FLASHBACK: HAMAS: FEBRUARY 2006

Here’s a likely course Hamas could take:

1. Hamas will not declare its acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. That’s too precious a card to play. Not now, not until Israel proves serious about pulling out of all post-1967 territory, pays for any water it is taking, and settles the issue of the refugees.

2. Hamas will spin off a number of rejectionist resistance groups. These will wait for orders. Should Israel not release Palestinian funds, and should a Hamas government face failure, these unofficial franchises will start and intensify nationalist grass-root-based unconventional warfare in tandem with progress (or lack of) on the issue of financial aid to the PA.

These rejectionist groups would have to be spinned off fast before the Palestinian public loses confidence in Hamas.

A Hamas-less Intifadha, led by groups that trace their origin to (and are secretly financed by) Hamas should be a hedge against political failure.

In other words, if the financial situation is one where money is flowing but at such slow rate that the Palestinian public will see in it a Hamas failure, the spin-off groups (and not Fateh) would restart military operations and would absorb the public’s frustration.

The spin-off groups would be a progeny of Hamas, through and through. Fateh would become even more irrelevant.

UN-CIVIL WARS

second rough draft

(NOTE: Forgive the shameless speculation. Not.)

INTRODUCTION

After their bully had failed against the Hezbollah men, the harmful idiots learned (with great difficulty) that perhaps, just perhaps, they are...idiots. Now they’re setting up Lebanon and Palestine for bloody civil wars, a la Iraq. Will they succeed?

LEBANON

While the Israelis were raining cluster bombs on Lebanese families and children, the harmful-idiot-in-chief, the September 11 queen, promised a new Middle East. Racism makes it such that the life of Arab children means little. Accordingly, the September 11 queen allowed the Israeli bully to murder over 1200 civilians and destroy a country as her September 11 team had destroyed Iraq.

Nothing new to Arabs and Muslims. Her predecessor in the Clinton Administration once had said that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying to remove Saddam Hussein. (In fairness, she later apologized.) Still, it proves the point that Arab and Muslim blood can be spilt without any pangs of remorse. I suspect empathy and conscience require a modicum of smarts, something that, by definition, the harmful idiots lack.

THE RUSE

The harmful idiots had been able to mobilize thousands of international troops and dispatch them to Lebanon as part of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.) The ruse: To use them, once they set up, as a NATO force, to forcefully disarm Hezbollah. To do this while an arms embargo is in effect against Syria and Hezbollah.

THE EMBARGO

(The embargo became evident when Cypriot authorities claimed to have themselves re-directed a North Korean ship bearing a Panamanian flag into one of Cyprus’ ports. They confiscated equipment meant for an air defense system, on its way to Syria. Although the Cypriots said that neither NATO nor the U.S. had participated in the operation, no one believed that. The all-alert SaudiPoltics certainly doesn’t.

(The Cypriots seem to have decided to join the war between the harmful idiots, the Israelis, the Saudi government, the Jordanian government, and the Egyptian government in one camp (the Arab people of these countries, all-–across classes, tribes, army ranks–-are with Iran and Hezbollah), and in the other, the Iranians, the Russians, and the Syrians. (The Chinese are forging along in their commercial takeover of the Iranian market while our oil companies still are waiting to collect on Vice-President Cheney’s confident imperial promise to them to give them all of Iraq’s oil. Darn. What happened?)

(Turkey has joined in the embargo against Hezbollah. It has been forcing Iranian planes into landing in its airports, denying other planes passage over its airspace. Wonder whether the Turks are begging for some generous financing of the PKK by the Iranians. True, the Iranians for now are fighting the PKK. But it wouldn’t take much for Iran to change course. Are the Turkish generals missing that agonizing civil war with the Kurds? Or are the promised new U.S. bases to be built in their country enough of a cargo to make up for the thriving tourist industry? Or do they think they can have both: a civil war and a tourist industry? Don't know.)

BE SERIOUS: LEBANON

Why it is unlikely that a civil war would erupt in Lebanon?

Because the harmful idiots would have no one of substance in Lebanon to bank on to join UNIFIL in a war to disarm Hezbollah:

1. The Lebanese army is mostly Shiite, the brothers and cousins of Hezbollah fighters.

2. Samir Geagea, a probable asset of the harmful idiots, can come up at best with 89.2 men to wage war. These would be mostly middle age, looking for extra income, who would be reluctant to die lest they leave behind their children who still need them.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: When I say that someone is an asset, I have no proof whatsoever. I’m guessing. I can smell these things from the evidence before me. Take Tony Blair: I’d bet money he’s an asset. Ambitious, and wanting in testosterone, he probably was picked up by our people a long time ago. Don’t you love that photo of him in a white shirt, being a MAN, finally, afer killing Iraqis, walking victorious with his troops in Iraq early in the affair, after the morons had bought into the stellar ideas of the strategic geniuses of the Jewish Right and its allies?)

3. Waleed Jumblatt, a probable asset of the harmful idiots and a cargo getter from the Saudis, has a Druse population of 19.4 people; and so he can come up with 3 men to fight Hezbollah.

Gone are the days when he could secure thousands of Syrian and Palestinian warriors, dress them up in Lebanese Socialist Party uniforms, and unleash them to do their massacres of Christians in Damour and Bhamdoun. Days these no more are.

4. Amin Gemayyel, a probable asset of the harmful idiots, can come up with 22 men from the Metn region, all only children to educated Christian parents, fluent in French, English, German or Spanish, who should be extremely reluctant to gamble their life away to help achieve the goals of the country (the harmful idiots’) which had sold out Lebanon's Christians more than once.

5. Saad Hariri. He owns the harmful idiots, via Saudi Arabia. Bush and Cheney are his assets, probably. (Who else but the Kingdom would have such a big heart as to flood these men with money afer they leave the White House? Wait and be dazzled.) Saad should be able to come up with, oh.....zero men. If anything, he would be shot by his own Nasserite constituents in Sidon should there be an attempt to disarm Hezbollah.

Recall when the murderer of civilians at Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon, had sent his goons into West Beirut in the early 1980s, after the PLO had been evacuated to Tunisia? There was not a single shot fired at Israeli troops in West Beirut. Pray tell, why? Where were the superb Murabitoun, the Sunni militia so active in the Lebanon civil war? Well, we found out that the Murabitoun were Palestinian fighters dressed in the uniforms of Murabitoun, having attended special Berlitz (sp.) classes to help them modulate their accent a la West Beirut.

No men for Mr. Hariri. Only tons and tons of money for his family. Oh... where from, pray tell?

6. Most importantly: Hezbollah has two solid safety valves:

a. Michel Aoun. The Christian leader is allied to Hezbollah. He has the men, young and old ( a respectable number of experienced former army officers and soldiers.) But Hezbollah doesn’t need these. It needs the General to remain popular among Christians to syphon off the majority of young men into his Free Patriotic Movement and away from causing trouble for Hezbollah. (Michel Aoun is undisputably the most favored leader among the Christians. Hands down.)

B. Nabih Berri. I suspect Mr. Berri is one of the most astute cargo getters among Lebanese politicians. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States favor him. He’s no fool, you see. He should be eminently reluctant to become involved in an intra-Shiite civil war. No way Jose. Repeat after me: Yes for cargo; no for civil war.

(Funny those Israelis. They bombed everything but never even scathed Mr. Berri’s villa in Salihiyyah, near their border. They bombed each and every factory that competed with theirs-–dairy, pre-fab...–but left the villa standing. Told you Mr. Berri was smart.)

BE SERIOUS: PALESTINE

Hezbollah’s impressive performance against the harmful idiots’ bully sent the harmful idiots scurrying after Abu Mazin, the same man they had disparaged as a useless slave. they needed to erect obstacles to Hamas. They had engaged in starving the Islamic government, financially. But that took them nowhere; they needed an alternative to Hamas. Time to revive Abu Mazin and Fateh.

