By Barry Rubin
It is important to understand that the current controversy over construction in east Jerusalem is neither a public relations’ problem nor a bilateral policy dispute. It arises because of things having nothing directly to do with this specific point.
What are the real issues involved:
By Barry Rubin
Significantly, President Barack Obama’s discussion of foreign policy came only at the end of his State of the Union message. Obviously, domestic matters and especially the economy come first. Yet international affairs are not only vital but often have been the issues on which administrations are judged, no matter how unlikely that seemed at the time.
It is apparently considered impolite to point out that Obama has no previous experience and little knowledge of international affairs. And yet that fact affects the fate of the globe every day. The really interesting question is whether the State of the Union message showed any growth in his ability after one year in office.
Sadly, the answer is “no.”
By Barry Rubin
The year 2010 is going to be interesting. Well, all years in the Middle East are interesting; many of them are far too interesting.
For the Obama Administration, I’m going to predict, it will not be a fun year. True, the best face will be put on things. Since it is protected-perhaps next year to a lesser degree — by the media, the administration has a special advantage over its predecessors. Yet there are two huge and two potentially serious problems which it cannot solve.
by Michael Rubin*
Announcing the results of his administration’s first policy review on Afghanistan more than eight months ago, President Barack Obama declared, “I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” To achieve those goals, the president explained, “we need a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.” Unfortunately, the strategy Obama announced tonight will not achieve it.
By Barry Rubin
There’s something big happening in the air regarding American media coverage of the Obama Administration. With the Washington Post in advance, the New York Times waking up the tiniest bit, the Los Angeles Times trailing far behind, and a lot of other newspapers getting tough, reality is seeping into their coverage. Even the Boston Globe, America’s most liberal newspaper, is strongly criticizing Obama.
The Globe remarks:
A briefing by Joseph C. Myers*
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph C. Myers, recently named the Deputy Director of the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force-Nexus Afghanistan, is a career Infantry and Foreign Area Officer with extensive overseas experience. He just completed one year of service as a political-military affairs officer in the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. On September 29, LTC Myers addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call from Afghanistan.
By Barry Rubin
April, wrote T.S. Eliott, is the cruelest month. But for hopes of peace, freedom, and moderation in the Middle East, June will play that role this year.
In Iran, Ahmadinejad backed by the spiritual guide is about to be reelected. In Lebanon, a regime backed by Iran and Syria is about to be installed.
It shouldn’t be that way. Remember the famous sign in the Clinton for President Headquarters back in 1992, which said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” as the main issue? Well, in the Middle East the equivalent sign would say, “It’s the Islamist revolutions, stupid.”
by Daniel Pipes*
Some of the bravest and most distinguished analysts from the Middle East emphasize that region’s culture of cruelty. Kanan Makiya titled his 1994 book about Arabs Cruelty and Silence. Fouad Ajami writes about Beirut being “lost to a new reign of cruelty,” about Iraq’s “plunder and cruelty and sectarian animus,” and about the region’s “cruelty, waste, and confusion.”
A month ago, US President Barack Obama announced a new strategy to address the current crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama’s plan to ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ al-Qaida and the Taliban in ‘Afpak’ includes deployment of an additional 21,000 US troops in Afghanistan, and an increase in civilian officials to aid in developing the Afghan economy and governmental structures.
by Michael J. Metrinko*
In August 2008, the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, jointly published a manual entitled, The American Military Advisor: Dealing with Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World.[1] Authored by Michael J. Metrinko, a leading U.S. government expert on the eastern Islamic world, the 95-page manual is a refreshing and blunt how-to guide for civil affairs and political affairs officers, excerpts from which follow. Metrinko brings to bear considerable experience. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and Iran and spent fourteen months as a hostage when Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, Metrinko reentered government service. After assignments in Yemen and Iraq, he spent four years on provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and eighteen months interfacing with the new Afghan National Assembly as an advisor on parliamentary affairs for the U.S. embassy in Kabul. –The Editors
It never ceases to amaze me that people who know nothing about the Middle East, in this case Roger Cohen but many other names come to mind, can suddenly proclaim themselves experts and make the most elementary errors involving the lives of other people. It also never ceases to amaze me that people can visit a country, especially a dictatorship, be wined and dined, handed a line and believe it so thoroughly that their mind is closed ever after.
Recently, I met a young man who helped me understand this phenomenon better. He worked on Afghanistan and took exception to my saying that there was no way that Western intervention was going to make that a stable and moderate country. It was too geographically diverse, bound by traditional culture, beset by conflict, and economically underdeveloped to achieve that condition. And no matter how much money was poured in to train its army to be efficient or to finance its government to be honest and effective, the situation would not change drastically.
by Daniel Pipes*
Why, just two weeks into a 209-week term, assess a new American president’s record on so esoteric a subject as the Middle East and Islam? In Barack Obama’s case, because of:
(1) A contradictory record: His background brims over with wild-eyed anti-Zionist radicals such as Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said, with Islamists, the Nation of Islam, and the Saddam Hussein regime; but since being elected he has made predominantly center-left appointments and his statements resemble those of his Oval Office predecessors.
By Douglas Farah*
The case of Khan Mohammed is drawing wide-spread coverage, and rightly so. He is the first known Taliban to convicted of drug trafficking. He was sentenced yesterday to two life sentences.
It was another (along with Viktor Bout, Monzar al Kassar, and other “shadow facilitators”) in a series of successful, aggressive moves by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in tackling not just drugs, but those that use the money to arm those who want to carry out attacks around the globe, particularly aimed at the United States.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
… A U.N. study of suicide attacks documented cases of children allegedly used as suicide bombers by the Taliban … “Most of these children were between 15 and 16 years of age and were tricked, promised money or forced to become suicide bombers.” …
Associated Press, 11/24/08
Here we have yet another one of the many horrors perpetrated by Islamists in their war against civilization — a war to reclaim the Stone Age. But let’s give credit where credit is due: “Afghanistan’s security forces” are also using children as pawns in their war. And in one of the most sickening revelations about Afghanistan, we find from the U.N. study as presented by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that:
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Two men on a motorcycle used water pistols to spray acid on girls walking to school Wednesday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, blinding at least two of them, military spokesmen said. ….
CNN.com, 11/12/08
Also yesterday in Afghanistan, a “… suicide bombing … occurred near a government building hours later that killed and wounded several civilians, including women and children.” And in neighboring Pakistan yesterday, “Gunmen shot dead a U.S. aid official along with his driver as he left his home in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday, a senior police official said.”
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