By education Ms Clinton is a lawyer. By concatenation of political circumstances she is a diplomat. Among the many features the two occupations share is a reliance upon words. Words which are carefully considered, accurately employed, and possessed of certain denotative value and connotative freighting. Thus it was both shocking and disheartening when Ms Clinton exhibited sloppy thinking, false analogy, and harmful shoddiness of expression in assorted Arab media following the Tucson shooting incident.
Specifically Ms Clinton debased the English language, fudged truth, created a very false analogy, and further obscured the nature of the threat presented to the US and other civilized states by violent political Islam when she equated the action of Jared Loughner and the motives of the 9/11 Himmelsfhartkommando. She was blunt, averring that Mr Loughner, like Mohammad Atta and his Eighteen Companions, was an "extremist."
This sort of casual mislabeling is a sure sign of the dynamics at work not only inside the Beltway but throughout the American elites which have assured a persistent inability to name the enemy at our gates. Mr Loughner is not an "extremist." In all probability he is psychotic whether or not his defects of perception and reasoning qualify him as legally insane. Mr Atta and his Eighteen Companions were not psychotic. They were not suffering under some defect of reasoning or emotional disturbance. Neither were they mere "extremists." The killers of 9/11 were--at least in their own minds and the minds of other adherents of violent political Islam--good Muslims. They were Muslims who sincerely believed they were protecting and advancing the One True Faith by their actions and by their deaths.
By her words, Ms Clinton once again gave a free pass to those Muslims in and out of government who tacitly support or at least passively accept the presence of violent political Islam. She encouraged the false perception that only psychotics can seek martyrdom, can wear suicide vests, plant roadside bombs, persecute and kill Christians. By her stating that a moral equivalence existed between the Loughner shooting and the acts of war on 9/11 Ms Clinton did a vast disservice to the cause of the US and its associates in the struggle against violent political Islam. Simultaneously she removed a burden from Muslims, specifically the moral obligation to openly, publicly, and repeatedly seek the exclusion of adherents of violent political Islam from the Muslim community generally.
Ms Clinton's (in highest probability) politically motivated depreciation of the 9/11 attackers and their ilk, her marginalization of these men by linking them to the evidently disturbed Tucson shooter, her sweeping aside of the role of religion in the events of 9/11, all harm our interests both short and long-term. Her ill-chosen and factually insupportable characterization of the martyrdom seekers as well as the psycho shooter as "extremists" underscores the unwillingness or inability of the Obama administration to accurately describe both our enemy and what is at stake in the contest.
Had Ms Clinton's trip ended on this pathetic note, she would have merited the much prized Bugs Bunny What A Maroon! Award. Fortunately for her reputation and, far more important, the interests of the United States, Ms Clinton had another bite at the rhetorical apple. A bigger bite before a very important audience.
At a major meeting of the region's elites in Doha, Qatar, Ms Clinton had some very well chosen, quite accurate words for the assembled officials and business leaders. In a fine example of Hillary at her hectoring best, she gave a trenchant cowboy-mend-your-ways series of admonishments regarding endemic corruption, pervasive maldistribution of wealth, political inequality, absence of transparency, and a form of democracy illustrated more by its lacking than its abundance.
Her message was blunt and tough. Unless the states of the Gulf, and, by implication, elsewhere in the Mideast changed their basic social, political, and economic structures; allowed more freedom in both politics and the economy; halted the corruption; ended the hyper-privilege of the narrow elites; fostered economic growth; then all would "sink in the sand." Her performance was "tough-love" diplomacy at its best, being a fine combination of exceptional truth telling and accurate assessment.
The salience of Ms Clinton's lecture has been underscored with bloody drama by recent events in Tunisia. The riots have been the result not only of economic doldrums, which have had a major impact on the young, but of a thorough revulsion with the corrupt, authoritarian, and nepotism riddled regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The seventy-four year old president has been running things for more than a quarter century with results which have been very, very good for himself, his wife, the families of himself and his wife as well as assorted favored cronies but not particularly good for everyone else.
Tunisia, which has long been regarded with more hope than realism as a modern, dynamic, and tolerant society, polity, and economy has been exposed in recent months as a wallow of all the political, social, and economic sins which beset the Arab Muslim countries generally. Ms Clinton has called it as it is and not as the local elites would like it to be seen.
Her warning that without major changes the disaffiliated youth of the region would respond with increasing fervor to the appeals of those who peddle violent political Islam is bang on and long overdue. It is this sort of realism and not the fantasies of the Obama Cairo Address which the region, the world, and the interests of the US and other civilized states need desperately.
