Jihadi Du Jour

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Dr Walid Phares, is a leader of the March 14 movement and the Director of Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy and the author of the War of Ideas. Dr Phares was one of the architects of UNSCR 1559. He is also a Professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University and a contributing expert to FOX News. He makes the following points about the current situation and dangers in the Middle East:

The US Government is considering a new gigantic arms sale to the Saudi Kingdom, up to 20 billion dollars’ worth of complex weaponry. The proposed package includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters, and new naval vessels, as part of a US strategy to contain the rising military expansion of Iran in the region. The titanic arms deal is a major Saudi investment to shield itself from the Khomeinist menace looming at the horizon: an Iranian nuclear bomb, future Pasdaran control in Iraq, and a Hezb’allah offensive in Lebanon.

The real Iranian threat against the Saudis materializes as follows:

1. Were the US led coalition to leave Iraq abruptly, Iranian forces — via the help of their militias in Iraq — will be at the borders with the Kingdom. Throughout the Gulf, Iran’s Mullahs will be eyeing the Hijaz on the one hand and the oil rich provinces on the other hand.

2. Hezb’allah threatens the Lebanese Government, which is friendly to the Saudis. Hezb’allah, already training for subversion in Iraq, will become the main trainer of Shia radicals in the Eastern province of the Kingdom.

3. Finally Syria and Iran can send all sorts of Jihadis, including Sunnis, across Iraq’s borders, almost in a pincer movement.

In the face of such a hydra-headed advance, the Wahhabi monarchy is hurrying to arm itself with all the military technology it can get from Uncle Sam. Riyadh believes that with improved F 16s, fast boats, electronics and smarter bombs, it can withstand the forthcoming onslaught.

I believe the Saudi regime won’t. For, as the Iraq-Iran war has proved, the ideologically-rooted brutality of the Iranian regime knows no boundaries. If the US withdraws from the region without a strong pro-Western Iraq in the neighborhood, and absent of a war of ideas making progress against fundamentalism as a whole, the Saudis won’t stand a chance for survival. For the Iranians will apply their pressure directly, and will unleash more radical forces among the neo-Wahhabis against the Kingdom. The Shiite Mullahs will adroitly manipulate radical Sunnis, as they have demonstrated their ability to do in Iraq and Lebanon.

Simply throwing money at a problem, without a vision as to how to properly spend it, has never been an effective solution. More often than not, money only exacerbates the problem it is meant to solve.

So what should the US advise the Saudis to do instead of spending hugely on arms?

First, if no serious political change is performed in Arabia, the 20 billion dollars’ worth of weapons would most likely end up in the hands of some kind of an al Qaeda, ruling over not only over Riyadh, but also Mecca and Medina. That package of wealth, religious prestige and modern arms, at this point of spasms in the region, is simply too risky strategically.

But there are better ways to spend these gigantic sums in the global confrontation with Iranian threat and in defense of stability. It needs a newer vision for the region. Here are alternative plans to use the 20 billion dollars wisely but efficiently; but let’s not count on the far reaching mainstream of Western analysis at this point:

Dedicate some significant funds to support the Iranian opposition, both inside the country and overseas. Establish powerful broadcasts in Farsi, Kurdish, Arabic, Azeri and in other ethnic languages directed at the Iranian population. That alone will open a Pandora’s box inside Iran. Realists may find it hard to believe, but supporting the Iranian opposition (which is still to be identified) will pay off much better than AWACS flying over deserts.

Slate substantial sums to be spent in southern Iraq to support the anti-Khomeinist Shiia, the real shield against the forthcoming Pasdaran offensive. Such monies distributed wisely on civil society activists and on open anti-Khomeinist groups, would build a much stronger defense against Ahmedinijad’s ambitions.

Lavish funding should be granted to the Syrian liberal opposition to pressure the Assad regime into backing off from supporting Terrorism. Without a Mukhabarat regime in Damascus, the bridge between Tehran and Hezb’allah would crumble. Hence, the Syrian opposition is much worth being backed in its own home than for Saudi Arabia to fight future networks in its own home.

Allocate ample funding to the units of the Iraqi army that show the most efficiency in cracking down on terrorists, and which prove to be lawful and loyal to a strong central Government, pledging to defend its borders, particularly with regard to Iran. That would include the moderate Sunnis in the center and the Kurdish and other minority forces in the North. A strong multiethnic Iraq, projecting a balance of power with Iran’s regime, is the best option for the Peninsula.

