The Syria Fairy Tale Lives!

Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/syria-troop-withdrawal-middle-east-policy/

December 22, 2018

(AFP)

There has never been any vacuum in Syria (or Iraq). Sharia supremacism fills all voids. In focusing on ISIS, David discounts sharia supremacism as “an idea.” But it is much more than that. It is a cultural distinction — even, as Samuel Huntington argued, a civilizational one. It will always be a forcible enemy of the West. It doesn’t matter what the groups are called. You can kill ISIS, but it is already reforming as something else. In fact, it may no longer even be the strongest jihadist force in Syria: Its forebear-turned-rival al-Qaeda is ascendant — after a few name changes (the latest is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Levant Liberation Organization) and some infighting with other militant upstarts. There is a better chance that ISIS will reestablish ties with the mothership than fade away.

The fact that al-Qaeda, which triggered the “War on Terror,” does not factor into American clamoring about Syria is telling. The anti-ISIS mission David describes was not always the U.S. objective in Syria. First we were going to pull an Iraq/Libya redux and help the “moderates” overthrow Assad. But the “moderates,” in the main, are Muslim Brotherhood groups that are very content to align with al-Qaeda jihadists — and our fabulous allies in Syria, the Turks and the Saudis, were only too happy to abet al-Qaeda. Syria had thus become such a conundrum that we were effectively aligning with the very enemies who had provoked us into endless regional war.

When ISIS arose and gobbled up territory, beheading some inhabitants and enslaving the rest, Obama began sending in small increments of troops to help our “moderate” allies fend them off. But the moderates are mostly impotent; they need the jihadists, whether they are fighting rival jihadists or Assad. Syria remains a multi-front conflict in which one “axis” of America’s enemies, Assad-Iran-Russia, is pitted against another cabal of America’s enemies, the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions; both sides flit between fighting against and attempting to co-opt ISIS, another U.S. enemy. The fighting may go on for years; the prize the winner gets is . . . Syria (if it’s the Russians, they’ll wish they were back in Afghanistan).

Degrading ISIS into irrelevance would not degrade anti-American jihadism in Syria into irrelevance. If sharia didn’t ban alcohol, I’d say the old wine would just appear in new bottles. It was, moreover, absurd for President Trump to declare victory just because ISIS has been stripped of 95 percent of the territory it once held. Caliphate aspirations notwithstanding, ISIS’s mistake was the attempt to be an open and notorious sovereign. It was always more effective as a terrorist underground, and it still has tens of thousands of operatives for that purpose.

If we stayed out of the way, America’s enemies would continue killing each other. That’s fine by me. I am not indifferent to collateral human suffering, but it is a staple of sharia-supremacist societies; we can no more prevent it in Syria than in Burkina Faso. And I am not indifferent to the challenge David rightly identifies: terrorists occupying safe havens from which they can plot against the West. But that is a global challenge, and we handle it elsewhere by vigilant intelligence-gathering and quick-strike capabilities. We should hit terrorist sanctuaries wherever we find them, but it is not necessary to have thousands of American troops on the ground everyplace such sanctuaries might take root.

The Kurds are a more complicated problem. We have had a good deal with the Kurds: We protect them from Turkey, they kill jihadists. I could not agree more with David (among others) that it is shameful to abandon them, and it is shame multiplied by cowardice if, as reporting indicates, Trump decided to pull out after a threat by Ankara.

When we look a little deeper, though, we see why Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism. When we made our arrangements with the Kurds, we knew the backbone of their fighting forces was the PKK, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization. We knew the Kurds had territorial ambitions over which the Turks (and the Iranians, for that matter) are spoiling to go to war. We knew, further, that Turkey is our purported ally in NATO — quite apart from its failure to keep its defense commitments, this Western alliance maintains as a member the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a sharia-supremacist in the Muslim Brotherhood mold who despises the West. We knew, therefore, that conflict between Turkey and the Kurds was inevitable, that we would eventually have to make an excruciating choice, and that the freight of the NATO alliance would tip the scales in Erdogan’s favor. In fact, in the very conversation in which Erdogan advised Trump to steer U.S. troops clear of Turkey’s imminent anti-Kurd operations, Trump offered Erdogan a Patriot air- and missile-defense system in order to dissuade the Turks from completing a purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile-defense system.

