RUTHFULLY YOURS

Despised by some, admired by others, the U.S. has been the Middle East’s principal power for decades, providing its allies with guidance and protection.

Now, however, with Russia and Iran thrusting themselves boldly into the region’s affairs, that special role seems to be melting away. As seasoned politicians and diplomats survey the mayhem, they struggle to recall a moment when America counted for so little in the Middle East—and when it was held in such contempt, by friend and foe alike.

“It’s the lowest ebb since World War II for U.S. influence and engagement in the region,” said Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Afghanistan and before that as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan.

From shepherding Israel toward peace with its Arab neighbors to rolling back Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and halting the contagion of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the U.S. has long been at the core of the Middle East’s security system. Its military might secured critical trade routes and the bulk of the world’s oil supply. Today, the void created by U.S. withdrawal is being filled by the very powers that American policy has long sought to contain.

Mr. Ferguson, author of a new bio of Kissinger is a tad too kind on Kissinger….who was wrong on detente instead of a muscular position vis a vis the Soviet Union, wrong on abandoning Taiwan as the price for opening relations with Mao’s China, wrong in his harsh treatment of Israel in the aftermath of the 1973 war, when he threatened a “reassessment of relations” if Israel did not bow to the demands of Sadat the aggressor (with Syria) in a combined surprise attack on Israel during Yom Kippur, and probably wrong in delaying arms shipment to beleaguered Israel. When Nixon insisted on the resupply it was never determined whether Kissinger or James Schlesinger, then Sec. of Defense were guilty of delaying the resupply. My bet is on Kissinger…..Mr. “Realpolitik”…..rsk

Henry Kissinger long ago recognized the problem: a talented vote-getter, surrounded by lawyers, who is overly risk-averse.

Even before becoming Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger understood how hard it was to make foreign policy in Washington. There “is no such thing as an American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in 1968. There is only “a series of moves that have produced a certain result” that they “may not have been planned to produce.” It is “research and intelligence organizations,” he added, that “attempt to give a rationality and consistency” which “it simply does not have.”

Two distinctively American pathologies explained the fundamental absence of coherent strategic thinking. First, the person at the top was selected for other skills. “The typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society,” noted Mr. Kissinger, “is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.”

Hillary Clinton revealed on Wednesday that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, providing just the latest evidence that she is little more than political ambition wrapped in a pantsuit.

Pay attention to the press coverage, because it’s fascinating: Nobody takes Clinton at her word. I’m not just referring to her conservative critics.

Slate’s Jim Newell asks, “Will anyone find Clinton’s position convincing?” The question is purely rhetorical. The article is headlined “Hillary Clinton Comes Out Against TPP, at Least Until the Democratic Convention.”

In “First Read,” a newsletter put out by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and his colleagues, the lead item on Thursday was titled “Why Clinton’s Trade Flip-Flop Is So Unbelievable.” They write:

Yes, Hillary Clinton’s new opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord cleans up something she needed to do before next week’s first Democratic debate. And, yes, it puts pressure on Vice President Joe Biden getting into the race (because he’d be the only major candidate in support of TPP). But make no mistake: This flip-flop isn’t believable at all.

Clinton had long touted TPP as “the gold standard” of trade deals. A tally by CNN in June found at least 45 instances where she had plumped, praised, pushed, or otherwise promoted the agreement. That, of course, would make sense given that she was secretary of state when it was being crafted and had a big role in selling it.

The Taliban seems to have correctly assessed the lack of resolve of the current U.S. leadership and have evidently decided to go for all of Afghanistan.

What is visible to everyone except Obama is that this “weak” Putin continues to outflank the U.S. in Ukraine, Crimea and now Syria. The U.S. Commander-in-Chief has failed to show the fortitude required from the leader of the free world.

President Obama reportedly offered to strong-arm India into making concessions on Kashmir. According to Pakistan’s former Ambassador to the U.S., Obama secretly wrote to Pakistan’s President in 2009, sympathizing with Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir, and apparently offering to tell India that “the old ways of doing business are no longer acceptable.”

The results of a Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan would be even more disastrous than its previous reign of terror. The Taliban would not only resume sending trained jihadists across Pakistan’s border to wage war on “infidels” in India, they would also carry out their declared objective of global jihad against the West.

With Europe’s borders now wide open, the West is more vulnerable than ever.

Americans like their history linear and their enemies well-defined. But it isn’t, and they aren’t.
In his prescient book Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan explains the vicious Balkan wars of the early 20th Century as an attempt by various groups to claim what territory rightfully belonged to them. But Hungarians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and others each defined their patrimony as the area it controlled at the peak of its power. It is easy to see the potential for endless warfare absent a Great Power or occupation authority to enforce the quiet that sometimes passes for peace. History is an overlapping series of claims and grievances; victory is never permanent, loss is never permanent, and chaos is common.

Consider the crumbling — collapsing — area running south from Ukraine through Turkey; down and east across the Middle East from Syria through Iraq, Iran, and Yemen; Africa from Libya to Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan; and farther east to Afghanistan. The fallout from fighting in those places wreaks havoc on them and undermines countries including Pakistan, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan. And it produces enormous waves of refugees.

Behind the tremors and shock waves are the United States, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, al Qaeda, and ISIS in various permutations, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Russia. All of which are or have provided arms, funds, territory, fighting forces, and ideological/political support for vicious cadres bent on pursuing wars grounded in regional/religious grievance. Holding the fort against the earthquake are the United States, Israel, the Kurds, Egypt, and a variety of brave and lonely individuals and small groups.

