Iraq has been discussing a truce with Kuwait at the Arab League Summit due to Iraq’s fears over a US attack.link
Actually I meant Mohammedan 
Well Iran and Saudi Arabia both provide money and Iran has attempted to provide weapons to the Palestinians recently. I’m not going to reply to the rest cuz I pretty much agree with most of it.
Erek
Right-wing hawk fantasy material.
Sam should really stop reading those comic book fantasies in the right wing press, in regards to the Middle East, they’ve led to more wrong predictions and opinions than one can possibly count in the past weeks.
The problem with those characters is they keep dreaming of the Cold War and all the fun they had back then. NR and their ilk have such a stunningly impoverished and warped view of the region I almost cry when I read their crap.
From Iraq fantasies in re 11 September and Iraqi arms capacity (not that there are not real concerns, but rather NR et al blow them up in funhouse mirrors) and Anthrax to paranoid delusions about Arab threat, it would be comical if so many didn’t take it for serious analysis.
No Arab State (present regimes) is going to go to war with Israel. Period. Syria: nope, they made an art out of strategically sitting out of actual offensives back in the “good old days” of the Arab-Israeli wars. The Syrian regime prefers to prop up other poor bastids to die for them.
Which makes the cynical posturing at the Arab Summit – I listened to the whole nauseating thing live – by Assad even more revolting than it is on its face. Jordan ain’t gonna do squat, barring actual Israeli invasion or – and here we have the real wild cards—fall of the Monarchy.
Egypt, Egyptians still bitch about how, from their POV, nobody supported them in the last round of warfare. Again, barring a complete collapse in the Mubarek government, there ain’t gonna be a war from the Egyptian side.
Lebanon? Well, Elmer Fudd(*) – aka Nasratullah our friendly head of Hezbollah – now he might just get it into his funny fat turbaned head to do something, if the Syrians allow him to. Probably not more than guerrilla action, and to my knowledge the northern border has been fairly quiet, excepting incidents in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
(*: He seriously sounds like an Arab Elmer Fudd)
That pretty much covers the neighbors. Iraq and Iran might try do something long range, but more likely to do things like smuggling arms to the P’s most radical wings such as Hamas. Jordan, if too destabilized might go that far, but truthfully the Jordanian military elite are none-too-fond of the Ps in general so things have to get real bad before that happens.
The sad thing is most Arab talk is just that, empty god damned words. Not just in this domain but in most areas. Big promises, little follow through. As in the area of the billions promised to the Ps by the Gulfies.
Where are the real risks?
In the near term: stability of neighboring Arab governments and their effective ability to work with the United States (and Israel clandestinely) on the issue of al-Qaeda.
Having directly observed their security networks, I would not foresee any government collapsing – save the Lebanese government, although in this case exogenous financial difficulties would likely be the cause given the doubtful ability of the Leb government to cover current interest expenses.
However, it strikes me as likely that most governments will find it hard to get their security people to actually cooperate, even if highest level will to cooperate continues, which I see as doubtful on a de facto basis.
The real question is what happens in the territories. What does Israel do? Edwino hit the nail on the head n re choices. They are three, from the Israeli side. Unfortunately, as usual the Israeli government is the sole proactive mover at the governmental level. Sam has utterly captured the issue with PA upper echelons, not just Arafat sadly. They are a self-interested elite with little to no capacity (mentally or actually) to take the initiative, even allowing for real constraints on their margin of maneuver.
So the Israeli options are
(a) Continue current in and out semi-occupation. Possibly the worst choice but the most likely. It simply allows continuing running sore to get more and more infected with hate all around. An ever worsening cycle of violence.
(b) Expulsion of the Ps from the territories. The Israeli (far?) right’s wet dream. I think in the long run a disaster, in the short run? Media chaos. Doable? Not without extreme bloodshed. Might provoke open armed conflict with Jordan and Lebanon, more likely to provoke cold war of sorts – if there is not already one, and could cause the utter collapse of neighboring Arab governments. Utterly alienate internal Arab population with capacity of generating internal violence and apartheidesque conditions. Whole ‘war on terror’ in Arab world grinds to a halt in a de facto way
© Withdrawal into near 1967 borders, throw up a wall with a DMZ. Most likely to achieve relative calm. Problem is, the unilateral action is likely to take all of Jerusalem, leaving the open sore alive. But would tend to restrict area of conflict, as Shebaa Farms. Least bad of a number of bad scenarios. Impact on Arab regimes? Hard to say, might give a point of negotiation in re Jerusalem settlement.
