Comments on reads 6/28

JoshuaPundit: Egypt: Shafik Flees As Muslim Brotherhood Takes Over And Begins Introducing Sharia

Their biggest project, of course remains Islamizing Egypt and laying the ground for the new Caliphate, to be ruled by sharia.

To that end, a plan by high ranking Brotherhood figures has been put together known as the “Jazira Plan” and was it personally approved by Mohammed Badi, the Supreme Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

While the plan is to be applied gradually, it calls for the strict implementation of sharia law, the abandonment of western based film and "artistic heritage," and memorization of the Qu'ran a condition for advancement in school.

The plan also calls for replacing the current national anthem with something called the anthem of the Islamic Caliphate,and the abolishment of Egypt's Ministry of Information and it's replacement by "an Islamic media organization".

How quickly this plan is implemented depends a great deal on the Egyptian military and how much and how quickly they can be subordinated to the regime's agenda. Tayyipp Erdogan and the AKP took almost a decade to do it in Turkey,but the Turkish military had a constitutional mandate to keep Turkey secular that went back to the days of Ataturk, and they were also fairly popular with the Turkish people.

In Iran, on the other hand,the transition happened fairly quickly because the military had no such legal role and because they had been identified with the deposed Shah,especially the higher ranking officers,most of whom either agreed to support Khomeni's regime, fled or were executed.

Egypt's military likewise has no legal role and the Brotherhood has been quite successful in identifying the military, especially the SCAF with Mubarak and with 'suppressing the Revolution'.

I'd put my money on a transition more on a timeline like Iran than Turkey.

Rest assured that we won't even recognize Egypt in two years time.

FP: This will be funded by US and Western money. And within those two years we will see serious deterioration in the peace treaty with Israel, a lot of border violence if not a full war, all means to extract money from the West.

Tarek Fatah: ‘Brothers’ of the Muslim Brotherhood

However, if we are to believe the man President Barack Obama describes as his “principle intelligence advisor”, U.S. Department of National Intelligence head James Clapper, there is little to worry about.

…

If this is the advice Obama is getting from his “principle intelligence advisor,” it is no wonder, leading up to the Egyptian presidential elections, his administration played host to the Muslim Brotherhood in Washington and were earlier accused of holding secret meetings in Cairo with its senior leadership.

…

However, like the Ayatollahs in Iran in 1979, wherever Islamists seize power, their ultimate objective is the destruction of the West, even when they are feeding off it.

The Muslim Brotherhood document produced by the FBI as evidence in the Dallas terror trial lists the group’s objective in North America as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process.”

It said: “The Ikhwan (Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers (Muslims) so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

To this end, the Brothers call on Muslims “to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.”

See what I mean?

 

Meteoric surge in anti-Semitism recorded in France

After years of steady decline, Jewish community in France records sudden 53 percent rise in anti-Semitic acts between January and May of 2012 • "It is unpleasant to be a French Jew these days, and this cannot continue," says MK Danny Danon.

FP: It will continue and increase probably until Jews get out of Europe.

 

US Army can't hide five billion dollar camouflage failure

"The Army designed a universal uniform that universally failed in every environment," an Army specialist who served in Iraq tells the Daily Mail • Some critics of the pixelated army uniforms reportedly blamed the uniforms for the deaths of servicemen.

FP: Decline

 

Erekat: Abbas, Mofaz to meet next week for peace talks

Meeting would mark highest-level talks since negotiations broke down in 2010; chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat says meeting comes at request of Kadima head; Mofaz neither confirms nor denies report.

FP: What did I tell you? More supplication and concessions.

 

How Hamas, not Israel, shapes the contours of conflict

Analysis It’s the Islamists who determine the timing and scale of violence along the Gaza border.

FP: Israel lost the initiative a long time ago. It only reacts.

 

RECOMMENDED READS

Matt Taibbi: Thomas Friedman's New State of Grace

Comments on reads 6/27

Alexander Bligh: Preparing for Egypt's worst

Egypt's economic situation today doesn't allow it to provide for over 85 million of its citizens. This means that a scapegoat must be found for the people to focus their rage against. The new regime will not be able to hide behind the old regime's shortcomings for very long.

What's more, every military conflict in the region has always been followed by U.S. mediation efforts, including substantial economic packages. We must not forget that U.S. foreign aid to Egypt is allocated mostly toward its military (some $1.5 billion), while some $800 million goes toward the civilian sector. This means that the U.S. is strengthening Egypt's armed forces, not its economy. Such an aid package, therefore, could very well tempt the new regime to act hastily. In light of all this, military conflict is the most reasonable possibility.

Therefore Israel must redefine its parameters for what constitutes a casus belli and notify the United States and other leading countries accordingly; the strength of deterrence lies in making your red lines known. In addition to such a public move, we should define, discreetly, our own goals.

Israel must display its commitment to the peace treaty, despite its deficiencies, practice extreme caution against being drawn into provocations and make its red lines very clear and public.

In the meantime, Israel needs to quietly prepare for any possibility — from amplifying all aspects of its military efforts to dealing with the increasingly hostile population in the Sinai — for when the day comes and the order is given.

There is no doubt that Israelis hope and wish that such a day never comes, but if it does come, God forbid, we'd better be well prepared.

FP: Where did you hear this first? Compare this with my comments in the previous post on Martin Kramer, Kramer’s post.

Then this:

Walter Russel Mead: Is Anti-Zionism Morsi’s Best Shot at Relevance?

But there is one weapon Morsi can use to needle the army and apply some serious pressure: opposition to Israel. Not only is Sadat’s peace treaty widely unpopular in Egypt, but anti-Zionism also unites the passions of both nationalism and Islam, the two most powerful forces in the country’s psychology. The army, by contrast, has no intention of tearing up the treaty or otherwise provoking tension with Israel, but its immunity from popular disapproval is not absolute. This is one issue where Morsi can enflame public opinion until the generals treat the president with a little more respect.

Under Nasser, the Egyptian military republic combined nationalism with passionate anti-Zionism as, among other things, a way to reduce the support for radical Islam. After Sadat’s treaty, anti-Zionism became one of the main Islamist talking points in the country. That remains the case today.

And this:

Robert Satloff: Morsi's Victory in Egypt: Early Implications for America and the Broader Middle East

While confirmation of Morsi's victory may spare Egypt a potentially violent faceoff between Islamists and the military, the shockwaves will be felt across the Middle East. This ranges from the wilderness of Sinai, where more-violent Islamists will push the Ikhwani leader toward confrontation with Israel; to the suburbs of Aleppo and Damascus, where the Morsi example will be a fillip to Islamists fighting Alawite rule; to the capitals of numerous Arab states, especially the monarchies, where survivalist leaders mortified by the prospect that Islamist revolutions could trump their claims of religious legitimacy will double-down on their velvet-glove/iron-fist strategies to fend off the fervor for change.

And this:

Lee Smith: What’s Next for Egypt?

Morsi has said that he is the president for all Egyptians. The question is how, particularly in the middle of an international economic meltdown, he can reconcile more than 80 million Egyptians to the Brotherhood’s rule. What has made the organization attractive for all these years is not its vision, its policies, whatever those turn out to be, but rather resistance, negation, a dynamism built on the foundations of conflict. Morsi will likely have little choice in the matter: To manage an Egypt perpetually on the verge of chaos, he will have to project internal conflict outward. In due time, Egypt will make war either on itself, or on Israel.

Detect a pattern?

 

Elliott Abrams: Who’s Visiting Cairo?

After President Obama’s congratulatory call to Egypt’s president-elect Morsi, it seems the administration seeks further contact in the coming days.  On June 25 The Washington Post reported this:

U.S. officials hope to make a strong impression on Morsi, 60, during an upcoming visit by a senior American official to Cairo, said another senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak for the record.

“Senior official” is an elastic term, but let us hope it does not refer to Secretary of State Clinton. I am told there’s a debate under way in the administration about who should meet now with Mr. Morsi. Clinton is the wrong answer. Morsi has, as that Post story noted, “spoken vitriolically about American policy in the Middle East…and has expressed doubts that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by terrorists.” A quick embrace will suggest that we simply don’t care about such things, and will be noticed by American allies and enemies in the region. Moreover, the Secretary could be embarrassed–as could the United States–if such a visit were followed quickly by more such statements by Morsi. Far better to wait, and have our capable ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson, deliver the message that relations with Washington will depend on what he says and does as president.  The victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is seen as a great risk by friends of the United States throughout the region, Arabs and Israelis alike. Actions that suggest we do not understand their views, or do not care about them, or do not care about the Brotherhood’s long record of anti-Americanism, will further weaken the American position in the region. Sending a “senior official” to Cairo can wait.

