NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT: TALK TO ALL. NOW!

First rough draft

They found people in bags
A person without a head
A person without arms and without [a] tongue
A person [who had been] strangled
And the rest without faces [and without] names
Have I gone mad? Please
Don’t write about these things.

Adonis, Desert I. (My translation from Arabic.)

How would we know the secret of the place
If the mud of that place doesn’t smear us?

Adonis, “The Innocent.” (My translation from Arabic.)



SAUDI ARABIA: USING THAT OIL SURPLUS

--What are the Saudis up to?

They’re swimming in money – $870 billion in accumulated surplus, according to Hasan Rohani, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator. They’re using that money to --

000 Contain Iran by firing up and funding Sunni nationalism A.K.A. Islamism. This has reached a point where even the moderate (and prominent) Sheikh Salman al-Awdeh has been recruited for the war of the Sunni-Shia divide. The idea is not only to mobilize Sunnis against the Shias and Iran. The idea likely is to have Iran lose its cool and as a result help (unwittingly) the Saudi government define and deepen the Sunni-Shia divide. My assessment: Islamism will bite them in the ass.

000 Unseat the Alawites and the Baath from power in Syria; in other words: destabilize Syria.

000 Return their Hariri proxies to power in Lebanon. My assessment: unreal, unless there’s a radical re-alignment of coalitions.

000 Pay off anyone who would take money , and/or partner with them, to buy out the Iraqi Shia state.

PAKISTAN

Too, it looks like the Saudi government will be taking on the burden of Pakistan, financially. Pakistan’s central bank saw its reserves fall precipitously in a few months from $16 billion in April to $9 billion in August/September. I haven’t read any explanation for that. It could be that the harmful idiots and the Saudis through their Pakistani assets are pursuing a policy of bankrupting the Pakistani state. The harmfully idiotic idea would be to make that state so desperate and so dependent on Saudi Arabia for its very existence as to coax it into putting its armed forces at the service of the general strategy of the harmful idiots. Along with the option of using India to put pressure on that state, that state should further go schizophrenic at a minimum or blow up in a civil war at a maximum.

–You think?

I hope I’m wrong. Because the harmful idiots had used the financial bankruptcy strategy in Lebanon through their asset, and an asset of the Saudis, the late Rafiq al-Hariri. They guy ushered in tremendous construction projects where it’s said he pocketed likely half of the “cost” and had his banks, likely co-owned with members of the Saudi royal family, lend the Lebanese state money for those gargantuan construction projects to benefit him and his family. The hope (for the harmful idiots) had been to saddle the Lebanese state with so much debt that it’d sign a peace treaty with the harmful idiots’ beloved, Israel.

Poor Pakistan. On the bright side the Saudis are involved in negotiations with the Taliban, with logistical help from Britain which is shuttling about at least one Taliban leader to bring the Taliban into the Afghani government. Europe is easily exhausted. It doesn’t want to be drained and Afghanistan will drain it. Likely it wants any sort of deal, even cosmetic, to start pulling troops out. But the harmful idiots aren’t on the same wavelength as the Europeans. Though bankrupt, they want to continue on. They like getting bogged down. Sadly for us, our foreign policy and defense establishment is not analytically connected to economic and financial processes, neither domestic nor international.


OIL GRABS DO EVOLVE INTO TRAPS AND HELP BRING ON BANKRUPTCY

--What do you mean?

Throughout the preparation for the Iraq oil grab, A.K.A. war, there hadn’t seemed to be any assessment of the economic impact of a lengthy involvement on the US economy. Nor any assessment of how the wealth of others, obtained thanks to the profligate consumption by Americans (the much-vaunted “expansion”), itself made possible by seller financing by the likes of China, on the possibilities of success or failure of an oil grab as Iraq’s. In addition, no one I knew of connected the attempt by Osama bin-Laden to bankrupt us with the knee jerk reaction by the Federal Reserve to effectively wipe out interest rates, to Bush’s tremendous and unnecessary tax cut, to launching onto an adventure that would (could, then) end up a morass and a lengthy and costly stay – to the impact of all these factors on the financial health of the country.

– Someone must’ve.

Maybe someone did. I hadn’t seen it. I’m talking about pre-invasion, not after.

–Has Osama bin Laden won?