Could we defy Erdogan and keep — or even beef up — the U.S. military presence to protect the Kurds (including protecting the designated terrorists with whom we’ve managed to ally)? Sure we could . . .but by what authority?

(New York Times)

I felt like a lonely voice around here in April 2017, when I condemned President Trump’s airstrikes on Syria as an unconstitutional act of war and an embarrassing contradiction of Trump’s broadsides against Obama for doing the same thing. I was therefore delighted when, addressing Syria a few months later, David asserted, “The Constitution cannot be discarded when it’s inconvenient.” He elaborated:

It’s past time for a true congressional vote on American engagement in Syria. Any argument that previous use-of-force resolutions applicable to Iraq or al-Qaeda also apply to the current conflict evaporate the instant American forces find themselves holding foreign territory in hostile opposition to the foreign sovereign. There is no credible argument that any current authorization allows American forces to occupy a single square inch of Syria without the consent of its government.

Amen. The Constitution is not a suggestion; it is our law. But this week, it is somehow not even a consideration. I hold no brief for Trump on Syria (as noted above, I believe his lawless aggression risked a wider war no one wants). But I find it remarkable that, as the president was rebuked across Capitol Hill — from Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a true believer in American adventurism, to Democrats, who will exploit any pretext to attack Trump — congressional critics never paused, ever so slightly, over the fact that the troops they want the president to keep in Syria were never authorized by Congress to be in Syria.

Some commentators sensed the problem but tried to finesse it, allowing that it would be good for Congress to have a “debate” about Syria because it would give clarity to the mission. That misses the point. The clarifying debate is a residual benefit we get from the constitutional necessity of obtaining congressional authorization before committing acts of war against other countries that have not threatened us. If the mission is not authorized, its clarity is immaterial.

Which brings me back, finally, to the excellent discussion on The Editors. Here’s David again, defending the mission:

This is one of the clearer missions that I’ve seen. This is not a nation-building mission. This is a mission that is a degrade and destroy a specified enemy, and then hold a geographic line against geopolitical foes who would seek to take that geography and crush our allies. That’s a clear mission

Yes, it’s clear. But so was David’s declaration, a year ago, that there is no lawful authorization in existence that “allows American forces to occupy a single square inch of Syria.” How, then, is it permissible for our forces to be “holding a geographic line” in a foreign country? What does it matter that, rhetorically speaking, Syria, Iran, and Russia are “geopolitical foes” if Congress has never authorized the use of force against them?

We all know the answer to this. Obama did not seek congressional authorization for combat operations in Syria because Congress would have refused. And Congress does not want any president to ask for authorization because members do not want to be accountable — they want to go on cable TV and whine that whoever is president has been heedless, whether for going in or for pulling out.

Want to declare war against ISIS? I’d be up for discussing that. Or, as a matter of honor, an authorization of military force to protect the Kurds for what they’ve done on our behalf? I could be persuaded. Or even a declaration of war against Iran — it wouldn’t require us to invade, but it might be useful as part of a real “maximum pressure” strategy, rather than just making mean faces at them in Syria. I’d be open to all of that; but not to more unprovoked military interventions that don’t have congressional authorization.

There is nothing for America in Syria. We haven’t defeated ISIS by taking its territory, and it wouldn’t matter if we did because sharia-supremacist culture guarantees that a new ISIS will replace the current one. The names change, but the enemy remains the same. And if you want to fight that enemy in an elective war, the Constitution demands that the people give their consent through their representatives in Congress.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. @andrewcmccarthy

‘You Have Been in Afghanistan, I Perceive’

By Michael Walsh

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/21/you-have-been-in-afghanistan-i-perceive/

December 21, 2018

US Forces patrol Near Manbij, Syria, June 24, 2018. (US Army/Staff Sgt. Timothy R. Koster)

President Trump’s decisions to withdraw from Syria and to start drawing down the number of our troops in Afghanistan should come as welcome news to all Americans. The pointless wars in the Middle East and the Hindu Kush have been going on since 9/11—longer if you count the entirely unnecessary incursion into Iraq in 1991—and have brought only misery in their wake. If Trump does nothing else but put an end to the endless wars bequeathed to us by the house of Bush, his will have been a consequential presidency.