See if Kramer’s forecast for a MB strategy is already being validated by the US behavior and whether I was right in claiming that the MB will play the West like a violin using anti-Israel threats.

Should the US try to make a strong impression on Morsi, should it be the other way around? Do you think Obama or Clinton are any match for the Islamists?

 

Shoshana Bryen: The Incredible Shrinking US-Israel Security Cooperation

In light of increased sensitivity to intelligence leaks, it seemed innocuous – or even admirable – when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) asked the Senate to remove a few words from the US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act: the "sense of the Senate" part of the bill included the sentence, "Expand already close intelligence cooperation, including satellite intelligence, with the Government of Israel;" ODNI wanted the words "including satellite intelligence" to go.

An ODNI spokesman said it was "simply a matter of clarifying the intelligence aspects of the bill and being sensitive to the level of specificity of the language…nothing nefarious here, just more clear language."

Yeah, right.

This is just the latest example of the Obama Administration making clear that it does not want to be seen as Israel's partner in regional affairs – several of them predicated on Turkish desires. Despite Israel's status as a Major Non-NATO ally, a NATO "partner" country, and a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue, Turkey is increasingly insistent that Israel be isolated and cut out. This surrender to Turkey -- which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years been aggressively making ever more fundamentalist -- coincides nicely with the Administration's increasingly open courtship of Turkey's Islamist-leaning and virulently anti-Israel Prime Minister and what appears to be the desire of the Administration to enhance security relations in the Arab-Muslim world as it dials back visible cooperation with Israel.

FP: This is precisely as I predicted: the US is trying to appease the Islamists in order to temperate violence against the US and to realign with them as allies by signaling abandonment of Israel.

Here’s another example:

Israel Matzav: A Hamas win at the 'human rights council'

Thanks to the Obama administration, Hamas managed to hold a meeting at the United Nations 'human rights council' on Friday to promote the destruction of the State of Israel.

…

Here is some of what Habeeb had to say while speaking in a UN room, at a UN-provided microphone, at a UN-advertised event associated with the UN’s top human rights body: “In 1947, 1948 and 1949 the Palestinian refugees were ethnically cleansed by the Israeli gangs.... Some Arab armies came to Palestine to fight the Zionist project, which came from all over Europe to take over Palestine and to make it as a national home for the Jews, although it was always the national home for the Palestinians for thousands and thousands of years.”

Habeeb, a well-known radical and “one state solution” campaigner, didn’t come alone. Various publications of his Palestinian Return Center were made readily available on UN premises.

There was the pamphlet with this bigoted diatribe: “a racist ideology is inherent in political Zionism and... is being implemented as a political project by the state of Israel.

Political Zionism idealizes and advances a racist and chauvinistic... religion and nationalism.”

And there was the map with the word “Palestine” splashed across the entirety of what is now Israel. Advocating the elimination of a UN member state, the most elementary violation of the UN Charter, is evidently acceptable literature in the belly of the UN human rights beast.

See what I mean?

 

Adam Kredo: Hamas: Israelis ‘must prepare to leave’

As Gaza militants renew violent rocket attacks on Israeli cities, a Hamas national security minister told a delegation of graduating police officers in the Gaza Strip that they should help liberate Israeli cities, such as Jerusalem, from Jewish control, according to a recently released translation of his remarks.

“None of you should give up playing with all the tools of force and equipment, which will bring us closer to our aspirations: Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Haifa, Akko, and Jaffa,” Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad declared during a Gaza police academy commencement ceremony on June 13, about a week before militants began firing hundreds of rockets into Southern Israel.

“The officers of the class graduating today will become the police chief of Jaffa, the police chief of Haifa, the police chief of Akko, the police chief of Lod, the police chief of Ramle, and of all other places,” said Hammad, an interior and national security minister said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“Therefore, from this place, we declare to all those who usurped our lands that they must prepare to leave, because we have prepared for jihad,” said the Hamas official, which remains officially committed to the destruction of Israel. “You are going to leave, while we are summoned to battle. We are the owners of this land.”

FP: The consequences of Islamist takeovers.

  

RECOMMENDED READS

Daniel Greenfield: It's Hard Out There for an Outsider

Bret Stephens: Who Lost Egypt?

David Goldman: What do you do when the people are the problem?

Elliott Abrams:Who Lost Egypt?

Yossi Klein Halevi: No more illusions about Egypt after Mubarak

Martin Kramer: Past and Current Forecasts on ME Prospects and Islamist Strategy

FP: There are a few good analysts of the ME, but none so accurate, different and interesting as Martin Kramer. I do not recall him ever being outright wrong or regurgitating conventional Western “wisdom”.

In this short piece he shared with me he refers to a study he conducted in 2005 about ME regimes and their likely fate. His conclusion:

In summation, we see liberal democratic transformation as unlikely. We believe the contest is bipolar, between regimes and Islamists, with the former less and less able to resist Islamist entreaties and encroachments. We believe that the coming decade will see more power ceded to Islamists, who will be wooed by regimes, the secular opposition and foreign powers alike. As elections allow them to demonstrate their appeal, they will increasingly become the fulcrum of politics.

Note that even before Obama it was the Bush administration who initiated the undermining of Arab regimes by its “rhetoric about democracy”.

Kramer was rightly skeptical of democratization and he validates my long time arguments in this blog. The Arab culture and religion, which are tightly intertwined—Islam is at its core a religion by Arabs for the Arabs—are not compatible with both order and freedom. It is not a coincidence that no Arab regime has been democratic since the colonial powers left the ME. The Arab world developed two forms of authoritarianism to enforce order at the expense of freedom: military rule and Islamism.

But order at the expense of freedom is conducive to corruption and senility and as military led regimes weakened, only the other alternative can replace it, which is exactly what happened. But Islamists have two significant advantages over military rulers:

1. They understand the critical value of and rely heavily on ideological indoctrination and its inculcation into state institutions, educational system, the media and the military.

2. They rule in the name of Allah.

If they manage to take over, it will be a very, very long time before they weaken, if at all. And because the problems affecting Arab societies are not resolvable by Islam—indeed, Islam is one core reason for their failure—their instinct will be to resort to external violence as a means to both distract from the failure and to piggyback on and exploit the success of others. That’s what supremacism and Jihad have always been for.

Now consider his current prediction of MB’s strategy. Did you see anything similar by anybody else?

Worst-case scenario comes true by Martin Kramer

The military’s efforts to contain the Muslim Brotherhood, at this late date, can only buy limited time. The parliament has been dissolved, but it will have to be reconstituted, and then what? The rewriting of the constitution can be delayed, but the constitution will have to be written and approved by the legislature, and then what? And if the president isn’t to be the supreme commander of the Egyptian armed forces, then who will be? The simple truth is that Egypt isn’t going to revert to military rule—it’s too late, the polls show that a vast majority of Egyptians want a transition to civilian, constitutional rule. For the military, the question is, what are the terms of this transition? What will guarantee their economic enterprises? What will assure them that they won’t be prosecuted and purged? This is now the core of Egyptian domestic politics: the terms on which the military will exit. And with each passing day, the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood is strengthened in this negotiation, because it grows more legitimate and the generals grow less legitimate. There are those who think that the Muslim Brotherhood can still be outmaneuvered by gerrymandering the system. In the long term, it can’t. Egypt is headed toward populist Islamist rule, and it is just a matter of time before the Brotherhood checkmates its opponents.

So how will the Muslim Brotherhood rule? It is the misfortune of the Muslim Brotherhood that, having waited more than 80 years for power, they have come to it at perhaps the lowest point in the modern history of Egypt. The country teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, the result of decades of bad decisions, corruption, and the absence of the rule of law. The Muslim Brotherhood is in a bind, because it has to deliver. For the masses of people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolution wasn’t about democracy and freedom. It was about bread and social justice.