The harmful idiots and their allies (Israel, Saudi Arabia--Olmert now is flirting with Saudi King Abdallah--the BAE Systems money must've arrived!-- Jordan, and Egypt) have been pouring arms and training onto the Presidential Guard–-Abu Mazin’s (practically) personal army. The idea is to unleash these against Hamas. In addition, they have pumped lots of money into Fateh’s pockets and had these buy up what’s left of the AK-47s and M-16s off the open market, to deny them to Hamas. So much so that an AK-47 is now going for $4000 and an M—16 for $9,000. Israeli and Egyptian merchants have smelled opportunity and are said to be supplying an underground market with more of the same, and with ammunition. (Note to self: set up in the Sinai as a middle man. Need tent, and shiny beads to exchange with the bedouins.)

Will they go at it?

Maybe, here and there, now and then. Abu Mazin had been to the White House and probably reached an agreement with the harmful idiots on a plan. The harmful idiots and their Israeli bully would like nothing less than a full and juicy (with Palestinian blood) civil war. But, likely, Abu Mazin would prefer to regain the upper hand in Palestine by showering all with cargo, now that they all are starving. He would rather not engage in a civil war. He might have to, but I doubt that he would like that.

At the very least, he would like to regain his power base, which is the West Bank, and he certainly knows that he stands no chance in Gaza, Hamas’s power base.

He’s no idiot. He knows that the White House became available to him thanks to Hezbollah’s performance and the fear that Hamas would eventually catch up with that party. So, if he eliminates Hamas, he would be eliminating the most powerful card he possesses–a card that obtains recognition for him and lots of cargo.

Without the threat of Hamas, he would be a slave, through and through, kissing the Israelis’ ass for each little concession. With Hamas, the Israelis and the harmful idiots would have to kiss his ass. What would his choice be?

Clashes and assassinations and bombings, to clip Hamas’s wings: Likely. Outright civil war: Unlikely.

FLASHBACK: SEPTEMBER...2002.

Editor's Note:

In no way is the following an anti-Iranian commentary. Why? Without Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Arabs would've been totally screwed. Ask Abu Mazin. The harmful idiots and their Israeli counterparts had treated him as they would a cockcroach. Now he's at the White House, courtesy of Hezbollah's warriors. A country later, 100,000 dead, nearly 2700 U.S. troops dead, thousands maimed, and thousands orphaned...All to avoid a Palestinian state!
___________________________________________________________________________________

Here's some of what this blog had posted in September 2002, when we all were four years younger:

Saudi Arabia, of course, cannot offer military assistance [to Iraq]. The most it can do is to persuade its ally, the United States, to ease up. To that end, it can point out that the invasion [of Iraq] could very well result in the rise of Iraq’s Shia majority, resulting in an Iraq that is totally allied to anti-American Iran. It can also remind the United States that it has become the most hated country in the Arab World and the Kingdom thanks to its alliance to Israel and its anti-Iraq campaign. At an extreme, its policies threaten the very survival of the current pro-American Saudi government.

(...)

Should Iran prove reluctant to accept the invitation [for a mutual defense treaty with Baathist Iraq], the Iraqi Republican Guard and Special Forces should unleash against the Shias and a civil war will erupt, forcing Iran into the fray, and throwing to the wind American warnings against Iranian intervention. Iran can do it a la Syrian model in Lebanon. [Syria did it slowly] (...) In the end [Iran will] establish itself as the main power broker in Iraqi politics, a la Syria-Lebanon model.


(...)

Turkey will be forced to come in from the north, allegedly to protect the Turkmen minority in Iraq–and quell (as viciously as can be imagined) the Kurdish de facto state in the north. American troops in Saudi Arabia will become an integral part of the Kingdom’s life since Iran would’ve become a more formidable rival, having laid its hands on yet more oil resources.

Egyptian troops could be expected in the Kingdom to quell popular uprisings.

SAUDI ARABIA IN IRAQ

(second rough draft)

It bothered me to no end that, in the last posting, I had made lazy guesses about the Saudi role in Iraq. I don’t want to be unfair to the Saudis ; but laziness got the best of me. While I don’t subscribe to the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-evidence theory in international relations, some evidence is necessary, if only to measure against a balance of power and an area study perspective.

So I headed back to my notes. What follows still is not as solid as I'd like. But it should give the reader a general perspective about the Saudi role in Iraq. I expect this role to become more prominent, especially once U.S. troops withdraw ("re-deploy"). (The recent visit by the Kuwait Emir to Washington could very well have been in preparation for an exit and the stationing of a good number of the troops in Kuwait.)

THE HARMFUL IDIOTS DE-STABILIZED THE REGIONAL BALANCE OF POWER AND PROVED UNABLE TO RE-STABILIZE IT. THE SAUDI RULING ELITE WORRIES ABOUT THE RISE OF ARAB SHIITE NATIONALISM

The invasion and occupation ordered by the harmful idiots of a relatively stable Arab country has so disturbed the balance of power in the region, both as states and as sects, that it had become a cause of ample worry for the Saudis. On or about September 21 of last year, Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal in Washington, D.C., had expressed concern that the impending civil war in Iraq could spill over into the region. In addition, he talked about Iran’s interference in Iraqi affairs. As if to address the harmful idiots’ moronic and harmful schemes head on, he said that Turkey would not allow a Kurdish state.

The rise of Arab Shiite nationalism ideally should not be of concern to any Arab elite. But it is. Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, where most of the oil is found, is populated by Arab Shiites in the great majority. In the thinking of the Saudi Sunni ruling elite, Shiite Arab nationalism rising in Iraq is bound to spill over into the Eastern Province. That could beget a Wahhabi populist response, probably encouraged by the elite to control the Shiites. Turmoil should ensue–-not a good thing for stable Saudi Arabia, and certainly not a good thing for the harmful idiots, and for the world supply of oil.

Lucky for the Saudi elite, the harmful idiots’ venture into Iraq, to protect Israel (they said repeatedly, to gain a domestic constituency for a naked aggression and for the Republican Party) and bring further turmoil to the region, and their continued inability to stomach Iran, has enriched this Saudi elite so wildly that it could buy the allegiance of any and all, including its Shiites. In an environment of low interest rates, where capital had been searching for bigger returns, the insecurity surrounding oil supply, a condition created by the harmful idiots, proved to be a terrific magnet for that capital. Oil prices spiked as a result of the flood of speculative capital, resulting in an incredible transfer of wealth from the United States to the Arab Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s yearly income went from around $55 billion to around $200.

No danger of much dissent, so long as the money's flowing.


ARAB SHIITE NATIONALISM: THE MECHANICS OF THE SPILLOVER-- THE EXAMPLE OF LEBANON.

Country and sect interact both in Iraq and Lebanon, and cause a lot of heartburn for the Saudi ruling elite.

The recent Israeli massacre of 1300 defenseless Lebanese civilians–-the equivalent of 97,000 dead in the United States-- using American bombs, including cluster, had an impact on the Kingdom. It foretold what might happen should yet another wide confrontation pit the Shiite Mahdi Army against U.S. troops. Muqtadha as-Sadr is very popular even among the Arab Sunni, let alone the Arab Shiites, way more that Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah ever had been before his men so doggedly stood their ground against the harmful idiots’ bully.

SPILLOVER: PRESSURE FROM THE ARAB STREET

Early in the bully’s attack on Lebanon, it looked as if the Saudi ruling elite had signed on to the Israeli assault. Almost certainly it had.


(Saudi Arabia actually may have been paying off the Israelis through the arms deals with BAE Systems. Are these payments in exchange for military assaults in Lebanon? God help us if that's the case. Cluster bombs and bombs with spent uranium...)

