate, and scarcely more rational.
Instead of seizing on it as yet further evidence (as if any were needed) that the TSS is nothing but a dangerous delusion, and therefore proof that other, Zionist-compliant, paradigms must be sought, the typical response has been that all this demonstrated is that the Palestinians have not shown themselves to be ready for such a solution – at least not yet.
The leopard’s spots
This policy has as much merit as waiting for a leopard to change its spots and morph in to a cuddly kitten.
After a century of conflict and almost a quarter-century of the post-Oslowian “peace process,” one might have hoped that not only would the penny have dropped, but that Israel would have been able to convey, conclusively and convincingly, the news of the coin’s belated fall to the international community.
The attitude of the Palestinians, as a collective, of immutable enmity is a function not of what the Palestinians have or do not have, but of who the Palestinians are.
Conversely, it is a function, not of what the Jewish state does or doesn’t do, but of what the Jewish state is.
Thus, other than ceasing to be what it is, there is no decision variable that the Jewish state can influence to attenuate Palestinian enmity, or to enhance the feasibility of the TSS.
Accordingly, it behooves the professed pro-Zionist elements in the country to discard the futile attempt to resurrect the unresurrectible, and to set about charting an alternative course and a fresh configuration for the destiny of Israel as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people.
(An appeal to adversarial readers/talkbackers: Please do not write in saying I offer no such alternative. Kindly consult the numerous articles in which I have done so, before sending in the usual unsubstantiated recriminations).
Irrelevance of sincerity
Actually, the dispute over Abu Mazen’s sincerity is entirely irrelevant. For even if there was good reason to believe he was sincere, this has – or at least should have – no bearing on Israeli policy.
For not only has the near octogenarian exceeded his elected term by what will soon be almost half-a-decade, creating grave uncertainty not only as to his personal status, but that of his regime, with his unelected prime minister, Salam Fayyad, continually teetering on the brink of resignation, because of widespread allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
This, in itself, is enough to preclude a responsible government from placing much store on any professions of peaceful intent from Abbas or in the durability of any agreement/understanding reached with him or his regime – even if it were done so with complete sincerity.
For not only are there serious concerns as to whether an Abbas-led Palestinian administration could sustain any arrangement arrived at with Israel, even if it wanted to, but as to whether it could sustain itself in the wake of such an arrangement, especially in light of the rejectionist winds blowing through the Arab-world in the post-“Spring” era.
Both sober analysis and precedent strongly suggest that it could not.
Now, if one has no way of influencing – much less, controlling – whether a purportedly peaceable Abbas-regime can/will rein in its rejectionist renegades, why consider perilous concessions based on the crucial assumption that it can? If one has no way to ensure that an Abbas-regime will not be forced to bow, however reluctantly, to the wishes – or to abdicate in favor – of radical Islamist rivals, would it not be wildly irresponsible and irrational to undertake a policy that hinges entirely on the assumption that it will not? See what we mean by “delusional,” Ms. Livni?
Indeed, imagine, Ms. Linvi, the dread that would reign in the country today had Israel evacuated the Golan Heights in compliance with an agreement with the Assad regime – made on the assumption of mutual sincerity – if al-Qaida-affiliated elements were to take control in Damascus.
The scale of the gamble
In assessing the plausibility of far-reaching territorial concessions to the Palestinians – not only to co-signatories of some mutually agreed accord, but to possible successor-regimes as well – it is essential to understand the strategic significance of such concessions, and the cost of error should they accrue to hostile elements.
Along with many others, I have repeatedly detailed how the territory designated for a Palestinian state would provide total control not only of the main runway at Israel’s only international airport and of the traffic on its major rail and road arteries (including the Trans-Israel highway), but also of vital infrastructure installations/ systems and about 80 percent the country’s civilian population and commercial activity.
Even a fraction of the rocket capability deployed in the nominally demilitarized Gaza Strip, or in the hands of the Hezbollah in south Lebanon (allegedly disarmed by the terms of ineffectual and counterproductive UN Resolution 1701, brokered by the above cited Ms. Livni) would make the maintenance of any socioeconomic routine in Israel’s coastal megalopolis untenable.
