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A Humble Question
October 6, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:02am | 20 Comments
I have nothing against Mitt Romney. He seems like a good and serious guy, even if I thought he pandered to primary voters on torture in the last election. (And got slapped down pretty hard by John McCain in a debate, if I recall.) And I think Gov. Romney has a list of pretty good advisors on defense and foreign policy, including Eliot Cohen and Meaghan O'Sullivan, who are both bright and honest scholars and thinkers. But when choosing a co-chair for your Middle East policy team, surely you can do better than to appoint someone who was party to the brutal, sectarian Lebanese Civil War. Surely you can do better than to choose someone who was a partisan in that conflict, no?
Who is it? As a German I am
Who is it? As a German I am not really into Romney's campaign. And I couldn't find any info about his co-chair for the Middle East policy team...
Walid
Walid Phares
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/02/walid-phares-and-lebanese-forces.html
Let's be totally honest. 95%
Let's be totally honest. 95% of voters could not care less what role Walid Phares played in Lebanon and the balance feel he was a bit flaccid in dealing with "the Muslims". I would wager a hefty amount that less than 2,000 people in the US could identify Walid without the aid of google....
I happen to know Professor
I happen to know Professor Phares, and regardless of his previous role during the lebanese civil war (which was both a war between fighters and between scholars) I believe he is well versed in the middle eastern affairs to occupy the spot in Romney's campaign. I don't think the Republican party is looking for unbiased or apologetic academics to fill in their ranks, and Phares' backgrounds makes him a good fit. Anyways, he is already a congress majority adviser on Middle Eastern affairs and global Jihad, and the presidential campaign will be a good opportunity to scrutinize and debate some key issues in the current US foreign policy from a first hand connoisseur's perspective.
Middle East is not going to
Middle East is not going to rank high in the list of concerns this election. I am really surprised with the focus on spending that we can not get a debate about the Afghan war. If the war stops, it will not do the US economy any better. That is a sad state of affairs. This war is wrong for America, there is no country for us to negotiate a peace, there is no sunset in the legislation that started it. It will only stop, when America has had enough of it. Problem is, no one is paying attention and Americans take their liberties for granted. When that happens, you get what you deserve.
The future of the Middle East depends on the people in the Middle East realizing that stability is their only hope. Stability brings economic growth, and that is exactly what they need to take care of their people. The differences of beliefs are too fixed and varied to allow stability to happen. No one on any US Presidential staff, regardless of the amount of financial resources that is available, can get the Middle East to change. Money only buys time, it is honey for the bees.
America is too split. We need to get priorities right. McCain is an idiot. He was a POW and got rid of this wife, then got a new one that got him a job. It is sort like Chelsea Clinton landing a $300,000 salary in grad school. Some Clinton supporter is repaying the favor. That really should strip Democrat's gears, how many new grads can not pay for their student loans cause they can not find a job. It goes to the core of beliefs. Same with McCain, if you can not be true to your wife how can you be true to your country. POW or not. Lot happens in Politics that is very distasteful. It is hard to deal with your own morality, it is hard to look at yourself in the mirror.
Romney is true vanilla, I really do not care if the next President is a Democrat or Republican, I just want some one that can enable Americans. The Fed is giving money way, there is no progress. To me that is amazing, it is also a statement.
Obama took us too far to the cliff, he is not a mender, he is a divider. That is unstable. People do not want more instability. If Obama gets a second term, he is going to go right back to where he started, right back to his true ideology. He is transparent.
Perry is a long shot, he would be fun to watch. Sometimes that in itself has value.
If Americans want peace in the Middle East, we have to start with understanding ourselves first. What America really needs is a President that can help us look in the mirror to let us see who we really are. Not sure Americans are ready for that. I will settle for a Howard Cunningham that can walk us through the questions without making us feel bad. Romney might be the person to do that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XIpU8BzpJw
I hear the laughter. What makes you change you mind? Some that makes you laugh or gives you a lecture?
The biggest Middle East
The biggest Middle East policy issue right now is curiously similar to Nixon and Ford courting the Shah of Iran in the early 1970s with massive arms deals - yes, this one:
The Republicans and Israel are all on board:
Source: Critics Slam Obama Administration for 'Hiding' Massive Saudi Arms Deal, Nov 2010, ABC News
Andrew Scott Cooper has written an excellent book on the 1970s deals with Iran and what came after, "The Oil Kings" that should be required reading for every presidential candidate (including the sitting one). Back in the 1970s, they thought they could arm the Shah to the teeth and he'd be their strongman in the region - and look how that turned out. If you think the Saudi Royals can't go the same way as the Shah, think again.
