Briefs

The Phone Call
Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but this time it feels different.  Unlike the convoluted complications of the Mueller Report, the Tr*mp-Zelensky phone call is easy to understand — easy for people with only casual interest in the news to think about.  It might be enough to convince Pelosi and the Red State Democrats that impeachment isn't so bad an idea.

Iran
No matter where the drone attack on the Saudi oil installations was launched, everybody knows Iran was responsible.  That, of course, is what the Iranians intended: their layer of deniability was paper thin.  They showed the Saudis how vulnerable they are, and upped the ante on Tr*mp, who now is forced to choose between tanking his re-election chances with a war nobody wants, or looking like a wimp to his base.  Yes, Our President has been having a bad week.

Israel
If Avigdor Liberman manages to keep the ultra-Orthodox parties out of the ruling coalition, he'll have done one good thing in his life.  Benny Gantz is moderate only by comparison to Bibi (and, maybe, Liberman), so if he successfully forms a ruling coalition, it won't make much difference to anybody outside of Israel – nor to the Palestinians.  Still, it does provide the prospect of Bibi going to jail.

Meanwhile, on the Arabian peninsula...

Given all the craziness going on in the USofA lately, our news media have paid scant attention to the ongoing crisis in Yemen — so you may have missed it when the UAE announced that it is ending its military cooperation with Saudi Arabia and withdrawing its forces.  After four years of war, it seems that the Emiratis have concluded that fighting the "Iranian threat" posed by the Houthis just isn't worth the effort and the expense.

This leaves the Saudis in an awkward position: they actually will have to learn how to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in weaponry purchased from the US over the past ten years in order to have any hope of winning their genocidal war, and they will have to take over the task of corralling and controlling the numerous and fractious "pro-government" militias fighting in Yemen.  Given the leadership style of Saudi Crown Prince MbS – macho incompetence – there is little reason to expect the Saudis will achieve those goals.

Emirati forces already have been withdrawn from the port city of al-Hudaydah, where international agencies offload food and medicine to relieve the suffering of the Yemeni people.  Whether the Emirati withdrawal will result in more or less aid getting through remains to be seen.  What is clear, though, is that Our President – who admires macho incompetence – will continue to support the Saudi war effort until a veto-proof majority in Congress acts to stop him.

The "threat" from Iran

How do you win a war without actually fighting one?  You don't.  You can, however, create the appearance of war: engage in a lot of bloviating and sabre-rattling, and then declare victory.  You don't need a real war to "wag the dog."

When I saw the first photographs of the damage done to those oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, I was, to say the least, incredulous — describing the damage as "minimal" is an overstatement.  No oil was spilled; no flames; no casualties.  Compared to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 or the attack on the Limburg tanker in 2002, the recent acts of sabotage were flea bites.

All four tankers were able to proceed under their own power: there was no disruption of traffic in or around the port of Abu Dhabi, to the great "relief" of the Emiratis. If the Iranians truly were responsible, it's evidence that they're too incompetent to present a credible threat to anybody. Just the same, the "attacks" helped to justify the accelerated buildup of US military force in the region and the sale of $8 billion worth of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In the absence of any evidence implicating Iran, the obvious question is qui bono? — and the obvious answer is Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Tr*mp Administration.

Then there is the "intelligence" indicating Iran presents a "credible threat" to US forces in the region.  Such intelligence always exists: what changes is its interpretation, depending on what those who control it want it to say.

Those who want evidence of Tr*mpian "collusion" with a foreign government will do better examining the Saudis than the Russians.  Everybody expects Saudi support for Jared's "peace plan" for Israel and the Palestinians (and nobody will be surprised if the plan seeks to institutionalize apartheid in the name of "economic development.")

One final note: Erik Prince runs Academi, the successor to Blackwater, out of Abu Dhabi — and he employs a substantial number of former Navy Seals.

Transactional?

Nobody can claim to be surprised by the way Our President responded to CIA assurances that Prince MbS did, indeed, order the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.  Tr*mp did stop short of claiming that Khashoggi was an Iranian agent, but only by a hair's breadth.

News analysts, once again, had to come up with a term to describe Tr*mp's approach to foreign policy.  Seizing on his emphasis of $110 billion dollars in imaginary arms contracts, once again they settled on transactional.