...But the Saudi elite had not signed on to a massacre, albeit sterilized, done from the air and not by proxies, on the ground, as in Sabra and Shatila. It was a cold-blooded mass murder whichever way one looked at it. The pressure of the Arab Street mounted and the Saudi elite backtracked (wisely!) breathlessly. (Please refer to earlier article on the issue.) Why? For one, no one should under-estimate the patriotism (3asabiyyah) of this elite. True, it runs scared from the harmful idiots; but there’s a limit to the length it’s willing to run. The massacre of defenseless Arab and Muslim civilians, targeted by the Israelis to punish the supporters of Hezbollah, was too much to stomach for the Saudi ruling elite. It had assumed that the Israeli army was all-powerful and capable, and likely had been paying Israel through the arms contracts given to BAE Systems. (See previous article on subject.) But it found out that that army was useless; worse, it found out that that army had no moral qualms about massacring the innocent, especially if Arab--Muslim and Christian.


SPILLOVER: PRESSURE FROM IRAN

The Arab Street and the ruling elite’s 3asabiyyah were not the only sources of pressure. More pressure came from the east.

The powerful president of the Iranian Overseers’ Council, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, sent a letter to King Abdallah which talked about the attempt by some (he meant: the U.S., Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) to incite differences between Sunni and Shiites at a time when Israel was devastating Lebanon. Too, this came after an Israeli newspaper had alleged that four Arab countries (probably: Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait) had been coordinating with Israel in its assault on Lebanon. Rafsanjani reminded King Abdallah that the Lebanese and Palestinian people were part of the great Islamic nation. Oops, said the Saudi King.

Rafsanjani’s letter came after Saudi Wahhabi Da3iyah, Sheikh Abdallah bin Jabrain, a leading Saudi cleric, had issued a fatwa calling Hezbollah a “rafidhi,” (rafadha: to refuse) and, accordingly, that it should not be supported. That these “rafidhis” were treacherous towards the Sunni. Al-Jabrain could not have issued the fatwa without the approval of and coordination with the ruling elite. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Jordan ripped into al-Jabrain for his callousness towards the spilling of blood of fellow Muslims.

Yet more pressure came, this time from a domestic source. On or about August 2, 2006, the Saudi elite got a taste of what could happen should a widespread confrontation in Iraq result in the death of Shiites. Around 2000 Saudi Shiites demonstrated in the city of Qtaif in support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They carried flags of that party and pictures of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. In view of the strict controls over public demonstrations in the Kingdom, the fact that 2000 people had dared to come out , risking beating and arrest, spoke a lot about the feelings of the Arab Shiites of the Eastern Province.

And, as true Muslims, the demonstrators shouted slogans that condemned sectarian divisions within Islam. “La Sinniyyah, La Shi3iyyah–Wi7dah, wi7dah, Islamiyyah.” (No Shii-sm, not Sunni-sm, [only] a united Islam.) You could say that this demonstration was a result of a hint from Mr. Rafsanjani. Then again, it could have been a spur of the moment happening.

A couple of days later, the Saudi police quelled yet another demonstration in the same city.

The Saudi ruling elite could now see how useful to Arab Shiite nationalism was the Israeli bully’s killing of defenseless civilians. Even in Iraq, where car bombs against Shiites had been the norm, on or about August 3, thousands braved death and demonstrated in support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

As stated earlier, the Sunni ruling elite made a U-turn. Wahhabi Da3iyah, Abdallah bin Jabrain (and , indirectly, the Saudi ruling elite) caved in to the pressure. The cleric issued a denial, saying that the above-mentioned anti-Shiite fatwa was not a recent one; that that fatwa was old and had been issued in 2002; that, in fact, Hezbollah fighters were muflihoun (fala7a: to toil hard; to till the land), and that if they brought victory to Islam in Lebanon, we should encourage them and pray to God to bring stability to them.


IRAQ AS A SAUDI STRATEGIC INTEREST

The clearest statement about Saudi interests in Iraq came on or about April 12. King Abdallah made sure a number of those in the state services were present at his meeting with the Iranian Secretary of the Higher Security Council, Ali Larijani. The head of Saudi General Intelligence, Muqrin Abdel-Aziz, was present, as were Saud al Faisal and Bandar bin Sultan.

Prior to the meeting, the Saudi government had leaked (I believe) a report written by a security advisor, Nawwaf Obeid. In that report, it was made clear that the Kingdom had an interest in the unity of the lands of Iraq and that it had an interest in caring for Iraq’s Sunni, especially that these now had become a minority and the Shiite the majority.

That report also made it clear that Saudi Arabia would be using its influence in Washington, D.C. to avoid an American pull-out from Iraq so as to avoid a major civil war.

The report also stressed that Saudi Arabia should make it clear to Iran that unless the Islamic Republic reduced its activism in Iraq, Saudi Arabia would have to revert to its own plans to balance those of that Republic. That, in effect, Iran had been taking advantage of the instability in Iraq to spread and strengthen political Shiism.

The report also mentioned the need for Saudi Arabia to forgive Iraq its $32 billion debt to show that country that it cared about all of its people, not only the Sunni.

In exchange for Iranian cooperation in Iraq, Saudi Arabia would diminish its opposition to Iran’s nuclear program. One report from AFP said that in fact Bandar bin Sultan had visited Moscow and had asked it to exercise its influence to avoid a Security Council Resolution that woul lay the groundwork for an American attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

A carrot and a stick?

A SAUDI CARROT AND A STICK TO IRAN:


THE CARROT:

The carrot: no opposition to Iran’s nuclear program and active intervention to avoid an American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. The stick? That Saudi Arabia had its own plans to which it would revert should Iran not cooperate in Iraq. What were these plans?

Saudi Arabia does have the money. So the plans may have something to do with its ability to finance something. What is it?


THE STICK:

The answer I believe came in on or about August 25, 2006. Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal spoke at seeming length about the state of the Arab world. In essence, he was threatening to revive Arab nationalism.

He said that the Kingdom was studying the “tragic Arab situation.” He referred in particular, implicitly, to the division within the ranks of the Arab states, where Syria was allied to non-Arab Iran. Even more vaguely, he referred to what he called the state of confusion within the Arab World. Likely he was referring to the excitement of the Arab Street about Hezbollah’s stunning achievement in facing off with Israel, something that, but for Egypt’s 1973 crossing of the Suez Canal, no Arab government had been able to achieve. The Arab Street in fact was euphoric, and that feeling must’ve sent shivers up the spine of all ruling elite, especially those who had coordinated with Israel to wage the attack on Lebanon.

(AN ANTHROPOLIGICAL NOTE: One mechanic who was dispatched to fix my flat tire in Washington, D.C., happened to be an Egyptian, a Sunni. On learning that I was Lebanese, he started hugging me and tried incessantly to refuse payment for his services. He reported that he couldn’t split from al-Jazeerah television he was so awed by the fighting men of Hezbollah.)

Key to al-Faisal’s statement was his warning that the Arabs were possibly losing their identity–-that one could see an Iranian Middle East and an American Middle East, but no Arab one.

In short, expect a revival (or an attempt at) of Arab nationalism.

Not that that nationalism really ever had died out. (If you hadn’t noticed, this American blog has its origins in secular Arab nationalism.) But here the Saudi elite will have a problem. Saudi Arabia had in the past been the most terrified of Arab nationalism and had worked hard to replace it with Islamic solidarity. Iran stole the latter and ran with it, proving to be its unquestioned leader in the Muslim and Arab Streets. Worse, excepting the Saudi King, who is old, Arab nationalists now are nowhere to be found within the ruling elite of the Kingdom. These nationalists had been pushed out a long time ago by the allies of the harmful idiots. It’ll take a lot to re-create them, let alone give them real power.

OTHER SAUDI STICKS

The Saudis have paid off the United States, Britain, and likely Israel handsomely by granting a contracts to BAE Systems worth up to $70 billion. (See previous article on the subject.) But, truth be said, the best protection for the Kingdom (or any country) is a solid and united home front, one where the Shiites are represented in the power structure. (The Saudis should be careful not to make the mistake the Arab Maronites of Lebanon made, or to place too much trust in the harmful idiots or the Israelis.) Conventionally, only the U.S. can be of help. Britain is rather useless, and Israel is supremely harmful.

