A War the United States Will Not be Able to Run From

The media, our representatives in the Federal Government, the President with the full backing of his Cabinet and the vast majority of Americans all believe that the battles for Afghanistan and Iraq have been won; and now that the troops are finishing up any untied strings and heading home for good. Nothing could be further from the truth and there is only one place to pin the blame, President Obama and Congress. They will likely claim that they are simply responding to the wishes and desires of the American people, and that holds a fair amount of validity. The problem is that Congress and the President are elected to serve the people, defend the Constitution from all threats foreign and domestic, to act as the adults in their relationship with the citizenry and to treat the people with respect by telling them the truth along with advise as to what choices are available along with a predicted result for each and after educating the citizenry the country can, as a whole, come to an educated consensus. Thus far none of these discussions have taken place and it is as much the blame of the mainstream media as it is the President, his administration and the members of Congress. The impression that has been put forth is a picture of Iraq and of Afghanistan each with a steady government that the United States have greatly aided and who is indebted to the United States and its military and will be one of the closest allies which the United States can rely upon in the future. If only that was even ten percent of the truth.

 

Let us begin with Iraq and open up some eyes to what is coming. The Iraqi Shiites can hardly wait for the last American to exit their country. They have already demanded and forced the United States military to sequester their personnel onto one of two main base locations, one in Baghdad in what was called the Green Zone where the government offices and the sprawling complex which is the United States Embassy and the rest isolated out at Camp Liberty in the middle of the desert miles from any town or other habitation. The American forces have to clear any operational moves or simple troop movements with their Iraqi advisors, though I am tempted to refer to these advisors as overlords as their decisions are usually final. Iraq has already aligned with Iran and is allowing Iran to supply Bashir Assad in Syria overland crossing central Iraq thus aiding Assad in his slaughtering of his own people as well as jihadists who have joined the battle against Assad in the name of al-Qaeda and/or the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite what the public back in the United States has been fed about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he was the most ardent of the Shiite candidates and was all but hand-picked by the true leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

Even as the troops from the United States and their allies were pulling out from their station points in Iraq in preparation to return home, the Shiite leadership of the government began a cleansing of the Sunni influences within the government wherever they were able. This has caused great amounts of friction and building animosity which is what has led to the drastic increases in terror attacks mostly in central Iraq. These ambushes will only increase and there is a possibility that the Sunni Muslims in Iraq will ally with the Kurds in the north and either begin an endless struggle for dominance against the Shiite loyalists in the south or possibly declare their independence. Whichever direction they should decide to move, once all the foreign forces have left or dwindled to the point of inability to influence or prevent fighting, then a war of some degree will break out and continue with no end in sight. This could become a winner take all take no prisoners blood feud and will not be pretty.

 

The last item about Iraq is that the leadership of the United States has misplayed their hand so pathetically by abandoning the only real friends they had won in Iraq, the Sunni and many of the Kurds, simply in order to get out as fast as possible and damn the consequences. Thus the result was a power vacuum which left a shaky balance between the three sects within Iraq with the Kurds relatively safely entrenched in the north and the Shiite in control in the center and south with the Sunni mostly in the center and at the mercy of the Shiite except in a few towns and cities closest to the Kurdish provinces. The result was a purge of the Sunni by the Shiite with Iranian backing followed by the Shiites seeking vindictive reprisals over the years of suffering they had suffered under the Sunni rule of Saddam Hussein. This is what will lead to a vicious civil war and possible bloodbath. The Sunni in Iraq, if any should survive, will never forgive the United States, who they trusted and joined making the surge a success, for abandoning them leaving them at the mercy of their historic rivals. The result is that every sector of Iraqi society now despises the United States because each one perceives that the United States deceived them and treated them poorly. We are leaving Iraq feeling greater animosity towards the United States than when the United States arrived or any time since. Iraq has resulted in a failure.