Other terms come to mind — "morally bankrupt" is a strong contender — but rule books at major media outlets demand the appearance of neutrality, and transactional is such a neutral sounding word!  It started me thinking, though.  Rather than transactional, they could have used corporate.

The Supreme Court long has recognized corporate personhood.  (The recent Hobby Lobby decision maintains that a corporation is enough of a person to have religious beliefs!)  Unlike your average person, though, corporations have but a single objective: to increase the wealth of shareholders.  Pretty much any corporate "person" would have made exactly the same decision as Tr*mp: their values appear to be identical.  Tr*mp just might be the embodiment of corporate personhood.

If a corporation really were a person, driven by a single goal to the exclusion of all others, that person would be diagnosed as psychotic.  Presumably, Our President has a variety of goals; but, as we've seen, his approach to all of them is the same — transactional.

Khashoggi, part two

I suppose this is conjecture, but it really feels right: Erdogan went public with lurid details of Jamal Khashoggi's murder because the Saudis didn't respond to his first blackmail attempt.  MbS couldn't imagine that anybody — especially the President of the United States of America — would be all that upset by the loss of a troublesome journalist.  After all, nobody paid much attention to the Kingdom's numerous other egregious abuses; how much difference could one more dead body make?

MbS was right about Tr*mp, of course, but others were less sanguine, and/or more opportunistic.  Under pressure, all MbS could do was "blame the help;" but given that the Turks almost certainly do have audiotapes, and possibly video as well, we can expect the negotiation of some very inexpensive "loans" to Turkey by the Kingdom in the near future.

Nobody actually believes the latest Saudi narrative, and even some Republicans will resist looking like complete idiots by pretending to swallow it — but it's the best anyone can do right now.  Will the whole thing blow over before Congress can curtail US participation in war crimes in Yemen?  As the Magic 8-Ball might say, "Ask again later."

The Real Khashoggi Question

A journalist is missing, probably dead, and whatever happened to him can be attributed to the government of Saudi Arabia.  That certainly is upsetting, but one wonders why it has drawn more media and Congressional censure than ongoing war crimes in Yemen; the imprisonment of women's rights advocates, including one sentenced to death; the imprisonment and near-fatal flogging of a mildly dissident blogger; the kidnapping and mistreatment of the Prime Minister of Lebanon; the Qatar blockade; and an host of other abuses.

Oh, yeah, there was that little matter of the Saudi royal family's involvement with al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

Jamal Khashoggi's reputation for "liberalism" dates from when he lost his job as editor of the Saudi journal Al Watan for failure to censor an article suggesting that Ibn Taymiyya, the 14th century founder of Wahabbism, may have been less than infallible.  It was just a minor glitch, though — more significant, since the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were close ties to ousted defense minister Turki al-Faisal.  One suspects that most of Khashoggi's royal friends were among those rounded up by MbS for the great Ritz Carleton shakedown.

Clearly, criticism of MbS is enough to get a person murdered these days, but there seems to be one question nobody is asking: why did Turkey go so public so soon, and what's in it for Recip Tayyip Erdogan?  It would have been easy enough for the Turks to pretend ignorance: instead, they leapt at the chance to spread grisly tales of torture and dismemberment, thereby revealing a practice of bugging foreign embassies and consulates.  (Nobody actually will believe the "Apple watch" story.)

My guess is that Turkey is tired of being pushed aside as America's favored partner in the Middle East, especially now that Erdogan has tanked the Turkish economy.  How can Americans complain about a little Turkish authoritarianism when the Saudis are so much worse?  The release of Evangelical agitator Andrew Brunson signals renewed Turkish interest in close partnership with the United States — not just an end to sanctions, but some sort of financial rescue.

Crown Ponce Jared won't like the idea, and neither will his "uncle" Bibi: a falling out with MbS will throw their alleged "peace plan" into disarray.  It won't go over too well with American corporations heavily financed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund either.  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!

In Case You Forgot...

Last week, a terrorist attack by Arab separatists in predominantly Persian Iran killed twenty-five and wounded at least seventy others.  Iran blamed the attack on a group financed by an ally of the United States.  In all likelihood, that claim was correct, and the American ally was either Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.

