WHY I CALL THEM HARMFUL IDIOTS: A CASE STUDY

part one of seven --rough draft

Shortly after dawn on October 23, 1983, at around 6:22 AM, a truck, laden with explosives, crashed into the Marine compound located near the Beirut International Airport. It drove into the center of the building where it exploded, bringing down the entire four-story structure. In that building slept some 300 U.S. troops.

241 soldiers, mostly Marines, were killed.


I’ve always wondered who advises the harmful idiots about the Middle East. The Iraq war brought this out, at last, crisp and clear. The bevy of Arab "assets," the Jewish Right, Jewish liberals, and this strange political force called Evangelical! Of all of these, however, the funniest (if it weren’t tragic) were the "assets"–all these corrupt snake oil salesmen who sold the Pentagon, its war-on-Arabs council--the infamous Judeo-Evangelical Defense Policy Board--the Jewish Right, their liberal Jewish adorers–these assets and the White House marketed the Iraq invasion as good for Israel.

Iraq has crystallized the fact that corruption is the harmful idiots’ hallmark in picking "assets." Do I have dreams about my country developing as foreign assets modernist and forward-looking people! Instead, it’s the most corrupt, the thieves of their respective countries’ resources, the insignificant, the con-artists, the double agents, the triple agents...these are my country’s foreign assets! And they don’t steal small. They steal in the tens of billions, and never ever are they satiated. As far as the harmful idiots are concerned: All that these unsavory figures need to do to become American assets is to declare their love for Israel. Once they do, they can become kings and Prime Ministers–and pillage larger shares of heir countries’ resources. And leave us hated by all the oppressed and struggling people in the Arab world.

A few years after the death of the Marines, my curiosity took me back to the library. I wanted to learn more about the events surrounding their demise. I had thought, throughout the Marines’ tenure, that events had been racing about them. But that their strategists were not keeping up with what these events had meant for their tenure in Lebanon. I wasn’t following things closely. I was too busy making a living and paying off loans. And the internet wasn’t so convenient to provide me with such a huge selection of primary sources to assess matters independently.

At the library, I discovered seven signals, loud and clear, that should’ve alerted U.S. decision-makers that the Marines stationed near the Airport were a target. But these signals, deafening though they were, failed to awaken the harmful idiots. Where were their analysts?

Here’s what I wrote then, probably in the late 1980's or early 1990's.

The seven signals:

The first regional signal: Syria declares war on the U.S.

Throughout the Lebanon war Syria had been capable of successfully manipulating events. Though it historically had always been a player in Lebanese domestic politics, starting in 1967, it had intensified it meddling in Lebanese affairs. It sponsored the entry into Lebanon of the various armies of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Syria, a less divided state than Lebanon, knew how to manipulate Lebanese pluralism to its advantage. Moreover, as master of unconventional warfare, it showed during its military intervention in Lebanon that it had terrific patience and endurance. It had an abundance of troops, well-mobilized and motivated. Its intelligence services could do what they pleased, without fear of punishment. To have been an intelligence service officer in Syria must’ve truly been the privilege of privileges. These people were ruthless and creative. When I wrote my dissertation on the Lebanese civil war, I had read volumes of primary sources, mostly press reports. I was stunned at the number of newly-found organizations that emerged daily while Syria was spreading its troops in Lebanon. The only conclusion I could draw was that these organizations were dummy creations by Syrian intelligence.

In essence, Syria didn’t need any help in Lebanon. It had the men, the wherewithal, the patience, the endurance. But it did have some significant limitations. Unlike Iran, it couldn’t unleash against the United States. Iran had oil and a large population to fall back on. Syria was a poor country which specialized in the production and export of labor. It couldn’t alienate the United States and Saudi Arabia, two of the markets for its chief export. But it needed to dislodge Israel’s ally, the United States, out of Lebanon, and here Iran was godsend.

