DISARRAY AND DOOM--Updated!!!!!Yes!

secondnotsoroughdraft

My sixth sense is all about doom.

CLOSER TO WAR?

The harmful idiots are knee-deep in confusion and disarray. Knowing them, they may be thinking war against Iran, soon, if only to use their conventional weapons and have the Iranians cry uncle. Illusion, of course. Their ally, Israel, has just moved troops into the Joulan. All know that should Iran be attacked, Syria and Hizballah would be expected to ignite their front. Moving more Israeli troops into the Joulan, therefore, may be a sign that a U.S. attack against Iran is imminent. Or it maybe just another bluff, part of a never-ending war of nerves, a game of chicken.

But Iraq is where real blood will be spilt, not Israel, not Iran, and not Syria and Lebanon.

PLUGGING HOLES

The harmful idiots’ plan on Iraq now consists of plugging holes, ever and ever. Their Saudi strongman, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the seeming most solid ally in the invasion of the fellow Arab and Muslim country, has become certifiably neurotic. He’s all over the map plugging holes, too.

The most recent hole in the idiots’ plan: the massacres of Tel Afar. Someone may have meant the Tel Afar massacres to split the Iraqi forces that are ancillary to the occupation troops. We know this has been one of the tactics of the Sunni resistance. But, as this newsletter had assessed in the last post, the Shia militias now may be aiming for the same. To fail the American puppet Shia state over which they may feel that they’re losing control. Especially with Shia Fadhila’s split to (probably) join a new coalition under Allawi–the coaltion meant to defeat the rise of the southern Shia state/bloc (Hakim and Sadr). Fadhila's split likely was financed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In Iraq, the Arab Sunni resistance has turned Tel Afar into a very dangerous place. Why and what’s Tel Afar? Ask the extreme right-wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI). AEI will tell you that Tel Afar is the town that’s dearest to its heart, the very town the AEI right wing harmful idiots cite as the sample of how "smart" (as this word is defined by idiots) counter-insurgency could work. AEI had been enlisted to shower praise for continued occupation, in the hope of establishing bases, to prepare for yet more war, this time against Iran. Now Shia police and militiamen have retaliated with mass murders of their own. Tel Afar, as a consequence, has got to be hell incarnate.

Turkey, for a while, had kept an eye on Tel Afar. (Tel Afar’s population is mostly Turkoman, both Shia and Sunni.) Turkey must’ve blinked. It should’ve known that the American policy of plugging holes would require the shift of ancillary troops (Peshmerga and Allawi's generals) to other locales–the province of Diyali, most recently.

FLIRTING WITH THE ARAB SUNNI RESISTANCE BY...LYNCHING THEIR (SYMBOLIC AND ONCE) LEADER!

The harmful idiots are awash in confusion, working at cross-purpose. We recently learned–this newsletter didn’t since its analysis had led it to that, anyway-- for instance, that the U.S. chief harmful idiot at the Green Zone had been holding talks with the Islamic Army of Iraq and other Arab Sunni resistance groups made-up mostly of former Iraqi army officers. Not a bad move. He’d come to realize that we’d been defeated and as a consequence had become smart. Not. Why? He’s shot his own foot when he aided in the lynching of the (symbolic and once) leader of these groups, Saddam Hussein–their benefactor. How typically i.........tic!

(It took me a long time to realize that the only way I can explain these people’s behavior is to call on the very basic concept of "idiot." We tend to assume that people have a basic ability to adapt to their surrounding. I’ve made that mistake watching the idiots, for years.)

ANTI-AMERICANISM IS HERE TO STAY

True, these groups led by former army officers probably had played a part in unleashinig the younger ones (aka Iraqi al-Qaeda) on the Shia. Why? Viewing their limited resources, that was the best and most ironclad way to fail the invasion and occupation. They succeeded. The invasion/occupation has failed, miserably. Even debased American power the globe over. An amazing feat. They won.

But now they’re stuck with the young ones. They would like to subdue these, if only to give themselves some tactical flexibility. But they can’t, not without shedding intra-Arab Sunni blood, profusely. It’s not our problem, you might say. Yes and no. It is our problem because, when all’s said an done, the Arab Sunni will reconcile, or try to. When they do, the army oficers will have to meet the younger ones half-way. That likely will mean rejection of the United States and a return to Russia, China, and some of the Europeans (possibly). It could also mean acceptance of a cooperative relationship with Iran.

As far as American troops are concerned: Even if the Sunni Arabs quiet down as a result of the Saudi-financed and Jordanian-encouraged intra-Arab Sunni civil war, it should be expected that the southern Shia would take over the mantle of resistance. The dynamics of their own politics lead in that direction, American payoffs to the many notwithstanding. (Always remember that others have money too, and ours now is significantly less valuable than the money of others, we’ve minted so much of it to finance a war without taxation.)

A PRESIDENT, ALL ALONE.

If you haven’t noticed: It looks as if the right-wing has all but deserted this President. You don’t see them on the Lehrer Newshour much anymore. (Remember when they brought out Bush father as a shot against the bow of the Jewish Right when its luminaries had started to criticize his son?) The Jewish part of the right-wing has all but tiptoed away from the carnage it so helped create. Seeing to the death of the parents of little children was and is of no concern to this Right’s luminaries. It’s always about the welfare of Israel, nothing less. At any rate, there’s no need to remind all that this breed of right-wing played such a prominent role in the coalition that orphaned little children by the thousands. All of them now–Evangelical and Jewish Right–are left with Big-Mouth-Bolton to pontificate about strategy, John Locke (yes dear), and Iran.

