THE NEXT PHASE: THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS PAVE TURKEY’S PATH TO CHINA

“And it all ends - - even the dreams.”

Fairouz song. (My translation from Arabic.)


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THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS’ TROJAN HORSE INSIDE TURKEY

- - Masoud Barazani, the Kurdish warlord, is welcomed at the White House.

- - Vice President Biden calls on another Kurdish warlord, Plantation Iraq’s President, Jalal Talabani, to help lift a ban on the Israel-Anchored Idiots’ proxies among the Iraqi Arab Sunnis to participate in the upcoming elections in Plantation Iraq.

- - Both warlords, Barazani and Talabani, merge their peshmergas into a united Kurdish army.

It’s clear that the Independent Country of Kurdistan now is a Full Working Base for, and protectorate of, the Israel-Anchored Idiots. A base - - but for what purpose?

(1) Superficially: to monitor and use against Iran.

I’d ask you to go beyond that.

(2) The Israel-Anchored Idiots’ use of the Kurdish Base, in competing with Iran until they change its government, in the end is meant to assure dominance over Plantation Iraq and its oil.

I’d ask you to go beyond that.

(3) Most stunningly, the Kurdish Base affords the Israel-Anchored Idiots the ability to play Turkish politics by claiming both a population/nation and a part of Turkey where that population predominates. The population/nation: the Kurds. In other words, by securing the Kurdish Base, the Israel-Anchored Idiots have secured a prominent role in Turkish politics. The Israel-Anchored Idiots now own a Trojan horse - -the Kurdish nation - - inside the Turkish body politic.

THE WAY IT HAPPENED

For what it’s worth: It’s not that the Israel-Anchored Idiots have meant this occurrence to gel he way it had. It has gelled that way more as a result of the comical (if tragic for Arab Iraq, for the Arab nation, and for the United States) failure of the Israel Idiots’ plans for Plantation Iraq than as a result of anything else. Having miscalculated as only a Jewish-American college sophomore would, obsessed by Israel and his Love for it, lacking in sophistication, and full of wishful thinking for his Beloved, the Israel-Anchored Idiots now have taken refuge in the Independent Country of Kurdistan. They’ve made use of this for want of choice and to soften the blow of “defeat”- - the Huge, Self-Made, Israel-Boys’-Inspired, Strategic Blunder.

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(Now, with a new version of the Boys, they’re on to another Bigger-and-Better Strategic Blunder: Mobilizing for the strangulation of Iran - - and warning about Iranian retaliation. But for Iran, the Idiots are going through retrenchment, paved for by the military - -at last. (On that, see David Ignatius, “Bringing Partners to the Fight,” The Washington Post, Thursday, January 28, 2010. At A-25. Mr. Ignatius doesn’t call it “retreat” or “retrenchment.” Since he seems to be a favored confident of the military-intelligence circles, though the antithesis to Seymour Hersh, he sugar-coats the retreat/retrenchment by calling it "partnership" - - as if that "partnership" wasn't available before his newspaper had hoorayed the crushing of Arabs and the dismemberment of an Arab country. That newspaper is at it again: it now wants the Obama Administration to not talk to the Iranian government and, instead, to support the "Green Revolution" - - meaning fund it. Little does the Israeli-Anchored newspaper care that the disintegration of Iran would bring so much misery to the people of that country - - and the people of the region, but not to the Post's Israel, God forbid.)

TURKEY’S CARDS AND THE IMF: TURKEY LIVES UNDER THE GUN

I wouldn’t want to under-estimate Turkey's ability to neutralize (balance, really) the Kurdish influence of the Idiots inside Turkey; that is, neutralize the use these can make of their Kurdish Trojan horse within Turkey. The Turks, for instance, can drag their feet on helping out in Afghanistan. Their intelligence service can go so far as to pass funds on to the Taliban at any moment that the Idiots-and-their-Israel use (or threaten to use) their Kurdish Trojan horse inside Turkey. In addition, Turkey could for instance use its influence in Central Asia not to help the interests of the Israel-Anchored Idiots.

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But these Turkish cards have severe limitations. They’re trumped by the aid Turkey receives from the IMF, aid that's made necessary by the population time bomb that's typical of Third World countries. (Sorry: the Turks are European.) Turkey cannot survive well without the IMF, I suspect, and the Israel-Anchored Idiots own that one - - hence the severe limitations.

In the end, unless China is able and willing to replace the IMF in Turkey, that country would have to show unquestioned obedience (but for some symbolic acts) vis-à-vis the Israel-Anchored Idiots. It’ll have to accept that Israel and its Idiots own Turkish politics.

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The reality - - intended or not, likely not - - is a stark one. In the current phase of the balance of power picture, the Kurdish nation within Turkey is a Trojan horse for Israel and for the Israel-Anchored Idiots. Mr. Erdogan can try to entice the Saudis to invest in Turkey. But Saudi Arabia cannot replace the IMF, if only because the Saudis likely are funding the Idiots’ Pakistan and Afghanistan military campaigns, and will likely get stuck with a good share of the bill for sustaining these (e.g., the four hundred thousand man army-and-police the Idiots want to create in Afghanistan.)

Besides, the Israel-Anchored Idiots own the Saudi royal elite and can restrain them relatively easily should the confrontation between the Idiots-and-Israel and Turkey heat up.

Still, in the theoretical haze of this period of transition, Mr. Erdogan goes on trying. But the reality is that his country’s national security - -if not cohesiveness - -is in someone else’s hands.

My prediction: Turkey, to gain breathing space vis-à-vis the two (the Idiots and their Israel) secretly initiates negotiations with China to wean itself off the IMF and regain a modicum of control over its own fate. For all I know, this may already have happened. China has every incentive to curry favor with Turkey and vice versa. Think Central Asia's energy fields and Turkey's Islamic credentials.

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The question: Can the Idiots avert yet another Israel-Inspired Strategic Blunder - - the total loss of Turkey - - while they’re working through (yet another Israel-inspired) Iranian Blunder, as Iran should not be expected to accept the terms of its own execution set for it by the Israel-Anchored Idiots.

THE NEXT PHASE

DRAFT


Retrenchment: REDUCTION; CURTAILMENT; specif: a cutting of expenses

Reactionary: relating to, marked by, or favoring reaction and esp. political reaction.

Reaction: b. tendency toward a former and usu. outmoded political or social order or policy.

Ghetto: 1: a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live.