You bet -- subjectively. His goal to bankrupt us has arrived, though late, seven years late. It had been delayed by the effective wiping out of interest rates by the Fed, the unnecessary and huge tax cut by an irresponsible and mediocre right wing Christian Zionist Republican administration, later compounded by an unnecessary tax rebate, and by an oil grab that has turned into a black and deep hole financially. I say “subjectively” because our current bankruptcy is really self-inflicted. In some ways, Mr. Greenspan kept interest rates unusually low to offset the Asian countries’ refusal to float their currencies. And he didn't see the respercussions. (He just loved attractive phrases and words, likely having failed English composition in high school.) Add to this the expenses of the wars of choice, Bush’s tax cuts and rebates...and you have disaster. If it’s any consolation, Europe seems to be coming up against a worse crisis.

–What’s next?


TRADE AND/OR CURRENCY WARS?

I don’t agree with the huge choir, domestic and international, that says that America’s days are over as a superpower. They’re not. There’s a silver lining. The financial crisis has forced us to look inward, which had been needed for eight years, even longer. China and India have built their “great power” status on the American consumer. China did seller financing for our profligate shopping and construction spree (“expansion.”) Sellers by definition should become richer than buyers. Right? Especially when they make an endless line of credit available to the buyer. The harmful idiots tried to engineer a run on the dollar as a way of diminishing the value of our debt to China and others or to force the Asian countries to float their currencies. That policy has backfired and put us in the dire strait we’re now experiencing.

Taxes will go up to pay for this mess. And they should. We’re a nation of over three hundred million. Progressive taxation should produce an extra income (easily) of 300 billion per year – by my amateurish and rough calculation. The rich will pay more than the middle class. The rich will not mind it. What’s there to mind? A few thousand dollars more per year?

But along with taxation, we should (indeed, will) force China and the others to accept to outrightly cut our debt to them. If they want the economic advantages the American system of hyper-consumption provides, then they’d need to cut our debt to them. Outrightly. I’m not talking through trade. If Japan is holding $100 dollars in U.S. Treasuries, then it should forfeit $50. If it doesn’t – then it’s a trade war. In law school I wrote a paper about Section 301 of some trade act that allows for trade sanctions. I have a strong feeling it will be used. The hell with ITO. The line to the debtors will be that we’re doing our share through taxation. Time for them to do theirs towards us. Yes, we do accept economic inter-dependence (“globalization”) but we can no longer treat our country as a plantation nor allow others to treat it as such. (A protectionist, oh no!)

I give us only a few years to see us on top back again. This time, however, we would have learned not to bog down ourselves and our armed forces into harmful adventures, fighting like a blind and deaf elephant instead of a fox. (By fox, I don’t mean the silly “counterinsurgency” stuff which bogs us down even further.) The economic revival of the state–I mean the federal government–should diminish the much vaunted economic “expansion,” but it should, too, see oil prices take a dive. Concomitantly, the reserves of countries like Russia and other oil and gas countries should, too, take a further dive. All, including us, should become more realistic as a result.

–Are you serious?

Yes, but I know the harmful idiots – revolving door and all – will find a way of not doing the right thing. The Republicans will borrow from the Gulf Arabs to steer through the financial crisis. They’ll wait for the Democrats to raise taxes and be blamed for that. It doesn’t matter that the Bush Administration and I-want-to-be-popular Mr. Greenspan had screwed the hell out of the country. The public will later punish the Democrats for raising taxes. In a way, if McCain wins, it’ll be the worst thing that had happened to the Republicans – next to Crusader and Bald Samson. Because McCain will be the one raising taxes and the public will blame his party for that. The Republican party should divide and a Ross Perot should appear and split the party for the next (at least) two presidential elections. It’ll allow any Democrat, even a relative unknown, to win the White House for years and years to come.


SAUDI ARABIA OR HOW TO SHOOT ONESELF IN THE FOOT

–Back to the Saudis.


They can’t seem to appreciate that their friends Bush and Cheney have screwed the Arabs (for the Saudis that means the Sunnis) for a century to come. They don’t get it. The right wing Jews, when they took over the Pentagon, scared the wits out of them when they threatened to unseat the royal family and divide the kingdom into various states. So they aligned with Crusader and Bald Samson to invade Iraq. Then they compounded their mistake, this time of their own will. Starting in May of 2007, after Cheney’s meeting with the GCC leaders, they began to coordinate with the harmful idiots to re-tribal- ize (pay off tribal chiefs to compete with other structures of political organization) the Arab Sunnis of Iraq (the sahwas) so as to finish the armed resistance by these to the American occupation.

–They tamed the Sunnis vis-a-vis Iran?

