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You may be wondering, as I am, how are we to meet the challenge of expansionist radical Islam, particularly in the form of soon-to-be-nuclear Iran?

You may feel uneasy that Iran has extended its influence all the way to Lebanon and will almost certainly  absorb Iraq into its sphere of influence as we withdraw — which we are certainly going to do.

It may bother you to think that Iran, where political rallies invariably include shouts of “death to America” and “death to Israel”, will shortly control — either directly or by nuclear blackmail — approximately 56% of world oil reserves.

If you care about Israel, you are probably very worried about Ahmadinejad’s threats to ‘wipe Israel off the face of the earth’, threats that he is in the early stages of carrying out by means of his proxies Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah — even without using the nukes he is building.

Well, you can stop worrying.

34 former US officials and ‘civic leaders’ have the solution:  Don’t fight ’em, join ’em!

WASHINGTON – The next U.S. president should speak out for better relations with the Muslim world in his inaugural address and pursue an accord between Israel and the Palestinians within three months of taking office, a diverse coalition of 34 former U.S. officials and civic leaders said in a report being issued Wednesday.

Step 1 is giving the Arabs and Iranians what they want more than anything else: Israel. You can bet that the ‘accord’ that they envision includes getting the IDF out of the West Bank and turning it over to the forces of Mahmoud Abbas, who will ‘fight terrorism’ for about 10 minutes before rolling over for Hamas. Then Israel will be almost entirely surrounded by Iran’s proxy armies, with missiles falling on Tel Aviv daily. I don’t even want to think about the rest of the deal, which will involve giving up parts of Jerusalem and even the admission of some number of ‘refugees’ (read: guerrillas) into Israel.

The proposals, which include diplomatic engagement with Iran, are designed to reverse Muslim extremism and enhance U.S. international security. They are based on the conclusion that improving U.S. relations with Muslim countries and communities is critical, the report said…

Do the dignitaries and civic leaders explain precisely how giving in to the demands of Muslim extremism will tend to reverse it? I would expect just the opposite, given the results of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza — and from simply paying attention to what the extremists say.

On promoting democracy among the Arabs, a hallmark of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, the report envisioned a cautious role for the United States: improving governance and civic participation without imposing a particular set of institutions, parties or leaders.

Bush’s war on terror, the report said, has been inadequate and sometimes counterproductive. It recommends “partnership” with Muslims committed to nonviolent political and economic development to reverse extremism and promote reform within authoritarian governments.

The jails in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are full of reform-minded Muslims (in the Palestinian Authority they don’t live long enough to be jailed). Bashar Assad, for example, does not want ‘economic development’ and certainly not any kind of ‘reform’. He is quite happy with funneling the fruits of the Syrian economy into the pockets of his friends and relatives, and his relationship with Iran — which provides an unlimited supply of weapons — is far more important to him than anything we can provide. With whom should we ‘partner’ in Syria?

Palestinian political culture is such that respect and support goes to the faction that has the most credibility in armed struggle with the Zionists. With whom are we to ‘partner’ among the Palestinians?

“Bush’s war on terror” as I recall, began with the overthrow of the Taliban who sheltered and supported Osama Bin Laden. Should we not have tried to impose a non-Taliban government? With whom should we have ‘partnered’ in Afghanistan?

Among the recommendations were expanding people-to-people exchanges and staging a business-government conference on economic reform, growth and job creation in the Middle East within the first six months of the new administration.

This is so wrong-headed that it’s breathtaking.

First, it ignores ideology as a motivator. Do you think that the average Hamas or Hezbollah fanatic will stop wanting to rip the throats out of Jews if he’s offered a better job? Was Osama bin Laden motivated by a desire for economic reform?

Second, it ignores that fact that the export of violent extremism is the deliberate policy of some Muslim nations (e.g., Iran and Syria). Iran’s support for Hezbollah — which has been called the “foreign legion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard” — as well as Hamas, has institutionalized extremism and terrorism.