How can the U.S. be in both camps?

For forty-four seconds Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted his September 29th speech at the United Nations, and stared out at the members. His purpose was to make them feel uncomfortable, to squirm at the silence. His silence was symbolic of that which Jews have endured for centuries. It was the silence of the allies before and after World War II. And it is the silence Israel is now abiding from their partners and friends. Silence is discriminatory when heads turn in avoidance of unpleasant truths, when evasion substitutes for aid.

Israel is a small, but politically and economically successful, nation. It is a secular democracy amid theocratic, despotic neighbors. Mahmoud Al-Zahha, co-founder of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas’ coalition partner in the Palestinian Authority, once said “Jews have no future among the nations of the world,” adding: “They are headed to annihilation.” Iran has promised to “eradicate Israel.” The desire of Islamic jihadists is to intimidate the West into subservience and to destroy the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Robert Frost once wrote that good fences make good neighbors. That aphorism may apply in New England, but it does not in the Middle East.

There are an estimated 16.5 million Jews in the world today, roughly the same number as before the Holocaust. A little over six million live in Israel, about one fiftieth the number of Muslims in the Middle East. Around the world, there are a hundred more Muslims than Jews. Israel is the only nation where Jews represent the dominant population. (They make up about 76% of the population. Most of the others are Muslims who live peacefully within her borders.)

A couple of days ago, James Kitfield published in Politico an interview with the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Martin Dempsey. The title sums it up: Martin Dempsey’s World Is Falling Apart. Never have I read such a pathetic – and chilling – document.

After all, the United States is – still – the biggest military and strategic power in the world. It possesses the biggest army, the most advanced weapons, and the biggest and most advanced armament industry. In addition, it commands the largest network of alliances and security pacts, from NATO, the American-European alliance and integrated military organization, to many bilateral pacts in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and Latin America.

But the image that General Dempsey is conjuring up is one of powerlessness and doom. According to him, American might is compromised by declining resources on the one hand, and by a growing unclarity about goals and strategies on the other. Regarding Syria, for instance, he remarks: It’s inconceivable to me that anyone would agree to allow Assad to continue governing Syria after what he’s done. In fact, the Joint Chiefs of Staff provided the American elected officials with military options, but the decision was made… not to select a military line of attack concerning the Assad regime and instead to let in the Russians, who seem interested, above all, in shoring up a regime that has essentially attacked the majority of its population.

When two devout Muslims opened fire on a picnic train outside Broken Hill in 1915, officialdom took just a few days to reach the conclusion that the attack had been inspired by Islamic fanaticism. Today, defenders of public safety are somewhat more tardy in recognising the obvious
Things were certainly different 100 years ago. Officialdom moved a lot faster in identifying the obvious.

On January 1, 1915, for example, a disaffected Pakistani, Badsha Mahommed Gool, and an halal butcher and cleric, Mullah Abdullah, opened fire on a picnic train leaving Broken Hill, killing four and wounding seven others. In a note found on Gool’s body all was explained:

“I must kill your men and give my life for my faith….”

Twelve days later, the inquest was done and dusted, with the official finding making no bones about what inspired the murder of innocents. From The Australasian‘s report of the coronial hearing:

In reply to the corner (sic), Captain Hardie said … Gool was evidently a warlike and a very religious man. The case seemed to have been one of Moslem fanaticism….

Inspector’ Miller: Such cases happen in India.

Witness: They frequently occur on-the north-west of India on the frontier. The Mahommedans frequently come out and kill the Christians…

A century later, investigators seem to have lost that sharp focus on religion as a possible motivation for murder. From Andrew Bolt’s interview with a remarkably vague Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs:

A few thoughts on a futile project.
One of the weird little facts of life that we don’t think about or talk about very much — and really should when we’re talking about taxes, the minimum wage, welfare spending, and other things related to inequality of income and wealth (and go ahead and picture me here manfully resisting the urge to put sneer quotes around “inequality,” as if a uniform distribution of material resources were the natural state of things and not some daft dorm-room fantasy) — is that we pay for everything (really, everything) collectively.

Let me show you what I mean.

Housing is famously expensive in New York City, especially in Manhattan and the parts of Brooklyn where college-educated young white people live, a fact about which people in Muleshoe, Tex., don’t much care. But they should, because they pay for it. You might think that the people who pay for those $5,000-a-month apartments are all Wall Street jerks or highly paid publishing executives (all the highly paid publishing executives in New York put together wouldn’t fill one medium-sized apartment building) or celebrities who are too cool to live in Los Angeles, but you — you, sucker — you pay for them.

Costs get shifted around.

Unable to address Texas senator Ted Cruz’s questions about “the Pause” — the apparent global-warming standstill, now almost 19 years long — at Tuesday’s meeting of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Sierra Club president Aaron Mair, after an uncomfortable pause of his own, appealed to authority: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists concur and agree that there is global warming and anthropogenic impact,” he stated multiple times.

The relevant exchange begins at 1:39 (though the whole segment is worth watching):The myth of an almost-unanimous climate-change consensus is pervasive. Last May, the White House tweeted: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” A few days later, Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.”

“Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists” say no such thing.

There are multiple relevant questions: (1) Has the earth generally warmed since 1800? (An overwhelming majority of scientists assent to this.) (2) Has that warming been caused primarily by human activity? And, if (1) and (2), is anthropogenic global warming a problem so significant that we ought to take action?