That these orders have seemingly resulted in the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis is not necessarily a bad thing. Trump is a churning force, as his track record already shows, and if his appointees disagree with his policies, then they go, not the policies. Just ask Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson. Like John Kelly, currently on his way out the door as White House chief of staff, Mattis is a distinguished officer in the United States Marine Corps—but no conservative. As anyone who understands the USMC knows, Marine officers are not ideologues; indeed, by training they are apolitical, owing their allegiance to the Constitution and the commander-in-chief. I’m not sure whether this is still true today, but when I was a kid growing up on various Marine duty stations, they didn’t even vote.

A great many on the Right disagree with Trump. They fear “chaos” and “instability.” But we have been living for decades with presidents (George H.W. Bush, take a bow) who made a fetish of stability and in so doing condemned the world to the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result. Thus we have had the eternal “peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians for the simple reason that no one seriously desires a definitive solution.

Nonetheless, a solution is only a solution when it is dispositive. This is something our current generation of politicians and warfighters do not wish to acknowledge: hence, the endless war that Bush I began against Saddam Hussein for no particular reason (did or does anyone really care about Kuwait?); was left unfinished; was restarted in the wake of 9/11 by Bush II—again, for no particular reason, since Saddam had little or nothing to do with the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Here we are, 18 years later, with only dead and maimed American soldiers to show for it. Neither Iraq, if it survives, nor Afghanistan will ever be Jacksonian democracies, nor do their inhabitants wish them to be.

This is not to denigrate the heroism of our troops, nor their skills. They may well be, as many say, the best warriors we’ve ever put in the field. But, just as in Vietnam, they’ve been allowed to fight, but not to win. Essentially, they’ve been told to play to an eternal draw, just enough to keep the lid on things over there, but not to materially affect the political structures in place. Thus, by mouthing the liberal pieties in Bush II’s second inaugural address about how the desire for freedom is the natural human condition (it plainly is not) and that America’s duty is to spread the gospel of liberty throughout the world (ditto), our rulers have obscured the lethal realities of our presence overseas.

These are not easy, or happy, conclusions to reach. But we must ask: what have we gotten from our misadventures?

Saddam may have been a tyrant, but he was just one of many, especially in that part of the world. Whether he abused his own people (what tyrant doesn’t?) may have been cause for editorial-page fretting, but not for bellicosity. In effect, both Bushes made the same mistake JFK and LBJ made in Vietnam: thinking that inside every foreigner was an American yearning to get out, when even a cursory glance at the history of Southeast Asia or the Islamic ummah should instantly have disabused them of that notion.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, nothing has changed and nothing ever will change. The last outsider to have any effect on the region was Alexander the Great, and he did so at the point of his sword. Since then, Islam has come and gone and come again, the British fought two wars there, and the Soviets first signaled their systemic vulnerability by not being ruthless enough in their attempt to conquer the “country.” Had they applied the same tactics they used on Hitler’s Germany to Afghanistan we might be living in a very different world today, but they did not. And so now the Soviets have vanished while the Afghans live on in their remote and savage land.

As for Syria, the last foreign occupiers to have a positive effect on that parlous place were the Crusaders, who established the Principality of Antioch, which included Aleppo, in the late 12th century; it collapsed about a century later. Since then, Syria has been the plaything of various warring Muslim factions but offers no menace to American national security, and is far too weak seriously to threaten Israel. As in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, we have no strategic or economic interests in those areas, especially as the United States has emerged once again as the world’s leading energy producer.

The way to deal with these places, therefore, is to withdraw and leave them to their own devices. Sure, the Russians will fiddle around the edges if only to keep their hands in the game and to create an object lesson for their own restive Muslim minorities. So what? The “kingdom” of Saudi Arabia in all likelihood won’t last much longer than Bohemond’s did. As for the religious clash between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, represented on the chessboard by the Saudis and the Iranians, we can only hope that they both lose, and lose badly.

The first words uttered by Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John H. Watson, M.D. are: “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” This startling deduction was made on the detective’s assessment of his future amanuensis’s physical condition: a wounded war veteran recently returned from the battle of Maiwand during the Second Afghan War. This Holmes can see at a glance, including the good doctor’s enervation from enteric fever.

But it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see that the endless war has been bad for America, and the sooner it’s ended, the better for all of us. Only then can the tremendous damage to American foreign policy brought on by the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama succession of insufficient presidents be remedied, and the nation start to heal.

