THE HARMFUL IDIOTS UNLEASH JORDAN’S PRINCE HASAN AGAINST THE SAUDIS–A CORRECTION.

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Boy was I wrong!

In my analysis in the April 23 post, "Of (Arab) Blood and (Saudi) Greed." I discussed an interview given by once Crown Prince Hasan of Jordan in which he was said to have criticized Bandar bin Sultan, without naming him, for helping to unleash Sunni-Shia tension and strife to contain Iran.

In that same interview, which never aired, Prince Hasan was said to have criticized the use by the Saudi government of the holy places as sites for signing inter-Arab agreements. Prince Hasan was said to have accused the Saudi government of misusing these sites to achieve Saudi political ends.

A recent article in the April 30 New York Times (" A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key") by Helene Cooper and Jim Ruthenberg reveals facts that, in the end, prove me wrong in my analysis. This article makes it necessary that I re-visit and correct what Prince Hasan’s alleged statements were all about..

With the New York Times article as background, Prince Hasan’s alleged statements to al-Jazeerah should be seen as a lame attempt by the harmful idiots to retaliate against Bandar and the Saudi government–and not anything else.

Why? Cooper and Ruthenberg reveal that the Bush administration is eminently displeased with Bandar and King Abdallah. The Administration feels that Bandar has misled it more than once. That same Administration, too, is displeased with the Mecca Accord–an achievement for Saudi diplomacy, but one that the Bush team felt had torpedoed Rice’s scintillating efforts to isolate Hamas.

To retaliate for losing full control over the now rich Saudis, the harmful idiots checked their colonialist play book for ideas. They came up with the accusation that Bandar, all alone, and without their aiding and abetting, and that of Jordan’s, had devised and implemented the sleazy policy of the Axis-of-the-Helpless (The U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel) to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shia to contain Iran.

Resorting to such a lame threat–to present Prince Hasan as, once again, the Hashemite pretender to the post of Defender of the Holy Sites–is a caricature of the club raised against Saudi Arabia by the Jewish Right’s Defense Policy Board on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Then, Kissinger, Perle and company on that Board not so indirectly floated the idea of breaking up Saudi Arabia. Now the harmful idiots are paralleling the Jewish Right’s stratagem by floating their own break-the-Kingdom idea, this time with Hashemite Prince Hasan as the tool. The Hijazis can’t wait.

About the use by the Saudis government of the Holy Places as sites to push along blood-sparing inter-Arab agreements such as the Mecca Accord...Oh well, maybe the Saudi government should’ve tried to use Amman instead. But then Jordan’s government, Prince Hasan included, would’ve had to seek permission from Israel. And the Saudis, for all their failings, still do have some self-respect.

All understand–including this newsletter– that Jordan needs the cargo the harmful idiots deliver. And, all understand that, to obtain the cargo, Jordan’s government has to service the idiots and the Israelis. But to criticize (the way Prince Hasan did–for the wrong reasons) a blood-sparing agreement among Arabs is stooping (way) too low.

FLASHBACK: February 5, 2007.

FOOL’S GOLD

By zein al-irban * (*pseudonym)

[...]

ESCALATING: THE SECRET AND IDIOT PLAN

The secret plan of the American Judeo-Christian right (their secret hope) is to use Maliki temporarily as a Shia cover to eliminate Muqtadha as-Sadr. Afterwards, the harmful idiots should rid themselves of Maliki. In other words, Maliki should provide a Shia cover for the military assault on the Mahdi Army. After defeating that army, the American colonial power should bring in its strong man–either Ayad Allawi or, more likely, one of his former Baathist generals. [...]

I couldn’t begin to describe the problems with this strategy. It’s so sophomoric, it’s hilarious--if it weren’t so tragic in results. It’ll certainly fail, one hundred percent. But only after costing us so much in blood and treasure.

For one, the Sadr people should melt away in the many towns in the south. For another, the Sunni targets of the American escalation should change the venue of their operations, from Baghdad to other towns--as they did recently by blowing up the innocent en masse in the Shia town of Hillah.

I don’t really buy the idea that Baghdad is key to the stability of Iraq. It’s fool’s gold. Putting out fires in Baghdad will only produce fires in other cities and towns: blowing up Shia by Sunni, and massacring Sunni wholesale by Shia death squads. It’ll only happen less in Baghdad and more in other places. [...]

STAYING POWER: THE HARMFUL IDIOTS V. THE RESISTANCE.

second ver y rrr oughand pollenfilleddraft. Culprit: oaktrees.

As a follow-up on a section in the last post ("Arab Blood and Saudi Greed") about comparative cost, I looked up some of the known estimates of the cost of the Iraq occupation.

BILMES/STIGLITZ AND THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE (CBO)

For the years between 2003 and 2016, Linda Bilmes and Jospeph E. Stiglitz (Nobel laureate economist) estimated late last year that the war could cost anywhere between $2 trillion and $2, 262 trillion.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for the same period (2003-2016), in the summer of last year, estimated that the Iraq war would cost anywhere between $493 billion and $697 billion.

I didn’t delve into the details on how each team had eached these figures. My aim was to develop a general idea about how much each U.S. soldier in the field costs per month, and to compare this to the seemingly paltry amount a resistance fighter costs. I did this to unravel the most important element in assessing staying power. One of course should keep in mind that casualties, though tragic, especially that they are the result of harmful ideological and biased impulse, in the end are translated into dollars in the United States.

