It’s funny. I’m suffering from a bit of writer’s block. It’s 100 degrees out, the news is all incredibly depressing, and flamewars have sapped my energy. I’m sitting here trying to decide whether to write another piece on the Middle East…kind of going over in my mind the points I want to make. I’m watching former DCI James Woolsey on my television comparing the current situation to pre-Munich Europe of the late 1930’s. He’s telling me that we can’t appease Iran or Syria or…
Or what, exactly? What exactly is going to heppen to us if we tell Israel to call off the dogs? We’ll embolden the enemy? And then they’ll do what?
So, I’m sitting here thinking about this. I’m thinking about the absurdity of the neo-conservatives claiming that we face a menace on a level with the Axis and yet calling for tax cuts and refusing to call for everyday Americans to take up the call to arms.
And then I come across Billmon’s latest. He pretty much hits every single point I wanted to make. So, why write this at all?
Americans just don’t understand the Middle East. They do not understand what the true nature of our relationship is with the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis, and the Emirates. They don’t understand why they are allied with us. They don’t understand that we built their armies, that we built the security forces, that we own these countries and dictate to them what they can and cannot do. They need to keep up the appearance of independence. They funnel a little money to Hamas to maintain their street cred. It’s all part of the deal. But there are limits to how much they can take. They can’t sit idly by while we pursue James Woolsey’s total war on their Arab and Muslim brothers. Their own people will kill them. And they won’t be replaced by pro-business, pro-Western, pro-American puppets.
Americans need to understand that we simply cannot count on our regional allies tolerating and surviving an all-out war to stamp out Iran’s influence.
Israel’s main source of security is America’s relationship with Egypt and Jordan. The neo-conservative plans put those relationships in grave risk. As Billmon puts it:
Still, you have to wonder how long the soldiers and security agents of your typical pro-American Arab police state are going to go on protecting the rapacious kleptocrats, drunken phonies and Hashamite anachronisms who rule over them — all for the greater glory of the Jewish state and the God-given right of the average American motorist to fill ‘er up at the local gas pump any time he or she likes…
…I don’t know — maybe things would have to get infinitely worse
before Arab soldiers would turn their guns on their officers, or
Mukhabarat attack dogs would sink their teeth in the throats of their
masters. Maybe the pain and humiliation of watching Lebanon destroyed
by American bombs dropped from Israeli planes isn’t enough. But the
puppets themselves are showing signs of a growing unease. They know how much depends on the loyalty of the hired help — or at least its continued willingness to obey orders.
Watching the entire American foreign policy establishment stick their heads in the sand out of fear of offending the Likud lobby is shocking. It’s not shocking because there is no precedent for it. It’s shocking because never before have Israel’s actions so imperiled our interests. And there is absolutely no upside to this. To get any kind of peace with honor, Israel needs America to come in and take over and move on the Damascus.
Our alliances can’t handle such a spectacle. The only people that think this is Munich 1938 are a few nutjobs in Washington DC. And even they don’t believe it. If they did, they’d be calling us all up to sign up and go slay the Mohammedans and liberate Jerusalem.
The internal contradictions of the neo-conservatives ideology are coming home to roost in a major way. We’ve never been proponents of Democracy in the Arab world because we found it easier to protect Israel by creating a ruling elite and providing for their protection. It was also good for business. How we thought we could Democratize our enemies while leaving our allies on their thrones, I’ll never know.
There is only one solution now. Israel must make concessions and hammer out a settlement of the Palestinian question. It doesn’t matter if it appears weak. We will assure their security.