The Brotherhood has a so-called “Renaissance” plan for the overhaul of the Egyptian economy. I won’t pretend to judge its feasibility. Could modernization of tax collection double or triple tax revenues? Can Egypt double the number of arriving tourists, even while contemplating limits on alcohol and bikinis? Can a renovation of the Suez Canal raise transit revenues from $6 billion a year to $100 billion? Can Egypt’s economy surpass the economies of Turkey and Malaysia within seven years? These are all claims made at various times by the economic thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood, who trumpet Egypt’s supposed potential for self-sufficiency.

If you think this is pie in the sky, then it isn’t difficult to imagine the “Plan B” of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is to find ways to raise the rent Egypt collects from the West and rich Arabs for its geopolitical position. Call it a shakedown, call it a bailout, it doesn’t matter. The message Egypt is sending is that it’s too big to fail, and that the world, and especially the United States, owes it. The deputy guide, Khayrat ash-Shater, put it directly: “We strongly advise the Americans and the Europeans to support Egypt during this critical period as compensation for the many years they supported a brutal dictatorship.” Egypt, which is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, is thus owed compensation.

A key part of this narrative is that Mubarak sold peace with Israel on the cheap. In Egypt it is believed that the $1.3 billion that Egypt receives a year in military aid, and hundreds of millions more in economic aid, are just a portion of what Egypt’s adherence to peace is worth. To get more, the plan of the Muslim Brotherhood is to persuade Washington that it can’t take Egypt for granted. The strategy will be to stimulate crises that will be amenable to resolution by the transfer of resources. No one can predict what those crises will look like. It’s hard to imagine that some of them won’t involve Israel.

So the question the United States faces will be this: is Egypt indeed too big to fail? Is the United States now not only going to talk the Muslim Brotherhood—which it is already doing—but actively work to help it succeed? The question comes at a time when the United States has become frugal. And there is no superpower rivalry that Egypt can exploit. When John Foster Dulles informed Nasser in 1956 that the United States wouldn’t finance his great dam at Aswan, Nasser went to Moscow. Today there aren’t any alternatives to the United States.

That being the case, the only way for Egypt to get the attention of Washington is to threaten to spin out of American orbit and into the opposing sphere of radical Islam. At no point will it be indisputable that the United States has “lost Egypt.” But at every point, Egypt’s loss will seem imminent. In that respect, the Muslim Brotherhood has already made its mark on history: from this day forward, Egypt can’t ever be taken for granted again.

He got it right in 2005 and he is right now.

I expressed similar thoughts on this blog. The only thing I would quibble with is that the question “Will the US actively help MB succeed?” has already been answered: Yes. The US has done and is doing it. See my comments on JoshuaPundit’s recent post.

The Islamists will play the West like a violin and extract considerable resources that it cannot afford, with which they prepare themselves for undermining their very source.

Comments on reads 6/26

Bill Katz: THE RESET BUTTON HAS POPPED OUT

When Obama came to town he made much of his "reset" of relations with Moscow.  Indeed, Secretary Clinton even presented the Russian foreign minister with a little model of a "reset" button to mark the new day.

A funny thing happened to the reset button on the way to being pressed.  It popped out.  There is no reset.  The Kremlin, under Vladimir Putin, is increasingly hard-line in its relations with the U.S.  And it is putting on traditional show-of-forces demos for us to plainly see.  From ace defense reporter Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon:

Russian strategic nuclear bombers threatened U.S. airspace near Alaska earlier this month and F-15 jets responded by intercepting the aircraft taking part in large-scale arctic war games, according to defense officials.

The Russian war games began the same day President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a frosty summit meeting in Mexico June 18.

U.S. officials said the arctic exercises over the Russian Far East and Pacific appeared to be a further sign of Russia’s hardening posture toward the United States.

The Obama administration made no protest of the bomber intrusions, according to the officials, in line with its conciliatory “reset” policy of seeking warmer ties with Moscow.

About 30 strategic nuclear bombers and support aircraft took part in the war games that continued through June 25. The aircraft included Tu-95MS Bear H and Tu-160 Blackjack nuclear-capable bombers, along with Il-76 refueling tankers, A-50 airborne warning and control aircraft, and Su-27 and MiG-31 jet fighters. Some 200 troops also took part in the Russian Strategic Aviation forces exercise.

A spokesman for the joint U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense command in Colorado Springs, which monitors air defense intrusions, had no immediate comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.

U.S. and Canadian F-15 and F-16 jets were involved in the intercepts that took place near the Air Identification Zone surrounding Alaskan airspace over the northern Pacific.

The exercises are part of increasingly aggressive Russian military activities in the arctic region in both the eastern and western hemispheres, which have created security worries among governments in northern Europe and Canada.

One official said the failure to publicize the threatening bomber maneuvers might have been related to Obama’s overhead promise in March to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev of “more flexibility.”

According to the defense officials, the arctic bomber exercises are part of Russian efforts to assert control over vast areas of the arctic circle that are said to contain large mineral and oil deposits.

COMMENT:  The threats to this country under Obama have increased, not decreased.  And yet we are looking at cuts to our defense budget, and a general retrenchment around the world. 

Russia is growing into a major power again.  Don't be deceived by reports of its "weak economy."   Even a weak economy, if focused on defense, can produce devastating power.   The USSR fought World War II with a third-world economy, and yet defeated the Nazi armies invading its land. 

And China's power is growing, despite some signs of a weakening of the Chinese economy. 

Our power is not growing.  We are in danger, and our president lacks the required sense of urgency. 

FP: Weakness to the bully is like a red sheet to a bull.

And speaking of Russia:

Claire Berlinski: The Cold War’s Arab Spring (MUST READ)

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes the depredations visited upon the region by European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability. The most intractable of the regional conflicts to which this gave rise, that between the Arabs and Israelis, is attributed in this narrative to Israel’s unwillingness to accede to Palestinian national aspirations. Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand.

What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense? Russian exile Pavel Stroilov argues just this in his forthcoming book, Behind the Desert Storm. “Not a word of it is true,” he writes. “It was the Soviet Empire—not the British Empire—that was responsible for the instability in the Middle East.”

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Stroilov’s book about these documents, many only now translated into English, challenges the conventional wisdom that Western colonialists are to blame for the chaos in the region. All of its major conflicts, he argues, were caused by Soviet expansionism. Terrorism and the rabid anti-Israeli animus of the Arab world were Soviet inspirations. And the revolutions we are seeing now were inevitable, for the Soviet client states were socialist regimes, and sooner or later socialism exhausts economies and thus the patience of the people who live in them.

Stroilov focuses upon Gorbachev’s intrigues in the Middle East, explaining the Arab Spring as the “final act of the Cold War.” This thesis is overstated—Stroilov is a bit too enamored of his own collection to admit the complexity of these events—but there is nonetheless much in his archives to support this description. The documents clearly suggest that many contemporary conflicts in the Middle East were fomented by the Soviet empire, particularly in the final years before its break-up. And the events he describes have had a significant impact upon the current state of the region—from the conflict in Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, to the development of a de facto alliance between the European Union and the Arab states. Perhaps most significantly, there is much here to suggest that it is past time to reexamine Gorbachev’s reputation as a reformer and liberalizer. Stroilov’s book suggests that in the Middle East, Gorbachev’s policy was old-school Kremlin imperialism, all the way to the end.

…

What, then, was Plan B? It was “the subversion and eventual destruction of Israel.”

Though not as good as the Gulf oil fields, Israel would also be a big prize. It was the only democracy in the region, the strongest military power in the pro-Western camp and, indeed, the bridgehead of the Western world. Even more importantly, the very process of crusading (or jihadding) against Israel offered fantastic political opportunities. A besieged Israel effectively meant millions of Jewish hostages in the hands of the comrades, and the threat of genocide could intimidate the West into making great concessions in the Gulf or elsewhere. On the other hand, by making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the central problem of the Middle East, the Soviets could exploit Arab nationalism, anti-Semitism, and even Islamic religious feelings to mobilize support for their policies. Indeed, under the banner of Arab solidarity, the socialist influence in the region grew far beyond the socialist regimes and parties.

