NO SHAME

rough second draft.

The recent U.S. raid inside Syria was a whopper of an event to put to use by regional parties.

SYRIA

Aware that it’s the only pan-Arab country still standing on its feet, Syria allowed all to visit the region where the raid took place. Why? To give room to the Arab Street to sympathize with the pan-Arab country, an essential sponsor of Hezbollah, the guerrilla army that showed off those Arab leaders, the ones on their knees, the “half-men.” A huge doze of pan-Arab legitimacy.

You can tell that the Arab Street was sympathetic. The non-Saudi funded Arab press seemed solidly in Syria’s corner. Abdel-Bari Atwan from al-Quds al-Arabi showed terrific understanding. He could’ve criticized Syria for not responding. But he didn’t, likely for the reasons outlined below. Likely, too, for the reason that no Arab can afford to see the harmful idiots dismember yet another Arab country.

To have the Israelo-Americans – the same people who devastated an Arab country, Iraq, dismembered it! – to have these people attack you is nothing short of a badge of honor. Milk it for all the legitimacy it'll get ya.

SAUDI ISRAELABIA

But the Saudi ruling elite weren’t impressed. I’d dare say they were envious, even jealous. They seemed to be wishing that the harmful idiots had ordered a raid inside the Kingdom.

The Saudi Al-Riyadh.com on October 29 featured an article adapting nearly in full a story from its Israeli edition (Yedioth Ahronoth) saying that the raid ordered by the harmful idiots inside Syria had been coordinated with Syrian intelligence. Ha! The Israeli article – and its adaptation (in effect) in full in alRiyadh.com – made hay of the fact that the raid had taken place in the daytime; that Syrian troops had been on a state of alert but didn’t respond. That the Syrian Air Force didn’t respond either. You see: coordination. Hush.

Yedioth Ahronoth got that intelligence from a recent appointee at the Pentagon, it said, per its Saudi edition, alRiyadh.com. Yeah, like anyone at the Pentagon wants to talk to the Israelis since they really trust that these wouldn't be spying.

Oh, you want me to answer the allegations in Yedioth Ahronoth A.K.A. alRiyadh.com? Here it is: because Syria is too smart to be drawn into a conventional battle with the harmful idiots. The troops of these (ours, sadly being led by harmful idiots) would destroy Syria’s Air Force in a nano second. Drawing Syria into a conventional battle likely was one reason for the raid, anyway. A calculated boost for John McCain, said the Syrian press. (They’re not idiots, you see, though they can be harmful when their interest is threatened.) The harmful idiots are too scared of Iran to stage a raid inside that country. In contrast, Syria was/is an easy target.

At any rate, al-Riyadh A.K.A. Yedioth Ahronoth (forgive me -- but I'm loving this) featured its thinly-veiled adaptation of the article from its its Israeli edition (Yedioth Ahronoth) on the front page of alRiyadh.com. AlRiyadh.com featured the Israeli article on top of the front page, following the mandatory two articles about the King, May God Protect Him – the articles (about the King) which no one reads. In effect, therefore, the adaptation from Yedioth Ahronoth was front-and-center for the Israeli al-Riyadh–Ooops, I meant Arab, oops, I meant Saudi. Oops, I meant Saudi Israelabian.

WHEN THE CHICKENS WILL COME HOME TO ROOST

ON THE BUTTRESSING OF SECT AND TRIBE BY THE HARMFUL IDIOTS AND THE SAUDI RULING ELITE. U P D A T E D.

second (updated)draft.

REVVING THE TRIBES: THE MARK OF COLONIALISM

So the harmful idiots, with help from the Saudi and Jordanian ruling elite, to end Arab Sunni resistance, revived the Sunni tribes of Iraq. We’ve now reached a stage where the harmful idiots and their Saudis and Jordanians have so succeeded at reviving these that the harmful idiots are considering using these (the revived tribes) as third party custodians for Arab Sunni independence fighters who have been stewing in the occupiers’ jails.

BUREAUCRATIC POLITICS: THE PENTAGON V. THE CIA. NOT REALLY.

It looks like there possibly is a bureaucratic rift in addressing the next phase in Iraq. Al-Malaf, the propaganda sheet of Jordanian intelligence – and, by historic extension, the CIA – is campaigning like there’s no tomorrow to convince the harmful idiots, through the Arabic-reading public, not to close Camp Ahsraf, the camp of the Mujaheedeen Khalq, the Iranian dissident group. The idea has been to give jurisdiction over this camp to the Dawa/Badr Shia government. Which already is on record saying it’ll close it down. Jordanian intelligence (AKA, the CIA) doesn’t want that camp closed since it sees the Mujaheedeen Khalq as a useful tool in the long-term money-making plan to war with Iran. (Jordan is resource-poor.) In other words, on this issue, the CIA stands opposed to the Shia Badr/Dawa state.

In contrast, the other harmful idiots, the ones from the Defense Department, continue to work along with that state with no hesitation, including not opposing its decision to close Camp Ashraf. The Pentagon harmful idiots continue to stage operations with the Iraqi army against opponents of the Badr/Dawa Shia state. Is the Defense Department buttressing the Badr/Dawa Shia state or is that Department weaving a ruse? Most recently, for instance, harmful idiot colonialist troops, with Iraqi ancillaries in tow, raided the house of a Shia ayatollah – Baghdadi – who is hiding in Damascus, likely because that ayatollah is competition to Sistani, the spiritual father of the Badr/Dawa state . (Baghdadi, too, likely is a significant player in the Iraqi opposition to the occupation, many of whose members work out of Syria.) The Pentagon harmful idiots probably are drooling at the highly possible fact that Sistani has given his money (Shia holy places’ money) to Saad al-Hariri to “invest” for him. (“Invest” means that the Saudis would add money to Sistani’s coffer regardless of the market’s ups and downs. They’ve bought him out.) That should secure yet more “counter-insurgency” peace until such time as the colonialist ruse can be brought to fruition.

