Different Clocks Are Running In Egypt

Political revolutions, even those which are (relatively) nonviolent, have clocks.  This has to be realized not only by the status quo regime--which, of course, has its own clock--but outsiders.  The outsiders have clocks as well, but their timepieces are the slowest running of all.

The people on the streets, the actual fomentors of revolution, the people who have the most direct emotional and physical investment in the process of change, run on clocks which tick very, very fast.  On the street, riding the waves of uncertainty, fear and hope, a standard hour is longer than Christmas Eve to a five year old; a week becomes an unimaginable extent of geological time and months, an unacceptable eternity.

The effect of the fast time mentality has been highly visible in Cairo's Tahir Square, the epicenter of seismic political shock in Egypt.  To the assembled demonstrators, and, in high probability, to others of similar mind connected to the square by television, cell phones, and the Internet, the idea of having Hosni Mubarak soldier on to the end of his current term as president is akin to waiting for the end of the universe.  It may be coming, but not in a time frame that any can accept.

The same dynamic was evident in Tunisia.  The fast clock phenomenon was at work each and every time the status quo offered some temporizing compromise.  No one in the midst of the emotional tsunami which crested in Tunisia could abide the idea of keeping on the crest of change without the orgasm of final relief--the exit of Ben Ali.  The same sort of ejaculatory inevitability has grabbed the minds and bodies of the footsoldiers of change in Egypt.

Leaders, whether of the opposition or the status quo, are but dimly aware of the driving imperative at work in the minds and glands of the thousands of disaffiliated people in or connected with Tahir Square.  Outsiders, the politicians and diplomats of countries ranging from the US to Europe, are also not truly appreciative of the fast time process as they call for an orderly transition and the time required for this to happen.

This implies that the most critical conflict unfolding in the Egyptian Crisis is that between the clocks of the protesters and the outsiders in search of effective influence on the unfolding of events.  At base this conflict is irreconcilable.

The position of the US is both easy to understand and defend.  The probability of a too rapid removal of Hosni Mubarak resulting in a species of chaos easily exploited by advocates of political Islam as well as national entities such as Iran which support these groups is high.  At the same time it is necessary to caution that the anxieties regarding the hijacking of revolution by the adherents of violent political Islam can be overstated with ease.  Mubarak has done so.  So has Benjamin Netanyahu.  Up until a couple of days ago so had President Obama.

Reinforcing the argument in favor of "deliberate speed" is the absence of a clearly acceptable consensual choice of leader by the assorted opposition elements.  Given that the powerhouse of the uprising has been the existence of self-organizing, predominantly youthful, assemblages of the discontented and the disaffected, the leadership problem is inherently pronounced.  The entrance of the Muslim Brotherhood to the open opposition has done nothing to clarify the leadership haze.  Nor has the direct participation of old line opposition political parties.

Mohamad ElBaradei offered himself as leader.  The offer was accepted by a broad assortment of opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, but that did not make it so.  As any number of demonstrators quoted in the international media have made clear, ElBaradei is not their choice.  More, many of those quoted, have seen ElBaradei as part of the old guard or self-interested and remote from the Egyptian realities.  It is easy to get the impression that the several high profile meetings between ElBaradei and other "leaders" of the opposition groups are somehow not relevant to the dynamics in the Square.

One of the major problems of this leadership vacuum is the meetings, the declarations, the demands, the pre-conditions (such as Mubarak must leave before negotiations on the future commence) all combine to accelerate the already fast running clocks in the Square.  Meetings of opposition figures like the demands and dictates create an expectation of success--success being defined by the demonstrators as the sight of Hosni Mubarak getting on a plane.

When no success is seen, the almost inevitable result is an increase in both frustration and action predicated upon frustration.  This, unsurprisingly, means an escalation in violence and concomitant hardening in the positions of both demonstrators and status quo.  This, undoubtedly, is what the perpetual bad boys of the world in Tehran and their proxies in Egypt are hoping and working for.

A drastic increase in disorder will force the hand of the army.  Either the army will have to crack down and do so hard and fast, or its leaders will have to tell Hosni the time to leave has come while deciding who among the opposition the army will choose as transitional leader.

The army would risk very, very much should its leadership order the use of force against the demonstrators.  Not only would it risk its own junior officers, NCOs and enlisted personnel disobeying the order, it would put in hazard its treasured place as the ultimate guarantee of legitimacy for state and regime alike.