But beyond the well-known and well-discussed security-related strategic risks entailed in foregoing control of Judea and Samaria, there are numerous other, lessfrequently raised, perils that could have drastically detrimental – even deadly – affects on Israeli citizens.
Giant leap of faith
For example, in 2004, Israel’s Water Commission (today Water Authority) cautioned that relinquishing control of the water resources, and unregulated Palestinian extraction, could have disastrous consequences within the pre-1967 Green Line.
Ominously, it warned: “In the northern valleys alone, the potential loss of water and the increasing salinity will lead to the desertification of the entire region, damaging the quality of life of its residents, devastate agriculture and tourism, and destroy the unique communities in these areas.”
More recently, the issue of carcinogenic smoke emitted by hundreds of charcoal producing sites within the Palestinian administered areas was declared by Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan “a threat to Israel’s security.”
When Israel closed down plants operating in Israeli-controlled Area C, they reopened in Palestinian-controlled Area B, where Israel has no civilian jurisdiction.
Despite the fact that Palestinians suffer from the pollution even more than Israelis (in some Palestinian sites near Jenin, the high incidence of cancer and asthma has reduced the average life expectancy to 40), the Palestinian Authority has refused to act, ignoring Israeli requests to do so.
It would take a giant leap of faith in Palestinian altruism to believe that once Israel evacuated the entire “West Bank,” these environmental issues impacting the lives and livelihoods of Israelis inside the Green Line would be dealt with with any greater energy or efficacy.
Back to Nietzsche
Have another glance at the introductory quotations from Nietzsche.
Then consider the “compulsive convictions” of the political Left that are “more dangerous than lies” on the one hand, and the “insipid” response from the political Right, which permits its delusional “opponents to remain faithful to their [disastrous] course,” on the other, and you will have a good insight into the mechanics of the “insanity” that drives the Israeli political system.
The imbecilic response to the Abbas interview is merely a sad symptom of the malaise
Friday, November 9, 2012
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The Palestinian Conflict with Israel is Not the Core of the Middle East Conflict
By Evelyn Gordon
As Syria's civil war drags on, it is increasingly destabilizing its neighbors. First, hundreds of thousands of refugees poured over their borders; now, violence has as well. Turkey and Syria have repeatedly exchanged deadly cross-border fire; in Jordan, a soldier was killed in clashes with militants heading for Syria to join the fighting; in Lebanon, the assassination of a senior intelligence official considered close to the Syrian opposition sparked violent clashes in Beirut. Ironically, in fact, Syria's quietest border nowadays is with Israel - the one neighbor it's officially at war with. Despite occasional accidents (tanks straying into the demilitarized zone during the ongoing civil war, errant bullets and mortars), there has been no intentional violence across this border, and no casualties.
Yet in reality, this shouldn't be surprising; it's the logical outgrowth of a basic fact about the Middle East that is too often overlooked: Contrary to the popular perception that the region revolves around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the truth is that Israel is irrelevant to most of the region most of the time, because it isn't a player in the nonstop jockeying for power among the Mideast's various Muslim sects and countries.
Syria, for instance, is currently the locus of two major intra-Muslim power struggles: that between Shi'ites and Sunnis, and that between Iran and Saudi Arabia (which is closely related but not identical: two years ago, for instance, Sunni Hamas was aligned with Shi'ite Iran, while its Gaza fiefdom was under blockade by Saudi-aligned Sunni Egypt). And with the exception of Israel, all of Syria's neighbors have taken sides in one or both of these struggles.
Sunni Turkey, though basically neutral in the Saudi-Iranian fight, is openly aiding Sunni Islamists among the Syrian opposition. Sunni Jordan, though wary of Sunni Islamists (who are also the greatest threat to its own regime), is being used by smugglers as a conduit for arms to the Syrian opposition, and its ally in Riyadh would like it to allow such traffic officially. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, is openly fighting alongside the Iranian-backed Syrian regime, while Lebanese Sunnis back the Syrian opposition. And Shi'ite Iraq lets Iran send arms to the Assad regime through its territory.