You bet. That armed resistance should’ve been preserved, even helped by the Americans. But it wasn’t to be. Because the harmful idiots had long-term plans (illusory, of course) to stay in Iraq and they held on to Israel-centric ideas. In these plans, there wasn’t room for an armed resistance by Arabs, Sunnis included. The Saudis and the Jordanians actively went along. I still remember Prince Hasan of Jordan, practically an extension of our heroic CIA, muse that the United States now will be a neighbor of Jordan’s, so sure was he and the CIA analysts of our ability to stay in Iraq.


STAY OR GO?

–Will we stay?

– The hope of all Israelis and Jordanians and Saudis is for McCain to win and for us to stay. I think they’ll be doing some creative budgetary acrobatics within intelligence and defense committees in Congress to approve appropriations for US troops in Iraq while putting out the word (hush!) that the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs will refund that money. In effect, the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, having no effective armies, will be using our armed forces as their mercenary army in Iraq. You broke it, you fix it , they seem to have been saying since the invasion. Only that they want it fixed the Saudi way.

So we’re a player in Iraqi politics. It seems that now we’re using the Kurds to put pressure on Maliki to approve of a treaty for a US bases. We’re de facto cooperating with and appeasing Iran –

– How?

For one, we have delivered the file of Mujaheedeen Khalq (MK) to the Shia Badr/Dawa government. There’s every indication that this government wants the MK out of the country within a specific period. (I recall six months, but I may be wrong.) In early September, it was revealed that there was agreement that U.S. troops will leave Camp Ashraf where the MK – 4000 of them with their children -- are based. Last March, the Iraqi President and opportunist extra-ordinaire, Jalal Talabani, called the MK fighters “terrorists.” (There’s some indication that Mr. Talabani is drawing particularly close to Iran as his realm within Iraqi Kurdistan abuts the Islamic Republic and as he senses that the harmful idiots’ influence will be waning.) Last year, MK had released a list of 31,000 Iraqis who it said were agents of the Islamic Republic and received salaries. It accused Iran of setting up operatives of the Quds Force inside Iraq.

In addition, the harmful idiots watch as Iran deepens its economic influence within southern Iraq. Either they can’t do much about it or they’ve come to terms with it. Likely both. A senior Iranian official was quoted on or about 9/11/08 as saying that Iran and Iraq will be opening three free trade zones on the border between the two countries; he hoped trade this year will reach $4 billion. This should create economic dependency by at least the south on Iraq on Iran. The harmful idiots’ Arab protectorates try to balance this economic integration with an Arab political one as when recently, at the U.N., the foreign ministers of the GCC, Jordan, and Egypt, included the foreign minister of Iraq in a coordination meeting. That’s a win-win for Iran. The Iraqi Shia government should prove a convenient tool for Iran to force normalization with the GCC. In other words, Iran benefits from the inclusion. Now Iran has three Trojan Horses to force normalization with the Arab World: the national plight of the Palestinians, Iraq, and Lebanon. I think normalization would be good thing: it’ll certainly help (significantly) stabilize the region.

–Are we going to stay?

I doubt we can. We’ll be forced to withdraw. Iran has assured peace within the Shia camp, its realm, so as not to disturb us and to ease our way out, little by little, having tamed the harmful idiots. We’re still conducting joint operations with the Iraqi army against the Sunni resistance, what’s left of it. And we’re gathering up Shia operatives of Iran. (No one knows the percentage caught of all those present.) But it doesn’t seem that Iraq will want the 145,000 troops. Little by little these will be whittled down. The Shia government will see to it that our withdrawal from Iraq preserves the illusion that we weren’t defeated. Too bad, since I’m a big believer that defeats and admission of such make us – or any country - much stronger. It’s all about definition and semantics anyway. But denial of mistakes and denial of defeat are prescriptions for yet more disastrous war policies.

– But what about the Saudi refunds of the expenses for our future tenure in Iraq?

The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs will pay up. We’re not going to withdraw from the Gulf. From Iraq: yes; form the Gulf: no. Not even I would recommend withdrawing from the Gulf, though we will need to defuse the hot issues: Palestine, Lebanon, and likely Iraq. We will lord over the Arab Gulf protectorates and (in effect) negotiate with Iran on their behalf. But we need to create a Saudi army, badly. Because we can’t be there in any significant numbers. And we shouldn’t want to, anyway. Our tenure should be more about preparedness to respond, a trip wire of sorts, than about elephant-ing our way about there, blind and deaf and so visibly supportive of reactionary governments. The Saudi young have shown an incredible ability to make war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So a Saudi army, one that is trained in guerrilla warfare, would be a terrific tool to balance Iranian military power. We shot ourselves in the foot when we adopted Israel’s views and defeated Arab nationalism. Then we shot ourselves in the foot yet again as Israel-centric imperials when we got rid of the Baath in Iraq. Watch us shoot ourselves in the foot yet again as Israel-centric Middle Eastern players by coordinating with Saudi intelligence to get rid of Syria’s Baath.