Bully: 2.a: a blundering browbeating fellow; esp. one habitually cruel to others weaker than himself. 3. a hired ruffian.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1970s?—the edition I used in my college years.)


THE BURDEN, SELF CREATED, OF THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS.

I recently saw a news item about joint maneuvers led by France and joined by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other frantic Arab governments. I say “frantic” because these allied governments (not their people) just can’t seem to know what course to take to dodge that feeling of being exposed. Along with France, they scratch away at the litter box.

The power vacuum left after dismembering Arab Iraq is bound to be filled; but by what country or what alliance? Iran and Turkey are the prime candidates but each has its Achilles heel; for Turkey: the Kurdish nation; for Iran: demographics, as a generation is produced so fast after another, hence the opposition, hence the opportunity for the Israel-Anchored Idiots to fund it, I suspect.


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France and England occasionally come into the picture. But their intervention is motivated by trade interests (arms and other government contracts.) They do not possess any (realistic) capability to balance Iranian power. Neither has the extensive global reach the Israel-Anchored Idiots possess.

Conventionally, only the Israel-Anchored Idiots can balance Iranian power. They possess the extensive global military reach necessary to achieve the mission. Add to that that the Israel-Anchored Idiots don’t have a clear-cut Achilles’ heel, such as a Kurdish nation within the American society-at-large. What Muslims they have are too comfortable and happy as Americans, logging in the larger part of their life before a screen of one kind or another. What use can be made of alienated American Muslims hardly destabilizes the polity-at-large—as the Kurdish nation would Turkey. Going postal has limited impact, and young American Muslims heading to Pakistan to wage Jihad is more cause for worry for parents than a threat to the American polity.

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For these reasons, the Israel-Anchored Idiots are the prime candidates to fill in the very power vacuum which they had created. The process, post-dismemberment of Arab Iraq, has found reinvigoration in Arab Yemen. The fact that the ruling elite of the Arab Gulf need the Israel-Anchored Idiots by their side, so badly, is yet another draw. But let’s be clear: For the ruling elite of the Arabian Gulf countries, it’s hardly about balancing Iranian power conventionally. It’s more about defeating Iran as a way of putting the breaks on the Islamic Republic’s influence among their own people - -Iran as the boost for the political opposition in the Gulf, be it Shiite or Sunni, and the Israel-Anchored Idiots as the protectors of the regimes against the opposition.

IRANIAN INFLUENCE TAKES A CIRCUITOUS ROUTE

These ruling elites, it should be clear, wouldn’t be so worried about direct Iranian influence. After all, Iran should least likely want to exert that influence in a direct and forward fashion. That would only alienate the people of the Gulf countries, the very base –now and in the future - - of the opposition. (Maybe, just maybe, I’m giving the Iranians too much credit as smart operators.) But if you consider the Arab nation as one, a nation that happened to have been torn apart by historical circumstance, by Israel-and-its backers, and by division these and oil have caused as to create legions of self-hating Arabs (the oil elite and those on the payroll), then Iranian influence - -the more effective influence - - should reach the Gulf Arabs via such places as Lebanon and Palestine - -and Iraq.

The challenge for the Israel-Anchored Idiots: How to do it? How to balance Iranian influence, especially the one arriving through the circuitous route? You see: The Islamic Republic isn’t about conventional weapons. The damage these would inflict is more in the nature of a deterrent. It’s that Iran is the only true backer of the Palestinian and the Syrian Arabs in a realm where Israel-the-Ghetto-vis-à-vis-the-Muslim-World just won’t budge on colonial expansion of that Ghetto, sinking the Ghetto’s sponsors: the Idiots and the Europeans. Unable to restrain their bully in the heart of the Arab nation - - if anything, secretly harboring support for, and fascination by, that bully/ghetto and putting it to use as they did in Lebanon and in Gaza, similarly to the way I suspect China uses the North Korean bully - - the Sponsors have instead adopted that ghetto’s view. They have resorted to trying to exert “soft power” on the Islamic Republic to change its regime. Without getting into the ultimate serious risks that policy carries (I’ve done that in other posts - -about an engineered Iranian self-disintegration), I would note here that the failure to force the Israelis back to the 1967 borders carries risks that are mind-boggling both to stability in Western Asia and to the American interest of keeping what already is theirs, their property in fee simple - - the Arabian Peninsula.

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For one, note the fact that the Palestinian camps in Lebanon still are a ticking time-bomb. You would think that Syria and Hezbollah would be the ones to rein in these. But neither has interest in alienating the wider Sunni public, the Arab in particular. And why would they want to do the work for the Israel-Anchored Idiots, including the French Ones, anyway? The Israel-Anchored Idiots can supply the Lebanese army with all the weapons in the world. In the end, without Hezbollah’s help, the Lebanese army shouldn’t be able to do it - -to rein in the camps. It can stage a “victory” here-and-there—but the price would be tremendous. Wisdom and economics therefore dictate that it doesn’t even try.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is trying through Syria to tame Iranian influence, hoping to even block it - - the influence that does and will arrive to Saudi Arabia via the circuitous route of Palestine and Lebanon. But Saudi Arabia without an effective professional army (and so owned by Israel’s Boys in Washington, D.C.) can hardly be of help to Syria in returning the Joulan, or pushing Israel back to the 1967 borders - -both essential Syrian interests. Whatever agreement Mr. Asad has reached with the Saudi government on his recent visit there, therefore, wouldn’t be so much about the Levant. (Saudi Arabia already had mostly conceded that to Arab Syria way before Mr. Asad’s visit—not that it had a choice.) It should be more of the nature of providing an “Arab [read: Syrian] cover” to the Saudis (and the Israel-Anchored Idiots coordinating with them) in Arab Yemen. A symbolic cover, no more. The Saudi Ruling Elite accepts that because it direly needs Arab legitimacy. In the eyes of the Arab people, including in particular the Arabs of Yemen, during the rein of Crusader, Bald Samson and the Jewish Boys - -and these are back, Oh Boy!- - that elite had signed off on its Arab identity and had sided in full with Israel and its Jewish American Boys. As a consequence, the Saudi ruling elite now needs Arab Syria to lend it some of that Arab identity that elite had shed, to increase the Saudi Ruling Elite’s effectiveness in Arab Yemen. (Secondarily, Saudi Arabia would need that Arab Syria not intervene in Arab Yemen in any way that would contravene Saudi policy there. Even an Arab Syrian media campaign, no more, against Saudi Arabia in Yemen would make life very difficult for the Saudi Ruling Elite as it would expose its lack of Arab nationalist credentials in a country—Yemen—where these credentials are of the utmost importance.)

