“ILLEGITIMATE OCCUPATION”

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The harmful idiots are perplexed. Why, they wonder, did King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia refer to the American occupation of Iraq as occupation, as illegitimate?

The answer: The current Saudi leadership is re-casting itself (or trying) as nationalist pan-Arab and serious pan-Sunni. With all that money, hope springs eternal in the Kingdom. The goal is to persuade all, including and especially the Arab Street, to join together in a front against Iran, while the Americans are preparing to bomb and oil prices to shoot through the roof.

COMPETING OVER THE KURDS–PART I.

Just this morning (Sunday, April 1), I caught on the news that the occupation prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has offered a deal to the Arabs of Kirkuk. The government would pay them $15,000 (for each family?) and give them land in their towns of origin to encourage them to leave Kirkuk.

Kirkuk and the area around it sit on at least 50% (possibly 60%) of the oil in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s government had engaged in a campaign to push the Kurdish population out of that city, and supplant it with the Arab, both Shia and Sunni.

Maliki in the past had insisted that Kirkuk was Arab. Why did he change his mind?

BUTTRESSING A PART ALL-ARAB(SHIA-INCLUSIVE) , A PART ALL- SUNNI (NO SHIA ALLOWED) HYBRID FRONT AGAINST IRAN

Maliki, though seemingly cooperating with the Americans, is really trying to get his state to stay afloat until these leave. He, probably in coordination with Iran, had been systematic in counseling Muqtadha as-Sadr to hide away and not face off with the Americans. The harmful idiots never really liked or trusted Maliki but they didn’t have much of a choice–so long as he cooperated with them, albeit reluctantly.

As revealed in this newsletter in previous posts, Saudi Arabia had been flirting with the two main Kurdish leaders, Masoud Barazani and Jalal Talabani. The latter, at the recent Arab summit held in Riyadh, said something similar to what the Saudi King had uttered, though more diplomatically. Likely on the American taxpayer’s payroll (along with his Peshmerga), he said that the liberation had turned into occupation. (Now he’s likely on the Saudi payroll, too, along with his Peshmerga.) Barazani recently visited the Kingdom multiple times (I believe three–don’t hold me to it); once for days and in the presence there of Iyad Allawi–the CIA man who now probably is financed by Saudi and Kuwaiti intelligence.

(Always be mindful of the concept of "Cargo cults.")

In essence, the Saudis are trying to buttress a Sunni front against the Shia and Iran. The Saudis seem to have co-opted Hamas (the jury’s out on this; we’ll have to wait to see what the Israelis will do); by co-opting it, they hope to co-opt such organizations as the Muslim Brothers. Jordan’s King seems to be in near-total agreement with his own Muslim Brothers, the powerful Front of Islamic Work, itself quite close to Hamas.

THE ALL-SUNNI POWER COMPETING WITH ALL-SHIA POWER IN POOR AND WRETCHED LEBANON

As part of the same effort, Saudi Arabia has been dispatching money to extremist Sunni groups in Lebanon, especially in the north and among the Palestinian refugees. The idea is to provide military balance to Hizbollah. Unless they have gone to the Harmful Idiots College (HIC) in Washington, D.C., the Saudis should be aware that their effort in Lebanon will not bear much fruit. Hizbollah and Syrian intelligence should be able to whip these Sunni Islamists any time they choose. In the north, I suspect, Syrian intelligence should be well-organized and widespread. This intelligence service can count on the help of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). (Elements in this party are the chief suspects in the cold-blooded murder of the young Pierre Gemayyel last year.)

The other Saudi allies, Jumblatt and Geagea, directly or via Saad Hariri and the harmful idiots, are basically useless. Jumblatt hardly has anyone to stand up to Hizbollah. The Druze have been dis-multiplying since the nineteenth century. Geagea is perceived as an Israeli agent and is disliked by many Christians for the killings his men had committed against fellow Christians during the war, and for spreading that war to the Shouf mountains, pitting Druze (and Syrian/Palestinian troops dressed as members of the Druze Socialist Party) against Christians–something the Shouf Christians had not bargained for or wanted. Moreover, he faces off with Michel Aoun, the former army general, who’s by far the most popular among the Christians.

Aoun, in his attempt to secure a role for the Christians in Lebanese politics and society, has allied his people to Hizbollah. No one can afford protection for the Christian minority but the Shia, his thinking probably goes. This is reinforced when he witnesses streaks of Sunni Islamic extremism financed by the Kingdom. The Shia are smart warriors and had not been exhausted and drained by the Lebanon civil war. Aoun couldn’t ignore their magnanimity (shahama) when they liberated south Lebanon. They did not commit a single act of revenge against the southern Christians.

