Tim Rutten in the LA Times:

You cannot change the totalitarian mind through dialogue or conversation, because totalitarianism — however ingenious the superstructure of faux ideas with which it surrounds itself — is a creature of the will and not the mind.

He’s right - it is a crucial understanding to have when dealing with Ahmadinejad or any other tyrant. After all, Hitler’s greatest propaganda film was entitled Triumph des Willens, or Triumph of the Will, not, “Triumph of Ideas.”

Bush goes to the bazaar - and plays the sucker again

The net is ablaze with stories about the Saudi arms deal with the Jerusalem Post running three pieces on how this will impact Israel as well as the US.

The first features a ghastly picture of the Iron Maiden as she prepares to go to Jeddah to convince the Saudis to take a “more active role” in the peace process.

A second piece examines the potential opposition Bush faces in Congress over the deal given the largely open-ended nature of the deal.

The final piece in the Post delivers the really bad news. These three items, which are really one long piece chopped up Israeli salad style, contained two underlying comments—one hidden yet spoken once and the other completely hidden to all but Israelis and their neighbors—the Bald Eagle is being fried once again.

US President George W. Bush’s administration said there is no trade-off in its plans to sell billions in sophisticated weaponry to oil-rich Persian Gulf states whose cooperation Washington is courting in Iraq.

“There isn’t an issue of quid pro quo,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the proposed sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations that have until recently committed little other than rhetoric to the US-backed democratic experiment in Iraq.

The sales, along with an aid package for Israel and Egypt announced Monday, are the fruit of years of partnership and recognition of the region’s strategic importance, Rice said.

The article goes on to explain that in the world view of the State Department, this means that the US hopes to buy Saudi goodwill for things that were previously agreed to but never delivered.

The administration announced the proposed US arms package, estimated at more than $20 billion (€14.64 billion), the morning that Bush’s two top national security aides left for meetings with Saudi King Abdullah and other leaders.

The administration framed the weapons sales, which must be approved by Congress, as a way to strengthen relatively moderate regimes against extremist regimes and ideologies. An increasingly ambitious Iran is the chief opponent.

“There isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to … US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see,” Rice said.

The meeting Tuesday, at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, is the first time Gates and Rice have joined for a diplomatic visit, suggesting an almost last-ditch effort to get Iraq’s Arab neighbors to fulfill their promises to help stabilize the war-ravaged country.

In the other article about Congressional opposition to the deal, Under Secretary of State, Nicolas Burns, was quoted thus:

Asked about demands made of the Saudis in return for the weapons they will receive, Burns said, “There are no formal quid pro quos in this, but it figures that we would want our friends to be supportive of Iraq.”

So, if I understand all of this, the US is giving the large men of Saudi Arabia $20 billion worth of high tech toys with no strings attached. Now, it is true that Condi is going to ask the large men to help out in the West Bank a little—does that mean they get to use some of those new toys?

House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos, who was briefed on the issue by administration officials Tuesday, announced over the weekend that he had concerns about any offensive capabilities the US was considering supplying. Other members went further, saying they would be sponsoring legislation to block such a weapons deal.

“We must not supply arms to Saudi Arabia while they are financing the teaching of Wahhabi terrorism all over the world,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-New York), whose office said he would help draft the legislation necessary to block the deal once Congress had been officially notified.

“Arms supplies to the Saudis may very well be turned against Israel and could easily end up in the hands of terrorists,” he warned. “And we should remember that the hi-tech arms we gave to the Shah of Iran ended up in the Ayatollah Khomeini’s hands. The same thing could end up happening in Saudi Arabia.”

Other members of Congress questioned administration support for the Gulf power at a time of increased US-Saudi tension.

Okay, here is the first warning—the Shah of Iran. Five years after the fall of Vietnam (the dread of the liberal left), Jimmy Carter lost the first round of this war without a shot. According to Professor Steve Brahms at NYU, it was largely due to the inability of the State Department to understand what Khomeini’s value preferences were in the emerging standoff.

To the point, as history has shown, it was unthinkable to the State Department mind that a rational actor might prefer death (read martyrdom) to money. Who would not want to talk to the US and not get lots of money?

While the liberal left is worried that Iraq as another Vietnam, they are ignoring the first total failure of the post-Vietnam foreign policy culture—Iran. Carter’s failure, and the first complete humiliation of the US, was simply because of a refusal to work in the Bazaar. There is no market/capitalist mode of production out here.