The colonialist ruse: the harmful idiots from Defense likely think that they own those units within the Iraqi army which are effective -- the ones which I believe likely will end up in San Diego, opening and running liquor stores. In other words, the ruse of the harmful idiots from Defense is to fight along the Badr/Dawa Shia state until such time as these harmful idiots can unleash the Iraqi troops they control on that state -- stage a coup d’etat against that state. On or about October 18, the political advisor to the head of SCIRI (now: Higher Islamic Council in Iraq) , Mohsen al-Hakim, said he expected a coup d’etat in Iraq. He hasn’t been alone in pointing to this possibility. Adil Abdel-Mahdi (Deputy President), Ahmad al-Jarabi (greed-driven shyster extra-ordinaire, asset of the harmful idiots and the “neocons,” and head of the so-called Iraqi National Congress), and Masoud “the happy” Barazani, had all so stated in the past. (“the happy” because one Arab news weekly recently said that around $3 billion had been transferred from Lebanese and Gulf banks to Kurdish. Payoff by the harmful idiots and the Saudi ruling elite for Kurdish compliance with the ruse and for bases?) The ruse requires that the harmful idiots at Defense play along the Badr/Dawa Shia state, including not opposing the elimination of Camp Ashraf, until such time as the harmful idiots are ready for the coup. No need to irk the Iranians unnecessarily or prematurely. Too, better wait for the provincial elections which could atomize (that’s the expectation) the Shias and make the Shia camp more malleable.

The Shias in power therefore would need to consolidate their ranks to withstand the harmdul idiots' ruse. Their options are limited. They should have no choice but to:

-- Unite solidly against the harmful idiots. This would mean that they would have to join ranks with Moqtada as-Sadr. This would be difficult on their egos since they would have to concede leadership to him.

-- Re-ignite the civil war with the Sunnis. Nearly impossible. The dynamics already have changed. They now are the Iraqi government. Their status would stand in the way.

-- Ignite a civil war with the Kurds. But the Pesh Mergas would kick their ass, including the new Iraqi army's.

These Shias (the ones currently in power) are running out of time, paralysed by their status as double-agents(agents for Iran and the harmful idiots.) The harmful idiots are aware of this and are using it to further their ruse. They could therefore be on point: the Shias could end up fighting each other and therefore become even more paralyzed, paving the way for the coup.

So the harmful idiots from the CIA and the Saudi ruling elite can revive the tribes while the harmful idiots from Defense can plan for the coup d’etat. All in all: keep that oil-rich piece of real estate -- and neighbor of the Islamic Republic, to boot -- divided into tribes and sects. Keep it so until such time that we can complete the training and equipping of the armed forces and imbue them with good old Third World elitism and with enough of a distinct corporate spirit. With that -- elitism and distinct corporate spirit -- we and the Saudi ruling elite can move to cull that army away from the tribes and sects we so endeavored to revive and buttress. We’ll use the new Iraqi army to stage a coup and allow us to stay in Iraq as we have stayed in South Korea and Vietnam. And as the French had stayed in Algeria. And the Israelis in Palestine. And the Italians in Libya.

Our “Gulf allies” will then be so happy for us -- really for themselves. As to the Kurds -- the Saudis and other Gulf “Arab Sunni” ruling elite will continue to sedate them with oil surplus money, transferring it in the billions to Kurdish leaders through Kurdish banks. To compensate them for Kirkuk, temporarily, until further notice. The Arab poor should watch with disbelief and sheer anger. Nationalist/Islamist opposition groups should have a field day in recruitment as a result.

SHIA TRIBES, TOO

The revival of the tribes is for real. We recently learned that their power has so peaked that even Dawa and SCIRI are expected to fight it out (with weapons) as they compete for the Shia tribes’ allegiance and the votes these can produce. So the tribe bug has bitten the Arab Shia community. Iran will have quite a task keeping the peace within its Shia realm, so successful were/are the colonialists at dividing it as they had divided the Sunni Arabs.

A note of caution is in order (I don’t know why I bother) to the nouveau colonialists: based on the past and on the fact that Iran is there while the harmful idiots come from 6000 miles away, no victory in Iraq is but chimeric and episodic. In the end, Iraqi nationalism (Shia-led, this time) should win out. Have no doubt about it. It’s a matter of time. Extending the American experience in Iraq, using the oil surplus of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, should only delay the inevitable, not eliminate it. The very ruse that requires the phasing out of the double agents could strengthen Moqtada beyond his wildest imagination, as well as line up tribes at his side -- with Iranian money to the Shia tribes to balance out the Saudi. If Sistani has in fact been bought out, and the harmful idiots aren't communicating with Iran, then expect attempts to have him assassinated.

CONTAGION: AND IT’LL SPREAD OUT INTO THE REGION LIKE WILD (OIL) FIRE

The tribe and sectarian bug has invaded Kuwait, the “staunch ally” whose ruling elite had assisted our harmful idiots in setting up Saddam Hussein so that the Iraqis should live in turmoil for fifty years, give-or-take. (The more I think about it the more I conclude it'll be more than fifty years.) Kuwait’s handsome emir recently warned his countrymen that he would not stand for sectarian and tribal differences continuing to rear their head. These differences had emerged acutely ever since once-Arab Kuwait had cast its lot with Israel’s sponsor and quit its Arab mission. Enjoy.