The fact that the estimates for the cost of the American troops probably include health care for the disabled is of little effect. In other words, the argument that such expense should not be considered in comparing the cost of the resistance against the cost of the occupation, is a non-starter. Cost is cost. A disabled resistance fighter has his family and clan to care for him, imperfectly, on the cheap. There’s no government to speak of, so family and clan will have to do it. And maybe the mosque.

In contrast, an American soldier has a government to speak of. This government will have to attend to her needs, when disabled. The family is too busy consuming and paying taxes so that the harmful idiots can make a naked grab for another country’s oil and make Israel safe; and the clan in America had ceased to exist, while the church (the mosque) is preoccupied with pushing along reproduction, not very successfully.

THE MONTHLY COST OF THE RESISTANCE FIGHTER

I don’t have figures for the cost of the resistance. I have an idea based on my observation of Syrian troops in Lebanon where it was accepted that they didn’t make much–$30 to $60 per month, around ten years ago. In contrast, to make the point, a Lebanese soldier, working for a bankrupt state, was making about $300 per month.

One can safely estimate that the pay for the Iraqi resistance fighter is comparable to that of the Syrian soldier, and less to that of the Lebanese. But since we have a dollar glut, itself a major cause of imperial weakness that hadn't been accounted for by the Arab and Muslim-hating crowd of the Jewish right, its liberal adorers, and the Evangelical crusaders, we can be more generous in our estimate and hypothesize that the resistance fighter is costing $300 per month.

Not to belittle a major incentive: This is the resistance fighter’s war, not the American soldier’s. Let ‘s not forget. If anything, to travel from Morocco to Iraq to blow oneself up places the resistance fighter outside this capitalist reasoning altogether.

THE MONTHLY COST OF AN AMERICAN SOLDIER IN THE FIELD

Using both the CBO’s figure and that of Bilmes/Stiglitz, we can estimate that the war will cost between a minimum of $493 billion (CBO’s minimum) and a maximum of $2, 262 trillion (Bilmes/Stiglitz’s maximum). I’ll pick a figure in-between these two: $1, 4 trillion for a total of 13 years (2003-2016)

Per year, the cost should be $1,4 trillion/13years= @ $100billion.

$100 billion, yearly cost , divided by 12 month= @ $8,3 billion–the monthly cost.

Fighting in Iraq is somewhere between 150,000 and 175,000 troops. Let’s say 165,000 as an average

$8,3 billion, cost per month, divided by 165,000 troops= @ $ 50,000.

SUMMARY: COST PER MONTH:

Iraqi resistance fighter: $300 (three hundred dollars and no.)

U.S. soldier: $ 50,000 (Fifty thousand dollars and no.)

OF (ARAB) BLOOD AND (SAUDI) GREED

sortofthirdroughdraft (I'm avoiding real work!)

The evidence is mounting that the harmful idiots, via the Saudis, via Prince Bandar bin Sultan, are fueling sectarian tension and strife among the Arab Sunni and the Arab Shia. This blog in prior posts had addressed this suicidal, blood-thirsty, self-defeating, harmful, and idiotic policy.

HASAN BIN TALAL: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SELF-BLEEDING

Most recently, an al-Jazirah television show host, Ghassan Bin-Jiddu, at the Amman airport, was made to cough up a videotape of an interview with former Jordanian Crown Prince, Hasan Bin Talal, the King’s uncle.

The former crown prince in that interview was said to have criticized the Saudis, an "un-named prince" in particular. (Bandar bin Sultan, of course). One reason: Unleashing Sunni-Shia sectarian tension and strife. The Jordanian prince expressed his fear that such could set off sectarian wars for one hundred years. In addition, the former crown prince lamented the (mis-) use by Saudi leaders of the holy sites (e.g., Mecca al-Mukarramah) as convening places to mediate and sign intra-Arab accords meant to achieve (in essence) Saudi political goals. These accords , he was said to have told the al-Jazirah host, are pushed along under the guise of stopping the shedding of Arab blood.

(NOTE:

Prince Hasan is almost certainly an "asset" of the harmful idiots. (Warning: This observation is based on my ability to "smell" these things. ) His statements therefore could very possibly reflect the views of these, or, more likely, the views of some of them–the realists. My suspicion is that these should by now have had it with the Israel-anchored sophomores at the American intelligence services and their self-defeating ideas. These have taken us to defeat. And one defeat is plenty. Hence, likely, Prince Hasan’s criticism about Bandar.

More problematic was Prince Hasan’s criticism of the use by Saudi authorities of holy Islamic sites to push along agreements among Arab parties. The one agreement that comes to mind is the "Mecca Accord," an agreement between Hamas and Fatah. Could the realist faction be offended by the Mecca Accord? Why would it? It doesn’t make sense.

It could be that the realists are using Prince Hasan who, as a Hashemite, lays a claim as caretaker of the holy places, as a pressure point on the Saudi ruling team to get rid of Bandar at a minimum. But to target the alleged mis-use of the holy places by the royal governing team possibly shows that the realist faction within the American intelligence services had had it with that team altogether, and not only with Bandar. For that team, as with the Bush one, had taken us to defeat and should therefore go away.

I could be reading too much into Prince Hasan’s statements. He’s made at least one outrageous one in the past where, from France, he had called the American President a bad name. Quite daring for a likely asset.

At any rate, don’t hold your breath: Plus ca change...)