Relevance: All parties to the conflict know the above and are bound to believe that the U.S. troops will not remain in Iraq to complete any defined task. In other words, all are thinking about how to re-align their alliances and their goals. Concomitant, they probably believe that the President will wait for a Democrat to pull the troops out--though he may be forced to do some of the withdrawls himself. (All signs are that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are taking over the mantle from the U.S., via Allawi--another topic.)

RICE SPINS IN THE WIND–BEHIND IN TIME, AS ALWAYS.

Another harmful idiot, the Secretary of State, is spinning in the wind. She thinks that connecting directly with the heads of Arab intelligence services of puppet Arab governments would stabilize things. She’s delusional. True, these–the heads of intelligence services–do hold the real power in the Arab world. These are the people who torture on demand–most recently, by the harmful idiots. But, lacking in strategic clarity doesn’t helps anyone, intelligence or idiot.

(I'm reading Zaki Chehab's Inside the Resistance. One distinct impression one gets is about the incompetence of Arab intelligence services. I believe this incompetence probably is related to the fact that the Arab Street has such a huge well of sympathy for those who chose to fight. There's more to it; I'll try to review the book--though I'm not promising anymore.)

Events have rushed way past the pathetic Ms. Rice and her advisers. Israel/Palestine has become insignificant to the welfare of the troops or to the stability of Iraq. What she’s doing is too little too late. I understand that she’s likely struck a deal with rich Saudi Arabia: to rent the troops out to them in exchange for kindness towards Israel. But the epicenter of instability had shifted a long time ago to Iraq, possibly to involve Kuwait. It’s no longer Israel/Palestine. Israel can stew in its own juice of chauvinism and ghetto-ism. Both it and Palestine are isolated. The epicenter had shifted away when Rice and her cohorts invaded–--no scenarios for possibilities, no imagination. It happened when she, a weakling, failed in the most elemental requirement of a new job: to define the task, and fast.

Yes, there has been for a long time a need to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if only to de-link it from other hot spots. But if the idiots are doing this in the hope of buttressing a united Arab-Israeli front against Iran, it won’t work. Any Israeli troops anywhere in the Arab world would spell the end of the Arab leaders who invited them. Not to mention that the Israelis have been defeated twice. Hizballah defeated them in its war of liberation of Lebanon’s south in the 1980s and 1990s and, again, Hizballah defeated them when it took the war inside Israel last summer. This signaled that a victory, clear-cut, has become impossible for the Israelis and, by extension, for the United States. As a result, no one (including Arab puppet governments) really thinks highly of what Israel can offer militarily.

Not to mention that the mass murder of 1200 Lebanese civilians, fleeing, under the "theory" of collective punishment (wonder who from they adapted this?), nauseated the Europeans, neighbors of the Arabs.

If the idiots are doing it to buttress a united Arab front against Iran, without Israel, they should know, shouldn’t they (I’m reasoning with idiots), that the Shia-Sunni rift they and Jordan had unleashed has weakened this putative front’s effectiveness, severely. And they shouldn’t under-estimate Arab Syria’s ability to derail this effort. (Syria’s hyper Arab diplomacy in preparation for the recently held Arab Summit in Riyadh was truly impressive.) Syria, allied to Iran, can provide more protection to countries such as Kuwait than the entire American armada.

YET ANOTHER AMERICAN ILLUSION

The harmful idiots are delusional. They really believe that Saudi Arabia can deliver in Israel/Palestine (if so, only temporarily, unless the Israelis take Hamas seriously as a negotating party) and in Iraq (dream on.) Hello? What troops does Saudi Arabia have? Haven’t the idiots understood that controlling the ground (as their insignificant asset Abdel Halim Khaddam used to say about Syria in Lebanon) equals negotiating power? He should’ve added that such control has to be done by Arabs and Muslims, with an ideological mission of one kind or another, not by poor and clueless American troops.

But the Saudi King doesn’t seem to be concerned about not having fighting troops. King Abdallah is said to have lectured Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad by reminding him that the American naval armada in the Gulf was not there for "vacationing." (Financial Times, March 27, 2007, at 2–article by Roula Khalaf.) Doesn’t this confirm this newsletter’s analysis that U.S. troops, once mercenaries for oil and Israel, now are mercenaries for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf countries? Are we having Bandar bin Sultan and Ehud Olmert (who recently warned that a U.S. pullout from Iraq would result in the fall of Jordan’s government) define American strategy? What’s their training? What’s their bias?

THE NEED FOR FLEXIBILITY

Get the troops out, now. You have Al-Adid to provide conventional deterrence. Dispatch Immigration and Naturalization Service agents to Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt to clear people for visas, all those who cooperated (called "collaborators") in the occupation. (Mr. Maliki should be at the front of the queue.) Saudi Arabia and Kuwait can take care of Iran by paying it off, as they should’ve done with Saddam Hussein, instead of subscribing to the ideas of the harmful idiots to starve and humiliate the Iraqis.

Get the troops out, not only because of opposition at home. Get them out because they don’t stand a chance. Be flexible. Don’t let events out-race you. Avoid a Lebanon-like 1983 tragedy, on a far larger scale.




Idiots.