Fareed Zakaria wrote: “Trump didn't know the Middle East could be so complicated,” an article that was
published on June 9, 2017 in the Washington Post.
I do not watch Zakaria's CNN show or read his Washington
Post articles all the time but when I do, I'd say he does a reasonably good job
except when it comes to Mideast issues. This
is when he falls into the trap of pretending to know foreign policy because he
is a foreigner, but does no more than peddle the prevailing common wisdom.
In that regard, he sounds okay when discussing Europe, Asia,
Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa because
there is no concerted effort by anyone to distort the realities of these
regions. The common wisdom can be wrong at times because of collective
ignorance, and not because of deliberate mischief. Thus, if someone does their
research well, they can put together a reasonable piece.
The problem will manifest itself if you're not astute enough
to realize that the prevailing wisdom on the Middle East
is a gigantic fraud painting a situation that was distorted and mutilated for
half a century by the Jewish noise and propaganda machine. Thus, when someone
like Fareed Zakaria says, “trust me when I discuss policy issues regarding the Middle East because I'm a foreigner,” say “no way.” Treat
his assertion like a general practitioner who says: trust me I can do brain
surgery on you because I'm a doctor.
Zakaria begins his article by opining that President Trump
has failed in his mission to the Middle East because a few days after his
return, the terrorists struck in Europe and the Middle
East . Also, the Arab countries started to feud among themselves.
These were two situations that Trump was supposed to have addressed
successfully, says Zakaria but did not. How shallow and simplistic that is! And
yet, he asks: “What is going on?” and he answers the question with apparent
confidence.
First of all, it takes time to prepare and execute terrorist
acts such as we saw lately. Thus, they could not have happened in response to
Trump's visit to the Middle East , and they
could not have been prevented if he were a magician performing miracles. As to
the feud among the Arab countries, the reason behind it is of the kind that's
understood instinctively if not intellectually, but seldom mentioned publicly.
Why? Because it would be too embarrassing. Simply put, the reason is rivalry –
call it sibling rivalry – among the Arab countries. It is usually initiated and
maintained by the smaller countries, especially if they are of the “nouveaux
riches” kind. What they want is to be the go-to authority America will
want to consult regarding all Arab matters.
Discussing the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar , Zakaria misses that point
entirely. To understand how and why, it must be said that the Arabs have a view
of the United States
(fair or unfair) that is not flattering. Because they see America tear itself apart to please Israel , the crackpots among the Arab leaders
believe they can get America
to do the same for them if they flatter it enough by pretending to love it or
love its friends, or by pretending to hate its enemies.
What crackpots such as Saddam's Iraq, and now Qatar miss, is
that Israel has a fifth column in America, controlling the important media
outlets and a formidable carrot-and-stick machinery, both of which bribe those
who get in line, and punish those who refuse to toe the line … this includes
Zakaria's CNN. The reality is that America 's
elites of any kind respond ten times more readily to this sort of clout than to
a Saddam attacking Iran , for
example, or Al Jazeera of Qatar
attacking the “undemocratic” Arab regimes.
Most of the bigger countries, especially Saudi Arabia and
Egypt (even non Arab Iran and Turkey) wish America would stop enabling every
adolescent gadfly that pokes the ribs of his neighbors, no matter how unsavory
the latter may be. The day that Fareed Zakaria will understand these realities
and factor them into his analysis, is the day he'll be ten times better than he
is today.
Had he known this much before writing his article, he would
have sensed that the days of nouveau riche Qatar playing the role of gadfly
were coming to an end – not because “Trump gave a green light to the Saudis to
pursue their increasingly aggressive, sectarian foreign policy,” like he says –
but because Trump turned off the green light that America was flashing in
Qatar's face since before the advent of Donald Trump.
There are two more things that Zakaria needs to understand.
First, the sibling rivalry among the Arabs extends beyond the immediate Arab
family, and has become a rivalry among the Muslim cousins as well, especially
the bigger ones such as Iran
and Turkey .
Second, Egypt
was thrust into the game in Nasser 's era not
because he wanted to play, but because there were no nouveaux riches to
challenge him at the time. He thus became the de facto leader of the Arab
world, if only by default.
When Sadat followed Nasser, he relished being wooed by the
international media; and this drew the ire of the Egyptian people who told him
they want an Egypt
leader, not a world leader.
Mubarak followed Sadat and played the quiet role so well,
the people saw him as being too lax with the foreigners who began to interfere
in Egyptian affairs. And they did not like it.