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Arab Syria, as cargo cult with salaries to pay, lends the Arab cover to the Saudi Ruling Elite, but only for Arab Yemen. I’m sure Mr. Asad didn’t say it when he was recently in Saudi Arabia - -it’d be too embarrassing - - but the Arab Syrians cannot trust the Saudis for the long term. These, after all, as ruling elite clinging to power, are so fully and unequivocally owned by the Israel-Anchored Idiots and run scared of Israel’s people in Washington, D.C. - - and work with them. (Note their partnership with the Israel Lobby in the polling of the Saudi populace on Iran—see the last post in this blog.) It could be that the Saudis throw tidbits to that Lobby to neutralize it; it could be that both mistrust each other, and likely do. But, in the end, Arab Syria can ill-afford to rely on the Saudi Ruling Elite for any real help against Israel. That Elite belongs to, and is owned by, the Israel-Anchored Idiots, and therefore in part by Israel itself - -they admit it or not.

RETRENCHMENT

Let’s go back to the observation that the Israel-Anchored Idiots don’t have an Achilles’ heel to speak of. That, by the way, isn’t fully true. It’s just that the Israel-Anchored Idiots’ Achilles’ heel isn’t an ethnic group or a sect. It’s the retrenchment that is bound to happen as a result of the financial meltdown. Unless Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries are willing and able to foot the bill (which I believe they already are—see prior posts), to the tune of, say, of tens of billions of dollars per year, the Israel-Anchored Idiots shouldn’t have the resources to continue on with spending on the military-in-overseas-campaigns in the Muslim World the way they currently are - -e.g., in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The bankruptcy of the government is so severe. The steps taken to deal with it have been more in the nature of analgesics to delay the inevitable: radical surgery. The Fed’s policy of reflating the economy to (in part) spike tax collection - - I don’t believe is proving to be medicine enough. So, in essence, what we may end up with is a military campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan that is funded, likely in full, by the Arab Gulf countries while the federal government effects military retrenchment in other parts of the world to save money.

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I have this strong feeling that the strategists of the state would sooner-than-later be heading to Capitol Hill to help a President (any President) discuss (1) the urgency of retrenchment, (2) the urgency of raising taxes, (3) the urgency of cutting down on social security payments - - and what have you of necessities to save the state-and-the-nation. Mr. Obama wouldn’t be inclined to do it before his next term, if he has one. But if he is re-elected, or someone else is, either would have to pursue a de Gaulle-like Algeria strategy to save nation and state. I don’t think a like policy can be avoided.

The strategists (in the state and in academia) should be expected to move on at least two fronts: that of the policy makers and that of the concentric circles of elite spanning out of urban centers across the country. The idea would be to prepare the country for the coming cuts in spending.

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Retrenchment shouldn’t be expected to affect the ability of the Israel-Anchored Idiots to balance Iranian conventional power. A trip-wire would do. But it’ll take quite a lot of energy to tell the public that the military campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan are paid for not by the public but by the Arab Gulf countries. These campaigns, although costy-free, so to speak, might just be emaciated as a result of the public’s ire at cutting its entitlement programs and not the expenditure in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In other words, the Israel-Anchored Idiots may not be able to relay the message to the public convincingly enough that the public is not paying for these military campaigns; or the public may not believe it anyway.

On the unconventional end, the Israel-Anchored Idiots already have lost the war. Their aversion as Christian-Jewish-Israel-Anchored elite to any pride that is Arab/or/Sunni/or/Islamic sinks them, and should continue to sink them in Western Asia and even the Muslim World. As a consequence of this Aversion, they are and should continue to be the reactionary protectors against their own people of what is already theirs: the stodgy and scared (though filthy rich) Arab Gulf ruling elites, and the Israeli bully/ghetto.

PUSHING THE ANALYTICAL ENVELOPE: IS IRAN USING THE LEBANESE AS-SAFIR TO SEND MESSAGES TO SYRIA?

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Likely I’m pushing the envelope analytically on this one; but what the heck. It’s good exercise to push the envelope analytically. It might serve to generate neurons in the little self-referential brains of the Israel-Anchored Idiots.

IS IRAN NERVOUS ABOUT SYRIA? NEJAD’S STATEMENTS

Iran seems to be getting nervous about the visit (for days!) by Syria’s President to Saudi Arabia. Iranian President Ahmadinejcad, during Mr. Asad’s visit to the Kingdom, fired salvos against the Saudi government. He berated it for using its weapons in Yemen instead of in Gaza. For good measure, if only, Saud al-Faisal fired back. He accused Iran of intervening in Yemen’s internal affairs.

(NOTE: The Saudi Foreign Minister's statement will be picked up by the Israel-Anchored Idiots and blown into a super-urgent crisis. With that, the Israel-Anchored Idiots will move even faster to fill-in the power vacuum left by their dismemberment of Arab Iraq - - in which the Saudi Government played quite a systematic role and which results are now haunting that government. The questions Mr. Faisal will have to answer for himself: Can the Saudi Government withstand the intense political dislocation the move by the Israel-Anchored Idiots into the region - -and his country - - will entail? Or will this move be unavoidable, anyway, for systemic reasons? One thing is sure: Mr. Faisal should not expect the Israel-Anchored Idiots to share the Saudi government’s views on the Shiites. We - - even the Israel-Anchored Idiots amongst us - - are not like that. Nor likely are the Israelis with whose proxies his government works - -see below.)

But that’s not all about Iran’s seeming nervousness.

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IS IRAN NERVOUS ABOUT SYRIA: THE (POSSIBLE) USE OF AS-SAFIR

Iran may be playing the Israel Diaspora-Lobby card - - if only to remind Mr. Asad (and the Saudis) that what’s good for the goose (the Saudis-as-renters of Israel’s Diaspora in the United States) can be good for the gander (Iran can do it, too.)

