Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[seafoid]

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/05/palestinians-are-driving-the-train-of-history-now-beinart-acknowledges.html#more-42829

That world is gone. America and Israel are no longer driving history in the Middle East; for the first time in a long time, Arabs are.

..until, of course, events happen that do not fit in with your neat little narrative (e.g recent muslim v Copt clashes) , in which case Arabs will then, suddenly, not be in control of their own destiny and , instead it will be a sinister US/zionist conspiracy.

That was actually written by a Zionist. But you wouldn't know that, would you?
How long do you give apartheid in the West Bank? 

  instead it will be a sinister US/zionist conspiracy.
It's not a conspiracy. It's business.

you weren't at the Herzliya conference in 2002 by any chance? do you know where Herzliya is by the way?


http://www.herzliyaconference.org/eng/?CategoryID=85&ArticleID=14

The Struggle Against Radical Islamism

Just as Fascism and Communism were defeated, so should radical Islam. However, since terror is only a syndrome of the phenomenon, the fight against it cannot be restricted to military campaigns and attacks on specific targets. It must be led by the United States and conducted more comprehensively:

·         An ideological war of ideas must be waged in order to achieve international de-legitimization of the ideas of radical Islam. The international community must place the war against evil and murderous ideas at the focus of moral imperatives of our times and to modify international law accordingly.

·         The Muslims themselves must lead the ideological struggle. The United States must motivate Muslim states to stand up to radical Islamist extremism.


War Against Dictatorships that Develop WMD

This war is linked to the war against terror and its rationale is as follows: if terrorism and the countries supporting it are a serious problem, then the most serious damage could be incurred by the WMD that dictatorial regimes are developing. Therefore, the campaign of counter-proliferation of WMD is one of the most    important challenges for the United States, particularly if such weapons reach terrorist organizations. This is the basis of the "axis of evil" concept.

Terror     

Along with its obvious characteristics, contemporary international terror is characterized by the ability of a decreasing number of individuals to cause increasing damage and even extreme damage to the Western economy. Today, 100 to 200 people can kill one million human beings and shortly, fifty people with bio-technological know-how will be able to kill ten million. We are only at the inception of a watershed in human history that will motivate a far-reaching revolution in international relations, international law, strategy and military doctrine. The necessity to fight against terrorism will be the main component of defense policies throughout the world.

This whole philosophy died in Iraq.  The upshot was the revoluition in Egypt. America lost the Arabs. 
But never mind. You can still go to the AIPAC conference this year.

Confirmed Speakers Include:
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister, State of Israel
The Honorable John Boehner (R-OH)
Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable Harry Reid (D-NV)
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate

http://www.aipac.org/pc/breakout1.asp

Strategic Challenges - Political Earthquakes in the Arab World
Throughout the Arab world, protesters have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers to demand political change. What changes are Arab societies across the Middle East and North Africa seeking, and how are regimes in the region responding? Will these uprisings follow in the footsteps of past revolutions in Iran and Lebanon? Our panel examines these recent events and analyzes the implications for U.S. and Israeli interests.

Strategic Challenges - Impact of Sanctions on Iran
Iran is feeling the pressure from international sanctions targeting the country's illicit nuclear program. In the past year, a decrease in revenue has forced the Islamic theocracy to quadruple gasoline prices and remove other government subsidies. How vulnerable is the Iranian regime to deeper sanctions? Can it maintain its grip on power, while continuing its ambitious weapons program? This session examines these critical issues.

Strategic Challenges - Continued Threat from Gaza
Nearly three years have passed since Israel launched defensive operations in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Since then, the terrorist group has rearmed with long-range rockets and have increased their attacks on Israel. What are Israel's options in dealing with Hamas? And what does political upheaval in Egypt, which also borders Gaza, mean for security in the region? This session examines the danger from Gaza and its regional implications.

Enduring Partnership - Israeli Ingenuity Helping to Secure America
The reality of life in Israel has forced the Jewish state to become a leader in designing techniques and technologies in the arenas of homeland security and counter-terrorism. Learn more about how Israel is working with U.S. government and private entities to develop technologies and equipment aimed at thwarting terrorism and safeguarding citizens from both nations.

Enduring Partnership - The Changing Face of the Pro-Israel Movement
Israel is not just an issue of concern to the Jewish community. Greater numbers of Americans from all backgrounds are becoming involved in the pro-Israel movement. This session will explore why Latinos, African Americans and religiously motivated pro-Israel Christians support the U.S.-Israel relationship and how they are expressing their support.