HIZBOLLAH CONFRONTS THE SAUDI-SPONSORED INTRA-MUSLIM CIVIL WAR (FITNAH)

Pepe Escobar recently wrote in Asia Times about his trip to Lebanon. Hizbollah officials revealed to him that they were all too aware that Bandar was behind the sleazy attempts to ignite sectarian strife. Bandar, the former Saudi Ambassador to Washington, D.C., is, for all practical purposes, a Middle Eastern extension of the harmful idiots.

This newsletter has repeatedly warned that the harmful idiots were behind the extremely dangerous scheme of igniting civil strife among Shia and Sunni. They’re desperate. They’re stuck between the rock (Iraq) and the hard place (the Israel-anchored White House). Iraq is unmanageable; the White House wants them to last in the Iraqi quagmire for the balance of Mr. Bush’s term.

This newsletter has warned that such a policy, using huge volumes of Saudi oil money, will bring tons of misery and instability onto the Arabs. Moreover, even a morally and ethically deficient person, but one who’s not an idiot, should see that this policy would not achieve its stated goal–to contain Iran.

For one, this policy practically delivers the Arab Shia to Iran on a silver platter. And it delivers others, such as the Shia of non-Arab Pakistan and Afghanistan. In other words, this policy concedes jurisdiction to Iran of a sizeable part of the Muslim Arabs. This should give Iran a near-permanent hold onto those Arabs and Muslims, consolidating its stature and regional reach.

This policy is dangerous for yet another reason, too complex for harmful idiots to understand, and complex enough for me to articulate. I’ll try.

HIZBOLLAH AS DEFENDER OF THE ARAB UNITY ETHOS

Multiple accidents of history have prevented Arabs from uniting. But the ethos of unity is very powerful, especially among the masses, and even among the majority of the elite. The only way I can explain this to culturally-deficient, Israel-anchored, harmful idiots is to liken this drive to the democratic ethos in America. Steven Cohen, one of my best friend from grad school, now a professor, had always pointed to me how powerful that ethos was, especially that he sees it repeatedly in public policy projects in which he becomes involved. And I’ve been witness to the same since. Now, since I practice law, I’ve been witness to another aspect of the democratic ethos–a sense of fairness and justice called due process. True, we’re way less democratic now since we’re been watched 24 hours a day, thanks to post-September 11 laws; but the democratic ethos lives on.

To sum up the comparison: Our democracy is now hugely a mirage, but our democratic ethos is alive and well. For Arabs: Arab unity is hugely a mirage; but the spiritual quest for it, too, is alive and well.

When such rich powers as Saudi Arabia and the United States push along a blood-thirsty policy to divide and subjugate Arabs, on behalf of (in the end) a stubbornly colonialist power, Israel, then the force that would oppose this barbaric policy should rise to the top. That force of resistance should gain prominence. All the Muslims and Arabs, even if swayed by the mix of Saudi money and American-Israeli-Saudi colonialist schemes, should appreciate the force of resistance–any force of resistance--which keeps the dream (ethos) of Arab unity (now Islamic Arab) alive. That force now is Arab Shia. Its vanguard is Hizbollah

(NOTE:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m all too aware of Hizbollah’s terrorist connections, Imad Mughniyyah, blah blah blah. They’re mostly true. But the Arab Street, provider of the resistance fighters, doesn’t give a hoot about all of this; and we’re sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire where the Israel-centric views, obsessed by terrorism (its sympathizers here have all but monopolized the definition of terrorism and many of the anti-terrorism jobs) have ensnared us into policies based on never-ending illusions. So forgive me for not partaking in illusions and idiocy. Defeat is sobering (we hope) and provides those of us who are not Israel-anchored a chance to save the life of maybe one U.S. soldier from the stupidity of his/her Israel-anchored, Saudi royalty pleasing, leaders.)

THE SAUDIS SPILL MUSLIM BLOOD TO PROTECT THEIR USURIOUS LOANS TO LEBANON

According to Pepe Escobar, Bandar, the point man in Saudi Arabia’s policy to ignite an intra-Muslim/intra-Arab civil war, has taken his harmful initiative to Lebanon. Why Lebanon? Why such interest?

I don’t have the figures, but here’s what I (not Pepe) suspect lies at the heart of Saudi interest in Lebanon: it’s money–tens of billions of it. The Hariri family is an extension of the Saudi royal family, whose wealth is understandably immense. The Hariri family, I’m told, "owns" two Lebanese banks. Which means that the Saudi royals own these banks, via the Hariris, or likely both own them together. These two banks, it’s said, have lent the Lebanese state the lion’s share of that state’s estimated $42 billion debt–at terrifically artificial and usurious interest rates. Chances are so much better that a Hariri government will pay back that debt than a Hizbollah-influenced government.

In other words, Bandar bin Sultan, in Lebanon, spilling intra-Muslim blood, is really protecting the financial interests of the Saudi royals. It’s not enough that these banks (and the Saudi royals behind them) probably have made their money many times over. Greed knows no limit even among brothers.

(It's also known that the Saudi royals own an unspecified amount of real estate in Lebanon. I suspect a lot of it. They own it through the Hariri family and through front personalities.)

(NOTE:

How did this all happen? How did the Saudi royals end up owning Lebanon? It began when an extension of the Saudi royal family and the harmful idiots, the late Rafiq al-Hariri, returned to Lebanon after the two forces (royals and harmful idiots) paid his way into the office of Premiership. There, he forged ahead with outrageously grandiose government construction projects where he had the state he controlled (the joke in Lebanon is that the Hariris own most of the judges) borrow from his two banks, likely owned by the Saudi royals and himself, at usurious rates, to finance these projects. So he and his Saudi royal extension, I suspect, made money twice: once by outright fraud, channeling contracts to family members at non-market rates, and another by charging usurious interest by the banks they owned to the state to pay for the grandiose construction projects!)