Ms Clinton is to be congratulated for her Doha remarks. She should be encouraged to keep hitting the same notes in the future. The baseless praise so beloved by Mr Obama for all things Islam does no service for the people of the countries dominated by narrow authoritarian albeit Muslim elites. Nor does the Obama stance benefit the interests of the US. The stance taken by Ms Clinton (with or without presidential approval) is the only one which has any potential of useful outcome either in the region or for the US.
To say that Ms Clinton has a mixed record as America's top diplomat is to belabor the obvious. In Doha she swung her personal diplomatic pendulum far into the positive range. One can only hope that she will do more of the same in the future and refrain from making disastrous analogies about "extremism" either of the Muslim or the made-in-the-USA sort.
Showing posts with label Doha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doha. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Qatar And The New (Sort Of) Cold War
Although not a major focus of the MSM, there has been a Junior Cold War under way for several decades now. The roots of the silent conflict extend back in time over a thousand years, but the proximate cause occurred only thirty years ago.
Although fought primarily with words and money, the Junior Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown in both size and intensity during the past few years. The growth hormone at work has been the intractable conflict between Israel and the Muslim Arabs of the mythical land called Palestine. The seeming forever war between Israel and its antagonists has served to draw more firmly and deeply the lines in the sand scribed by the religious and political dichotomies separating the Persian Shites of Iran and the Arab Wahhibist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia.
Neither the religious nor the regional hegemonic pretenses of the two Gulf contenders should be underrated or trivialised as some sort of "conservative" state versus a "radical" one. The stakes are high and growing higher as both the Saudis and the Iranians seek allies and influence both in the region and around the world.
When the awesomely ill-advised American invasion removed Iraq as a counterweight to the ambitions of both the House of Saud and the Mullahs of Tehran, the pint-sized Cold War moved out of the fringelands of unrealisable ambition. Without Iraq as a major regional player, the way was clear for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to seek wider and deeper influence in the Arab and Muslim states--and not simply those of the Gulf region or the Mideast.
Both Saudi Arabia and Iran brought a mix of advantages and disadvantages to the rapidly blooming game.
Saudi Arabia had (reasonably) good and productive relations with the Arab League states generally once the House of Saud got over its snit with Egypt. Of course, the Keeper of the Two Mosques represented the majority branch of Islam. With oil money pouring out of every spigot, the Saudis were in a position to spread Wahhibist Sunni doctrine throughout the world including the US and Europe. Saudi Arabia also had the not inconsiderable advantage of being seen by the US and most European governments as an indispensable agent in the "peace process."
The House of Saud also deployed a significant set of disadvantages in its struggle against Iran. It could easily be seen as the seven hundred pound gorilla of OPEC, a burnoosed bully boy which used its massive reserves as a club with which to bash the "club" into compliance. (The potency of Saudi Arabia's reserves as a tool of coercion was enhanced when the US and the UN removed Iraq as a serious competitor.) Generally, the Saudi government and ruling family acted in an entirely too haughty fashion to sit well with other governments who were just as afflicted as the Saudis with an easily bruised sense of honor and propriety.
Then, of course, there was the question of religious purity. Osama bin Laden was not the only Islamist who saw the House of Saud as irredeemably stained by the sin of apostasy. Contravening the strictures of Wahhibism seemed to many Islamists and Islamist-leaners as the primary characteristic of the Saudi Royal Family. More times than can be counted easily the Saudi Royals and their hangers-on were seen as talking the austere talk of Wahhibism but never walking the walk.
The Saudi disadvantages served to potentiate the handful of Iranian advantages. The starting point for adumbrating the Iranian position must always be the fact that Shia is seen by Sunnis as both a minority (which it is) and apostate (which it isn't--at least in Shiite eyes.) The Islam preached and practiced by the Mullahs of Tehran was every bit as austere and demanding as that preached but not necessarily practiced by the Wahhibsts of Saudi Arabia or the Salifism of other countries.
The critical advantage accruing to Tehran was that Iran followed the demands of a harsh version of Sharia to a very, very large extent. This may have rebounded against the mullahocracy in both Western Europe and the US but it was very much an advantage within the the Muslim community.
This advantage must be considered together with the indisputable fact that the Iranian Revolution occurred. The Ayatollah toppled the Shah. Islamist "students" humiliated the US for well over a year. The religious zeal of Iranians--primarily young Iranians--allowed Iran to fight the militarily superior and US backed Iraqis to a stand still.