Although the carnage was appalling, it was insignificant compared to what the alliance of Gulf State monarchies continues to visit upon Yemen, with financial and logistical support from the United States.  Bombing attacks are carried out with virtually no effort to avoid civilian targets, and medical facilities, such as hospitals maintained by Doctors Without Borders and other international aid groups, seem to be particular favorites for destruction.  A shipping blockade creates widespread malnutrition and a lack of medication to combat an epidemic of typhus. A UN report points up clear violations of international law, and a strong suggestion that war crimes are being committed.

Members of Congress from both parties have expressed concerns, primarily in response to particularly egregious actions like the bombing of a school bus that killed forty children, but the power to end US involvement lies with the Administration.  Sadly, Our President's bromance with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman makes an end to US involvement unlikely. “We have not seen any callous disregard by the people we’re working with.  So we will continue to work with them, [to] reduce this tragedy,” said Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who does not appear to be working at it especially hard.

Current American preoccupation with the sexual history of an entitled frat boy seeking a seat on the Supreme Court has pushed Yemen to the back pages of the press, but Americans should not forget that their tax dollars are funding atrocities.

Can the Middle East get even worse?

Sure it can — and the cheerful young man you see here is just the one to bring that about.  Now apparently in complete control of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman already has exacerbated regional turmoil, and promises to do more.

For the past four decades, Saudi Arabia was stabilized by oil revenues, religious authority, and gerontocracy.  MbS, as he's known, aims for continued stability, with special emphasis on the stability of monarchical rule.  He very much enjoys being the man in charge — of everything.

Admittedly, keeping Saudi Arabia stable will not be simple for anybody, direct descendant of Ibn Saud or not.  MbS needs to diversify the national economy away from oil and gas while engaged in a complex contest for power with Islamic authorities.  Ultraconservative Islam has been the foundation of his family's rule, but also its most significant rival for power.  Attempts to relax the Kingdom's medieval interpretation of Sharia Law are met with powerful opposition.

The greatest potential for making things "even worse," though, arises from MbS's efforts against regional rival Iran.  After over two years of war crimes in Yemen (with US collusion) and spending many times what Iranians give Houthi rebels, he has produced what the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth, and no sign of resolution of the conflict.

Nobody doubts considerable Saudi pressure on Saad Hariri when he announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Lebanon from Riyadh, nor that the move was intended to delegitimize Iranian ally Hezbollah's role in Lebanese government.  Apparently, MbS thought the pleasure of sticking a finger in Iran's eye was worth the risk of the Syrian Civil War spilling over the border into Lebanon.

The boycott and blockade of Qatar continues, punishing the Qataris for the sin of conducting diplomacy with Iran, with which they share vast natural gas reserves under the Persian Gulf.  The pure, spiteful pique involved is positively Tr*mpian.

Actually, it was just after a sleepover party with First Boy Jared Kushner that MbS seized all police power for himself and had about two hundred potential rivals arrested, including the oft-mentioned eleven princes.  The White House is quite fond of MbS, who exercises the kind of arbitrary authority Our President wishes he could have for himself.  In return for American support, we can expect MbS to weigh in on upcoming Israeli-Palestinian "negotiations," pressuring the Palestinians to accept whatever Bibi deigns to offer them.  (The Tr*mp "negotiating team" consists of three Orthodox Jews and a Coptic Christian.)

Saudi Arabia has potential as a manufacturing center because of its energy resources — including a huge and uninterrupted supply of solar when the oil runs out.  All MbS will need is a reliable pool of cheap labor.  Saudi men are unlikely to take those jobs, so "progress" in allowing women to work outside the home is a strong possibility, provided religious authorities can be brought along.  Failing that, there are bound to be plenty of impoverished Palestinians in the neighborhood.

Foreign . . . policy?

Vulcan mind meld?

 

Can Tr*mp even find Qatar on a map?  Pretty clearly, "his" generals neglected to mention the two enormous American military bases there before he launched the tweetstorm that created his latest international dumpster fire.

To anyone who has been paying attention, the Saudi problem with Qatar is clear: Qatar maintains lines of communication with Iran.  Saudi accusations that the Qataris "support terrorists," including IS and al-Qaeda, are the height of hypocrisy.  Al-Sisi may be more justified in his dislike of Qatar, based on Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood: after brutally overthrowing the Brotherhood's democratically elected government in Egypt, al-Sisi might not feel much confidence in the organization's renunciation of violence back in the 1970s.

