WarSclerotic

While the Middle East combusts, threatening vital U.S. interests, the U.S. attempts to clip Israel’s wings — the only reliable, predictable, stable, effective, democratic and unabashedly pro-U.S. firefighter in the region.

Western policy-makers and public-opinion molders welcomed the 2011 riots on the Arab street as an “Arab Spring,” a people’s revolution and a transition toward democracy. However, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria have demonstrated that the Arab street is experiencing an Arab tsunami and a transition towards intensified chaos, totally unrelated to the Palestinian issue, which has been a regional sideshow.

In fact, Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the International Committee in Russia’s Duma, stated on July 4: “The ongoing events in Egypt confirm that the so-called Arab Spring has led not to democratic renewal but to chaos … We can see this in Egypt, in Libya, in Syria, and in Iraq … The events in Egypt show that there cannot be a quick and gentle transition from an authoritarian regime to political democracy. There can’t be such a transition in the Arab Middle East countries.”

According to the May 13 issue of the Singapore-based Today, “The beauty of the Arab Spring seems to have given way to an almost unbearable Arab Winter … The so-called Arab Spring generated a wave of hope among those fighting for — or advocating — democratization of Arab authoritarian regimes. Now, following regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and with a brutal civil war raging in Syria and increasingly fraught conditions in Bahrain, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq … the region has already witnessed [disintegration which] will reverberate beyond the Arab map … Everywhere in the Arab world and beyond [the Arab Winter] has called into question the viability of the nation-state.”

Amir Taheri, a columnist of the Saudi-controlled daily Asharq Al Awsat, wrote on July 5: “Even before it was fully underway, the Arab Spring was seen by some Western analysts as the prelude to an Islamic Winter … The coup against [Egyptian] President [Mohammed] Morsi hints at … a military summer of chaos. In most cases, change of [Arab] governments has occurred in three ways. One way has been through the assassination of the ruler that dates back to the dawn of Islam … The second way is through military coup … With the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of several new Arab states centered on newly created armies, changing governments through military coups became an established method.

“Since the 1920s, Arab nations have experienced around 40 coups — from Oman and Yemen to Algeria, Syria, and Egypt. The fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt was due to the Tunisian and Egyptian armies pulling the rug from under the feet of their despots. The third method is through foreign invasion, such as the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. The Arab Spring created the hope that another method might be developed: change of government through reasonably clean elections… [However], crowds are fickle beasts on whose back could ride all manner of unsavory characters … Morsi was kicked out because of the armed forces. Egypt would be back to 1952 when [Gamal Abdel] Nasser was beginning to build his military dictatorship.”

A major axis of the Arab-Muslim tsunami — and the most critical obstacle to intra-Arab and Israel-Arab peace — has been Islam, the only common denominator in the violently fragmented Arab Middle East. Since its inception in the seventh century, Islam has been authoritative, coercive, repressive, demanding of total submission, and violently intolerant of criticism by Muslims, let alone by “infidels.” Islamic regimes have always regarded freedom of expression, religion, association and free market — the pillars of democracy — as lethal threats.

Moreover, Islam has always considered itself to be divinely ordained to dominate the Christian and Jewish “infidels,” condemning them to “dhimmitude” (accepting inferiority through peaceful surrender) or annihilation. Islam has never tolerated “infidel” sovereignty in the Abode of Islam, as evidenced by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ hate education system, which refers to the Jewish state as an inhumane entity to be uprooted from the Middle East.

Islam’s strategic goal has been to spread Islam throughout the Abode of the Infidel, peacefully or via the sword/war/terrorism. Accordingly, Islam and democracy, as well as Islam and peaceful coexistence with the “infidel,” constitute oxymorons.

The 2013 Middle East — which is increasingly dominated by the 14-century intra-Muslim chaos, uncertainty, shifty policies and horrific intolerance — is incompatible with a 9- to 15-mile width of Israel, as espoused by the well-intentioned U.S. administration.

The 2013 Middle East highlights the tenuous nature of Arab regimes, policies and agreements and the absence of intra-Arab comprehensive peace. However, Israel is pressured to ignore the nature of its Middle East neighborhood and retreat from the tangible mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria — which constitute its cradle of history and tower over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and 80 percent of Israel’s infrastructures — in return for an intangible and tenuous Arab agreement.