Our Childish Elite Shed Crocodile Tears for Khashoggi

By Michael Walsh

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/28/our-childish-elite-shed-crocodile-tears-for-khashoggi/

November 28, 2018

Protesters outside the White House, 19 October.(Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

In the playpen that has become our politics, feelings are everything. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, only the emotional effect those facts and their attendant consequences might have on the party holding the short end of the stick. Lose an election? Whine and sue. Don’t like the notion of a sovereign nation defending its borders from an attack using non-lethal means? Emotionalize and propagandize a picture of a mother and her children fleeing. Everything must have an emotional component, behind which lies the unspoken accusation: how would you like it if this happened to you?

Nor are international affairs spared this childishness. The gory murder of a non-American Muslim in the capital of a Muslim country by a group of Muslim assassins from another Muslim country has somehow been transformed into an American problem. Why should that be? The decedent in question occasionally wrote propaganda pieces disguised as journalism for a preening American newspaper in Washington, D.C., whose motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” In fact, what died in the darkness of the Saudi embassy in Istanbul was Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national of whom no one in the Western world had heard until a month ago.

Cue the crocodile tears: the reflexively anti-Trump, crudely reductionist, historically ignorant American media immediately transformed a rather ordinary Arab bit of bloody business into the greatest crisis since the Perdicaris Affair, and ever since the murder has stamped its tiny feet, demanding that the United States immediately “punish” the Saudis for a crime committed on sovereign Saudi diplomatic territory in the Turkish capital. Part of this is phony professional solidarity based on the most generous possible interpretation of Khashoggi’s real occupation of Muslim Brotherhood activist and anti-regime agitator as that of “journalist.” The other is rather more complex.

Friends, Frenemies, and Enemies

In the media sandbox, the entire geopolitical situation must be judged by the ideological sympathies of the institutional players du jour.

During the Obama Administration, whose foreign-policy bureaucracy was staffed by the same kind of like-minded Ivy Leaguers who populate the leftist pundit class, it was natural for the media to root for the John Kerry-Samantha Power-John Brennan school of America Last, and in particular for the so-called Iran nuclear deal framework, which turned American policy decisively in favor of the Shiite Iranians over the Sunni Saudis. Never mind that Obama once publicly bowed to the Saudi “king”—our money, including pallets of cash, went where his heart was: Iran.

Never mind as well that Islamic Iran has been, since the hostage crisis of Jimmy Carter’s administration, an implacable foe whose people and leaders shout “Death to America” with soporific regularity. Under Obama, America tilted away from our traditional frenemies, the Saudis, toward an avowed enemy, and paid them for the privilege of giving them what they wanted.

Donald Trump’s perfectly sensible restoration of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, as morally odious as that alliance is (Saudis made up the bulk of the 9/11 hijackers, and yet you never heard the Left call for punishing the kingdom in 2001), represents not simply a return to the status quo ante, but an explicit rejection of  Barack Hussein Obama’s “legacy,” and thus must be fought against with the passion of the defeated segregationist South battling for the Lost Cause.

Enter, at last, the grownup in the romper room: secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who set the record straight regarding Democrats’ “caterwauling” over Khashoggi in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday:

Is it any coincidence that the people using the Khashoggi murder as a cudgel against President Trump’s Saudi Arabia policy are the same people who supported Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Iran—a regime that has killed thousands world-wide, including hundreds of Americans, and brutalizes its own people? Where was this echo chamber, where were these avatars of human rights, when Mr. Obama gave the mullahs pallets of cash to carry out their work as the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism?

Saudi Arabia, like the U.S.—and unlike these critics—recognizes the immense threat the Islamic Republic of Iran poses to the world. Modern-day Iran is, in Henry Kissinger’s term, a cause, not a nation. Its objectives are to spread the Islamic revolution from Tehran to Damascus, to destroy Israel, and to subjugate anyone who refuses to submit, starting with the Iranian people. An emboldened Iran would spread even more death and destruction in the Middle East, spark a regional nuclear-arms race, threaten trade routes, and foment terrorism around the world… Abandoning or downgrading the U.S.-Saudi alliance would also do nothing to push Riyadh in a better direction at home.

As Pompeo knows, great-power politics are not to be subjected to the moralistic whims of the emotionally weakest members of the body politic. The modern Left, which has shorn itself of its do-gooder, midwestern Protestant origins and is now wholly godless, nevertheless still uses our founding religious scruples against us, in line with Alinsky’s famous Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” (The “Christian church” bit is a nice, characteristic and indicative cultural-Marxist touch.)