So, as I was “leafing” through Assafir.com (1/13/10), I ran into this strange article filed by Joe Maacaron (sp.), as-Safir’s reporter in Washington D.C. (As-Safir, a respectable newspaper, is Shiite-led - -Arab nationalist—pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian. It’s by far the best newspaper in Lebanon and the Arab nation - -for now. Al-Akhbar - -the same leanings - - is displacing it as I write.) The article was about some sort of polling of the Saudi populace on Iran - - about the state of the Saudi populace’s thinking on war with Iran, on sanctions. For a while into the article, I couldn’t tell who really was behind that polling - - and Mr. Macaron wasn’t helpful on that. One outfit from “Princeton” had worked on this polling along with an Arab outfit who Maacaron tells us hasn’t revealed its identity (!).

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Then things became a lot clearer. That happened when Mr. Maacaron moved on to interview a “researcher” at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) who had acted as consultant to the pollsters. Bingo: That, to me, cleared up the picture about who was behind the polling: the Israel Lobby - - in a partnership with the Saudi government (see below.)

Further, my best speculative guess hovered in-between these two scenarios:

(1) That the Israel Lobby – in this instance, the Washington Institute on Near East Policy (WINEP) -- is trying (independently) to help the Israel-Anchored Idiots in deciding on sanctions. (Some in the Saudi public like these to be “severe;” so, since we’re democratic-to-the-bone, the world being our oyster and all its people fellow citizens, we should aim to please these Saudi subjects, as our elite circles could now point to that poll to justify intensified interference overseas.)


(2) That WINEP is acting as an arm of the Pentagon. In this scenario, the Pentagon under the Israel-Anchored Idiots, has given the Diaspora institutions the monopoly these demand on anything of substance related to the Arab nation and to the Islamic World. Accordingly, the double-functionaries of WINEP (functionaries of WINEP and the Pentagon), be they de jure or de facto, are keeping the Pentagon one step removed from visibility in Saudi Arabia. In this scenario, involving WINEP likely is the Pentagon’s rather sophomoric way of attending to Israel’s fabricated “existential” fears about Iran.


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Of interest here is that the Saudi government has allowed whoever (be they Israel’s people or Israel’s people on behalf of the Pentagon) to conduct such polling. Realistically (to an analytic certainty) the Saudi Government (the Arab outfit whose identity wouldn’t be revealed to Mr. Maacaron) was partner in this polling with WINEP - - once again: beholden to the Diaspora institutions and accepting of them as the medium to reach the Israel-Anchored American decision-makers - -especially the Pentagon. Worse –for poor us—the Arab polling firm that remained unknown: I would dare say (without any hesitation) that it likely was an arm of the Saudi Government. So: the Saudi Government, via the “scientific” polling of a foreign population that our democracy-imbued elite would blindly treat as American, is using the Diaspora to influence the Pentagon.

What’s relevant to us here is that the reporter of a newspaper that is deemed to be very close to Iran has approached WINEP - - an outfit of the Israel Lobby.

Yet more relevant - - key to my analysis, really - - is that nowhere in his article did Mr. Maacaron reveal that WINEP is part-and-parcel of the Israel Lobby.

IS IRAN NERVOUS ABOUT SYRIA? THE SOFTWARE CONTRACT

Add to that the following: On 1/18/ 2010 almalaf.net (close to the Jordanian government and, through it, likely to our beloved CIA) carried a story from The Jerusalem Post which said that last month the Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce had executed a one-million dollar contract with an Israeli company by the name of DaroNet to purchase internet-management software.

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PUSHING THE ANALYTICAL ENVELOPE

The seeming flirtation by as-Safir with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy may be a message by Iran to Syria that Iran, Hezbollah and the Shiite community in Lebanon are able to change course and open up to Israel should Syria heed advice by Saudi Arabia to sever its strategic alliance with Iran. In other words: we will race you to Tel Aviv.

In other words, too, As-Safir is sending an Iranian message to Arab Syria to complement Nejad’s message when he had criticized Saudi Arabia while Asad was visiting there.

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The said contract by the Tehran Chamber of Commerce with an Israeli company should, too, be interpreted as part of Iran’s nervousness about Syria.

Don’t you forget: In this post, I have pushed the envelope really far.

THE SCRIPT

Why do I say that?

Because the entire thing could have been scripted by some Iranian-Syrian coordinating committee - - including Iran’s purchase of Israeli software, Nejad’s criticism of the Saudi government while Asad was visiting, and including even Mr. Maacaron’s flirtation with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

THE POLITICIAN AS CON ARTIST: CHARLES DE GAULLE, FRANCE-IN- ALGERIA, AND THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

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(I owe the title- - “The Politician as Con-Artist”- - to a very close friend.)

I neither have the time nor the in-depth knowledge to draw comprehensive analogies between France’s predicament in Algeria in the 1950s and America’s current predicament, especially as Israel-Anchored, in the Muslim World. Things likely cut both ways: The experiences are analogous here, not so-analogous there.

But it has seemed to me as I was reading Charles Williams’ book (see below) that France’s experience in Algeria does sound the alarm on a number of fronts. One of these grabbed my attention more than others: The military’s narrow views on the Algeria conflict and the support that the Military enjoyed in a sector of the population that benefited from these views - - the European settlers in Algeria. In the 1950s, French politicians wouldn’t dare speak of withdrawing from the costly entanglement in Algeria. It didn’t matter that military victories would prove vacuous in their political non-results. If anything, these victories, in Algeria, would prove counter-productive when it came to winning any hearts or minds among the Algerian people, the real Algerians, the Muslims - - not the settlers.

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Hence the statesmanship of Charles de Gaulle; only he knew how to do it- - to extricate France from the bottomless pit that was Algeria. To follow his progress and learn how the Master did it, you may want to go to Charles Williams, The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993.

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In that book, you may want to cut to the chase and proceed to the following pages: 363 to 407. That would be Part Seven, titled “Head of State.” In Part Seven, you would need to focus on chapter 1 (The General’s Resurrection,) chapter 2 (I Have Understood You’,) and chapter 3 (Algeria Is Not French.)

WHEN THE MILITARY HAS A POLITICAL LIFE OF ITS OWN

De Gaulle, to Charles Williams, was endowed with so much courage. How else explain his stubbornness if one considers that he was the subject of thirty-or-so assassination attempts, mostly because of his policy about Algeria? Though I didn’t delve into who the schemers were, it was quite obvious that the “Ultras” had sprouted most of them. There has seemed to be an association between these and the French Military in Algeria. The French military establishment there had a political life of its own: “the army wanted no surrender in Algeria;” (p. 369) and neither did the Ultras. The military establishment cared little about the economic woes of the nation and the cost of the Algeria enterprise. That military establishment was focused in the way a mule would be.

