July 15 is fast approaching. Why should that matter? Because the HISH alliance is an unstable structure, that like the proverbial pelagic shark, must keep moving or die. Hamas cannot rule over Gaza for long, Iran is facing unrest and rationing gasoline, Syria is preparing for war, and Hezbollah is threatening to set-up an independent Hezbollastan in Southern Lebanon.
Some items for your perusal; note the significance of July 15:
Analysis: Rumors of Syria-Israel war
Well-informed sources in Washington fear a confrontation between Syria and Israel may happen this summer. The sources say that Syrian intelligence is abuzz with activity reports of an imminent Israeli attack across the Golan Heights, while others believe it is Syria that is gearing up for war.
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Meanwhile a decision by Syrian authorities to recall its citizens from Lebanon before July 15 has not helped lessen the tension, nor the rumors, lending to speculation that there might be more than just rumors behind the latest tension in the Middle East.
Beirut's Daily Star newspaper reports that Damascus has ordered its citizens in Lebanon to return home by July 15, citing concerns over the "security situation in Lebanon." And a report in the government controlled Syrian daily al-Thawra said Syrian students studying in the public Lebanese University and the Beirut Arab University were authorized to enroll in public Syrian universities for the upcoming academic year 2007-2008.
MEMRI -- the Middle East Media Research Institute -- reports that on July 5, the Lebanese daily al-Liwa cited rumors that Syrian workers were leaving Lebanon at the request of the Syrian authorities. Arab and Iranian media reports have backed up the probability that Lebanon's current political impasse may turn violent after July 15. Indeed, a number of sensitive events affecting Lebanon and/or Syria coincide with the fatidic July 15 date.
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to discuss the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 on July 16. The discussions will center on the Syria-Lebanon border and the possibility of positioning international observers along the border to prevent weapons finding their way from Syria into Lebanon.
The London-based al-Hayat newspaper says the United Nations' recommendations will demand the stationing of international experts in the border area to assist Lebanon's security agencies in monitoring the frontier.
Also between July 15 and 17 the head of the International Investigation Commission into the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Serge Brammertz, is to submit his report to the U.N. Security Council.
Israel just completed large scale military games to prepare for the possibility of a three or four front war this summer.
Iran is digging tunnels with North Korean help.
Syrian has brought in thousands of rockets and missiles to face the Golan Heights; they can hit any spot in Israel, which has a shortage of gas masks.
Meanwhile, even The New York Times admits that leaving Iraq would be a disaster while opportunistic Democrats and feckless Republicans compete to see who can surrender more quickly, ignoring the fact that the fighting in Iraq is currently all about al Qaeda, who they claim we should be fighting.
But since this is the Middle East, things are actually worse than they appear; in fact, potentially much worse. Turkey, everyone's primary example of an Islamic democracy, is poised for either a complete take-over of the government by Islamists, whose interests are inimical to ours and to democracy, or a military coup. The Turkish military, partly to build up support, is threatening to attack Iraqi Kurdistan, the most stable and prosperous part of Iraq.
Chaos could easily descend upon the entire Middle East with extremely dangerous implications for the entire world. Consider a summer war, with Iranian and Syrian over-reach and Israeli desperation. What are the implications of a super-critical Middle East disorganizing into a state of higher entropy. What happens when oil goes to $120 a barrel and stays there. The United States can tolerate a recession; can China?
The neo-isolationists would prefer to ignore all these ominous signs, withdraw to an illusory safety, and propose only to replace American power with wishful thinking; they do not comprehend that our liberal democracy does not in fact represent the end of history. Much of the world, in fact, fear liberal democracy, believe that a system based on small elites ruling over large subject populations is the natural order of things, and further believe that the pseudo-chaotic politics of democracies has no place in their affairs. The preference for an (illusory) static equilibrium over the dynamic equilibrium of democratic governance has been a source of catastrophe in the past and will likely be catastrophic in the future.
Robert Haddick, milblogger extraordinaire and proprietor of Westhawk, properly worries about American retreat and its impact on our psyche when our mission changes from bringing order out of chaos to standing by and allowing chaos to engulf Iraq:
The traditional mission of U.S. foreign policy will thus be transformed from suppressing chaos to accepting it. After this transformation has taken hold, after U.S. policymakers no longer feel the compulsion to react to any chaos displayed on the world's television screens, the next logical step will be to use chaos as a foreign policy tool. I will save that discussion for another day. For now, it is enough to ponder how the retreat from Iraq will change us.
