Interesting Read, Long.

[Patrick]

Whether you're a Bush fan or not, this is an interesting read with a lot of history in it.....

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NO, BUSH IS BRILLIANT -- Raymond S. Kraft 29 November 2007

Today, I received an article from a friend about the Middle East Peace Conference proceeding at Annapolis, with its nebulous, if not dismal, prospects for actually achieving achieving a resolution of the Palestinian Israeli problem, asking me if I thought Bush was naive, or merely stupid. I replied, substantially as follows.
I do not think Bush is either naive or stupid. I do not think he thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell that the Israelis and the Palis will work out a real peace deal this year, or next, and maybe not in the next century. But Bush is playing a deeper game than that. I'll call it "clearing the decks."

We gotta remember, in politics, and geopolitics, what we see on the surface is just the 1% tip of the iceberg. Most of the berg floats far under the surface. But the newspapers and TV only report the 1%, because that's all most of them see, and apparently all most of them understand. And even when a better analysis rises to the surface, it often gets buried in the back, as did the excellent Annapolis Peace Conference article by Steven Erlanger of the New York Times (13 Months to Come Up With a Peace Treaty) that ran on page A12 of the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, while on A1 above the fold the Chron gushed on and on about Google's new search for renewable energy by investing "hundreds of millions" to build power-generating kites in the sky that would, I imagine, come crashing to ground whenever the wind stopped.

The world is in a situation now where the more or less moderate Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, etc., are even more afraid of Iran (Arabs have hated the Persians for centuries, since at one time or another the Persians have invaded and conquered most of the Arab world, often with great brutality, going back a thousand years or more before the rise of Islam) and now Persia (Iran) is on the brink of getting nukes, which none of the Arab nations have (Pakistan has nukes, but is not Arab). The Arab states are now more or less terrified that, if Iran gets nukes, it will be able to blackmail them all into doing whatever Iran wants, and they are right. Ahmadinejad and Khameini may well be thinking about the beauty of annexing Saudi Arabia's oilfields, and Iraq's, which would, of course, be the end of the Saudi Princes, and the glorious flowering of the Iranian Empire, the Caliphate of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Saudi Princes don't want to give up their private 747s, or their heads, either. And who can blame them?

The Arab states are also deeply concerned, or fearful, about the rising tide of Islamic militancy, Jihadism, which threatens the stability of all their own governments, and the future of Arabia, for if Jihadism sweeps across the politics of the Arabian subcontinent it will sweep hopes that the Middle East will emerge into 21st century modernity into the sea, or into the sand, as militants and mullahs take the Middle East backwards into an imaginary utopian 7th-century golden age of Islamic puritanicalism, which only a minority of Arabs actually want.

Since none of the Arab states have military forces able to deal with Iran, the only salvation for the Arabs from Iran, and Iranian-sponsored Jihadism, right now, is America and, swallow hard, Israel, because only America and Israel, and maybe France, stand in the way of the Iranian Bomb.

The leading Arab nations would also, truly, like to see a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli unpleasantries, because the plight of the Palestinians, however much it is a self-inflicted wound, has long been a rallying cry for Islamic militantism, a cause célèbre for Jihadism and its mush headed cohorts in the American and European media and universities.

But the Arabs cannot be seen by their own people as making too nicey-nice to Israel, or America, since Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries have large populations of more or less radicalized Muslims who hate Jews and think the existence of Israel offends Allah, and many who are equally hostile to the presence of Americans in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the world.

Thus, the Arab Middle East has a narrow fence to walk. In order to save itself from a nuclear Iran, it must cooperate with America and Israel to solve the imminent threat of a nuclear Iran, with at least covert political and military cooperation. And in order to save itself from its homegrown militants, it has to be seen in public as standing up against America and Israel, the Great Satan and the Little Satan, respectively.

Thus, Bush has to save the face of the Arabs who will, then, not very publicly, perhaps, but very discreetly, at least, support whatever the US and Israel, and maybe France, is preparing to do to Iran. To save the Arabs' faces for them, Bush has to trot out the "peace process" dog and pony show with Olmert and Abbas, and because Israel and the Palis have been long locked in the absurdly futile "peace process" punctuated by long interruptions for assorted wars and intifadas for sixty years, Olmert and Abbas can't refuse Bush's invitation to meet at Annapolis and talk about it, and the rest of the Middle East can come along to show solidarity with the Palis.

And I think this symbology is important. Very important.

[Patrick]

Annapolis is home to the US Naval Academy, and it was the US Navy and Marines that Presidents Thomas Jefferson sent to the Middle East 206 years ago to attack and defeat the Islamic Terrorists of that day, the Barbary Coast Pirates, sailing out of the Barbary States of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, all part of the Ottoman Empire, and then President James Madison did it again, a few years later.

