Rethink the Middle East?

[4est_4est_Gump]

...

Among other things, the American response to the events in Egypt shows the utter pointlessness of American security guarantees in the present negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Authority. Even in the extremely unlikely event that Mohammed Abbas chose to make peace with Israel, he would face a high probability of civil war, just as Ireland’s independence leader Michael Collins did when he struck a deal with the British for an Irish “Free State” rather than a republic. Collins killed more Irishmen than the British did in the preceding independence struggle. I do not want to compare Abbas to Collins, and I do not think he has any intention of making peace with Israel. But American blundering in Egypt has closed out the option, for whoever makes peace with Israel will require a free hand with Iranian-backed rejectionists.

America forgets that it corrected the flaw in its founding by killing 30 percent of Southern men of military age during its own Civil War, so many that the Confederate Army collapsed for lack of manpower. There are numerous wars which do not end until all the young men who want to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so. And of all of history’s conflicts, none was so likely to end with this sort of demographic attrition as the present war in the Middle East. Compared to the young Arabs, Persians and Pakistanis of today, American Southerners of 1861 were models of middle-class rectitude, with the world’s highest living standards and bright prospects for the future. The Europeans of 1914 stood at the cusp of modernity; one only can imagine what they might have accomplished had they not committed mutual suicide in two World Wars.

Today’s Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslims have grim future prospects. The world economy has left them behind, and they cannot catch up. Egypt was at the threshold of starvation and economic collapse when the military intervened, bringing in subsidies from the Gulf monarchies. The young men of the Middle East have less to lose, perhaps, than any generation in any country in modern times. As we observe in Syria, large numbers of them will fight to the death.

America cannot bear to think about its own Civil War because the wounds are too painful; in order to reunite the country after 1865, we concocted a myth of tragic fratricide. Wilsonian idealism was born of the South’s attempt to suppress its guilt for the war, I have argued in the past. That is an academic consideration now. America’s credibility in the Middle East, thanks to the delusions of both parties, is broken, and it cannot be repaired within the time frame required to forestall the next stage of violence. Egypt’s military and its Saudi backers are aghast at American stupidity. Israel is frustrated by America’s inability to understand that Egypt’s military is committed to upholding the peace treaty with Israel while the Muslim Brotherhood wants war. Both Israel and the Gulf States observe the utter fecklessness of Washington’s efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The events of the past week have demonstrated that America’s allies in the Middle East from Israel to the Persian Gulf can trust no one in Washington — neither Barack Obama nor John McCain. Those of us in America who try to analyze events in the region will be the last to hear the news, and the value of our work will diminish over time.

David P. Goldman (Spengler)
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/08...ddle-east-are-just-beginning/?singlepage=true


Is it time to stop being a player, to stop trying to wield influence and completely withdraw with the one caveat that an attack on Israel is an attack on the US and will be met with overwhelming fire-power?

Then, just let the chips fall where they may between Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Turk (and everyone else), Arab and Persian?

 

[RobDownSouth]

David P. Goldman (Spengler)
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/08...ddle-east-are-just-beginning/?singlepage=true


Is it time to stop being a player, to stop trying to wield influence and completely withdraw with the one caveat that an attack on Israel is an attack on the US and will be met with overwhelming fire-power?

Then, just let the chips fall where they may between Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Turk (and everyone else), Arab and Persian?

Ah yes, the isolationist viewpoint. How did that work for Murica in the 1930s?

 

[run_silent]

I know this sounds very cynical but I think that we should let the middle east go to war and deal with the last group standing.

The land is ancient and has been occupied by many groups at one time or another. All can make a legitimate claims to the land.

There are rivalries that are centuries old. As in the American civil war one side had to defeat the other to move on. Yes it was very bloody.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I know this sounds very cynical but I think that we should let the middle east go to war and deal with the last group standing.

The land is ancient and has been occupied by many groups at one time or another. All can make a legitimate claims to the land.