As I mentioned before, negotiating in the Bazaar is not working the Market. Possession is everything and all transactions are conducted in front of all other actors in the Bazaar. Whoever wins is considered to be a Big Man because he was able to force the other person (the loser) to take a lower price or pay more than the item was worth. There is nothing here about mutual benefit—whoever has the good has the power and dictates the price. Just look at Hamas’s recent change in the price for Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped (he was 19 then) last year. It is not about price, it is about power.

The worst, however, position to be in the Bazaar is to be the one who gives up something for nothing. This is the freier—a term that can only be roughly approximated as a sucker, but this lacks the total humiliation of the term. The freier is the guy who gives up a good or does a job for nothing. Even the concept of “getting ripped off” lacks the appropriate derogatory abuse that accompanies being labeled a freier.

Westerners think nothing of doing work on speculation. This could be providing a prospective client with samples, prices, and maybe even writing a grant contingent on future earnings. Pro bono efforts are considered to be the life blood of many professions—a kind of priming the economic pump. To the Middle Easterners in the Bazaar, these western traits are the mark of the freier. To work a freier is the mark of a Bazaar master and the process always starts with tokens of good will.

When I was a boy, my father taught me the meaning of the Yiddish word gonef, which is loosely translated as thief. “You meet a man in the street and when you part you discover that he has taken all of your clothes—in fact you are standing naked in the street and you think he has done you a favor.” What my father neglected to tell me was that the naked guy is the freier.

So, what’s going on here? The Saudis are working the US, once again. Since WWII, the Saudis have mastered the art of revealing to all that the State Department is a freier. The money flows but the large men do nothing in return. In English, they laud the US but in Arabic they revile US for the freier it has become.

It is perhaps the irony of living in a capitalist age that the very thing that makes a society like the US work and generates its wealth and freedoms is exactly the thing that impedes and hobbles the Middle East. Mind you, the political system of Israel, the socialist legacy of the Kibbutz collectivist mentality, is not much better. IMRA reported last week that Olmert’s recent peace rounds are nothing more than his attempt to survive to September. Likud holds its opposition party election on August 14, and Netanyahu is the sure winner—elections will not be long after. That is unless Olmert is able to make the bulk of the electorate into freiers once more.

Will the big men of Saudi Arabia play ball? Local money is ten to one against it—a long shot at best. Indeed, the latest rounds of the peace process resemble the opening rounds of negotiations in the Bazaar. The only critical question at this point is who will be made the bigger freier?

Wake Forest University Prof. David Coates writes in, “Life after Blair-the Browning of British politics” that,

Tony Blair shaped foreign policy from No. 10 while Gordon Brown ruled domestic policy from the Treasury. The Brown Government will have no such division. We can therefore expect a more coherent linking of foreign and domestic concerns than was normal in the Blair years, and far less prime ministerial investment in global diplomacy. Unlike the Blair Government, New Labour under Brown will do more at home and less abroad; and we need to be ready for this shift in focus.

[Brown’s foreign secretary ] David Miliband is on record as finding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 excessive, and the Bush Administration’s lack of leadership on environmental matters regrettable. His prime minister is known to favor a shift of focus in Middle East policy from Iraq to Palestine, away from military initiatives towards the economic reconstruction of a viable Palestinian state. We can therefore expect some subtle distancing of UK foreign policy from the “poodle-like embrace” of Bush by Blair; and an enhanced emphasis by the UK on the orchestration of multilateral solutions to international problems: for the Middle East no less than for world poverty and global warming. Given the events in London and Scotland at the end of June, British prime ministers, like American presidents, will continue to stand firm against the threat of global terrorism; but no British prime minister of any party is likely again to be so loyal and vocal an advocate of US-designed policies against that threat as Tony Blair became. Brown is no Europhile. He will keep the Atlantic alliance strong; but he has already promised, when visiting Washington, “to speak [his] mindÉ[and] be very frank”. He and his foreign secretary are likely to speak in that fashion even if, in 2009, the White House is captured by the Democrats.

It’s long been observed that Tony Blair was much more popular in America than in Britain. Blair had been politically close to Bill Clinton regarding domestic policies, but obviously was much aligned with G. W. Bush regarding foreign policy. Brown likely won’t be either, no matter who takes the White House come January 2009. One of the persistent criticisms in the UK of Blair’s government was that it was mostly subordinate to America. Brown will try to distance his government from the US, at least publicly. The key question for him is whether he will be able to shape events or be shaped by them. And nowhere will that question be sharper than regarding the continued presence of British forces in Iraq.

I wrote on June 14 of the possibility that Jordan and/or Egypt might intervene in, respectively, the West Bank or Gaza because of the Hamas coup in Gaza. Egypt is plenty concerned because Hamas is a ideological child of the radical, Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, members of which assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Jordan is keeping a close eye on the possibility that Hamas may move to seize power in the West Bank.