The History Of - The U.S.-Israel Alliance
From foreign aid to strategic cooperation, this session analyzes the major milestones, achievements and failures in the historic U.S.-Israel relationship. We delve into the roles that Congress and the executive branch have played in developing America's special relationship with the Jewish state.

[seafoid]

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/former-un-envoy-israel-s-international-status-at-all-time-low-1.362185

Israel's current status at the United Nations is at an all-time low, Israel's former UN ambassador, Prof. Gabriela Shalev, said yesterday at a session of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

"Israel has no chance of dealing with the Palestinian move in the General Assembly," Shalev said, discussing the Palestinians' expected declaration of statehood after a UN vote this September. "The United States is not interested in vetoing the UN's recognition of a Palestinian state." Shalev added that the UN is today the foremost place for activity against Israel.

Israel's government is hiding its head in the sand," Mofaz said. "Without a peace initiative, events like the one on the Syrian border will recur in September.

"The changes here are tectonic," he added. "The events are a precursor to the September events, which could come in waves against Israel's population."

Mofaz said Israel should not have waited for Sunday's clashes to understand that the reality in the Middle East has changed.

[seafoid]

Things have changed a lot in a year

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n20/karma-nabulsi/diary

But whenever a proper discussion begins, the suddenly lowered voices of our frustrated young people, many of them at the heart of the fierce protests on university campuses and in rights campaigns elsewhere, have the same tone I used to hear in the voices of our young ambulance workers in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s: an elegiac gentleness towards the hopelessly wounded, towards those who were already beyond repair.

And today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/19/nakba-day-palestinian-summer

It was the moment for which we had all been holding our breath for decades – for 63 years to be precise. Palestinians everywhere watched the unfolding scene transfixed and awed. The camera followed the movements of a small group of people advancing from the mass of protesters. They were carefully making their way down a hill towards the high fence that closed off the mined field separating Syria from its own occupied territory of the Golan that borders historic Palestine, now Israel.

They were mostly young Palestinians, drawn from the 470,000-plus refugee community in Syria: from Yarmouk refugee camp inside Damascus, from Khan el-Sheikh camp outside it, from Deraa and Homs refugee camps in the south, from Palestinian gatherings all over the country.

Slowly, and in spite of the shouted warnings from the villagers from Majdal Shams about the lethal landmines installed by the Israeli military right up to the fence, these remarkable ordinary young people – Palestinian refugees – began to both climb and push at the fence. We were going home.

It was a profoundly revolutionary moment, for these hundreds of young people entering Majdal Shams last Sunday made public the private heart of every Palestinian citizen, who has lived each day since 1948 in the emergency crisis of a catastrophe. Waiting, and struggling, and organising for only two things: liberation and return.

[thejuice]

Obama called for Israel to pull back to the 1967 borders. But its only a statement how far he will push for it is hard to know.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-warns-arab-dictators-and-demands-israel-pulls-back-2286710.html

[Capt Pat]

Time to stick a fork in the President of Yemen. He is done. A 69 year old with 40 per cent burns bleeding under his skull and a three inch piece of shrapnel under his heart. They kept it quiet about the extent of his injuries at first but the severity of these injuries at his age make it look like there is no way back.

[Tyrones own]

Where are the resident anti US/Israel humanitarians on this
horifying situation in Syria

"The death toll since the start of the uprisingon March 15th is estimated to be approaching 2,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Out of that total, more than 130 have reportedly been killed in the two days since Sunday, when the Syrian troops stormed Hama with tanksshelling residential areas in the country's fourth-biggest city with a population of 800,000 people."

[Tyrones own]

Somebody...anybody, wow what a shocker 

[Eamonnca1]

Where are the resident anti US/Israel humanitarians on this
horifying situation in Syria

"The death toll since the start of the uprisingon March 15th is estimated to be approaching 2,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Out of that total, more than 130 have reportedly been killed in the two days since Sunday, when the Syrian troops stormed Hama with tanksshelling residential areas in the country's fourth-biggest city with a population of 800,000 people."

Last I heard that dictator in Syria has killed 1600 of his own people since they had the audacity to ask for an accountable government. It wouldn't surprise me if the toll has risen to 2000. The relative silence of the west on this will be remembered in the same bracket as Bill Clinton's dithering while Rwanda descended into madness and genocide.

[Groucho]

Where are the resident anti US/Israel humanitarians on this
horifying situation in Syria

"The death toll since the start of the uprisingon March 15th is estimated to be approaching 2,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Out of that total, more than 130 have reportedly been killed in the two days since Sunday, when the Syrian troops stormed Hama with tanksshelling residential areas in the country's fourth-biggest city with a population of 800,000 people."