It does look like "Professor Phares" (nice PR spin, that title) is a full-blown nutter, and I doubt he'd get along that well with the Saudis, now would he? The warm relationship between the Saudi Royals and Israel notwithstanding... and wasn't the Shah of Iran also a "great friend of Israel", too?
Go to Google News and type in the following: saudi arabia protests
Could it be that spring is coming?
P.S. "BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia was the leading buyer of U.S. weapons in 2003-10, receiving arms worth $29 billion, the U.S. Congressional Research Service's latest report on arms transfers stated. . . .The 75-page CRS report said that over the entire period Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally since World War II, was far and away the leading recipient with deliveries totaling $29 billion. It was followed by India at $17 billion, China $13.2 billion, Egypt $12.1 billion and Israel $10.3 billion."
Just an economic stimulus package, folks! Nothing to see here!
gunboat diplomat on October
gunboat diplomat on October 7, 2011 - 1:59am
It is not a perfect world, is it.
Go fast stuff is what America is good at, we have off-shored and taught the world how to do everything else.
If we stop selling the go-fast stuff, then maybe we should put the brakes on globalization.
Obama wants the world to buy the "American label". Why should the world buy American when GE, GM, Ford, and every other manufacturer is doing something else in other countries.
Why should American children get smart when all they have to look forward to is getting out-placed by a person from India on a H1B vacation that works at a lesser salary and does not bring a reoccurring health cost to the corporate spread sheet?
Why should Americans build Universities? To train someone from China that has never paid US taxes?
I have a lot of questions too.
You do realize that Professor
You do realize that Professor Phares wrote 12 books since the Lebanese civil war ended, notably his latest book entitled "The upcoming revolution", published two weeks before Tunisia happened. Maybe we should all take the time to debate his ideas instead of crucifying him for an alleged role he had in an undecipherable civil war.
...As opposed to Obama and
...As opposed to Obama and former PLO spokesman in Lebanon Rashid Khalidi.
Not sure if any of the 2012
Not sure if any of the 2012 candidates have a clue in either party.
Walid Phares on the Romney
Walid Phares on the Romney team is indicative of a lot of things, first and foremost the ability of anyone to reinvent himself in the US with the help of a PR firm and lots of good friends. It is easy because no one really looks too closely at people's pasts beyond what that person chooses to reveal. Would Romney be concerned about an idea such as rearrangement of Lebanon's populations so the Christians would be in the south so as to be protected by Israel? I'm sure it would not bother him in the least.
It may be easy for some to dismiss the man's Lebanese Civil War background, but if you consider jihad as terrorism and terrorism as the intentional killing of noncombatants, then it is important to find out exactly what he was doing during his time with a militia group. But then, who knows, maybe Romney is also gullible enough to believe MEK propaganda and want to get them off the terrorist list, having avoided looking seriously into what they are about.
The Obama administration demonstrates the continuity of US policy in the Middle East regardless which person or party is in charge. The peoples of the region, with a few notable exceptions, neither respect nor fear us. They simply see that their interests and those of the US are different. The biggest message from the "Arab Spring" is that people would like to make their own decisions, whether or not they coincide with the wishes of the US or anyone else.
The US has lots of "power" but less and less "influence." If the next President does not accept this reality, then the best one can hope for is that he not start a war with Iran, an outstanding item on the wish list of some within the US foreign policy establishment.dvalish
Well, "when God created
Well, "when God created America" he probably didn't want a Muslim Arab on a presidential candidate's foreign policy team.
Visitor on October 8, 2011 -
Visitor on October 8, 2011 - 5:35pm
The Obama administration demonstrates the continuity of US policy in the Middle East regardless which person or party is in charge.????
The US has lots of "power" but less and less "influence."?????
Not sure I agree. When Bill Clinton ran for office lot of folks looked the other way concerning what a future President did on foreign soil. Part of that was about not breaking US law. As far as the above? Not sure that I would call what Obama is doing as continuity in the ME, he has added his own ideology to FP. There is duplicity in Obama's words gives each side of the argument reason to believe they are supported. It is not a healthy place to be cause history tends to put people on either side of the fence. I really do not think that Obama wanted to give the Palestinian speech at the UN, he had to. That speech pulled him back in the USA camp, he had to pander to the Jew vote or his party would lose traction in the 2012 campaign.