Even Tom Barnett, who is usually a good source for an optimistic take on events, notes the potential for a positive outcome that he doesn't expect. He comments on a WSJ op-ed by Sarah Kass detailing ways that the current dis-equilibrated state can be pivoted into supporting a peace process:
The Iranians, in their proxy war (Hezbollah and Hamas v Israel) against the U.S. presence in Iraq, have reached too far.
But instead of just knee-jerking the region into an anti-Iranian coalition, why not utilize the situation to move the ball forward on Israel-Palestine.
I have said this for a long time now: the three fights that need to be advanced or processed are Israel v. Iran (Iran’s fearful reach for nukes is pushing that nicely), al Qaeda v. House of Saud (Sunni Iraq localizes that situation nicely versus having Saudi nationals ram jets into NY buildings), and Iran v. Saudi Arabia (the one giving us the chance on Israel v. Palestine right now).
Hamas’ raw grab for power in Gaza, in Kass’ scenario, work like this:
Up to now, autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and much of the Arab world have demonized Israel in order to consolidate their own diplomatic and domestic power. Hamas’ coup has changed the game. Suddenly, the autocrats realize that should Israel be defeated, the West Bank would fall to Hamas, helping revolutionary Iran secure its hold on the region while slicing in half the entire Middle East.
The latter bit is my continuing fear on making it Sunni versus Shiia, because I see New Core pillars Russia, India and China siding with the Shiia as much or more than with the Sunni, thus my concern of a Yalta-like divide in the region and the replication of a lot of pointless bipolar standoffs in coming years.
Anyway, unless you get some traction on Israel-Palestine, the U.S.-led Sunni coalition is unlikely to achieve much in its underlying disunity. So why not use the impetus of fear over Iran’s advances fuel something else?
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Frankly, if this was an underlying Bush strategy vis-à-vis the surge/drawdown dynamics in Iraq, I’d resume my general optimism about the Big Bang working out. To me, this sort of adaptive planning response was what I was hoping for all along from the Bushies on the Big Bang: get the board moving and then play, play, play--aggressively and imaginatively.
But this scenario, as Kass admits, requires some “visionary leaders” and I just don’t see that happening with the Bush-Cheney-Rice troika. I mean, the Bush team had a far better set of regional circumstances two years after the invasion and did nothing with that, so why stick their necks out now when things seem so much less conducive--at least on the surface?
Actually, it is not only visionary American leadership that is missing, but visionary Israeli, Arab, European, et al, leadership as well.
The greatest lack in our leadership is the ability to understand how all these moving parts interact with each other, that events in Turkey represent one aspect of the Islamist tide, that Iraq cannot be understood in isolation, that Hamas and Hezbollah do not just threaten Israel but represent the most overt reflections of a political philosophy and dynamic that is implacable in its hostility toward the West.
Finally, Judith Apter Klinghoffer points out that the Dark Ages were not caused by the invasion of barbarians de novo; the civilized empires that allowed themselves to crumble in the face of the barbarians did so voluntarily and with minimal awareness of what they were facilitating. In our current civilizational timidity, we face three great enemies:
One prong consists of Islamist barbarians, Al Qaeda types, who, like barbarians from time immemorial, excel in exploiting the military and institutional weakness of civilized democracies.
The second prong consists of Fascist/Communist/Islamist tyrannies such as China, North Korea or Iran who feel threatened by the success of democracies. They enjoy sitting back, watching the barbarians soften up the democracies despite knowing that they are bound to be the barbarians' next victims.
The third prong consists of transnational elites who assume that the Islamist barbarians do not pose a real threat. Their goal is to bring about a world run by international institutions not directly accountable to the “uninformed masses.” Indeed, as they consider powerful civilized democracies, most especially the US, to be their most formidable opponent, these transnational elites do not shy from cooperating with Islamists and tyrannies by legitimizing their demands that free speech, i.e., thought be circumscribed.
I appreciate this post is wide ranging and lacks optimal coherence, but perhaps that simply reflects my sense that while the center yet holds, barely, the rough beast is on the move, slouching toward Bethlehem, and our leaders are posturing and prancing.
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