Grant abundant aid to the Lebanese Government, the Cedars Revolution NGOs and the Lebanese Army to enable them to contain Hezb’allah on Lebanese soil. Earmark some of these grants to the Shia opposition to Nasrallah inside his own areas. When Hezb’allah is isolated by Lebanon’s population, Arab moderates around the region can sleep much better at night.

Spend real money on de-radicalization programs inside the Kingdom and across the region. With dollars spent on moderate Imams and not on the radicals, Riyadh can shake off the radical Salafi clerics, and have an impact the Jihadists’ followers. By doing so, it will prevent Jihadism from becoming (as it has already) the only other option on the inside, if the Iranian axis will put pressure on the country.

Forward meaningful sums to support the current Somali Government against the Islamic Courts and help the moderates in Eritrea and Sudan. The best defense against radicalism coming from the horn of Africa is to support the moderates in East of the continent.

Invite the US military to abandon Qatar as a regional base and to relocate to the Eastern provinces of the Kingdom, with as many billions of dollars as required to help in reinstallation and deployment facing Iran’s threat. A military attack by the Iranian regime on Saudi Arabia would then become a direct attack on the United States.

With the remaining billions, the Saudi Government would renew, remodel, and retrain its forces so that along with its allies, the US, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Gulf states, they would deter an Iranian regime, which will be defeated by its own people.

That of course, presumes radical reforms take place, quickly, in the Peninsula. But isn’t such a hope just a desert mirage?

Indeed, the points I suggested in this article, although logical in terms of counter-radicalism strategy, have very little chance of being adopted or even considered in Riyadh. The Kingdom, sadly, wants to confront the Islamic Republic only with classical military deterrence, not with a war of ideas. Which perhaps is why the region’s “friendly” regimes have preferred not to endorse “spreading democracy” as a mean to contain Terrorism. The reason is simple: Democratic culture will also open spaces in their own countries, a matter they haven’t accepted yet.

Dr. Phares is quite rights when he notes that we cannot count on the far reaching mainstream of Western analysis at this point. Why? Because of the unrealistic and failed policies of the Realpolitik practitioners at the State Department. Not only are past Realpolitik policies directly responsible for America’s current imbroglio in Iraq, but their further pursuit will only add dangerous new fuel to the existing problem while creating many more.

It is high time for a drastic change, time to bring in people who are true experts on the Levant’s mentality. People who recognize that what works in the West does not work with IslamoFascism. Not only is there a different mentality at work, the political logic is entirely different, unless we in the West are willing to engage the IslamoFascists onIslamoFasciststhey simply perceive as weakness. Unless we nurture their own opposition within, we cannot hope to stop their growing advance.

While IslamoFascism poses as a religion, it is no such thing!!! It is merely a political idea of world conquest, which adapted some trappings of religion as a convenient disguise. It is absolutely incapable of coexisting with the West, since its underlying philosophy is in direct opposition to the West. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we get rid and bury Realpolitik and its practitioners, the better the chances of stemming the advance of totalitarianism in the form of a future One World Caliphate.

But as Dr. Phares says at the end of his article: Indeed, the points I suggested in this article, although logical in terms of counter-radicalism strategy, have very little chance of being adopted or even considered in Riyadh. The Kingdom, sadly, wants to confront the Islamic Republic only with classical military deterrence, not with a war of ideas. Which perhaps is why the region’s “friendly” regimes have preferred not to endorse “spreading democracy” as a mean to contain Terrorism. The reason is simple: Democratic culture will also open spaces in their own countries, a matter they haven’t accepted yet.Will the West wake up to the looming dangers in time? Riyadh will not likely accept Dr. Phares sensible suggestions. As long as Democrats like Nanci “The most powerful woman in the world” Pelosi continue to cuddle up to the likes of Baby Assad, we are heading the wrong way down the political pike. As long as the House of Saud’s main Consigliere, James Baker, continues to hold sway on America’s foreign policy, neither will the State Department take any action to move away, even one iota, from its bankrupt path and it certainly won’t listen to Dr. Phares’ advice. Will we in the West change our stance and deal with IslamoFascism in the only decisive language they unequivocally understand?

Chaim

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Twenty Billion, Thirty Billion

Crossposted at: Freedom's Cost

Labels: Ahmadinejad, American Dhimmitude, Bashir Assad, Iran, Iraq, islamofascists, James Baker, Nancy Pelosi

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

Twenty Billion, Thirty Billion

Dhimmi Watch had the following today:

The Bush Administration announces in the same breath that “over ten years” Israel will receive “$30 billion in weapons,” and that Saudi Arabia will get “$20 billion” in weapons to stave off Iran (over what time period? 10 years, like the Israelis? Or more like a year or two?). And it announces also that, furthermore, a country that is in every way hostile to us, Egypt, will receive “$13 billion” in weapons as a gift.