And third, it ignores reality. Will Ahmadinejad agree to stop building the weapons with which he plans to become a regional superpower as a result of promises to build maquiladoras in his country? Can we afford to bribe Bashar al-Assad better than Ahmadinejad can?

The full report can be found here; it is being released today before the foreign policy debate between John McCain and Barack Obama to beheld Friday and includes a “Call to Action” for the next President.

The 34 signatories include 11 Muslim-Americans including Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA], as well as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, President/CEO of the American Petroleum Institute Red Caveney, and Stephen Heintz, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, one of the major funders of the project.

This document is 170 pages of nonsense masquerading as serious policy analysis, whose goal is to replace opposition to Iranian and Palestinian goals with appeasement and bribes (which will be accepted and ineffectual, as always).

Technorati Tags: US-Muslim Engagement Project

In 1967, PM Harold Wilson announced that Britain would withdraw forces from major bases “East of Suez”, and the process of ending the British Empire that began around the end of the war was more or less complete. It was brought down by a combination of forces political and economic; among the latter was the enormous cost of the war which left Britain an economic basket case with huge trade deficits that caused several currency devaluations. Even if it had had the will to counter the explosion of nationalism in places like India (and Palestine), it could not afford to do so.

Today, Britain’s successor empire, the United States, finds itself in a similar predicament. The present financial crisis was triggered by a particular problem in one segment of the economy, but its continued progress is a kind of domino effect facilitated by the huge amounts of leverage — inadequately secured debt — in the system. The government is attempting to prop up strategic dominoes, but it can only do so by increasing its own massive indebtedness (only in part created by the enormous cost of the war in Iraq). If it is successful, then there will not be a sudden cataclysm (I don’t even want to think about what that would look like), but there is no question that even if the maneuver succeeds the standard of living of all but the upper classes will be significantly reduced as the need to pay for the bailout will result in either heavy inflation, higher taxation, reduced services and entitlements (Social Security, veterans’ benefits, etc.)  — or probably all of the above.

It’s important to understand that although the present debacle may seem to be a one-time occurrence caused by ‘mistakes’, greed, or even criminal behavior in the financial establishment, this event was only the push needed to send a house of cards flying. The economy’s weakness is structural, caused by every sector — government, business and consumers — financing a level of consumption far above what it can afford by borrowing. In each cases the holders of the debt — trade partners, banks, etc. were always ready (until recently) to refinance and extend more and more credit.

The US, having replaced its manufacturing economy with one primarily made up of services, is no longer adding sufficient value to its products to maintain its lifestyle, especially since so much of it depends on one commodity — oil — whose price is rising dramatically. This price rise is also structural, a result of increased worldwide consumption meeting up with finite supply.

It’s worth pointing out that the  ‘solution’ to high oil prices in the US that is being pushed by some politicians — that the US should drill more — would have almost zero effect. The price of oil is set on the world market by multinational corporations.  Any increase in supply that could be expected from domestic drilling would be the proverbial drop in the bucket, too small to affect the price. Unless we are prepared to nationalize our oil supplies and infrastructure, we are stuck with the world price.

There is also a geopolitical crisis to go along with the fiscal one. The rise of radical Islamism — fueled, ironically by the huge amount of cash transferred to the oil-producing countries of the Middle East — represents a direct challenge to Western influence in the region. The US is finding — the war in Iraq is a case in point — that its own economic weakness, combined with the ability of formerly weak states like Iran to buy sophisticated weapons, exacerbated by the psychological power of the Islamist ideology, and aided by mischief done by its traditional opponent, Russia, is making it  harder to exert effective control over events in the Middle East.

The expansion of Iran’s influence in recent years has been striking. Syria’s foreign policy is entirely subject to Iranian wishes, and Iran’s agent, Hezbollah, now is the single most powerful element in the Lebanese government and can be said to rule the country in all but name. Iran has also made an alliance of convenience with Hamas, which is contending for control of the Palestinian movement (only military action by Israel can stop it).

As a result, there are suggestions that the US, like Britain in 1945-1967, is overextended. That the days of being “the world’s only superpower” are over. That we no longer have the ability — militarily, economically and psychologically — to maintain our influence in the Mideast, and that we should — also like the British, stand down “East of Suez”. This point of view holds that rather than confronting Iran, we should make accommodation with it.