Last I heard that dictator in Syria has killed 1600 of his own people since they had the audacity to ask for an accountable government. It wouldn't surprise me if the toll has risen to 2000. The relative silence of the west on this will be remembered in the same bracket as Bill Clinton's dithering while Rwanda descended into madness and genocide.

2000.....over 500,000 were killed in 100 days in Rwanda....and the powers that be did nothing......how many died in Serbia before international intervention?

It is the non action of neighbouring Arab states that never ceases to amaze me.

The UN(US) can't get involved until they sort out Libya I guess

[Capt Pat]

Where are the resident anti US/Israel humanitarians on this
horifying situation in Syria

"The death toll since the start of the uprisingon March 15th is estimated to be approaching 2,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Out of that total, more than 130 have reportedly been killed in the two days since Sunday, when the Syrian troops stormed Hama with tanksshelling residential areas in the country's fourth-biggest city with a population of 800,000 people."

Last I heard that dictator in Syria has killed 1600 of his own people since they had the audacity to ask for an accountable government. It wouldn't surprise me if the toll has risen to 2000. The relative silence of the west on this will be remembered in the same bracket as Bill Clinton's dithering while Rwanda descended into madness and genocide.

2000.....over 500,000 were killed in 100 days in Rwanda....and the powers that be did nothing......how many died in Serbia before international intervention?

It is the non action of neighbouring Arab states that never ceases to amaze me.

The UN(US) can't get involved until they sort out Libya I guess

Not too many died in Serbia. It wasn't until the Kosovo conflict years after Croatia and the Bosnians declared independence that the West decided to stand up for democracy by bombing Serbia.? The problem is there wasn't enough oil or natural gas in these places for the Americans and Brits to stand up for democracy.

[seafoid]

WTF in Afghanistan

where is Tyrone's Own to justify America shooting itself in the groin repeatedly over 10 years?   

Vanity, machismo and greed have blinded us to the folly of Afghanistan


The decade-long retribution exacted on this nation has cost the west dearly – and our old foes laugh at our expense
•   
o   o   Simon Jenkins
o   guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 20.30 BST
o   Article history

