SYRIA, RUSSIA AND IRAN - SECOND COLD WAR IN THE MAKING?

The Syrian crisis has escalated beyond anyone’s imagination. Most of the Arab Spring was limited to local politics. Up till now the populist rebels, who ever they were, have won and the Government in power was ousted. While the eventual outcome of these internal struggles will have an impact on the Middle East and the World political scene, for the moment these countries are still in the process of sorting out their new orders. The Syrian situation has broken the mold. The rebels, again whoever they are, are loosing the battle.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

Now the rebels are loosing the battle not because of Assad’s ascendancy but rather from the aid he has received from Russia, Iran and the Iranian surrogate Hezbollah. Russia has become a very active material supporter of the Assad regime. Even if one is charitable and puts this down to their long history of trade and personal relations with the Assads the implications are far reaching. Russia is aligning itself with the Iranian terrorist axis at a time when Iran is making a sustained play to become a Middle East and a world power.

Russia is shunning any meaningful attempt to settle the Syrian civil war in the teeth of the atrocities committed by Assad. The latter include conclusive proof that the Assad regime is using chemical weapons.

While the world community are coming round to the creation of a no fly zone to control Assad’s aggression, Russia are not only adamantly opposed but are supporting Assad with arms and even, it is rumored, trained personnel. Putin has defiantly stated that the rebels are cannibals and has warned the West not to arm the rebels. 

AMERICA’S POSITION

Obama’s America has tried to stay out of it all. (Blog: Decision Points: Bush, Obama and Syria). However, Obama’s chemical weapons, line in the sand, has been bridged and with pressure from the hawks, like McCain and Lindsay in addition to advice from Bill Clinton, he has to get involved. America’s chief Western allies have been pressurizing Obama for some time to climb in boots and all so they will be delighted to have him aboard. As Jay H Ell writes he is having de ja vu all over again. Putin is risking a second cold war situation by his determined backing of Assad. More significantly he is aligning himself on one side of the great Muslim dispute. The Iranian Shiite side to be more specific. And if it needs reiterating Iran are determined to be a world power with nuclear arms to back them up.

IRAN’S BID FOR ASCENDENCY IN MUSLIM WORLD

Iran is more than mindful that before it can take over the world it has to be the legitimate Muslim super power representative. Put another way before taking on the world it has to win the regional championship to be a contender. Iran is at a distinct disadvantage in the Muslim world. Firstly, it is not an Arab country and secondly it is Shiite and not Sunni. The real true blue Muslims are Sunni.

In order to overcome these disadvantages Iran has taken the lead in attacking the State of Israel. This it has done in terms of rhetoric, unashamedly calling for the annihilation of Israel. It has carried on the Goebel’s principle, if you tell a lie often enough it gains credibility, by denying even that the holocaust ever occurred. It has been more than rhetoric that the Iranians have offered. They fund and train two terrorist organizations that have highly efficient militia – Hezbollah and Hamas. Hezbollah have currently been commandeered to fight for Assad and won back a key hold rebel town that has turned the war around. The Iranians have a natural affinity to the Iraqis in that the latter are predominantly Shiite.

So you are looking at an Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese, (Hezbollah) and Palestinian, (Hamas), axis. In addition the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are leaning toward Iran. This makes the minority government of Jordan even more vulnerable. If this scenario materializes then Iran controls the whole Middle East surrounding Israel. Israel will be an easy target if this occurs. Regardless of the rest of the Muslim Arab Sunni World’s antipathy to Iran they are not going to support Israel over the liberation of Palestine by Iran and it’s surrogates. (Even “liberal” Dubai, whose economy depends on tourism, will not let you visit if you have an Israeli entry stamp in your passport).

On top of this all Iran persists in its nuclear ambitions and Russia, like it or not, is allied to them.

ARAB WORLD.

Although the Arab countries, predominantly the Sunni, have not engaged directly in the fight, they have roundly condemned Assad. In a way it is ironic however that the responsibility to take up arms is still left to the Western allies. No offers of a Saudi Arabia militia on the table, for example. What is pouring in, according to the Washington Times, are large sums of money from wealthy Arab individuals and “charities” to specific rebel groups. These tend to be mainly the Jihad groups of rebels.

There has to be deep ambivalence in the Muslim world toward the Assad situation. Either an old guard is still in power with the potential of an Arab Spring in the background or a new lot are in that cannot feel secure.  All of them are autocratic in one way or another so there has to be some identification with Assad’s plight. Also none of them want to be on the wrong side of the Israeli – Palestinian divide. This dilemma is not unlike that of the Muslims, in general, not coalescing to give a unified unqualified condemnation of Jihad terrorism. (Blog: Jihad – Who Is To Blame?)