…

The Soviets’ proudest accomplishment of the epoch, however, was the First Intifada. In April 1988, Yasser Arafat went to Moscow to explain his plan and seek approval. “Gorbachev acknowledged that he fully understood the PLO’s ‘tactics of using different forms of struggle.’ ” Arafat was quite clear what he meant by this:

ARAFAT. We also continue the struggle in other forms, on other fronts. The armed struggle does not stop in the South of Lebanon. Artillery fire, air raids, other actions take place on daily basis.

…

Stroilov’s archives closely detail the Soviet mediation of secret negotiations between Washington and Baghdad during the fall of 1990. The superpowers apparently came near to agreement on rather extraordinary terms: Saddam would withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for a scheme, proposed by the Soviets, to hold a U.N.-sponsored international conference designed to result in the disarmament and dismemberment of Israel.

The documents show that George H.W. Bush agreed to that deal in principle—so long as the linkage was kept secret…

…

Baroness Catherine Ashton was the treasurer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1980 to 1982. The CND was notoriously secretive about its sources of funding and refused to submit its accounts to independent audit; when it was finally forced to do so under immense pressure, the auditors discovered that 38 percent of their annual income could not be traced back to the original donors. Will Howard, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was responsible for this part of the fund-raising.

Baroness Ashton is now the E.U. foreign policy chief, leading negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.

FP: Fascinating. See also Ion Mihai Pacepa: Russian Footprints (MUST READ)

 

Almost 120,000 Christians pledge to vote for Jesus Christ as president this November

In a "Say No to Satan" campaign led by Bill Keller, who claims that he is "the world's leading Internet evangelist" because of his LivePrayer.com website, Christians are pledging to write in Jesus Christ for president this November.

Within days of Keller's press release announcing the campaign, around 14,000 people signed his online pledge committing to write in their savior's name on the presidential ballot.  Keller claims that the current candidates represent "a two-headed coin with Satan on both sides" and that no Christian in good conscience can vote for President Obama, who he says is a "true enemy of God," or GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, who he characterizes as "a 5th generation member and a priest in the satanically inspired Mormon cult."

In just a month's time, almost 120,000 people have signed Keller's petition, according to his website (see screenshot above).

Keller proclaims, "Now is the time, this is the moment. God may be done with this nation, but His people can make our stand for righteousness, say NO to satan, and help lead this nation back to the Almighty and His Truth!!!"

FP: About the same caliber of people who elected Obama.

Comments on reads 6/26

Barry Rubin: Egypt: A Muslim Brotherhood President Does Not Prove That We Are All ‘Chimps’

If we assess honestly what has happened, it would require us to conclude that the aggressiveness of revolutionary Islamism and the weakness of the U.S. response to this challenge have been the principal problems in the Middle East and must be addressed seriously or things will get steadily worse, more violent, and more oppressive. Yet if we are all equally “chimps,” one can ignore all of the lessons of the last eighteen months and, thus, continue to make more terrible errors in the months to come.

But what should we make specifically of this most recent event, the certification of al-Mursi’s victory? Certainly, it is another step forward for the Brotherhood toward capturing the most important Arab country.  A confident Hamas (which has now officially  joined the Muslim Brotherhood’s international network) has launched a war against Israel by firing dozens of cross-border rockets from the Gaza Strip and other means which the “international community” and democratic West are ignoring, to set one more terrible precedent in the war—one-sided as far as they’re concerned—with revolutionary Islamism.

Even now the “chimps” refuse to acknowledge the extremism of the Brotherhood, the most significant anti-American, antisemitic group in the entire world today. They ignore the fully documented fact that al-Mursi campaigned on a basis of hatred for America, fundamentally transforming Egypt into a Sharia state, going to war with Israel, and spreading revolution throughout the region. At this very moment, for example, the U.S. government is supporting a Brotherhood-led puppet group as the leadership of the Syrian uprising and arming its forces.

Yet within Egypt itself the outcome is not clear at all. There are as many options as there are rumors in Cairo. Remember that there is no Egyptian constitution, no parliament, and no timetable for electing a new parliament. The powers of the president are not defined.

So al-Mursi is going to govern the country or, which seems more likely, the rulers will continue to be the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and al-Mursi will be a figurehead.  It seems likely that this situation will prevail for at least one year. Will the military make some deal with al-Mursi and the Brotherhood which trades limited power for accepting limits on their power? Here’s an article by Eric Trager, who has also consistently been right on Egypt, writing about how hard-line al-Mursi is personally and the likelihood he will follow the instructions of the Brotherhood’s jihadist supreme guide, al-Badi, in his decision-making.

Will, as seems less likely, the Brotherhood embark on a campaign of armed resistance or, more probably, just continue demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo? Here we can see the difference between all of the nonsense spoken in 2011 and reality. If the army wants a “revolution,” there will be a “revolution”; if the army wants to resist, then it will remain in power. It is important to note, however, that the Salafist groups will not take this lying down. There will be a lot of violence.

Finally, there is a question of Western policy toward Egypt. What should happen is realpolitik, survival response. The military is saving Egypt from catastrophe. That doesn’t mean its rule is wonderful, democratic, or terribly competent.  The army is not going to solve Egypt’s problems, but neither is anyone else.

Yet probably what will happen is that the U.S. government will condemn on some level the military, stamp its foot ineffectively, and spout words like “turnover of power,” “transparency,” “rapid action,” and so on. In effect, of course, they are insisting that Egypt be turned into a totalitarian state, the sooner the better.

FP: I am not so sure about the ability of the army to withstand MB takeover, for reasons that Caroline Glick so accurately gave (see my post of her column from a couple of days ago).

See also AND NOW FOR THE SMALL PRINT. Nothing that I have not predicted.

 

JoshuaPundit: Hillary Clinton's Hidden Ties To Egypt's New Muslim Brotherhood President

In view of the aiding and abetting of the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt by the Obama Administration, it's worth looking at another close, direct tie between the White House and the new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi.

This one concerns Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff and her closest adviser is Huma Abedin, recently in the news as the unfortunate wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.The relationship between the two women is extraordinarily close, and it is an open joke in Washington to refer to Ms. Abedin as 'Hillary's shadow'.

As I revealed previously, Huma Abedin also has very close family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.Her entire immediate family are well known in hard line Islamist circles.

…

There's a distinct possibility that Huma Abedin may be an intelligence mole, which would account for a number of things, including a lifestyle that seems far beyond her current salary.

As Secretary Clinton's close adviser, she already has access to quite a bit of classified information, as well as having the sympathetic ear of the U.S. Secretary of State and the ability to influence policy on a very personal level.

Also, as a Muslima, she has the religious flexibility to practice takiyah, or Muruna as it is more commonly known among Sunnis, deception to advance Islam.

This is speculation, but for the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, can you imagine a better placed mole than Huma Abedin?

FP: It is becoming increasingly obvious that the West, and the US in particular don’t have the slightest clue who they’re dealing with (see next)

Scott Johnson: Brothers’ Day

Mark Steyn cruelly recalls the wisdom of Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding events as they were unfolding in Egypt last year. Mark writes: “[D]on’t worry, on the day Mubarak stepped down, America’s Director of National Intelligence, who presides over the most lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy on the planet, was telling the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘largely secular.’ So that’s okay.” Mark links to the video (below) of his appearance on Fox News discussing Clapper’s wit and wisdom at the time.

Mark also makes the point that “experts” can get a lot of things wrong, but rarely on the scale of the western media in February 2011, at the time of Mubarak’s resignation. Barry Rubin elaborates on this point at length in an excellent column, to which Mark Steyn supplies a coda: “We can’t do anything about the disposition of the Egyptian electorate, but we could at least stop deluding ourselves.”

And this just in: Our friends at the Times of Israel report: “Egyptian President-elect Morsi looks to strengthen ties with Iran, re-examine pact with Israel.”

FP: See what I mean? See also Debbie Schlussel: Mohammed Morsi: Add Muslim Bro’hood Egypt Prez to List of Muslim US College Attendees Who Hate Us. And

Elder of Ziyon: Egyptian beats pregnant wife to death for not voting for Morsi

From Al Arabiya:

An Egyptian plumber in Alexandria beat his pregnant wife to death upon learning that she had not voted for Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Mursi, reported the Egyptian daily al-Wafd on Sunday.

According to police reports, the initial argument between the couple who was not named escalated into violence, despite her pleas. Battered and bruised, she was reported to have died at the hospital from injuries sustained.

