On 24 August, 2011, Glenn Beck gave a speech in Jerusalem, at a rally assembled under the Temple Mount. The full text is here.

He strongly praised and defended Israel. It was a speech that may do Israel some good, considering that Beck has an audience in the US of millions, and Israel needs American public opinion to be on its side.

We select these excerpts from it, the parts we like best. (His many pious allusions to “God”, his references to and quotation from the Jewish Bible, we politely disregard – except for the pillar of fire.)

In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds… against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true. Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it tries… and it is courageous.

Today, the world needs courage more than ever.

We need it because whether you live here in Jerusalem, or in London, or in Athens, or in Washington, D.C., you know – we all know — the world is changing, the world is burning, and whatever we have known… whatever we’ve thought would never change… whatever we’ve grown to think is solid and strong and durable … is under siege.

You don’t have to be a prophet to know that things are not going well in the world. The threats are mounting. Darkness is falling.

Far too many politicians are willing to look away. The shape shifters are at work. They have turned day into night, good into evil. They have changed the very meaning of words.

In New York, the so-called leaders of the world talk about abuses of human rights. But what they will do is abuse the very meaning of the phrase “human rights.”

“Human rights,” they say. But who will they focus on? Libya? Syria? North Korea? No.

They will condemn Israel. Tiny Israel. Democratic Israel. Free Israel. Israel, which values life above all other things.

Israel, as usual, is the exception. …

When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder children light their streets on fire.

These international councils, these panels of so-called diplomats, condemn Israel not because they believe Israel needs to be corrected. They do so because it is convenient.

Everyone does it. In some countries, it’s a crime not to.

The diplomats are afraid, and so they submit. They surrender to falsehood. The truth matters not. To the keepers of conventional wisdom, a sacrifice of the truth is a small price to pay. What difference does it make if we beat up on little Israel? These are the actions of the fearful and cowards. …

The cause of human rights has been taken over by organizations who share little with the individuals who led the movement. Human rights was once a cry for justice. Now it used as a threat.

These organizations have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent. They criticize free nations and spare the unfree. They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all. They are nearly comical in their double-standards. Whatever moral force they once had is spent. …

If we want to be endowed with rights – real human rights, we have to act with responsibility. We must not be comfortable with rights. We must be comfortable with responsibility. We cannot use our few short years on this planet enjoying our rights… we must do everything we can living by our responsibilities to our fellow man. …

Link arms with others and stand with courage, and walk behind the pillar of fire.

You see evil rear its head in our time. You see the signs again. The swastikas are on display in the street marches. This week they’re holding up signs in Cairo that say: We’re building the gas chambers. They dress their children in suicide belts. They are given the choice, and they choose death. …

We won’t find the answers in some global body halfway around the world, but in ourselves. We won’t find purpose in the drumbeat of destruction and disobedience we hear in the West, but in a mission of building and honor and courage.

With his speech in Jerusalem, Beck was preparing to launch what he hopes will be a global movement in support of Israel but also, more widely, of the foundational values of the United States. From Israel he went to South Africa, to speak about the cruel policy of apartheid that had prevailed there in order to dispel the lie that Israel practises any such policy (as the Palestinians declare they will in the Judenrein state they plan to declare next month). After that he proceeds to South America to enlist support for his movement. Finally, next week, he will formally launch his movement at a mass rally in Dallas.

The founding document of the movement will be a Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities. Its full text is here.

It invokes the Declaration of Independence (but is more God-haunted than that great document). If it is endorsed by a large number of activists, it will confirm Glenn Beck in the heroic leadership role he has assumed at the head of a moral army.

We wish the venture success. We long ago learned to endure the religious decoration so often attached to causes we support.

So onward, Glenn Beck’s soldiers – we march to the same political-moral goal as you do, although to the beat of a different drum.

In 1918 Australian troops liberated Damascus from Ottoman rule. An Arab contingent, led and misled by the romanticizing Englishman T.E.Lawrence, wanted to claim that they had achieved the victory. So the British ordered the Australians to withdraw and let the Arabs march in as if they were the conquerors.