As for the last above, US still has all the influence it wants in the world. There is a lot of cash being spread around the world by the US, that speaks volumes. Countries bluff if they say they do not want it. Europe is still protected by NATO, the Euro's do not want to spend on defense. A defense budget would kill the Euro social programs that they have built since WW2. US dollar is still the safe haven in the world. China and India need the US consumer and US corporate intellectual property more than ever to produce capital for its agenda. The US navy is still keeping shipping lanes open in many places of the world.
More than anything else, the US does not always ask for "payment" of service. If the US did ask for "payment" or take its toys home, there would be a different view in the world. The US is not exercising its influence, that is the difference in our views.
Think about this. American consumers are about there own interests. They purchase for the lowest price, a fad, or status. They look inward not outward. Think about what would happen if the US consumer just stopped buy ALL foreign products PERIOD.
That would be a cash register heard around the world, America just does not organize around nationalism.
BTW.....Those pissed about $5 DEBIT charges. Rather than listening to the DICK Durbin and walking from from Bank of America, JUST USE CASH. CASH is still "free" to use. Not sure why DICK is bent on debit cards, he is a US Senator, he should support the American currency a little more. His party must like debit cards, standard procedure with that one.
I got this reply to
I got this reply to Abukhalil's article on Salon.com
"Abukhalil, a Hezbollah Propagandist, is stupidly helping Romney"
By Benedict Franks
Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 12:02 am
Asa'd Abukhalil, the well known Hezbollah propagandist in America and the America basher in the Arab media, the operative who goes on Hezbollah's al Manar TV and meet with Terror leader Nasrallah, despite US laws, thinks he is smart when he tries to trash Walid Phares, the well recognized scholar on Jihadism and the author of the prescient "The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East." In his tract published by Salon.com Abukhalil tries to tarnish Phares' image by attacking his Lebanese Christian roots. But the Hezbollah propagandist, who thinks he is damaging Mitt Romney's political credibility by attacking his newly appointed advisor on Middle East affairs, is actually rendering the frontrunner an incredible service.
The San Francisco based militant has attacked Phares on every ground that is going to help Mitt Romney harvest support from sectors traditionally under his competitors wing. By attacking Phares as someone advocating the defense of Christian minorities in the Middle East, he is drawing the support of millions of Americans voters from Lebanese Christian, Maronite, Egyptian Copts, Assyrian and Chaldean, as well as Christian Sudanese descent to the Romney campaign from other more conservative quarters. Worse, when American Mideast Christians shift, they impact mainstream American Christians who are concerned about "persecutions of Christians in the region." More needed Christian Americans could be affected to shift. In addition, as Phares has written extensively on the Green revolution in Iran, the Kurds, and liberal Muslims all rising against the Islamists and the Jihadists, the reckless Abukhalil and his "compadres" in the Islamist and far Marxist blogosphere are causing a shift towards Romney by people who are basically in the center. Last, but not least, when Abukhalil, known to be among the most anti Israel and anti semitic bloggers, calls Phares pro-Israeli, what does he imagine would the result be? Well more people from the Jewish community are going to shift in reaction to a pro Hezbollah propagandist ranting. What Abukhalil at Salon.com, the other Hezbollah operative "Abu Muqawama" at CNAS, Ben Smith at Politico, Lobe at IPS News, Max Blumenthal, the anti War folks and others are doing, is simply to gIve Romney an edge he didn't have before, in the midst of a Presidential primaries.
For if the Obama camp wants Romney failing to reach Republican nomination, knowing that he is relatively the most capable in defeating Obama, the last thing you'd do is to offer Romney segments of voters from the Christian and Jewish communities, as well as people from the center by waging this idiotic campaign against a highly regarded scholar in those circles. The "apologist lobby," as for CAIR during the Pete King hearings, has fired too early on a radio active target. For Professor Walid Phares has too much material out with books and articles for over 30 years. You can't scratch him with little Abukhalil(s). You'd need heavy weight academics to challenge him on substance not light weight bloggers who circulate unfounded rumors and often wrong facts.