Israel, however, has no horse in this race, because both sides dislike it equally: Iran is currently its greatest enemy, yet Sunni Islamists, whose prominence in the Syrian opposition is growing, also pose a major threat. And since Israel isn't aiding either side, neither government nor opposition forces have any incentive to waste men and munitions on attacking it.
Yet, as recent Mideast history amply shows, Israel's irrelevance to the conflict now embroiling the rest of the region isn't exceptional, but the norm. Think back to the last time a Mideast conflict involved as many countries as Syria's now does, and one fact leaps out: Israel wasn't a party to it.
Israel has conducted three major military operations over the last decade: against Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank in 2002, against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, and against Hamas in Gaza in 2009. Yet none of these prompted any involvement beyond the rhetorical from any other Mideast country, with the partial exception of Iran, which resupplied Hamas and Hezbollah afterward.
In contrast, several Arab countries actively aided the opposition during last year's Libyan civil war, while Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain in 2011 to support the Sunni government against a Shi'ite opposition it viewed as Iranian-backed. And in the 1991 Gulf War, almost every country in the region joined an American-led alliance to reverse Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein, like many Mideast rulers, frequently proclaimed his desire to annihilate Israel. But the two countries he actually tried to annihilate were Iran, via an inconclusive war in 1980-88, and Kuwait. The reason was simple: Saddam wasn't a fanatic ideologue committed to waging holy war on behalf of a cause, but a run-of-the-mill dictator whose main interest was augmenting his own power, and who therefore aspired to dominate the region. And to do that, Saddam needed to vanquish not Israel - which doesn't care who dominates the rest of the region as long as it is left alone, and thus rarely takes sides in regional power plays - but his rivals for regional domination.
The revolutionary Shi'ite government that seized power in Iran in 1979 was a clear rival to Saddam, and particularly threatening to his Sunni-minority rule of Shi'ite-majority Iraq. Kuwait, though no threat in itself, had lucrative oil fields that would bolster Iraq financially (and thus militarily) in its bid for regional dominance, and due to its close alliance with another aspirant for regional dominance, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait's conquest would also undermine Riyadh's prestige.
This power struggle also explains why most Mideast countries joined the effort to oust Saddam from Kuwait: They wanted to prevent him from achieving regional dominance.
And Israel? The man who launched two full-scale wars against his Muslim neighbors launched a token 40 Scuds at Israel in 1991, and even that mainly in hopes of disrupting the American-led alliance; most of his opponents have never attacked Israel directly at all. For all their talk, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply isn't that important to them.
Iran's nuclear program offers further evidence against the theory of Palestinian centrality. Virtually every Arab leader has urged Washington to take military action against Iran. Some even openly support Israeli military action; others are thought to do so quietly (hence the persistent rumors of Israeli-Saudi cooperation on this issue). Yet Israel's reputed nuclear arsenal provokes no similar hysteria among Arab regimes. Why? Because they know Israel isn't interested in regional domination; its putative nuclear arsenal is only for self-defense. Iran, in contrast, openly seeks regional domination and wants nuclear weapons partly to further that goal. Hence Israel's weapons aren't a threat, but Iran's are.
Clearly, ideology can be a very powerful motivator. Israel, founded after a war that saw Hitler diverting desperately needed resources from the war front to the cause of slaughtering Jews until the bitter end, knows this better than most. That's why it takes the genocidal rhetoric emanating from Iran's leaders - men fanatic enough to send hordes of children to clear minefields with their bodies during the Iran-Iraq War - with utmost seriousness, especially when coupled with Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But most Mideast leaders aren't ideological zealots; they're ordinary rulers concerned primarily with their own interests. They pay lip service to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because pro-Palestinian rhetoric serves as public diplomacy in their regional power game: It paints the speaker as concerned with "oppressed fellow Muslims" and opposed to "Western colonialism" (i.e. non-Muslim Israel), and hence suited for regional leadership. But it's a great mistake to confuse such rhetoric with reality.
What chiefly concerns most of these countries is the regional balance of power between rival Muslim sects and states. And in this, neither Israel nor its conflict with the Palestinians is a player.
In fact, far from being the axis around which the region revolves, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - as the Syrian crisis once again shows - barely rates as a sideshow.
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