In Saudi Arabia we have Bandar bin Sultan’s strategy of widening the rift between Sunnis and Shias. The man wants to make up before the King and the Allegiance Council for having been member of the team (together with Crusader, Bald Samson, the Jewish Right, and the Evangelist Conquerors) which brought defeat onto the Kingdom. So his campaign produces the likes of one prominent Sheikh who recently ordered Sunnis not to sell real estate to Shias. But that wasn’t the novelty. The novelty was that one Mukhalaf bin Daham al-Shamri, a civil rights activist, retaliated by putting up his house for sale at a 10% discount for Shias. Now I don’t have the time to make phone calls and verify my analysis. (This blog as it is already is exhausting.) Here’s my non-verified observation: the civil rights activist’s name (al-Shamri) strikes me as originating in the name of the powerful al-Shammar tribe, one of eight largest in Saudi Arabia. Al-Shammar is a Najdi tribe with clans inside Iraq and Syria. It behooves all to know that the al-Shammar tribe, under the leadership of the al-Rashid, had fought the al-Saud in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

To put it bluntly: the tribal and sectarian chickens, which the Saudi ruling elite is fostering in part to fail the Iraqi Sunni resistance to the occupation of Iraq, in part as a self-defense mechanism, its way of warding off the American-Israeli-Iranian hangman, should come home to roost inside Saudi Arabia. (Each and every Arab, including those who disliked Saddam Hussein, have etched in their brain the delivery by the American/Israeli conquerors of an Arab President to the Iranian hangman. That should apply to the ruling families in the Gulf, including that in Saudi Arabia. Unless they’re not Arab. And some of them frankly aren’t, patriarchal mythology notwithstanding.) Iran and others (including the harmful idiots) know the Saudi tribal stuff and can use it against the ruling elite.

Suddenly, a new vista opens up to all those against whom the Saudi ruling elite is using its oil money surplus. The (unintended) message: look into those tribes which historically have fought the al-Saud, fund them, and bring them into prominence. The surplus should evaporate, in and for a while at least, and it’ll be naked violence which would balance what’d be left of it. Naked violence might be visited earlier on those who are feeding the sectarian/tribal tsunami, what with surplus on one side of the Gulf and relative poverty on the opposite side and among the majority of the Arabs. All of this while the Arab poor watch Saudi Arabia and the other rich Arab Gulf ruling elite fund the fancy occupation of Iraq by U.S. troops, who scheme to keep it divided. And while these Gulf ruling elite flood the secessionist Kurdish region with Arab money. There’s no assurance that the naked violence will stay out of the Kingdom. What with the tribe bug spreading into the Kingdom and the Gulf from Iraq (such bug itself having been funded by the Saudis ruling elites!) As a result, these Saudi tribes should re-evolve and sharpen their identity, including recalling their defeat at the hand of al-Sauds.

What, too, with a sect, the Shias, feeling like second class citizens.

Words to the wise among the harmful idiots and the Saudi ruling elite, if any are left: you should be overwhelmed by the very dynamics you’re setting off.

S H O W D O W N : THE COMING WARS AMONG INTELLIGENCE SERVICES

Fictionalized and Classified.

Ruf ceccond drapht.

To V.

Thanks to you I’ve made peace with my days
Because of you I’ve forgiven Time
You helped me get over my pain
And I’ve forgotten, thanks to you, you only, my deepest sadness.

Um Kalthoum. “Inta 3Omri.” (My translation from Arabic.)


SaudiPolitics has been able to listen in on a conference call between Muqran bin Abdul Aziz and Omar Suleiman, the heads of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, respectively. Here’s what SPC has recorded:


The Brother Muqran : Good morning Brother Omar. How’s the family and the children?

The Brother Omar: They’re all good, thank to your kind largesse, Brother Muqran. Hope the wife is pregnant.

The Brother Muqran: Two are, thanks to God, from Him Mercy and Generosity. What are you up to?

Omar : Trying to make sense of what the brothers the Americans are up to.

Muqran: Join the club, brother Omar.

Omar: You and they have sent us this killer of Sunnis, Samir Guaguaa [Geagea, really, but the brothers the Eguyptians prefer to convert the “j” and “g” to “gu”] on the payroll of the brothers the Americans to prep him –

Muqran: He’s on our payroll too, through our son Sheikh Saad al Hariri. We just can’t host him in the Land of the Islamic Holy Sites.

Omar: Because he and his Israel-sponsored Lebanese Forces had killed way too many Muslims?

Muqran: Sunnis! Black Saturday -- mass murder of Sunnis -- these guys put innocent Sunnis against walls and shot them, and made Sunnis jump off the tall building of the electrical power company in Beirut. Then you had Sabra and Shatila, a massacre which came after the brothers the Syrians had murdered the leader of the Lebanese Forces then, the asset of the brothers the Americans, Bashir Gemayyel. This massacre of innocent Sunni Palestinians and some Sunni Lebanese was perpetrated under the supervision of our cousins the Jews whose army officers were laughing it out with Elie Hobeika, the leader then of the Lebanese Forces’ troops, while these troops were committing mass murder.

[Editor’s Note: Recently King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia made the point that the Kingdom didn’t distinguish among Arabs. While some would beg to disagree -– what with the Sunni-Shia thing -- I’ve always reminded the right wing Lebanese Christians, including those of the Lebanese Forces who tend to be quite anti-Muslim, that even at the height of the Lebanese civil war, even after Bashir Gemayyel and his men had committed cold-blooded mass murder against innocent Beirut Sunnis -- there hadn't been a single backlash in the Kingdom nor in the rest of the Arab World against Arab Lebanese Christians. The Kingdom and its people and its rulers acted with the magnanimity expected in Arab culture. Kudos to them and to the 300 million (mostly Sunni) Arabs.]

Omar: So you unload him on us!

Muqran: The brothers the Americans did. Enjoy. Our brothers the Americans and my brother Bandar -–they’re one and the same you know, since the brother Bandar is brother Bush’s brother and likely an asset of brother Hayden or brother Hayden is an asset of his, it’s unclear -- think Geagea and his Lebanese Forces can be useful in the coming war among intelligence services in Lebanon.

Omar: Wouldn’t the brother Gumbolatt [Jumblatt] be more useful? He had been on your payroll; what happened to that?

