Short-Suiting the US

Commentary on Playing to Our Short-Suit
© 2011 Ross Williams

Alright, so does Barack Obama have anyone in his administration who knows diplomacy? Does anyone even have the talent for it? I mean, besides the manipulative liar Hillary Clinton? Diplomacy is the patriotic art of lying for one’s country [Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary] as well as the art of allowing someone else to have your way [David Frost], not to mention a continuation of war by other means [Clauswitz, or Chou En-Lai, depending on which side of the political spectrum you call home].

Are you telling me that our National Savior can’t find anyone with Clinton’s polished skill at deceit and manipulation having the selfishness to think of the United States first, the foresight to think of the United States last, the arrogant stamina to think of the United States in between, and pass ideological muster with the Neophyte in Chief? There’s 300 million Americans, fergodsake, and the dozen or so major foreign policy advisor seats are filled by a clown car full of boobs and drips ... and Hillary Clinton.

It’s a sad day when the nation’s most insightful foreign policy maker is a corporate loyyer from Chicago, by way of New York, DC and Little Rock, and her main qualification for being our nation’s Head Diplomat [apart from innate talent for self-serving prevarication] is being the sometimes wife of a former President – who filled many of his own administration’s foreign policy advisorships with Republicans.

Speaking of… Why does James Clapper still have a job? It’s obvious why he got it; why’s he still there? “The Muslim Brotherhood is a secular organization...” Uhhh ... huh?

How about the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Secular? Run that by the ACLU and see what they think.

United Jewish Appeal. Secular?

Muslim Brotherhood is only involved in “civic” improvements? The group which fathered Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, the outfit from which al Qaida’s number two leader [and number one strategist] Ayman al-Zawahiri emerged? The group which claims Hamas as its Palestinian outpost? Seriously? That’s “civic improvement” in Obama’s world?

Yikes.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been involved in the periphery of several Egyptian political intrigues in the 80 years of its existence. They are to the muslim world what Freemasons are claimed to be to the christian world. Super-secretive, super-connected, super-involved.

Involved with the assassination attempt on Nasser; involved with the assassination of Sadat; involved in various paramilitary outfits of the pan-islamist jihadi stripe...

Involved also in building Egypt’s mosques, hospitals and schools as well, yes. So’s Hezbollah in Lebanon – in between lobbing mortar shells into Israel. So what? Alexander rebuilt Persepolis ... after he burned it down. The US rebuilt Serbia ... after Clinton and Chirac bombed the snot out of it [and the Chinese embassy]. The US is rebuilding Iraq, as well, and I don’t think I need to discuss that any further.

We’ve heard for close to a decade the sad, wailing refrains from the idiot American left about why America is always wrong and everyone else is always right; how the bad things we do cannot begin to be compensated by the good things; and how the good things that others do more than makes up for their bad things. And while dishonest, disingenuous, and disconnected from reality when such an outlook is found in an idiot Liberal on the street, it becomes dangerous and nationally suicidal when the attitude is found in an American politician with more clout than the City Clerk of Springfield.

Any nation which devotes energy to propping up other countries and tearing itself down is a nation whose only future is in history books. Does no one in our current government understand that?

Furthermore, “to say nothing ... is half the art of diplomacy” [Will Durant] ...

So why are we unable to keep our big fat mouths shut with regards to Egypt? If it’s sad that Hillary Clinton is our nation’s most credible diplomat, then it’s pathetic that Joe Biden is the administration’s least objectionable elected mouthpiece. Joe Biden has stuck his feet in his piehole so often that he has athlete’s tonsils. Yet he managed to make many phone calls to his counterparts in the Middle East this past week without embarrassing himself, humiliating the nation, or causing the US to take center-stage in what is somebody else’s problem.

Barack? What’s your problem? At least Dubya knew – or he had advisors tell him and he listened – to shut his damn mouth now and then when the subject was something he didn’t know ... which was a lot. You know nothing of foreign policy, and neither do those you surrounded yourself with. Why are you blabbering about what needs to happen in Egypt? You haven’t even got a clue what needs to happen in the US – apart from you getting re-elected, and over half of us would be glad to give you a hearty debate on that point.

Here, I’ll make it simple for you.

Egypt is our friend and ally. Have they been a dictatorship with a thin democratic veneer for 25 years? Yep. Doesn’t matter. Again: two-thirds of the nations in the world are run by dictators – in fact, or in practice – and if we are to survive long enough to make it to whichever environmental armageddon floats your boat this week, then we need as many friends as we can get. Some of them are going to be dictators. Get over it.