There are rivalries that are centuries old. As in the American civil war one side had to defeat the other to move on. Yes it was very bloody.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Alliance with Cairo at risk: McCain and Obama are ‘trying to destroy Egypt’
Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — Americans, particularly officials, have come under increasing threat in Egypt.

Egyptians, led by the media, have been threatening the arrival of prominent Americans, including envoys of President Barack Obama and Congress. Those threatened have included visiting Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“He should be arrested and tried for trying to destroy Egypt,” Ahmed Zind, chairman of the Egyptian Association of Judges, said.

[U.S. officials said the Obama administration's support for the Muslim Brotherhood was driving Egypt's military toward Moscow and endangering the U.S. strategic alliance according to a report by Bill Gertz for the Washington Free Beacon.]

McCain as well as other Americans have been accused of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in wake of the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi. The Egyptians have been infuriated by McCain’s visit to Cairo in August in which the senator called for the release of Morsi and visited the financier of the Brotherhood.

“He [McCain] is not a man elected by the American people to speak on their behalf,” Egyptian analyst Ahmed Mussa, a leading media commentator, said. “Today, he speaks on behalf of an armed terrorist organization — the Muslim Brotherhood.”

http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/08...mccain-and-obama-are-trying-to-destroy-egypt/

 

[Busybody]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I really expected KILL THEM ALL!

 

[Busybody]

I really expected KILL THEM ALL!

no need to say it

they do a DAMN good job of doing it themselves

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

U.S. analyst Raymond Ibrahim, an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum, asserted that the visit by McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham highlighted the “cozy relationship” between Obama and the Brotherhood. Ibrahim said Egypt has determined that Washington feared that any trial of Morsi and Brotherhood leaders would reveal U.S. funding of the Islamist movement.

“McCain’s call to release Brotherhood leadership validates the widespread belief in Egypt that America is a fellow conspirator with the Brotherhood,” Ibrahim wrote in an analysis. “Egyptians believe the U.S. fears that Morsi and others, if tried, would reveal the nature of their cozy relationship with the U.S. government, leading to any number of ugly revelations — treasonous ties and conspiracies, the exchange of billions of dollars, and Sinai issues.”

Same source as above.

The doddering old fool should STFU and retire...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

no need to say it

they do a DAMN good job of doing it themselves

When two sides put off a big fight, it only gets bigger...

Toshiro Mifune, Yojimbo

 

[Busybody]

its only ONE!

 

[RobDownSouth]

Same source as above.

The doddering old fool should STFU and retire...

Why? McCain is promoting the same position you've promoted for years:

Stability uber alles, respect for the rule of law even if people suffer:

TEH SPICE MUST FLOW! HAIL AYN!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It is as many tribes as can be found save the 12 and the one lost...

 

[Busybody]

on another note

Im HAPPY the CHRISTIANS re being massacred

the ONLY reason they aren't in the WB and other places in Israel etc, is cause of the JEWS, who protect em, yet they ALWAYS shiton the JEWS and cozy up to the PALIS

Fuckem, DIE!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

...

Over the preceding two decades, the U.S. sent troops into harm's way five times to liberate Muslim people -- in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq -- and yet America's reputation generally worsened. And whenever Muslim fanatics launched horrific and brutal terrorist attacks -- mostly slaughtering fellow Muslims -- the supposedly vast reservoirs of moderate Muslims rarely voiced much outrage. Meanwhile, our supposed partners in Afghanistan and Iraq, never mind our allies in Egypt and elsewhere, didn't express much interest in democracy that extended beyond saying the right words to keep the river of U.S. tax dollars flowing.

The understandable -- if not necessarily laudable -- response from many pro-defense conservatives was, "To hell with them." They don't want our help and, besides, we can't help them when we try. If they attack us, will attack back, but beyond that, they're on their own.