Muqran: Still is, and he has a Druze following inside Syria the sibling. At least he says he does. But he really doesn’t have that many Druze left in Lebanon the sibling. The brother Druze had limited their reproducing starting a long time ago, some time in the early 19th century. But the Shia Persians and the brothers the Syrian Shia Alawites [he means Hezbollah] came close to finishing him this past May. They didn’t because they didn’t want to create a Druze martyr out of him.

Omar: So he still is in a state of shock?

Muqran: You bet.

Omar: We’re taking a big load off of you and Switzerland, wink, brother Muqran. Because our Persian Shia -funded Muslim Brothers don’t like it a bit– that we’re hosting in Eguypt a slaughterer of Sunnis.

Muqran: Tell them you’re working to convert him, brother Omar.

Ha, ha, ha.

Omar: Truth be told, he’s one of you, brother Muqran. His television station LBC built your al-Arabiya which now is one of your better propaganda tools. So he must’ve made a couple of hundred million dollars from you.

Muqran: So he did. We looked around and didn’t see any successful sisterly Egyptian satellite television station to do the job. We had to rush through al-Arabiya to answer al-Jazeera and now to damn the Persians and Syria the Sibling and its Shia Alawites.

Omar: How can we compete with the LBC, brother Muqran, if the Muslim Brothers don’t let us show legs, ass and breasts? Those f-----ing Lebanese Christian brothers are shameless. LBC is successful because it’s pornographic.

Muqran: Our Ulamas, may God bless them so they’ll continue to do His Work on Earth, agree with you. They know the LBC is pornographic and a couple amongst them have issued fatwas to have owners of pornographic stations assassinated. One more reason why we couldn’t host Geagea. I personally favor the LBC. How do you think the wives became pregnant, may God have His Will?

Ha, ha, ha.

Omar: How about that Traitor Brother Aoun. Visiting Tehran! The audacity...

Muqran: He’s looking for money. We, through our son Sheikh Saad al-Hariri, and the brothers the Americans, have been pumping money into the Lebanese Forces and brother Amin Gemayyel – the two brother Lebanese Nusarah [Christians]. Using this money, these have been able to place so many young men on the payroll. That threatens the brother traitor Aoun’s popularity. We’d be glad to fund the brother traitor Aoun if he’d side with our son Sheikh Saad al-Hariri. But he sees the office of the Sunni Prime Minister (which we have given to the Hariris) as a threat to the office of the Maronite President. So now we and the brothers the Americans are trying to split his camp and weaken him by flooding Geagea and Gemayyel with money, of which we have so much, Praise be to God the Generous. So Aoun likely is telling the Iranians that the money they’ve been sending him via Hezbollah and Syria isn’t enough. Not to mention that the last two likely get a cut. He and the Iranians want to do away with that cut and with intermediaries.

Omar: Can the Persian Shias cough up as much money as you and the brothers the Americans?

Muqran: Lebanon the sibling is small. There’s so much money we ant they can pump in. The Persians can afford it. Lebanon the sibling is an integral part of the Persians’ strategy in the region.

Omar: What about our boss the brother Hayden? What’s he doing in the region?

Muqran: The brother the director of the Central Intelligence Agency the sibling [agency] is heading/is/has been to Beirut. Syria’s Asad says that the Sunni fundamentalists in northern Lebanon are a threat to Syria the sibling. U.S. commanders in the Iraq the sibling, which they manage, continue to level accusations against Syria the sibling that it is flooding Iraq the sibling with foreign fighters. Syria the sibling accuses a “neighboring Arab country” (they mean Iraq the sibling; in other words the American ancillary state in the dismembered country) of providing the explosive material for the recent suicide bombing in Damascus the sibling city.

Omar: What’s going on?

Muqran: A war among us all intelligence services. You’re so preoccupied with Gaza and the Persians’ people there and the cousins that you’re not seeing the rest. We and the brothers the Americans are facing off with the Iranians and the brothers the Syrians in Lebanon the sibling. We were able to penetrate the Syrians’ shield when, working with the brothers the Americans’ ancillary state – – a state independent of the brother Maliki government, chock full of former brother Baathists, and being trained by our brothers the Jordanians which we hope one day, God willing, will be able to rule Iraq and snatch it away from the Persians – – were able to explode a suicide bomb in Syria the sibling. We provided the suicide bomber from Lebanon the sibling via our financing of al-Qaeda in Tripoli the sibling, and the brothers the Americans provided the explosives via the ancillary Iraqi state they run.

Omar: But I thought al-Qaeda was –

Muqran: Each intelligence service now finances one al-Qaeda or the other. The sister Syria has its own to use inside Iraq and inside Lebanon the sibling (when Lebanon the sibling had been ruled by our son Saad [al-Hariri];) Iran has its branch; our brothers the Americans have theirs through the ancillary Iraqi state they run; we have ours inside Iraq and another inside Lebanon.

Omar: Should we have one?

Muqran: Do you have the money?

Omar: It’s your money and that of the brothers the Americans.

Muqran: Then use ours! Why replicate the effort, brother Omar?

Omar: So what’s the brother Hayden up to?

Muqran: They haven’t told us the brothers the Americans.

Omar: Don’t pull my leg, brother Muqran. The brothers the Americans, I mean oily Cheney and oily Bush, are on your payroll and they tell you everything. You'd be funding their future careers and that of their children, forcing them and their progeny onto corporations with interest in the kingdom.

Muqran: Brother Omar: I’m serious. They only deal with the brother Bandar, not with us.

Omar: And brother Bandar hasn’t told you?

Muqran: I’m not certain he knows. He doesn’t talk to me, anyway. He thinks I’m competing with him to be the next Crown Prince. Which, with the health of our current Crown Prince, may God Preserve Him and Guide Him, would mean I’d be King. And he wants to be King. And time is running out for him because the brother Bush should soon become yet less significant. And many of the princes on the Allegiance Council blame brother Bandar and his American assets -- brother Bush and brother Cheney –- for the defeat that has been dealt the Kingdom (against Iran) when the brothers the Americans invaded Iraq.