SAUDI INTELLIGENCE: BACK TO ISLAMISM

– Which brings us to Syria. Who staged the recent car bomb in Damascus?

Prime suspect: Saudi intelligence. Possibly Egyptian. The car bomb came after news that Syria has spread a said 10,000 of its special forces on the Syrian side of Lebanon’s northern border with Syria. Saudi intelligence has been funding Islamists to engineer a mini civil war between Arab Sunnis and Arab Alawites in the city of Tripoli, in the hope that this war would spread to Syria. Syria has asked Lebanon to move one Lebanese army brigade from the south to the city of Tripoli to scuttle the Saudi intelligence plan.

–What do the Saudis want?

The Saudi royal family wants to avenge the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri who was an extension of themselves, both as extended “family” and as banking and business partners. They, too, want to contain Iran and Arab Syria is allied to the Islamic Republic. (Albeit that alliance has its problems, borne out mostly of Iran’s exclusively Shia behavior in Iraq; but that’s a different subject altogether.) And they want to return the Hariris, directly or through proxies, to power in Lebanon. I think they likely feel that they’ve lost Lebanon which the late Rafiq al-Hariri had told them that they then had owned – through him. (I suspect they own via proxies tons of real estate in Lebanon. I have this image of each and every Lebanese attorney waiting in her office a la Guy Noir for the Saudi network to walk in on him and use him to buy in his name real estate.)

The alliance between the majority of the Christians and the Shias promises to do away with Sunni predominance within the Lebanese state structure until such time when alliances and coalitions change. (Recently Hezbollah’s Nasrallah assured Hariri and the Saudi royal family –“the Sunnis”– that they’ll continue to play a crucial role in Lebanon even if the Shia-Christian alliance wins parliamentary elections.) The late Rafiq al-Hariri, a blindly greed-driven businessman did the Sunni predominance a huge disfavor when he corruptly emptied the coffers of the Lebanese state and put it in debt to fatten his pocket and the pockets of his family. In the age of Hamas and Hezbollah you can’t afford that level of grand theft and expect legitimacy for your political predominance. And, frankly, the Saudi royals aren’t capable of understanding that Hezbollah and Hamas have introduced a new paradigm for political legitimacy in the Arab World. It’s one where corruption is nearly absent, let alone obscene corruption.


–But does this Saudi plan have a chance of working?

– No. It’s a dangerous plan. Beware what you wish for. It’s agreed overall that a Sunni state in Syria will likely be an Islamist, Hamas-like, state. I myself think it’ll even be more radical than Hamas. (I think Hamas is not that radical! ) The Sunni state in Syria will go through a revolutionary phase that should mark it radical and extremist for long time. Regarding the recent car bombing in Syria: Be mindful that the Hariri/Saudi intelligence-funded Islamists are angry with Syria because the latter likely is no longer allowing large numbers of them to sneak into Iraq. In other words, Saudi intelligence funds the Islamists for one reason (to destabilize the Syrian government); but the Islamists have a mind and an organizational structure of their own. To my mind, this organizational structure includes contact with al-Qaeda. The French recently revealed that two out of eight al-Qaeda terror suspects awaiting trial in France had been to Nahr el-Bared where they received training.

Let’s wait and see what the Syrians do next. Who they assassinate and/or how many operatives they dispatch to Tripoli. Let’s see if Iran will or can help them. Because the fastest and surest way to end Saudi Arabia’s attempts to destabilize Syria , logically, is to retaliate inside Saudi Arabia. And I doubt very much that Syria has that ability. Iran likely does. But will Iran act on this ability?

There’ll be a civil war, alright, in Tripoli, but it’ll be an act of cooperation between Lebanese army intelligence and Syria’s. (I wrote this prior to the recent roadside bomb attack on the Lebanese army bus in Tripoli. Could it be that the cooperation on the ground between the intelligence services of Syria and the Lebanese army’s has begun?) Both will hunt for the Sunni Islamists in the alleys around Bab el-Tebbaneh in Tripoli. If Lebanon’s internal security intervenes (I don’t know what they call them now, but these are the mostly-Sunni police troops associated with the Ministry of Interior and acting as Hariri’s official militia), then expect Hezbollah to move against these. Europe should secretly hooray Syria’s entry into Tripoli. Europe should worry about Islamists A.K.A. al-Qaeda having a base in Lebanon. Lebanon’s banking system is so liberal that terror money can be transferred easily to Europe. And the Islamists have money from Saudi intelligence. Europe likely would prefer that the Islamists be stopped in their hometown, Tripoli, and not in Paris or Madrid.


NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT

It behooves the U.S. government to open up to any and all in the Arab and Islamic Worlds. If only tactically. I mean to all: any small or large group, all governments -- Syria’s, Iran’s, Hamas -- you name it. Why? I recently read an article by Michael Scheuer warning of a “near-term attack” by al-Qaeda on the US mainland to compound our financial crisis. I rarely take these warnings seriously. But his (reasoned as an al-Qaeda strategist) made sense. What I worry about is the following: the harmful idiots have introduced to the Middle East more systematically than ever before the phenomenon of mercenaries – security agencies a la Blackwater–mercenaries for pay, in effect. My understanding is that these come from all over the world, especially the Western. Understand this: ideas are copied, and successful ideas are copied more successfully. Already Mr. Hariri and Saudi intelligence had copied this idea to achieve unstated goals. If the Syrian-sponsored/sympathetic press is telling the true story, Mr. Hariri (and Saudi intelligence) had opened sham offices for alleged private security companies in Lebanon, especially in Beirut. These, however, were meant to recruit a Sunni militia to attack Hezbollah’s rear lines and preoccupy it. In May, Hezbollah scuttled this plan, picked up the employees of these offices, and delivered them to Lebanese army intelligence. Foreign mercenaries and the Saudi ambassador, fled the country via the Christian heartland and most via boats to Cyprus.

My concern is that bin Laden and company will copy the harmful idiots and use mercenaries of their own. Watch for offices for private security agencies in the Arab World and in Europe. Watch for mercenaries. The worst part about the use of mercenaries is that Muslim and Arab communities in Europe and the U.S. wouldn’t even see these and warn the authorities. That’s why we need to open up to all, including Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and Syria and each and every opposition group in that world. We and Europe are exposed and it seems we have a way of teaching our opponents new ways to hurt us – as in the use of mercenaries. Those Europeans who aren’t assets of the harmful idiots are opening up to the Arab opposition–to bin Laden! (e.g., Switzerland.) Is that going too far? We need to open up to the Arab and Muslim opposition, too. Start by doing something symbolic like dropping the case against Sami al-Arian. (I’m not keeping up; so I don’t know the latest in with his case. And I don’t know him from Adam; and I have no affinity whatsoever with him or with whoever he likes. And I’m tired as Arab-American to justify each and every creative policy thought I have.)

The opening towards the Arab and Muslim opposition cannot be done solely (maybe not even at all) by our CIA or our reactionary allies in Egypt (useless) or Saudi Arabia (harmful). (Jordan already has resumed contact with Hamas, fearful about the immense influence this organization has within Jordan.) Our CIA has lost flexibility with the Arab opposition when it partook so systematically in extraordinary rendition and torture. This is a time when (if only symbolically) we need the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights, and so on of organization which have credibility to build a bridge with the Arab opposition. (Please: no more paid mandarins with “democratic” credentials. I had too many fights with a number of these assholes who, in their twenties and thirties, want to teach us Arabs about democracy. And yet they’ve never worked on a single political campaign in their own country!) I’m hoping grants are given to these to conduct their own foreign policy, so to speak, in the Arab and Muslim Worlds. Since the worry is about a terror attack inside the U.S., find those FBI agents who wrote up memos and reports about torture and bring them into the limelight. (See Mark Tran, “FBI files detail Guantanamo torture tactics,” in www.guardian.co.uk , January 3, 2007. Too, refer to the ACLU press release, “Newly Obtained FBI Records Call Defense Department’s Methods ‘Torture,’.... 12/20/04) The FBI possibly got a black eye with the Maher Arar case–the Syrian-Canadian who was sent to Syria and was tortured there. Settle the Arar case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Draft an apology. Spend some money. Have him appear with FBI directors and announce forgiveness. (I heard Mr. Arar on Democracy Now. He didn’t strike me as the vengeful type.) Cease the opportunity. Count your blessings that he’s not dead. Use him.

Time is of the essence. Move it!

(I’m tired. To be continued. Maybe. The God of Capitalism and Wall Street willing.)