The British, knowing they are useless, have been trying hard to show their worth to the Saudis by sponsoring explosions in the Ahwaz region of Iran, where an Arab minority is in the majority in that region. My assessment is that these explosions are useless if the goal is to tame Iran or deter it. The Saudis could be in on these, since they seem to work closely with the rather useless British.

Yet another stick has shown its face (or its length?) in the Balushistan region , on the border between Pakistan and Iran, where guerrillas have attacked Iranian troops and kidnaped some this and last year. Again, the internal front in Iran is such that these attacks hardly make a dent. It seems to me that the British repeatedly have paid a price in southern Iraq for their machinations. Anything for arms contracts, I guess.

(Note: The Gulf Arabs are now reluctant to re-cycle their petrodollars in the United States for fear that the U.S. government would freeze their accounts. As a result, military deals have become yet more important to the West to recycle the petrodollars. Which means that the Western powers will keep on poking about in the Middle East to show their usefulness to the local states and have them sign on for this or that weapons system--protection money that recycles the oil bounty. But Hezbollah's terrific performance in south Lebanon, its second, has shown that two years of religious education, secrecy, services to the poor, courage, and some weapons beat fancy systems any day--and murder less civilians.)

SAUDI ARABIA INSIDE THE SUNNI RESISTANCE?

POINTS ABOUT STRATEGY

For any observer of Saudi Arabia, it would be unthinkable that the Kingdom would not have been involved in beefing up the Sunni resistance, especially that that resistance would be the real stick the Kingdom could wave against Iran, not Arab nationalism per see. But the Kingdom’s hands are tied by a number of considerations.

Theoretically, Saudi support of the resistance–if any--becomes very complex when one considers the following elements:

1. That its hands are tied, since the resistance would unavoidably be conducting operations against U.S. troops–the allies of Saudi Arabia. No one would be able to convince the resistance otherwise, since the harmful idiots had sent an army, seemingly on a made-in-Israel plan, to emasculate the Arab Sunni once and for all.

2. That the Kingdom was systematic in easing the invasion ordered by the harmful idiots of Iraq, and therefore is likely mistrusted by the Arab Sunni of Iraq;

3. That the Kingdom’s second collusion with the United States against the Arab Sunni of Iraq took place when its income had been a paltry $55 billion (or so) and therefore it could not stand up to the threat from the American Jewish Right (Paul Wolfowitz, Thomas Friedman, Douglas Feith, Brookings’ Saban Center, the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, and allies in academia--to mention a few) which led a Christian Evangelist crusade to splinter the Kingdom into a number of countries.

4. That the money which flowed hugely into the Kingdom’s coffers and the pockets of its thousands of princes and merchants, thanks in good part to the harmful idiots’ charge against Iraq, would one way or another find its way to the Sunni resistance. A function of nationalism, pure and simple.

5. Especially that Iraq was the main venue for the Saudis to defeat the ideas advanced by the American Jewish Right , using its Christian Evangelist army, to eventually break apart the Kingdom. (That's how it looked to the great majority of Arabs and Muslims. Doesn't help to avoid a reality take on how others view American politics. To Arab intellectuals, just as there exists a Christian Right, there also exists a Jewish Right, and the Republican Party had used that Right to spin the Jewish community and include it in on an imperial adventure, portraying the quest for control of oil as good for Israel. I think a majority in that community fell for it.)

(Please note that I have no evidence of any active financing by the Kingdom of resistance groups in Iraq, which financing , if it had occurred (see below re. what the Americans are saying), would have been meant to defeat U.S. troops and the Jewish Right’s ideas of breaking up the Kingdom. I’m proceeding logically: Had I been a prince or a merchant with an immense fortune, I would not have been reluctant for a second to dispatch ample money to the Sunni resistance. It’s called nationalism.)

That said, it is also important to note that the presumed Saudi involvement in financing the Sunni in Iraq (insurgency or not), probably has mutated. To make the point, again, if I were a patriotic Saudi prince or merchant, I would be financing the Iraqi Sunni first to defeat the Jewish Right’s attempt to splinter the Arab nation, in particular the Saudi Kingdom; then, after defeating that Right, (a defeat that already had taken place ), I would be financing the Sunni to fight off the U.S., balance out Iran’s increasing power inside Iraq, and oppose what is perceived as a Kurdish-Israeli alliance in the north. (That's for some princes; the government doesn't seem to mind Israel.)

Iran’s influence in Iraq, especially in the south, is clearly established. Accordingly, it would be unthinkable that Saudi Arabia would not adopt those Sunni groups which are perceived as anti-Iranian. Are there? Did the Saudis adopt any such group?

Saudi activities in Sunni Iraq are bound to be coordinated with the harmful idiots, come what may. One therefore can safely conclude that whatever the American occupier does in Iraq is coordinated with the Saudis or, at the very least, has been communicated to the Saudis. For example, the American attempt to split the Sunni resistance by negotiating with the native part of it, or by seeking out the assistance of the tribes and clans, has had Saudi support. (See below.)

This tactic has faced abject failure: I have not seen a single report of fighting among the Sunni groups. The Arab Sunni resistance is tightly knit. Of equal importance. The Iraqi Sunni resistance, if it remains united, should be able to play off Iran against the United States. In that sense it has a lot of power. It can divide up the roles: some within it would remain close to Iran and others to Syria, while yet others to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Until such time when they all can unite their effort with Muqtadha as-Sadr (probably) to recreate Iraq as an independent and proud Arab Islamic state.

IS AN ISLAMIC STATE AN IRANIAN IDEA?

Jalal Talabani seemed to have been behind one effort to bring together the native Sunni resistance and the Americans, an attempt by the U.S. and their Saudi helpers to splinter the Sunni resistance. The groups which allegedly met with the Americans were:

The Islamic Army in Iraq
The Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth
The Army of the Mujahideen
The Anbar Revolutionaries

But both the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth on or about April 13, asserted that they had nothing to do with the Baath. The Islamic Army went on to say that it stood for foreign troops to leave Iraq and to form an Islamic state. Why the need?

This need by the two groups to assert that they were not associated with the Baath, and for one of them to divulge that it stood for the formation of an Islamic state, could very well reflect their wish not to alienate their allies and possibly their financiers. An Islamic state could very well be a reflection that the financiers of the group were themselves Islamist; it could also be that these groups received money from Iran. Why else stress that they had nothing to do with the Baath? Or that one of them would be working for an Islamic state? Accordingly it is unlikely that either of the two groups receive Saudi money. As to the others, we have no statements from them and no evidence whatsoever.

SAUDI ARABIA AND THE U.S. SEEK OUT THE TRIBES

Also around the same time, we started hearing about a said rift between the native Iraqis and the non-Iraqi Arabs in the insurgency. In this instance, it looked as if either the U.S. or the Saudis, or probably both, were financing the Sunni clans as a way of reining in both the Sunni Islamists and the foreign Jihadis. One reason why I suspect Saudi involvement in trying to drive a wedge between the clans/native resistance and the non-Iraqi Jihadis was the fact that the entire affair was so drummed up (repeatedly) on the pages of al-Hayat, an excellent newspaper but one that at times is a flagrant tool of Saudi intelligence.


THE WALL OF DISTRUST TO SAUDI INFLUENCE IN IRAQ

The problem for the Saudis in influencing the Iraqi Sunni is that there probably is a lot of Iraqi Sunni distrust of the Kingdom. After all, Saudi Arabia had twice offered its territory as launchpad for attacks against Iraq. In that sense, the Arab Sunni of Iraq are similar to the Arab Christians of Lebanon, many among whom mistrust the United States and Israel, after the two sets of harmful idiots had allowed Syria to conquer Mount Lebanon. Ditto for the Arab Shiites of Iraq, who were told by the harmful idiots to rebel in 1991, then were left to bear the leaden hand of the Saddam Hussein government, while the troops of the harmful idiots stood by watching in Kuwait.