Time was all politicians understood this. Living in the tough neighborhood known as Planet Earth, all countries must eventually lie down with the devil, jungle up with some pretty ripe characters, and hope to muddle through with as much of their dignity as possible, but not one shred more if it defeats the larger objective. As we become increasingly infantilized, however, the idea that great political decisions often must be separable from domestic moral considerations becomes ever harder to explain.

“That’s not who we are,” sobs the Left as it gleefully indulges its reflexive anti-American nature. What they forget is that actions speak louder than words, and that it is in the best interests of the United States at the moment to pretend to like the Saudi “monarchy” even as we do our best to undermine it—“the crown prince has moved the country in a reformist direction, from allowing women to drive and attend sporting events, to curbing the religious police and calling for a return to moderate Islam,” wrote Pompeo, patting the Kingdom on the back for doing the very things that will help bring it down.

As Mikhail Gorbachev found out, glasnost led to perestroika which led to Christmas Day 1991, the day the Soviet Union vanished onto the ash heap of history. The death of Khashoggi is an internal Saudi affair, with some repercussions for its relationship with its other rival for Islamic supremacy, Turkey: it is, literally none of our business. And as all kindergarten teachers used to know, sometimes you have to kill the little monsters with kindness.

What Is Saudi Arabia to Us?

By Angelo Codevilla
https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/27/what-is-saudi-arabia-to-us/
November 27, 2018


Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, attends a meeting at the United Nations in New York City, March 27, 2018. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP)

It seems that Saudi Arabia’s rulers murdered an opponent. The U.S. media and political class is shocked, shocked, to find that murder is going on in such precincts. Who did they imagine the Muslim world’s leaders are?

Moreover, our chattering class demands that President Trump do whatever it takes to make sure that they do nothing like that again. Do what? Does anyone really think that swapping sheik A for sheik B would improve their kind’s moral standards? Do they have any idea of what keeps A on top of B, what it would take to switch them, or what the repercussions would be in foreign policy? Are they naifs, idiots, or are they just playing with foreign policy to make life a little harder for Trump?

What follows is politically incorrect information on what Saudi Arabia is, what role it plays in American politics, and what it means for our foreign policy. Then, I will suggest how American foreign policy from the Founding to around 1910 would deal with today’s Middle East.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers are a subspecies of the desert rats endemic in the region. The ones on the cheese now are of the clan of seven sons out of old king Saud’s favorite wife, Suda, and hence are known as Sudaris. The previous ruler, Abdullah was the only son of another wife. When Abdullah’s birth-order turn came, in 2005, he took the throne thanks only to having mobilized the national guard of bedouins for war against the national army (and everything else) controlled by the Sudaris. Today, when you read about Mohammed bin Salman’s “anti-corruption reforms,” you should know that they target primarily Abdullah’s son and other relatives. In other words, what is going on, including murder, is a purely dynastic power play. But that is Saudi Arabia’s nice side.

The fundamental reality is that this is a slave society, (the Arabic word for black man is the word for slave) which considers work something that inferiors do for superiors, prizes idleness, and practices cruelty as a means of asserting superiority. Everyone knows that women, treated as property, end up disproportionately in the harems of the wealthy. But few stop to think that this custom dooms the majority of Saudi men to lives without legitimate sex, never mind families.

As for who gets what, that comes strictly either from birth or from connections with the powerful. Nor are the young clamoring for the kind of useful work that would lift them up. They compete, all right, but for favor. Saudi students in U.S colleges—and even in military training programs—just don’t do their work. A degree is a passport to a job which somebody else performs.

Religion? The ultra-puritanical Wahhabi sect, which authorized the House of Saud to take power by murdering non-Wahhabis, is inexorably interwoven with the Saudi power structure. No doubt, many believe its teachings. And yes, Wahhabis pay for radical mosques throughout the world, America very much included. But hypocritical corruption is at its core. Fly first class from Riyadh to Paris or London. Watch the women with Burqas step onto the plane. Off comes the headgear. On take-off, they doff the Burqas, revealing Dior fashions with plunging necklines. And the booze flows.