No, they are not just like us and they won’t be because they don’t want to. On the contrary, they want us to be like them.

 

Turkey turns to NATO over Syrian attack

Turkish newspapers report the plane downing as a declaration of war by Syria on Turkey • U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls the attack "brazen and unacceptable" • Syrian forces kill 70 more people on Sunday.

FP: After Islamizing the Syrian opposition, Erdogan now wants to suck the West into the morass of the ME craziness to save himself the hassle. If NATO agrees, it’ll become the tool of Islamism. Hardly surprising.

 

Bill Katz: GERMANY REBUFFS OBAMA

We can still hear the cheering from the throngs that greeted candidate Obama in 2008 as he spoke in Berlin...an odd place for an American candidate to appear.

Apparently Obama's goal was to show American voters that he could life up his arms and influence the world because he was...Barack.  Elect me and America will be restored in the world.

Not so fast, fella.  What we've seen in the last three and a half years of Obama's rule is a world that increasingly ignores what this country does and what its leader says.  Projecting weakness rather than strength, Obama may still be winning popularity contests among the world's teeny-boppers, but those over 12 are having their doubts. 

The latest rebuff comes from Germany, site of that 2008 triumphant speech:

BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's finance minister is rejecting U.S. President Barack Obama's calls on Europe to move faster in fighting its debt crisis, telling him to get the American deficit under control instead.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday that "people are always very quick at giving others advice."

He says: "Mr. Obama should first of all take care of reducing the American deficit, which is higher than in the eurozone."

Obama and other leaders fear an escalating crisis in Europe could drag down the world economy.

COMMENT:  What is remarkable about that comment is its brusqueness.  This finance minister is talking about the president of the United States.  Just a few years ago he would have genuflected before Obama.  The fact that he feels he can speak so disrespectfully is a sign of the disappointment many feel in the leadership of this president.

Indeed, we are being ignored all over the world.  We are making no significant headway in any area.  Notice that Iran has not granted a single concession in the current nuclear talks.  North Korea ignores Obama's warnings.  A president must be feared as well as respected.

FP: Two parallel declines.

 

Kofi Annan suggests adding Iran to Syria meeting

UN special envoy wants Tehran to help solve crisis, but needs Washington and Moscow to sign off on the move.

FP: How do these idiots ever get their high level positions?

 

Members of Congress trade in companies while making laws that affect those same firms

One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.

Almost one in every eight trades -- 5,531 -- intersected with legislation. The 130 lawmakers traded stocks or bonds in companies as bills passed through their committees or while Congress was still considering the legislation. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 68 to 62.

FP: Part and parcel of societal decline.

 

RECOMMENDED READS

Victor Davis Hanson: Is the Country Unraveling

?

JoshuaPundit on Obama Support for the MB Takeover (MUST READ)

FP: I don’t know if all the details are true, but if they are, they validate my long time analysis of Obama’s ME strategy to realign the US with the Islamists.

Any short term compromise between the army and the MB will only permit MB to do what Islamists do best: Islamize the state institutions, media, education and the military (see Turkey) and I think it will be easier and faster in Egypt than in Turkey. Whatever prerogatives the army preserves for now, Egypt will become an Islamist state.

In fact, I don’t know if “become” is accurate, because if the account of the size of the win by Morsi, and given previous parliamentary elections results suggests that, Egypt was and is an Islamist society already, except that Mubarak and the army prevented a regime reflecting that.

One other observation, not new either: the US simply does not learn from mistakes. It keeps repeating them over and over regardless of how many times they proved to be mistakes.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood Takes Over Egypt - With The Obama Administration's Direct Help

Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed forces, the military junta running the country finally announced the 'results' of the recent presidential run off election. After some dancing around, they finally named the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi as Egypt's new president...by a narrow 51.7%, a three point spread. If this suggests a cynical deal to you between the Islamists (who almost certainly won by a greater margin) and the Army, you're absolutely correct.

The back story on this is absolutely incredible. So is the Obama Administration's direct involvement.
As you know President Obama has long been sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. There are several influential people in his administration with Muslim Brotherhood ties like senior White House adviser Dalia Mogahed and U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Rashad Hussain, among others.

The Administration's support for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was so all encompassing that our Department of Justice deliberately allowed major officials of Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) who were directly linked to material support for Islamist terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation trial to go free in what were virtually open and shut cases by filing motions of Disinclination to Prosecute.

The Muslim Brotherhood has a friendly ear in the White House and here's how they used it.
You may remember a story that briefly surfaced last week about an Egyptian Islamist who was invited to the White House named Hani Nour Eldin. Eldin is an Islamist member of the Egyptian Parliament who belongs to an officially designated terrorist group, Gamaa Islamiya. Those in the media who bothered to cover this were wondering why someone like this not only got a visa in defiance of U.S. law, but a White House invite to a sit down with what were described as 'high-level advisers'.

The answer is simple. Eldin's trip, authorized by the White House, was made after the SCAF dissolved the newly elected Egyptian parliament, the assumption by the junta of legislative authority and the announced delay in declaring the winner of the Egyptian presidential run off between the Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and the army's candidate, Ahmed Shafik.
According to my sources, Hani Nour Eldin was the chosen ambassador of the Egyptian Islamists to the White House sent to ask for their assistance in getting the junta to turn over power to them, and the story that he came here to ask for clemency for Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted of involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1992 is simply misleading nonsense.

The Army was already aware that Shafik had lost handily to the Islamists, and the steps they had taken, which included declaring martial law, were designed to hang on to power and their prerogatives.

What happened next was an elaborate three way dance between the Egyptian military junta, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration.

Egypt is heavily dependent on U.S. aid and is in the process of negotiating a desperately needed loan from the IMF. In fact, one of the reasons for the trumped up dissolution of parliament was a disagreement between the junta and the Islamist over whom was going to control the funds from the IMF loan once it went through.

The Obama Administration apparently acted as the muscle for the Brotherhood, threatening the junta with the possible loss of all U.S. aid and the torpedoing of the IMF loan unless they relinquished power to the Brotherhood and worked out something acceptable. At that point, the junta and the Brotherhood began serious negotiations.

What apparently has resulted is that Morsi and the Brotherhood will take over as civilian leaders, but without a parliament and with limited powers. In exchange, the Brotherhood has apparently decided to allow the military to hang on to some of its power and avoid an open confrontation in the streets - for now.

Morsi made perfunctory mentions of being the President of 'all Egypt' which some people have taken to mean that Egypt's Christian Copts and Egypt's women are going to have democratic rights. Watch and see how many Copts end up fleeing Egypt within a year's time.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Morsi to congratulate him and pledge to "support Egypt's transition to democracy and stand by the Egyptian people as they fulfill the promise of the revolution." Translation.. the aid check's on the way. Not only are we now funding Hamas, but we'll be funding their parent organization in Egypt.

President Obama's strategy - if it can be called that - is to appease and assist the Muslim Brotherhood at every turn because he imagines that these are jihadists whom can be 'worked with'. He couldn't be more wrong, and subsequent events are going to bear that out.

This is a much bigger event than people in the West realize.

Comments on reads 6/24

Martin Kramer

Memorable quotes: a nostalgic medley.

• Marc Lynch (Muslim Brotherhood putting forward a presidential candidate “will reveal itself to be a strategic blunder”) http://on.fb.me/MOlklz

• Tom Friedman (“The popular trend is not with the Muslim Brotherhood”) http://on.fb.me/MOkBRk

• Juan Cole (“that almost certainly hurt the chances of the Muslim Brotherhood in the upcoming elections“) http://on.fb.me/LJKrDi

Political Scientists Are Lousy Forecasters by Jacqueline Stevens | NYT

“Chimps randomly throwing darts at the possible outcomes would have done almost as well as the experts.”

FP: Hardly surprising. They tend to project from Western culture to the ME and there is not one chance in hell this can prove accurate. Scott Johnson (now in Israel) agrees that Caroline Glick’s column I commented yesterday on is the one to read on Egypt’s MB win:

The MB’s useful idiots

Today comes word that the man from the Muslim Brotherhood has been declared the winner of Egypt’s presidential election. For Americans trying to understand the meaning of this development, I don’t know of better commentary than Caroline Glick’s column “The Muslim Brotherhood’s useful idiots,” which anticipated it last week.