Of course, it is unlikely that repression would do more than buy some time at a very high price.  It would not put the incubus of radical political change back in some sealed bottle.  Rather, repression would assure the incubus would reemerge bigger and badder in not too many months--at the longest.  It is most likely that repression would do little other than make the clocks on the street run faster.

It is far safer, albeit harder emotionally, for the senior military leadership to tell Hosni that the game is over.  Should it do so and then offer a high visibility and evidently responsible position to a person well known in the ranks of the opposition as an honest and effective politician, the act would serve to slow the clocks in the Square by giving a very real, quite substantial success to the demonstrators and their supporters.  It would bode well to slow the clocks of Tahir Square to a point they mesh with the always slow watches of the West.

There is even a good choice for the position of politician as army partner.  That choice is not Mohamad ElBaredei.  He is neither well enough known nor trusted by the army--or many of the opposition.  The post of political partner can best be filled by one time foreign minister and more recently head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa.  Moussa has long been a relatively charismatic politician well known not to be a line hewing partisan of Mubara even though he was Hosni's ForMin for much of the Nineties.

Mubarak finally chaffed with Moussa's fits of independence as well as his growing popularity.  The dictator then shelved Moussa over at the Arab League.  His years as foreign minister as well as head of the League mean Moussa is a known and respected commodity internationally as well as in the region.  His appearance in the Square yesterday brought enough cheers to indicate he has not lost his luster with the street.

While the current vice-president, Omar Suleiman, is not acceptable to the fast clock folk in the Square, the addition of Amr Moussa to the ticket might be sufficient.  While the army may not be as happy with Moussa as they are with Suleiman who is, after all, one of their own, they may be persuaded to accept the duo.  At the least, Moussa is better than ElBaradei and, certainly no flaming Islamist.

If President Obama gets over his snit with the spooks for not having gotten Tunisia and Egypt perfectly right in their prognostications (who did?) and his pretense that he has gotten out in front of events in Cairo, he and his foreign policy "team" might take a close look at how the army can bring the opposition on board, smooth Hosni's (rapid) departure, and slow down the clocks in the Square.  As those clocks tick, they are counting down the seconds to genuine disaster and they will not slow by themselves.

The Army Is Egypt's Last, Best Hope

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has upped the ante in the Egyptian Crisis.  She was all over Sunday morning talking heads shows with a clear message for Hosni Mubarak--and the opposition.  While she did not directly call for the aging dictator (with apologies to Joe Biden) to step down, she made it as plain as the pyramids that his days were numbered and the number isn't a big one.

In her statements Ms Clinton ran ahead of President Obama which is a good thing.  The president as is his wont has been too cautious, too ambiguous, too noncommittal, too, in a word, academic in his public statements.  And, get a grip on this, it is the public voice which matters most with the Egyptians in the street.  As has been reported all over the MSM of the English speaking world, the newly empowered Egyptian street has been demanding a loud, unmistakable message from the US.  Are we Americans on the side of the opposition or are we locked in a death embrace with the current regime?

From the statements oozing out of the Oval the answer is not clear.  The Clinton posture is more so, but, arguably not sufficient.  It would be most helpful both to the Egyptians and to American policy interests in the region if Ms Clinton received backup from Secretary of Defense Gates.  The US provides over a billion dollars a year in military assistance to Egypt and, as a result, has very good ties with the senior and mid-level officers of the Egyptian armed forces.  If Gates were to come out with a public statement backing the army as the necessary transitional presence, it would go a long way to assuring the army would do the right thing.

In this case, the right thing consists of impartially maintaining order.  So far all reports indicate that the army has been doing just this.  The forces deployed in Cairo and elsewhere have not taken robust (or any perceptible) action against the demonstrators but, rather, have shown sympathy with the cause of reform/regime change.  This means nothing has happened yet to impair the prestige which the army enjoys with the mass of the Egyptian people.  Quite unlike the massively despised police forces, the army enjoys a high measure of support and is viewed by many on the street as the ultimate guarantor of Egyptian identity and pride.