Saudi Arabia is marvelously well-connected in America—and especially in Washington D.C.—thanks to countless millions of dollars spread in all manner of ways to any and all who might be useful to the Kingdom over decades. Between 1983 and 2005, as Saudi ambassador to the United States, and then as secretary general of the Saudi National Security Council (where he managed the kingdom’s American affairs), Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud did not let pass any occasion to get to know and to invite and to gift. But vacations in Aspen or on the Riviera, and fellowships and connections, are small stuff compared to the billion-dollar bonds built with scores of American contractors and close friends of the very powerful. The Saudis have been able to get away with whatever they wanted.

In the aftermath of 9/11, not only did the U.S government fly Osama bin Laden’s family out of the country forthwith. It also flew out the Saudi consular officials who had helped the hijackers. Sections of the 9/11 commission report dealing with Saudi Arabia remain classified. Since the security camera photos of the 19 Saudi hijackers do not match the names on their passports, to this day, we still do not know their real identities. Nor has anyone investigated whence came the money for the operation.

Saudi foreign policy has been far from U.S.-friendly. Until around 1990, it might well have been described in one word: “pay.” Who? Anybody, to keep them from making trouble for the Kingdom. Thus the Saudis were the Syrian Assad regime’s main financiers. The money went to buy Soviet weapons. The same was true for Egypt prior to 1979, after which the money went to buy U.S. weapons. The Saudis paid most of the bill for Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran. And yes, they financed the PLO until, in 1990, both the PLO and Saddam turned against them—which led to firming up connections with the United States.

But those connections did not prevent the Saudis from playing a double game during the Iraq war—entirely understandable from the Saudi standpoint, but the acceptance of which by the U.S. establishment proved its abysmal incompetence. In short, the Saudis wanted above all to protect Iraq’s formerly ruling Sunni minority. That is why they lobbied hard and successfully to turn the successful U.S. invasion of March-April 2003 into the disastrous 2003-2010 U.S. occupation. Worse, during that occupation, the Saudis were the principal financiers of the Sunni war against U.S. forces, and the suppliers of most suicide bombers.

Today, the war between Saudi Arabia and Iran—effectively between the Muslim world’s Sunni and Shia blocs, is the great issue in the Middle East.

The Saudis rightly fear Iran. Make no mistake: Much as Iran rails against the Great Satan, (America) and the Little Satan (Israel), Saudi Arabia is its chief enemy. Whatever faults Iranian forces may have, whatever equipment they lack, they are still superior to the Saudis. Most important, the Saudis and their Sunni allies in the Gulf lord it over Shia minorities (in Bahrain they are the majority) who look to Iran for relief. The Shia in Saudi inhabit the oil producing regions. The Saudis know how vulnerable they are. The United States does not have to convince them to be anti-Iran. Since Iran is far more a danger to them than to us, they will always be more anti-Iran than we.

Nor do we have to treat them gingerly because they are the principal part of OPEC. In fact, the world oil price is now set largely by American production. Much as the Saudis would love to raise the price by cutting production, they know that maximizing their income requires pumping as much as they can at whatever the world price happens to be.

In short, we owe them nothing.

Our relationship with Saudi Arabia should flow from our own needs—not theirs—based on the realities of the region.

Were John Quincy Adams to whisper in Trump’s ear, he might well say the following: Just as in 1823, when we premised our dealings with Europe by making clear the contrast between the republican principles by which we live and those of monarchical Europe, we should now draw a bright line between our way of life and that of the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Now as then, this is primarily for the American people’s benefit. Now as then, we cannot change others, but must deal with them. We don’t have to like them, and they don’t have to like us. Good diplomacy does not pretend. We will not lower ourselves to asking the Saudis to pretend they have become liberals, nor fool ourselves into thinking that they are on the way to doing so.

We have some concurrent interests. Only some. And for our own different reasons. And the concurrence is conditional.

There are certain things we can and should do for the Saudis, mainly by limiting Iran’s economy. But for us to do that, the price of oil has to be kept in an acceptable range for a range of allies. Hence we must demand that the Saudis cooperate. We can and should protect the Saudis against major Iranian military moves, especially by providing better missile defense. But we are not going to involve ourselves in trying to put down Shia revolts against Sunni hegemony. In Syria, we have only two interests: limiting Iran’s reach to Israel, and safeguarding the Kurds. Any Saudi action that we judge non-supportive of these interests will lead to reduction of our support in other areas.