 

In Afghanistan we have played the political game poorly and what makes matters worse, we got caught at the game. Afghani President Hamid Karzai was an ally of the Americans who now feels betrayed after he became aware that the government of the United States had opened up negotiations with the Taliban without consulting or informing Karzai. He immediately opened his own dialogue with them and soon the situation became exactly what one would expect, the Taliban began playing the American and Karzai off of one another. This only served to deepen the rift that was forming between the two countries. Then there were a number of accidents and the beginning of the drone war operations all of which resulted in injured and murdered Afghani civilians. The United States admitted to a few civilian casualties and held the position that the greater majority of those killed were al-Qaeda and other jihadists and terrorists. Karzai saw the picture far differently and his protests only grew angrier and louder as the bodies piled up and the United States appeared not to care and refused to change their method of engagement. This eventually came to a head and President Karzai forced a curtailment of the drone war and a rewriting of the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for United States and allied troops which served to make these troops operations extremely difficult and eventually resulted in numerous additional casualties and deaths as troops were often denied air or artillery support under the new ROE. Another change was the demand that the United States and allied troops not carry their arms when within the wire back at major camps and bases. This is what has allowed for what is known as Green on Blue attacks. Green on Blue attacks are where Afghani police or military, who are trained by the United States and their allies, shoot often killing their American or allied counterparts. These shootings usually happen within the compounds of the major bases where the American and allied troops are disarmed by regulations and are unable to defend themselves. There has been no explanation provided by the Afghan government and seemingly no investigations or steps have been taken to address these disastrous and often fatal attacks. Needless to point out that these attacks are but a symptom of the animosity felt towards the United States and allied presence in Afghanistan. Afghanistan will return to the tribal and fractional confrontations and hostilities as soon as the United States and allied troops depart. There is a distinct possibility, maybe even inevitability, that the Taliban will once again rise to power and the terror training bases reopen returning to business as usual which spawned 9/11. Needless to point out but Afghanistan will end up being a complete disaster.

 

Then there is the Arab Spring, or as we here at BTC have called it since very early on, the Arab Winter. As was pointed out here, the people being supported by the United States fall into three categories, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda aligned terrorists, other terrorists who possibly are aligned with Iran. President Obama may make grand speeches about the democracy revolutions and the youth with the use of social media bringing a change to these Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and possibly Syria, but that is a pipe dream. Yes, there were many youth who demonstrated for hope and change and they received change without any hope. The beneficiaries of the revolutions spreading across the Arab world thus far have been the Muslim Brotherhood with a definitive victory in Egypt where they now control the Presidency, are on their way to control of both houses of the Parliament, have taken over the majority of the courts, and have replaced almost all of the higher officers in the military. The sole grand accomplishment in Egypt was to replace a military backed dictatorship where regular election frauds were held with a Muslim Brotherhood military backed dictatorship where regular election frauds will be held in the future. In Tunisia the Islamists have gained the majority of the Parliament but have been blunted to some extent and who will win out has yet to be decided. Libya has dissolved into a fractional state where different tribes now control their own parts of the country and terrorist groups roam freely and are carrying their revolution into the neighboring countries. The most closely covered has been in Mali where French forces are assisting the Mali government forces in containing the terrorists in the north of the country. Nigeria is another front which has had numerous assaults by Islamist terrorists, mostly from the Boko Haram terror group. The Boko Haram terrorist fighters have bombed and burned numerous churches in the north and into the center of the country often during services killing and maiming numerous Christians as well as torching neighborhoods and stores owned by Christians. The situation threatens to devolve into a civil war in Nigeria as the violence builds just as it has already become in Mali.