On November 21, 1982, an armed rebellion flared up in the predominately Shia city of Baalbek, in the Beqaa valley, under Syrian occupation, a city that’s close to the Syrian-Lebanese border. The rebellion, staged against the national government of President Amin Gemayyel, [a likely "asset" of the harmful idiots], involved around 500 armed men. These took control of the government building and the town’s center. It was thought that a majority of the rebels were Iranian soldiers of the Guard of the Islamic Revolution (GIR).

Most telling about the rebellion was not that it took place at all (itself a sign that Syria now meant to de-stabilize the pro-American Gemayyel government) or that the GIR was involved.
Most telling was that Syria had allowed the GIR to enter Lebanon and mix with its Shia population. It meant that Syrian strategy had now shifted to allowing for an unconventional defensive war to stop Israeli domination of Lebanon and the concomitant isolation of Syria. Such war to be led not by Palestinians, but by native Lebanese: the Shia.

By introducing the vehemently anti-American GIR into Lebanon, Syria was sending the U.S. a message: that unconventional warfare by GIR against the United States in Lebanon would begin in earnest. Isn't that to be expected from GIR ? What else would Iranian intelligence do? [Remember: the U.S. was working with Saddam Hussein's--the lynched Arab--Iraq in its war against Iran.] It was for the U.S. to read the [Syrian] message correctly.

(...)

Syria had upped the ante, sending a clear message to Washington. Not only have we given up on the possibility that you, the United States, would bring Syria relief from Israel, said the message; but now we have drawn closer to Iran and have allowed into Lebanon U.S.-hating GIR soldiers. Allowing the vehemently anti-American GIR into Lebanon (and Iranian intelligence) could only have meant that Syria had declared U.S. presence in Lebanon to be a legitimate war target. I found no evidence that Washington picked up on that message.

Syria could read the signs on the wall: that the new Lebanon would be an American-Israeli preserve. That meant Syria would lose yet another ally, Arab Lebanon, as a front against Israel. In contrast, Syria read our messages correctly. The United States would announce that it would rebuild Lebanon’s army, doubling its size to 40,000, and Israel and Lebanon could begin face-to-face talks. This spelled isolation for Syria in its attempts to regain it Joulan heights.

In the meanwhile, Syria had for a good while stopped trusting Arafat [who, by then, was becoming another Anwar Sadat] and clashes between proxy militias–Syria’s and Arafat’s–raged in the northern city of Tripoli. [I’m not clear on things now but I believe that Syria had begun to consolidate its control over the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, sponsoring alternative leaders to Arafat; these refugees could provide yet more fighters to control the ground in Lebanon.]

Talks between Lebanon and Israel, brokered by the United States, were soon to elicit a verbal reaction from Syria. (Remember: Syria already had pronounced itself when it had allowed the GIR into Lebanon.) As if to make the message to the Americans louder and clearer, Syrian President Hafez al-Asad issued a warning to Lebanon not to make concessions to Israel, and reminding everyone that no agreement between Lebanon and Israel would be feasible if Syria disapproved.

There was no specific American response to Syria’s opposition. Our leaders had made some foolish assumptions, most grievous of which was that Syria’s attitude could be softened by repeated visits by American officials and likely promises to return the Arab Joulan to its rightful owner–promises only fools would believe. And wise and cunning Syria didn’t. One wonders whether our officials had stopped reading balance of power literature . They were running foreign policy as a public relations event. For, on the ground, Israel had proved incapable of dislodging Syria. [In retrospect, Syria looked even more cunning. It seemed to understand U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East as the product of a Judeo-Evangelical and colonial mind set.]

Accordingly, from a balance of power perspective, this failure should’ve cued us to the fact that Syria was truly more powerful than Israel, and therefore should be included in any peace agreement in the region. (Abdel-Halim Khaddam, Syria’s foreign minister, was known for giving advice to Syria’s Lebanese allies to "control the ground"–that, by so doing, they secured themselves a political role.). [With the huge flow of money from oil and money from the American taxpayer, Mr. Khaddam looks like he has become an asset of the harmful idiots and the Saudis. Truth be told: he is eminently insignificant.]

to be continued