Prior to the American Revolution, the Europeans, Britain and France, had bought a fragile peace with the pirates via a combination of military force, diplomacy, and, most importantly, tribute, blackmail, money. By 1783, after the American Revolution, American ships lost the protections of England and France, and became vulnerable to the Islamic pirates of North Africa. In 1783, the United States Congress buckled, as some members wish to do today, and allocated funds to pay off the pirates. They apparently didn't pay off enough, for in 1786 the Dey of Algiers took two American ships hostage and demand $60,000 in ransom for their crews, quite a large sum of money in that day. Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador to France, argued that paying ransom would only encourage more attacks. He lost the argument, and the United States began paying Algiers up to $1 million a year over the next fifteen years as ransom for the safety and return of American ships and hostages. Tribute paid by America to Algiers in 1800 was 20 percent of the entire Federal budget!

In 1786 Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli's Ambassador to London, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, and asked him by what right he took slaves and extorted ransoms and tributes. Jefferson wrote to Congress: "The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet Mohammed, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman (or Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to heaven."

When Jefferson was inaugurated President in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, Yussif Karmanli, promptly demanded $225,000 from the United States. Jefferson refused the demand, and in May of 1801 the Pasha declared war on the United States. Jefferson responded by sending a force of U.S. Navy frigates to the Mediterranean, and informed Congress, which never voted a formal declaration of war, but did authorize the President to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli, "and also to cause to be done all other such acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify."

The USS Enterprise defeated the Tripolitan corsair Tripoli in a fierce but brief battle on August 1, 1801. In 1801, Jefferson sent much of the U.S. Navy to the region, deploying the USS Argus, the USS Chesapeake, the USS Constellation, the USS Constitution, the USS Enterprise, the USS Intrepid, the USS Philadelphia, and the USS Syren, under Commodore Edward Preble. Throughout 1802, Preble blockaded the Barbary ports and raided and attacked the cities' fleets.

In October, 1803, the USS Philadelphia ran aground and was captured, with its crew, by Tripoli. On February 16, 1804, a small group of U.S. sailors slipped into the harbor and burned the Philadelphia, to deny the Tripolitans her use. On July 14, 1804, the USS Intrepid attacked Tripoli, packed with explosives, to blow up the harbor, but was destroyed by enemy fire before reaching its objective, killing Captain Richard Summers and the entire crew.

Finally, in April and May, 1805, former consul William Eaton and U.S. Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led a small force of U.S. Marines, with some Arab and Greek mercenaries, overland to attack the city of Derna, which gave the US a significant strategic advantage, since it could now land troops and supplies and attack by land as well as by sea. Faced with this prospect, Yussif Karmanli signed a treaty ending hostilities on June 10, 1805. Thus ended the First Barbary War.

From this victory comes the second line of the Marines' Hymn, "…to the shores of Tripoli..." in 1801.

[Patrick]

The peace didn't last long, for the Barbary states soon went back to their old ways of seizing American ships and crews, for ransom. Terrorism in the Middle East is an old story. Umar ben Muhammed, the Dey of Algiers, again declared war on the United States for failure to pay him proper tributes. Distracted with the buildup to the War of 1812 with Britain, the US did not respond to this provocation until the Second Barbary War of 1815, under President James Madison. On March 3, 1915, the US Congress again authorized military operations against Algiers (again without a formal declaration of war), and Commodore Stephen Decatur's squadron set sail again for the Mediterranean.

Wasting no time, Decatur's force soon fought and captured the Algerian ships Meshuda and Estedio. Under threat of attack, the Dey of Algiers signed another treaty ending hostilities, returned Americans and Europeans held captive, and paid $10,000 for seized shipping. The treaty guaranteed the United States full shipping rights, and no further demands for tribute. Decatur set off to negotiate a similar treaty at Tunis, whereupon the Dey of Algiers promptly repudiated the treaty he had just signed, example of taqqiya, deception, another old story in the Middle East. In 1816, an Anglo-Dutch fleet under British Admiral Viscount Exmouth bombarded Algiers for nine hours, after which the Dey finally came to his senses, signed another treaty, and the Barbary Wars ended.

This digression is to illustrate, for those who have forgotten, or never known, why the symbology of holding The Middle East Peace Conference at Annapolis, home of the United States Naval Academy, is important. It was the United States Navy and Marines that Presidents Jefferson and Adams sent to stop the piracy of the Barbary states, by projecting enough American military force to subdue the Pashas and Deys of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, halfway 'round the world. Annapolis will remind both Olmert and Abbas of that, at least Abbas, for the Arabs have long memories. I think the choice of grounds at Annapolis, rather than Camp David or some other, lesser, place, and rather than West Point, or the White House, or Paris, or Oslo, is a very specific reference to President Jefferson, and President Adams, and the American victories in the wars with the Barbary Pirates two hundred years ago.

