Monthly Archives: June 2014

Culture, Wild West

Mayberry Militarized: Fallujah and Kandahar Come to the American Heartland……..

      

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“Pentagon data, reports the New York Times reveals the scale of military equipment turnover. Under the Obama administration, 432 MRAPs, 533 planes and helicopters, nearly 100,000 machine guns, and nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines have gone to police departments. That flow of military equipment to local police departments might have made more sense when the program was created in the 1990s. Violent crime, particularly in cities, peaked in that decade, sparking fears about our degenerating urban areas. But then, for reasons sociologists will debate over and over, violent crime has fallen drastically to the lowest rates we’ve seen in decades. And now, we find also ourselves with a surplus of war equipment. The militarization of police departments is also changing the role of local police……………..”


Helicopters, MRAPs, Drones, Machine guns invade small town America. Does Mayberry need Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles now? Mayberry as militarized as Fallujah or Kandahar. What would Aunt Bee think (but not necessarily say) if she were alive? What would Andy Griffith say if he were alive? What does Opie think now?

Hell, what would Matt Dillon and Wyatt Earp say? No doubt TWF was not cool in their days, not in Dodge City nor in Tombstone, if it was available (it was not). So, I shall say it on their behalf: WTF?……

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Syria

A New Reset for the Syrian Opposition? the True Number of Bashar Al Assad Days……..

      

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There were reports in some Arab media this past weekend that Ahmed Al Jarba will be replaced as head of the Syrian National Coalition, or whatever its latest name is now. A new leaders, the, what, sixth or seventh, in three years? That may call for a change of name as well: throw the jumbled separate words inside a bucket, shake it good, and start pulling out the new name of the opposition……. 

But can they run out of eligible Syrian names to lead it? At this rate of change, the laws of probability, the odds, are bound to bring the circle back to, yes, Bashar Al Assad. Once they run out of eligible candidates among the exiles and AWOL Syrian officers. Someday, maybe in a few years, we will read the headline that the Syrian National Coalition (or whatever its name is by then) has selected Bashar Al Assad as its new leader. Then Al Assad will give press conferences and deliver speeches in Istanbul and Riyadh promising to soon liberate Damascus from Bashar Al Assad and his allies. He may even visit Washington and Paris and meet with Senator John McCain and Bernard-Henri Levy and the Iranian Mujahideen Khalq as they declare that “the days of Bashar Al Assad are numbered“.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Elections, Egypt, European Union, Syria

Impartial Foreign Monitors of Syrian and Egyptian Elections Are Happy with Great Big Zeros……

      

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Syrian media reported that an ecstatic Bashar Al Assad met with an uncharacteristically cheerful Iranian parliamentary delegation that had monitored the Syrian election. The Iranians insisted they did not care who won as long as the election went smoothly and everybody from Al Raqqah through, er, Beirut got to vote. They declared themselves satisfied with the election process. They claimed the elections were as free and fair as they had wished them to be, and the results (Assad won with 88%) were fantastic. “Could not be better”, said one bearded Iranian who insisted they were in Damascus as just impartial observers “to keep the honest, honest”.………


Egyptian media is quoted by my Cairo source claiming that General Al Sisi met with a gaggle of Gulf princes and potentates who had monitored the Egyptian election from the GCC democracy-monitoring headquarters in Riyadh. They declared the voting to have been free, fair, and very democratic, “almost as good as anything we have never seen back home”. One worthy grumbled that it was actually too democratic “if you ask me“, even if not tribal enough. When asked about the results (Sisi won with 97%), they said it was obviously fantastic and ordained by Allah and “why haggle over a lousy 3% discrepancy?”………
One smirking shaikh added his own version of a Parthian parting shot: “unlike that Great Big Zero election held in Syria“…….


Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Egypt

The Sad Grim Future of Khaled Said……


      

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Young opponents of the old Mubarak regime in Egypt used (and some still use) the motto: “We are all Khaled Said” online. That was to commemorate a young activist who was beaten to death by old regime security agents in Alexandria in 2010. 

  • Now the old regime security is the new regime security, the old goons are the new goons. 
  • Just as the new regime bureaucrats are the old regime bureaucrats, just as the old regime courts are the new regime courts. 
  • Come to think of it: the new regime is the old regime. 
  • The one difference may be that the new regime probably has collected more political prisoners than the old regime, and in a much shorter time. And it is killing off more opponents than the old regime did, either on the streets or through kangaroo courts passing mass death sentences.
  • Just this weekend another Egyptian kangaroo court sentenced ten more young people to hanging, adding them to the more than a thousand others already on death raw for political reasons.
  • Also this weekend an Egyptian appeals court freed a police officer who was charged with killing 37 political detainees.
  • So, you know where all this is heading in the coming months and years.