So, Tr*mp's profound geopolitical ignorance has left America's military and foreign policy establishments scrambling to clean up his mess, even as they scramble to close the rifts he created with NATO allies on his recent European trip, and his alienation of the British arising from his responses to the terrorist assault on London.  He's already antagonized Mexico and Canada — even Australia!  Who's next?  (Probably not Russia.)

It helps to remember what "America First" meant the last time it was a popular political slogan: isolationism — and "peaceful co-existence" with the Nazis.

Briefly

Middle East
Islamophobic?  Not Tr*mp!  The biggest difference between Sunni and Shi'a, it seems, is $110 billion in military contracts.  Okay, absolute despots who quietly finance radical jihad may not be the nicest people in the world, but why let a few little human rights get in the way of a sweet deal? Meanwhile, the Iranians were putting unprecedented pressure on their own religious radicals in a exercise of something that looked a hell of a lot like democracy.
     (Breaking fake news!!! The "prayer note" Tr*mp slipped into the Wailing Wall said, "No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.")

Budget
The President's budget proposal is understood as an opening bid in a negotiation, designed to lower the adversary's expectations and leave room for expected "giveaways." The Tr*mp document is so extreme that a "compromise" could wind up looking like Paul Ryan's wet dream. The objective of every Republican since Reagan has been to further fatten the fat cats while thoroughly screwing everybody else.  Tr*mp, the alleged "populist," continues the tradition — in spades.

Turkey
Even Erdogan's goons attacking Kurdish and Albanian protesters in downtown DC failed to draw press attention to the extension of "emergency powers" in Turkey in the service of political repression. One can only hope that a criminal investigation into Michael Flynn's employment by Turkey will draw a little more attention to the ongoing decimation of Turkish democracy.  Erdogan paid Flynn a lot more than the Russians did.

Very Briefly

✪ The decision by Congress to allow families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia may lead to lawsuits against the US for consequences of CIA and military activities; I'm fine with that. 
✪ Investigators have provided extensive proof that a Russian Surface-to-Air Missile was responsible for the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine; uh huh.   
✪ Speaking of SAMs, isn't it time to start providing shoulder mounted SAMs to the Syrian rebels, even at the risk of them getting into the hands of Fateh al-Shah (al-Nusra)?   
✪ To the dismay of vestigial Blairites, Jeremy Corbyn continues to lead the Labour Party sharply to the left; so, whither the Democrats? 
✪ So now Peres is dead, along with Rabin, Arafat, and the Oslo Accord; Nobel prize points for trying, I guess. 
✪ David Wildstein's testimony at the Bridgegate trial of Christie toadies Baroni and Kelly continues to provide a laugh a minute as corruption in state and local politics scarcely takes a breather; up next, the Cuomo administration.

Noteworthy

Yemen
Saudi Arabia's war on Doctors Without Borders, along with its many other war crimes in Yemen, has not discouraged the Obama administration from providing aid and support to the monarchy.  Some say it's a matter of "making up for" the nuclear deal with Iran, but the influence of lobbyists for the arms manufacturers may be more important.  There's an effort underway in Congress to stop an impending sale of tanks and armored vehicles to the Kingdom — more as a signal of disapproval than as a means of slowing the war effort — but that would miff arms merchant General Dynamics, so don't count on it.

Obamacare
Aetna got all pissy because the Justice Department is suing to prevent the insurance giant's acquisition of fellow insurance giant Humana, and will cease operations over most of the Federal Exchange.  It's conceivable that some in government will finally concede that there has to be a public option, at least, available on every exchange — but don't expect Hillary to come out for National Health Care while she's pandering to Wall Street.

alt-Right
Stephen K. Bannon of Breitbart News is now in charge of the Tr*mp campaign, signalling total abandonment of establishment Republicanism and complete embrace of the racist, white nationalist extreme of the Republican Party.  Having alienated everybody else, Tr*mp hopes there are enough proto-fascists in the USofA to give him a victory.  Failing that, he is looking for an investment opportunity in some "news" outlet where he can continue to indulge his narcissism.