It's called, "sending a message," to Iran specifically, and to the rest of the Middle East in general. And the diplomatic world sees it with perfect clarity, even if most of the news world and the punditry world do not. We did it once, in the days of the tall ships and muzzle loading cannon, we can do it again, in the days of stealth bombers.

The US success in the Iraq war in the last six months, with much thanks to General Petraeus, the Patton and McArthur of our time, although we don't fully realize that yet, is achieving a complete realignment of much of the Middle East toward the US, not because they love the US the more, perhaps, but because most of the Arab countries see in the US their only hope of salvation from Iran, and, in the US and Iraqi defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq, they see their hope of salvation from the growth of Al Qaeda and militant Islamism and Jihadism, which threatens to topple the House of Saud and the rest of the moderate (by Arab standards) regimes in the Arabian countries and replace them with juntas of strict religious mullahtocracy, to the tune of many heads rolling. The Arabs will side with the winner of the Iraq War, if only because they cannot afford to side with the loser, economically or politically. If we win, the Arab world will draw closer to the US, as it is now doing. If we lose, closer to Al Qaeda & Co., because that's the only option they have.

In order to clear the way ("clear the decks") for the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc., with the US, in the coming confrontation with Iran, Bush has to give them a show they can show to their people and say, See, Bush tried to broker a peace deal for the Palestinians… maybe he didn't succeed, but he tried…and that gives the Saudis et al. some political maneuvering room.

We notice that Bush is not trying to force a deal. He said he would help "facilitate" a deal, but Olmert and Abbas have to do the deal on their own, and neither of them has the authority of his respective country to do any deal that would not be dead on arrival back home. So, either no deal, or no deal that matters. Not now. Not yet.

There are really only two solutions for the Palestinians, and they don't like either of them.

1. Kill Israel, wipe it out, send the Jews packing off to America (we should be so lucky, an influx of 6 million smart, educated, industrious, legal immigrants, most of whom speak English already!), and take over Israel for the Palis, which is precisely what the Palestinian National Charter and the Hamas Covenant call for, and in a year Israel will be just as trashed as Gaza is now, because the Palis don't have the social and civilizational and political structure to make a nation-state of their own function as anything but just another failed third world mess. Not now, not yet, probably not anytime soon, just a feud between Hamas and Fatah. And a whole bunch of Palis would die in the war.

2. Swallow hard, suck it up, and concede, formally, publicly, by treaty, that Israel has a right to exist, and a right to be free from jihad, terrorist attacks, wars, and intifadas. This will require repudiating (a) the Palestinian National Charter, which calls for the abolition of Israel, (b) the Hamas Covenant, which calls for the abolition of Israel, and (c) about 1400 years of Islamic teaching, which calls the presence if an infidel state in the Lands of Islam, Dar al Islam, an abomination to Allah.

This could happen, sometime in the next century, but the condition precedent for this happening is for enough Arabs, Palestinians, and other Muslims to become convinced that to continue on their present course of anti-everybody-but-Muslims-and-most-of-them-too is nothing but a recipe for the continued inexorable slide of the Arab world deeper and deeper into intellectual poverty, and, when the oil runs out, or as America goes to hydrogen fuel and nuclear, solar, and geothermal power, intractable economic poverty. Every year that the Arab world fails to move in the direction of modernity, it falls farther and farther being the West. I was in Frye's Electronics the other day to get some computer stuff, and I remarked to the 20-something sales guy that, twenty years ago, nobody in the world could have bought a single thing in the store for any amount of money, because none of it had been invented yet! He looked startled, for a moment, and then he agreed. Just look, I said, I'm getting a 500 megabyte external hard drive for $99. Five years ago nobody had a 500 meg hard drive, and 30 years ago nobody had a hard drive, period!

But none of that technology, not a single thing, came from Arabia. America, yes. Japan. Europe. China. But not Arabia. The educated Arabs who run the countries know all this, perfectly, and they fear for their future, and the future of their nations and people, but many millions of semi-literate Arabs don't understand, they just want to throw out the Jews. The Middle East is caught in a conflict between two visions, one of an educated and liberalized modernity, and one of the Islamists and Jihadists who want to time travel back to antiquity.

The best of all possible solutions for the Palis is to give up the Intifadas, embrace Israel as a friend and partner, and let the Israelis teach them how to develop a modern educational system, government, and economy, that will lift the Palis out of poverty and into the 21st century, but they have to give up their addiction to virulently religious anti-semitic Islamic fundamentalism to do that. Many "common Palis," I'm sure, would be glad to, but not the ideological leadership.