When our dictator friends are in the process of being overthrown we don’t jump on the pile – unless we’re the one overthrowing them. What ever made you think that adding your self-righteous commentary to the fray was going to help? Or even make you look – to the rest of the world – like someone who had anything intelligent to add? Your middle name, Hussein, can only get you so far in the Arab/muslim world; so does your bowing and prostration to them. Seriously, have you no dignity? Since you act in our name, do you think we have none? Say enough stupid things and the rest of the world won’t care how low you scrape to them; they’ll consider you stupid and, by scraping, a weak, easy target.

And they do. Surely you remember something of the islamic mindset from your time in that madras. Get with it, man. Even Jimmy Carter, the only other US president in the last century to have as ideologically inept a foreign policy as you have, knew better than to cut the Shah of Iran loose after the revolution by Iran’s version of Muslim Brotherhood. The Shah lived out his last days in exile – in Los Angeles.

Do you think we’re too pure to give Mubarak sanctuary? Or cut him some slack while he’s being deposed?

When our regional allies have their little revolutions, only bad things can happen for us. And bad things are most likely, unless we step in and do a little nation-building. Like we’ve done over and over and over again since we were born in the 18th century, so let’s not pretend to be too pure for that, either.

Egypt has a government that is friendly to us ... then they lose that government. What are the odds that they’ll create a replacement government that is friendly to us? Slim? None? Wasn’t that part of the reason for the uprising in the first place? There’s goes an ally. An imperfect friend is always better than an enemy. I’d spend time being surprised that you don’t know this, but ... I recall your qualifications and see who you have advising you.

The single largest outfit in Egypt – besides its military, which has taken turns being brutal to the Egyptian people, and being accommodating of the rioters – is Muslim Brotherhood, the loins from which two terrorist groups were spawned and a third gets support. Do you honestly see this ending well from our perspective?

And do I need to remind you that, as President of the United States, it is our perspective from which you should be seeing all matters of international consequence, and to the absolute exclusion of all others? As far as you need to be concerned, we are the only people who matter to you and your legitimate priorities. Muslim Brotherhood is going to be pulling strings, making use of current fractiousness in Egypt’s military, and if they don’t end up with Egypt’s reins, they’ll probably be a significant partner to those who do.

Not a pleasant picture.

You blew it, badly, by not keeping quiet and backdooring a transitional government in Egypt that would transfer power from a “retiring” Mubarak to a less dictatorial, but still-US-friendly leader. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Turkey – all imperfect friends – are getting nervous and twitchy at your public and self-righteous pronouncements. They saw how quickly you turned on our ally; they consider you a clueless amateur that can't be trusted.

It’s already quite clear that you don’t consider Israel a friend, even an imperfect one, and that is undoubtedly fine and dandy with all the pan-islamist yahoos taking heart by the rioters who toppled a US-friendly nation, and who see Israel as the 51st state in our union. Wither Israel, the US. Count on it.

Is it not bad enough that there are already two nations ruled by “secular” islamists who want to wipe Israel off the map, and a third who isn’t ruled by anyone at all who does as well? Not to mention the Palestinians. I’m sure it’ll be better with Egypt added to the list. Haven’t we been there, done that? Again, even Jimmy Carter, the only foreign policy fool more foolish than you, recognized which side our pita bread is buttered in this area of the world.

None of these events in Egypt are going to have any kind of resonance with masses of people in Saudi Arabia, I’m sure. All we can see is that the Saud family is dictators. If they get overthrown it can only be by “popular will”, and that is universally a good thing – except in “healthcare” “reform”, huh.

You do realize, don’t you, that the vox populii in Saudi Arabia belongs to the Wahabi sect of the Sunni muslims. You do realize, don’t you, that these people are the religious zealotry behind al Qaida, and their first target even before the US, even before they invented al Qaida, was the Saudi royal family – another of our friends and allies. Is that still a good thing?

You do understand, don’t you, that it’s extremely rare to overthrow a dictatorship and immediately replace it with a democracy. Right? The list of nations which have done that consists of ... um ... us. The US. And many would argue whether or not it was “immediate”. All other democracies that exist evolved slowly through piecemeal relinquishing of centralized authority [or by force] – often by means of one or more civil wars somewhere in the process. “Letting the people get their way” is virtually guaranteed to result in a different dictatorship. One that, not to belabor a point or anything, is not friendly to the people who count and that you need to look out for: us.

One dictatorship for another, but this one an enemy ... yes, I can see why that would appeal to certain Americans: because they are self-loathing, suicidal idiots.

Stop posing for your statue long enough to do what’s best for the country. Our country. Not someone else’s.