The Future of US Foreign Policy

In brief, prospects for ongoing US foreign policy are not encouraging.  The Donald's ineptitude is such that he is certain to defer to "the best generals" in matters of war and peace, and Hillary's stance in the 2008 primaries and as Secretary of State suggest that she will continue her ongoing attempts to prove she has enough "balls" to be "one of the boys."  Bernie Sanders will probably have significant impact on the Democratic platform, but the relationship between a party's platform and what happens when that party wins an election has little if any bearing on what its candidate does when elected to office.

The "War on Terror"
Tr*mp vacillates between isolationism and carpet bombing (along with use of torture and killing the families of terrorists), but his commitment to building the size and strength of the military makes one wonder if "boots on the ground" might be inevitable — the military-industrial complex would like that, since it could restore sales to 2010 levels.  Clinton has been largely silent on her suggestion of a "no-fly zone" in Syria lately, but her history on interventionism is troubling, including her vote for the war in Iraq and endorsement of intervention in Libya.  Neither has any fresh ideas for dealing with the Islamist State as an international threat, even if Obama's efforts to cut into the territory it occupies continue to make progress.

The Middle East
It seems clear that Clinton will maintain US support for the Arab autocracies, despite copious human rights abuses within their territories and Saudi war crimes in Yemen.  She also will be more friendly to Netanyahu's increasingly bellicose and repressive path for Israel than Obama has been, and the Palestinians will be out of luck, no matter what Bernie gets into the Democratic platform.  Tr*mp's support from Sheldon Adelson suggests that he will be even deeper in Netanyahu's pocket than Clinton; and his rejection of the Iran deal and insistence that the Saudi's "pay their own way" would be a recipe for a nuclear armed Middle East.  With regard to Assad, Tr*mp might be too conciliatory, Clinton too bellicose.

Europe
I don't know if anybody has considered problems that might arise from installing missile "defense" systems (against Iran? Yeah, right!) in Eastern European countries moving ever closer to fascism, but that probably can wait for 2020.  Neither US candidate has anything to offer Europe in dealing with its refugee crisis, and neither will use US influence over the IMF in an attempt to soften Europe's devastating austerity regime, albeit neo-liberal (aka neo-conservative) US bankers have a lot more influence than US political leaders.  Clinton certainly understands Europe's problems better than Tr*mp, but she's no less neo-liberal in her thinking than her husband was — and nobody knows what impact Tr*mp's affection for Putin might bring

Asia and the Pacific
The US Chamber of Commerce seems confident that Clinton will change her mind about support for the TPP as soon as she's president, and they're probably right.  Tr*mp seems to think he could negotiate a "better deal," but his confidence in his negotiating skills is just as inflated as his hair.  The Chinese, I suspect, couldn't care less which of them is elected because China's economic and military power is unlikely to be affected.  Tr*mp's fantasies of Japan and South Korea having their own nuclear arms would almost certainly remain fantasies, because not all Republicans are total idiots.

Africa
If Tr*mp can identify more than three African countries on an outline map, I'd be very surprised.  Clinton, at least, is aware of the mess that is African politics and economics, but is unlikely to move beyond Obama's very limited engagement there.  With either of them, Africa will remain on the back burner until something explodes.

Latin America
Haven't you had enough pessimism for one post?  It's certainly been enough for me, so I'll pass over Latin America — where the US has had virtually no policy at all since "our" dictators were overthrown — and save it for another day.  In the meanwhile, though, keep an eye on Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatamala, et al.  Tr*mp's "wall" won't keep the chaos south of the border.

Etc.

Refugees
Angela Merkel and the rest of the EU entered into a devil's bargain to deal with the flow of mostly Muslim refugees, the devil in question being Recip Tayip Erdogan.  I suppose they preferred to deal with a devil outside the EU rather than the nativist devils who put increasingly fascist governments in charge in Poland and Hungary, and are threatening the rest of Europe as well.

Brexit
See above.  The nativists of UKIP are eating away at Britain's Conservative Party, and the controversy over EU membership is threatening to split the Conservatives in much the same way that Tr*mpism is threatening to split the Republicans on this side of the pond.