Expect many more Khaled Saids in the future of Egypt. Some of them will no doubt be called ‘terrorists’, but in many cases that will not be true. They will simply be new versions of the Khaled Said who was beaten to death months before the Tahrir Uprising. But they will be facing the same old enemy that he faced in 2010……..

Cheers
mhg

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Jihad, Syria

So, Which Foreigners Did You say Are Interfering in Syria?………


      


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“More recently, however, the mainstream rebels’ allies—chiefly the United States, Britain, France, Qatar and Saudi Arabia—have begun to expand their efforts to help those they consider worthy of support. They have been chuffed by the rebels’ war on ISIS. And they are co-ordinating efforts to help them better. An increasing number of vetted fighters in both the north and south of Syria have been trained in Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, given money to pay salaries, and supplied with anti-tank weapons, albeit so far in limited quantities. Meanwhile, Gulf donors are said to have cut off funds to some of the more zealous Islamist groups, including the Islamist Front, a coalition dominated by Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafist outfit…………..”

The Economist has been hawkish on Syria, but only on Syria of all the Arab uprisings. It has been pissed (to put it succinctly) by Obama’s reluctance to attack Syria for the past three years. It, like other Western and Arab media and their officials, has been critical of ‘foreign’ intervention in Syria. Not all foreign intervention in frowned upon: only Russian and Iranian and Lebanese intervention. Other sources of intervention: European, Turkish, American, Gulf GCC, Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, and Al Qaeda intervention on the side of the Jihadists is apparently kosher and halal and seeks democracy and freedom and human rights in Syria. That has been obvious from past experience when the Jihadis took over towns and neighborhoods and immediately started to apply democracy, freedom, the chopping of heads, the kidnapping of nuns and priests, among other blessings of what the rest of Syrians can expect.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Elections, Egypt, Syria

Tale of Two Funny Elections: European Union Congratulates Al Sisi but not Al Assad……..


      


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“Declaration on behalf of the European Union
on the presidential elections in Egypt
The holding of the presidential elections marks an important step in the imp
lementation of
the constitutional roadmap towards the transition to democracy in Egypt. The Europe
an
Union expresses its willingness to work closely with the new authorities in Eg
ypt in a
constructive partnership with a view to strengthening our bilateral r
elations.
The EU congratulates Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, as the new President of Egypt
, and trusts that
he will tackle the serious challenges faced by the country and the new governm
ent, among
them the dire economic situation, the deep divisions within society, the security sit
uation,
and the respect of the human rights of all Egyptian citizens in line with inter
national
obligations and guaranteed by the new Constitution adopted last January.
On the basis of the preliminary statement of the EU Election Observat
ion Mission the EU
takes good note of the overall peaceful and orderly conduct of the elections……………….”
Yadda, yadda, yadda in European bureaucratese.

The EU congratulated Generalissimo Field Marshal Al Sisi for winning his rigged Egyptian election with 97% of the vote. Effectively they congratulated him for overthrowing the elected president of Egypt, Morsi and taking over the state. They did not congratulate Bashar Al Assad for winning the other funny Arab election, the Syrian election. Perhaps because Bashar won only 88% of the vote and did not reach the required Arab majority of 90%. 
They did, however congratulate the latest chubby oligarch to become president of Ukraine.
Cheers
mhg

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History, War, WWII

Power and Glory: from D-Day to another Qadisiyya………

      

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For the United States no war in modern history has been as necessary as WWII. No battle was as necessary as the reverse Norman conquest, the storming of the beaches of Normandie:

  • The USA and Britain had a day of glory and sacrifice, also a day of basically taking care of a necessary grim business on D-Day in the 20th century………

  • Before that the Russians (Soviets) had their own days of glory in Stalingrad (and Leningrad, and a few other places)………

  • So what, big deal. In the same century the Arabs had their own glorious battle in the Qadisiyyat Saddam قادسية صدّام and its continuing aftermath…….
  • I forgot the Ghazwat New York and all the little ghazwas of blowing up civilians in Iraq and Pakistan and Syria and other places……….
  • Then there is the very common Ghazwa of Tear Gas and the even more common Ghazwa of Political Prisons. These battles are well known in the Arab world, from Bahrain through Riyadh to Cairo and other places.

Cheers

mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Politics, GCC, History, Iraq, Jihadis, Persian Gulf, Sectarian, Syria

Sectarian GCC, Delusional GCC: Third Battle of Qadisiyyah, Second Battle of Karbala…….

      

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In the year of Our Lord 15 Hijri (about 636 AD), the Muslim Arab fighters won a big victory at the Battle of Qadisiyyah in what is today’s Iraq. That opened the door for the spread of Islam to Mesopotamia and Persia and beyond.