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That establishment even dared scheme for a coup d’etat in the mainland should its wishes be ignored. It had a name for its planned coup: Operation Resurrection. (372-373.) Even de Gaulle, the former General, seemed accepting of that fate (376), and not reluctantly. (377-378.) France could very well sink into a civil war with the coup or without. The Algeria-based French military had so taken over political decision-making that one cabinet minister had noted that the Minister for Algeria could not go to Algeria. (375.)

On June 3, 1958, the Assembly granted General de Gaulle (as Prime Minister) the special powers he needed to deal with Algiers. Remember: the army there at one time had thought he was on their side since, for one, he had given them a nod for Operation Resurrection:

“De Gaulle’s next task was to assert his Government’s authority in Algiers. It was certainly not going to be easy. The generals there were firmly of the view that it was they who had brought de Gaulle to power in France; and that they had done so specifically in order that Algeria might be incorporated into France and the rebellion ruthlessly put down. De Gaulle had done nothing to dispel that view . . .; indeed, he had not hesitated to invoke the threat of Operation Resurrection, and that threat had been a powerful card in his hand.” (381)

In other words, the General conned the military establishment in Algeria. He would later, at the time of his choosing, turn on them.

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On June 4, de Gaulle visited Algiers to a roaring welcome. The settlers were sure he was on their side, but that feeling would prove fleeting. They could tell. (There were one million of them to nine million Algerians.) The General had nursed along the impression of his sympathy to their cause when in his speech to them he had said, “I have understood you.” (382) But he had confided to some that “we cannot keep Algeria.” (383) This confidence must’ve slipped out and spread among the settlers fast enough for the General’s poster portraits, put up only a week or two earlier, to be soon torn down.

A FAIRE TOUT POUR LE MOMENT-DE-L’ALGERIE

De Gaulle’s agenda was to extricate France from North Africa. For that, he needed the support of the armed forces. So he “was out to secure the firm support of the army as servants of the republic.” (385) He, too, had come to realize that to survive in the new world and thrive, France needed to be governed differently - - it needed a new constitution. So he launched on his double mission. But have no doubt: As I wrote in my notes, using my French, “Il [General de Gaulle] a tout travaille pour le moment de l’algerie.” (“He had worked everything for the Algeria Moment.”)


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“The final brick in the edifice of the Fifth Republic,” wrote Willliams, “Was the election of a President.” (391) No sooner would Mr. de Gaulle move into that spot, that “[t]axes would be increased, social security payments cut, farm subsidies reduced.” (392) De Gaulle had conned the very French people who had elected him; they had not voted him to the Presidency to do that. Here’s Williams: “It must be rare, in any democratic system, for an election to have been fought and won on an economic prospectus that was so misleading.” (392)

Moving on to Algeria: “It was messy, nasty and dangerous. It had all the characteristics that politicians most fear: there was no obviously political solution; the passions aroused were intense; violence had become commonplace; and positions were so entrenched that there was no identifiable room to maneuver.” (399)

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The General’s first move was to change personnel in Algeria—to purge those officers in the army in Algeria who he considered unreliable. Not only were high-ranking officers let go, but a further 1500 officers of lower rank were inconspicuously transferred or retired. (399) A major purge.

ILLUSIONS DO PERSIST EVEN AMONG POLITICALLY-SAVVY PEOPLE

But the general wasn’t without his illusions. He nursed ideas about defeating the Algerian nationalists if only to force them to negotiate on his terms. In December 1958, under the leadership of one commander-in-chief of de Gaulle’s choice, the French army conducted a ruthless campaign against the Algerian Army of National Liberation. Part of that campaign required the uprooting of one million Algerians. “It was appalling, but militarily it was successful. Politically, on the other hand, it did not work. The Algerian troops refused to give up.” (400)

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“As he paced around the garden at Colombey, [de Gaulle] came to two conclusions. First, the cost of the war was politically and economically too great and in the end would pull down France herself. Second, the only solution that made any sense was Algerian independence.” (400)

These conclusions must’ve horrified the generals. One of them gave an interview to a German journalist which was published in January 1960. That general said the army perhaps had made a mistake in bringing de Gaulle back to power and, “as far as he and the majority of officers in positions of command were concerned, [he] would ‘not execute unconditionally the orders of the head of state’.” (401) De Gaulle reacted by sacking the general - -in spite of advice to him that the sacking would lead to bloodshed in Algiers. (Which it did.) “De Gaulle would have none of it. A soldier had broken the first rule of his profession: unquestioning allegiance to the civil power. That was all there was to be said.” (401) De Gaulle-the-flexible had forgotten that he himself had once given a nod to the military for a coup d’etat. But times have now changed. He was President and he was intent on carrying through with his plans to extricate France from Algeria.

Draft

The rebellion by the senior officers began a course of outright collision between the General/President and the French army in Algeria. The General would involve the French public to neutralize those of Algeria. In the end, the settlers read the sign on the wall: they began a mass exodus from Algeria. In May 1962 alone, 300,000 left their North African homes. (405-406)

Williams: “As it turned out, de Gaulle’s extrication of France from Algeria was the making of his reputation as a statesman.” (399)

WHEN THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS GO PRIMORDIAL

In Memory: Mona A-K

“Why should I, at the age of sixty-seven, begin a career as a dictator?”

General Charles de Gaulle: in responding to concerns about his views on civil liberties. As quoted in Charles Williams, The Last Great Frenchman: a Life of General de Gaulle. John Wiley & sons, 1993, at 373.)

Draft

This is about a recent interview with a French academician published in the Lebanese weekly KifahArabi.com (Ayman Abdel Malak--Cairo, “The Shia Are the Future.” KifahArabi.com, January 8, 2010. I’ll keep a printed copy of the interview. I don’t do links in this newsletter.)

THE IRAQI SHIA AT THE PENTAGON

The French academician told the interviewer about an incident when once he had been visiting with Mr. Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon. There, the French academician saw a crowd of Iraqi Shia waiting to meet with the Pentagon’s “theoretician/strategist” - - the academician’s description for Mr. Wolfowitz. Mr. Wolfowitz explained to the academician that the Shia in the Middle East were the future. Why? Because, he said, they’re willing to work with the United States. Why? Because, he said, they’re very much like the Jews. How so? Because, according to Mr. Wolfowitz, as relayed by the French academician: the Shia, similarly to the Jews, felt discriminated against by the Sunni majority. Throughout history, relayed the academician about what Mr. Wolfowitz had told him, the Shia weren’t given any opportunity to govern.