Now former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu has openly called for Jordanian intervention:

(IsraelNN.com) Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has expanded on his general call for Egyptian and Jordanian intervention in the PA, and says Jordan should send over its PLO brigade.

Speaking with Israeli reporters in Washington on Thursday, the former Prime Minister said that Fatah chief Abu Mazen cannot be expected to maintain law and order in Judea and Samaria on his own. He said that Jordan should dispatch its Palestinian force, known as the Badr Brigade. “The Badr Brigade, which is Jordanian-Palestinian, can create law and order,” Netanyahu said.

This idea was less than warmly received even by Bibi’s political allies.

Moshe Feiglin, chairman of the Likud Party’s Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction, responded, “It is very sad that Netanyahu is reviving, via the back door, the Oslo illusion that Palestinian terrorists should protect the State of Israel against other Palestinian terrorists.” …

“The members of the Badr Brigade have been there for many years,” [MK Silvan] Shalom said, “and they are not the ones to bring order, chase after Palestinians, confiscate weapons and arrest them. Expecting Palestinians to do the job against Palestinians is silly.”

I have to wonder whether Bibi really thinks that, too, but is hoping that the Arabs of the West Bank and Jordan will have to spend their time and resources fighting each other rather than Israel.

Last week’s gangland shootout in Gaza transitioned into political uncertainty on the first day of the Israeli work week. The combatants have retreated into their respective corners of the old PA into two separate barrios. Talking Heads everywhere are yammering away pointing fingers and terribly upset about what will happen next.

Alex Fishman points out on YNET, the entire political situation on both sides of the Separation Fence has come to a halt. The PA is finished and Kadima’s future is short-lived at best. Israeli security measures seem to be on autopilot and there is increasing steel with respect to Gaza. The first move appears to have closed the gates to and from the strip, and the second move appears to have closed the gas valves shutting off gasoline.

However, Israelis appear unmoved and the passport office in Afula today had many Arabs applying for travel documents. I live in the Galilee and the Galileans have a long history of being the local equivalent of Rubes. Of course, as any conscious being in the States knows, there has been a recent shock when the Rubes (also the Reds) turned out to be solid people, aware and intellectually astute BECAUSE of their God-fearing traditions and beliefs. So, too, it is with the Galilean who lacks the élan of the Tel Aviv trendy or the fervor of the Jerusalem chaver. Like the inhabitants of Middle America, the Galileans pride themselves on their rural and light industry. There are many small colleges, some newly independent from the Mega University Bar Ilan, that cater to the full spectrum of the cultural diverse Galilee - Bedouins, Druze, Muslims, Christians, religious and secular Jews, and the Russians.

Everyone does national service of some sort. High School is when young men and women begin their preparation for military service. Everyone learns the Bible and many high schools have field trips where students go out to see where Joshua fought the King of Chatzor or where Deborah and Barak rallied their 10,000 at the foot of Mount Tabor. Those who are “too old to go” stand watch at night in their local Yeshuvim or Moshavim. These are real places. Many were born here and many came here from all over the world to live freely.

Almost everyone here is a veteran from some war or action, even if it was only from the rocket bombardments of last summer. They are good soldiers and well motivated. They are well trained and know the first rule of being a grunt—hurry up and wait. Like all grunts, they gripe. Every soldier gripes. It is the first rule of service. Whether in the army, navy, air force, or the merchant marine, the bottom gripes. However, the second rule of service is to follow orders (that’s why the first rule is time honored by everyone).

National service is part of the fabric of the Galilee. On Shabbat, my wife, our son, and I were invited for lunch to the home of some friends who emigrated ten years ago with five sons. While the parents talked about the pros and cons of cherry wood versus olive wood to smoke fish and chicken, our sons talked with a neighbor’s son, home on leave, about which unit to join, what role to take, whose brigade has the highest standing. None of these young men and future gripers believes that Syria wants peace, that Abbas can be trusted, or that Hamas will reason for anything other than to gain more time, more money, and more sophisticated weapons with which to fire at them.

Like all good gripers, they are really saying that they are ready to do their duty, to give their blood, and pay with the ultimate cost for their obedience. Their courage can never be questioned. They only ask that their leaders make good choices.

So, here the Galileans find themselves at the cross roads they all griped about for the last 30 years. There has never been an honest partner in the Peace Process, they say; in fact, there has never been a process at all other than an inscrutable pressure from the US to keep retreating and take another volley. The disconnect is understandable the way the US grunt understands what happens when a bunch of “Oak Clusters” gather around to discuss strategy. Until a few weeks ago, there was no mechanism in this democracy for a treaty decision to go before the “people” in referendum. Had there been such a process, all the diplomatic triumphs of Foggy Bottom
since Oslo would have died at the ballot box.