In short, the Shias of Iran proved to Muslims throughout the world that Warriors of Faith could triumph over the infidels and apostates regardless of the apparent advantages of the latter.
(The successes of the Iranian Revolution constitute the sub-text to the later narrative emphasising the victory of Islamist Arabs and their Afghan co-religionists over the Soviet Union. This reality must never be ignored despite the success of Sunni Islamist propagandists in recurrently trumpeting the presumed victory of Islamist jihadism over the Red Army.)
Another completely undervalued advantage of the Iranian mullahocracy is contained in the person of President Ahmedinejad. In the West, particularly in the US, Ahmedinejad is seen as a large mouthed nut case spouting highly objectionable rhetoric which is often clearly disconnected with reality.
That negative view may be how the Iranian Orator-in-Chief may play in Peoria.
It is not how Ahmedinejad plays in much of the Muslim world.
When Ahmedinejad came to power in 2005 his mouth started running--with effects which were uniformly beneficial to the Iranians in their rapidly blooming confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The blustering defiance of Ahmedinejad (which was backed by the senior clerics of Iran or it would have been stopped quickly) laid the ground for the conclusion of successful alliances with Syria and the crucial non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran no longer stood alone. The conclusion of de facto alliances with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas served as a powerful force multiplier. This multiplier could not be and was not quickly nor easily countered by Saudi Arabia and its closest partner, Egypt.
More recently the Iranian position was strengthened and the task faced by Saudi Arabia and its associates in the Arab League made more complicated. The reason for this was the de facto adherence of the Emirate of Qatar to the Iranian side.
Qatar, incidentally the country with the highest per capita income on Earth since 2007, is run by a man who can accurately be called eccentric. The eccentric Amir Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his money siphoning father back in 1995 in a bloodless coup. Since then his policies have been marked by a clever balancing between the demands of Islamist oriented Arab nationalism and the needs of assuring stability and pumping enough money from the ground to meet internal needs and popular desires.
From 2003 to date Qatar has both infuriated and pleased Washington.
The biggest source of pleasure was the Amir providing basing facilities at time when Saudi Arabia was tossing the US forces out of the kingdom. Aircraft operating from Qatar have provided support to US combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bulging warehouses and depots have done the same on the logistics side of the house.
Washington has not been so pleased with the Amir's television enterprise, al-Jazeeria. The W. Bush Administration tossed al-Jazeeria out of Iraq because its coverage of the Great Adventure in Regime Change was less, much less, than laudatory. Overall this very popular and equally influential television outlet has pumped enormous quantities of provocative and often highly anti-Semitic views for years now. While its English language coverage of Mideast and American news can be remarkably objective in appearance (and even reality) the same cannot be said of its Arabic language programming. Al-Jazeeria is anti-Israel, anti-Saudi, anti-Egyptian, anti-American, pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, and pro-Iranian.
The Amir most clearly tossed his lot in with the Iranians earlier this month in a controversial and perhaps illegal meeting of the Arab League states held in Doha. The Amir made so bold as to invite Ahmedinejad to the "Arab" conference. As a result some Arab states did not attend with the result that the meeting lacked the requisite quorum.
The upshot of the Doha conference was a communique which went over the edge in damning the Egyptian role in seeking a diplomatic settlement for the Israeli incursion and demanding unwavering support for Hamas. Implicit criticism (to put it mildly) was directed at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states for failing to rush to the aid of the embattled "liberation fighters" of Hamas.
Given that the US can find replacements for the facilities it currently uses in Qatar there seems to be no real national or strategic interests in play there. Considering that the Obama Administration has a very full plate of domestic and foreign policy conundrums there seems to be no need for much attention to be paid to the "whither Qatar" question.
Unfortunately any marginalisation of Qatar, any ignoring the seeming smaller matter so that attention might be paid to the larger problems will have the effect of making the larger problem less easily solved. It is essential to get a firm grip on two interlocking realities.
The Junior Cold War is not going to end quickly nor easily.
Iran is not going to toss over its ambitions for either regional hegemony or being the starting point of the final march to a global caliphate.
Saudi Arabia is neither a constant nor effective "ally" in the struggle between the US (and to some extent, Western Europe) and the Islamist movements. Quite the contrary, it is part, even a large part, of the Islamist threat. Beyond that, it is an unpleasant associate as well as an economic threat.
Iran is even worse.
Which means that the most viable course of American action is not unlike that followed by the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Iraq War or Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War. This course is simply that of taking all necessary actions to assure that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia comes out ahead in their version of a cold war.
How do we go about doing this?
