FRIENDLY FIRE - Many Americans worry about us being too close to Israel. I think that Israel ought to worry about standing too close to us.
Our American foreign policy in the Middle East and Near East is a catastrophe of the first order. It is an ongoing bi-partisan disaster, marked by failure at virtually every turn.
Bush One started but didn't finish the Iraq War. Clinton failed with both the Palestinians and the Iranians (when there might have been a deal to be made).
Bush the W had ADHD and wandered from Afghanistan where we might have had a chance at a better society, then tried to tame Iraq without sufficient troops and simply broke it, leaving it drenched with blood and Iranian influence.
Then came Obama who tripled down on Afghanistan to no good end. He accepted W's declaration of victory in Iraq and left it as broken as W had and with yet more Iranian influence. Good job America.
The double coups in Egypt show that we can no longer buy Egyptian friendship. Hell, we can't even rent its cooperation. The first coups was the generals overthrowing Mubarak (a thoroughly corrupt despot) and then losing the election and actual power to the Muslim Brotherhood, who just effected their own military coups with the help of American-trained young officers who hate us.
Nor are the Libyans overly fond of us, but fortunately we don't have many uniformed folks on the ground or directly funded projects. They are, however, taking some of the weapons we supplied to the rebels and sending them, along with eastern Libyan former fighters, to Syria. There they join up with Yemeni and Saudi Jihadis--also armed with American weapons.
Bombs are going off in public places all over Iraq as Sunni Arabs, sympathetic with Salafist Jihadis, are fighting against the Shiite Iranian-influenced leaders now exacting revenge for Saddam's Sunni excesses. Got all that? There is, of course, no democracy, Jeffersonian or otherwise. There is no social contract, nor even a Modus Vivendi. There is only sectarian civil war.
Further east, Afghanistan is in chaos. The soldiers and police, we committed to train up and have ready for our departure, are turning their guns on us. Well, that's not precisely true. They're turning our guns on us as Green violence kills Blue American and Coalition forces. The hope that many Afghan people felt in the beginning of this misadventure has turned to dust as Karzai has proven himself to be both weak and corrupt and there is no decent government in sight.
We talk about establishing a no fly zone or some kind of safe and pacified area in Syria when there is no such place in either Iraq or Afghanistan after a decade of misspent blood and treasure! The Chairman of our own Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, came to Afghanistan to look into the Green on Blue violence and his plane was damaged by rocket fire while at Bagram Air Force Base. At the same time, to the west, dozens of Iraqis were killed by bombs within sight of Baghdad's Green Zone.
In Syria, no one has a good plan or practical policy. Getting in the middle of an uncivil civil war seems like a bad idea. We rightly hate to see Basher Assad kill innocent Sunnis. We will also hate to see revengeful Sunnis slaughter innocent Alawites. Yet even more would we hate to be slogging through this disaster on the ground.
It goes without saying that as fractured as Pakistan is, the one societal agreement is that they hate us. And why not? We call ourselves allies and rain missiles from drones on them to prove it. They are convinced that they are being persecuted by a secret cabal of America, India (of course) and Israel (by tradition)!
Speaking of Israel. They are just about our only friends in the whole unholy Holy Land. Israel is the only nation where Americans are welcome and are relatively safe. Israel is the only state in the region with a real and functioning democracy, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious population that practices (yes, imperfectly) tolerance or even holds tolerance up as a value. They don't hate us. They also don't trust us--but that's another issue. They judge correctly that in the event of an attack against them, we would not commit our nuclear arsenal in their defense--not Obama, not Romney, not any American president.
We live in a strange world, a world where we drop bombs on our so-called allies and do little to our enemies. We impose great and terrible economic sanctions on Iran, then watch as they are broken by our friends in Iraq and we give waivers on these stringent sanctions to China! Naturally, we don't know quite what to do with Israel. If they are smart (which they are) they won't stand too close to us.
They can be our friends, however, it's way too dangerous to be an ally.
(Jonathan Dobrer is an op-ed contributor to the Daily News and Friendly Fire and is a syndicated columnist. This column was posted first at Friendly Fire. More on Jonathan and his books at www.Dobrer.com) –cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 69
Pub: Aug 28, 2012