Reading this, I felt like someone had put a gun to my head and robbed me. I felt that my country’s Huge, Humongous, and So-Expensive-Yet-So-Dumb-War-Machine had as war theoretician/strategist someone who felt so primordial, in that he was so inspired by an obsessive sectarian experience. Most depressingly, he felt that way while designing plans for the Huge and Expensive Dumb War Machine to, in the end and in no small way, bankrupt us.

I’LL GO PRIMORDIAL, TOO

I need not complicate things here, as in trying to advance analysis that integrates regional studies, balance-of-power theory, and American politics (especially the race by politicians to love the so-called expansion, to dismiss taxation as the evil-of-all-evils and instead print money which enriches rivals - -think oil prices going to Russia and Iran and money going into the coffers of China- - and to spend sinfully and corruptly on “war” – armies, contractors, mercenaries and silly so-called civil society-democracy mules.) Instead, I want to go primordial (and simplistic) about Arabs and Muslims, as allegedly (but likely true) had Mr. Wolfowitz, as witnessed by the French academician.

Staying primordial (and simplistic), I’m reminded of this Arab proverb, “I and my brother [should join together] against our cousin, and I and my cousin [should join together] against the stranger.” To illustrate, here’s a quotation about cousins-in-Islam from the days of the Crusades:

“How dare you slumber in the shade of complacent safety […] leading lives as frivolous as garden flowers, while your brothers in Syria have no dwelling place save the saddles of camels and the bellies of vultures? Blood has been spilled! Beautiful young girls have been shamed, and must now hide their sweet faces in their hands! Shall the valorous Arabs resign themselves to insult, and the valiant Persians accept dishonour?”

Judge Abu Saad al-Harawi. Baghdad. August 1099.

(As quoted in Amin Maalouf, The Crusaders through Arab Eyes; New York: Schocken Books, 1985, at xiii. Emphasis added. This book, by the way, is one of my favorite history books.)

So, you see, Arabs and Persians can be cousins when facing strangers. Primordially, this cousin-hood should blossom as the stranger - - the Israel-Anchored Dumb War Machine- - remains so visible in the Muslim World. (I think the cousin-hood has blossomed already. big time, at the level of the Arab Street, and has become quite solid - -always underground - - after the Israel-Anchored Dumb War Machine had dismembered Arab Iraq, led by these disgusting Jewish-and-Shia-Hating Sunnis - -the same ones who had given the Arab nation secularism which the Christian Troops of Crusader and the Harmful Idiots then crushed—and then unleashed its Israeli complement on the Shias in Lebanon—oops: no more crowding at the Pentagon—then on the Sunnis in Gaza.) It doesn’t matter what the Israel-Anchored Dumb War Machine is doing in Muslim lands: Building a highway to Central Asian and Caspian oil, or searching for “victory” against al-Qaeda, or helping out India become a Great Power to assist against China, or spoiling it for China on plans by the latter to work with Iran and Pakistan to extend pipelines this-way-and-not-that-way, or most absurdly having fallen into a systemic power vacuum trap and lacking the creativity and courage to find a way out.

It’s as if the one trillion dollars the primordial-and-wishful-thinking Israel-Anchored illusions had cost us couldn’t have bought us these pipelines, the Caspian, and all of Central Asia - - and each-and-every Palestinian refugee, with money and a visa to Canada. (I apologize to the Palestinian Arabs and to the Canadians for supplanting my judgment for theirs. I’m just making a point.) But we had to do things to secure Israel’s realm for Mr. Wolfowitz who, along with the Shia, so sadly had never been allowed to govern. We had to do things whatever the price. And we had to put to use the Dumb War Machine for something, anything, regardless of political repercussions and in spite of the fact that we could’ve done things so much more cheaply (and effectively!) without it. Worse of all, we had to turn our country, a la Israel, into a ghetto vis-à-vis the wider world, the Muslim in particular.

SOME SO PRIMORDIAL REPERCUSSIONS: HOW A JEWISH MAN, WHO LOVED THE SHIA, CONQUERED THE SUNNIS

Still primordial: You see, the Arab Sunnis Mr. Wolfowitz (seemingly) has such a (Jewish) grudge against—well, now that we had dismembered Arab Iraq (in part) for his Jewish Primordial Pleasure - - so that he would visit there as conqueror, which he did, followed later by Crusader and often by Bald Samson- - it’s unlikely they’d trust us for generations.

(Mr. Wolfowitz has liked and currently likes the Indonesians as his token Sunnis; the Maronites once showed promise until they were crushed; the Druse; the Kurds; then the Arab Shia; the Indonesians. All should beware, however, of a spill-over from the church-burning Malaysians to Mr. Wolfowitz’s Indonesians. It’d be yet another Israel-Inspired Disappointment before we all sink - - including the Indonesians - - in the mud of the illusions associated with the Love-for-Israel Dogma. Not to mention that no one wants to admit that closeness to the Israel-Anchored Idiots is the kiss of political death to any Muslim or Arab. Watch what happened to all those who during Crusader’s Greater Middle East/New Middle East/Union for the Mediterranean/Anything to Crush Pan-Arab-Pan-Sunni Solidarity campaign got on the bandwagon of Arab Self-Hate, for a buck, and sold off their identity to the Israel-Anchored Idiots. They’ve now become useless to the United States - - unless, of course, they’re used for a cute iftar dinner with the Secretary of State or the President or such like symbolic nonsense - -the rarefied trophies they are, the pathetic Israel-Anchored Counterweight to the Arab Street and to al-Qaeda.) Or they’re plucked out of a deli from somewhere-in-America, given a turban, and made to rule a ‘country.”

(Sorry to digress, but Lebanon does teach one a lot. The “Arabs” and “Muslims” of the Israel-Anchored Idiots are so similar to the Muslims the Maronite establishment, when once it had presided over political Lebanon, would pick for this-or-that post. I don’t want to recite names. But many of those who that establishment would pick either had no credibility within the Muslim Street, or lost that credibility soon after accepting the appointment by the Maronite establishment. In essence: they were anyone who could provide the establishment with the veneer of legitimacy among the Muslims, but proved useless when the Muslim Street rebelled.)