Unfortunately, the parallel with Britain breaks down at this point. Britain was not endangered by an independent India the way we are endangered by a nuclear Iran. Britain was able to hand off control of critical areas to the US, which shared its worldview to a great extent. Britain was able to take advantage of assistance from the US to dig itself out of the economic pit into which it had fallen by the end of the war.

The US, on the other hand, needs to face its crises alone. And the growing power of radical Islamism in the Middle East does represent a threat to the US. The Iranian regime certainly does view itself as our bitter enemy, and it will soon be armed with nuclear weapons. Although Islamism is also a threat to Russia, there is no reason that Iran and the Russians can’t work together to our detriment. Ideology cannot be such a barrier to an Iran which can fund both Sunni Hamas and Shiite Hezbollah (and don’t forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939)!

America is on the verge of a protracted struggle, which may be fought as much with economics as with missiles. Our new President will need an understanding of the proper use of both.

Technorati Tags: Britain, America, empire, Iran, oil, Middle East, economics

News Item:

Moscow — Russia made clear Saturday that it opposes a Western push for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Russia spoke out against a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran at a meeting of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany in Washington on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said.

Russia stressed the need to draw Tehran into “constructive dialogue,” the ministry statement said. “In this context we spoke out against the development at this time of new measures along U.N. Security Council lines.” — IHT (AP)

The ‘sanctions option’ is apparently not an option. Only military action can stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It seems to me that the opinion of the world’s leaders — except in Israel, for obvious reasons — is that a way will have to be found to get used to a nuclear Iran.

There are rumors that the US will step in at some point. Although it is not impossible, I doubt it. It is certainly in our national interest to not have a nuclear Iran, but the political and economic consequences of an attack now would be great, and the forces in Washington which seem to have the upper hand in our foreign policy today lean in the direction of making accommodations rather than confrontation. This was the message of the National Intelligence Estimate (see: “The significance of the NIE“) released last December.

Caroline Glick thinks that, from an Israeli point of view, time is short.

Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb. Last Friday the Daily Telegraph reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran’s already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph’s report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.

It would be a simple matter for Iran to assemble those bombs without anyone noticing. US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran. The mullocracy has not disclosed these sites to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites.

As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran’s nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA’s report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. With their range of 1,300 kilometers, Shihab-3 missiles are capable of reaching Israel and other countries throughout the region.

It’s unfortunate that the world has chosen to believe that these developments can be lived with.  Today a large part of the world’s oil supplies is in the hands of the reactionary Arab leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This is bad enough, but these leaders are not trying to export a radical Islamic fundamentalist revolution which directly confronts the West, as Iran is.

Iran has already made Syria into a satellite and is fast gaining control of Lebanon by means of Hezbollah. Iran has even gone so far as to make an alliance of convenience with the Sunni Hamas organization, which will soon dominate the Palestinian movement.

A nuclear Iran will control the region, from the gulf states through Iraq, even as far as Egypt. Iranian influence will determine policy even in those states which do not become satellites. The US will no longer be a player in the Middle East. It may be that some in the State Department are already beginning to plan for this state of affairs,  planning to contract US influence around the world the way Britain did in the years following WWII.

If they think this adjustment can be made comfortably for Americans, they are wrong. Iran will have the ability to deliver huge shocks to the already tottering economies of the US and Western Europe at will. We will all be, in effect, Iranian hostages.

Of  course, Israel will be long gone in this scenario, unable to survive in an environment even more toxic than that of today, with help from the US even less likely.

It may be that the only way to prevent this will  be for Israel, out of existential necessity, to take the action required to at least delay the Iranian nuclear capability long enough for the US to regain its footing. Then, in the best case, our leaders will understand what is at stake and do whatever is necessary on a long term basis to keep the bomb out of the hands of the Islamic revolutionaries of Iran.

It’s ironic to think that Israel might be instrumental in saving the US, rather than the other way around.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, Nuclear weapons