This distrust of the United States (and, by extension, its Saudi ally) probably is made all the more acute by the fact that a great majority of the Iraqis believe that the American occupier is behind quite a number of the sectarian bombingss. These sectarian bombings, it is alleged by a majority of the Iraqis, are meant by the occupier and its allied Arab intelligence services to widen the rift between Sunni and Shiites and trump the possibility of the formation of a united Sunni-Shiite Islamic front. Such, the Sunni (and Shiites) believe, was/is the Americans’ way of keeping the country off-balance, therefore allowing the Americans to stay in Iraq–a Saudi policy goal (see above). (John Abizeid on or about March 13, declared that the U.S. wanted to keep troops in Iraq to protect oil fields and balance Iran’s influence.)

The bombing of the Shiite Shrine in Samarra had brought the widest range of inter-faith condemnation and all pointed the finger at the occupier as being behind it, to blow up any attempt at the formation of the Sunni-Shiite anti-American front. Iran’s condemnation was similar. In addition, on or about March 1, 2006, around eight days after the Samarra bombing, Jordan declared that it had foiled a suicide attack in that country. A retaliation to the Samarra bombing,? Jordan being closely allied to the U.S., both of whom are said to be trying to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shiites? (Refer to earlier article, “WHO DID IT?”)

IRAN AND THE SUNNI

Within the insurgency, there are those who believe that Iran finances at least one group, Ansar al-Sunna. It’s not improbable since , as Ansar al-Islam, that group had once been based in the north, near the Iranian border area. But Ansar al-Sunna was/is an ally of al-Qaeda, according to Azifah Azzam, the son of Bin Laden’s once spiritual guide, Abdallah Azzam. Could the money sent to Ansar-al-Sunna find its way to al-Qaeda in Iraq or to other Sunni Islamic groups allied to it?

(Other groups allied to al-Qaeda in Iraq:

The Army of the Mujahideen
The Islamic Army to Liberate Iraq
The Grouping of Tawheed and Jihad
The Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth.


If Iran was in fact financing Ansar al-Sunna, not unlikely, then Iran practically was passing money on indirectly to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, an ally of Ansar al-Sunna. Which could explain the punishing retaliatory bombings by Al-Qaeda of the hotels in Jordan, a party many believed was supporting activities (e.g. , sectarian bombings) in Iraq to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shiites and fail the formation of the anti-American Islamic front of Sunni and Shiites.

Note that the Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth were allied to al-Qaeda in Iraq–which could explain that group’s assertion (see above) that it had no association with the Baath. Note, too, that it was part of the same alliance as Ansar al-Sunna.

WHAT’S THE U.S. SAYING?

What does the American government know about Saudi influence in Iraq? The only glimpse we got on this was when Stewart Levy, U.S. Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, testified before Congress on or about April 3, 2006. While he congratulated the Saudi government for the excellent job it was doing in fighting terror inside the Kingdom, he did express concern that there were within the Kingdom large givers to organizations which are misusing humanitarian aid to finance extremists.

Undoubtedly, he said, some of that money was going to Iraq.

A LITTLE TILT

Another area of possible Saudi influence in Iraq came in the form of the American tilt towards the Sunni. For instance, in a patent effort to endear them to the Sunni, on or about April 8, 2006, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that the greater threat in Iraq were the Shiite militias who had gone on a rampage of killing Sunni.

THE ISLAMIC FRONT IS THERE–-ONLY NOT UNITED, NOT YET

The Islamic front which the U.S. and Jordan had been trying to abort throughout this year seemed to be evident in the field, and became evident to me only on reviewing my notes. In mid April 2006, for example, two U.S. soldiers were killed in Anbar–a Sunni stronghold–, then four others, A tad earlier, four British soldiers were wounded in a bomb in Basra, a Shiite stronghold. While the U.S. was continuously involved in an undeclared war with the Shiite Mahdi Army, there were widespread Sunni attacks on U.S. observation posts in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, and battles in Baghdad’s Sunni Azamiyyah district between the Sunni and the Americans. Later, on or about May 6, 2006, a British copter was downed in Basra, and four crew members were killed.

In other words: the fight against the occupier has for a good while now involved both Sunni and Shiites; the Islamic front therefore has been in evidence, only that there are no indications that it’s in any way united under one command.

(The best ammunition for the Islamic Front comes from the harmful idiots themselves. When the chief harmful idiot in Iraq, the U.S. Ambassador, flies to attend a session in the Kurdish Parliament, he does a huge service for the Islamic Front. True, the American occupation would be truly unbearable (for the occupier) without the help of the Kurdish militias. But the occupation is untenable. So shouldn’t the harmful idiots start thinking about how not to push the Kurds’s alienation from Iraqi Arab society too far along, if only to protect them? What am I saying? Someone who is harmful wouldn’t give a hoot about the pain a friend would suffer; and since he/she is an idiot, he should be lacking the intelligent conscience and empathy necessary to even appreciate his meting out of such pain.)


SAUDI ARABIA AMONG THE IRAQI SUNNI

On or about May 28, 2006, the Islamic Ulamas (scholars) criticized the visit to Iraq of Iran’s Foreign Minister. They seemed to be swimming against the tide, trying to curtail Iran’s influence among the Iraqis, possibly the Sunni Islamists in particular, the most potent fighting force for the Sunni. They reminded the Sunni (they couldn’t be reminding the Shiites, since these had welcomed the invasion and Iran’s collusion) that Iran had colluded with the U.S. in the invasion of Iraq. But, as if to remain true to their young Sunni nationalists–the fighting backbone-- they did balance this by telling a more complete story: that Arab countries also had colluded with the United States against their beloved country. Noteworthy, however, was that the Ulamas did not name these countries. It could be because, at that stage, they realized that the Iraqi Sunni needed these treasonous brother countries; too, it could be because the ulamas were receiving money from one or more of them, likely Saudi Arabia.

On or about June 13, 2006, we got another glimpse of possible Saudi involvement in Iraq. In an al-Hayat article, that paper’s reporter was trying to investigate the raging civil war, the reporter heard statements from Sunni leaders that the civil war–the mass massacres against the Shiite-- was useful to the Sunni. That, one Sunni leader asserted, should convince the Shiite not to rely too much on their majority status. In other words, that leader was saying that the Sunni carried the power of a veto over the formation and stability of an Iraqi state, any Iraqi state, where their voice wasn’t given an appropriate weight.


When the reporter brought up the specter of a full-fledged civil war, that leader answered that he was not worried as regional countries had promised them to place all their assets at their disposal.


Who were these countries? Off hand, I would say they included Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE–it misses Saddam Hussein the most since when he was around it could stay in the contested islands), Jordan, and Egypt. And the “assets” would include not only money and weapons. The “assets” could include the active help and assistance of U.S. troops.

Put differently, the nature of the civil war which the Sunni establishment had begun, in reaction to the American assault on its country, has changed. It’s no longer one that has been meant chiefly to defeat the Americans, to one that is meant to defeat mainly the Iranians. Here, the Saudis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians are confident that they can put to service American troops to defeat Iran in Iraq. Frankly, they couldn’t do this without the willingness of the harmful idiots to lend American troops as mercenaries. They did it first allegedly for the Jewish Right and Israel, and now they’re doing it for their Arab protectorates (they say.)

Anything to control those oil fields.

SAUDI MONEY

Another glimpse into likely Saudi involvement in Iraq came when, on or about June 28, groups within the Sunni resistance offered a cease-fire with the Americans, if these committed to withdraw within two years. The groups were:

Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth
The Heroes of Iraq
Grouping of Nine April
Phalange of al-Fateh
Phalanges of al-Mukhtar
Jaysh al-Mujahideen
Phalanges of Salah al-Din
Phalanges of the General Command of the Armed Forces

Of particular note was the fact that these groups had placed as one condition (out of many) that observers from the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, and the Association of Islamic Scholars (Ulamas) supervise the agreement.