 

The final front is Iran and their aligned forces which include Bashir Assad in Syria, Hezballah which rules Lebanon by overt military threat, Hamas in Gaza, the IRGC and affiliated terror units which operate worldwide including a large base in the tri-state area of South America on the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina shared borders meet. Iran also has made allies with Venezuela and Nicaragua while also wooing additional South and Central American countries including Brazil, Peru, Argentina and others. Iran is also suspected of working towards attaining nuclear weapons. Iran has apparently made an agreement with North Korea under which the two countries share rocket and nuclear research and design information. Many believe the two have been working to perfect a special type of nuclear weaponry which is quite different than the normally perceived nuclear ballistic weapons which are largely destructive due to their explosive properties. The kind of weapon Iran and North Korea are researching is a low yield high Gama burst device which has an explosive component of only one to twelve kilotons but discharges an enormous Gama ray burst which causes a massive EMP pulse which can be destructive to unshielded electronic devices and networks such as power grids and communications systems which would include television, radio, phone, internet, and electronic generation systems. Such a devise, it has been suggested, could theoretically be so destructive that one warhead detonated over the Kansas City to St Louis areas would take out almost all electronic equipment and power from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains and possibly all the way to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The other advantage of such a weapon is it does not require any hardened heat shield as it does not need to reenter very far into the atmosphere before being detonated and thus is far lighter allowing for a more powerful device to be placed atop a launch vehicle.

 

The truth is that between the economic time bomb which is the European Union and the budgetary and debt problems plaguing the United States when combined with the problems spreading through the Middle East and North Africa and throwing in the axis being built between North Korea and the areas of Iranian influence there are more than sufficient potentials for serious problems and likely scenarios which result in confrontations which could easily explode with little or no notice that one might believe that governments have not been exactly truthful as they peddle the idea that all is going to be just fine. President Obama has on many an occasion claimed that the United States does not have a spending problem. If President Obama means that the United States has no problem spending, then he has been truthful; otherwise he has been misleading the American public. The claims that the Arab Spring will result in Western style liberal democracies throughout the Arab world is wishful dreaming at best and foolish lies which can only end poorly at worst. The claims that Europe and the United States are experiencing an economic recovery and the end of their financial woes is just around the corner are simply a misrepresentation of reality. The stock market is showing gains simply in proportion to the rate of increase in the money supply from the three sets of Quantitative Easing with a simple delay built in as the stock market is almost always a lagging indicator of such forms of stimulus. The actual value of the majority of stocks has not changed very much but is only representing the soon to be realized inflation which will balance the stock gains out through higher prices across the board. Behind almost every rosy picture the media and politicians are attempting to sell is a large amount of fertilizer. We live in what the Chinese might call interesting times, and to them interesting times is a form of curse. Perhaps that is the one piece of truth, we are in interesting times and China just launched their first aircraft carrier on their way to having a blue water navy comparable to that of the United States, and President Obama’s cuts to the military, the Navy in particular, is making their task all the easier.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The More Things Change the More They Remain the Same

Near the start of what was called the Arab Spring the people of Egypt witnessed the removal of their President and Evil Dictator Mubarak and awaited what were to be real free elections for a new President and for Egyptian Hope and Change. The election did not exactly prove to produce the liberating governance the Egyptians had so hoped for. The result in Egypt and throughout the countries which were initiating or striving to initiate change now faced what had been renamed the Arab Winter. The results did not quite measure up and fulfill the Hopes for Change that had driven the initial uprisings. Now Egypt is experiencing buyers’ remorse or is it reMorsi. They have come to the realization that the new boss is not all that different than the old boss; he simply has a slightly different dogma which results in the exact same practices. The protesters are still being shot and murdered. Those arrested still face torture and people still simply disappear. But the people of Egypt are going to find that their new oppressors are far more difficult to remove than was Mubarak as the new oppressions have the backing and support of Allah.