All this adds up to the Arab world condemning Assad but doing naught to stop his slaughter or to influence the Russians to back off from arming Assad.

WHERE ALL THIS MAY GO

This scenario puts the Russians in the Iranian camp. If Jay H. Ell knows that so do the Russians. The Iranians have unabashedly taken on the Western and Sunni Arab world. China is not terribly much interested so they are out of the picture. The Russians are showing no signs of letting up so there is a make or break situation in the international power game revolving around Syria.

The West cannot afford to let Assad win. The West for practical purposes means America. How far will America go to stop this from happening? There is too much at stake to let Assad win. Israel, its biggest ally in the region becomes totally vulnerable to an Iranian attack, possibly even nuclear. The picture becomes even darker when a full-blown support of the Rebels, whoever they may be, means being on the opposite side of Russia in a war. This is not just philosophically on opposite sides but both Russia and America materially backing opposite sides with arms and G-D forbid boots on the ground – ala Vietnam or Korea.

As the situation stands there is no way out of this mess. Putin has, for whatever reason, sought to take America on in this arena. What he hopes to gain is difficult to understand. Is he really interested in making Iran a world nuclear power? This cannot be about loyalty to an old friend. Nothing in Putin’s resume points to loyalty being a driving factor in his decision making process.  Putin by going against the majority of Western and Arab opinion is staking a claim that Russia is once again a player in the world scene. If he persists in this stance we are looking at the second cold war in the making. Even more than that America will be dragged into a prolonged Middle East Battle that it hoped it would resolve by diplomacy.

Israel, understandably, are not going to let this strengthening of Iran carry on too long and may well take the situation into their own hands and that will add to the complexity of resolving this explosive situation.

OBAMA AND PUTIN– CRUNCH TIME

Also down the tubes goes Obama’s resolve not to involve America in any more wars. Unhappily this has now become America’s war. This also speeds up decision making on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Obama does not need an antagonistic Russia allied to a nuclear-armed Iran that, if Assad wins out, will become the major player in the Muslim world. He cannot sell out on Israel. Unless Russia is grandstanding before meeting Obama at the Group of eight meeting and at the end of the day will back a compromise in Syria and give Assad a dacha on the Caspian Sea, the situation is going to turn ugly pretty fast. Jay H Ell has to believe that Putin has grandiose ideas about putting Russia back as a major power house on the world scene. The only hope has to be to convince this former head of the KGB that he becomes more significant if he is seen to be resolving the Syrian crisis rather than creating it.

On thing is for sure the future aint what it used to be.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS DEAD

Two clearly different approaches have emerged in response to the current parlous state of the Republican Party. The one approach, executed by the Party Establishment was to conduct an introspective assessment of what has gone wrong with the party and the other approach, emanating from the Tea Party was to continue a full time non -stop smearing of the Obama Administration.   The rationale for the latter approach is that attacking Obama and his Administration is the only issue that the two wings of the party agree on.

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    APPROACH 1: THE ESTABLISHMENT - IT’S MY PARTY AND I WILL CRY IF I WANT TO.
    
    
    • Jed Bush, who has to be the Republican establishment’s choice as the next Presidential nomination, has been very vocal on how the Republican Party is currently perceived by the electorate, (Blog: What Barbara’s “Enough Bushes” Means). The former Republican Governor maintained that the GOP is perceived as the party that is against everything – women, immigration, social security and on and on. He pleaded for a more positive agenda to be articulated that would be more congruent with where the electorate is at.
    • Bob Dole, who has go be the doyen of the Republican party - Gerald Ford’s running mate in the 70’s, the Republican leader of the Senate forever and the Republican Presidential nominee against Clinton, has said Nixon and Reagan could not be in this party. He suggested that the Republican National Committee put a notice on its door, “Closed for Repairs”.
    • The Republican Youth Committee has just sponsored a costly study with focus groups and interviews to ascertain why the youth voted in droves for Obama. Paraphrasing the results, the conclusion was that the Republican Party was way out of tune with their needs and values. This study came to the same conclusions as the National Republican Committee’s in depth review. Predictably, but inexplicably, both the Youth Group and the Senior Group interpreted the results, as meaning that there was nothing wrong with the Republican Party’s policies it was just the way they branded them!
    • And on and on……..
    
    
    APPROACH  2: THE TEA PARTY - IT’S MY PARTY AND I WILL ONLY CRY IF I WANT TO.
    