(Also of note was that the Majlis Shura al -Mujahideen, made up mainly of al-Qaeda, the Islamic Army in Iraq, and the Army of Muhammad, had not joined in the two-year moratorium offer.)

When a body asked that the Saudis be included in the supervision of an agreement, it would be fair to conclude that possibly they were receiving money from the Saudis. Were the Saudis trying to snatch away some of the resistance from Syria and Iran?

A day later, a spokesman for the Association of Islamic Ulamas (al-Dhari) asserted that the most important resistance groups were the al-Qaeda-led Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen and the Phalanges of the Revolution of the Twentieth. Could al-Dhari have been advertising to the Saudis who to support–that in fact they had little choice, since, as government, they would not support an al-Qaeda-associated outfit. The only one left: the Phalange of the Revolution of the Twentieth.

MORE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE ABOUT SAUDI INFLUENCE AMONG THE SUNNI

On or about July 2, 2006, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki started an Arab tour to garner support for his program for national reconciliation. The countries he would visit should tell the observer about who carried weight within the Iraqi Sunni community and its resistance movement. These were: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: MUQTADHA

Could Saudi Arabia have given money to Muqtadha as-Sadr? My guess is that they did. Here’s why:

On or about November 11, 2005, Muqtadha as-Sadr started a petition drive to collect eight million signatures calling on the Saudi government to allow the building of tombs for Shiite Imams who had died in Saudi Arabia. Other related demands were made in sermons by sheikhs associated with Muqtadha.

Now that was playing Saudi politics, wasn’t it? In early January, on or about January 10, 2006, King Abdallah met with Muqtadha, and I stopped hearing about the petition.

If in fact the Saudis have passed money on to Muqtadha, it would be because he knew how to play Saudi politics, so to speak. It’s my judgement that, looking beyond the current phase, should Arab nationalism be revived, Muqtadha would be a prime candidate to integrate Shiite and Sunnis within the fold of this nationalism.

IRAQ: THE PRESIDENT GOES ON THE OFFENSIVE AND

...THE "WHAT WENT WRONG IN IRAQ" INTELLECTSHITUALS BACKPEDAL--INTO SHRUBS FULL OF RACOONS, PRAY TO GOD.

third rough draft

“What’s shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90% of the cluster bombs strikes [by Israel] occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution.”

JAN EGELAND, U.N. UNDER-SECRETARY GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS.

STAY THE COURSE AND THE “WHAT WENT WRONG” SONG-AND-DANCE

The White House and its tentacles once again have gone on the offensive to stay the course in Iraq. It has recruited poli. sci. sophomores to write up speeches for the President and his Vice about appeasement of Islamic fascists. What are they hiding? Besides the fact that Iraq is a disaster–the Iraqi people’s and ours, more the Iraqi people’s--the two are as worried about their base, the Jewish/Christian right, our version of Islamic fascism, as they are about the fate of America’s troops in Iraq. The audiences they're addressing are exactly those who they want to persuade that it was not President Bush and Vice President Cheney who led America to defeat in Iraq. It’ll be the Democrat who will withdraw the troops.

In the meanwhile, the dishonest pushers of the Iraq invasion, with various hidden agendas, who have filled to overflow Iraqi orphanages, having snatched the fathers away from their children in an unnecessary war, are backpedaling with breathless speed.

(A Note from Anthropology. You may wonder why those dishonest ones who led the nation astray on Iraq are so shameless, and why the media still gives them time. If you look at this phenomenon with the eye of an anthropologist, you would conclude that the ants appreciate these other ants for having created work. Since all real work practically has gone to China, a war now-and-then gives the illusion of a working nation that is getting something done. So, in essence, even dishonest ones who create misery and orphan little children are appreciated by the ant colony for the employment their dishonesty creates–-in the absence of non-war-oriented work. Crazy, huh?)

Here are some points about the false debate launched by those with hidden agendas:

1. DEFEAT TOOK PLACE WHEN THE IDEA OF INVADING IRAQ WON OUT. EVERYTHING ELSE (“MISTAKES”) THAT TOOK PLACE AFTER...WAS OF THE NATURE OF INVASION AND OCCUPATION–ANY INVASION, ANY OCCUPATION.

The very idea of invading Iraq was mediocrity itself and concealed within it an array of hidden agendas, even at the highest level of government.

(Mediocrity is/was a function of a want of independence of analysis and perspective; it bespeaks to such phenomena as advice from ethnically- biased advisers, arrogant advisers, Uncle Tom advisers/academicians, Israel-obsessed right-wing advisers, Israel-obsessed liberal adorers of the Israel-obsessed right wing advisers, Iraqi snake oil salesmen.)

The Sunni establishment in Iraq was bound to start a civil war sooner or later to fail an invasion/occupation that the harmful idiots had planned with Shiite agents of Shiite Iran. (Please refer to “Flashback...")

My assessment then was that the Sunni establishment would start the civil war on the eve of the invasion, or even before the ivasion began, and would beget retaliation from the Shiites. But it waited. (I’ve been accused by many past mentors, chief among them was Professor Glenn Snyder, of being too efficient.) Civil war was the Sunni establishment’s only way of averting total political annihilation by the harmful idiots’ armies and their Iraqi double-agents.

Accordingly, the proponents of the invasion (Uncle Toms, Paul Wolfowitzs, Douglas Feiths, Tom Friedmans, various men with erection problems, delusional triple-agents, narcissistic-delusional advisers, sadistic hatefuls of Arabs and Muslims), who are now back-pedaling, are being...oh well, self-serving. They were right, you see, but their rarified ideas about ruthless and unnecessary killing of the fathers of little children were carried out the wrong way. Darn! They will bring out various elements that allegedly failed the invasion, such as the harmful idiot’s disbanding of the Iraqi army, the campaign against the Baathists and all Sunni men, and so on.

Once and for all: The occupier could not but disband the Iraqi army. If it hadn’t, it would’ve had to deal with a Shiite insurgency first, and possibly two insurgencies running at the same time The Sunni officer corps waited to start the civil war probably in the hope that the harmful idiots would have an appreciation of the role the army played in the stability of Iraq. But the officer corps proved wrong since the harmul idiots could not but disband that army, lest the harful idiots ended up with a Shiite insurgency. You see, once again, one needs to remember that the harmful idiots are both: harmful and idiotic, not only harmful and not only idotic. Both.)

Ah! If only the generals had done this; if only the chief harmful idiot in Iraq (Paul Bremer)had done that.
.
Bullshit. All of these “what went wrong” items were part-and-parcel of occupation, any occupation.

CASE STUDY: THE LEBANESE UNDER OCCUPATION

Ask the Lebanese about how many times Syrian troops shot people by mistake or ran them over with their humongous Russian trucks. There’s an entire family in my childhood neighborhood in Beirut who were all maimed by one such Russian truck. And that’s one out of endless many. Or, ask the Lebanese of the south and the Beqaa about their children being blown up by Israeli cluster bombs, the pride of America’s manufacturing and the gift of its liberal democracy. Ask J. A/H, my older sister’s best friend, how Syrian troops murdered her first husband in cold blood, and his brother, in the Cedars area of Lebanon, and threw the bodies in a ditch. (Just learned from my father that they ran over one of them with a tank.) Ask her how her second husband stepped onto an Israeli (American-made) cluster bomb in a potato field in the Beqaa, to widow her a second time and orphan the two children.

Occupation forces will sooner or later commit the same mistakes whoever they are and wherever they are. One only needed to look at Syria’s occupation of Lebanon and Israel’s occupation of Palestine (let’s murder a poor family picnicking at the beach in Gaza and say it was a mistake) to come to terms with that.

