Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

Jordan asked Nixon to attack Syria.

This is a pretty crazy story.  History has many hidden stories, as we all have learned.  Jordan was perhaps fearful of Syria’s power and influence.  Another exemplar of political realism.

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I was watching CSPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, which I might add is perhaps the best and most intellectual discussion of public policy issues on cable TV (even better than PBS and NPR, and CSPAN is a private corporation!), and I saw this intelligent Palestinian lady named Diana Buttu.  Buttu is a former advisor to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and has a Ph.D. in law from Stanford University.

This is a very good discussion on Arab-Israeli peace and the Annapolis accords:

www.c-span.org/rss/video.asp?MediaID=33584

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The Wall Street Journal ran a very intelligent article yesterday on American geopolitical strategy in the Middle East. The article argued that by inviting Syria to Annapolis, taking it out of isolation, and attempting to build the foundations for a comprehensive Israeli-Syrian peace and settlement to the Golan Heights issue, the U.S. will pull Syria away from Iran. The Journal reports:

Talks with Syria could go some way in weakening Tehran’s strongest alliance in the region… “Maybe it’s time to employ the carrot to remove [Syria] from the axis of evil,” the deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, said in Washington last month. This will “prevent the Iranian influence,” he said.

This analysis is correct and on target. John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, the authors of The Israel Lobby, argue this at the end of their book - as well as in separate articles entitled Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism versus Neoconservatism by Mearsheimer, and The Origin of Alliances by Walt. Powers balance. Syria’s main foreign policy interest, other than its own security, is to gain back the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and then less so to gain back the Israeli occupied Shebaa Farms, and achieve a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian issue.

To achieve its interest, Syria puts pressure on Israel and the United States by allying with Iran and thus increasing its leverage in the balance of power. Iran attempts to get a nuclear weapon to also threaten Israel. Iran and Syria both support Hezbollah and Hamas to carry out destruction and achieve this end. Robert Pape argues this in his work Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.

From the perspective of the United States and Israel, the perfect way to defeat such a geopolitical strategy is to divide Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran pose no real existential threat to both the United States nor Israel, they do however pose the threat of increasing instability in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. The goal of Syria’s support of the groups of Hezbollah and Hamas is to try to achieve its geopolitical objectives. By reaching a settlement with Syria on the Golan Heights, and leading the way on an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the United States can effectively insure that Syria will end their support for Hezbollah and Hamas and become a partner in the region. Iran will then be isolated.

However, as long as it is United States policy to unrestrictedly support Israel and ignore any type of true and comphrensive peace settlement with the Palestinians, this will simply encourage states such as Syria and Iran to step up their means in pursuit of that end. Syria and Iran are already leaning at some sort of global alliance with Venezuela, and perhaps even North Korea, to increase their leverage. Support of Hezbollah and its constant threat of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians would stay the same or increase, as well as support for the terrorist organization Hamas, and the destabilization and meddling in Iraq.

All of these things do not pose an existential threat to the United States or Israel, simply because of their immense advantage in the balance of power, but do pose large thorns in their sides. The threat of terrorism increases more and more through the support of policies which are interpreted as aggressive by native populations. Machiavelli himself recalls this in The Prince by stating that such perceived oppression by the common people leads to immense nationalistic fervor and the revolt of common people who rise up and are seen as “great leaders.” These populations, in their quest for vengeance, support using the tactic of terrorism to attempt to continue to put pressure on their enemies, which eventually causes their enemies to give in, at least in part, to the demands of the terrorists. Harvard Law Professor Allan Dershowitz has summarized this natural law of history in his work Why Terrorism Works.

The CIA has recounted this fact as well, in their concept of blowback. Blowback is when foreign policy and international intervention by a nation causes the unintended consequence of a vitriolic response in the civilian population - which then act to achieve vengeance.

The perception of Arab victory in the 2006 Lebanon War destroyed Israel’s psychological deterrent, as Haaretz reported after the war ended. It reinforced the belief of Israel’s enemies to support terrorism.

On the Israeli side, the seriousness of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis emerged. Prime Minister Olmert, seen as a hawk during the Lebanon war, began to make positive statements regarding finding a solution to the problem with the Palestinians, even to the extent of inviting Syria to the discussion table, as the Journal article states:

Israel has pursued a peace dialogue with Damascus, eager to calm tensions on its northeastern border and quash strong Syrian support for Palestinian extremist groups. Mr. Olmert has used Turkish intermediaries to explore options with the Syrians, according to Israeli officials. Retired Israeli diplomats also have held unofficial talks with a confidante of Mr. Assad’s over the past few years in an effort to find a formula to solve the Golan dispute.