No observer can conclude that any outcome which does not feature the departure of Mubarak is conceivable.  There is no certainty about what will transpire after Hosni and company depart.  The possibilities include a reasonably fair, honest, and open election occurring on or about the date already scheduled.  They also include the nightmare outcome of chaos, chaos which tosses up the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

The best way of bending events closer to the first rather than the second outcome hinges on the Egyptian army.  As long as the men and officers of the army see that they and their organization are lionized by the mass of the citizenry for playing a fair game, the blandishments of the Muslim Brotherhood--which includes their adherents within the armed forces--will be lessened.  By acting as an impartial honest broker, by maintaining order, by not seeming to favor either the current regime or the radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a better than even chance that a semblance of a fair presidential election can take place.

The problem with an election, of course, resides in the absence of a high profile non-Islamist candidate.  The former director of the IAEA, Mohamad ElBaradei, comes closest to filling this niche.  The unfortunate reality is he is much better known outside of Egypt than he is within.  Except for the percentage of the Egyptian population which is tied into international affairs, ElBaradei is very much an unknown quantity.  This translates into a strong chance that he could be defeated by a better known personality who is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Again, it would be the army which would have to carry the freight of preventing a takeover by the Brotherhood.  The reality which must be understood by the army at all levels is simply that a Muslim Brotherhood run Egypt would become a danger not only to the region but the world.  As such, the group, as an advocate of armed political Islam, would be a very real danger to Egypt itself.  In its role as ultimate repository of Egyptian sovereignty and identity, the army would have to act to prevent this internal threat--or by failing to do so consign Egypt to the status of pariah.

The US and other Western countries have made one major mistake after another in dealing with Mubarak over the past couple of decades.  Out of a superabundance of concern for the sensitivities and cooperation of the regime, one American administration after another has refused to put any credible pressure on Mubarak to undertake real, albeit gradual reforms.  Rather, in pursuit of compelling but short-term policy interests, the US has made only the softest of noises, the most gentle of nudges.  Not surprisingly, all have been ignored in Cairo.

The best chance of recovering from this unblemished record of error resides with the leverage provided by the high level of US support for the army.  The time has come for the US to cash in on the mass of IOUs piled up over the years.  This requires not only the correct sort of public statements regarding the necessity of regime change but also blunt talk behind the scenes to the senior and mid-level officer corps.  Not only must these men be made aware of the consequences which would ensue should the Muslim Brotherhood come to power either directly or by proxy but also should be reminded that the bastion of national identity and sovereignty has been the army in Muslim majority countries ranging from Turkey to Algeria to, most recently, Tunisia.

Thirty plus years ago the Carter administration wrote the book on how not to deal with internally driven radical regime change.  Among the courses of action not taken by the feckless Carter and his team of foreign policy midgets was insisting that the Iranian army, a creation of American largess, play the role of stability maintainer.  There was no insistence, not even the mildest suggestion, that while the Shah may have to go, the primary responsibility of the armed forces was that of keeping the change within internationally acceptable limits.

The statements by Secretary Clinton a couple of weeks ago as well as today show that at least one member of the current administration is not given to the blindness of the Carter days.  One can only hope she is not alone in this.

Hosni Mubarak, The Shah Of 2011?

Over the last couple of days as demonstrators, albeit in diminished numbers, took on the security forces of Egypt, the US has been issuing contradictory statements which are redolent of those made in 1979 in the weeks before the plug was pulled on the Shah of Iran.  Secretary of State Clinton, for example, has tacked between imploring the government of Hosni Mubarak to refrain from suppression and to seize the opportunity to meet the grievances of the demonstrators and averring that the Mubarak regime was "stable"--presumably even without granting ground on the demonstrators demands.

The "stability" of Mubarak's rule is identical to that of the late Shah's.  That is to say, it has the appearance of short term order being (mis)represented by Washington as the reality of long-term stability.  To err on the side of accuracy, it is not so much that the Deep Thinking Global Strategists of the current and prior administrations have simply represented the Egyptian government as stable over the long haul as they have inappropriately invested the regime with capacities it never has possessed.

During the Cold War this confusion of the autocrat's ability to impose and maintain public and political order on a day-to-day basis with the substance of long term stability based upon a perception of existential and functional legitimacy widely shared within the country's population drove most of the glaring errors of US foreign policy.  It was this confusion of the short and long term which joined the US shoulder and hip with the most distasteful dictators in the world.  When night fell as it must on each of these despicable creatures, a roster which includes the Shah, the legacy was one of profound anti-American sentiment which took firm hold not only on the new rulers but the population at large.