"Our" Muslims
Obama is pissing off the Saudis.  Good.  It's about time.  Somebody has to do something to end the human rights abuses in Yemen, and cut into support for world Islamism.  While he's at it, maybe something can be done about the buildup of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, which now seems to include tactical nuclear weapons, and is vulnerable to Taliban attack.

Merrick Garland
Hopefully, the nomination is more a political ploy than a serious indication of the kind of candidate most Democrats want to see on the court.  We've had more than enough "moderation" from Obama himself, and we don't need a Justice who reflects Obama's illiberal views on the primacy of government over individual liberties.

Mideast somehow manages to get worse

The Saudis are at it again, and the USofA, as usual, is letting them get away with murder. Literally.  Murder.

The beheading of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr (along with sixteen others who apparently don't matter to anyone) has sent any hope of diplomacy to solve regional problems into a tailspin.  The best known spokesperson for the Shi'a minority in eastern Saudi Arabia as well as for the Shi'a majority in Bahrain was exactly the wrong person to kill at this juncture if there is to be any hope of something resembling peace in Syria or Yemen, an effective coalition against IS, or a little more stability in Lebanon.

So the USofA sent a "naughty-naughty" message to King Salman the Senile, which will have no impact whatsoever on the likely instigator of the crisis, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud.  My heavens!  But what more can we do?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Stop providing logistic support to the Saudis in Yemen.  It hasn't done anything to limit Saudi aerial massacres of civilians; and without it, they just might lose and go home.
• Stop selling the Saudis advanced weapons systems.  Yes, the military contractors will whine about it, but there are plenty of other autocrats to arm around the world.
• Invite President Hassan Rouhani of Iran to meet privately with Obama.  Hint that they're close to relaxing the sanctions against Iranian oil.
• In diplomatic cables, refer to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the young dipshit behind the current mess, as "the young dipshit." Leak the cables to Wikileaks.

There no longer is any real need to suck up to Saudi Arabia.  Their control over oil prices has been sharply reduced by American fracking, and now that the USofA is exporting oil again, higher oil prices might even help the American economy.  Using the Saudis as a foil against Iran also no longer is necessary now that there's been at least a little thaw with the Iranians; but also because Saudi financed Salafists have done us a lot more damage than Iranian backed terrorists in recent years.  We wouldn't be inclined, nor encouraged, to build any sort of alliance with Iran, but there's no reason to take sides any more.  If we think "getting tough" works, let's get tough with both.

ISIS? Isis who?

(Sorry, it's another long one — but it had to be.)

The Russians and the Turks are rather upset with each other at the moment, Turkey having shot down a Russian aircraft that was bombing northern Syria.  The Islamist State (as I prefer to call it,) most Americans might be surprised to learn, was not at all involved.

Putin and the Russians support Bashar al-Assad, the Allawite leader of Syria.  Russia has an ongoing deal with Assad which permits Russia to maintain its only military/naval presence in the Middle East.  Turkey under Erdogan is dominated by an authoritarian Sunni Islamist party hostile to Assad and his Allawists, although Erdogan's primary goal in the region is to suppress the Kurds, who have been getting closer to having their own, autonomous state.  To defeat the Kurds, Erdogan has made use of Turkmen rebels, who happened to be be concentrating their own efforts on both Assad and the Kurds, and whom the Russians bombed for being anti-Assad.  The Kurds, of course, have been the only effective US ally in the region.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have been restricting most of their bellicosity to Yemen, where they are trying to destroy the Houthi.  The Houthi have some degree of support from Iran, Saudi Arabia's chief rival in the region.  Iran, its Shi'ite proxy Hezbollah, and Russia are cooperating in support of Assad.

So where does IS come in?  Good question.  And where does the USofA come in?  Better question.