The smartest move for the United States and Israel, is to find a solution to Syria’s problem and engage Syria diplomatically and thus pulling Syria from Iran and ending its meddling in Lebanon, while securing its cooperation in Iraq. Isolating Syria will simply give Syria more reasons to be allied to Iran and to seek out increasing its power in Lebanon. As John Mearsheimer said, powers balance, they don’t bandwagon… lesson one in international relations!

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The New York Times has an interesting editorial on the health care crisis in this country today.  It is different from many of the other articles written on the matter in that it attempts to be descriptive of the great number of variables in the problem of achieving affordable health care in the United States.

However, what struck me most was this statement:

A classic experiment by Rand researchers from 1974 to 1982 found that people who had to pay almost all of their own medical bills spent 30 percent less on health care than those whose insurance covered all their costs, with little or no difference in health outcomes.

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This documentary is about the Mearsheimer and Walt book.  It interviews Richard Perle, Tony Judt, John Mearsheimer, John Hagee, and ex-Sec. of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff on “the Israel lobby.”

It is worth a watch, very informative for those interested in international relations, geostrategy, and American foreign policy:

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So after a barrage of malicious and slanderous ad hominem attacks by The Washington Post, The New York Times, FoxNews, Foreign Affairs, and every other newspaper or news magazine in the country, Mearsheimer and Walt are out to promote their book in the UK. I discussed one of the strawman arguments here.

Mearsheimer and Walt today have an interview with the BBC! And it is definitely worth a read.

The interview with the BBC is pretty interesting, considering that these two scholars are two of the greatest minds alive in the world of international relations. With regard to war with Iran, Mearsheimer makes a very strong point - a halmark of balance of power theory of which I posted a few days ago:

With regard to your point that the United States and other countries should play hardball with Iran, that strategy effectively means keeping the military option on the table. However, as long as that option remains on the table, you are in effect giving the Iranians powerful incentives to acquire nuclear weapons of their own…

The great foreign policy scholar, and former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, (who endorsed their book) argued the same case the other day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

Mearsheimer and Walt’s book is worth a read by everyone. You may not agree with all of their assertions, I certainly didn’t, but in regards with foreign policy they are a new refreshing force instead of the typical neocon hawks we are now so used to hearing. Mearsheimer and Walt are not isolationists, they are not non-interventionists, and they are foreign policy realists - meaning they support an extremely high defense budget, and American global supremacy. However, the understand the concept of blowback - which is essential in understanding the post-9/11 world.

I accept peace with Israel, and I blame the Palestinians and Arabs for most of their problems. None can say I am not independent, as I have shown various times concerning my numerous case-by-case positions on the issues on this blog. However, you have to be intellectually weak, or just plain lying, to state that the Israel lobby does not have vie for very significant influence in our foreign policy. Mearsheimer and Walt make the case, as do many others from all backgrounds. Israeli Jew Daniel Levy, of the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, makes the best case for the book, and has an intelligent review here.

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Robert Fisk, Middle East expert and columnist for the British daily, The Independent, is reporting from Beirut today. The story is extremely insightful and a very educated piece. I mean a country in the Middle East without a President is a pretty big deal, right?

France News 24, the French English-language international broadcasting network, has Lebanon as its top story. The BBC is covering Lebanon’s crisis, as well as the British daily’s The Guardian and The Times of London - who both carry the story as their top headline.

However, moving back to our shores, the story is much different. CNN has barely covered the story, although it does have a piece on its website. The New York Times has the most pathetic half-page article describing the situation, which cannot even be found on the front page of its website.

The only good article about the situation in Lebanon today, on U.S. soil, comes from The Washington Post which has a very well written, detailed, and lengthy article by their Middle East reporter Anthony Shadid, who also wrote the best American piece on the situation yesterday.

Why all the silence in the American media on the matter? Well, the corporate media wants to cover that which makes money, and in a free-market, the consumers in the United States want to hear more about Brittney Spear’s kids than the Lebanese elections. Understandable, but also sad…

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Neoconservative commentator Charles Krauthammar echoes neocon over-optimism again in today’s Washington Post. Krauthammar, just as he did before the run up to war in Iraq (and right after) is over optimistic that we have won the war. The idea is, that this means their theory is working:

A war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

Krauthammar plays off pessimists as “in denial,” and then proceeds to spin every negative development in a positive favor, for in his words, there were a lot of “Sure, but…” lines in the column:

Sure, there is no oil law. But…

Sure, the de-Baathification law has not been modified. But…

Read the column for more of this nonsense. Yes, the surge is working, but three months of success are nothing close to the idealistic picture that Krauthammar describes. Where is the everyday life of the Iraqi in this picture? The civil society? Institutions? Oh yeah, I forgot, sure there are suicide bombings and slaughterings of civilians everyday but we’re winning so they will soon go away.