    
    *With all that advice and all those studies one would think that there would be a bold massive rush to articulate, in pamphlets, speeches and the like, clearly what the Republican Party was. The best platform for that is Congress as it is covered by literally hundreds of media people of all sorts. You introduce or argue against legislature clearly outlining a consistent alternative to Obama’s agenda.
    
    
    *But this is not what the Republican Party Caucus has chosen. Where they, as the majority, in the House of Representatives are in a position to introduce legislation there has been less than ever.  In the Senate where the Democrats are in the majority, there the Republicans filibuster legislation not allowing it to come to a vote.  Instead the oxygen in the Congress is taken up by hearings and investigations that degenerate into smear after smear and attempt to create scandal.
    
    
    *The key spokesmen for the Republican Party now are Rand Paul, Mark Rubio and Ted Cruz and to a lesser extent defeated Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  All have Tea Party support and are in the Tea Party caucus. Where there are alternatives to Democratic Policy they are enunciated mainly by these four. These are articulated as populist slogans. Cruz says there should be no IRS. In public they do not talk too much about cutting off disaster relief and privatizing social security and turning Medicare into a voucher program. Paul grandstanded and filibustered about killing American terrorists with drones ignoring the fact that the last thing in earth is that the Tea Party would want to be labeled is being soft on terrorism. (Blog: Obama Killing Americans – Moans on Drones). Mark Rubio is only emphasizing his desire for immigration reform, as he is Latino. So the leaders are either being populist or practical.
    
    
    It seems quite clear now that the Tea Party controlled Republican legislators have decided to follow the advice of their unelected institutions rather than from their establishment figures and smear the Administration. (Blog: Obamagate – Boomerang?)
    
    
    TEA PARTY TACTICS AND AGENDA
    
    
    Jay H. Ell has blogged extensively about the emergence of the Tea Party. In January 2011 he blogged, “The Tea Party, The New Congress and Palin – All You Ever Needed to Know”, celebrating the coming out party of the Tea Party. In that blog he outlined the ideological divisions within the Republican Party. In two years the Tea Party takeover was complete. (Blog GOP Civil War Sabotages Obama Talks, March 2013).
    
    
    There is now a total disconnect between the Party Establishment and Moderate Republicans on the one hand and the elected Republican Party Representatives as to what the Republican Party stands for and what its priorities should be, on the other. The Heritage Foundation, with former Senator Joe De Mint, the Tea Party Godfather, as its CEO, is calling the shots - there is to be no debate about policy now, just smear smear, smear. (Blog: Obamagate – Boomerang?)
    
    
    This way the Tea Party can complete their hijacking of the Republican Party. The Tea Party policies are not being debated now so the moderate Republicans will not run away. Ostensibly they and the Establishment are all in it together exposing and smearing the administration. The Tea Party is using the Establishment to keep the Republican Party a viable entity the same way the Establishment used them. The Establishment got right wing support, before it gelled into the Tea Party. The Establishment did this by focusing on the right wing social agenda thereby bringing the right wing out to the polls. They then never put the social agenda into legislative effect, as they knew it wouldn’t fly. The Tea Party’s policy is a right wing social agenda, a right wing fiscal policy and smaller government – code for getting rid of every social program.
    
    
    Over the last few years the Tea Party have concentrated on Primary races, poring a disproportionate amount of money into these so that their candidates become the Republican Party candidates.  This has been the modus operandi in State as well as national elections. So where the Republicans dominate the State, Tea Party legislation is being introduced.  On a national level it is self evident  - this blog is all about their take over of the Republican Party Caucus.
    
    
    ESTABLISHMENT RESPONSE
    
    
    Ostensibly the Establishment of the Republican Party is in control. They control the Republican National Committee and the major money connections. Failure to act and follow through decisively on Approach one, above, shows that they are in denial. Karl Rove, the Establishment’s unelected megalomaniac in chief, has decided to throw his PAC money into Republican Primaries but as it is too late it has to be too little.
    
    
    The Establishment ostensibly still has the Leadership in Congress. The leader of the Republican controlled House of Representatives is John Boehner. However, he is the nominal leader. He does not control his caucus. He is there by the grace of the Tea Party. It suits the latter to have him there to give the Establishment deniers false reassurance that they are still in control. Boehner does not introduce any contentious legislation as his caucus is split. He waits for the lead from the Senate, to quote him, - “For the Senate to get of its arse”.
    
    
    Boehner and Mc Connell the Republican Minority leader of the Senate are the choirmasters of the hate Obama campaign. Boehner believes it is a waste of time to talk to the President and McConnell sole stated objective for four years, in “doing the people’s business”, was to deny Obama a second term. His objective for the second term is less complicated it is just deny Obama, period. There is a second objective to the leadership mantra now - stop Hillary 2016. (Blogs: Stopping Clinton 2016 Starts at Benghazi and Carry on Benghazi: Stop Hillary 2016, Part 2).
    