Acquaintance with the Middle East environment, and its implications for vital U.S. economic and national security interests, while the U.S. withdraws and cuts its defense budget, warrants a stronger Israel, which is incompatible with the proposed Palestinian state and an Israeli retreat from the Judea and Samaria high ground.

Everyone hears the sounds of Iran’s centrifuges spinning down the path toward forbidden nuclear weapons, but the West is pretending not to notice.

Europe knows the magnitude of the danger, yet is not responding. While America is hoping that new winds are blowing in Tehran, the opposite may be true. New Iranian President Hasan Rouhani speaks sweetly, lulling the world’s democracies to sleep. So what will stop Iran?

Let’s do a quantitative comparison. How much time and energy has Europe invested in preventing the Islamic Republic of Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? There are almost no indicators of such an investment. The same is true even in the U.S., where the level of fundamental concern about Iran is higher than in Europe. On the other hand, how much exhaustive effort has Europe invested in settling accounts with Israel (which soon will not be able to export goods from Judea and Samaria to the old continent)? This is truly Sisyphean harassment of Israel by Europe.

Israel differs from the European Union’s view that it must separate from territories across the Green Line to receive European funding for science. And even those who accept European pressure on Israel find it hard to understand why it is being applied now, at a time when Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have restarted and efforts are being made to build trust between the two sides. Is Europe knowingly and intentionally sabotaging the talks?

If Israeli representatives are not able to dissuade European governments from boycotting settlement goods, there will be no choice but to come to terms with the EU’s one-sided conduct. But why is the EU doing this now, as peace talks have gotten underway, and why isn’t the EU making a distinction between the main settlement blocs (which will remain part of Israel in any case) and remote settlements and outposts? And, most importantly, how is this in line with the over-arching strategic need to thwart Iran’s nuclear intentions (which threaten the future of humanity)? Israel is not asking these questions loudly. But Europe (and America) aren’t answering with the type of language that is customary among friends.

Israel did develop a military option against the Iranian nuclear program. Meir Dagan (then-Mossad chief), Yuval Diskin (then-Shin Bet chief) and, to a certain extent, Gabi Ashkenazi (then-Israel Defense Forces chief) banded together to thwart that option from being implemented. Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak truly intend to send Israel Air Force planes to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites? In my opinion, Netanyahu and Barak conducted successful diplomatic brinkmanship to get the West to implement painful economic sanctions on Iran, which are still burdening it today.

But memories of that old Israeli threat have passed. Netanyahu is trying to revive the threat by reminding the world of the military option he has at his disposal for use against Iran’s nuclear program. International, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Thursday that the Iranian nuclear program could be destroyed with “a few hours of airstrikes.” I know there are others who have different opinions on that, but there is no reason that Israel should not use Steinitz’s words to reunite the free world behind imposing deeper sanctions on Iran and threatening Iran’s nuclear facilities with military action.

Perhaps this will succeed, but Israel is reheating latkes that were frozen a year or two ago.

In 1645, after failing in his efforts to locate Malta, the Kapudan Pasha, who commanded the Turkish armada that was about to annihilate the Knights Hospitaller group that ruled the island, reported back to his boss, the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim the Mad. “Malta yok,” he said. Translated from the Turkish, it means Malta is no longer in existence.

Despite the fact that the American superpower enjoys limitless advantages in technological capabilities that were simply unavailable to the Turkish fleet in the 17th century, one gets the impression that the Obama administration is still having trouble identifying clear and present challenges in the international arena.

The most glaring example of such repeated failings was on display this week, when word came that the U.S. was shuttering its embassies throughout the Middle East and North Africa following an intelligence tip indicating that al-Qaida was preparing attacks in the region.

The wholesale closure and immediate evacuations, which were carried out quite dramatically and with great media fanfare, particularly of American nationals in Yemen, resurrected the issue of the global war on terrorism which President George W. Bush made a top priority following the attacks of Sept. 11.

Bush’s successor in the White House, Barack Obama, sought to disentangle himself from this agenda to the greatest extent possible. The liberal Obama, who made it a priority to forge a rapprochement with the Islamic world that would serve as a key pivot point in his foreign policy, preferred to minimize and downplay the threat posed by radical Islamist extremists that were liable to thwart and frustrate his conciliatory vision.