The long practice of supporting odious and repressive regimes simply because they assured Washington that the enemies of America were their enemies as well went on a (short) hiatus following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The rise of violent political Islam brought the Cold War golem out of the tomb and back into the policies of the US government.

Hosni Mubarak made the transition of Dictator Meriting American Support due to his anti-Soviet, anti-Communist stance to the new role of Dictator Meriting American Support because he was resolutely opposed to violent political Islam, at least the sort espoused by the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood.  Of course, ole Hosni had reinforced his position by carving a key if sometimes ambiguous role for himself in the Mideast Peace Process.  (You gotta admire professional competence even in the service of a rotten cause--the perpetuation of Rule By Hosni.)

It is necessary to recall that Mubarak came to power courtesy of a subscriber to violent political Islam having gunned down his predecessor Anwar Sadat thirty years ago.  Mubarak moved quickly and effectively to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood and other exponents of violent political Islam.  The jails, torture chambers, and graveyards were filled to capacity by Egyptians who either did or might have supported violent political Islam.  Since then Mubarak and his effective internal security organs have launched waves of repression separated by carefully calculated intervals of tolerance.

Many of the periodic tolerance festivals remind the observer of Mao's Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom campaign which encouraged dissent in order that all dissenters might expose themselves and subsequently be liquidated.  At the same time Mubarak did take measures which allowed followers of political Islam to engage in the allegedly semi-secular political life of Egypt.  This served to tie the Muslim Brotherhood to the government at least to a limited extent and gave the government some relief from public criticism as a result of the Muslim Brotherhood's highly effective social welfare programs.  (And, never forget, it gave additional opportunities for the several secret political police agencies to penetrate the Brotherhood and related entities with greater effect.)

All of this implies that Mubarak is a crafty and calculating political survivor.  His use of robust coercion, official terror as well as his willingness to rule by decree when such is either necessary or merely desirable show Hosni is one determined dude, determined to hold on to power by all means necessary be they fair or foul.  Taken together, these aspects of the Egyptian dictator's character indicate strongly that he is not going to exit the stage easily or gracefully despite his advanced years (he is on the wrong side of eighty) and less than splendid health.

There is no sign that the Egyptian army is likely to emulate its Tunisian equivalent.  Nor have the internal security police shown any suddenly developed sense of tender mercy or squeamishness.  Without defection by either or both of these instruments of state power, the probability of Mubarak acceding to the importuning of people power and getting on a jet plane to Saudi Arabia is very slim to none.

The dissidents are cranking up for another round of monster rallies on Friday following prayer services   These may be a real humdinger.  But, they will not mean the end of Hosni.

The anti-government movement is diffuse, lacking a national stature leader (although ElBaradie is headed back home from Vienna) and confined in the main to those meriting the loose sobriquet, "youth."  On the downside, Mohamad ElBaradei is lacking street cred due to his frequent and prolonged absences from Egypt since announcing his presidential candidacy, which impairs his status as a leader of the demonstrations and the movement of which they are the most dramatic sign.

Another very big unknown is the intention of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brotherhood has been on the sidelines.  Perhaps its leadership cadre has been taken by surprise but that seems unlikely.  Far more probable is the assessment that the Brotherhood is being cautious.  The leaders most probably do not expect the demonstrations to have any useful outcome beyond radicalizing an ever larger segment of the politically disaffiliated.  This means the Brotherhood will have a much larger potential recruitment pool in the months to come.

Another, less probable, motive for the Brotherhood's bystander posture is they are waiting for the main chance.  In the event that Mubarak does decide that a trip to Saudi Arabia is in his best interests, the Brotherhood will be in the catbird seat for a takeover bid.  The Brotherhood is very large, quite well organized, highly motivated, sufficiently financed, possesses tendrils nearly everywhere (including the armed forces), and can count on the support of the clerics and faculty of al-Azar university.  In short, it is the only entity in Egypt that can take control of the government.

The ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood to the seat of power in Egypt would be a very real nightmare for the Deep Thinkers of Global Strategy in Washington.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could equal the mullahocracy of Iran as a sinister actor in the region and on the global stage.  From the perspective of either Israel or the US, the Muslim Brotherhood taking control of Egypt is a worst case scenario--on steroids.

