Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Back to the Future after an ill-advised detour

 Suppose you are the modern version of a Dear Abby kind of columnist. You receive a letter from a teenager complaining that her mother is messing up the relationship between her and her boyfriend, and she wants to know what to do.

 

Having no other information to go by, you do not print the letter. What you do instead is write to the girl and ask her to give you details of her complaint. She writes back saying that she and her boyfriend are classmates. They have a great relationship because they have one thing in common. It is that both have an intense hatred for the geography teacher. The problem is that her mother and that teacher are becoming friends, and that's messing up the relationship between her and her boyfriend.

 

You think that's funny, huh? Well then, wait till you see something that's even funnier. You'll find it in an article that came under the title: “Biden administration back to the future in the Middle East,” written by Gary Anderson and published on February 5, 2021 in The Washington Times.

 

What Anderson did is begin his article by lamenting that the Europeans are happy with the advent of the Biden administration, but that America's friends in the Middle East are not. He asserts that according to what his Israeli friends are telling him, the angst in the Middle East is real. He explains it further as follows: “Mr. Biden's national security team moved to disrupt the growing Israeli-Sunni partnership in the region. The administration's stated intention of reengaging with Tehran is a return to the Obama regional [approach]”.

 

In other words, according to Anderson and his Israeli friends, what has kept alive the friendship between the Sunni Arabs and the Jews, was their mutual hatred for the Iranian Shia whose geographical expansion is becoming a threat to the region. But now that America, like the girl's mother in the story above, is becoming friendly with Iran's hated mullahs of the Middle Eastern classroom, the Sunni-Jewish relationship is feeling the strain, and is about to collapse. What will Dear Gary say or do to salvage that friendship?

 

Good or bad, what Gary Anderson did in response to the cries for help from his Jewish friends, is to practice the art of scaremongering on America. Here is how he did it:

 

“President Biden has selected a foreign policy team of traditional internationalists. The State Department will preach human rights, take the Palestinian side and try to induce Iran to stop pursuing atomic weapons. In the process, the US will experience a decline of its influence as regional actor. The Israelis will turn the Iranian nuclear program into a smoking hole in the ground leaving the US looking inept and weak. If we pressure them over the Palestinians they will begin to deal with the Russians and Chinese. The US can still play a role in the region. The troops we have in Iraq are a bargaining chip. Iran wants them out, and we want Iran's Quds force out. The same is true in Syria. That quid pro quo might be tied to slowing the Iranian nuclear program. Unfortunately, there is the possibility that we could again become dependent on Middle Eastern oil. If the day comes when we must go back to Sunnis in the region for military fuel, it will not be as regional power brokers. We will merely be customers”.

 

What comes out of this passage is that it sounds like an ultimatum out the mouths of a terrified Israeli junta to the American President Joe Biden. These people know that gone are the days when America will spend what it has not, to send its young men and women to die for the purpose of inflating the ego of an Israeli junta of the current stripe or any stripe. And so, Anderson and the Jews are telling Joe Biden to use the leverage he has in the form of American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Syria, and negotiate the withdrawal of Iran’s Quds force out of Syria.

 

Ignoring the reality that the world treats as common knowledge the fact that Israel has spent nearly a decade trying to dislodge Iran out of Syria, but could not do as much as get the Iranians to show displeasure by firing back a warning shot, Gary Anderson delivered the following piece of idle bluster to Joe Biden: “The Israelis will turn the Iranian nuclear program into a smoking hole in the ground leaving the US looking inept and weak.” But what is that supposed to mean?

 

It means the Israelis are reviving the blackmail they used previously when they tried to scare then President Barack Obama into believing that Israel will commit suicide by attacking Iran in such manner as to force Iran’s hand and its allies to flatten Israel. The idea is that America will be forced to come to Israel’s rescue or be blamed for the holocaust that will have ended the attempt at creating a viable and sustained Jewish state.

 

Getting no response from Joe Biden, Dear Gary prints the girl’s letter with the advice that Uncle Joe of America, unlike the Uncle Joe of an earlier era, does not scare easily. He is saying: Sayonara, baby.