ARAB IRAQ NO MORE: NOTES ON SAUDI ARABIA, EGYPT, AND LEBANON.

d r a f t--s e c o n d

ARAB IRAQ NO MORE: NOTES ON SAUDI ARABIA, EGYPT, AND LEBANON.


OF ARAB 3ASABIYYAH

A folksy story:

Once in Jordan, wearing my ubiquitous Dockers shorts, I entered a deli to buy water. A young man reached into the refrigerator and bought bottled juice. “Taste?” he asked; and he laughed. Absurd. Outside, he and his friends, all waiting for a bus to take them to the hotel where they worked, laughed even more. I approached them. Strumming the string of a strong Arab cultural trait, I told them that I was un-impressed by their tradition-less hospitality. The laughs ceased, and for a couple of seconds there was sheer silence. Then they all apologized, profusely, while hugging me. “El-akh 3arabi?” They asked and told each other. (“The brother is an Arab”). Their shame was genuine.

Politically, this story is telling. When the Bush Administration dismantled Arab Iraq, it did away with the only ideology that competently had balanced and in many places neutralized Islamism, Arab solidarity--Arab nationalism at the level of the masses--3asabiyyah. That Arab nationalism over the years became stale, and so many of its proponents became Uncle Toms, is besides the point. Iraq represented that secular ideology, albeit having infused it with a dash of Islamism. This sprinkle of Islamism made it yet more effective against the Osama bin Ladens of the Middle East.


SAUDI ARABIA REDISCOVERS THE PAIN OF THE PALESTINIANS, AND BUILDS A BRIDGE TO THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC.

Saudi Arabia has rediscovered the pain and destitution of the Palestinians. Its Al-Hayat, an excellent daily, but which frequently is used in propaganda campaigns by the American and British wings of the Saudi political establishment, has re-awakened to the fact that the Israeli occupation is horror itself. To keep a people under the boot of occupiers for decades, erecting hundreds of checkpoints, and to rob them of land and their share of Jerusalem, is indeed dehumanization on a grand scale.

The Saudis were reminded recently that all the money they now have will not protect them against al-Qaeda attacks. Perhaps it was a message, likely to the Saudi Foreign Minister and to Empire. (See earlier article, "Iran to Saud al-Faisal...") Abqaiq, which processes about two-third of the 9.5 million barrels per day of Saudi production, could have been severely damaged. And the world economy as a consequence would have experimented with a shock of gargantuan proportions.

Saudi Arabia now understands that it has to be careful about shedding its Arab identity, lest Iran outbids it on everything that connects Muslims and Arabs. Hence Al-Hayat’ s acute rediscovery of the Palestinians whose cause will likely remain the litmus test for Islamic solidarity. (Politically, Arab solidarity is passe. Its people are tenured professors at Western universities, self-hating Arabs, teaching the imperials how to cause destitution to Arabs and Muslims.) The Palestinians therefore should become a bridge-of-understanding between the Kingdom and Islamic Iran. Not bad for the Kingdom: The Palestinians are probably its least costly shield of protection.


THE PAIN AND TRIBULATION OF AN EGYPTIAN VASSAL

Egypt’s Mubarak is ailing and he wants his son to replace him. Empire has been cold and rather unfriendly, perhaps because it was the Egyptian vassals who, on orders by the Bush people, produced some of the loudest false intelligence on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell took that intelligence all the way to the U.N. Ms. Rice, like so many replacements in the Bush Administration, especially at the Pentagon, is now searching for a scapegoat. Better that it be a foreigner than someone in one’s own home. And Egypt, weak and unable to assist Empire, could very well be Ms. Rice’s scapegoat.


Empire’s mandarin-in-chief recently visited Egypt and made it clear that she wants the Egyptian vassal to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel (as if he could), to lay down its weapons (as if he could), and to accept the Oslo Accords (which the Israelis have all but reversed–as if he could.)