What shall we say about this? Israel is not only a temporary ally but a permanent ally. It is a permanent part of the West and central to the West’s history, at this point, and must be kept alive not only for our own moral sanity, but also because its disappearance, or reduction to dhimmitudinous despair and reliance on Arab Muslim willingness to allow it to survive would whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites. But this weapons transfer, billed as “$30 billion,” in fact is misleading. Over ten years that amounts to $3 billion a year in weapons aid, which is only one-quarter over the amount now given, and gratefully received. (And need one point out how many advances, in aerospace technology, and in everything from unmanned aircraft to explosives-resistant vehicles that ought to have been, but were not bought, by the Pentagon for use in Iraq, are developed by the Israelis for their, and of course our, use?)

With James “F*** the Jews” Baker and his aparatchicks running the show at Foggy Bottom and Defense did anyone really think the spin would go any different? But… I digress!

Saudi Arabia, per contra, is our enemy. A permanent enemy, because it is a country whose people are suffused with the most uncompromising, violent, and malevolent — for Infidels — version of Islam. For in Saudi Arabia they take their Islam very, very seriously. Saudi Arabia is not worried about an invasion by Iran. Such fears are phony. The whole hysteria, coordinated with Egypt and Jordan, about the “Shi’a crescent” is merely designed to get the Americans to focus only on Iran (and its current accomplice, Syria) and to ignore the much larger threat, outside the local business in Iraq, that Sunni Islam poses to Infidels. It is designed to get them to ignore also that above all other states, Saudi Arabia is the world’s Muslims’ chief financier, paying for mosques, madrasas, propaganda, campaigns of Da’wa, and the buying up of Western hirelings who in the capitals of the West — and certainly in Washington — work to do the Saudi bidding. They work to prevent intelligent understanding of the menace of Jihad and of Islam to our legal and political institutions and to our physical security.

It is absurd to think that the Saudis will master this equipment, but not absurd to think that such weaponry could fall into the hands of Arabs and other Muslims who can master some of it. In any case, the mere possession of such weapons would have to be taken into account by Israeli military planners, and will make their own task even more hellishly difficult, and they don’t deserve to have that outcome. When the United States protested about a sale of aerospace technology, developed by the Israelis, to China, Israel, at great cost to its own fledgling aerospace dreams, promptly cancelled the sale — thereby angering China and permanently damaging any hope of future sales to such a market. But Israel listened and heeded our desires. We, however, or at least this and other American administrations, have not ever heeded Israel’s pleas on the same score.

And what is also bad is the signal to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia should be read the riot act. Saudi Arabia should be told it is not “our ally,” and if it wishes to be defended, it will obviously have to rely, in the end, on us — not on weapons that could fall into hands even more malevolent than the Al-Saud (just as the weapons we sold the Shah, that “pillar of stability” in the Persian Gulf, fell into the clutches of the Islamic Republic of Iran). Thus if these weapons are delivered, we would have to be ready to intervene in order to make sure those weapons were not seized, or transferred, to others. Saudi Arabia was a loyal supporter of the Taliban (and one of only two countries to recognize the Taliban government, besides Pakistan). Saudi Arabia must be forced to stop funding mosques and madrasas, stop funding the hate literature against Infidels that have been found in those mosques and those madrasas, stop funding those campaigns of Da’wa that target prisoners, that target all the psychically and economically marginal.

The Saudis do not now do, and never have done, the United States any favors. We buy their oil at the market price. They have fooled successive American policymakers, who wanted to be fooled. They were helped along in being fooled by so many who, directly or indirectly, at the time or soon after, have been paid off by the Saudis, the government, or its institutions, or rich individuals.

And as long as America’s enemy Number 1, James “F*** the Jews” Baker, continues to both have powerful friends here and continues as the Royal House of Saud’s Consigliere, we will continue to be fooled over and over and over… until the Saudis have attained their goal!