Above all, we realize that Saudi Arabia is even less a permanent fixture of the international scene than the Soviet Union was. It is even more unstable. Stabilizing it, saving it from the consequences of its congenital dynastic wars, is beyond our capacities, as John Quincy Adams might have said. That is why now, as in 1823, the essence of good American foreign policy is to be very clear about our very few interests, to commit to those, and to let the rest of the world fight their own battles.

LOUIS FARRAKHAN, LIVE FROM TEHRAN

Lloyd Billingsley
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271861/louis-farrakhan-live-tehran-lloyd-billingsley
November 6, 2018


(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Monday November 5, one day before the election, marked the resumption of sanctions on the Islamic regime by the Trump administration. Nation of Islam boss Louis Farrakhan flew to Iran to speak out on behalf of the ruling mullahs.

As Fox News reported, Farrakhan told Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council: “Today, I warn the American government that sanctioning Iran is a big mistake.” The eager Farrakhan failed to flag any mistakes by the Iranian Islamic regime, the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. And Farrakhan took care to time his visit with an important event.

Thirty-nine years ago, in 1979, the Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, took more than 50 American diplomats and civilians hostage, and held them for 444 days. Farrakhan marked the anniversary by telling law students at the University of Tehran, that “America has never been a democracy” and then led the students in a chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

No one in America had ever seen a performance quite like that. On the other hand, in his live Tehran show the Nation of Islam boss was not advancing any new themes.

On October 14, the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March, Farrakhan addressed a cheering audience in Detroit: “To the members of the Jewish community that don’t like me — thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet…I’m not mad at you, ‘cuz you’re so stupid.” The Nation of Islam leader also claimed “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite,” and repeated that message in a tweet.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz denounced the speech and called out presidents Obama and Clinton, along with former DNC boss Keith Ellison, for their ties to Farrakhan. Even so, prominent Democrats running for office were not swift to denounce Farrakhan for his Jews-are-termites speech. In fact, Farrakhan thrives on special treatment from high-profile Democrats.

“Louis Farrakhan has ingratiated himself with the liberal elite in the United States,” Howard Feldman noted after the “termites” speech. “Both Obama and the Clintons have been photographed alongside him. And whereas they publicly denounce his attitude towards Jews, the fact that they continue to be seen with him is that which empowers him.”

True to form, at the funeral of Aretha Franklin, who passed away in August, Farrakhan got a place of honor, right up front with Democrats Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Erica Holder. Many speakers exploited the occasion to bash President Trump, but none of the prominent Democrats took Farrakhan to task about anything. Viewers got the impression the Democrats liked being seen with him.

Back in 2005, a smiling Illinois Senator Barack Obama duly posed with Farrakhan for a photograph (above) that only recently emerged. That was no surprise because the senator’s 1995 Dreams from My Father portrayed the Nation of Islam in a completely favorable light.

The author’s hatemongering Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright, who prefers “God damn America” to “God bless America,” was a longtime pal of Farrakhan, and the Dreams author participated in the Million Man March. In 2008, when the dreamer ran for president, Farrakhan called him the “messiah.” 

Once elected, POTUS 44 preferred to target conservatives rather than take Farrakhan or Wright to task. In similar style, for the most part, the establishment media have remained uncritical of the Nation of  Islam boss, even though his racist views were no secret.

As Stanley Crouch explained in the Village Voice in 1985, in the view of Louis Farrakhan, “the white man was a devil ‘grafted’ from black people in an evil genetic experiment by a mad, pumpkin-headed scientist named Yacub. That experiment took place 6000 years ago. Now the white man was doomed, sentenced to destruction by Allah.”  It follows that, regardless of self-image, anyone who believes that Dave Brubeck, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Wright Brothers are the devilish result of Yacub’s failed experiment is a racist.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was quick to target Trump supporters as racists, sexists, homophobic, islamophobic, and so forth, a veritable “basket of deplorables.” When it comes to racism, the former First Lady and Secretary of State, who would still like to be president, pretty much gives Farrakhan a free pass.

For his part, the Nation of Islam mouthpiece knows he can call Jews termites, denounce America from Tehran, and most prominent Democrats will treat him gently. In reality, his “Death to America” chant differs from the Democrats only in degree, not in kind.