In light of these hopes and expectations, which were enunciated quite eloquently in his Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, it was hardly astonishing to learn that Obama’s first decision as commander-in-chief was to shut down the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The threat of terrorism was pushed to the margins, and Obama naturally deported a number of terror suspects to various U.S. allies.

The fact that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during the first year of his presidency further steeled his determination to justify the credit that was extended to him. He sought to put American foreign policy on a path of reconciliation, characterized by a willingness to extend an outstretched hand even to those who provoke and threaten (like Iran).

This deeply ingrained tendency of seeking the widest possible common denominator with Islam out of a willingness to ignore its very foundations and radically violent underpinnings gained further momentum after May 2, 2011, the day on which Osama bin Laden was assassinated.

The death of the man who symbolized unbridled hatred for the West, its culture and traditions, should have spelled the end of any possibility that al-Qaida would undergo a metamorphosis and relocate its center of gravity from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the deserts of Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and the Maghreb. As such, it boosted the president’s confidence that “al-Qaida yok,” and that he finally had license to turn his back completely on the Bush years, the era in which the American people became “a democracy on the defensive,” namely a country that was willing to infringe on individual rights in order to ensure the safety and security of many.

This state of affairs closely reflected Obama’s fundamental worldview, yet it was also sustained in large part by the president’s acute sensitivity to political correctness. As such, federal authorities no longer had carte blanche to dig into the personal matters of an American citizen and to turn him or her into a target for interrogation based solely on ethnic background or religious affiliation.

As a direct result, the FBI put off investigating Nidal Malik Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants from El-Bira who, on Nov. 5, 2009, went on a shooting rampage that killed 14 soldiers on an army base in Fort Hood, Texas (Hasan’s trial is ongoing). The authorities ignored Hasan despite the evident radicalization in his religious views as well as the supposedly incriminating correspondence that he began to maintain with the radical Yemen-based imam Anwar al-Awlaki. In their exchanges, Hasan requested that his spiritual teacher give him a “green light” to commit his act of murder (al-Awlaki, whose fanatic sermons provided inspiration to three of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011).

A chain of near-attacks

Another manifestation of the Obama administration’s strict adherence to the view that al-Qaida-manufactured terrorism was a threat that had vanished for good could be found in the manner in which the president interpreted the bloody events that unfolded in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. The White House’s desire (which was partially motivated by electoral considerations) to see reality as dovetailing with its preconceived notions led to a situation in which Obama initially characterized the events as a spontaneous outburst by an incited mob still smarting over the screening of a provocative anti-Islam Internet video.

It was only after an exhaustive congressional investigation that it became clear that this was a well-planned and executed attack carried out by a local al-Qaida cell.

Despite the Libya attack (which claimed the lives of four American diplomats, among them the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens), the gap between the utopian dreams harbored by the man occupying the Oval Office and the harsh, cold and hard reality has yet to be closed. Even the chain of near-attacks that was thwarted at the last minute did not prompt any change in thinking on Obama’s part, particularly when it came to his initial belief that he could just do a complete U-turn on American strategy.

Despite Obama’s ideological bent, some of the American intelligence community (particularly the National Security Agency) began to gather information on attacks-in-the-making. The revelations exposed by leaker Edward Snowden shed light on the vast system of information monitoring and gathering. Nonetheless, even with the latest intelligence tip indicating that the order had been handed down for a mega-attack by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the Yemenite commander of al-Qaida (and which was intercepted by American intelligence), there is still a gap between wishes and reality in the mind and conduct of President Obama.

The NSA continues with its invasive, extensive activities that are designed to frustrate terrorist activities (NSA officials say that 50 such attacks have been thwarted), yet this operational vigilance has yet to seep down to the White House. Even if we can understand the reasons for the decision to close the embassies (indeed, recognizing the severity of terrorism was liable to bring Obama closer ideologically to his predecessor), this cannot justify it. Alongside the White House’s wish to steer America on a course of reconciliation and peace, in spirit with the doctrine championed by President Jimmy Carter, the challenges and dangers continues to bubble in the American strategic environment.

Blind support for Morsi

It is still premature to determine whether the recent spate of embassy closures will serve as a wake-up call that will bring Obama back to reality and sober him up. Nonetheless, a glance at Washington’s Egypt policy highlights the challenge in implementing a realist approach.