Having the professed support and direction of Allah and the religious class of Imams means you are facing forces who can define all who oppose them to be apostates.  Once any group has been labeled as apostates they become enemies of Allah. Once they become enemies of Allah they can also become the target of Jihad. Once you have become a target of Jihad you then can face a Fatwa used as a death sentence that frees the hands of the believers to bring you to justice, the justice of final judgment of the grave. This provides President Morsi with his backing of the Muslim Brotherhood legitimacy far greater and more dangerous than Mubarak could ever have claimed. Mubarak could only claim the legitimacy of the State, the same claim that could be made by the people who were calling for the overthrow of the tyrant Mubarak. Morsi can claim the legitimacy of Allah with the literal blessings of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Imams and thus has legitimacy beyond that the demonstrators can ever hope to claim. Morsi can claim that he is performing the will of Allah which makes any opposition to his will an act of blasphemy which can often result in death. This will make Morsi that much more difficult to replace, and even should such be accomplished, would the next leader chosen by either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists be any improvement? Very likely they would be as bad if not worse.

The pro-democracy supporters, tempted to call them dreamers as they have little tangible power, might have had an opportunity to pull Morsi from taking power very early after he assumed the Presidency. That is no longer the case as Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood made some shrewd maneuvers rather quickly after assuming power. They revamped the top brass in the Egyptian Military retiring many of the Generals and other senior officers replacing them with members of the Muslim Brotherhood. They also promoted replacements who were also members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had managed to infiltrate the military while Mubarak was in power. Now Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood hold all the levers of power as they have replaced the necessary people in the state police and other enforcement arms of the government cementing their rule. Egypt will continue to appear to be a democratic country but in reality the winning candidates will be chosen by the Muslim Brotherhood. In many ways it is a real shame that the Egyptian people who were the original protesters were not the ones who had the organization and the funds to run and win the national elections they deserved after they had given the initial impetus for change. Now they have received change, received change but not hope.

The really sad part of the story of the Arab Spring turned Winter is that the current forces throughout the Middle East and the Arab and Muslim Worlds will lead every country which is able to forge change and will be more likely than not to end up going from their nationalist rule to theocratic Islamic rule. Even Turkey which had been organized by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to be a guarded sectarian democracy where the military was charged by the Constitution of Turkey to enforce the country’s secular nature and to remove and call for new election should Islamists ever try to compromise the modern secular nature of the country. Unfortunately, the blindness and ignorance of the European Union and its individual nations along with the United States under President Bush with advice given by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded the Turkish military stand down at the crucial point at which Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan crossed over the point of no return in his implementation of plans to alter Turkey from a secular state to one based on Sharia. The main reasons behind this reality is that the majority of the population of these countries were raised completely on Islam and either in isolation from the Western World or with an animosity for the Western World as they had a resentment of being colonized after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Western influences have had an effect on the youth in many of these countries but there are also a significant sector among the youth who are strict Islamic adherents which serves as a further reason for the overwhelming influence and power held by the Muslim Brotherhood. If Western culture and secular science based civilization manages to survive for another century, then the Islamic world may experience a reformation which will allow for a separation between Mosque and Government. If such is not the case, I do not even pretend to be able to predict what would follow. My hope is that should Islam become the dominant force on Earth they would progress forward with a rebirth of the early writings from the Mecca Koran coming into prominence. That could allow for a pluralistic society with freedom if not quite complete equality for all peoples, even non-Muslims. The coming years are going to be a crucial period where much will be held in judgment and the progress of all mankind will be in the balance. The next century will either usher in an age of unlimited brightness and discoveries or darkness where war, pestilence, and hatreds rule the earth, the seas, the skies, and the hearts of mankind.

Beyond the Cusp

The World Pushing for Yet Another Arab Israeli War

The world has consistently insisted that their main goal regarding the Middle East is to establish a lasting peace where all the countries can live in safety without any threats of war, terrorism, or other threats. One of the major sectors where an inordinate amount of attention is concentrated is Israel, the surrounding countries and even a number of more distant lands where threats of a confrontation with Israel exist. The seriousness with which the world and its organizations invest in this pursuit of this goal can be revealed by the fact that virtually all the reports, sanctions and edicts originating from the groups responsible for enforcement of peace, human rights, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other various disturbances and threats almost all deal with events which include or concern Israel. One glaring example can be taken from the United Nations Human Rights Council is that well over ninety percent of its sanctions are on Israeli violations where the vast number concern mistreatment of the Palestinians or the overt use of disproportional force in response to provocations. Needless to say, Israel’s supporters have complained about an obvious bias in the enforcement of Human Rights by the UNHRC to no avail. Some of the reason for this astonishing statistic is due to the countries which populate the Human Rights Council and its various committees and less to do with Israeli actions, but addressing that is for another time.