(NOTE:

So, you see, the harmful idiots are masters of sponsoring corruption. Is there a revolving door here, too? Does anyone know? Carlysle-like? I feel like a college freshman thinking this way. But I wouldn’t even have given this a thought had it not been for the defeat in Iraq, the sadistic annihilation of an Arab country, and the repercussions of developing corrupt assets. This awakened me to the harmful idiots’ role in annihilating Lebanon. There's a dire need to re-formulate the criteria for chossing foreign assets by this government.)

Saudi policy therefore (to protect its financial stake in Lebanon and force that country to continue to pay the royals interest, by keeping the Hariris in power--via Seniora or whoever) melts into the harmful idiots’ Israeli-anchored sophomoric, and needlessly harmful, policy : to wipe out Hizbollah by (among other things) training Jumblatt and Geagea men in Israel to counter-assassinate, and assassinate.

The policy of dividing the Muslims of Lebanon seems to be bearing some fruit. For instance, historically, the Sunni of Tripoli, Lebanon’s northern city, had been at the forefront of Arab nationalism. But in the last parliamentary elections, they voted for the Hariri list. It’s unclear whether they did so because Hariri paid for the votes (not a secret in Lebanon) or because the policy of dividing the Muslim Arabs had worked. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. The irony of ironies, though, is that Hariri and Bandar are financing Sunni extremists who, in the end, should turn on them at any moment that Israel attacks. Not to mention that Syria should be able to infiltrate these Islamists relatively easily since Syria carries still a lot of weight in Tripoli and northern Lebanon.

Back to the ethos/dream of Arab unity. If Hizbollah senses that the colonial policy of divide and conquer is gaining strength in Iraq or Lebanon (e.g., in Lebanon, the international tribunal as a tool to defeat it and Syria), it will counteract it by igniting the Lebanese-Israeli front and/or the internal front in Israel/Palestine. True, UNIFIL troops stand in-between Hizbollah and Israel. But should Hizbollah, now the champion of Arab Muslim unity, of the ethos/dream, sense that matters are getting out of hand, it’ll start eating away at the UNIFIL troops. The ways are many. (It should start by southern Lebanese children, who would make great baseball batters, spinning Biblical rocks at this or that UNIFIL contingent.) We have learned, haven’t we, that Western troops can be cowardly. Consider the fifteen British sailors who caved in to nothing when snared by Iran’s Guard of the Islamic Revolution. Consider how they failed to fire a single shot.

Consider, too, the experience in Iraq where even relatively mild losses would spark domestic calls in European countries to withdraw their contingents from Iraq. In short, Western troops are eminently unreliable (e.g., the Italians), all talk (e.g., the Brits), or outright useless (e.g., the Australians.) Or smart enough to stay out of Iraq yet, under the pressure of illusions and to protect the Saudi $40 billion usurious loans, idiot enough to head to Lebanon (e.g., the French.)

STAYING POWER

Since all know that the harmful idiots are driving our country bankrupt, the challenge would be to assess the staying power of each party. Here, it strikes me as hilarious that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe that they can outlast Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran–that Saudi money can do it for them (e.g., by taking over the cost of recruiting the mercenary Peshmerga. Don't you love it how the Kurds, using our money, are paying for a public relations campaign in the U.S.?)

COMPARATIVE COST:

How can the Bush team believe that the U.S. can outlast the others? Do the calculus: A resistance fighter could not cost more that $300 per month, "salary" and cost of basically primitive weapons (road-side bombs, AK-47, chlorine.) In contrast, an American soldier costs a small fortune, maybe $10,000 per month: Rayban sunglasses, up-to-date weaponry, bottled water, MASH units, surgeons, medics, copters, around the clock email access... (For a better calculus one would need to divide the billions in cost by the number of troops on the ground.)

So you see why Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, courageously stated the obvious: that the battle in Iraq has been lost. I’ll add that it was and is lost both in Iraq and Lebanon. This blog has addressed the defeat in Iraq multiple times.

In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia’s Hariri remains in power (superficially) only because Hizbollah, acting as defender of the Arab unity ethos, will not be the one to destroy that ethos by cutting all ties with the Saudi government ("regime" to Tony Blair until the Saudis coughed up $15 to $70 billion in arms contracts). But should that government and its harmful idiot allies push too far, Hizbollah should be expected, with absolute certainty, to come to defense of the Arab unity ethos, and itself.

WHAT TO EXPECT

If Hizbollah is pushed into a corner,

--We should expect Israel (eventually) to re-invade and criminally spread American goodies (cluster bombs, though now Israeli-made) over Lebanon, for the benefit of its Arab children. (There was a time, a time of the Presbyterians and the Methodists and other missionaries, when America spread colleges and education. Now it’s education for the rich, in the Gulf, and cluster bombs, "shock -'n-awe,’ and bombing back to the stone age for the Arab poor.)

--We should expect the Arab Street to mobilize in support of Hizbollah (and Syria). (The Street now has networks; it no longer heads to the actual streets to demonstrate. It got smart.)

--We should expect the arming the pro-Syrian Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to help out against the Israelis and against the Saudi-financed pro-Israel (temporarily--in the long-run, they're not) Hariri Islamists.

--We should expect more weapons to the resistance in Iraq, this time quality weapons capable of downing planes and copters by the dozens.