CASE STUDY: OCCUPATION AND OUR MILITARY HARMFUL IDIOTS

Pathetic for our military harmful idiots: One needed only look at Israel’s defeat in south Lebanon (1982-2000) to learn that there was something called IED–the infamous road-side bomb--and there were suicide bombings, and that these defeated the valiant troops of that morally-superior and faultless Jewish state, which massacres children from the air with American cluster bombs. Oh yeah, like you don’t think other cultures are capable of improving on these IEDs? They're inferior, aren’t they, and their minds don’t have our engineering skills. Well, go visit any department of engineering at a U.S. campus and report back to me that the majority of the advanced students there are American. Not.

So, the very idea of invading spelled defeat.

(To be fair: There are generals who knew better and "resigned" so not to take part in a plan hatched by idiots who were harmful.)




2. SHED THE MEDIOCRE WHO TOOK US TO DEFEAT. HA, HA, HA. STOP IT, PLEASE!

A priori, the imperial state had accepted advice from the biased and mediocre sources described above, and will need to shed these.

I’m laughing–-in tears, really. As a wise public policy friend of mine had always reminded me: It’s about jobs and jobs and more jobs and juicy contracts–-dollar signs all over. Got nothing to do with carrying out a solidly thought-out plan. The mediocre shall seek the mediocre. But they are all working and making money; and that’s what really matters.


The public policy friend couldn’t be more right. For instance, one buddy, smart, who meant well and understood the limitations of his mission, left the status of under-employed to work in Iraq, and was able to retire after his years there, doing next-to-nothing since the security situation had pre-empted real work. (I told you he was smart.) An acquaintance, having never stuffed envelopes for a political campaign, who would otherwise be unemployed, a pathological sex maniac, did it for the oral sex (he reported about) on his escapades to Jordan and Lebanon–-and a lot of money in his pocket to boot. He maintained that he could help the Iraqis turn to democracy.

War: Such a capitalist celebration!


3. A DIVIDED STATE THAT WILL EXPLODE

The state that the United States is building in Iraq is, by definition, a divided one. A recent event illustrates this division. One seemingly cunning move was the recent anti-Sadr raid on Diwaniyyah. The US assigned it to the Ministry of Defense and not to the Interior Ministry–-the entity to which that duty primarily belonged. Why? I suspect the Ministry defense (of war, really) is once again controlled by the Sunni Baath and its men wouldn’t mind going after Shiites.
So, in essence, the American occupier thinks it can manipulate the country’s divisions and have Sunni eliminate one of their most energetic foes–-Muqtadha.

And herein lies the problem:

Should the US retreat from Iraq, which will happen sooner than later, Iraq will have two armies: a Sunni army (Ministry of Defense) and a Shiite one (Ministry of the Interior and tens of thousands of armed protective services men.) This probably explains why the US occupier is reluctant to give either advanced weapons, in spite of criticism by one former general. (I didn’t get his name; he was quoted by NPR on the morning of 8/31/06.)

Expect both Ministries to be passing information (“intelligence”) to their respective guerrillas, the Defense to the Sunni and Interior to the Shiites.

This intelligence should make it easier on the various guerrillas to target for assassination those who are responsible for this or that act. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me that Interior already knows who at Defense spearheaded the Diwaniyyah raid and has passed on this information to Muqtadha as-Sadr’s men who could target those who had spearheaded that raid. Worse, they could target their families. Accordingly, the US occupier should have INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents at the ready in Kuwait to grant these people refugee status in the United States.


3.a. IN A PUPPET STATE, THE TROOPS’ ALLEGIANCE WILL REMAIN TO THEIR SECT.

To dispatch Interior Ministry troops against Sunni guerrillas and Defense Ministry troops against Shiite guerrillas is a game that’s bound to backfire. Each set of guerrillas could find it convenient to carry out nerve-wreaking sectarian killings that should assure that the balance of these troops’ allegiance will be to their respective sect and hardly to the puppet “state.”

In other words, the much bigger explosion in Iraq is coming, sooner or later.


3b. THE SHIITES WILL NOT SHED IRAN

When I had told my conservative father about the snooping by right wing Israel-obsessed and connected pseudo-friends on me (I’ve covered most--but not all-- of these in the series “Chance Encounters,”) he became worried. His face reddened. But knowing that intimidation will not stop me (it really is biological), he went pensive and said that he would rather that I don’t write about politics. Then he said, “Look, every Sunni at heart is al-Qaeda, every Jew at heart is Israel, and every Shiite at heart is Iran. I apologize for simplifying and stereotyping; but you need to come to terms with this when you hang out with people.” There’s nothing like a Lebanese Maronite Catholic, from a country that recognizes eighteen official sects, whose heart still is there, to give you a different perspective. What he forgot: A number of fellow Lebanese Christians are at heart and in fact Israeli agents.)


In Iraq, that means that there’s no way under the sun, now that the Americans have brought the sectarian genie out of the bottle, that the Shiites will join forces with the United States against Iran. SCIRI’s head, Abdel Aziz Hakim, recently (on or about August 30) rejected U.S. accusations that Iran was intervening in Iraq’s affairs. He could see that the U.S. had been tilting in favor of the old Baath. He ain’t gonna take it lying down. (SCIRI: Supreme Council of the Islamic Revoution in Iraq.)

The Iraqi Shiites once fought valiantly against the Iranian armies; but that was then, when their secular Arab identity had trumped petty sectarianism. But the harmful idiots’ invasion put an end to that, and I don’t see it reviving, not with the current conditions. Though the Iraqi Shiites are Arab in every way, Iran --for now--is their reference, if only because there's a cultural vacuum, the result of the harmful idiots' elimination of the Baathist government. And this reference is made stronger by Iran’s focus on Israel, its occupation of Arab lands, and beastly treatment of the Palestinians.

The Sunni could--join forces with the U.S. But that’s not as easy as it had been when Arab nationalism had been dominant under the toppled President of Iraq. The Baath ruled not exclusively with repression; it offered a carrot, too : You become an Arab nationalist of the Baathist variety, and most doors would open for you. And that applied to women! But now, to recall my father’s warning to me: Every Sunni in Iraq is at heart an al-Qaeda.

And that’s what the invasion did in Iraq: It turned nearly all Sunni there into al-Qaeda sympathizers. That was, and is, an act of self-defense to meet a horrific and unprovoked aggression by the United States, one which looked as if made in Israel. As this newsletter had covered before, the Islamists had taken over the Sunni Street in Iraq. Some in the old Baath travel to Jordan and receives hefty payments from the Jordanians–-U.S. money-–but I don’t see them being able to reclaim the Sunni Street.

And they may not want to reclaim it, anyway. The Arab Sunni Islamists are their sons, their brothers, their sisters, and their cousins, and they will be needed for an eventual bigger show off with the Shiites and/or with the Kurds. I suspect they are (now, not when they did it) disturbed by the sectarian killings done by the takfiris, and that these are (very likely) financed by people in Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of their state, no two ways about it, and our harmful idiots. (An intelligence service passes money on to a merchant who in turn passes it on to another merchant...to the takfiris.) But the old Baath is putting up with these massacres against the Shiites for various reasons:

1. Saudi Arabia probably has promised them that its ally, the United States, will return the Sunni to power;

2. As strategies go, killing Shiite civilians could eventually bring Iranian troops into Iraq (unlikely) which would be one mistake the harmful idiots are waiting for to mobilize the American public into a full-fledged war against Iran, and which would place the Sunni squarely into the American camp and return them to power.

3. They are afraid to oppose the takfiris lest they be murdered and since they will need them in case of a major confrontation with the Shiites or the Kurds.

4. The takfiris have the money–-Saudi, most likely. Lots of it. (Saudi Arabia is bringing in about $220 billion per year.) And they probably have placed so many of the unemployed Sunni youth (and the old) on the payroll.

Ominous for our troops: The takfiris, so well financed, will never come to terms with the United States and will turn their guns against our troops--fully--, and away from the Shiites, should alternative financing become available.