The Geek admits it is much easier to reach a conclusion in principle than it is to put that conclusion into effective practice. It's all the harder when putting the principle into practice demands some very unpleasant changes in both foreign and domestic policies.
It's even harder to turn conclusions into action when the two first, most basic questions have not yet been asked at the policy level--let alone answered.
What are you getting at, Geek?
Simple, fifteen years or so too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What did the end of the US-USSR Cold War really mean for us?"
Simple, thirty or so years too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What do really mean with the buzz phrase, energy independence?"
Although fought primarily with words and money, the Junior Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown in both size and intensity during the past few years. The growth hormone at work has been the intractable conflict between Israel and the Muslim Arabs of the mythical land called Palestine. The seeming forever war between Israel and its antagonists has served to draw more firmly and deeply the lines in the sand scribed by the religious and political dichotomies separating the Persian Shites of Iran and the Arab Wahhibist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia.
Neither the religious nor the regional hegemonic pretenses of the two Gulf contenders should be underrated or trivialised as some sort of "conservative" state versus a "radical" one. The stakes are high and growing higher as both the Saudis and the Iranians seek allies and influence both in the region and around the world.
When the awesomely ill-advised American invasion removed Iraq as a counterweight to the ambitions of both the House of Saud and the Mullahs of Tehran, the pint-sized Cold War moved out of the fringelands of unrealisable ambition. Without Iraq as a major regional player, the way was clear for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to seek wider and deeper influence in the Arab and Muslim states--and not simply those of the Gulf region or the Mideast.
Both Saudi Arabia and Iran brought a mix of advantages and disadvantages to the rapidly blooming game.
Saudi Arabia had (reasonably) good and productive relations with the Arab League states generally once the House of Saud got over its snit with Egypt. Of course, the Keeper of the Two Mosques represented the majority branch of Islam. With oil money pouring out of every spigot, the Saudis were in a position to spread Wahhibist Sunni doctrine throughout the world including the US and Europe. Saudi Arabia also had the not inconsiderable advantage of being seen by the US and most European governments as an indispensable agent in the "peace process."
The House of Saud also deployed a significant set of disadvantages in its struggle against Iran. It could easily be seen as the seven hundred pound gorilla of OPEC, a burnoosed bully boy which used its massive reserves as a club with which to bash the "club" into compliance. (The potency of Saudi Arabia's reserves as a tool of coercion was enhanced when the US and the UN removed Iraq as a serious competitor.) Generally, the Saudi government and ruling family acted in an entirely too haughty fashion to sit well with other governments who were just as afflicted as the Saudis with an easily bruised sense of honor and propriety.
Then, of course, there was the question of religious purity. Osama bin Laden was not the only Islamist who saw the House of Saud as irredeemably stained by the sin of apostasy. Contravening the strictures of Wahhibism seemed to many Islamists and Islamist-leaners as the primary characteristic of the Saudi Royal Family. More times than can be counted easily the Saudi Royals and their hangers-on were seen as talking the austere talk of Wahhibism but never walking the walk.
The Saudi disadvantages served to potentiate the handful of Iranian advantages. The starting point for adumbrating the Iranian position must always be the fact that Shia is seen by Sunnis as both a minority (which it is) and apostate (which it isn't--at least in Shiite eyes.) The Islam preached and practiced by the Mullahs of Tehran was every bit as austere and demanding as that preached but not necessarily practiced by the Wahhibsts of Saudi Arabia or the Salifism of other countries.
The critical advantage accruing to Tehran was that Iran followed the demands of a harsh version of Sharia to a very, very large extent. This may have rebounded against the mullahocracy in both Western Europe and the US but it was very much an advantage within the the Muslim community.
This advantage must be considered together with the indisputable fact that the Iranian Revolution occurred. The Ayatollah toppled the Shah. Islamist "students" humiliated the US for well over a year. The religious zeal of Iranians--primarily young Iranians--allowed Iran to fight the militarily superior and US backed Iraqis to a stand still.
In short, the Shias of Iran proved to Muslims throughout the world that Warriors of Faith could triumph over the infidels and apostates regardless of the apparent advantages of the latter.
(The successes of the Iranian Revolution constitute the sub-text to the later narrative emphasising the victory of Islamist Arabs and their Afghan co-religionists over the Soviet Union. This reality must never be ignored despite the success of Sunni Islamist propagandists in recurrently trumpeting the presumed victory of Islamist jihadism over the Red Army.)