Of course, a miracle could happen and things could go better, but usually guarded pessimism in the region serves one best, or so a decade of experience has taught me.
None of this is as dramatic as the fantasies of the Cold War hawks, but could get to a truly terrible spot. Frankly, part of the reason why this has spun out of control is the incredible myopia of what I will refer to as the hard right hawks, at the expense of wiser heads like Powel. The other reasons being the utter incompetance of Arafat (who is an idjit) and the instrangeance of Sharon, but leaving Sharon out, there seems to be no way to overcome Arafat’s myopic, self serving behavour. The best thing all around would be for the idjit to have a heart attack or die in his sleep. Netanyahu’s dream of taking him out is just going to hand it to the extremists.
Returning to USA: The obsession with Iraq and the single-minded navel-gazing has led to a real diminishment in leverage. Let me make a business allusion. International relations are like long term business relations and the smart corporation approaches issues such as long-term capital raising, supplier relations and the like from the perspective of repeated transactions – repeated games in game theory terms – rather than one off isolated transactions (or games). Why?
Because as empirical evidence and game theoretical research shows, investment in ongoing relationships lowers average costs of getting what you want, even if one-off costs might be lower. Example, the corporation that drives the hardest bargain on the capital markets such that say bond-holders or equity buyers feel they got cheated or abused, ends up facing higher costs the next time around. The Bush administration is now discovering the principle applies to inter-State relations –no surprise there really as that’s what the literature has said for years and years.
Bush II has paid attention to the I-P conflict only when the admin’s immediate goals were threatened, ignoring the long-term deterioration. Now we walk into a conflict that is spiraling out of control, whereas close attention and leverage starting in the Fall might have at least hedged the violence, insofar as it appears that among the reasons Arafat’s people stopped impeding Hamas –besides their own weakness – was that they saw no attention to their concerns. Right or wrong, the calculation is clear.
I am frankly amazed that Bush II has managed to piss away the immense leverage we got in September through a series of unnecessarily clumsy and badly timed moves. Axis of Evil, ABM, Steel, etc, none of these were required by pressing interest, given unfinished business with al-Qaeda and real need for security cooperation with other nations in re intel etc.
You know, Collounsbury, you have some valuable things to add to these discussions.
Which makes it too bad that you have to continally wrap your cogent arguments inside a noxious mixture of ad hominem attacks, smug superiority, and condescension. Some day you are really going to have to learn that not everyone who has a different viewpoint from yours is a drooling idiot who has masturbatory right-wing fantasies about the prospect for world war. Intelligent, educated people can and do differ on these issues.
You need to learn to treat your opponents with respect. Or you need to go away.
Cite?
How does one know what these individuals are dreaming? 
Are you in contact with their psychoanalysts?
According to Eric Alterman, what does set the right wing pundits apart is their strong support for Israel. (When I was a lad in the 40’s and 50’s, it was the left that supported Israel. I do not know how this turnabout occurred, but it’s one reason I now feel more comfortable with the pubbies.)
Yep, I totally agree. Israel could wipe out all the Palestinians (which they have the fire-power to do) and the Arab community wouldn’t stop them.
Beyond this point, my crystal ball is not working. Israel bends over backwards not to use their powerful armaments (which is probably a good thing.) The Palestinians and those who support them won’t be deterred by current Israeli strategy of simply responding in some way to each provocation.
One would think that things couldn’t go on forever like this. However, they have gone on more-or-less like this for 50 years. Fifty more of the same is not out of the question.
OTOH the balance will change dramatically when or if the Palestinians ever get a real stock of modern weapons… :eek:
This is the most interesting wild card in the region. I have no doubt that the various factions are slowly stockpiling shoulder-launched anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. It’s impossible for me to believe that the Palestinians haven’t been able to get a hold of some of these. The recently-captured ship was likely only one of many efforts at obtaining heavier weapons. The Palestinians are hesitant to deploy them because the IDF will treat doing so as an open declaration of total war.