    
    This is not the agenda of the two Republican indepth post election analyses. Also it isn’t the advice of Jed Bush or Bob Dole. This is the agenda of the Joe De Mint, the Tea Party Godfather’s Heritage Foundation. Here the policy is to stay off policy and smear, smear smear.
    
    
    SMEAR, SMEAR, SMEAR AND SMEAR AGAIN
    
    
    So Congress is not dominated by legislation debate but rather by attempting to create scandal either in the debating chamber or by endless Congressional hearings. Perhaps the most disgraceful episode was the character assassination of Obama’s original nominee for Secretary of State, Susan Rice. This lead into the Benghazi fishing expedition that lead nowhere.
    
    
    However the main action is in the endless Republican Congressional Hearings that sap all the media attention. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is the fearless inquisitor. Failure does not daunt him. His earlier attempts at investigations have all fizzled out. Eric Holder the Attorney General was and is the main target. He insulted him, belittled him and without precedent held him in Contempt of his Committee. All to no avail.
    
    
    Issa obeying the Heritage Party line is carrying on the one investigation that he hopes will hit pay dirt – the IRS scandal. As Jay H. Ell predicted, (Blog, Obamagate - Boomerang?), more malfiscience is emerging. But how does Issa pin it on Obama who has already condemned the behavior thus far uncovered and ordered a judicial investigation? Darrell, bless him, has subpoenaed another nineteen IRS workers to sap up the Republican oxygen in his ongoing circus.
    
    
    Issa is lashing out at all and sundry including calling the President’s Press Secretary a paid liar and with his newfound fame his own murky past is coming to the fore. He has work cut out getting anyone to take him seriously.
    
    
    OUTCOME:
    
    
    How all of this is going to elect a “Republican” President is unclear. If any of the aforementioned Tea Party favorites get the “Republican” Presidential nomination how are they going to persuade the independents, youth, African Americans, Latinos and women to vote for them? It is almost as if we are witnessing lemmings going to their suicide.
    
    
    As for Obama he rather likes what the Republicans are doing as evidenced by the choice of his Chief Security Advisor – the selfsame Susan Rice whom the Republicans believed was unfit to be Secretary of State. In her appointed position the Secretary of State reports to her. Obama seems only too happy to watch the Republicans go ballistic rather than offer a credible alternative policy. He has enough sense of history to realize that to complete his legacy he needs another 8 years of Democratic Presidency. He also realizes to get elected you have to do more than attack your opponent you have to offer an alternative policy. This is not happening.
    
    

The Republican Party, that we all knew, is dead. 

JIHAD - WHO IS TO BLAME?

The stark horror of the public dismemberment of a young British soldier and the angry response by the English Defense League, towards the Muslim community, including the burning of a mosque, has reawakened the whole issue of who is to blame and what can be done about Jihadi terror.

This situation is not an uncommon scenario and follows on the recent Boston Marathon Bombing where there was the cold-blooded murder of three and the injuring of 264 persons. It preceded yet another murder of a French Soldier.

Jay H. Ell was immediately struck by the comment of an editor of a Muslim Newspaper, who stated that when he heard about the Boston bombing, he prayed to God that it wasn’t a Muslim who was the perpetrator. One does not need to belabor the number of incidents that have occurred since 9/11. Virtually all of these have been perpetrated in the name of Islam by Muslim Jihadis justifying the Muslim editor's fear. 

Governments recognize that they are dealing with an asymmetric situation where a few people can wreak havoc. There is the overriding fear of them obtaining nuclear weapons or employing biological warfare or taking over a State as they did for practical purposes in Afghanistan. Also there is Iran, who is sponsoring two terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, as a backdrop to all this Jihadi activity. The scenario is further complicated with the Middle East in turmoil where the question is whether the new governments will support the Jihadis or be against them?

WHO IS TO BLAME AND HOW TO RESPOND?

This all begs the question, who to blame and what should the societal response be?

* Prepare for a final war between all Islam and the West.

There are societal elements, like the English Defense League who see this as a war between the Muslims and the Western Judeo – Christians. They see Europe and the world being overtaken by Muslims who do not integrate into society but rather make demands that society adapts to them. The dire economic circumstances in Europe exacerbate the anger of these groups who perceive that they are taking their jobs as well. With each of these violent episodes they reiterate their doomsday predictions that the war is on. Other than rioting it is uncertain how they would deal with this situation. The ostracization and terrorizing of Muslims cannot stop the Jihadists. If anything they can create a fertile recruiting ground.