UPDATE: Providing a little more background and putting an exclamation point on Glick’s column, Breitbart TV has posted the video below, via RabbiLive and MEMRI TV. Breitbart TV identifies the speaker as Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, introducing Morsi’s campaign on May 1. Ed Morrissey comments here.

Ed Morrissey: Muslim Brotherhood candidate wins Egyptian presidential election

Well, this should make the Middle East a calmer, more rational place … right?

  

But I disagree with most of Morrissey’s interpretation of the situation: 

I’m a little more sanguine about this, but not because I think Morsi is a closet moderate who will pull a Nixon-goes-to-China move and work with Israel.  The Egyptian military is not likely to take orders from Morsi that risks its funding or its status in the nation.  If the Muslim Brotherhood tries to march on Jerusalem in anything but the figurative, spiritual sense, the military won’t hesitate to depose Morsi and impose its own rule on Egypt — putting the country right back to the Mubarak status quo.  They have already defanged the Egyptian parliament in anticipation of this outcome.  They don’t want a war with Israel, and certainly not with the US, which is what an attack on Israel will bring.  I’d expect Morsi to either play along and be a good little puppet to mollify the Muslim Brotherhood, or suddenly disappear if he doesn’t.  

As I commented on Kramer’s Facebook page, I agree with Glick that what we will be witnessing now is a competition between the MB and army on who is more anti-Israel, that can easily get out of control.

And when that happens, who exactly will stand with Israel? I don’t think Obama is competent enough to assess the strategic implications of his US realignment with the Islamists, but I have no doubt that he saw this as a way to scare Israel into concessions. The combination of a collapsed West and an Islamist but failed ME is an invitation for disaster.

 Paul Mirengoff hopes that it is still possible to Avoid the full Jimmy Carter in Egypt, but I very much doubt.

 

Bill Katz: A FIGHT WE LIKE

Frankly, I wouldn't mind a good scrap between the Islamists of Turkey and the butchers of Syria. 

And we may get one.  There's been a major incident in the region – Syria has apparently shot down a Turkish jet fighter.   The Turks are taking it seriously.  You know they're taking it seriously because they haven't blamed the Israelis.  From Reuters: 

ANKARA - Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Saturday it was not possible to ignore the fact that Syria had shot down a Turkish fighter jet and said everything that needed to be done following the incident would be done, Turkish media reported.

"It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary will no doubt be done," Gul told reporters from the central Anatolian city of Kayseri.

The Turkish military said it had lost contact with one of its F-4 fighter jets off the southern Turkish coast near Syria on Friday morning and Damascus later acknowledged it had shot the plane down.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had been returning from a summit in Brazil when the news broke, called an emergency security meeting on his arrival in Ankara and in a statement his office said Ankara would act "decisively" once all the details had emerged.

Syria has said the Turkish aircraft was flying low and well inside Syrian territorial waters when it was shot down. Gul said it was normal for jets to briefly cross into foreign airspace and said a probe into the incident would look at whether in fact it was downed while in Turkish airspace.

Oh guys, fight it out and leave us alone.  And may both of you lose.

FP: I’ve always said that if the West had any strategic thinking and cunning it should not discourage (if not instigate) conflicts among its enemies, without putting its personnel in between them. Unfortunately, it’s the innocent that suffer most, but better there than here.

My guess is, however, that nothing much will happen if Israel is not involved.

UPDATE: Israeli TV has confirmed that Erdogan “accepted Syria’s apology”. Boy, am I good!

And:

WHEN WACKOS MEET

A group of wrongly named "progressives" met in Washington this week under the banner of the "Take Back the American Dream" conference.  When a visitor took an informal poll of whom the "progressives" wanted for president to succeed the sainted Barack Obama, the answer that came back was...Elizabeth Warren.  I am not kidding.  They're already boosting her for president.  She's already sewn up the vote of the millions of Americans who claim to be Cherokee, and aren't.  What this result shows, once again, is how immature these "progressives" really are.  They aren't progressive.  They're regressive, dreaming of a return to the sixties.

FP: I’m afraid this is not specific to “progressives”, but to the American electorate in general. There is a serious scarcity of knowledge and reasoning ability due to the collapse of the educational system.

 

William A. Jacobson: Chicago violence in two tweets

From friend of the blog, Anne Leary of Backyard Conservative.

With gang violence continuing to spiral, and now taking place in the fancy and liberal Lincoln Park section of town, Anne notes:

Will Chicago bleeding heart limo libs be mugged by reality?: Gang violence erupts in Lincoln Park shar.es/sZFni via @sharethis

— Anne Leary (@backyardconserv) June 24, 2012

Maybe if some bald eagles get shot liberals will get upset: Bald eagles making comeback in Chicago area chicagotribune.com/news/local/bre…

— Anne Leary (@backyardconserv) June 24, 2012

FP: Looks like my warning that in crisis of decline societies break down is proving correct.

 

RECOMMENDED READS

Daniel Pipes: Kenneth N. Waltz – The Stupidest Strategist?

Adam Chandler: A Waltz to Forget

Jennifer Rubin: Member of Egyptian terrorist group gets meeting with White House Senior Officials

Barry Rubin: Fast and Furious, Middle East Style: Why Should Obama Help Bring America’s Second-Worst Enemies to Power?

Matt Taibbi: Notes on Wall Street's Bid-Rigging Scandal

Daniel Greenfield: A Lawless Society

Caroline Glick on Islamist Egypt (MUST READ!)

FP: There is nothing much I can add to this except that this is exactly what I was predicting would happen in almost all details. I have highlighted the important ones and inserted a couple of comments].

 

The Muslim Brotherhood's Useful Idiots

You have to hand it to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. They know how to play power politics. They know how to acquire power. And they know how to use power.

Last Friday, the day before voters by most accounts elected the Brotherhood's candidate Mohamed Morsy to serve as Egypt's next president, The Wall Street Journal published a riveting account by Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley of how the Brotherhood outmaneuvered the secular revolutionaries to take control of the country's political space.

The Brotherhood kept a very low profile in the mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square in January and February 2011 that led to the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood's absence from Tahrir Square at that time is what enabled Westerners to fall in love with the Egyptian revolution.

Those demonstrations led to the impression, widespread in the US, that Mubarak's successors would be secular Facebook democrats. The role that Google's young Egyptian executive Wael Gonim played in organizing the demonstrations was reported expansively. His participation in the anti-regime protests - as well as his brief incarceration - was seen as proof that the next Egyptian regime would be indistinguishable from Generation X and Y Americans and Europeans.

In their report, Levinson and Bradley showed how the Brotherhood used the secularists to overthrow the regime, and to provide them with a fig leaf of moderation through March 2011, when the public voted on the sequencing of Egypt's post-Mubarak transformation from a military dictatorship into a populist regime. The overwhelming majority of the public voted to first hold parliamentary elections and to empower the newly elected parliament to select members of the constitutional assembly that would write Egypt's new constitution.

As Egypt's largest social force, the Brotherhood knew it would win the majority of the seats in the new parliament. The March 2011 vote ensured its control over writing the new Egyptian constitution.

In July 2011, the Brotherhood decided to celebrate its domination of the new Egypt with a mass rally at Tahrir Square. Levinson and Bradley explained how in the lead-up to that event Egypt's secular revolutionaries were completely outmaneuvered.

According to their account, the Brotherhood decided to call the demonstration "Shari'a Friday." Failing to understand that the game was over, the secularists tried to regain what they thought was the unity of the anti-regime ranks from earlier in the year.

"Islamists and revolutionary leaders spent three days negotiating principles they could all support at the coming Friday demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square. They reached an agreement and the revolution seemed back on track."

One secularist leader, Rabab el-Mahdi, referred to the agreement as "The perfect moment. A huge achievement." 

But then came the double cross.

"Hours before the demonstration, hard-line Salafi Islamists began adorning the square with black-andwhite flags of jihad and banners calling for the implementation of Islamic law. Ms. Mahdi made frantic calls to Brotherhood leaders, who told her there was little they could do." 

Checkmate.

THE DIFFERENCE between the Brotherhood and the secularists is a fundamental one. The Brotherhood has always had a vision of the Egypt it wants to create. It has always used all the tools at its disposal to advance the goal of creating an Islamic state in Egypt.