For a much more balanced analysis see Trudy Rubin, veteran Middle East journalist, in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer where she tears apart the Krauthammar article:

“This change has been dramatic, but we have to be real cautious in evaluating it and reacting to it,” says a senior State Department official. “That which emerged quickly could recede quickly.”

And yet there is room for a smidgen of hope. (In the Middle East, it never pays to go overboard with optimism.) Where does such hope lie?

It lies in the fact that Iraqis themselves took the first steps to quash the violence even before the surge started.

Thomas Friedman also has a more balanced article on Iraq, which appeared in Wednesday’s New York Times:

Michael Gordon, The Times’s top military expert, whose history of the Iraq war, “Cobra II,” is one of the best books on the subject, said the phrase circulating in the military lately to describe the situation evolving in Iraq is “accommodation without reconciliation.” The various parties basically accept the new imbalance of power — Shiites on top, but allowing the Kurds and Sunnis to have a share — and the political struggle continues with lower levels of violence.

In the end nobody is denying that violence has declined greatly, but saying “the war is over,” reminds me a lot of someone on an aircraft carrier who said “mission accomplished.”

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No matter what ideology you adhere to, what political views you have, or what you believe is the ideal system - revolutionaries are crazy.

The last great phenomena of revolutionaries, in our generation, was the Marxist Socialists and Communists. Their revolutionary theory of history meant that the quest for Utopia could be actualized through a global overthrow of governments. Che Guevara, Tortsky, Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser, and all the socialist revolutionaries would finally bring heaven-on-earth to a reality and give “the workers,” rights, and dignity, all would be merry, and everyone would just have a nice big smirk on their face.

This revolutionary ideology was taught to children in the Soviet Union from their youngest ages.

We have also had other revolutionary currents. Advocates of “world revolution,” have been many. All of them have one thing in common though - the quest for Utopia on earth after finding the “perfect,” ideology of government, economics, or society. The quest for Utopia, yes, that all-encompassing quest is what defines these revolutionary movements.

In 1979, after the Shah was deposed in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, called his Shiite brethren to the same concept of global revolution. Shiite Republics based on fundamentalist interpretations of scripture, would lead to peace on earth, and happiness in society. This revolutionary Shiism was argued to be the “perfect,” ideology - encompassing the Democratic elements of the rational, and the Shiite Islamic elements of the spiritual, resulting in pure bliss.

We have also had this in Sunni Islamic movements as well. The “Muslim Brotherhood,” led by Islamic extremist Sayyid Qutb, called for global revolution, of the Marxian sort, to install Sunni Islamic republics throughout the world. This would led to eventual world peace and the best type of society it was argued, by many thinkers then and now.

Neoconservatives, in their belief that Democracy is the ultimate system known to man, call for the violent spread of Democracy through means of force if necessary to all countries of the world. When every country is a Democracy they argue, this will lead to the greatest aggregate happiness - and also world peace for “Democracies don’t attack each other.”

The Quest for Utopia, get the picture?

However, Communists destroyed the private and personal civilian lives of the entire populace in the Soviet Union, forcing on them drastic poverty, a terrorist police state, and carrying out wars and massacres the world has never known.  The so-called “Islamic revolutionaries,” of the Muslim Brotherhood led to the formation of al-Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks, and the massacres and brutal terrorist attacks which have happened throughout the Middle East these days but especially Iraq. And, the neoconservatives have gone to war with a country which was not a threat to them, Iraq, and in their race to spread Democracy have led to the killing of over a million people and the destruction of the infrastructure of a nation.

Why are people so bad? The political philosopher Edmund Burke observed over 300 years ago, that the worst of people’s souls and of their selves come out during revolutions. He argued that revolutions cause the magnification of the evil side in human nature. In revolutions, things get ugly, people get crazy, and everything is believed to be justified in - well, a quest for Utopia.

Utopia is never coming. Although I believe in “better,” and “worse,” ideologies and systems, no matter what you believe, if you are a revolutionary, your an idiot and crazy. At least the vast vast majority of the time, in my view.

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The New York Times today reports that the Supreme Court is going to be hearing a case on whether or not people have the right to keep guns in their homes for private usage.

Judges make policy. Thats a fact. You can blame Marbury v. Madison for that one. It makes the policy making process much more interesting, thats for sure. For after the House and Senate agree on a common bill, the President signs it into law and may or may not implement it, the state and local governments have their disagreements, - then boom people go to the courts to clarify the law, and the judges product becomes policy.

Its not the neat and easy process that we all think of in our U.S. civics books…

It will be interesting to see what the courts say on this one. For Thomas Jefferson’s dissent on the courts making policy, check this out.

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