* Qualified justification for Jihadi behavior and a call to address the “real” Muslim concerns.

There are those who maintain that, while condemning the violence, that one must look at the root causes of this behavior. These groups include several liberal as well as Muslim groups. They argue to varying degrees that the West have scant disregard for the Muslims and the Islam religion. They point to the Iran and Afghanistan wars and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians for example. However, with each act of violence these apologists have less and less credibility, as their position is hard to separate from that of the perpetrators. Like it or not they appear to be justifying the violence rather than outright condemnation of it. To a lesser or greater extent they are giving validity to the terrorists’ position. They need to condemn the violence with no ifs and buts.

This situation is the crux of the dilemma facing the Muslim world. While the Muslims generally feel strongly about some of these issues and the fact that they are being victimized and profiled as a result of the situation, their indecisiveness as a group to unconditionally condemn these acts of terror and the Jihadist entities perpetrating them does not help society isolate the broad mass of Muslims, who recoil like the Muslim editor and pray to God that it was not a Muslim who perpetrated the latest atrocity, from the Jihadi thugs.

* Work towards religious rapprochement.

Then there are those like Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs that form alliances with all religious groups and try to create a milieu that recognizes that differences between the monotheistic religions must be respected and work for peace and tolerance. Sachs gathered on Ground Zero with the leadership of the religions of the world and they all pledged peace and co- existence. As Sachs said that the media took no notice of this momentous occasion. Had the groups broken up in disarray it would have been headline news. Obviously, for the moment at least, these well- intentioned efforts have no impact on societal opinion whatsoever.

* Government response

Governments are really betwixt and between. They are anxious to protect minority rights. Consequently they are very guarded as to who is to blame. They are also as tough on vigilante groups who wish to take the law into their own hands and unfairly victimize the innocents. However, the selfsame governments create lists of suspects and areas of possible recruitment that contain mainly Muslims and Muslim organizations or Mosques. They are then attacked for profiling from the left or pandering to political correctness from the right. The administrations have to accept the fact that the majority on those lists maybe Muslim but the majority of Muslims, by far, do not support the radical Islamic Jihadists.

* Jihadists are not lone crazy nuts.

The crisp point is that these Jihadists cannot be created in a vacuum. They are not lone deranged lunatics. They cannot just suddenly emerge with these brutal ideologies. The temptation each and every time is to say that the perpetrator was some – one who was just radicalized on the Internet. That cannot happen. There has to be a sustained brainwashing process. There has to be several steps to making an American citizen board a plane and go to Somalia – a propaganda piece on the internet offering a more fulfilling life would not cut it? There have to be cells and propaganda that prey on potential recruits. No lone UK citizen dreams up this carnage in a vacuum as has been shown in the recent UK bombing.

UNPLEASANT REALITY

So the unpleasant reality has to be faced that out there in the Muslim Community are those that are radicalizing these people. The even more unpleasant reality is that they have to be infiltrated and information gained. Welfare organizations, religious groups, professional groups and other organizations sadly are the pool from where this radicalization takes place. Hopefully, the country has advanced from the outrageous response in the forties where all Japanese citizens are interned.

In order to do root out those radicalizing the youth, support and understanding is needed from the Muslim groups. The latter are not coordinated in their condemnation of these terrorists and the countries that support it. It has to be said the responsibility is on them to do all they can to make it clear that these thugs are threatening their liberty as much as anyone else’s. They really ought to form a group that speaks on behalf of all Muslims in a clear and unequivocal voice.

On a Governmental level those countries that abhor this violence need to unite and condemn the Jihadist activity and countries like Iran who support and foster it.

As a member of a minority group, Judaism, I can identify with my Muslim brethren the fear of being stigmatized by the behavior of others of my group. The Jews of the world were not in a dissimilar situation when the Irgun in Israel perpetrated terrorist activities on the British prior to the establishment of Israel They were condemned by the Jewish leaders in the Zionist movement including Chaim Weizmann, Ben Gurion leader of the Hagannah in Israel and the Palestinian Jewish Agency, who were the de facto Jewish Palestinian Government. In 1944 after the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Secretary of State, the Jewish Agency assisted in naming names to the British. Teddy Kollek who was subsequently the Mayor of Jerusalem was an agent in this highly unpleasant operation that nearly created a civil war between the Ben Gurion and the Begin factions.

This notwithstanding the fact that there was plenty of root causes for the Irgun terrorist behavior including the fact that the British, contrary to the Balfour Declaration and even the 1939 British White Paper were not allowing the surviving victims of the holocaust entry into Israel.