The Obama camp better reign in on its online "militia" before the latter loses the battle of "defeating Romney at any price." One can see clearly that Phares has read Sun Tzu as he teaches Global Strategies. He hasn't responded to any of the attacks that started with CAIR, then the apologist reports endorsed by Wahabi funded John Esposito, To Press TV and now the Hezbollah propaganda network. There is a reason why. Simply to have all the crowd "unload" their "material" and show exactly what is their "map." By having the "militia online" firing at will, you'd determine its entire apparatus -which is almost done- and you'd use their chaotic firing to mobilize the undecided people, which is also happening now. Silence sometimes is the mother of communications weapons, till the time comes. Abukhalil is causing his allies lots of trouble.
The appointment of Walid
The appointment of Walid Phares indicates that Mitt if elected, unlike Hussein Obama, will not bow to the muslim world
In what way, exactly, has
In what way, exactly, has Obama "bowed" to the Muslim world? The extension of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Vetoing the Palestinian state resolution at the UN? The constant bombardment of other predominately Muslim countries with drones? The continuation of GITMO and other violations of American law? The tepid support for the middle east revolutions (except, of course, when the US is not bestest friends with the dictator in question)? Holy shit, some of you people are fucking clueless.
I don't know and I don't care what your feelings are about the Muslim world. Quite frankly, my opinion of pieces of shit like you is that you are all worthless hypocrites. Walid Phares was involved (regardless of his specific role) with two brutal militias who committed heinous civilian massacres. Of course, to people like you, that is irrelevant. What is important to you is not the act, but the victim. If the victim is aligned ideologically with you, then it's Islamofacistic savagry. If it's a Muslim, then oh well, collateral damage, and the violence was probably justified anyway.
You are a revolting human being. Fuck you and everything you stand for.
having a progressive
having a progressive orientation, i voted for Obama & contributed to his campaign. the first inkling that something was not right was his lo bow to the custodian of the holy shrines & to the Japanese Emperor. Giving Israel bunker buster bombs, altho they say they know how to make them & it's cheaper for us to give it to them rather than give them $ to make their own, is the same as green lighting a strike on Iran that will suck us in.Dubya had refused to give them the bombs. Then there is the UN Palestine speech that showed he had no character followed by trying to capitalize on this uncredible FBI sting op.
Mark my words, this guy will later join a catastrophic Israeli strike on Iran- all before the election. As the Romans would say, he has no gravitas or autorats. he is playing way over his head & it will be to our detriment. Ron Paul is the only guy talking foreign policy sense. I would vote for him even tho he matriculated from Duke.
With Mitt in charge we would
With Mitt in charge we would not be eagerly waiting for USAF/IAF birds hitting iranian nuclear facilities with bunker busters.
Returning to Abu Muqawama's
Returning to Abu Muqawama's original point: if you want a Christian nationalist who dedicated years to the extermination of Palestinians and fellow Lebanese Muslims to advise you on "jihadism" (by no means his original specialization) that says something. It says a lot about NDU, and the Washington DC approach to the war on terror, and that Romney has not veered from that campaign. Phares' books are so far into the Islamophobic approach to terrorism that bona fide academic journals are not reviewing them -- it is simply not true that his academic expertise is what has brought him to the hub of policymaking. He has virtually no standing on other issues like the revolutions now sweeping the Arab world, or the role of Turkey, or even a thoughtful approach to Iran (naturally, Phares is opposed to the Islamic republic and every Islamic group, movement, etc.) So -- it may be crazy -- but perhaps the Washington DC defense establishment wants another Christian warrior as its Middle East representative, and that fits in with certain values of the radical right.
Abukhalil is far from a Hizbullah "supporter" - that's just trash-talk. He is critical of every Middle Eastern government and group, has not appeared on al-Manar (not that it would matter). He is a bibliophile to the n'th degree and came of age when the left and socialism was still a strong force in the Middle East.
As for not agreeing to appear with Abukhalil - in these meetings, one usually has no such choice - I was shocked to be included in a meeting with Phares during Israel's onslaught on Lebanon during 2006, and I was clearly at odds with everyone in the room then practically rejoicing the physical destruction of Lebanon and its fragile communitarian spirit (which nevertheless, or somehow remained)
UN PRESIDENT TIM KALEMKARIAN,
UN PRESIDENT TIM KALEMKARIAN, US PRESIDENT TIM KALEMKARIAN, US SENATE TIM KALEMKARIAN, US HOUSE TIM KALEMKARIAN: BEST MAJOR CANDIDATE.
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