She also ordered him to declare war on Iran. (I’m only slightly kidding.)

The problem is that President Mubarak has little power. Unquestioned servitude to Empire has castrated Egypt. Any troops he could field to help Empire would be motivated by Islamism. So it’s difficult to put them at the service of Empire, lest they join the Muslim Brothers.

President Mubarak closed off his options when he instructed his intelligence services to assist the Bush Administration in the invasion of an Arab country. (Mubarak’s Egypt is European!) And, unlike Saudi Arabia which also assisted in the invasion (albeit passively), he didn’t (and doesn't) have the Kingdom's wealth to dodge the mandarins' inclination to scapegoat his country. Now he watches as Empire plays up to the Muslim Brothers in the hope of taming them. Empire’s hope springs eternal.

(To be clear: Saudi Arabia assisted in the Iraq invasion because the Bush Administration unleashed against it the dogs of hate who wanted to play the Shia card all the way, including in Saudi Arabia. They wanted to dismantle yet another Arab country. As for Egypt, it was following orders, as any vassal. The blame therefore for dismantling Iraq and its repercussions falls squarely on the Bush Administration. Accordingly, one should resist the temptation to scapegoat, as I suspect Dr. Rice is doing with President Mubarak.)

Rice spoke about the pitfalls and obstacles on the way to democracy in Egypt. She should know, shouldn’t she, that democracy would bring into office the Muslim Brothers. And these would infiltrate each and every state agency. She’s hoping that they would moderate. But what does she know. She was National Security Advisor when an extension of the Brothers committed the most heinous terror attack on American territory in recent history. Such will be her legacy, sooner or later. She was there, at the pinnacle of the national security pyramid.

Now she wants Mubarak to give these people more power and representation. He would love to remind her of her epic failure, caused by the very Brothers she wants to see sharing power. But he can’t; he’s on the payroll. He can’t remind her of where she sat when the mother of all terror crimes against national security was committed. She was asleep at the wheel, busy with all the nuts around her in preparing to invade an oil-rich Arab country. If Mubarak could, he would tell her that in any culture where honor and shame still were working concepts, she and many in the Bush Administration would have resigned, gone into a corner, written their apologies to the nation, and taken away their earthly life.

Poor President Mubarak. Soon after Ms. Rice left the region, he rushed over to the Gulf, then to Libya. My guess: He is looking for money to provide him the option to free his government from America’s suffocating hold. He probably offered his hosts a united Arab front to stare down Empire and Iran. But I think it’s too late for that. He doesn’t have the troops to lend to the Saudis or the Libyans. What troops he can muster will be infiltrated by Islamists–the only ones with motivation.

Besides, Saudi Arabia has been diversifying its sources of security. (See earlier article, “Micro strategies and the Security of Saudi Arabia.”) Arab troops on its territory, especially Egyptian, could spell trouble. They could, couldn’t they, draw close to the Islamists.

Saudi Arabia, however, probably is aware that it should be concerned that the Muslim Brothers could become part of the Egyptian state. It would be too close for comfort.

And, lest it be forgotten, it’s the fear of the United States which deters Iran from sending armies into the Arabian Peninsula. An American trip wire is all it takes to keep the Islamic Republic on its toes. The Gulf countries can enjoy the result. Simple balance of power calculus.

That is why Iran, for now, is not a threat. Iran is aware that only if it does something spectacular would Empire be able to mobilize its population to make a fifty-year commitment to that region. The Islamic Republic is too smart for that–to stage an attack on a Gulf country, for instance. Why should it? To help Empire mobilize its people? It wouldn’t. Iran can just play its cards one at a time: It owns the hearts and minds of the Sunni masses, in spite of the sectarian massacres in Iraq. Having watched Iran for the past few years, I doubt it would commit any act that would make it easier for Empire to enact the draft and send a million troops to invade the Islamic Republic.