To answer your question: likely Hayden is in Beirut to rearrange house for his intelligence service; but more importantly his visit is a message to the brothers the Syrians , the Shia Persians, and their proxies not to dare push the brothers the Americans out of Lebanon altogether. You see after Georgia, the brothers the Americans now are concerned that the cat is out of the bag – that the brothers the Russians will be more daring and supportive of their allies in retaliation for Georgia. The brothers the Russians are on a roll in the Caspian basin. They’re routing the brothers the Americans there. And the brother Hayden likely fears that they’d rout the brothers the Americans and us out of Lebanon the sibling. Possibly, too, he could be laying the groundwork for a contingency plan to move the CIA out of Beirut should things heat up with Iran. The brothers the Americans have lost a lot of CIA agents in Beirut in the 1980s. They’re not about repeating the same mistake. If things heat up in Iraq, Iran will include Lebanon the sibling in its retaliation plans.

Omar: You don’t say!

Muqran: That’s the analysis I glean from that good-for-nothing the brother Sheikh al-Khater in Washington, D.C.

Omar: That son-of-a bitch! Couldn’t you rely on LaRouche’s people instead, as we all do? Wouldn’t it be more honorable than relying on an Arab brother who's busy exposing our dirty linen?

Muqran: Can’t stand these LaRouche people. Likely they’re infiltrated, anyway. And they never bathe!

Ha, ha, ha.

Omar: They don’t bathe. That’s so true. Brother Muqran, you’re crazy!

Muqran; Look who’s talking!

Ha, ha, ha.

Omar: So are we gonna have our ass kicked inside Iraq?

Muqran: Yes. Still, get your men ready. We’re boning up for a huge war among intelligence services there.

Omar: Who are we facing off with?

Muqran: We’ll be working with the Iraqi ancillary state which our brothers the Americans and the brothers the Jordanians have created and coordinating with our brothers the Jordanians, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis–to face off with our brothers the Syrians and those Shias.

Omar: Do we stand a chance, brother Muqran?

Muqran: Absolutely not. But that’s what our sophomoric brother Bush and sophomoric sister Rice want us to do.

Omar: And we do it?

Muqran: It bewilders me brother Omar how sophomoric these brothers the Americans are. For the most inportant country in the world -- to be run by Israel-centric sophomores! From the beginning of this Iraq thing –- the very idea of invading was sophomoric, an idea championed by a bunch of wishful-thinking-Israel-in-my-heart--right-wing Jews. And the most powerful country on earth adopts this Israel-and-oil-wishful-thinking mediocrity! Now –

Omar: But you did, too, brother Muqran. The Kingdom the sibling did!

Muqran: Brother Omar, your Swiss nest –

Ha, ha, ha

Muqran: The idiot brother Bandar who has the ear of our King, may God Protect Him and Lead him in the Right and Straight Path, assured us all that it’ll be a breeze and that the Kingdom will have security forever after post-invasion Iraq.

Omar: And you believed him?

Muqran: Frankly, brother Omar, we didn’t have the choice not to believe him. The right wing Jews of Israel’s diaspora had taken over the Pentagon and were threatening to unseat us as a royal family and dismember the Kingdom.

Omar: Water under the bridge, now.

Muqran: What irks me still is that neither the brothers the Americans nor my brother Bandar have reined in their sophomoric and harmful –– to use the brother Sheikh al-Khater’s words –– perspective of things. I recently learned the brother Bush had sent a secret letter, using the brother Abbas as messenger, to the brother Asad the Shia Alawite in which he told him that he’d give him back the Joulan in exchange for Syria splitting from Iran. How sophomoric can one get?

Omar: What’s bad about that – – besides the fact that the son-of-a-bitch Abbas didn’t tell us and told you?

Muqran: the brother Sheikh al-Khater has taught us and his countrymen the harmful idiots that Syria the sibling does go the direction of money. But it does so where money comes in based on need for Syria the sibling, not money based on begging.

Omar: Are you insulting us Eguyptians, brother Muqran?

Muqran: If the shoe fits...

Ha, ha, ha.

HOW TO KEEP THE HARMFUL IDIOTS IN IRAQ: A PAGE OUT OF THE PLAY BOOK OF SAUDI INTELLIGENCE?

rough second and short draft.

I'm the longing of the poets
[Their] alienation
... The music of what they've composed
And [that of] their prose

Sung by Fairuz, "Baghdad and the Poets" (I don't know who authored the song/poem) (My translation.)

[Caveats:

1. There are plenty of reasons for the Sunni resistance (“al-Qaeda in Iraq”) to be infuriated with the Shia state in Iraq, not the least of which is the torture by that state of Sunni resistance fighters and their hanging in a basement in a building in Baghdad. (Robert Fisk recently has reported on that.)

2. Out of necessity: what follows packs lots of speculation. Since my training was mostly in the Lebanese civil war, I'm comfortable with that speculation and believe it hits the mark most of the time. ]

*******

It just hit me why Saudi intelligence likely is funding al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The wholesale suicide and car bombing assaults on the Shia civilians is likely what Saudi intelligence is after, not the other acts of resistance – e.g., going after Sunni recruits of the Shia state’s police.

Why?

To beget a backlash from the Shias against the Sunnis.

Why?

To get the Sunnis -- at least the ones in Baghdad -- so scared of the Shias that they would cling to the harmful idiots for protection.

Why?

Because the harmful idiots would then have a case to present to the world, to the American public, but most importantly to the Arab (read “Sunni,” in accordance with the attempts at dividing that public by the Saudi ruling elite) Street. The case would be about why they’d need to stay in Iraq and have permanent bases. It'll be about the "need" to "protect” the Arab Sunnis. Never mind that the Saudi ruling elite, the instigator of this harmful scheme, is using and screwing (yet again) the Arab Sunnis of Iraq so that the harmful idiots can protect them! So that the harmful idiots can stay in Iraq in accordance with their own harmful idiocy (they like getting bogged down; it creates jobs) and the wishes of the Saudi ruling elite (and the Israelis and the Kuwaitis and the Jordanian ruling elite.)