The real question my neighbors want to know is “What has the US been drinking all these years?” “Don’t they know,” the gripers ask “with whom they are dealing?” Last week, the Galileans watched with the smug satisfaction of every grunt griper as the entire CIA edifice to bolster Abbas and Fatah with 50,000 arms and six armored vehicles neatly transfered into the coffers of Hamas. So while the liberal camp here and the US State Department runs around wondering what went wrong, the Galileans wonder what was Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton drinking?

Indeed, it is the absolutely irrational insistence on a peace process by what appears to be the US State Department that is driving the Galilean gripers overtime. They do not blame the Israeli politicians: they are crooks and bandits who have easily caved into the State Department’s demands. What they want to know is why does the State Department treats Israel, a fellow democracy, like Banana Republic ruled by Junta - a group of Birds and Clusters?

Two Shabbats ago, I was talking with a young man who sits two rows in front of me in shul. He is an IDF colonel who spent a year in the US studying military strategy. He offered the following assessment between the US and IDF approaches to deterrence. “Israel is a small country with limited resources. We have to select when and where to apply pressure. The US, on the other hand, is quite wealthy and can spend its power freely, wherever and whenever it likes.”

This is certainly a necessary but a not sufficient condition to explain the US policy infatuation with the Peace Process. Along with the Galileans, I am amused and alarmed to the extent that “radical chic” lingers on in the mindset of the politically correct professional diplomat. Radical Chic is a term coined by Tom Wolfe in an essay of the same name (1970) about a fund raising party thrown by Leonard Bernstein and his wife on behalf of the Black Panthers in 1966. Wolfe satirizes the “beautiful people” and their historic impulse to identify themselves with “what they imagine to be the raw, vital lifestyle of the lower orders” (from Tom Wolfe’s website). Never mind the allegations of drug dealing and violence, the liberal elite financed and defended the Black Panthers. Several decades later, the same age cohort of liberal elite continues to side with similar thugs and gangland killers. Despite repeated demonstrations of lack of faith and a consistent commitment to make war, US officials insist that Israelis carry the burden and yield to the demands of the PA. Holding aside the nature of the “demands”, what is the PA? Is it the duly elected officials who sanctioned hunting down their opponents in hospital wards or dragging them out of their homes, screaming “We are not Jews”, and shooting them in the streets?

So what is the response in the MSM? Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post today tells us that it is Bush’s fault. The Galileans laugh at the suggestion. In fact, the entire piece is so outrageously ethno-centric, totally ignoring Clinton’s hand in the current situation, that it does not even deserve the honor of a gripe. The Galileans gripe about the situation; but, it is summer—time to clean out the bomb shelter and stockpile DVDs.

Here we go again. Reporting of the violent takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the AP reports,

Abbas, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

The the presidential guard is “elite” but it crumbled fast when attacked by “better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.”

So just how was the presidential guard “elite”?

For some reason, Western media seem compelled to label Arab troops “elite.” Not all of them, of course, but it’s an adjective that falls off their keyboards and broadcasts so easily it’s become habitual. Remember the “elite Republican Guard” of Saddam’s regime that was going to fight ordinary American troops (whom the media never characterize as elite) to a standstill?

Back when this site was on Blogger, I wrote about this media habit. Unfortunately, all those posts disappeared when Blogger got bought by Google (I had already backed them up on my hard drive, though). Anyway, I posted in July 2002 an essay, “Why ‘Elite Iraqi forces’ is an oxymoron:”

Every American unit is elite compared to any Iraqi unit.

Iraqi soldiers may be individually brave or devoted to their cause (I doubt the latter), but large-unit operations are difficult and take practice, practice, practice, which the Iraqi army has not done since the Gulf War and I guarantee has never done in a force-on-force training exercise remotely resembling what the US Army does all the time at the National Training Center in California. This lack of training and capability was fatal in the Gulf War, fighting the US Army, Air Force and Navy/Marines, which are superbly equipped and have been practicing fully integrated, combined-arms, joint-service operations for decades.

I guarantee that iron rigidity, not flexibility, marks Iraqi military operations. In totalitarian states it always does. The senior commanders of the Iraqi military did not rise to high rank because of their military acumen or autonomous creativity. They are there because they are safe for Saddam to have them there.