--We should expect an operation or two inside Kuwait, as a shot across the bow of the harmful idiots, that the forces that be are willing to expand the conflict; (It matters little that the head of Kuwait’s National Security Organization, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahed, would recently make Arab nationalist statements to the effect that Kuwait will be the last one to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and that Jihad (in Palestine) is legitimate so long as there’s occupation. Kuwait has exhausted Iraq financially and my antennae tell me there are tons of Iraqi Islamists, both Shia and Sunni, who are waiting for the right time to exact revenge.)

--We should expect an endless stream of assassination attempts in Lebanon and attempts against Saudi royal family members wherever they may be found.

--We should expect a more generous financing of al-Qaeda, money meant for Iraq, but spread by al-Qaeda to allied para-military opposition groups in other countries, as we’ve witnessed recently in Algeria and Morocco.

DISARRAY AND...THE EGYPTIAN-SAUDI COMEDY ACT

Seondrrrrrrroughnondraftnot

VICTORY FOR THE AMERICAN-ISRAELI ALLIANCE IN EGYPT TURNS INTO DEFEAT...IN IRAQ

The harmful idiots took their policy to split and slice the Arab World on behalf of Israel too far in Iraq. Along with their Israeli ally, at Camp David, the harmful idiots had sidelined Egypt. They turned it into a true plantation, a beggar-country, led by Uncle Toms. As a result, Egypt became insignificant regionally. Too, the consistently high demand for oil, in part the result of the dollar glut, in part to rumors-of-war speculation, has all but stripped Saudi Arabia of its influential status as "swing producer."

In short, both sets of elite–the Uncle Toms of Egypt and the kiss-Israel’s-ass princes of Saudi Arabia–have become eminently irrelevant.

But to read the Egyptian press one is led to think otherwise. The Egyptian establishment elite talks about Egypt as leader of the Arabs. This elite is disturbed by the attempts of its Saudi counterpart to wedge Egypt’s elite out of the alleged Arab leadership role. Absolutely delusional! Why? The Egyptian establishment elite had ceased to be Arab when it had left the Arabs behind, signing a peace agreement with Israel, separate from Syria, and failing to include the Palestinians.

For its part, the Saudi elite lost any and all Arab credibility when it colluded with the harmful idiots to destroy Arab Iraq–its Sunni, in particular. Mission accomplished! Congratulations to King Abdallah, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and all their Saudi associates.

And yet these two sets of elite believe they are competing over leadership of the Arab World. They choose to ignore their very recent past.

Oh well, denial is not a river in ....Egypt.

So the Egyptian establishment elite is busy competing–only in its mind–with the Saudi on who should be leading the Arab World. True, Saudi Arabia has the money, they argue , but Egypt has the oldest state, possibly in the world. Egypt has tradition and bureaucracy--way too intricate for the "poor" Saudis to match.

DELUSIONAL PRETENDERS

Sadly for the Arab World, both countries’ elite are delusional pretenders. Neither has the armies; both sets of leaders are perceived by their own streets as traitors or sissies–hush-hush in Saudi Arabia and not so hush-hush in Pharaoh’s Egypt. All Hizbollah need do is ignite the Lebanese-Israeli front to have the Arab Street stand behind it, as defender of Arab honor, patriots and true men in the world of Arab agents of Israel, of the harmful idiots, Uncle Toms, and Arab sissies.

Iran, my dears, is now the defender of the Arab World and its unchallenged leader, as is Hizbollah. Unless the Iranians screw it up by failing to control their Persian chauvinism, they ‘ll continue to be the leaders of the Arab World–not the Saudis and not the Egyptians.

Both Saudis and Egyptians are now under the protection of the American-Israeli alliance. They would like to be under the protection solely of the Americans. But the masters insist that they give Israel a role–darn it!–among their brotherly ranks. Saudi princes and the Egyptian establishment elite oblige. Meanwhile, therapeutically, only the Iraqi resistance gives both sets of elite a sense of manhood. And Hizbollah. Very little else does. ("little," "manhood"–get it?) Grant it, they see the latter as a Shia (these aren’t Arab to the Saudi and the Egyptian elite) and as an arm of the Iranian state.

Yes Hizbollah is an arm of the Iranian state. But it’s a smart arm, way smarter than they, and a populist Lebanese political party, too. And way less corrupt by any standards, to boot. If it weren’t for these two–the Iraqi resistance and Hizbollah–the Saudi and the Egyptian establishment delusional elite might as well check their balls at the doorstep of the holy American-Israeli alliance.

THE DILEMMA FOR THE PROTECTOR OF SAUDI ARABIA

The pretenders’ protector–the United States–is torn. Its leader wants to stay in Iraq in part to convince the Saudis and the Israelis that it’s not abandoning them. (No one really wants to occupy or blackmail Egypt, lest they go bankrupt.) But the harmful idiots aren’t Arab nor Muslim. Worse, they’re total and absolute allies of the Israelis, the tormentors of the Palestinian Arabs for generations. They’re of that Judeo-Evangelical mind set which had destroyed Arab Lebanon–all to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state. And now this same mind set has destroyed Iraq–and threatens to drag us--the American public--deeper and deeper into an endless, winless, and terrifically expensive war. This mind set will bankrupt us, no two ways about it.

The delusional pretenders for more than 60 years have failed to hammer together a Palestinian state. They beg Israel and the idiots. Nothing works. For forty years, these silly pretenders have failed to do anything about the suffering of their brothers and sisters under occupation. They don’t care.