Note: The arrest or assassination by occupation forces of Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq may have something to do with an increasing awareness by the the Iraqi Arab Sunni leaders of the insurgency, the natives, that the takfiris' massacres against the Shiites have gone too far. Credit this awareness in good part to the retaliatory massacres by the Shiites, especially after the Askariyyah bombing. It's possible therefore that information about the leaders of the takfiris (al-Qaeda) is being passed along by Sunni inusrgents to the Americans. In addition, be mindful that some groupings within the Arab Sunni insurgency probably receive money from Iran and should be reluctant to support massacres against the Muqadha as-Sadr people, who themselves are now very close to Iran and Syria. These Arab Sunni groupings are probably the most likely source of information about the takfiris.



4. HISTORIC SHIITE-SUNNI ENTENTE, DIFFICULT, BUT YOU NEVER KNOW

The Sunni Street in Iraq and Muqtadha as-Sadr’s Shiites could eventually reach an understanding. Difficult but it could happen. The Saudis (probably) are building obstacles to that by financing the takfiris, generously, to keep the Sunni-Shiite rift as wide as possible. But one catalyst for this understanding always will be Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah. The political entrepreneurs on both sides will find that war convenient to re-build a consensus--as a means for them to come out of their destructive isolation. In other words, America’s war on the Arabs and Muslims, and Israel’s war on its Palestinians, could provide a way to rebuild Iraqi nationalism. It’ll be an Islamist Arab one, not an Islamist solely, nor an Arab.

To be clear, the evolution of this brand of nationalism faces the terrific obstacles of sectarian killings and of the takfiris, who are apparently hugely well-financed. A dangerous game for those financing them (my guess: the Saudis), since these things tend to backfire and run amok. Ominously, the only plausible way for the Shiite Arab Islamists (e.g., as-Sadr) to handle this would be to risk another wide confrontation with the Americans. But that would entail a huge cost to him. Still, if he gets a commitment from some Sunni to participate in his insurgency, he could initiate it. Hence probably the pre-emptive targeting of his lieutenants by the American occupation forces.

4a. OUTSMARTING THE HARMFUL IDIOTS

Hezbollah’s war with Israel should have done a lot to push along this eventual reconciliation. (I don’t believe for a moment Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s words that he hadn’t expected Israel’s horrific wholesale slaughter of civilians as a reaction to his men’s operation against Israel’s military. Reading al-Manar, I believe these people understand Israeli politics and the American-Israeli relationship very well. Mr. Nasrallah probably was playing Lebanese politics when he said what he said.)

Israel’s massacre of Lebanon’s civilians and its destruction of its economy have brought the Shiite and Sunni Streets together as never before. More importantly, it had opened the Sunni Islamists’ eyes to the possibility of reconciling. One could see this in the editorial on August 31 by Abdel-Bari Atwan of Al-Quds al-Arabi. A terrifically perceptive political observer, and one who had been right on nearly everything that related to Iraq’s invasion---not that difficult since the other view was being offered by dishonest blabber heads-, con artists with hidden agendas, and allied Uncle Tom intelligence services---wrote a passionate defense of Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Opportunist proxies of the harmful idiots in Lebanon had rushed to use Nasrallah’s admission that he had not expected Israel’s over-reaction as a rallying cry against him. Atwan, an Arab-Islamist and Palestinian nationalist (my categorization), a Sunni, unleashed against those, as eloquently as only he can.

Atwan’s defense of Shiite Nasrallah showed the possible course the Sunni Islamists will take. The cluster bombs which the Israelis rained on south Lebanon in the last 72 hours of fighting, knowing full well that the fighting was to stop soon (the U.N. has identified 405 bomb strike areas with up to 100,000 unexploded bomblets ) should be fodder for the possible entente between the Sunni Islamists and the as-Sadr people–-an anti-American entente, since the cluster bombs were made in the United States, or their technology transferred from the U.S. to Israel.

I maintain that Iran put up Hezbollah to sooner-or-later carry out the operation against the Israeli military knowing full well that it would bring about the Israeli over-reaction. This over-reaction against civilians (a cold-blooded massacre of about 1300 civilians) to an operation by Hezbollah on Israeli troops, was direly needed to achieve that very entente and trump the ceaseless attempts by the harmful idiots and their Saudi, Jordanian, and Gulf proxies to drive a wedge between Shiites and Sunni, in their laughable project to create an Israel-led Arab anti-Iran camp. (It’s really hilarious–to do this while Palestinian and Syrian lands are occupied. Hello!)

Another factor that should prod the new Iraqi nationalism along is the all-but-done secession of the Kurdish part of the country. Masoud Barazani, the president of Iraq Kurdistan, recently (@8/30) ordered the elimination of the Iraqi national flag from all governent buildings and checkpoints. That should make the blood boil in each and every Arab in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni.


5. THE REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT IS NOT FAVORABLE TO THE U.S. IN IRAQ

The regional environment is not conducive to a result in Iraq that is not favorable to the United States.

The US went to Turkey to seek help and was able to persuade it to send troops to Lebanon. But Turkey is no longer a country which is so beholden to the U.S. It has a thriving tourist industry and high hopes to become member of the European community. (These European bastards: All they do is vacation and all we do is work. What went wrong?) I suspect that the latter factor and not U.S. cajoling, as much as anything, eased it into its decision to dispatch troops. How better to soften French opposition to its membership than to have its troops (and generals and foreign minister) work together with French troops, and Italian (and generals and foreign ministers.)

Turkey would not have gone in without Iranian consent. Why? Turkey knows that, for example, Iranian intelligence would gladly dispatch E50,000 Euros (that's soon--next week--to be around $4.5 million--that's what happens when you enrich Halliburton and Bechtel by going to war without raising taxes) to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) each month to make life hell for Turkey, should the latter make a move against Hezbollah. It’d add weapons seized after the Iraqi army was let go and chaos had reined in. If anything, Turkey and Iran are cooperating against the PKK, both shelling the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, and Turkey conducting air raids.

In this environment of cooperation between Iran and Turkey, it’s highly unlikely that Turkey would move into Iraq to boost those among the Sunni who are perceived as pro-American. The Turks, with a thriving tourist industry, and so much Gulf Arab money heading their way after the harmful idiots destroyed Lebanon’s economy, would be fools to go into Iraq.

(The multinational force which the Israelis have clamored for after failing to weaken Hezbollah, let alone disarm it, and after they had massacred 1300 defenseless civilians in frustration at their army's failings--this multinational U.N. force is actually a double-edged sword. It could prove to be more useful to Iran and Syria than to Israel. Think about the U.S. troops in Iraq. Aren’t they useful to Iran? You bet.)


CONCLUSION

The Iraq war, a very expensive affair, is over for the U.S., regardless of what the President and his Vice say or do. Defeat and failure happened when the idea of invading won out. Everything that came after (of the “what went wrong in Iraq” variety) was NOT what led to defeat. The very idea of invading signaled defeat. What went wrong after always goes wrong when one country occupies another.

Goes to show that the nation needs smart and discriminating leaders, first and foremost, a la Clinton. (Isn't Clinton now laughing? The right wing would have killed him if he had gone ahead with his idea to rehabilitate Iraqi President Hussein. What a trap he set up for them! And what a trap the right wing set up for his not-as-smart wife, who hoorayed the war. Can't blame her, politically: She needed to cater to her Jewish constituency, a majority of whom had followed Thomas Friedman's brillant lead. My public policy friend has added that she was as scared of the right as most Democrats.)

Then again, the nation seems to be accepting of those who caused the murder of its and Iraq's children, orphaned thousands of innocent children, destabilized a country and a region and cost us (eventually) a couple of trillions of dollars without any bit of return!

It is a forgiving Christian nation. Or maybe it simply appreciates those who create employment and move capital, however dishonest and moronic they are. (Morons can't be dishonest. Discuss.)

(For ideas on how to handle Iraq, please refer to earlier articles in this blog. I'm in tears: like anyone in government is reading this newsletter! They're all on the internet, shopping.)