And the "right of return" isn't going to happen. It can't. But it's a symbolic issue the Palestinians won't or can't give up, like a dog hanging onto a rag. At some point, if they want peace, and prosperity, they're going to have to accept the rule of Water Under the Bridge. Right or wrong, things change, and after a time there's no going back. Sixty years ago half the Palestinians in fledgling Israel left, voluntarily, promised by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, that Israel would soon be defeated and abolished and they could return to Palestine rid of the Jewish pestilence, but Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, were wrong. And that's a bitter pill to try to swallow. But it stays stuck in your throat 'til you do.

Letting 6 million Palestinians into Israel would be (proportionately) like suddenly bringing 200 million immigrants into the US. Where would they live? Where would they work? There aren't jobs or houses or schools for them, and it would destroy Israel as a Jewish homeland by creating a 2/3 Arab-Palestinian majority hell bent on voting and blowing Israel out of existence. And everybody at Annapolis knows this. But they have to do the sideshow for the politics of it all. The only real solution for the Palestinians is for them to agree to a two-state solution and peaceful co-existence with Israel, and then for the Arab neighboring countries, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, to absorb many of them, which they don't want to do because they know the Palestinians cause way too much trouble, too, and they haven't been willing to absorb the Palestinians into their own lands anytime in the last sixty years.

But they also know that if there is a serious war between the Israelis and the Palis, the Palis are going to become refugees in their neighbors' lands, and they don't want that, either. They may fear the Palestinian invasion even more than they hate the Jews. And so they come to Annapolis.

[Patrick]

I am quite certain that Bush has no expectations for peace in the Middle East, not on his watch, but he is doing the obligatory political song and tap dancing routine for the Arabs and the world that will clear the decks and pave the political way for operations against Iran, if operations against Iran because necessary. And maybe it really will lead to peace in Palestine, someday. The longest journey begins with a single step.

My prediction…

History will view Bush as a troubled, but great or near-great President, because he doggedly pursued and accomplished the single most important thing of his time: he narrowly averted the conquest of all Arabia by Jihadism, by luring Al Qaeda, whether intentionally or inadvertently, into a war in Iraq, and defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq. Not alone, of course, with the help of a couple hundred thousand American troops, and four thousand who died there, and a few thousand from Britain, and small forces from other countries. But Bush stood by the helm through the storm.

Iraq will, in time, emerge as one of America's strongest friends and allies in the world, and, as peace settles in and its oil industry can be redeveloped, it will emerge as one of the most prosperous nations in the world, in time.

Of course, Al Qaeda is not abolished, and may never be, but it is deeply wounded and weakened by the loss of more than 20,000 fighters killed by American and Iraqi soldiers and Marines, and, seeing America determined to win this war at last, the Iraqis are growing optimistic now to join the fight, no longer hedging their bets that America will cut and run, leaving them to the tender mercies of Al Qaeda & The Jihadis. The tide is turning, or has turned, against Al Qaeda, and the Middle East Peace Conference at Annapolis is a sign of that turning tide, not because peace in Palestine will emerge this year, or next, or anytime soon, but because it is a sign that the nations of the Arabian Middle East are acknowledging that peace in Palestine must inevitably come, later, at least, even if it cannot come sooner.

Bush will be seen as a great or near-great President, too, who, despite his unpopularity at home and the political rabble yapping and snapping at his heels, tied himself hard and fast to a long strategic policy that blocked the coming of the Islamic Bomb, the Libyan Bomb, the Iraqi Bomb, the Syrian Bomb, the Iranian Bomb, and prevented the descent of the Middle East into a Land of Terror armed with nukes.

History will view General David Petraeus as one of the genius generals of history, as important, in a less conspicuous way, as Patton and McArthur. He turned around a counter-insurgency war that was, at best, a stalemate, and set it on the path to victory, nearly overnight, in weeks, not years.

Bush has fallen down on some other issues, domestic issues, I think, perhaps in part because he has been so focused on the Jihad War, but if we don't win the war with Jihad, in the end, nothing else matters.

“No, Bush is brilliant.”

[Sifu-TZ]

sssssssimbolism.


hahahahha, sorry, I'm a Booddock Saint's fan. great movie, I hope you're seen it Patrickor this won't be funny. excellent read.

[CalamariKid]

Bush is a dumbass.

[Patrick]

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily agree with all of the observations made, but do find a lot of them interesting.

[txgsxrbob]

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily agree with all of the observations made, but do find a lot of them interesting.

+1 alot to read .....wow

[OMEGA]

check this website out and tell me what you guys think, i dont agree with all said either but very intresting http://rense.com/

[OMEGA]

and just wondering how bush is brilliant after his top millitary officials told him about the out coming of this war and ignoring them?