And this mistrust by the Iraqi Arab Sunnis could (I would say will) fan out from Baghdad and Iraq - - eventually and likely to Indonesia - - so long as the Dumb War Machine and its civilian mule still are trudging along stubbornly-and-delusion-filled in the Muslim World, wanting to be liked. (It’d be hilarious if it weren’t tragic.) This, while we all wait for the Iranian opposition to topple the Islamic government as if that government, with the resources it controls, should (for one) prove unable to sow friction in the opposition and divide it. Or as if the Chinese and Russian strategists are as stupid as the Israel-Anchored Idiots and would not find a way, in hedging their bet, to pass money on to any force that would stand up to the Dumb War Machine. (I have no evidence; I’m using international relations’ common sense.)

You see, primordially still: though individuals forget - - the very word for person in Arabic, “insan,” derives from the verb “to forget” - - groups do nurse a memory. The Arab Sunnis of Iraq should not be expected to forget who dismembered their country and made them eat Diaspora-and-Israeli shit. (Hello: it wasn’t Iran.) If their Persian “cousin” plays his cards skillfully, we should expect that so many amongst them would be spending their summer vacation in the mountains of Persia. They should be followed there by so many other Sunnis - - maybe even Mr. Wolfowitz’s Indonesians.

FLASHBACK: MORE TRAPS - - COURAGE MISSING

“Weakening the terror culture requires first-and-foremost a political approach - - not a [psycho] therapy approach and not a criminal justice approach. There’s a dire and pressing need to defuse/lift the deep tension that the Dumb War Machine’s military campaigns in the Muslim World have created and are creating. We have to start pulling out, and do it now - - because we will have to do it later, anyway. Let’s cut our losses, now;”

From the last post: “Stuck in Endless Wars, Bottomless Pits, and Systemic Traps: Charles de Gaulle, We Need You.” Jan. 1, 2010

STUCK IN ENDLESS WARS, BOTTOMLESS PITS, AND SYSTEMIC TRAPS: CHARLES DE GAULLE, WE NEED YOU

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The latest terror attempt, this time by a Nigerian young man, reveals (for our purposes) the following about the thinking and strategy of the Israel-Anchored foreign policy Idiots:

1. The Israel-Anchored Ones are asking of us to take on the task of understanding the psychological complexities of how a young man from another country, one out of the billions of Homo sapiens the globe over - - well, the billion-plus Muslim Homo sapiens - - fell in to the temptation of terror. (See, for instance, Guy Chazan “Web Offers More Clues on Suspect,” The Wall Street Journal, December 30, at A4.) What is this all about? Is it yet another attempt to divert our attention away from what works and what doesn’t? Would it be meant to buy the Israel-Anchored Ones yet more time to consolidate their elusive gains in the construction of the Highway (read: systemic trap, bottomless pit) to the oil fields of Central Asia and the Caspian?

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2. The Israel-Anchored Ones are asking of us to adopt the task of assisting yet another failed government - - that of Yemen. Yemen’s President for a good while now has been angling for exactly that: Hooking us (and the Saudis) to take his side (financially and militarily) to quash local rebellions - -that of the Houthis and that of the secessionist south. The performance of his armed forces, mostly commanded by his relatives, including his son, has been pathetic. So many times – for years -- he had promised to finish the Houthis and so many times he had gotten nowhere against them. To him, al-Qaeda has always been a side show - - even worse se well-embedded are they in his security establishment, some believe. (How else explain when al-Qaeda seasoned operatives are able to bust out of prison?) In the end, the young Nigerian fellow and his connection to al-Qaeda in Yemen were just what the doctor had ordered for Mr. Ali Abdallah Saleh. He finally has us hooked. (See, for instance, “U.S. Looks to Intensify Yemen Campaign,” The Wall Street Journal, December 30, at A4.)

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3. The Israel-Anchored Ones are asking that we ignore the fact that the dispatch of the young Nigerian man (we’re going to have to be kind to him because of his father) was al-Qaeda’s retaliation for our involvement alongside the Yemeni Government in bombing (I think twice) al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. You might say: well, we needed to do an Israel-like thing to retaliate for the Nidal Hasan “operation.” My kind-of-answer: Be my guest. Retaliate to your heart’s content. Never mind that that’s exactly what the Islamists want. Along the way, you will murder children (unavoidable) and other innocent people (unavoidable, too.) As a result, you will drive the middle classes further into the arms of Islamic ideology - -the one that says in part that all harm comes from us and our Dumb War Machine, and that Muslims would get along just fine but for our aggressive military presence amidst them and our Israel-inspired policy to disintegrate Arab and Muslim countries. Besides, it should be relatively easy, shouldn’t it, for those who are resisting the Dumb War Machine to send misinformation to the Dumb War Machine and cause yet more deaths among civilians. Not to mention that it’s still unclear whether Nidal Hasan was an al-Qaeda operative. It doesn’t seem that he was, what with all the talk about self-radicalization. And, don’t you forget, the great and proven phenomenon of “going postal.” But that’s beside the point. There’s smart retaliation and dumb retaliation. Guess which one the Israel-Anchored Idiots always chose?

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SAVE LIFE, MONEY, AND REPUTATION: WORK THINGS OUT FAST AND PULL OUT NOW NOT LATER

I can go on for a good while. But let me be constructive, for a change:

Weakening the terror culture requires first-and-foremost a political approach - - not a therapy approach and not a criminal justice approach. There’s a dire and pressing need to defuse/lift the deep tension that the Dumb War Machine’s military campaigns in the Muslim World have created and are creating. We have to start pulling out, and do it now—because we will have to do it later, anyway. Let’s cut our losses, now: talk to Iran; hasten John Kerry’s visit; if not Senator Kerry, send in anyone who the Iranians would trust. Maybe George Mitchell at the head of a delegation - - since you’ve screwed him on Palestine when you had told him it was a matter of “national security.” Maybe you can atone for that. (You, behind his back, seemed to have struck a quid pro quo with the Israel Lobby, this time the Washington Institute for Near East Policy - - it’s really one-and the same as AIPAC, the one meant for Democrats the other for Republicans. The deal seemed to be one where the Administration would lay off Israel, and the Institute/AIPAC would diminish as much as possible the assault by the wider Right Wing on Mr. Obama, at least until such time when health reform passes through Congress. Both had an incentive to reach the deal and it went beyond Palestine and health reform. But I’m not gonna get into what the incentive was.) As to Mr. Mitchell, he may have to assess: Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice . . .

I understand that you, the Israel-Anchored Idiots, are waiting for Iran’s Islamic Republic to crumble under the pressure of the opposition, which you’re likely helping along. (Your statements and those of the British tell the entire story.) In addition, I understand that you” think” that the spread of Islamism (and even the tension between the Christian World and the Muslim World) has nothing to do with the military campaigns by the Dumb War Machine in Islamic countries, including the elimination of Arab Iraq and the crushing of the Arab Sunnis, you in Iraq and you-through-Israel-and-Fateh in Palestine, and the creation of millions of refugees - - and everything to do with Iran’s Islamic regime’s very existence. Talk about pathological self-reference!

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But have you really thought out what will happen if the Islamic regime founders? (See one prior post in this blog a part of which addresses that.) Can your Israel-Anchored Brain handle it? Can we afford it? (I understand: You don’t care; you have pension plans. I know; I’m being rhetorical since, for one, I’m forever aware that I’m talking to Israel-anchored self-referential idiots.) Look at Plantation Iraq as an illustration of what the campaigns of your Dumb War Machine have done. Thanks to you, once-Arab Iraq has now evolved into at least three “countries.”

(In no way do I mean to defame the troops. The troops follow orders and the orders come from the Israel-Anchored Idiots either with conviction or for fear that they would be blamed and pay a political price for “losing” Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Or simply –and most convincingly--because of the deal they likely struck with the Israel Lobby to have that Lobby, so well integrated within the wider American Right-Wing, neutralize that Right-Wing for the Obama duration, or at least until health reform passes through Congress. See above.)

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I guess you think you can handle Plantation Iraq by keeping troops there. How many would you need? 5,000? If continued instability: 50,000? How many would you need for Plantation Iran, the one to follow the civil war in that country which you - -consciously or unconsciously, meaning Idiot-like - - are angling for? Would 100,000 do? How many will you need for Plantation Afghanistan? Would 50,000 troops do? 75,000?

Beware of what you wish for. You’ll go for sanctions, but the Iranians shouldn’t be expected to confine themselves to your parameters for confrontation. You might force them to play more-than-chicken with you. They’re not going to accept strangulation. Why should they? They have Plan B-- engineered self-disintegration. (See prior post: “Success Against Iran.”) Until calling on Plan B, they should be adept at re-defining the confrontation in a way that places you on the defensive, not they.

ILLUSTRATIVE THOUGHTTS ON HOW IRAN CAN TURN THE TABLES ON THE ISRAEL-ANCHORED IDIOTS

Here are illustrative queries/thoughts: What makes you “think” that the security apparatus you’re building in Plantation Iraq can take over from you so that you will need less than 50,000 troops there? (By the way, a Turkish newspaper is reporting that U.S. troops will begin to depart Iraq via Turkey starting today.) Even without Iran, Iraqi nationalism should re-assert itself sooner or later. (If anything: Iran is doing you the favor of delaying that.) What makes you “think” that the new Iraqi nationalism would be fond of Israel-Anchored You? Only the (very small) profit-making elite are fond of Israel-Anchored You. The rest believe you’re there to siphon off Iraq’s wealth and boost Israel’s dominance and yours.

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You might say: Just give us a little more time to eliminate the Islamic Government of Iran. I remind your little Israel-Anchored Idiot Brain that I don’t think you can afford that. That’s due in part not only to the scenario that Iran might disintegrate during-and-after a civil war. (You really have to read a prior post on that, “Success Against Iran.”) It’s due, too, to the fact that the Islamic Government can keep you preoccupied for the longest time until it opts - -if it has to - - for the scenario of civil war and self-disintegration. (The nuclear program may very well be Islamic Iran’s attempt to avoid engineered disintegration as a last resort, since it knows you’re going to come at it sooner-or-later. Have your Israel-Anchored “experts” give this some “thought.” Give them a few billion dollars for that.) For one, Iran-being-strangled should sooner-or-later come to the realization that it will need to allow Shia-catalyzed Arab nationalism to ignite - -the Sadrist card. It delays that to its detriment. But it is anyway. Lucky you!

And how much money would a civil-war-torn Iran cost? For instance, I calculated (not scientifically—but then I had been first to calculate how much an American soldier or an American-hired mercenary costs - -way before anyone else - - and I was able to get the idea across) that the 400,000 troops and police our Dumb War Machine wants to create in Afghanistan (See Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Civilian, military planners have different views on new approach to Afghanistan,” The Washington Post (online), Sat. December 26, 2009) should cost us $4 billion a year in salaries/employment costs and corruption payoffs. (Remember: It’s not only salaries and corruption costs; it’s medical-care-for-life for personnel and family, and hospitals and co-ops for military people—it’s a Huge Welfare Program, similar to our Pentagon’s.) Add to that all the other costs - - since, as I found out in Iraq (I was too young to really appreciate that for Vietnam)—you cannot do anything cheaply. All of this while our rivals (systemic) do things cheaply and enjoy seeing us and our Dumb War machine fall into traps and prove unable to correct the course. The bastards.

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IS THERE A CHARLES DE GAULLE OUT THERE?

I’m aware that your Little Brain adores economic expansion and job-creation. But this is not economic expansion and the jobs you’re creating now, by sapping the budget, will hurt the same people later. Better bring them back home to work on infrastructure projects here not in Afghanistan. This is government expenditure that by now has gone way beyond what the GDP can handle. (Hence, I guess, why some smart people still are betting on inflation coming with a vengeance, the Fed assurance about its ability to control that phenomenon falling on deaf ears.) I don’t expect you to appreciate that. But I do hope the Pentagon does - - that is, not the ones with a stake in wars, but the retired generals, colonels and the others with pension plans. (If I can risk it and issue this newsletter while my pension plan is a joke, then you, with a stellar pension plan, should be able to muster some balls to do the right thing.) I’m hoping that these would get off their consulting-to-the-military-industrial-complex-ass, put in the intellectual energy to understand the wider repercussions to the economy and America’s standing of these endless wars A.K.A. Bottomless Pit - - and go public about their convictions. Read about the courageous General Charles de Gaulle ordering the French out of Algeria. (Yesterday, I asked for one biography of the French general.) This timid administration (as any Democratic administration on defense issues) needs the retired men and women of the armed forces to come out and lay out a program for pulling out of the prohibitively costly systemic trap -- the endless wars. Someone’s got to start the actual and full retreat - - not the compromised half-ass one.