The way to “protect” the Al-Saud and the oilfields is quite different. It is to sell Saudi Arabia an insurance policy. We will guarantee the safety of the rulers and of the oil. It will cost: let’s say $50-100 billion annually. Too much, you say? Well, since Saudi Arabia takes in about one billion dollars a day, and since the rich Saudis have invested a lot overseas, have perhaps a trillion or more socked away, they can certainly afford $50-$100 billion. Okay, how about a little souk-haggling, in that case? Let’s give them a deal — $75 billion a year. How’s that? As long as you agree with the concept, we can at a later date decide just how much we intend to recoup, for the Iraq calamity and squandering of $880 billion, from the fabulous rich Saudis.

As long as James “F*** the Jews” Baker, continues hobnobbing with the powerful here, while continuing as Consigliere for the Royal House of Saud without needing to register as a foreign agent, Saudi Arabia will continue to thumb its nose at us! And as long as that does continues to happen, the half hearted and selective pursuit of the “War on Terror” will merely be little more than a bumper-sticker, albeit a very bloody one.

And what about Egypt? Can it seriously be maintained that Egypt needs those weapons because the army of Shi’a Iran may march right across northern Iraq, and Jordan, and Israel, and march right into Egypt? Really? Or is it possible that Egypt needs those weapons because Iranian troops will be coming up from the Sudan? Or that somehow the Sunnis of Egypt, who are deeply distrustful and intensely dislike the Iranian Shi’a for being non-Arabs and for being Shi’a, would somehow be converted by Shi’a missionaries? And if that were the case, why would giving Egypt the most advanced weaponry help in stopping those missionary efforts?

Egypt has fought four major wars with Israel, and has been responsible for nearly 20,000 separate fedayin attacks in the period 1949-1956 on Israel. It has been, and remains, the most dangerous neighbor Israel has. Egypt does not go to war not because its people have reconciled themselves to Israel’s existence — if anything, they have become since the Sinai handover even more virulent in their officially-sanctioned and officially-promoted hatred of Israel and Zionists and “Jews.” Yet the Administration thinks that giving weapons to Egypt, a country whose poor will not benefit one whit from the airplanes and missiles Egypt will receive, will somehow be accepted by the American people and by Congress, that we will all be unable to see right through this.

The lumped announcement of the one legitimate arms delivery planned — that to our ally and friend Israel — at the same time, in the same breath, with the announcement of the gift of advanced weaponry to Israel’s constant threat Egypt, and the sale of advanced weaponry to the funder of the worldwide Jihad, Saudi Arabia, shows an Administration that is terminally exhausted. It cannot think straight about Islam. It cannot begin to start to think straight about the dangers it is creating for an ally, and for the larger Infidel world. It can’t begin to get a grip and think in terms of the Camp of Infidels and the Camp of Islam, and how to do whatever it takes to weaken the latter and strengthen the former.

Instead, it has swallowed the Sunni Arab line about the need for countering the Shi’a threat (as if there were not, for Infidels, a greater Sunni threat), which means the threat to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and to Bahrain, and among the Shi’a agitating in Lebanon, or those Shi’a minorities in Yemen and Kuwait. And of course they also mean the threat in Iraq, if the Shi’a are permitted to keep their new gains, and the Sunnis to be forced to accept the new order. That is why, just as the Shi’a exiles were the ones who helped inveigle the Bush Administration to go into Iraq, it is now the turn of the Sunnis, to inveigle us — against our own best interests — to stay.

The Administration keeps amazing us with its ignorance and inability to see the whole picture.

And in its list of recipients of the arms, the Bush Administration puts one in mind of the scene in a Woody Allen film, in which he is in at a kiosk in New York telling the newsdealer that “I’d like a copy of The Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Review Books, and The Hudson Review and also Partisan Review and, oh, could you just throw in a copy of Slut.”

Let’s face it, gentle reader, as much as we desperately need oil for our economy to function the Saudis need us at least as much! Who else will defend them from the Iranians? Who can replace us as their main oil customer? If instead of pursuing the failed diktats of James “F*** the Jews” Baker and his boys’ unrealistic Realpolitik, if we were truly serious about the war on terror, if it meant more than a mere slogan, or bumper-sticker, then perhaps we should stop paying the dhimmi’s jyzia tax and stand up to our rightful place! Saudi Arabia certainly has every reason to believe that James “F*** the Jews” Baker is well worth his weight in oil… at least thirty pieces of silver’s worth (plus an allowance for 2000 years of inflation)! But why must we, go along with this involuntary taxation. Perhaps the time has come to tell James “F*** the Jews” Baker and his lapdogs at Foggy Bottom and Defense that it’s time for them to move to Saudi Arabia, where they can happily don kefiyas or hijabs… far away from us!

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(from: Cox & Forkum)