Lee Smith: Obama has hurt American interests in the Middle East

Last week, one of Syria's government news organs riffed on the title of my book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. "The American president," Al Tharwa wrote, "was betting on the sick horse." Instead of siding with Syria's Hamas allies, Obama was backing the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. From Damascus' perspective, the description also applies to the United States' other Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms, as well as to Egypt and Jordan. These states are ready to be put out to pasture, while it is Iran's "axis of resistance," including Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Syria itself, that represents the rising power.

OK, maybe the regime in Damascus hasn't actually read my book. I lifted the title from Osama Bin Laden, anyway. "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," said Bin Laden, "by nature, they will like the strong horse." But the Syrian appraisal confirms my thesis—in the Middle East, political power is the prerogative of those who take it and maintain it by both the appearance and application of force. In this instance, unfortunately, what's good for my book is very bad for U.S. interests and allies—and for American citizens.

Daniel Pipes: America’s shiny new Palestinian militia

With Israeli permission, these troops have deployed in areas of Hebron, Jenin and Nablus. So far, this experiment has gone well, prompting widespread praise. Sen. John Kerry calls the program “extremely encouraging,” and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times discerns in the US-trained troops a possible “Palestinian peace partner for Israel” taking shape.


LOOKING AHEAD, however, I predict that those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider their likely role in several scenarios...

A Hizbullah statement released late Monday said Nasrallah informed Jumblatt that Syria "will overcome" what happened in the past and open a new page. It added that Syrian President Bashar Assad will receive Jumblatt in the near future.

Jumblatt's harshest verbal attack against Assad came on February 2007 when he told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters that Assad was a "snake" and a "tyrant" and called for revenge against him....

VDH: Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?

Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.

Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?

Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.

Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider the following.

VDH: No Allies — But Plenty of Enemies

Argentina is now angry over a British company's oil exploration off the windswept islands in what it considers its own South Atlantic backyard.

Although nominally democratic, the unpopular Kirchner government in Buenos Aires has claimed that the sparsely settled islands are a symbolic matter of Spanish-speaking pride throughout Latin America — and is theirs because the islands once belonged to Spain in the 19th century.

In response to all this, the Obama administration announced that it would remain neutral. Aside from the fact that the Falkland Islanders wish to remain British, and our prior support for the Thatcher British government during the 1982 war, there are lots of reasons why our neutrality here is a bad idea.

"Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020, the CBO said."

CNN adds that "By 2020 the (CBO) estimates debt held by the public would reach $20.3 trillion, or 90 percent of GDP. That's up from 53 percent of GDP in 2009."

I suspect that most Americans, if asked whether these numbers trouble the Democratic leadership and President Obama, would answer in the affirmative.

They would be wrong.

Michael Totten has put up a great piece about Romania, the communist years, and how it is today.

There are quite a few people who admire the system in Cuba. You know the types I mean. The people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts."

"Ah, yes," she said. "They are ridiculous. But somehow I can understand them. Let’s take the example of France. In France they were all socialists when they were young. Sartre was a close friend of Castro's. Gerard Depardieu was a close friend of Castro's. They believed in this ideal, but after they saw what Stalin did they couldn’t look to the Soviet Union. So they turned their hopes to Cuba. Then they saw what Castro did. The only one who still seemed to live up to the ideal was Che Guevara. So they turned to Che Guevara. I understand them. They were wrong their entire lives, and it is difficult to admit this."

Saudis begin nuclear program

The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Thursday that the Saudi minister of water and electricity, Abdullah al-Hosain, said the kingdom was working on plans for its first nuclear power plant. The US inked civil nuclear power deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last year. Israel had no official response to the Saudi minister's announcement.

Another foreign policy blunder from the Obama administration?

And on Syria?

Poll: 60% of voters think force will be required to stop Iran, 25% think diplomacy will work

ht: Avid

Iran moved nuclear fuel above ground?

When Iran was caught last September building a secret, underground nuclear enrichment plant at a military base near the city of Qum, the country’s leaders insisted they had no other choice. With its nuclear facilities under constant threat of attack, they said, only a fool would leave them out in the open.

So imagine the surprise of international inspectors almost two weeks ago when they watched as Iran moved nearly its entire stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground plant. It was as if, one official noted, a bull’s-eye had been painted on it.

The S-300 system is capable of hitting aircraft up to 90 miles away and tracking 100 targets at a time, and could be used in case of an Israeli air attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

But last week, Russia announced it would delay the shipment due to "technical problems" just one day after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow.

According to Dr. Vladimir Mesamed, an expert on Iran at the Hebrew University, the Gulf nomenclature issue comes up rather often in the Iranian press: “In 2008, when Google published a map that mentioned the name ‘Arabian gulf,’ Iranians were furious. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that the term ‘Persian Gulf’ be used instead.”

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Mesamed said Teheran’s decision to impose the use of “Persian Gulf” on its Arab neighbors is closely tied to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.

“Iran is very unpredictable nowadays. Just a few days ago its spokesmen announced that Iran is already a member of the nuclear club and that it is able to enrich uranium to the 90-percent level. Their current move reflects tension in the region over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the position of Arabian Peninsula states caught between ties to Washington and fear of Teheran. It might also be a preemptive step meant to stop any Arab attempt to ‘Arabize’ the Gulf while Iran is in a vulnerable position,” Mesamed said.

We would like to draw the viewers' attention to the attempt to hijack the Arabian Peninsula – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Yemen – and to incorporate them in the false Persian state, desired by Khomeini's Safavid Persion followers.

It may come as a surprise – if not to you, to your viewers – that the American-Iranian alliance is one of the strongest alliances in the world. It is one of the strongest alliances in the world. Did this sink in, or is it too much of a shock?