Nonetheless, even a handful of these weapons will dramatically change the balance of power because the IDF will no longer be able to operate in the West Bank and Gaza with impunity. At the same time, they’ve no one to shoot back at. Suppose for example, a Stinger missile fired from a refugee camp shoots down an Israeli helicopter. Israeli tanks and APCs head toward camp but start taking anti-tank fire. At this point, the Israelis can either mount a full-scale assault on the camp, killing hundreds of civilians, or they can back off, not a pleasant choice to have to make. Even if they capture the camp, they won’t find what they’re looking for. In the recent incursions, most of the actual militants were long gone by the time the Israelis arrived.
One-off costs, huh? I seem to recall that the Sudetenland was supposed to be a one-off cost. Your umbrella, Mr. Chamberlain.
I see now that I have this backwards. According to Collounsbury’s logic, Chamberlain caving in to Hitler on the Sudetenland was an “investment in an ongoing relationship”. If Chamberlain had stood up to der Fuehrer at Munich and called the Nazi leader’s bluff, Collounsbury would have shook his head in his condescending Collounsbury way and tut-tutted that the Prime Minister was damaging prospects for a healthy, long-term, lower-cost relationship with Hitler. In fact, the way things turned out . . . good God, Collounsbury, you’ve been around a while, haven’t you?
Doghouse Reilly
I think you’re missing C’s point. If I can sum it up rather pithily it’s
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Don’t dig the well when you’re thirsty.
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Don’t piss in it, either, as you’re going to need to drink from it again later.
Collounsbury’s got quite a temper and he’s gone too far once or maybe twice, but very hardly here. His contempt for right wing press need not include all of it’s readers. I would characterize you as intelligent, though not very sensible and I believe Collounsbury too has said somerthing to that effect.
(But as an aside: Collounsbury, for fuck’s sake, don’t get yourself banned… That would be tragic.)
For Pete’s sake I mean. Been told to watch my language.
I can’t see how attacking the National Review amounts to an ad hominem. I mean, it must be one of the easier targets of direct criticism in this debate. They make easily refutable points in nearly all of their op-ed pieces. And I’m pro-Israeli.
But I will agree with Collousnbury on most of his points anyway. The US has tossed any illusion of being a fair arbiter in this conflict and has only stepped in when direct US interests are threatened. In fact, that is how I would classify most of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Remember how he ran on a platform of no peacekeeping missions/clear endpoints to military operations/expand the military but reduce their role/we are not the world’s policeman? How things have changed. It seems we only enter negotiations with Russia when we are looking to do something with ABM, we only confer with the Muslim world when we are about to take military action against one of them, we only confer with the EU when we need their support for something that we are going to do (or need to deflect some criticism for something that they obviously don’t support, like steel tariffs), etc. Our foreign policy overall has been quite reactive, not proactive.
But back to the debate, I will disagree with Collousnbury on one point. While I do view the US actions on the I-P situation as a Band-Aid on a festering purulent invasive abscess, I end my pessimism at that. I can’t see the I-P conflict from expanding to a regional or world conflict, unless one side does something extremely stupid. And I see the situation normalizing pretty rapidly after a few weeks of a reduction in violence.
Whatever way the reduction in violence comes about – from Arafat reigning in who he can as he did in December, from Sharon actually accomplishing something with this little field trip into Ramallah – most of the damage of these last 18 months is easily reversed. Even the polarization in public opinion is quickly changed once each side allows itself to come out of its seige mentality. The economic, political, and military benefits of cooperation are too great to be ignored by both sides. If extremism is repressed/quashed/ignored on each side of the Green Line, then each side has every reason in the world to live in peace.
Arafat is a moron, and his actions have done nothing but delay IMHO inevitable peace. But, his intifada has succeeded in hammering the point home that Israeli security is better accomplished without the West Bank and Gaza than with it (a fact that Barak acknowledged at Camp David and Gaza). There is only one piece of the puzzle remaining: Israel needs assurance that the Palestinians can work with the Israelis to root out terrorism and prevent extremism. When and if that one piece ever comes, there is no reason for the occupation to continue, for the intifada to continue, or for there to be anything but full cooperation between Israel and Palestine.
Let me just add that my views on the subject are very similar to what Barak told Paula Zahn on CNN yesterday morning:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/03/28/barak.attack.cnna/index.html
And Arafat (granted he is under seige right now) still is a moron. Check out his answers to Amanpour when she asks if he has any plan to reign in terror:
Would Iran do that? Seems farfetched to me.