Why?

Because the Saudi ruling elite doesn’t want us to leave lest Iran completes its take-over of Iraq. If Iran does, so fears the Saudii ruling elite, then the Shias of Saudi Arabia would be strengthened and may succeed at putting together a populist alliance and/or political coalitions with other sectors of the Saudi population.

Why?

Because if we withdraw, even the mainstream Iraqi Arab Sunnis would flock to Iran.

Who says?

I say. Look at the Lebanese Christian politician Michel Aoun, leader of the most pro-American and pro-Western community in the East. He’s visiting Tehran. Who would’ve said!

Why is he doing this, the bastard?

Because the harmful idiots had given the Christians of Lebanon the historic screw when they had struck a deal with Syria. They needed Syria to give U.S. troops an “Arab cover” as U.S. troops were “liberating” Kuwait. (Which Saddam Hussein had invaded, having fallen for a trap set up by the harmful idiots and Kuwaiti intelligence. Do ask the then Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington whose daughter helped entrap the U.S. Congress, claiming she had been a nurse at a Kuwaiti hospital. Can't any reporter tell us whatever happened to that "nurse" and to her father? Oh well... the harmful idiots entrap the Iraqi Arab army into invading Kuwait, then the harmful idiots liberate Kuwait. The goal has always been total domination of Iraq itself. Good luck with that.)

So?

So, in exchange for Syria’s “Arab cover” to Bush senior’s “liberation” of Kuwait (which, again, would’ve been unnecessary but for the harmful idiots and Kuwaiti intelligence having set up Saddam Hussein, the Arab they hanged), the harmful idiots (and their beloved, of course) allowed Syrian troops to conquer Christian Mount Lebanon.

So?

So, if Michel Aoun and his pro-Western and pro-American community have learned that the harmful idiots would sell you for a nickel, why wouldn’t the Arab Sunnis of Iraq? Darn: Haven't the harmful idiots and Israel’s American right wing diaspora just given them the historic screw?

Strange?! We’re forward-looking people. In that, we're forever the innocent. Why can’t the Arab Sunnis be like us -- innocent? After all, we love them and we’ll be glad to protect them in exchange for permanent bases.


Because smart people have a memory, unlike idiots who are harmful and self-referential. And no one has screwed the Arabs of Iraq, the Arabs, all, and most particularly the Sunnis of Arab Iraq, in the last one hundred years more thoroughly than --

1. The British ( Palestine);

2. the harmful idiots (Iraq and Israel/Palestine) and

2. Israel’s right-wing diaspora in the land of the harmful idiots (Israel/Palestine and Iraq.)


So?

So the Arab Sunnis cannot and will not trust the harmful idiots. Come what may. Because the harmful idiots will not and cannot re-unite their country for them, a country of which they’re proud. Just as Aoun and the Lebanese Christians rally around the office of the Maronite presidency, and do what it takes to strengthen that office (vis-a-vis the office of the Sunni Prime Minister), including playing up to Iran, so will the Iraqi Arab Sunnis rally, but around what comes natural to them.

Rally around a presidency? We the harmful idiots don’t get it.


And no one expects you to. The Arab Sunnis of Iraq will rally around the call to re-unite their country -- whatever the hue of that call -- not confederation, not sectarianism, not consociational bullshit. They’ll be waiting for the opportunity to achieve that unity, come what may. It’ll be a long, arduous, and turbulent road, but they won’t stop until they get there. Even if it means an Iraq that’s allied to Iran. If that’s what it’d take (remember the Lebanese Christians), then that’s what it’d take.

Each generation will should hold that goal dearer and dearer.

AFTER DISMEMBERING ARAB IRAQ: ON THE ANGST OF THE SAUDI RULING ELITE AND ITS NURSING OF SUNNI NATIONALISM

Rough first draft

(This is a follow-up to the last post , “National Security Alert: Talk to All. Now!” )

That the wretched would drink from my cup
They don’t ask
From what vine comes my running wine.

Mahmoud Darwish, "Marthiyya."

RULING ELITE ANGST

There’s a difference in the depth of angst among the ruling elite of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC.) The small ones, all but Saudi Arabia, haven’t had to give much thought to the new reality in the Gulf. That reality had followed the dismemberment by the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism (the harmful idiots and Israel, mostly) of Arab Iraq, the regional balancer of Iranian power. These smaller members of the GCC had always been protectorates. Their foreign policy had been run mostly by Westerners — the Brits first, now the countries of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism: the harmful idiots, Britain, and Israel. (According to Israeli press reports, per the Arab press, Israeli security companies, chock full of “former” Israeli generals and officers, are being given security contracts in some of the smaller GCC countries.) Psychologically the ruling elite of these smaller principalities are used to this state of dependency. I’d dare say: they have no angst whatsoever.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia, though lacking a competent army, had always had an image of itself as a large and influential country. It had needed protection from the West, but that protection had nearly always been one step removed and somewhat invisible. For a long time Arab Iraq, a fellow Arab brother, had been recruited to provide the more visible protection, though the United States had never been that far behind. In those days the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia could tell its public a patriotic story where the ruling elite could credibly deny that Israel’s sponsor, the United States, was in fact responsible for the Kingdom’s security.

No longer.

SAUDI ARABIA COMES UNDER THE DIRECT TUTELAGE OF THE AXIS OF CONQUEST AND NEW COLONIALISM.

