Do you want to know why Russia
and Iran are winning in the
Levant where America
was left behind to bite the dust? If your answer is yes, read Benny Avni's
latest column which came under the title: “Yemen is a horror show that Obama
used to call success,” published on October 11, 2016 in the New York Post.
You'll find in it a full menu of advice; the kind that leads to the house of
defeat.
The main reason why America keeps losing is that it
gets the same bad advice in every situation. The advice comes from every
direction, disguised as a balanced view that takes into account a variety of
opinions. But when you analyze that advice, you find it to have two main
deficiencies. First, there is a minor deficiency, which consists of the pundits
who give it spinning things to promote their own causes and not those they
pretend to tackle. Second, there is a major deficiency, which consists of the
pundits conflating reality and fantasy.
You can see an expression of the minor deficiency in the
title of Avni's column where he comes out as obsessed with pinning the Yemen horror on
Obama than he is about giving an accurate description of reality. Lest you
believe the title was the choice of the editor, here is Avni repeating the
charge in the text that he wrote: “Two years ago, Obama presented Yemen as a success story in his most neglectful
approach to the Mideast wars.” He could not
have spun reality more fantastically than that.
As to the major deficiency, despite the fact that it became
apparent in Iraq and elsewhere that Middle Eastern alliances are ephemeral – a
reality that is not lost on Benny Avni – he still regards each alliance as a
natural enemy of America. Here is how several paragraphs he wrote on the topic,
condense:
“Yemen
has become a battlefield for Mideast
rivalries. The Houthis [are] close to Shia. Iran , which is Shia, supports them
with money, weapons and training. Enter the [Sunni] Saudis. Riyadh gathered a coalition of Sunni states.
They launched a ferocious war on the Houthis”.
And here is his view as to the ephemeral nature of Middle
Eastern alliances:
“Not all is hunky-dory among Arab coalition members. The
enmity between Saudi Arabia
and Qatar
[still exists.] The Qataris think any outcome in Yemen is a win for them. If the
Shia Houthis win, the Saudis lose. If the Sunni Brotherhood – backed by Qatar – wins,
the Saudis lose.” And Avni explains that the Brotherhood is “a leading
anti-Western political force”.
And so, between the Shia who are affiliated with Iran , and the Sunnis who are led by the
anti-Western Brotherhood, it would seem that “letting them fight each other to
the death,” would be in America 's
best interest. No, says Benny Avni, because “any of the factions may use Bab al
Mandeb against us, blocking a naval passage connecting Eastern Africa and South
Asia with Europe ”.
When you add to this that “any hope of success in the UN-led
diplomacy has died,” you have no choice but to ask the question: What can be
done? Avni does not offer a direct answer to that question. Instead, he
generalizes the Yemen
problem to paint the entire Middle East with
the same brush: “Our withdrawal gave rise to the region's extremist elements
and their anti-American backers.” And this is a subtle way to say that America should
try to get back in there, and stay there indefinitely.
In fact, this has become the standard response of those who
constantly give out hawkish recommendations. Because America
did as they recommended and created the mess that is now plaguing the Middle
East, they say the mess was not caused by America 's
intervention but America 's
early withdrawal. Here is how Avni repeats the same old recommendation:
“Regrettably, the presidential frontrunners signal they'll continue Obama's
attempt at ending America 's
global leadership, which will come back to bite us”.
The people in the Middle East
hear all that. They resent what America
has done to them and wants to continue doing. In response, Avni and those like
him explain that these people hate America not because of what it is
doing to them but because they hate freedom.