There is not much the US government can do to directly influence events in Egypt in the short run.  And, there is not a whole lot more it can do in the longer term.  In a very real sense we chopped off our options when we climbed into bed with Mubarak back in the days following Camp David.  The perceived imperatives of the Cold War and the quest for Mideast peace pushed the US and Mubarak together in a marriage of mutual necessity.  When the Cold War ended, the continued search for the chimera of Arab-Israeli peace precluded ending the marriage.

The coming of Osama bin Laden and with him the challenge of violent political Islam prevented any sane and objective reassessment of the American support for the Egyptian autocrat.  We were stuck with him.  And, stuck with him today we remain.  Our least-worst option is to hope that (and in a low key way, assist) Mubarak remains in power.

Mubarak may be as unpalatable as cyanide but the Muslim Brotherhood would be much, much worse.  And, that, bucko, is all the choice we have.

ElBaradei Cashes In His Chips

Dr Mohamad ElBaradei, who has often seemed to be Iran's next best friend (in both the usual and lawyerly senses of the term) finally had an attack of blunt honesty in the waning days of his tenure as jefe grande of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) The Egyptian has graciously acknowledged that the IAEA's investigation of Iran's nuclear program has reached "a dead end."

This admission does not leave Iran bereft of support. China with enormous and growing investment in Iran's oil fields (120 gigabucks over the next five years with more memoranda of understanding in the pipeline) is more than ready to fill the role of next best friend. Even when faced with a clear message that the Iranian program is seen as "existential" with the consequences for China that implies, the Gnomes of Beijing have been unwilling to go further than not oppose a stiffly worded UN resolution deploring the Iranian lack of transparency and cooperation.

Whoopee! That will sure teach them mad mullahs that the "international community" is as serious as a heart attack about them and their quest for the "Mahdi bomb." You bettcha, bucko.

Dr ElBaradei bemoaned the intransigence of the Iranian regime. Evidently he is filled with sorrow over the failure of the Iranians to take advantage of this "humanitarian" moment by accepting the deal his people brokered some weeks ago. The Geek has to agree. It is such a tragedy that all sorts of Iranians in need of medical isotopes produced in the elderly US built reactor may waste away in misery as soon as the fuel runs out next year.

Perhaps Dr ElBaradei and the Chinese alike should be more concerned over what will happen if Israel sees no options other than either the acceptance of a nuclear armed Iran or taking what military actions it can to delay or end the nuclear effort. The effects of an Israeli attack no matter how carefully designed and skillfully executed will be bad for Iranians generally. It won't be much better for the rest of us.

The time when push comes to shove is not far in the future. Dr ElBaradei seems to have realized this. Perhaps he now regrets his overly polite and delicate handling of the so obviously tergiversatious Iranian government over the past several years. Perhaps he now thinks (realizes?) that the delicacy, the sensitivity, were misplaced and counterproductive. Perhaps he now understands that the Iranian mullahs and their governmental frontmen were working from a vastly different calculus of rationality than was he.

We won't know unless the (almost) former Director General writes memoirs which are a monument to both candor and introspection. By the time that hypothetical happens it will be too late for the Iranians and the world.

The IAEA having failed and the UN sanction effort giving every indication of having done the same the question remains, "What is to be done?" In large measure the answer to this question will be found in one of two places: Washington or Jerusalem.

The Israelis will wait a bit before informing the world as to their answer to the key question. However, the "bit" will not be inordinately long. Particularly if the efforts by the US and others to halt the 800 million dollar deal between Iran and Russia for the latter's S-300 air defense missile system is bootless.

There are limits to the US capacity to influence or pressure Israel into agreement with American policy requirements. The limits are quite constricted where the continued existence of the Israeli state is concerned.

Yes, the Israelis have developed and continue to develop an impressive defensive capacity against missile and rocket attacks. This process has been assisted by heavy American cooperation. Nonetheless, the Israelis recognize the limits of purely defensive systems, a purely defensive doctrine, a purely defensive way of waging war.

When the stakes are high--and none are higher than national survival--the attractions of an active, a very active, defense become overwhelming. Even if the odds are not good as regards total success they are no doubt to be preferred to the odds of overwhelming failure if the enemy gets there "firstest with the mostest."

Few analysts believe that an Israeli attack would do more than retard the Iranian effort by more than a few years with the concomitant of solidifying support for the current regime in Tehran. Further costs would be imposed both on Israel and the rest of the world by the inevitable Iranian riposte.