IS offends Western sensibilities in a variety of bloodthirsty ways, so the US is necessarily against it.  Inspired by Salafi Islamists from Saudi Arabia, and probably making use of private Saudi seed money, IS has been endeavoring to create and maintain a Sunni extremist caliphate in Iraq and Syria.  Some of our "allies," though, are far more concerned with Assad and Iran than with IS atrocities.  The USofA is providing Saudi Arabia "logistic support" (telling them where to bomb the most civilians?) in Yemen, thereby helping their proxy war against Iran.  In Iraq, however, the Iranians are our chief allies in protecting what was supposed to be our puppet regime.  In reality, though, it's their puppet regime because we let it be dominated by Shi'ites.,

Turkey, a NATO ally, really has nothing in particular against IS, considering how it is keeping the Kurds from establishing an independent state on Turkey's border.  The Turkish border with Syria restricts the IS supply of weapons, war materiel and foreign fighters about as well as a chain link fence obstructs the flow of water.  Bear in mind that Turkey is part of NATO, and supposedly opposed to IS, but since it started bombing in northern Syria, its primary targets have been the US allied Kurds.

In brief, since the USofA opposes both Assad and IS, and since others in the region have mixed feelings about which other groups present the greatest threat to their own self-interests and different historically and geopolitically based affinities and animosities, there are too damned many sides, and every new development creates more ambiguity.

It's a ridiculous time for anybody to want to be president, which sheds a little light on the general ridiculousness of foreign policy discussions in the current campaign.  If we adopt Hillary's "no-fly zone" idea, who do we enlist to help us and who do we keep out?  If we follow Lindsey Graham's prescription and send in ground forces to eradicate the "State" part of IS, it might turn out much more difficult to contend with a stateless enemy.

We're probably leaning on the Turks and the Saudis and the Iranians and the Russians and anybody else who has a real state as hard as we can, but our diplomatic pressure is spread too thin.  Don't blame Obama (this time) — at least he's not actively making it worse.

How to Sabotage a Nuclear Agreement

An unsubstantiated rumor believed to have started on this blog, today, would have it that Paul Wolfowitz, neoliberal co-architect of the US invasion of Iraq, is currently on loan from the Jeb Bush presidential campaign to Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia (see post of April 4, below.)  If true, a Wolfowitz influence would go a long way towards explaining why Saudi Arabia has invaded Yemen to restore the "democratically elected" Hadi administration to power.

First, a word on that "democratic" election.  Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi ran unopposed, in an election boycotted both by the Houthis and Yemen's southern secessionists.  His previous experience was as vice-president to the "democratically elected" Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to resign by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf.  Saleh and his loyalists now are allied with the Houthis.

In what looks most like a barefaced attempt to sabotage the agreement between Iran and its six negotiating partners announced last week, the USofA announced it would be supporting the Saudi invasion of Yemen.  (Note: Saudi Arabia is the number one armaments importer in the world, buys most of its weapons from the United States, certainly would not need any extra help if bin Salman were competent, and is unlikely to profit from whatever help is forthcoming.)

Why did Obama take exactly the wrong step at exactly the wrong time?  Did he intend to sabotage the proposed agreement by backing the Saudis and letting Kerry strongly suggest that the Houthis are Iranian puppets?  Was the intent to back out of the nuclear arms agreement while forcing Iran to take the blame?  Did he go out of his way to provoke the Grand Ayatollah?

That's how it looks to me — and I have no difficulty imagining Bibi Netanyahu, John Boehner, and all Congressional sucklers at the AIPAC teat (of both parties) sitting back with smug smiles on their faces.  Maybe there's something more subtle going on, but if so, it's too subtle for me.  What next?

Normalization

If the agreement with Iran is a genuine step towards normalization of relations, all of us should hope the process proceeds apace.  Iran is not the bogey-man, it is a modern state no more in the thrall of religious power bases than Saudi Arabia, and not all that much worse than the USofA.  The more diplomacy becomes possible in this screwed-up world, the less likely ordinary human beings trapped in conflict areas are to suffer.

In my last post, I proclaimed that it was "all about oil."  Maybe I'll walk that back a little, and leave a little space for testosterone.  It looks like King Salman might not be ruling Saudi Arabia*, given that he's vested most of his power in his son, Mohammed bin Salman — a thirty-year-old spared the "softening" influences of any European education.  He's the one who sent the warplanes off to Yemen, and has been saber-rattling about ground forces.  Yes, he wants us to know he's tough.

Another possible victim of testosterone is Bibi Netanyahu, albeit the testosterone may be more that of young settlers and Hasidim than his own.  As evidenced in the run-op to the recent election, Likud stays in power by tapping into fear.  Is Israel justified in fearing the Islamic world, especially Iran?  Maybe, but the fear is overblown.  As I've mentioned in the past, I'm certain that it would make no difference if Iran had a nuke, because it wouldn't be used.  The last estimate I read gives Israel over two-hundred nuclear warheads, mostly based on submarines.  Nobody is going to nuke Israel.