That attitude is back with a vengeance, and not just among self-described hawks. There's even a version of that attitude among doves. Though they probably wouldn't say, "To hell with them," they share a similar attitude that there's little the U.S. can do for the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, this exasperation is something of a boon for segments of the anti-American left, who've always seen U.S. power as a force for ill in the world. President Obama offered the Muslim world a grandiose do-over, promising to be, in effect, an anti-Bush president. He's now less popular among Arabs and Muslims than Bush was in 2008.

The "to hell with them" attitude is no doubt prevalent among Americans who dislike Muslims, but having animus in one's heart is not a prerequisite for exhaustion and exasperation with large swaths of the Middle East. All you need to do is read the headlines coming out of the Middle East and feel like, "I've seen this movie before." And thanks to fracking and other technological boons, the fact that we're becoming less and less reliant on Middle Eastern oil only serves to undermine arguments that we need regional stability at any cost.

You can't prove a negative, but my hunch is that support for Israel or South Korea, never mind our NATO allies, remains quite strong. If real friends were threatened, the American people would support coming to their aid. It's just that there's a growing -- or, in many cases deepening -- sense that we don't have real friends in the Muslim world.

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"Sire, clear the square with gunfire or abdicate."

That was the message one of his generals gave the young czar Nicholas I in December of 1825, as thousands of civilians and soldiers massed in Senate Square to challenge his claim to the throne.

Nicholas gave the order, the cannons fired, and he and his heirs ruled Russia for another century, until Nicholas II was overthrown, and murdered by Bolsheviks.

Such was the moment Egypt's army faced on Wednesday, with thousands of backers of the Muslim Brotherhood encamped in Cairo, challenging its rule. The slaughter that ensued, 500 dead the first day and thousands wounded, means there is no going back.

The die is cast. The Egyptian army has crossed the Rubicon.

Egypt's generals cannot now hold elections that a coalition of the Brotherhood and Salafis might win. Were that to happen, many of them could wind up like the shah's generals, on trays in the morgue.

So where does Egypt, and where do we go from here?

While we Americans are babbling about a new politics of "inclusiveness," even some of the Twitter-Facebook liberals of Tahrir Square are coming to see Egypt as it is. Us or them.

And the one issue on which Egypt's Muslim militants and Egypt's militarists seem to agree is that the Americans cannot be trusted.

Two years ago, the United States celebrated an Arab Spring that began with the overthrow in Tunis and Cairo of dictators who had been our loyal allies. We then became the champions of free elections in Egypt, as we had been the champions of free elections in Palestine, until Hamas swept the board in Gaza.

When half of Egypt voted for the Brotherhood and a fourth for the more militant Salafis, we accepted the results and pledged to work with President Mohammed Morsi.

But Morsi failed as badly as Hosni Mubarak. So, when millions massed in Cairo's streets to demand Morsi's overthrow, we signaled our approval for a military coup.

Then, when Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power, imprisoned Morsi, jailed Brotherhood leaders and installed a puppet government, we refused to call it a coup.

Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

Cut off the funding.

It is the law.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com

Good ole Jonah, he never tires of promotin' his pet cause that Muricans should die for Israel's causes, because Jews are too valuable to waste. Once a neo-con, always a neo-con.

 

[Busybody]

Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

Cut off the funding.

It is the law.

too late

the Generals embrace a REAL LEADER

Putin!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

too late

the Generals embrace a REAL LEADER

Putin!

Their military is getting all the funding it needs form other Arabs.


Let Putin waste some of his oil money...

 

[Busybody]

Their military is getting all the funding it needs form other Arabs.


Let Putin waste some of his oil money...

The WORLD is better off the Generals KILLING the MB

 

[BotanyBoy]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The problem with an emp strike is that they might not notice...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

September 11, 2012: A day that will live in infamy
James Lewis, American Thinker
August 17, 2013

September 11 of 2012, just nine months ago, was the eleventh anniversary of the Declaration of Holy War signaled by three simultaneous attacks on America by nineteen Saudi Arabian suiciders, killing 3,000 innocent people in Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in the air over Pennsylvania.