Arab Iraq is gone and the truth is out: the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism, mostly via the harmful idiots, is the Kingdom’s security shield and the balancer of Iranian power. The ruling elite of the Kingdom has caught on, but not the public. The ruling elite has tried for a couple of years now to acclimate the Saudi public to the new reality – that the Muslim Arab Sunni public needs to join the “Christian” (U.S.) and “Jewish” (The U.S. and Israel) worlds for protection against the “Shia” (Iran.) Hence in part the inter-faith conference in Spain months ago, sponsored by the Kingdom. The Kingdom, as a result of the loss of Arab protection (Iraq), (and earlier the protection of pre-1973 Arab Egypt), has come more directly than ever before under the tutelage of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism – under the tutelage mostly of a nation where Jews and Christians are allied and define themselves in relation to, and opposition to, Arabs and Muslims, and Muslims respectively. (In other words, they don’t define themselves solely by their religious tenets; the tenets, I submit, pale in importance vis-a-vis definition against Arabness and Islam. These are sectarian tribes. It used to be Jews v. Arabs; then Jews v. Muslims; then Jews v. Shias v. Sunnis v. Christians. This phenomenon which originated and still thrives in the Middle East and has established itself in the United States and influences (and is influenced by ) aspects of U.S. foreign policy. I’m forever amazed, for instance, about the extent of anti-Muslim animus that I hear when I talk to a born-again zealot. This anti-Muslim animus comes out even when the conversation wouldn’t have much to do with Islam. Could the anti-Jewish animus be that far behind? Has the anti-Muslim animus replaced – with conscious effort on the part of Israel and its right wing diaspora activists – the anti-Jewish?)

A TECTONIC SHIFT!

The Kingdom therefore better acclimate itself (or at least act as if) to needing these – “Christians” and “Jews.” Hence the recruitment by the Saudi ruling elite of the religious personalities in the Gulf (e.g., Sheikh Qaradhawi, Sheikh Awdeh) to integrate the masses into the new reality – to be open both to Jews and Christians. (This thing smells of a harmful idiots’ sophomoric scheme.) To be so directly under the rule of the harmful idiots (under the boot, so to speak) is nothing short of a tectonic shift for the Saudi ruling elite. At a a minimum it impacts its definition of national self. This shift is made only slightly more bearable by the huge inflow of oil money. Still, the level of angst among this ruling elite should be high. (Note: I’m being specific: ruling elite NOT elite.)


IMPACT

The ruling elite of Saudi Arabia no longer can adopt patriotic positions which once packed (for them and still do for Iran) so much legitimacy at home and in the Arab and Islamic Worlds. Because the Saudi ruling elite lives under the boot of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism, which has an Israeli wing built into it, directly and via Israel’s diaspora, the ruling elite can no longer talk with freedom about the Arab Palestinians; or to condemn the Israeli devastation of the Arab Lebanese civilian population; or to scream at Israel’s occupation of the Arab Joulan or Israel’s settlements. Israel via the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism, of which it is an integral part, now lords over the Saudi government. (I’m serious.) Hush.

The taming of the Saudi ruling elite didn’t happen only because that elite has come under the direct tutelage of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism. There’s a less immediate background. The Saudi ruling elite has witnessed the power of Israel’s diaspora in the United States; it has tasted it. It saw that this mostly right-wing diaspora wants nothing less than to “civilize” the Arabs, the rich Saudis in particular. That diaspora had always seen Saudi Arabia as the country to tame, to domesticate, to force it to accept Israel’s centrality in the sea of Arab hinterland. The right wing diaspora was so intent on subduing Saudi Arabia that it lost sight of the fact that Saudi money to patriotic Arab groups easily can be replaced by Iranian money – or, secretly, Russian or Chinese. (I’m – logically – speculating.) The Saudi ruling elite has seen that this predominately right-wing diaspora can do it in. It can tame this elite; it can “domesticate” it. It can subdue it. That this right wing Jewish diaspora has now disappeared off the radar screen is only a tactical retreat meant mostly to dodge any blame by the wider American public for the Iraq imbroglio. But, in essence, the right wing Jewish diaspora had achieved its goal in subduing the Saudi ruling elite.


IMPACT: NO CREDIBLE NATIONALISM – DODGING THE AMERICAN-ISRAELI-IRANIAN HANGMAN.

The new reality therefore is as much about the symbiotic alliance of the Israelis and the harmful idiots (the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism) having quashed any possibility for credible nationalism by the Saudi ruling elite as about anything else. A new self-image needed to evolve, one that didn’t offend the new protectors of Saudi Arabia, the members of the Axis of Conquest and Nouveau Colonialism. That identity had to be devoid of Arabness. Lest it offends the Israelis. And it couldn’t be Islamic, lest it offends both the Israelis and the harmful idiots – the “Jews” and the “Christians.” Lest the Israelis unleash their right wing establishment and that establishment’s ululating liberals in the United States against them yet again, work to unseat the royal family and dismember the Kingdom. As they had dismembered Arab Iraq, unseated its rulers and hung them, and once had threatened to do the same to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ruling elite at some level of consciousness likely dreads with absolute gloom the Axis for that Axis’s ability to do the same to them as it did to Iraqi leaders: have them hung.

Not to mention that the threat of an eventual Israeli-Iranian alliance looms large. This prospect adds yet more gloom to the psyche of the Saudi ruling elite, lest the hangman appear from three directions: east (Iran), north (Shia Iraq and Israel) and West (the United Sates and Israel’s diaspora.) When an aide to Ahmadinejad said a few weeks ago something to the effect that Iran can build a bridge with the Israeli people (or is close to–I don’t remember the exact words), he was reminding the Saudis of what could happen if Saudi intelligence continued to use its new-found wealth to wage mini-wars against the Iran, its allies, and its proxies, and a propaganda war against Iran. (The propaganda war is being waged by al-Arabiyyah and other media outlets owned/controlled by the Saudi ruling elite.) The Iranian aide’s statement wasn’t a slip; it wasn’t a mistake.