When it comes to the Egyptian front, we can see that the administration remains tethered to the democratic vision that it sought to see applied in the Land of the Nile. Not only did Obama swiftly abandon his long-time ally, President Hosni Mubarak, after he was convinced that the “Egyptian Spring” would usher in an era of a free civic society and a pluralistic approach in lockstep with Western democracy, but he also continued to provide support and backing to the autocratic, oppressive regime led by Mohammed Morsi, all the way up to the waning minutes of his rule. Obama did so despite Morsi’s religious roots, which were planted by the Muslim Brotherhood and which are inherently hostile to Western values as well as the political, cultural, and liberal traditions espoused by Obama himself.

The fact that Morsi was elected in a free vote (procedural democracy) is what tipped the scales in his favor in Washington’s eyes. His sharp deviations from the most fundamental principles of democracy, which were laid bare during his lone year in power, prompted “all of the president’s men” to reevaluate policy toward Cairo. Even after the military coup was carried out and the Morsi-Muslim Brotherhood era was brought to its premature end, the administration continued to contemplate its next move for a full month before finally expressing its support for the newly installed regime.

All of these difficulties and contradictions appeared despite the fact that it was clear from the outset that General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his partners in the Egyptian transitional government were committed to a demonstrably pro-Western regime that will yield numerous strategic benefits for the American hegemon in the Middle East.

Similar to its desperate attempt to suppress the threat of terrorism and deny its acuteness, on the Egyptian front the American approach remains on neutral, frozen as a result of its adherence to formal and legal technicalities.

In keeping in line with his approach, the legitimacy granted to Morsi following his election was a sort of indefinite green light that kept flashing even as the Egyptian leader was initiating oppressive and aggressive policies against his rivals. Obama was too loyal to this approach, even after it was proven bankrupt and that Morsi’s style of rule was light-years away from any kind of democratic model.

This adherence led Obama to initiate a “cold-shoulder” policy toward Cairo at the exact, critical time that the new el-Sissi-led government was making its first steps and desperately needed international support. First, there was criticism over the fact that el-Sissi used violence against the demonstrators and that he did not work toward the desired goal of “national reconciliation” and the formulation of a road map that would eventually lead to democratic elections. Then came more punishment when Obama ordered the suspension of F-16 fighter jet shipments to Egypt as a sign of Washington’s dissatisfaction with the violence in the public squares.

It is worth noting that Obama refrained from burning all his bridges with the Egyptian military regime by purposely doing all he can to avoid calling the Egyptian military’s overthrow of Morsi a “coup.” Labeling it such would have legally obligated the president to immediately halt all U.S. aid to Egypt (which annually comes to total $1.5 billion).

Delayed legitimacy

The cool chill that emanated from Washington this past July stood in stark contrast to American core interests not just in Egypt but in the entire region. These interests required Washington to embrace the new leadership in Egypt, even if it wasn’t brought to power in entirely free elections.

Indeed, when el-Sissi takes a determined stand against religious fundamentalist radicals in Egypt, and when the U.S. is suddenly presented with a window of opportunity to once again turn Egypt into a central cog in the Sunni regional alignment in a part of the world with so many serious challenges and threats, this is where he could have demonstrated good will rather than sternness that came with sanctions.

One can only hope that the legitimacy granted to the el-Sissi regime this past weekend by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will mark a turning point toward a more realistic approach. This step will also benefit Egypt’s neighbor, Israel.

The process of getting up to speed with the latest developments requires Obama to face facts, one of them being that democracy is not a concept that can be applied universally and immediately in countries that have yet to develop the institutional, moral, and social infrastructure that are so necessary for it to work. This is how a new dilemma came to spring up before the president’s eyes, a dilemma that is derived from a delusion that has crashed down to reality.

What is clear now is that the parade of presidential delusions from which Obama suffers as it relates to the Middle East has yet to conclude. Despite the fact that his Egyptian adventure was finally stopped in its tracks, Obama continues to pursue the diplomatic track as it relates to Iran and the nuclear program. He does so in the hope that dialogue with newly elected president Hasan Rouhani — who announced that he was open to negotiations with the West — would yield the desired breakthrough.

One can only hope that awakening from these American delusions does not come too late, after a new page — one more dangerous and risky — is opened in the Middle East.