Would you say Jordan is particulary vulnerable to destabilization?
Well, it seems very likely (a) will come true before (b), © or anything else will happen. Question: Could things go on like this “indefinitely”, like a decade or longer, no end in sight. You get the feeeling “somethings gots to give”, and soon, but maybe they get stuck in a loop, I don’t know.
Wouldn’t this mean Israel would become a pariah state? End of US alliance, sanctions from at least Europe. (It should mean that at least.)
Because of this (b) seems very far fetched.
Not necessarily least bad. If Palestine turned into Somalia it wouldn’t. Could happen. Also, an eventual real peace seems more likely under (a) than under ©.
Y’know there’s (e) a peace agreement, and (f) a return to the situation before al Aqsa. While they seem distant, (b) seems even more distant to me, thankfully.
Do you really mean that? Wouldn’t Arafat’s death mean (more) anarchy among the palestinians and noone to talk to for the Israelis.
How far will the administration go in pressuring Israel, to get peace or at least calm for their Iraqi war? Considering their folish optimism re other aspects of such a war, they might not feel a dire need for it.
I forgot this before, but… CITE?
For the record, shortly after 9/11 I predicted that the U.S. would not negotiate with the Taliban, but would topple them. I said at that time that the next target after that would be Iraq. I also said that the battle in Afghanistan would be over quicker than most predicted, but that Bin Laden had an exit strategy in place and would get away. I also predicted that there were probably a number of sleeper cells in the U.S., amounting to several hundred people.
In the Palestinian conflict, I predicted that Arafat would continue to call for peace in English while inciting more terror in Arabic. I predicted that as the Israelis withdrew and the U.S. got involved the number of terrorist attacks would increase. I also predicted that the ultimate solution was going to involve massive military action by Israel in the occupied territories, and that Arafat wouldn’t back down until he had absolutely no options left, at which point he would call for peace, but if given it would violate the cease-fire once the heat was off. I also said the wildcard was going to be Hamas and Hizbollah, who were increasingly being funded by other Arab nations and wouldn’t listen to Arafat.
I won’t deny that I might have made the odd wrong prediction, because I’m not clairvoyant. But I’d sure like to see the list, especially since you added that smear to the ‘comic book’ crack as an attempt to discredit me personally rather than the things I was saying.
Oh, and speaking of bad predictions, I believe you just finished saying that the Arab nations were going to stay out of all this. Just today, they issued a statement saying that they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Iraq, and that they considered an attack on Iraq to be an attack on them. In the meantime, they have announced even more support for Hizbollah and Hamas.
Yeah, those Arab nations are just sitting peacefully on the side. They sure don’t want to get involved in anything, do they?
Of course you’ll claim that this is all bluster and that when push comes to shove they will all back down. And you’re probably right, simply because the U.S. could crush them like bugs. But the fact is, they are involving themselves quite deeply both in the Palestinian situation and in supporting Iraq.
I can’t imagine that was ever supposed to be taken literally. otherwise we’d have to invade Belfast.
stoid
Has there been any terror in Northern Ireland since Bush made that statement?
To fine-tune my earlier prediction concerning the likelihood of mid-east peace,
Arafat’s life is a tripwire. If the Israelis miscalculate and kill him, either intentionally or “accidentally,” the Palestinians will treat this like a declaration of war. Violence will spiral out of anyone’s control and the Israelis will opt for “unilateral separation.”
If the Israelis don’t kill Arafat, there won’t be any serious political discussions until Sharon is forced from office. This will be sooner rather than later because Sharon has no long-term plan and his current military response strategy is not increasing Israeli security.
I am having trouble with option ©. That involves the unilateral and sudden abandonment 50,000+ Israeli citizens in West Bank settlements, right? Sounds difficult / politically impossible. Background Ref: Oslo Map: Light grey areas show that Israeli settlements are all over the place. Or perhaps you are seeing option © as an endgame, following Israeli military action.
I suppose it depends on how you’re defining “terror”. No bombs have gone off lately. But there have been several murders and attempted murders by a few different terrorist groups, and bombs have been discovered before they’ve gone off. So yes, it is an ongoing problem - and one that Bush doesn’t appear to have any plans to get involved in (thank God).