For their part, the secularists have no ideological unity and so share no common vision of a future Egypt. They just oppose the repression of the military. Opposing repression is not a political program. It is a political act. It can destroy. It cannot rule.

So when the question arose of how to transform the protests that caused the US to abandon Mubarak and sealed the fate of his regime into a new regime, the secularists had no answer. All they could do was keep protesting military repression.

The Brotherhood has been the most popular force in Egypt for decades. Its leaders recognized that to take over the country, all they needed was the power to participate in the elections and the authority to ensure that the election results mattered - that is, control over writing the constitution. And so, once the secularists fomented Mubarak's overthrow, their goal was to ensure their ability to participate in the elections and to ensure that the parliament would control the constitution-writing process.

To achieve these goals, they were equally willing to collaborate with the secularists against the military and with the military against the secularists. To achieve their goals they were willing - as they did before Shari'a Friday last July - to negotiate in bad faith.

While instructive, the Journal's article fell short because the reporters failed to recognize that the Brotherhood outmaneuvered the military junta in the same way that it outmaneuvered the secularists. The article starts with the premise that the military's decision to stage an effective coup d'etat last week spelled an end to the Egyptian revolution and the country's reversion to the military dictatorship that has ruled the state since the 1950s.

Levinson and Bradley claim, "Following the rulings by the high court this week [which canceled the results of the parliamentary elections and ensured continued military control over the country regardless of the results of the presidential elections], the Brotherhood's strategy of cooperation with the military seems failed."

But actually, that is not the case. By permitting the Brotherhood to participate in the elections for parliament and the presidency, the military signed the death warrant of its regime. The Brotherhood will rule Egypt. The only thing left to be determined is whether its takeover will happen quickly or slowly.

To understand why this is the case, it is important to notice what happened in Turkey. When the Islamist AKP party won the 2002 elections, the Turkish military was constitutionally authorized to control the country. As the guardians of Turkey's secular state, Turkey's military was constitutionally empowered to overthrow democratically elected governments.

Ten years later, Turkey is a populist, authoritarian, Islamic state. Half the general officer corps is in prison, held without charge or on trumped up charges. Turkey's judiciary and civil service are controlled by Islamists. The AKP is filling the military's officer corps with its loyalists.[FP: This is exactly what I’ve been arguing will happen in Egypt. In fact, I would guess that the Egyptian army is much more Islamized than Turkey’s].

When you know what you want, you use all the tools at your disposal to achieve your goals. When you don't know what you want, no matter what tools you hold, you will fail to achieve your goals.

The Egyptian military today is far weaker than the Turkish military was in 2002. And it has already been outmaneuvered by the Brotherhood. The only way for it to secure its hold on power is through brute force. And the generals have already shown they are unwilling to use sufficient force to repress the Brotherhood. [FP: The entire army top is made of lazy old men who grew rich from the Mubarak economy and corruption and have no heart for violence and they cannot count on the lower ranks to use brute force against the MB. If they had and could they would have done it to save Mubarak.]

The regime's decision to outlaw the parliament and decree the military above the president was not a show of strength. It was a panicked act of desperation by a regime that knows its days are numbered. So was its decision to delay announcing the winner of the presidential elections.

When Morsy declared victory in the presidential elections on Sunday, he did so surrounded by members of the just-dissolved parliament. His act was a warning to the military. The Brotherhood will not allow the ruling to stand.

It is possible the Brotherhood will stand down in this confrontation with the military over the parliamentary election. But the military will emerge vastly weakened. And when the next round of confrontation inevitably arrives, the military will have even less clout. And so on and so forth.

THE INEVITABILITY of the Islamic takeover of Egypt means that the peace between Israel and Egypt is meaningless. Confrontation is coming. The only questions that remain are how long it will take and what form it will come in. If it happens slowly, it will be characterized by a gradual escalation of cross-border attacks from Sinai by Hamas and other jihadist groups. Hamas's sudden eagerness to take responsibility for the mortar attacks against southern Israel as well as Monday morning's murderous cross-border attack are signs of things to come.

With the Brotherhood ascending to power, the security cooperation Israel has received from the Egyptian security forces in Sinai is over. And the regime won't suffice with doing nothing to stop terror. It will encourage it. Just as the Egyptian military sponsored and organized the fedayeen raids from Gaza in the 1950s, so today the regime will sponsor and eventually organize irregular attacks from Sinai and Gaza. [FP: It already does.]

In the rapid-path-to-confrontation scenario, the Egyptian military itself will participate in attacks against Israel. Egyptian troops may take potshots at Israelis from across the border. They may remilitarize Sinai. They may escalate attacks against the US-commanded MFO forces in Sinai that are supposed to keep the peace with the goal of convincing them to withdraw.[FP: Again, my prediction: competition for power between the Army and Islamists who is more anti-Israel]

Whether the confrontation happens tomorrow or in a year or two, the question of whether the military remains the titular ruler of Egypt or not is irrelevant to Israel.

In their attempt to maintain their power and privilege, the first bargaining chip the generals will sacrifice is their support for the peace with Israel. With the US siding with the Brotherhood against the military, maintaining the peace treaty has ceased to be important for the generals. [FP: Now you see the consequences of Obama’s realignment with Islamists?]

This dismal situation requires Israel's leaders to take several steps immediately. First, our leaders must abandon their diplomatic language regarding Egypt. No point is served by not acknowledging that the southern front - dormant since 1981 - has reawakened and that Israel's peace with Egypt is now meaningless.

Recall that it was under Mubarak's leadership that the Egyptian media reported that the Mossad was deploying sharks as secret agents and ordering them to attack tourists along Egypt's seacoast in an effort to destroy Egypt's tourism industry.

Since Israel doesn't need to actually do or say anything to cause the Egyptians to attack, we might as well be honest in our own discussion of the situation. At a minimum, frank talk will ensure that the steps we take on the ground to meet the challenge of Egypt will be based on reality and not on an attempt to ignore reality.

Straight talk is also important in the international arena. For the past 30 years, in the interest of protecting the peace treaty, Israel never defended itself against Egypt's diplomatic assaults on its very right to exist. Now it can and must fight back with full force.

At a minimum, this will enable Israel to wage a coherent diplomatic defense of whatever military action it will eventually need to take to defend itself against Egyptian aggression. [FP: Coherent diplomatic defense with whom? The West has already decided Israel was a bad idea. With Islamists rising and itself collapsing, who will care about Israel’s existence?]

As to that aggression, we don't have any good options on the ground. We cannot operate openly in Sinai. If we retaliate against missile attacks with air strikes, the Brotherhood-led Egyptian government will use our defensive action to justify war. So we need to massively expand our ability to operate covertly.[FP: They will respond the same to covert operations and may well use it to escalate. And Obama, Clinton and all the politicians supporting Israel will condemn it and pressure it to concede in return for meaningless promises.]

Aside from that, we must equip and train our military to win a war against the US-trained and-armed Egyptian military [FP: Will the US support Israel in such a war? Would you bet on it? I would be more willing to bet on pressure on Israel to withdraw from the WB to “defuse” Egypt’s motves to fight Israel. Right.]

However the Egyptian election results pan out, the die has been cast. We must prepare for what is coming. [FP: I hope Israel does, but I wish I were more certain.]

Comments on reads 6/20

Scott Johnson: Live from Jerusalem

My jet lag and laptop are giving me fits in Jerusalem, where I have arrived to attend the Fourth Israeli Presidential Conference. Tonight’s opening ceremonies featured the awarding of Israel’s Presidential Medal of Merit to Henry Kissinger by President Peres himself. Peres gave a moving tribute to Kissinger in Hebrew followed by an equally good but different one in English. Kissinger opened his remarks with the observation (I am quoting from imperfect memory): “It isn’t often that an 89-year-old accepts an award saying, if only my parents were here.” He said that of all the awards he has received, this one would have made them the proudest. Kissinger described the signing of the Egypt-Israel agreement in 1973 as the greatest moment of his professional career.