The Egyptian pretenders had once even gone sadistic against Arabs: Anwar Sadat, the darling of the American Jewish community, its favorite Uncle Tom, had watched as Lebanon burnt in the 1970s. He would feign ignorance and confusion about what was taking place there. He was way too comfortable to bother, what with his Uncle Tom non-Arab status, kissing the ass of the Israelis and the harmful idiots during the day, and smoking his marijuana at night. (See Woodward’s Veil.)

Jamal Abdel-Nasser he was not.

GETTING OUT OF IRAQ IF ONLY TO GAIN FLEXIBILITY

This President will not withdraw from Iraq, not so much because he believes that he can turn things around. I don't see how he can. His goal likely is political; he wants to buy a couple of years. Importantly, he and the Vice-President don’t want to be blamed for defeat. And that’s a matter of definition.

While in this newsletter defeat took place at the very moment the decision was made to invade, the two men know with certainty that their right-wing populist constituency, made up of people who have become economically marginal thanks to their own government’s fostering of globalization, have a more simplistic definition of "defeat." Since these see jobs in war, they would see defeat only in withdrawal–nothing short of that. Their employment in the globalized economy is threatened– no unions to collectively bargain for them to secure a liveable wage. They only have the armed forces for lucrative employment. Otherwise, they’d need to wait for the Chinese to go on a spending spree to get our industrial and agricultural base moving–somewhat. (See "China Plans U.S. Spending Spree," Financial Times, April 14/April 15, 2007, at 5.)

To get out of Iraq, it would help (immensely) to think long-term. Absolutely avoid thinking short-term. Thinking out loud, and long-term, a variation of the following would need to be done:

1. Withdraw from Iraq. Most of the collaborators should be expected to end up in San Diego. Accept it.

2. Allow the civil war to rage in Iraq.

3. Pressure all neighboring countries to desist from direct intervention in Iraq. All will supply weapons and money each to its Iraqi horse. Can’t stop that.

4. The harmful idiots can make life easier on the Iraqis they made destitute by bringing in U.N. troops. These won’t stop the bloodshed, but they can erect safe havens within Iraq for the refugees.

5. Likely, an Arab Islamic state will evolve, sooner or later. It’ll be the embodiment of an alliance between Arab Sunni and Shia. The two will set themselves to regaining the north.

6. Turkey will be torn between reining in the Kurds and supporting them to stand up to the new Islamic state. Eventually, as with all, it’ll seek a more extensive involvement by the U.N.

7. An endless stream of refugees will continue to leave Iraq to neighboring countries. Have the U.N., the Red Cross and all NGOs ready.

( The Lebanese churches in the U.S. should see their parishes’ numbers double with Iraqi Christian refugees. Add an Iraqi cultural night to the yearly bazaars. And sell books. Everyone in the Arab World knows that, before the harmful idiots made them destitute, the Iraqi Arabs were the most avid readers–of all the Arabs. They truly cherished literature and bought umpteenth volumes. The saying had been, before the harmful idiots made Lebanon and Iraq destitute: " The Egyptians write; the Lebanese publish; and the Iraqis read.")

8. Eventually, Turkey and Iran will meet and settle their differences. Both may mediate an agreement between the Kurds and the Arab Islamic state. Both should be aware that neither can afford a war with the other.

9. The alliance between the new Islamic state in Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran should not (and will not) be set in concrete. In other words, the harmful idiots should wait to take advantage of any differences and be ready to support that state to balance Iranian power if and when it would need it. This will happen sooner or later, probably much later. Again: T h i n k l o n g-t e r m. The harmful idiots, who are bankrupting us, and the wealthy Europeans, need to be ready to pluck that state or, at the very least, modulate its bahavior.

10. The harmful idiots, with the assistance of the affluent Europeans, should work hard to de-militarize the Middle East, including their darling.

11. The harmful idiots will have a problem getting accepted by the local population in the states where they’re based–Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait–especially as this presence intensifies after withdrawal. Their presence, therefore, will have to be away from population centers. So many in these hate the idiots’s guts. Never forget that in the mind of the Arab Street, the idiots and the Israelis are one and the same. Which is terrifically perceptive and to the point.

12. The harmful idiots, in their sophomoric and self-defeating tactics against Iran and Hizbollah--recruiting Balochi Sunni, Kurds, Lebanese Christians and Druse--are bringing disaster onto themselves and the people from whom they’re recruiting. Their trainees will be infiltrated. You think up the rest. Do refrain from giving these people visas to the United States. Thank you.

13. The harmful idiots, of course, can strike a deal with the Iranians. Not a bad idea. But they should be aware that, unless a strong state evolves in Iraq, even if sponsored early on by the Iranians and the Syrians, no one but that state can balance Iranian power. Certainly not the United States, with its Israeli Achilles’ heel. And certainly not the silly pretenders. (Don’t believe Nawwaf Obeid. He’s just blowing sophomoric hot air. My advice to him: to move to Egypt where he can join the delusional choir, or check in with a therapist to treat his (political) delusional disorder. Here, I said it! Been holding it for a good while.)

14. The harmful idiots can use a total Israeli withdrawal from the Joulan Heights. That will not change Syria’s course immediately; but it should, eventually. Syria mistrusts the harmful idiots immensely. It’s weary of the idiots’ desperate mining of minorities (e.g., the illusion of Jumblatt as chief of the Druse in Lebanon, Israel, and Syria--a highly doubtful proposition--who can be used to unseat the Baath government in Syria. One can tell this advice to the idiots had come from the Israelis, being such a typically colonialist brand of advice.) It’ll take Syria a while to see the new and improved harmful idiots.