And that is also exactly the basis on which Mahmud Abbas vetted the members of his “elite” presidential guard: they were politically reliable, not militarily capable. This is pretty much the case across the Arab world and has a lot to do with “Why Arabs Lose Wars” when fighting Western armies in modern times. (They sure didn’t lose them when Mohammed’s successors conquered North Africa, Spain and large areas of southern and easter Europe.)

Anyway, Brian Briggs wrote satirically in 2003,

Pressure from the international community has forced the United Nations to convene a special committee to review standards for calling organizations “elite.” The call for a standard was prompted after the elite Iraqi Republican Guard was seen performing tasks in a not so elite manner.

So nix with the “elite” stuff, ja?

That all being said, the new puissance of Hamas in Gaza is sure to spill over the the West Bank. Hamas was jihadist when Osama bin Laden was still a beer-swilling, club hopping rake enjoying the rich boy’s high life in the corrupt West. Hamas is a client of Iranian mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, though not Shia - the alliance is tactical and political rather than religious. Hamas’ new resurgence is surely worrying Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of which much fear a “Shia crescent” arcing from Iran through Shia-majority Iraq, thence through Syria and Lebanon into Gaza and the West Bank; all but the latter two regions are either majority Shia or have large Shia minorities. I am not predicting, but would not be surprised to see Egypt move into Gaza and Jordan into the West Bank to shut out the closure of the crescent’s creation. In fact, Egypt may well be viewing current events with the most alarm, since Hamas is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood, a strict Islamist movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s. More on this later, I hope.

Update: Comments on. And consider this perspective, via email, from Rabbi Daniel jackson, who lives in the Galilee region of Israel and teaches several classes in Jerusalem at Touro College in Israel.

I take the Derech Allon to and from Jerusalem weekly during my commute. This is a beautiful road, rarely travelled, that strongly resembles the North American West but instead of Native Americans, it is dotted with Bedouin sheppards, their settlements, their flocks, and their children. It is a seriously controlled zone, ranging from 10 to more than 20 kilometers wide between the eastern high ridge of the West Bank to the Jordan River. The area is patrolled by heavy IDF presense with check points at all critical junctures. Moreover, the road runs generally about 500 to 800 meters above sea level while the Jordan runs from -200 meters at the south side of the Sea of Galilee to about -600 meters at the Dead Sea.

I can assure you that the Jordanians will NOT be able to move into the West Bank without Israel’s permission. Moreover, Israel will NOT cede this strip to the PA EVER.

I responded to Daniel, “As for Egypt or Jordan moving against Hamas, you are right, it cannot happen without Israel’s (covert) consent. I thought of that as I was typing the post, and should have added it - but it was late here and I was tired and wanted to go to bed. This just proves George C. Marshall’s dictum that no one ever makes a good decision after 4 p.m.”

The Jerusalem Post reports that a survey,

… conducted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip showed that that 82.7 percent of the Palestinians are pessimistic regarding their conditions.

The survey, conducted by the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University in Nablus, also reported that 92% of respondents feel insecure because of the growing lawlessness in the PA-run areas.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that 10,000 Palestinians “have filed requests to emigrate from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year,” all of which have been approved, while PA officials say that “there are at least 45,000 emigration applications being reviewed by different countries.”

The number of Palestinians who wish to emigrate increased significantly after the second intifada broke out in September 2000. Figures published by a number of Palestinian groups show that 50,000 to 80,000 people emigrated in the first few years after the violence erupted.

Note that it is not violence by the Israelis against the Palestinians that caused, and still causes, enormous numbers of Palestinians to decide to move away, it is violence done by Palestinian factions to Israel and by the factions against each other. Fact is, the Palestinian West Bank and especially Gaza have been embroiled in civil strife (literally a civil war) for at least a year, and the Palestinian people are sick of it.

The solution is so obvious that only the Palestinian Authority’s chief cleric could have thought of it. Stop the fighting? Nah! Forbid emigration out of the PA areas!

Alarmed by the growing number of Palestinians who are emigrating from the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority’s mufti has issued a fatwa [religious decree] forbidding Muslims to leave. …

Entitled “No Permission to Emigrate from Palestine,” the fatwa reads: “There has been much talk in Palestine about emigration, especially among the young people, due to the difficult security and economic situation. This is being done in search of a better life abroad. Many are continuing to rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates of the Western nations with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries.

“We hereby declare that emigration from the blessed lands is not permitted according to religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their homes and must not leave them to conquerors. Those who abide by this ruling will perform an honorable deed and will support the Aksa Mosque.”

It seems that only PA Muslims are forbidden to leave. PA Christians, who used to number almost a third of the Palestinian people, are free to go.

… they’ll be forced to get their act together and solve their own problems.

Iraq? Nope, Africa.