There has been an understanding among a number of Arab governments which stated that the first objective was to force Israel through world pressure to return all the lands lost by three of these countries resulting from the Six Day War in June of 1967. The initial efforts to have Israel required to return these lands failed as the Israelis resisted and at that time still had the support of much of the world, particularly the Western World. The main contributing factor to the support Israel was receiving was due to the perception that the Arab Israeli conflict was perceived accurately as one tiny little country, Israel, standing against Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab World. The statements and propaganda emanating from the Arab World supported the concept that Israel was fighting against almost unimaginable odds facing a coordinated attack supported by countries with tens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of times sized militaries, tanks, planes, troops, helicopters, trucks, rifles, artillery, mortars and every other imaginable military equipment and other essentials. The solution to this problem was to find some manner of changing the equation on the ground, but how to shrink the Arab forces and make Israel to appear as the military giant instead of the outmanned and outgunned small country in a sea of enemies. There was a solution and it was to invent a group and isolate them from the rest of the Arab World and recast the representation of the two adversaries replacing the overwhelming Arab forces with a small and virtually defenseless and powerless group of Arabs with no military and no resources and cast Israel as an oppressor. This was what brought on the invention of the Palestinians as the indigenous people from whom the Israelis had stolen their lands and forced them into refugee camps where they languished under the most inhuman conditions.

The world could not have made this ploy any easier if they had tried. The charade has been carried out and the world has lapped up the toxic milk of the distraught Palestinian people whose country, Palestine, with its capital, al-Quds (Jerusalem), has been stolen and the Israelis now occupy the lands they stole. The other side of this charade was the denial of the existence of any Jewish refugees. They started by denying the Holocaust thus making the Jewish refugees who came to Israel straight from the Nazi concentration camps as simply Jews who chose to move to the Middle East from Europe with the intent of stealing Muslim and Arab lands. Then they refused to allow any recognition of the nearly one-million Jews that were dispossessed of their holdings and possessions over the first decade of Israel’s existence being exiled from all across the Arab and Muslim World. The argument denying the existence of these Jews was a simple matter of challenging Israel to show the refugee camps where these exiled Jews were languishing in just like the Palestinian refugees. The fact that Israel absorbed their fellow Jews and treated them as their brothers and sisters given the same rights and even some assistance from the government helping them to recover their lives was completely beside the point. People are ignorant that approximately half of the populations of Israeli Jews are from the Arab lands of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Now the entire Arab World had been shrunk down to being represented by the Palestinians who suffered before the all-powerful Israelis and the IDF. The fact that at the point the Palestinian hoax was hatched, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt were still in a declared war with Israel along with numerous other Muslim countries that were in a state of undeclared hostilities with Israel.

Now the world came together to protect the unfortunate Palestinians from the traumas caused by their refugee status. Israel was condemned for any use of their military might as the Palestinians had no military which could be used against the IDF. The fact that Israel was attacked almost daily by terrorist actions was of no real concern. Much of the world even drew a line that separated terrorist attacks against Israel and terrorist attacks against the rest of the world. Eventually Egypt and later Jordan made peace with Israel and were offered all the lands they had lost to be returned. Egypt availed itself of the Sinai Peninsula but refused the Gaza Strip and Jordan remained happy to just keep its lands east of the Jordan River thus leaving Judea and Samaria under Israeli control. According to the Geneva Conventions, since Israel won these lands in a defensive war they were entitled to retain possession of all the lands they had gained in such actions. This means that Israel would have been within their rights to retain even all of the Sinai Peninsula but instead returned them in order to gain a cold peace which now is in jeopardy as the Muslim Brotherhood has taken control in Egypt. Israel has annexed some of the lands they gained in the war, namely the Golan Heights and all of Jerusalem. There was no Palestine which declared war or ever entered a war with Israel. Palestine has never existed except in the minds of those willing to take any position if it harms Israel. But, how does any of this result in another Arab Israeli war?