Should the Sunni Islamists become yet more aggressive against the Christians, including those ringers on the payroll of Syrian intelligence (as the ones who --somewhat--recently placed a bomb in a bus in a Christian neighborhood to undermine Amin Gemayyel) expect Aoun to bring this up with Hizbollah and the latter with Syrian intelligence. We know what you're up to. You murder Christians in Amin Gemayyel's district to discredit him. But you end up murdering Christians who likely are Aoun supporters and discrediting our ally, not Amin Gemayyel. Such would be Hizbollah’s message to Syrian intelligence.

In short, the Christians–be they followers of Aoun or Geagea-- are no longer in a fighting mood. One disaster is plenty. They’ve gotten smart. They’ve fought Israel’s wars to the tune of their near-total annihilation and that of the country they had created. In addition, they witnessed the harmful idiots and their Israeli beloved leave them out to dry when these needed Syria to give an Arab cover to the harmful idiots’ shenanigans with Iraq--the so-called liberation of Kuwait, after an Iraqi occupation which they themselves (along with Kuwaiti intelligence) had invited to entrap Saddam Hussein--to destroy his armies. Never again.

Aoun has effectively used the symbol of the presidency in his mobilization of the Christians. These typically rally around that Office, which the Ta’if agreement that "ended" the Lebanon civil war, had made marginal. The Christian Presidency therefore, through coalition-building, could now count on the the Shia and only them to make it relevant once again.

(Predominately, Geagea and the Lebanese Forces are popular among the Lebanon diaspora and relatively unpopular inside Lebanon. I believe the reason is that the diaspora is filled with people who had fought with Geagea. Typical of immigrants, many among them freeze politically and even culturally, at the point when they leave their home country. Consider the Cubans of Miami. Aoun’s was the army and had not recruited among the civilians as did Geagea’s militia. The civilians typically emigrate in search of a living. The army people emigrate less. They sort of own the state and its services.)

In Lebanon, in the Gulf, and in Iraq, Saudi Arabia has made it look as if it’s cooperating with Iran, and vice versa. But this "cooperation" conceals a lot of tension.

HOW (NOT) TO RE-CREATE ARAB NATIONALIST LEADERS

In its effort to buttress a united Sunni, vaguely pan-Arab (to include the Shia), front, Saudi Arabia has had to re-create leaders who would be credible among the Arabs and the Sunni. King Abdallah, having allied the Kingdom with the harmful idiots in the invasion and devastation of a fellow Arab and Muslim country, certainly is not credible among the Arabs and Muslims. Nor is Bandar bin Sultan who, I suspect, is despised by the Arabs and Muslims. Prince Bandar is seen as America’s strong man in Saudi Arabia and the executor of the wishes of the harmful idiots and those of the Israelis.

(The Arab public probably would forgive King Abdallah, knowing that he had been under immense pressure by a Pentagon that had been taken over by the Jewish Right–the Defense Policy Board. But that was then and now is now. Why is he so enamored by the same Jewish right and one of its hooraying Jewish liberals? That discredits his new pan-Arab persona without obtaining any benefits for the Kingdom.)

Okay, so you need an Arab nationalist leadership, a new team. But you face a tremendous obstacle: the royalty/family succession system is such that no one resigns their post (similar to ours) , or is asked to leave their office (somewhat like ours), or is voted out (unlike ours.) In principle, to draw the Arab and Sunni world behind the Kingdom, Arab nationalist members of the royal family would have to take over the rein of government. There still would be no assurance of success, but it would raise the possibility for such. Sultan, the Crown Prince, is not an Arab nationalist leader–to say the least.

Viewing the constraints of the succession/family system, the idea men (and women?) behind Saudi policy had no one to work with but King Abdallah, to re-cast him as the Arab (mostly Sunni) nationalist figure. (By the way this newsletter had suggested a similar course a while ago, but it should’ve been obvious to all that a new team would have to personify this change.)
In order to appeal to the Arab Street, the Saudi leadership is trying to re-cast itself as Arab nationalist, not beholden to the harmful idiots. This would be one way to draw into its fold the Arab public. Such should allow it to hammer together an effective anti-Iran front. (If you’ve wondered why Ahmadi-Nejad makes such outrageous anti-Israel statements, it’s because he’s competing with the established and weak Arab leaders over popularity among the Arab Street.)

The great majority of Arabs and Sunni strongly resent the devastation of Iraq by U.S. troops. They see the destruction of Iraq, a country that’s dear to them, as the work of the harmful idiots: the Jewish Right, Evangelical Crusading Right, and the hooraying Jewish liberals. It’s not like the "liberation " and occupation of Iraq were spearheaded by the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arabic Studies. They were, as would be the bombing of Iran, spearheaded by the likes of the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings, as the latter is now part of the Israel lobby since it houses the Israel-centric Saban Center. (One guy there had wanted Iraq invaded, was running all around town hooraying–in effect-- the orphan-ing of children, and now refuses to stop babbling away, though he wants us to wait before we bomb Iran since even he, the harmful idiot he is, realizes that already we have bitten more than we could chew.)