That Declaration of War came from the brutal desert theocracy of Saudi Arabia, run by its Wahhabi priesthood. Wahhabism follows ancient Muslim war theology against all non-Muslims and against Muslims heretics like the Iranians. Wahhabism runs a worldwide oil-funded missionary campaign, and mosques built by Arabian oil billionaires are often staffed by Wahhabi imams, who preach holy war against the rest of humanity.

"Islam" means surrender or else.

Since 2001, the Saudis and other brutal tribal cultures have continued to finance, agitate, indoctrinate, infiltrate, plot, threaten, manipulate, propagandize, commit mass murder, and sabotage their First-World benefactors. The dead silence of the Western political and media elites about the Global Jihad means that billions of oil dollars have bought a lot of Democrats and Crony Media.

Across the Gulf, the other war branch of Islam keeps waging its own brand of murder and tyranny. Sunnis and Shiites are at war with each other in Syria, but they also attack the First World at every opportunity -- politically, psychologically and by acts of terror.

Nine months ago, on September 11 of 2012, international news headlines showed two photos of simultaneous al-Qaeda terror attacks on American sovereign assets. Benghazi was the most famous assault, killing our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. But al-Qaeda always commits mass murders twice on the same day. That is its signature.

A second jihadist attack was therefore headlined on the same day. It was on our Cairo Embassy, where Qaedists briefly flew their black flag over a burned-out part of the Embassy, long enough for their tame news photographers to send their message around the world.

Every Muslim in the world instantly understood the meaning of that double-terror attack, the war signature of al-Qaeda. But ordinary people in the West were blinded and deceived by our treacherous mass media, controlled by vast amounts of oil money.

The al-Qaeda message on September 11, 2012 was instantly understood in the White House, where Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama, and John Brennan are intimately familiar with the war theology of Islam. They constantly find ways to enable it.

The flood of lies about Benghazi was engineered by our media and Democrat Party Machine, to cover up al-Qaeda's obvious message to the world. Hillary Clinton and her husband were of course complicit in that massive cover-up. Oil money may be buying the Hillary run for president of the United States.

Today our media-political class is still trying to make you forget September 11, 2012.

If the media had told you the truth, Obama would have lost the election.

Whether you like Mitt Romney or not, the world would be much, much safer today if Obama had been defeated.


That is why September 11, 2012 is a day that will live in infamy.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/september_11_2012_a_day_that_will_live_in_infamy.html

Who was the NSA spying on? American citizens.

Who was the IRS targeting and continuing to target? Patriots; anyone unwilling to submit.

Who does President Obama use the rhetoric of hate against? Not Islam, but on his opposition.

Does President Obama and his supporters call anyone racist, homophobe, bigot, xenophobe, radical or Extreme?

Not Islam.

But his fellow Americans...

OH HELL YA!​

 

[Ishmael]

Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

Cut off the funding.

It is the law.

The die is cast. The Egyptian army has crossed the Rubicon.

The last quote fairly well sums up the situation.

The question is, "Which side are we aiding and abetting by cutting off the funding?"

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

September 11, 2012: A day that will live in infamy
James Lewis, American Thinker
August 17, 2013


http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/september_11_2012_a_day_that_will_live_in_infamy.html

Who was the NSA spying on? American citizens.

Who was the IRS targeting and continuing to target? Patriots; anyone unwilling to submit.

Who does President Obama use the rhetoric of hate against? Not Islam, but on his opposition.

Does President Obama and his supporters call anyone racist, homophobe, bigot, xenophobe, radical or Extreme?

Not Islam.

But his fellow Americans...

OH HELL YA!​

Like I said yesterday, no matter what goes on in Egypt, the one thing we can be sure of is that bigoted racist hatemongers like AJ will use events to bash President Obama.