Frankly, it wouldn't hurt to "normalize" our relationship with Israel.  For many years, Israel has been America's spoiled child, accustomed to getting its way no matter what the consequences for we doting parents.  It's time for a little tough love.

*Right after he ascended to the throne, there was talk about Salman being in the early stages of dementia, but the talkers got their mouths zipped with all due dispatch.

Yemen

Is the enemy of my enemy, etc. etc... ?  Apparently not.

We have heard Yemen described as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and I suppose that's accurate enough a description.  We've also heard it described as an outgrowth of the classic Middle Eastern conflict between Sunni and Shi'a Islam.  That, I'm pretty sure, it is not.

The Houthi are adherents of the Zaydi sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'a Islam, but not nearly orthodox enough to satisfy the clerics who hold power in Iran.  Iranian Muslims supporting the Houthi because they're, sort of, Shiite, would be kind of like the Roman Catholic Church supporting Seventh Day Adventists because they're sort of...  well, you get it.

Move over to Iraq, and you find Sunni clients of the USofA fighting the Sunni zealots of Daesh, aka all those other names and acronyms tirelessly repeated in the American press.  Why are Sunni fighting Sunni?  Not because IS (aka etc. etc.) is especially naughty what with the beheadings and whatnot.  No, it's all about the usual, just as it was from the time of the Cheney invasions or even the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh government in Iran and installation of the Shah.

It's about the oil.

That's why Saleh could be fighting the Houthi one minute and supporting them the next.  That's why the Egyptian military, an equal opportunity oppressor of Islamists no matter what branch of Islam they spring from, is out there trying to restore Hadi to power.  That's why Americans, even some in government, are having such a hard time figuring out how and why anybody is putatively allied with anybody out there around the Persian Gulf.

Don't be confused.  Just follow the money.  Follow the oil.

What's with Yemen?

There are a lot of Americans who never even heard of Yemen, and wonder why it should be getting all that news coverage.  Unfortunately, the news media seem to have little more information about Yemen than the aforementioned Americans.  This article seeks to unravel some of what has been going on there better than PBS, the BBC, or even Fox.

Let us begin.  In recent weeks, a Zaidi/Shiite group called the Houthi has pushed the "elected" Yemeni government out of power but, oddly enough, has not taken over the reins of power itself.  So-called "elected" President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi has resigned, probably a wise choice on his part because his Presidential Residence was overrun by Houthi fighters.  Hadi is often called a "staunch ally of the United States" because he makes no objection when the USofA sends drones against AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) and anybody else who happens to be in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time.

Hadi ran unopposed in the election he "won," with financial backing by the US and the Saudis.  Yemen is a very poor country, which survives mostly on foreign aid, mostly from the USofA and Saudi Arabia.  Nobody was surprised when Hadi, backed by his country's most significant donors, found nobody running against him.

During the seventies and eighties, the southern regions of Yemen were independent, and under Communist leadership.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did South Yemen, and the country was more or less united again.  It is very unlikely that there are any Communists left, but you never know.

At the moment, Yemen has something of the look of a Saudi-Iranian proxy war, with the Saudis backing what remains of the most recent government, and the Iranians supporting the  Houthi group. which bears some slight resemblance to Hezbollah in that it opposes corruption.  The Saudis, of course, support corruption, and certain Saudi oligarchs probably are supporting AQAP as well.  The USofA, needless to say, dares not offend Saudi Arabia, no matter how many journalists are jailed and whipped, "adulterers" stoned to death, or "infidels" beheaded there.

Assuming the USofA does not wish to ally itself with AQAP, the only viable alternative is the Houthi resistance.  The trick is finding a way to do it without pissing off the House of Saud, Israel, and Iranian-hating members of Congress.  The Houthi are at war with AQAP, but probably won't be nearly so willing as Hadi to wave at departing American drones while yelling "bombs away.  On the other hand, it looks like Iran has far less control over the Houthi than it does over, say, Hezbollah.

Okay, did that help?  I didn't think so.