In September of 1980, while Iran was in revolutionary turmoil, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded the Iranian province of Khuzistan (a.k.a Arabistan). Saddam made several demands and goals for his invasion, none of which were met at the end of the war. Seeing the dire situation inside Iran, he had expected a quick victory, as did most Arabs and many in the West (even the once-venerable The Economist wrote stupidly in 1980 that Iran might become an Iraqi satrapy). Saddam got the support of all the GCC states of the Persian Gulf, moral support, propaganda support, money support, and weapons. He also got the support of all the Western powers: weapons, intelligence, even some limited military action. As well as supplies of chemical weapons and overlooking his use of WMD against Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers. 
Not all Arabs sided with him: Syria, Libya, and Algeria among the Arab states, and a faction of the PLO, did not side with Saddam. The late King Hussein of Jordan, the man who lost Jerusalem and the whole West Bank to the Israeli IDF in one single day, even went to the front and fired some symbolic shots at the Iranians. Iraqi propaganda and Persian Gulf supporters called the war Qadisiyyah of Saddam. In the end Iraq came out of this war a financially broken country. That was when he turned his guns against the Gulf people who had stood by his side. He invaded Kuwait in August 2, 1990 and the rest is history.


Now we have the Wahhabi terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL) sweeping across northern Iraq. The same great Gulf GCC tribal sectarian minds that cheered Saddam before 1990 are now cheering ISIS. Many of them are claiming that ISIS is really a nationalist rebirth of the Baath Party, apparently a softer Iraqi Baath Party that can now get along with the absolute tribal rulers of the Gulf. Maybe it is not the same Baath Party that invaded Kuwait and threatened the terrified Saudi princes until the Americans showed up and chased them out. Now they claim they are cheering for the disenfranchised Sunnis of Iraq, the 20% who have not reconciled to losing power. 
Diehard sectarians in the Persian Gulf region are coming out of the closet, out in the open; not that they were ever well hidden. From tribal academics to media stars to liberal-Wahhabi-men-and-women-about-town to the clownish chief of the Dubai Police Dhahi Khalfan, they are all in justification mode, using crass sectarian terms. The same crass sectarian terms they used in the 1980s until Saddam’s tanks moved toward the south in 1990.
Now they see this new turmoil in Iraq as a third Battle of Qadisiyyah, or maybe as a second Battle of Karbala, as the Wahhabi invaders in Iraq are hinting at.
 

It is as if on my Gulf they have not learned any lesson from the past few decades. It is as if delusion is like an heirloom handed down from foolish fathers to foolish sons and daughters in the GCC countries of the Gulf.

Cheers
mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Kuwait, Persian Gulf

ISIS, ISIL, WTF: Mystery of the New Black Map of the Wahhabi Caliphate………

      

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One overlooked detail of the recent noise about ISIS (or is it ISIL) and its threat to all of Iraq has been overlooked. The new black map of their proposed Wahhabi Caliphate ominously includes Kuwait. Kuwait, as everyone knows (well as many know) was occupied by the Baathist Iraqi regime in 1990-991, and declared the 19th province. Until American forces and some other Western allies liberated it during what is officially called the Persian Gulf War.

There have been hints, repeated in Arab media, that the ISIS (or ISIL) now may include former Baathist generals from the old Iraqi Army, the one that refused to defend Baghdad in 2003.

Iraq, US Foreign Policy

The Myth of the Iraqi Baathist Army Endures……

      

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Whenever things heat up in Iraq, as they are these days, most Western and Arab media types and ‘analysts’ fall back on an old and mistaken argument. That argument is: that disbanding the old Baathist army was a big mistake by the Bush administration. Oh, yes, if only the old Baathist army ‘was not disbanded’. Yet it is arguable how and when the old army was ‘disbanded’ and by whom.

During the start of the last Iraq war in 2003, the Iraqi army vanished. Its men just shed their military uniforms and melted away. They deserted rather than defend Iraq’s borders. They did not even defend their capital Baghdad, which lay open for the coalition invaders (or liberators, if you will). The army that tormented its own native people could not face foreign forces, sadly a typically common Arab phenomenon.

The old Iraqi army vanished, deserted at the start of the war, long before Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad. The myth that Bremer made a mistake by “disbanding” it continues. The myth is dusted up periodically by media and analysts and pundits and many Arab apologists, then shelved until the next Iraq crisis. 

Yet, with or without Bremer, would the Shi’as and Kurds of a new Iraq have accepted continued domination by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist army? The same army that was so good at gassing and repressing them?
In fact Bremer just formalized a fact that existed: the old Iraqi army had deserted, refused to fight, and effectively disbanded itself.

Cheers
mhg

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