Another completely undervalued advantage of the Iranian mullahocracy is contained in the person of President Ahmedinejad. In the West, particularly in the US, Ahmedinejad is seen as a large mouthed nut case spouting highly objectionable rhetoric which is often clearly disconnected with reality.
That negative view may be how the Iranian Orator-in-Chief may play in Peoria.
It is not how Ahmedinejad plays in much of the Muslim world.
When Ahmedinejad came to power in 2005 his mouth started running--with effects which were uniformly beneficial to the Iranians in their rapidly blooming confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The blustering defiance of Ahmedinejad (which was backed by the senior clerics of Iran or it would have been stopped quickly) laid the ground for the conclusion of successful alliances with Syria and the crucial non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran no longer stood alone. The conclusion of de facto alliances with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas served as a powerful force multiplier. This multiplier could not be and was not quickly nor easily countered by Saudi Arabia and its closest partner, Egypt.
More recently the Iranian position was strengthened and the task faced by Saudi Arabia and its associates in the Arab League made more complicated. The reason for this was the de facto adherence of the Emirate of Qatar to the Iranian side.
Qatar, incidentally the country with the highest per capita income on Earth since 2007, is run by a man who can accurately be called eccentric. The eccentric Amir Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his money siphoning father back in 1995 in a bloodless coup. Since then his policies have been marked by a clever balancing between the demands of Islamist oriented Arab nationalism and the needs of assuring stability and pumping enough money from the ground to meet internal needs and popular desires.
From 2003 to date Qatar has both infuriated and pleased Washington.
The biggest source of pleasure was the Amir providing basing facilities at time when Saudi Arabia was tossing the US forces out of the kingdom. Aircraft operating from Qatar have provided support to US combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bulging warehouses and depots have done the same on the logistics side of the house.
Washington has not been so pleased with the Amir's television enterprise, al-Jazeeria. The W. Bush Administration tossed al-Jazeeria out of Iraq because its coverage of the Great Adventure in Regime Change was less, much less, than laudatory. Overall this very popular and equally influential television outlet has pumped enormous quantities of provocative and often highly anti-Semitic views for years now. While its English language coverage of Mideast and American news can be remarkably objective in appearance (and even reality) the same cannot be said of its Arabic language programming. Al-Jazeeria is anti-Israel, anti-Saudi, anti-Egyptian, anti-American, pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, and pro-Iranian.
The Amir most clearly tossed his lot in with the Iranians earlier this month in a controversial and perhaps illegal meeting of the Arab League states held in Doha. The Amir made so bold as to invite Ahmedinejad to the "Arab" conference. As a result some Arab states did not attend with the result that the meeting lacked the requisite quorum.
The upshot of the Doha conference was a communique which went over the edge in damning the Egyptian role in seeking a diplomatic settlement for the Israeli incursion and demanding unwavering support for Hamas. Implicit criticism (to put it mildly) was directed at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states for failing to rush to the aid of the embattled "liberation fighters" of Hamas.
Given that the US can find replacements for the facilities it currently uses in Qatar there seems to be no real national or strategic interests in play there. Considering that the Obama Administration has a very full plate of domestic and foreign policy conundrums there seems to be no need for much attention to be paid to the "whither Qatar" question.
Unfortunately any marginalisation of Qatar, any ignoring the seeming smaller matter so that attention might be paid to the larger problems will have the effect of making the larger problem less easily solved. It is essential to get a firm grip on two interlocking realities.
The Junior Cold War is not going to end quickly nor easily.
Iran is not going to toss over its ambitions for either regional hegemony or being the starting point of the final march to a global caliphate.
Saudi Arabia is neither a constant nor effective "ally" in the struggle between the US (and to some extent, Western Europe) and the Islamist movements. Quite the contrary, it is part, even a large part, of the Islamist threat. Beyond that, it is an unpleasant associate as well as an economic threat.
Iran is even worse.
Which means that the most viable course of American action is not unlike that followed by the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Iraq War or Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War. This course is simply that of taking all necessary actions to assure that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia comes out ahead in their version of a cold war.
How do we go about doing this?
The Geek admits it is much easier to reach a conclusion in principle than it is to put that conclusion into effective practice. It's all the harder when putting the principle into practice demands some very unpleasant changes in both foreign and domestic policies.
It's even harder to turn conclusions into action when the two first, most basic questions have not yet been asked at the policy level--let alone answered.
What are you getting at, Geek?
Simple, fifteen years or so too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What did the end of the US-USSR Cold War really mean for us?"
Simple, thirty or so years too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What do really mean with the buzz phrase, energy independence?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)