There are two things that would end the conflict between the Arab World and Israel. The obvious one would be the destruction of Israel which would very likely result in the genocide of all of the Israeli Jews and possibly many of the Christians and Muslims who are Israelis as they might be considered to have acted as collaborators. The other way would be if Israel were allowed to completely win one of the wars declared upon her by her neighbors. The first way where Israel loses to the invading Arabs would take very little from the rest of the world. They would just need to look aside while the combined Arab armies swarmed over Israel slaughtering everyone on their path. The other would take somewhat longer for the world to ignore what was occurring allowing Israel to finish the war and capture the capitals of her adversaries. In the usual situation that would mean Israel would have to take Cairo in Egypt, Damascus in Syria, Beirut in Lebanon, and Amman in Jordan. It might also be necessary to take the majority of the other major population centers and capture the vast majority of the armies of these countries after they had started a war. The same goes for ending the terrorist threat facing Israel. It could be ended if Israel were allowed to actually finish off the terrorist forces and destroy the terrorist infrastructure and military stores. The problem is such will never be allowed to come to pass. The powers of the world will always, as they have done previously, demand Israel stop their assaults as soon as it becomes obvious they are winning and might actually destroy their enemies. The world, especially the UN, EU, Russia, and the nonaligned movement countries go into instant fit bordering on heart failure when Israeli unabashed victory appears imminent.

The other front is the efforts to push Israel back inside the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice Lines, the borders Abba Eban named the Auschwitz Borders. This is being done despite promises made after the 1967 Six Day War where it was contained in UN Resolution 181 that Israel would be permitted to retain whatever lands were considered necessary for Israel to have defensible borders. Somewhere around a decade ago that promise finished evaporating and now Israel is being demanded to return to the indefensible Green Line. This would place the vast majority of Israeli population and industry within artillery range of her neighbors. Israel would be on the low ground with the Arab forces perched on the hills surrounding Israel and able to direct their artillery and rockets with great accuracy. Israeli radars would be blinded to any air attack from out of the east as the Judean Hills would block their radars until the aircraft were within minutes, possibly seconds from their targets. Israel’s middle would be reduced to a width of between ten and fifteen miles and be crossable by an invading army in less than thirty minutes thus cutting Israel in half. Should Israel be returned to the Green Line the Arab countries have had an agreement that that would be the day when they began the final plans to finish what they have thus far failed to manage, the complete destruction of Israel and the Jews residing therein. And there is one last item that is a fairly well-kept secret. The Palestinians terror groups which include the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PRC, and others have always intended that once they achieve having Israel reduced to the lands within the Green Line, their plan is to then unify the rest of the Palestinian nation and then join with Syria, Egypt, and whichever other Arab and Muslim nations wish to join them in their glorious destruction of the Zionist entity. This unification is not the unification of Hamas and the PLO reuniting the major parties of the Palestinian Authority. By uniting the Palestinian nation they intend to overthrow the Jordanian King as they actually do recognize that Jordan is the Palestinian State. They ignore that fact and deny it because it serves their efforts to pretend that Jordan has nothing to do with the Palestinian people. It helps immensely that the rest of the world plays along with this deception as all one need do is read the Churchill White Papers to realize that Jordan was established as the Palestinian Arab State, but that requires reading history and that is simply too much to ask of today’s political world, especially if it would overturn their fantasies and opportunity to set up another Arab Israel war as eventually the Arabs will win, the world is counting on that.

Beyond the Cusp