15. The harmful idiots can’t do all of this without help from politicians. They need cooperation at home to protect the American state from the globalization this state has so nurtured. The American state needs to suck the dollars out of the world market–the glut it created. By so doing, it’ll put some brakes on the wealth of some of its foes–the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians. It can do it either by raising interest rates or by taxation. Since the Federal Reserve doesn’t factor in the idiots’ self-inflicted dilemmas in setting rates, our fearless politicians (Congress and the President) will have to raise taxes if they care about the future of American power. Can’t wage war on the words of right wing "theoreticians" (read: Israel-obsessed idiots of the American Jewish Right) that Iraqi oil should in the end pay for the war.

DIVIDE, CONQUER, AND (HOPE TO) RULE IRAQ

....And the Brits cave in to...nothing! (See below: NOT THEIR WAR.)

secondroughdraft

The harmful idiots, while plugging holes, are pursuing the old colonial policy of divide-and-conquer, to rule Iraq.

DIVIDE-AND-RULE THE ARAB SHIA

The harmful idiots’ strategy among the Shia is to (effectively) side with Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) (for now) against Muqtadha as-Sadr of the Mahdi Army.

The recent assault on Diwaniyyah, still ongoing as I write this post, aims for elements of the Mahdi Army. Many among these had left Sadr City in Baghdad and had disappeared in southern Iraq, including Diwaniyyah.

Last November, in Diwaniyyah, Mahdi men had fought the Badr Brigade, Abdel Aziz Hakim’s militia, and defeated it. Since then they had controlled Diwaniyyah, including its police force.
Abdel Aziz Hakim, an arch-rival of Muqtadha as-Sadr, should certainly be thrilled that U.S. troops are routing Mahdi men. Revenge, at last! Only recently, four men were assassinated in the province of Qadissiyyah, including a representative of Abdel Aziz Hakim. Mahdi men were suspected of the killing. In essence, therefore, the U.S. in Diwaniyyah is coming to the aid of Hakim and his Badr Organization/Brigade.

It’s unclear where Maliki stands. His silence should put him squarely in the U.S.-Hakim (temporary) camp. Elements in the Mahdi Army have said as much. (Update: Just learned that the Iranian authorities didn't allow Maliki’s plane to fly over Iran on its way to Japan. Yep: they see him as siding with the harmful idiots to divide-and-rule the Shia.)

WILL THE ARAB SHIA DIVIDE AND ALLOW THE HARMFUL IDIOTS TO RULE?

Will the strategy of the harmful idiots work?

Unlikely-- highly.

Iran carries a lot of clout among all the Shia, Hakim included. A long time ago, this newsletter had carried a post titled "Double Agents No More" about SCIRI and Daawa. In essence, then, my thinking was that the U.S. may have succeeded in buying these two organizations off. That the money the U.S. had placed in the pockets of the SCIRI and Daawa leaders was of such amounts as to split them off Iran, once and for all. But events since have shown that SCIRI is unlikely to split from Iran. (Even the harmful idiots think so: Recall the arrest by the U.S. of Hakim’s son as he returned from Iran.) In other words, the harmful idiots’ money had always been welcome so long as the idiots worked to install a Shia regime in Iraq. Now that the idiots are catering to the Sunni, albeit with confused uncertainty, under pressure from the Saudis, all bets for the Shia are off. Even Hakim should know that in an American Iraq, he would have to play second fiddle to Iyad Allawi and accept a central government which would control the oil of the south. Why should he?

One should expect Iran to intervene and mend relations between SCIRI and Mahdi–to check their rivalry at each and every turn. Why? The Saudi-inspired policy of building up Sunni solidarity to contain the Arab Shia and Iran is by definition an anti-Shia policy. This policy has the total support of the harmful idiots who are nursing the illusion that they can erect an effective united front of Sunni regimes and Israel against Iran.

To cut to the chase: The anti-Shia policy of the Saudi geniuses, as approved and boosted by the harmful idiots, keeps the Shia out of the Arab camp. Disastrous, really. The Arab Shia, in response, should be aware that the Saudis and the idiots intend to reverse their rise, especially the Saudis. Blocked out of the Saudi-sponsored Sunni front, and the idiots-sponsored mirage of a front among Israel and the weak Arab Sunni regimes, the Shia will have no choice but to seek Iran’s help to protect their recent political gains. Iran, in turn , should reciprocate. Why? The Arab Shia are an Iranian line of defense against the harmful idiots–made more solid by their exclusion by the Saudis in the pan-Sunni front.

The Saudis could’ve opted for an Arab nationalist front to contain Iran. This front, by definition, would be Shia-inclusive. (This was the course recommended by this newsletter.) But that would’ve called for an Arab nationalist leadership in the Kingdom and a more self-respecting policy towards Israel, to force it to return all Arab lands--Palestinian and Syrian--that Israel had occupied on June 4/5, 1967. The harmful idiots wouldn’t stand for this. Therefore, be assured: it’s DEFEAT and FAILURE.

(Note to graduate students: an excellent dissertation topic would focus on the illusions as grounds for U.S. foreign policy. The case can be made that the Iraq affair has moved from one illusion to another. The only way to explain the dominance of illusions is to dig into the cultural egocentrism (and ethnocentrism) of the harmful idiots, heirs to the European colonial past. The disciplines of psychology, religious studies, and cultural anthropology therefore would be needed in reaching for an explanation.)