Now completely dominated by the left, Democrats despise the America that actually exists, with its culture, history, traditions and borders. Their dream is the future social justice America, with no borders. In the Democrats’ vision, only their party prevails, with help from an imported electorate.

"No Trump, no wall, no USA at all,” the refrain of leftist Democrats, is no great distance from “Death to America,” as chanted by Louis Farrakhan in Tehran. Democrats have effectively empowered this loathsome racist and anti-Semite. At election time or any time, non-Democrats, journalists and civil rights leaders would be wise call them on it.

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation, recently updated, and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Movie Industry.  Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield, is a collection of his journalism.

Trump Takes the Right Position (Again) on Khashoggi

By Roger L. Simon

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/trump-takes-the-right-position-again-on-khashoggi/

October 16, 2018

Jamal Khashoggi (alliance/dpa/H. Jamali)

Gasp and gasp again!  Donald Trump is once more seeming to defend the indefensible.  From the AP:

President Donald Trump Tuesday criticized rapidly mounting global condemnation of Saudi Arabia over the case of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, warning of a rush to judgment.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump compared the situation to the allegations of sexual assault leveled against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

“I think we have to find out what happened first,” he said. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.”

The AP was quick to remind us that the president was again swimming against the tide:

He said it was too early to say whether he endorsed other countries’ actions. “I have to find out what happened,” he said. But his complaint about “guilty until proven innocent” and comparison to the Kavanaugh situation suggested he was giving the Saudis more leeway than other U.S. allies.

Indeed, but which allies?  Turkey?  In the Despot Derby, their President Recep Erdogan seems to be running at least neck-and-neck with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and may be out front by a nose or more.  Which one has more journalists in jail? Turkey hands down. (They lead the world in that respect.) Which one has beheaded more of its citizens?  The nod goes to Saudi Arabia.  Equal or ahead of them on all counts -- Iran.

In the Middle East, suffused as it is by the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya -- making it permissible, often required, to lie to the kufr (non-Muslim) for the good of the faith -- it's hard to discern who is telling the truth or anything close.

Trump says he is reacting to vehement disavowals from MBS and his father that they ordered Khashoggi's death, but are they to be trusted? Westerners may have good instincts about the hysterics of Dr. Blasey Ford, but are less likely to be able to comprehend a culture more insular, determined, and bloodthirsty than the Mafia.

The Khashoggi story has no one close to a hero, not even, perhaps especially, its subject, who was for decades part of the Wahhabi government so in love with beheadings.  The disappeared so-called journalist -- actually a lifelong activist for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that sought, and still covertly seeks, world domination through the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri -- is scarcely someone to be admired, even with his Washington Post byline.  (Mr. Bezos, please explain why a man with this history is writing for your newspaper.)

And, of course, the USA has for years practiced targeted assassinations, via drones and other methods.  The Israelis are thought to have taken out several Iranian nuclear scientists via drive-by killings and other strategies.  Complaints were muted, as well they should have been.

If MBS is responsible for the death of Khashoggi, one wonders why he chose such an obvious and barbaric method, less subtle and deniable even than the way North Korea's Kim poisoned his step-brother. (Perhaps MBS was even inspired by us, thinking we would disregard such an action since we do it ourselves.) On the other hand, if the actions were performed by some of the crown prince's adversaries, it seems to have been a good way to embarrass him seriously and remove him from leadership.  In the Middle East, the game is played for keeps. Trump's nastiest insults must seem to them like child's play.

For insight into how this all works, I would recommend the television series Tyrant,written and directed by the Israeli writer Gideon Raff.  It's more or less a fictionalization of the rise of Syria's Bashar Assad, who begins in the series as a mild-mannered pediatrician in the U. S. (not an ophthalmologist in the UK as in reality).  Raff is the creator of the superb Israeli series Prisoners of War, which was turned into the much inferior American version Homeland.

As for Trump, I think once again he is being smart not following the herd.  If MBS turns out to be a total swine, there's plenty of time to react accordingly.  If not, the president has properly hedged his bets.  In any case, in a world (the Middle East) where practically all leaders, other than Israelis, are various degrees of thugs, it may come down to the regrettable choice of the traditional the  "enemy of my enemy," etc. Thanks to Obama's giveaway of billions, we know who that mainly is -- Iran and its client Hezbollah.

Roger L. Simon = co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media - is an author and an Academy Award-Nominated screenwriter.