The award ceremony was followed with a keynote speech by Tony Blair. Blair’s speech was mostly great, with a slight admixture of nonsense. But his central point was excellent and maybe even brave. He held Israel up as an example for the countries of the region to emulate. He cited democratic institutions. He cited freedom of speech. He cited freedom of religion. He asserted the insufficiency of elections. I thought for a man in his position, it was a remarkable speech.

FP: Ah, yes, there is no better spectatcle than the Jimmy Carter of Israel, responsible for Oslo and walker on the beach holding hands with Arafat, honoring Kissinger, who managed the negotiations between Israel and Arabs by telling the latter to be patient, as in a couple of decades Israel will be struggling to exist. Should his parents be proud about that?

Add to this a keynote speech by Blair, who has parlayed his job as the Quartet emissary into his own, immensely profitable private business. Any wonder why the West goes down and Israel is in strategic trouble? (see next)

 

Despite mediation efforts, Gaza fighting escalates

Some 60 rockets, including Grads, launched at western Negev since Monday night • Rocket attack injures four Border Policemen • Israel kills al-Qaida operative who took part in Monday's cross-border attack.

Dan Margalit: Cast Lead 2 is just a matter of time

What the IDF can do in the Gaza Strip – retaliate forcefully – does not apply to Sinai, where any attempt to target terrorist squads would be a violation of Egyptian sovereignty.

FP; Well, a bit more difficult now, with a power struggle in Egypt between Islamists and the Army, the instinct of both being to distract from internal problems and prove is more anti-Israel.

And what will Israel do about Sinai as it becomes a terror base? Violate Egyptian territory to defend itself?

And if a major miltary conflict erupts who will be with and support Israel. Is there any doubt that this is precisely what Hamas is trying to achieve?

BBC: Hamas admits Gaza child was killed by Palestinian rocket

Palestinians first blame Tuesday's death on Israel Air Force strike, but a Hamas official later attributes incident to Palestinian rocket fire • Despite this credible report, Chinese and French media report child died in "mysterious" blast.

FP: See what I mean? Here we go again.

 

Why are only the Palestinians considered 'refugees'?

Following Israeli urging, U.S. Congress asks the U.N. to clarify why Palestinians can transfer their "refugee" status to descendants • The request could possibly change U.S. funding for UNRWA.

FP: When pigs fly.

Even if a Palestinian state were declared tomorrow, it would still remain dependent on massive aid in perpetuity, because it would not be viable, and a source of nothing but problems, yet another Arab failed state. There is no way that such a state could digest 5 million “refugees” or that Arab countries could accept them. Congress does not have to ask, that was exactly the whole idea for refugee status inheritance: to reach a mass that would make an Arab solution impossible and make the right of return the only possible solution. That is the conclusion to which the West will come to at some point and there is every indication that it is on its way already

Bill Katz: YAWN

The talks over Iran's nuclear program, held in Moscow between the major powers and Iranian representatives, have essentially collapsed.  No one is hiding that fact.  The only talks scheduled are technical ones. 

The Washington Post, whose liberal editorial page is actually thoughtful on national-security issues, sums up the dilemma after the collapse:

If there is a positive aspect to this outcome, it is that the United States and its partners appear to be sticking to their position on what Iran must do to open the door to a diplomatic solution — and are prepared to let the process lapse. No further negotiations have been scheduled — only an experts’ session early next month to go over technical details, followed by contacts between the deputies and chiefs of the delegations. Western officials say further meetings will depend on whether Iran shows itself ready to carry out the package of steps originally proposed last month, including a freeze of its most advanced form of uranium enrichment, the export of its existing stockpile of that enriched uranium, and the closure of an underground processing facility known as Fordow. “The choice is Iran’s,” said Ms. Ashton’s statement.

And...

The Obama administration must nevertheless be prepared to take an Iranian “no” for an answer. It should resist any effort by Russia or other members of the international coalition to weaken the steps that Iran must take, or to grant Tehran major sanctions relief for partial concessions. It should continue to reject recognition of an Iranian “right” to enrich uranium.

The United States and its allies also should have a strategy for quickly and significantly increasing the pressure on the Khamenei regime if the negotiations break down. Israel may press for military action; if that option is to be resisted, there must be a credible and robust alternative.

COMMENT:  Even old Henry Kissinger said yesterday that the crunch with Iran will come in a matter of months.  In other words, it will come right before our election. 

It's been clear that Obama wants no disruptions to his election campaign.  While most sane Americans would understand, and support, strong action against the Iranian nuclear program, Obama's base, with its heavy dependence on the committed left and its financial backers, might not. 

In foreign policy, nothing is going well for this president right now.  That is what happens when you project drift and weakness.  The Iranians give the impression that they don't fear us, nor even take us seriously.

The crunch is indeed coming.

FP: The Iran negotiations are very similar to those between Israel and the PalArabs. No matter how outrageous the latter behave and how many times they collapse the talks, they know that Israel will come back in some way and make another concession (the latest Ulpana kerfuffle is exactly a signal to that effect). In the case of Israel, it is the Oslo syndrome, Western pressure, and a strong leftist elite in the bureaucracy, media, and academia, coupled with right PM’s who delude themselves that they can appease the West and will be the “peace PM”. This sums up as the Blackmailer Paradox game, on which I wrote more than once before.

In the case of Iran, with American power in steep decline and the Europe in freefall, there is nobody with the wherewithal to stand up to aggressive power plays of the enemies and competitors of the West. The best example of this is the military excercises that China, Russia, Syria and Iran are going to conduct: they essentially hold the West in contempt and tell it “FU”. And remember the Turks making decisions for NATO?

This is precisely what the PostWest looks like. So only one of two things will happen: the West will ultimately find some way to cave that can be spinned as a win, or it will do nothing. In either case it will invite further aggression and steeper decline. About the only possibility of crunch I see is if Obama becomes desperate electorally (see next), and if he does anything in these circumstances it has a good chance to end up just like Carter failed attempt to rescue the hostages and cause major damage for nothing.

But there is nothing I would like better than to be proven wrong.

A SHOCKING PICTURE

We mentioned in the post just below that this president has been projecting weakness and drift.  Anyone who saw the shocking pictures of Obama at the G20 summit in Mexico this week know he's also projecting some other things – fatigue, confusion, smallness.

Even Frank Bruni of The New York Times, a paper not known to be anti-Obama, was startled by what he saw, as he noted in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan.

…

He is in trouble, and it's showing.  There are enormous pressures on Obama, and he just doesn't handle them well.  He's a campaigner, a talker, not a doer.  His whole political life was a life of advocacy before he became president.  He'd never actually done anything. 

And now he's confronted an intransigent Putin, who apparently lectured him as a teacher lectures a child.  And his negotiators have confronted an intransigent Iran, which is gambling that we'll cave in the nuclear talks.  And at home the economy is not being helpful. 

President Kennedy was lectured to by Khrushchev at the Vienna conference of 1961.  Kennedy's poor performance, which he readily acknowledged to aides, led Khrushchev to believe, correctly, that he could build the Berlin wall, which he did.   Kennedy learned from the bitter experience.  Obama never seems to learn.  Kennedy described himself as an idealist without illusions.  Obama is an idealist with illusions, and he never concedes that the illusions are just that.  The reset with Russia.  The "engagement" with Iran.  The new approach to the Muslim world.  Nothing works, and nothing seems to change.

FP: There are two problems much more serious than Obama: the American electorate that elected him and the hugely damaging consequences of his presidency for America and the West which are not reversible.

 

'Israel in a unique place to make peace with Arabs'

Former Mossad chief Dagan notes radicals no longer in Arab League; Ross lays out steps to restore faith in two-state solution.

FP: On what planet are these people living? Ross is a peace processor, but to think that Dagan was the head of the Mossad. Frightening.

 

Orthodox rabbis fight over who hates Reform rabbis more

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger refuses to sign letter by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar calling on rabbis to attend conference against Reform movement • Ashkenazi Rabbi Aharon Shteinman says ultra-Orthodox have more urgent problems.

FP: Religion is religion is religion. Do we want these people serving in IDF?

 

Israel's Shayetet 13 commando unit gets a new commander

Navy chief tells outgoing Shayetet 13 commander: Under your leadership Shayetet 13 was the IDF's vanguard • Colonel "S" commanded the 2010 raid of the Mavi Marmara ship, which attempted to break through Israel's blockade of Gaza.

FP: Draw your own conclusions.