But Empire can engineer an incident, a la Gulf of Tonkin, and blame Iran for it. It did after all engineer the weapons of mass destruction ruse. Let’s see how the Islamic Republic would deal with that. It’s too early for Empire to try out that trick, since its populace now mistrusts the White House. But, a few years from now...Who knows.


LEBANON: GOD BLESS THE STALEMATE

In Lebanon, they are flattered that Empire is paying attention to them, at last. But so were the Iraqis at first. See what happened.

The American proxies in Lebanon are playing a dangerous game: They don’t seem to appreciate that they are in a stalemate. And that they should be thankful for the stalemate. The alternative would be a civil war where most of the weapons are held by the proxies of Iran and Syria. The Lebanese army? It’s mostly Shia. And neither Empire nor the Europeans have the fighting troops to dispatch to Lebanon.

All really need a lesson in history: That much of Lebanon’s recent misery has been (and is) related to Syria’s nearly-forty year-long ceaseless quest to regain its Joulan. What makes anyone think that these efforts would cease, with sanctions or whatever else? Do you really think that a Sunni state in Syria would line up with Saudi Arabia and not with the Muslim Brothers and Iran? Hello!

Northern Lebanon, mostly Sunni, historically responds to Syria.

Waleed Jumblatt is now visiting Washington. What does he have to offer? What and who does he control anyway? No disrespect meant, but lets face it: The Druse are such a small minority in Lebanon, probably no more than 200,000. They "won" their battles in the Lebanese civil war using Syrian and Palestinian troops (from the Palestine Liberation Army) dressed in Jumblatt’s Lebanese Socialist Party fatigues. (Syria’s Palestinians, so to speak, are the ones who committed the Damour and Bhamdoun massacres against defenseless civilians.)

Waleed Jumblatt’s influence among the Arab masses stemmed mostly from his father’s Arab nationalist legacy. But that’s over now. I can detect an anti-Jumblatt campaign brewing in some of the Arab nationalist (Sunni) press. He makes money for his people from the Saudi Arabia via Saad al-Hariri, probably. Good for him; anything to keep his people from emigrating.

But he truly has little to offer Empire, except anti-Syrian and anti-Hizbullah diatribes, statements which lose their impact the more he makes them. And he wouldn’t dare use the Druse of Syria, lest he unleashes massacres against them. Syria is now hyper-mobilized and alert to what Empire is planning for it. It’s the wrong time to entice Empire-induced sectarian conflict; the state is so vigilant, and it has the support of the Sunni majority which sees the Iraq invasion as an American-Israeli scheme to weaken the Sunnis.

Saad Hariri doesn’t have the troops, either. He has the money; but so does Iran; so does Russia. His dad’s biggest mistake was his failure to appreciate that Syria could not–would not–let go of Lebanon without assuring the return of its Joulan. The Americans and the French led Rafiq on. Geniuses. Not.

And the French and Empire don’t have the troops either. They go to the U.N. like any weakling would. Ask the Arab governments if you will how often they dragged their tired bodies to the U.N. Security Council to force Israel to withdraw from Arab lands and avoid the current state of hyper-mobilized masses. What good was it? But these unfulfilled Resolutions did have results. They taught the masses something precious: that their governments are useless, and that they will have to rely on themselves.

Ghaltit al-Shatir b’alf ghaltah: Rafiq al-Hariri’s advisers weren’t that good. (I don’t know who they are; I’m result-oriented.) Let’s hope Saad’s are better. Saad should call on the Beqaa people, such as Robert Ghanem (I’m sorry I’m plugging in a relative; but I mean it), and the Skafs of Zahleh. These are wiser and more realistic, having to live between the rock and the hard place.

Empire should be careful not to push its proxies in Lebanon too far. It cannot protect them. It had dispatched a former Lebanese army officer (probably) to afford them protection; but he obviously has failed. Hizbullah (and therefore Iran and Syria) sit in each and every office of the state’s security bureaucracy.