DIVIDE-AND-RULE THE SUNNI

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, and the harmful idiots have have been trying to divide the Arab Sunni camp:

(1) To divide al-Qaeda on the one hand from, on the other, the rest of the resistance groups: the Islamic Army, Ansar al-Sunnah, Army of the Mujaheedeen, the Phalanges of the Tishreen Revolution, Jaysh al-Rashideen, and so on. The chief method used here is to announce having met with this or that group, in Jordan, to cause a violent backlash by al-Qaeda against that group–and deepen distrust among the resistance groups.

(2) To divide Al-Qaeda on the one hand from, on the other, the clans. In this effort, the clans are encouraged to send their young men as recruits in the armed forces and the police of the puppet state. American and Saudi money probably is pumped into the clans.

WILL THE ARAB SUNNI DIVIDE AND ALLOW THE HARMFUL IDIOTS TO RULE?

To cut to the chase:

From an Arab perspective–and even an American--this policy is outrightly dangerous. Why? Reluctantly I will take a sectarian approach to this. Viewed from a sectarian angle, dividing the Arab Sunni should result in an intra-Arab-Sunni civil war, possibly full scale. That war in the end would see the Arab Sunni camp drained and exhausted. Saudi money and (empty) promises (by a country which has no effective troops) could never replace the solidarity that camp once had and, relatively, still possesses.

Almost certainly the U.S. will be out of Iraq as the American public, capitalist, can no longer bear the huge losses associated with its "investment" in Iraq. This "investment" has produced only negative returns. If anything, the American public’s now paying so much more for gasoline, instead of so much less. As the expenses ("investment") pile up and the returns remain in negative territory, the American public is bound to intensify the pressure to cut losses and save its money. Sooner or later, therefore, the U.S. will have to withdraw. Pressure will continue to build up so long as the losses--financial and other-- continue to mount. (Everything in an advanced and well-settled capitalist culture is measured by money. So even the wounded are factored in not only as human tragedy but, as importantly--if not more--as a "cost" and an "expense" for society for the length of their diability.)

Only a lame duck president is standing in the way of withdrawal.

When the U.S. leaves, you will have a strong Shia front, where differences are mediated by Iran, facing a drained Arab Sunni, where divisions are pushed along by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Grant it, the Saudis have recruited the Kurdish Peshmerga to "protect" the Arab Sunni. In fact, Masoud Barazani has just offered the Palestinian refugees of Iraq a "home" in Kurdistan. He even offered to dispatch his Peshmerga to protect them in Baghdad. He said they were of "Ahl al-Bayt"–"People of the [Sunni] home"–having suddenly, under the influence of Saudi billions, re-discovered his Sunni roots! Mr. Barazani’s offer should be seen as a reflection of the new Saudi-championed policy of erecting a pan-Sunni front, and paying off Barazani and Talabani to join in. What a waste of billions!

But this policy should throw the Arab Sunni into the laps of the Iran-supported Arab Shia. The Arab Sunni, as the Arab Shia, are Iraqi nationalists first and foremost. As nationalists, they cannot bear the loss of Kirkuk to the de facto Kurdish state in the north. Iran would stand with them to regain Kirkuk, so long as they accept to kick the Americans out. So would Turkey. (Not for the same reason.) Are the Saudis less-than-Arab and therefore willing to let go of Kirkuk?
Wouldn't the ease with which they're willing to bargain away Iraqi Arab territory reason enough to cause a backlash among the Arab Sunni?

A recession in the United States, now a likely possibility, would drive oil prices down, and the Kingdom’s income. The four billion dollars the Saudis are giving the Kurds to make them Sunni again (I’m guessing wildly about the amount), should reduce to one billion, even less. What then? Not to forget that Iran should be all too aware of this Saudi policy and can send messages to the Arab Sunni resistance that it would stand with them and the Arab Shia to regain Kirkuk.

To put it differently, the pan-Sunni front in Iraq entails the loss of Kirkuk to the Kurdish secessionists. While these have now declared themselves Sunni first, Kurdish second, such should reverse fast--as soon as Saudi money runs out. No one but a fool would believe that Talabani and Barazani–and their public–would ever quit the idea of an independent Kurdistan, with Kirkuk as an essential part of it. Their people are mobilized accordingly. A compromise by them of this essential nature should see disgruntlement within the ranks of their followers and the rise of competition to their leadership.

(The PKK, now financed by the idiots to conduct operations inside Iran, could very well be that competition.)

Conclusion: It’s unclear whether the Arab Sunni would self-annihilate under the pressure of Saudi money and Jordanian meddling. While Iran will almost certainly work to keep the Shia united, the Arab puppets of the harmful idiots–and the harmful idiots themselves-- are shooting themselves in the foot by working to divide the Arab Sunni of Iraq.



************************************
NOT THEIR WAR

This blog has maintained in the past that the Brits cannot protect anyone. The performance of their fifteen sailors under Iranian "psychological pressure" proves the point. While Arab resistance fighters put up with some of the most gruesome and de-humanizing torture–physical, cultural, and psychological--at Abu Ghraib, and stood their ground, the fifteen sailors caved in to... nothing. Psychological pressure in such a relatively short duration?

How's the Arab public to see this when it compares it to the incredible resistance of its people at Abu Ghraib? Would that public be justified to detect cowardice on the part of the British sailors?
Can’t blame the sailors, in a way. This ain’t their war! Blame their Prime Minister, all mouth...

These guys and gals can’t protect anyone. Send them home and stop the charade.

“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.