In the short run the task of dealing with Iran resides with the current occupant of the Oval. That is the place where the questions of what is to be done must be answered first. It is sincerely to be regretted that the response cannot be limited to the area where Mr Obama has shown the most talent: making speeches.

Rhetoric is not relevant. Neither is a very long process of "strategic review." Given the record to date, the use of economic sanctions is not particularly efficacious. Admittedly, the reality of sanctions has never been employed. The sanctions to date have not been designed to really hurt Iran and the Iranians. Additionally, the sanctions have been repeatedly infringed if not down right violated in a wholesale way by China, Russia, and commercial enterprises in Germany, France, Italy, the UK, and elsewhere.

Even if the sanctions already in place were to be imposed in the real as opposed to the hypothetical world it is doubtful they would impair the Iranian will and capacity to pursue the Atomic Grail with success. The same can be said of enhanced sanctions such as those which would hit the Iranian deficiency in refined petroleum products.

Even the most effective sanctions take time to become potent tools influencing the decision making of the target government. The time might simply not exist now.

Because of its failing to exploit the shokku felt by the Tehran regime in 2003 and then frittering away the years following in a wasteland of improperly executed policy in Iraq, the administration of W. Bush set up the US for failure in the great nuclear game with Iran. The successor administration has done nothing substantial to rectify the situation.

Arguably, there is nothing the Obama administration can do at this late date. The Chinese have become far more intransigent, and far more potent in the years since 2003. The same is true with the Russians. Neither has any real world reason to go along with US policy requirements--even though the Kremlin for purely domestic reasons may do so, up to a point.

During the same years the US failings in both Iraq (regardless of later redemption following the surge of 2007) and Afghanistan have severely, perhaps fatally, undercut the will and capacity of the president to use or even consider the use of military force. The advent of the Great Recession did nothing to make the aftermath of a military attack on Iran's nuclear and related target constellation any less unattractive.

Then there is the minor factor of President Obama's personality and priorities. The man is opposed to the messy realities of war. He is post-modern and thus believes such bumper sticker sentiments as "We are all passengers on spaceship Earth." (As French president Nicholas Sarkozy was reputed to have said, "Beam up, Barack.") This orientation is why the president is all for the international campaign against the newest bogey "anthropogenic climate change," but balks at making tough decisions regarding Afghanistan or taking an unapologetic, realistic look at life in the Mideast.

Beyond that, the priorities of the present administration are highly focused on the domestic side of life. The problems in that department are manifold and quite time and energy consuming. The one time community organizer finds enough risk, enough thrills, enough reward at home.

All of this implies that the current administration has made the non-decision decision to learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran while hoping that somehow, someway, somebody, perhaps divine providence, will take a hand and bring the Iranians to accept the US perspective. Since the latter is a little less likely than evil space invaders arriving and so bringing about true global harmony, the former seems the new default position regardless of oratory to the contrary.

The further implication is that Israel will take action in the not overly distant future. That country has little realistic alternative given the totality of the circumstances. Most important, perhaps, in that critical context is the demonstrated inability of the US to deal with the ever growing Iranian threat with any degree of effectiveness.

It pains the Geek to have watched the US slowly degrade in its global influence over the past decade, particularly the past five years. While far from purity in its motives and ambitions, the US was the best or at least least malignant candidate for leadership in a unipolar world.

The Bush/Cheney administration was correct in its assessment five and more years ago that the US was (to update the statement of Secretary of State Olney over a century ago) "practically sovereign in the world." It is to the detriment of the US and many other countries and peoples that the Bush/Cheney administration also frittered away this unparalleled position in a combination of hubris, arrogance, and mis-fought (Afghanistan) or mis-begotten (Iraq) wars.

Bouncing between ideological extremes, We the People compounded the disaster of decline by replacing the overly muscular neocon ninnies with the "progressives" headed by a very nice young man from Chicago who was both post-modern and hopelessly naive in the true ways of the world. In not quite a year the Obama administration has shown precisely what its predecessor demonstrated in not much more time--ideology is the natural and fatal disease of effective foreign policy and military affairs.

As history has shown since written records first existed, the only sort of foreign policy, the only form of military strategy, the only variety of diplomacy which works is one which is coldly realistic as to national interest and national power in all its forms. An over subscription to ideology of whatsoever stripe prevents reality from intruding its ugly head. And, that assures failure.

In all probability it is way too late, but it would be for the good of all if the American president would heed his French counterpart's urging, "Beam up, Barack!"