Iran sits across the Gulf. Iran is proving incapable of forming and cementing any real Arab Shia-Sunni alliance in Iraq. It doesn’t even care about forming a like alliance. (Hence the main difference with its ally, Syria.) Iran therefore is stuck in its Shia realm. Unless it’s able to motivate the Saudi Shias in the Eastern Province, it’s going nowhere. And there’s so much Saudi government money (soon to be nearly a trillion dollars in accumulated oil money surplus) to buy up the Saudi Shias many times over and offset Iran’s schemes. So, until it’s able (or willing) to form an Islamic (Arab) Sunni-Shia alliance in Iraq, Iran has contained itself.

(There are limits to how far Iran can milk the Palestine Cause. Unless it’s willing and able to ignite continued mini-wars, and the Israelis respond to these, Iran may in the end be left with the Palestinians, no more. A new intifadha is past due, anyway, and may help them out. Mahmoud Abbas has been used up as a cargo-getter. He got cargo, alright, but he couldn’t get the Israelis and their settlements out. The Palestinians expected his failure as a liberator but needed the cargo he alone (as an asset of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism) could get. But they got the cargo already, or enough of it to last them throughout a new intifadha. A new intifadha therefore should be in the offing. It would be Godsend for Iran and should extend the duration of Iran’s reluctance to open up to the Sunnis of Iraq. My advice to the people of the West Bank: start piling up on essentials and water.)

Stuck under the boot of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism, and facing off with Shia Iran, Saudi Arabia could’ve chosen to revive Arab nationalism. But that would’ve offended the Israeli wing of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism which now rules the roost in Saudi decision-making. Hence the resort to Sunni nationalism – inoffensive to the Israeli wing of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism, even similar to Jewish nationalism, but perceived as beneficial (superficially) in damming Islamic Iran. Superficially because Iran already has dammed its own self. Iran is stuck in its Shia realm in Iraq. Sunni nationalism, however, may have the slight benefit to Saudi Arabia of delaying Iran’s ability to build a credible Iraqi Sunni-Shia alliance. This alliance would help Iran once and for all in forcing any reluctant Arab ruling elite to accept it. In addition, perhaps at a subconscious (maybe even conscious) level, Sunni nationalism likely is a defensive measure for the Saudi ruling elite. It’s in that Sunni nationalism that the elite would hope to find a safe haven from the American-Jewish-Shia hangman. Better a violent Sunni-Shia civil war in Saudi Arabia, if need be, than the gallows of the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism!


SUNNI NATIONALISM AS A TOOL

Contrary to how things appear at the surface, Sunni nationalism, it seems, is only nominally anti-Iranian and anti-Shia. Viewing the fact that Iran has significantly dammed itself in Iraq (and outside, since Iraq, not only Palestine, defines Iran’s ability to reach the Arab and Sunni public outside of Iraq), Sunni nationalism is really the Saudi ruling elite’s response to the new reality of direct tutelage by the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism. Likely it provides that elite with a tool to regain some of the freedom it had lost as a result of the invasion and dismemberment of Arab Iraq. Sunni nationalism reinforces the ranks of the Saudi ruling elite, which ranks could’ve gone every which way as a result of defeat. (The defeat that the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism had dealt the Saudi ruling elite when it dismembered Arab Iraq.) The dismemberment of Arab Iraq ended the phase where Saudi Arabia had enjoyed protection by an Arab sister country. More importantly, the loss of that protection robbed that ruling elite of the pretense that it was independent of the harmful idiots and their Israeli ally – the Axis of Conquest and New Colonialism. As a result of coming directly under the tutelage of the Axis, of which Israel and its American diaspora are an integral part, the Saudi ruling elite could no longer seek legitimacy for its government in the Palestine Cause and the condemnation of Israeli colonialism and aggression. For now: Bye, bye Arab Palestine as a source of legitimacy for the Saudi ruling elite.

In other words, Sunni nationalism likely (in good part) is a transitional phase, a knee jerk reaction meant to rally the political troops and keep the stream of legitimacy going for the Saudi system of government while the ruling elite seeks a new and more credible (and durable) source for legitimacy. (Other than the legitimacy obtained of oil money surpluses, of course, and the protection of the Holy Sites. Both of these sources are fungible and shallow as they would be available to any other system of government, anyway.)


REPERCUSSIONS

The question: Does part of the legitimacy the new Sunni nationalism is seeking involve the nursing of a new version of al-Qaeda (by Saudi intelligence), one that’s tactically not anti-American or anti-Israeli, yet available to the ruling elite as a tool across the Arab and Islamic Worlds? It’s clear to me that one such version of al-Qaeda is being funded in Lebanon (and Syria) and that yet another, I suspect, is being funded in Iraq. And can that ruling elite assure that the money flow to the New al-Qaedas doesn’t end up in the wrong place? Or is the ruling elite aware of this and doesn’t give a damn? To be specific: When Saudi intelligence funds Sunni nationalists in Tripoli, or Sunni proxies in Iraq, isn’t it a likely possibility that some of the money will be re-routed to individuals and groups which agenda reaches outside of Tripoli and Syria or goes beyond Iraqi tribal chiefs and the obvious proxy Iraqi Sunni politicians? In Iraq, could it be that Saudi money is filtering through to al-Qaeda in Iraq to conduct operations against the Shias? Against the Shia state’s Sunni recruits? Just as the new Saudi Sunni nationalism feels the need to have an army (a competent one as would a version of al-Qaeda) to give it reach, doesn’t Iraqi Arab Sunni nationalism, which is likely funded by Saudi intelligence, need the same? Which money is fungible and flows through to conduct (eventually) operations against targets outside of Iraq? Ditto for Saudi intelligence money flowing out of Lebanon and Syria? Does U.S. intelligence know that? Does it approve? Is it in cahoots with Saudi intelligence on the re-creation of al-Qaedas?