The first remembrance field dedicated solely to British military personnel who have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Ten years of western occupation of Afghanistan led the UN this week to plead that half the country's drought-ridden provinces face winter starvation. The World Food Programme calls for £92m to be urgently dispatched. This is incredible. Afghanistan is the world's greatest recipient of aid, some $20bn in the past decade, plus a hundred times more in military spending. So much cash pours through its doors that $3m a day is said to leave Kabul airport corruptly to buy property in Dubai.
Everything about Afghanistan beggars belief. This week its leader, Hamid Karzai, brazenly signed a military agreement with India, knowing it would enrage his neighbour, Pakistan, and knowing it would increase the assault on his capital by the Haqqani network, reported clients of Islamabad's ISI intelligence agency. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Pentagon is exulting over its new strategy of drone killing, claiming this aerial "counter-terrorism" can replace the "hearts and minds" counter-insurgency. Down in Helmand, visiting British journalists gather to recite the defence ministry's tired catechism: "We are making real progress on the ground."
The opening decade of the 21st century has been marked by two epic failures by the western powers that so recently claimed victory in the cold war; failures of both intellect and leadership. One is the inability to use the limitless resources of modern government to rescue the west's economy from prolonged recession. The other is the use of an attack on America by a crazed Islamist criminal as an excuse for a retaliatory war embracing a wide swath of the Muslim world. The decade-long punishment of Afghanistan for harbouring Osama bin Laden has been an act of biblical retribution. The demand that it also abandons the habits of history and adopt democracy, capitalism and gender equality was imperial arrogance.
What happened in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 has spawned an industry of hindsight, with over a hundred titles of wisdom after the event. We learn of the post-9/11 arguments within the Taliban, many of them old CIA allies. We learn of the possible role of Abdul Haq in Kabul, of Pakistan's intelligence double-dealing, and of the Kandahar jirga of October 2001 which came close to evicting Osama bin Laden.
Yet every counsel of caution in dealing with Afghanistan was disregarded in America's rush for vengeance – even the warning of Donald Rumsfeld that America "had no dog in the Afghan fight" and should avoid nation-building after a punitive raid. A great surge of imperial eagerness seemed to overwhelm Washington, London and Nato, as if the whole of western liberalism were craving a role in the world.
The occupation of Afghanistan has been a catalogue of unrelieved folly. America is spending staggering sums on the war, which it is clearly not winning. Congressional studies show virtually no US aid reaches the local economy, most remaining with contractors in the US or going on security or being stolen. Local democracy has failed, as warlords feud with drug lords and tribal vendettas resurface. The "training of the Afghan police and army" has become a dope-befuddled joke.
Britain's part in this has been dire. The thesis that Whitehall and its NGOs could somehow end Afghan corruption was absurd. Clare Short's mission in 2002 to "eradicate the poppy crop" and Kim Howells' spending of £270m "defeating the drugs trade" were beyond satire. I still have before me John Reid's briefing as gung-ho defence secretary in 2006, that Britain's job was "to build a prosperous, democratic, stable and secure Afghanistan", with British troops "not waging war but helping to rebuild". I recall General Sir David Richards at the time assuring me it would all be over soon in Helmand thanks to his "inkspots" strategy. The conclusion drawn in Frank Ledwidge's book, Losing Small Wars, is that the performance of Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand was "nothing short of disastrous ... leaving a legacy of destroyed towns, refugees and civilian casualties". Whitehall's compensation payments to Afghan civilians killed and injured by its troops are doubling each year.
Three hundred and eighty-two British soldiers have died in this war. Can any minister look their families in the eye and claim the loss was worth it? Worth what? Except in garrisoned towns, security in Afghanistan is as bad as ever. British soldiers have been told that they are being withdrawn over the next two years. Since they cannot pretend to have achieved their mission, it makes no sense to leave them in harm's way a moment longer.
The policy now is to "talk to the Taliban", as if it were the German high command on Luneburg Heath. All that is happening is that Karzai's emissaries and Taliban chiefs are seduced into "talks", and then murdered either by their own side or by America's trigger-happy drones. Five of Karzai's negotiators have already been killed, including his brother. The drones are removing one Taliban or al-Qaida leader after another. While it is hard to feel sorry for them, the wrecking of any hierarchy of control replaces a path to peace with renewed vendetta. American policy has turned the tiny cell of Bin Laden's al-Qaida into a global terrorist brand.
What is strange, as Barbara Tuchman wrote, is not the folly of policy as such but its immunity to correction even when known to be folly. Any visitor to Kabul soon learns two things. First that it is senseless to confuse Pashtun nationalism with Taliban insurgency, and that with al-Qaida terrorism. Second, if Nato wants to eradicate a security threat in this part of the world, some accommodation must be made with the mujahideen or, as the Russians found, they will simply win. Accommodation, that is, with their Pakistan sponsors. The only key that unlocks this door is the departure of Nato troops.
As during Vietnam, some wars pass the stage where politicians and generals dare step back and look. Pride, a craving for glory, an aversion to defeat, above all, the institutionalising of the war in its surrounding territory, come to drive strategy. Kabul is occupied by tens of thousands of soldiers, diplomats, NGO officials and contractors. Afghanistan has become a stew of the military/industrial complex, with aid mixed in.
American estimates from Brown University are that some $3.7 trillion will have been spent avenging the 9/11 deaths. Britain's contribution to this stupefying sum is £18.8bn. Whether this spending has prevented another terror attack, whether that would be value for money, or whether the whole venture has been little more than a cruel exercise in vanity, machismo and greed can never be answered, though Bin Laden himself was dealt with quite cheaply. All we know for sure is that revenge has not been sweet, just very expensive.
The irony of this great folly is that its chief beneficiaries are likely to be those who lost the cold war, Russia and China. As the west's leaders struggle to rescue embattled armies and embattled economies from morasses of their own creation, they have left their old foes laughing with glee. Democracy has snatched defeat from the arms of victory – without a shred of a reason.

[Denn Forever]

Britain  doesn't come out  well either according to President Karzai.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15217416

[seafoid]

Cognitive dissonance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6HjXtpQ6n0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHhECvN2kQI

[mannix]

Meanwhile, mitt Romney has declared the yanks need a bigger army to lead and control the world. They have military bases in 134 countries and are very concerned about china building a military, meanwhile they spend more than the next 10 military powers combined. 

[thejuice]

Did anyone see what happened in Egypt with that poor woman beaten and kicked by the army. Horrendous stuff.

It's hard to see where things are going in Egypt other than civil war, though hopefully not.

As for the rest of the middle east, Syria & Libya will probably go the same way.

What the future is for Iraq and Afghanistan is hard to say. The US will maintain a presence there with 20,000 personnel in the embassy and control the air space too.

An attack on Iran would be madness but maybe its only being used as a measure for Republican candidates.

If Ron Paul wins and pulls all troops back home (both unlikely) its likely that China and Russia will  step in for an increased share of the oil wealth. Both are on good terms with Tehran as things stand and don;t want the West sticking another straw into their favourite punch bowl.

For the USA/The West, getting a foothold next to the Caspian is the next step in trying to gain more control of the oil and gas movement in the area. It is the Russians main shipping and piping route.