In effect, the Arab public has seen an Israeli agenda in the invasion of the Arab country. Their Palestinian brothers and sisters already were disenfranchised in one Nakbah; are they to sit through the disenfranchising of their Iraqi Arab brothers and sisters?

The new and improved King Abdallah, by calling the American occupation of Iraq as such, and as illegitimate, is appealing to this Arab and Sunni public–including Hamas and the Muslim Brothers–the Street.

THE KING DIDN’T MEAN IT, O HARMFUL IDIOTS

Now: Can Abdallah afford to see the U.S. withdraw? After all, damning the occupation is bound to play into the hands of the anti-war people in the U.S.

It’ll pass, is probably the King’s thinking. I think the King is hoping that the harmful idiots would understand his statement for what it was–as explained above--and stay in Iraq to help out in the hoped-for coming offensive against the southern Shia. He’s probably immensely grateful for this newsletter to have explained his thinking. (You’re welcome.) But even if he didn’t explain it to them, Barazani, Talabani and multiple others would have had. These are all part of the same Saudi strategy. All have tried to scare the wits out of the Iraqi Sunni by making statements that should the U.S. withdraw, the Arab Sunni should expect to be annihilated. (I’m using the words they would’ve liked to use.)

The Kurdish leaders’ statements are part of the campaign to try and subdue the Iraqi Sunni to accept American protection. That would allow the U.S. to stay in Iraq to sooner or later defeat Iran and make the Saudis happy. (Only some Arab Sunni are biting. Lucky for the cracking but still relatively united Arab Sunni front, Maliki has been cooperative enough with the harmful idiots that these could not get rid of him. Seeing Maliki for what he is, the Sunni still are highly mistrustful of his state--that it can ever protect their interest. Should they become desperate to bring in Allawi or one of his generals, watch for an assassination attempt against Maliki, or a visa to the Mission Bay pier in San Diego.)

Appealing to the greater majority of Arabs and Sunni was the King’s way of appealing to the Arab Sunni of Iraq, too. When the U.S. leaves, the Saudis are hoping to forge an alliance (under Allawi) of Arab Sunni and Kurds–peppered by some Shia (Fadhila)--a military alliance that would defeat the de facto Shia State in the south and clip Iran’s wings as a result. (The Saudis must be paying through the nose for the Kurds to join in.)

COMPETING OVER THE KURDS–PART II

Knowing that, Maliki (a hidden ally of Iran) made his offer to the Arabs of Kirkuk, in effect promising to have his government approve of Kirkuk as part of an autonomous Kurdish part of Iraq.

The problems with King Abdallah’s Iraqi part of the pan-Arab/Sunni strategy are so many–so many: Here are some:

-- For one, Turkey will not accept Kurdish control over Kirkuk. And the Saudis are unlikely to obtain the Kurds’ support without promising them Kirkuk. The Turks: No way under this sun.

--The Arab Sunni will never accept Kurdish control over Kirkuk;

--And the money the Saudis are pumping into Iraqi Sunni groups to accept an alliance with the Kurds will result in an intra-Sunni civil war. (We’re seeing this now.)

--Just as Saudi Arabia has proxies in Iraq–resistance groups willing to subscribe to its "plan"-- so does Syria and, indirectly Russia.

--Not to mention that Iranian intelligence should be glad to provide weapons and financing even to Sunni groups that are killing Shia, so long as they are fighting other Sunni, too. (I’m letting my imagination roam.)

--Not to mention that the southern Shia could take over the mantle of sectarian strife and explode the Maliki puppet state with nothing to replace it.

--Not to mention that the Israelis would have to cooperate, withdraw, respect age-old UN Sec. Council Resolutions, blah blah blah...Forever refusing to accept reality–that the days of supremacy of the colonialist West are over, technologically--the Israelis are still waiting to win the next war and be dominant–all that from their ghetto. Hope does spring eternal.

--Not to mention that the very idea of a pan-Sunni front excludes the Arab Shia, and a pan-Arab front dilutes the anti-Iran effort. Darn.

ARAB NATIONALISM REVISITED

That’s it: Arab nationalism under a Saudi team that colluded with the harmful idiots and the Jewish Right to destroy an Arab and Muslim country and orphan children. Will it work? Under a Saudi team that lacks credibility? I wouldn’t bet the (ethanol-producing) farm on it.

Will attacking Iran make it work? No. Since Syria and Hizbollah should be expected to ignite their front–at least Lebanon’s–and the entire Arab Street will see yet another Israeli carnage of Lebanon’s civilians, and would link America’s aggression on Iran to the pictures of ashen Lebanese Arab children.

If not attack Iran, then what? Probably push Maliki out and move U.S. troops into the south to clip Iran’s wings. Will it work? No. For one, the anti-war movement here has gained so much momentum it’ll vote down most Republicans as a result of more U.S. casualties and limitless "investment" without any cheaper oil "returns."

All warring options suck.

Back to the drawing board for the Saudis. Can’t do: Succession's set in concrete.