The lie fostered the notion among the Arabs that they really were great warriors. This meant that when, thirty years later, a small ill-equipped ad hoc Israeli defense force beat the five Arab armies that attacked the new state, the Arabs felt not only humiliated but incredulous. The lie, as is the way with lies, did them no good.

The Europeans – the British at least – should have learnt their lesson then, that allowing the Arabs their false pretenses is a stupid and counter-productive policy.

But it seems they did not. It’s pretty obvious that something similar is happening now with the “capture of Tripoli by the rebels”.

In our recent post Sudden victory in Libya, we quoted this question asked by DebkaFile:

How did the ragtag, squabbling Libyan rebels who were unable to build a coherent army in six months suddenly turn up in Tripoli Sunday looking like an organized military force and using weapons for which they were not known to have received proper training? Did they secretly harbor a non-Libyan hard core of professional soldiers?

Now here’s the story that is supposed to answer such a question, cooked up (so we suspect) by AP and some wily Arabs, and swallowed whole by the Washington Post:

They called it Operation Mermaid Dawn, a stealth plan coordinated by sleeper cells, Libyan rebels, and NATO to snatch the capital from the Moammar Gadhafi’s regime’s hands.

Ah, so NATO did play a part. Well, everyone knows that NATO was assisting the rebels – with air-strikes, weaponry, intelligence. So what? Nothing new there.

It proceeds in the manner of pulp fiction:

It began three months ago when groups of young men left their homes in Tripoli and traveled to train in Benghazi with ex-military soldiers.

Ex-military, eh? But – soldiers of what nationality? Is care being taken here to hide the fact that NATO soldiers put their boots on Libyan ground and took charge of the rebel forces for an advance on Tripoli? After NATO had said they wouldn’t do such a thing? Perish the thought!

After training in Benghazi, the men would return to Tripoli either through the sea disguised as fishermen or through the western mountains.

A script ready for the big screen.

“They went back to Tripoli and waited; they became sleeper cells,” said military spokesman Fadlallah Haroun, who helped organize the operation.

He said that many of the trained fighters also stayed in the cities west of Tripoli, including Zintan and Zawiya, and waited for the day to come to push into the capital.

Operation Mermaid Dawn began on the night of August 21 and took the world by surprise as the rebels sped into the capital and celebrated in Green Square with almost no resistance from pro-Gadhafi forces.

Haroun said about 150 men rose up from inside Tripoli, blocking streets, engaging in armed street fights with Gadhafi brigades, and taking over their streets with check points.

See what tacticians these rebels are? What long-sighted and meticulous planners?

He said another 200 men [came] from Misrata.

But why did the armed Gadhafi troops melt away when the rebels drove through?

Would they fear a raggle-taggle rebel army?

Fathi Baja, head of the rebel leadership’s political committee, said it was all thanks to a deal cut with the head of the batallion in charge of protecting Tripoli’s gates, the Mohammed Megrayef Brigade.

His name was Mohammed Eshkal and he was very close to Gadhafi and his family.

Close to Gadhafi? Then why – ?

Ah, there was a reason. A secret grudge nursed for many and many a long year. So the plot thickens.

Baja said Gadhafi had ordered the death of his cousin twenty years ago.

“Eshkal carried a grudge in his heart against Gadhafi for 20 years, and he made a deal with the NTC — when the zero hour approached he would hand the city over to the rebels,” said Haroun.

“Eshkal didn’t care much about the revolution,” said Haroun. “He wanted to take a personal revenge from Gadhafi and when he saw a chance that he will fall, he just let it happen.”

But Haroun said he still didn’t trust Eshkal or the men who defected so late in the game.

Haroun said that he didn’t trust any of the defectors who left Gadhafi’s side so close to August 20.

“They knew his days were numbered so they defected, but in their hearts they will always fear Gadhafi and give him a regard,” he said.

Haroun said NATO was in contact with the rebel leadership in Benghazi and were aware of the date of Operation Mermaid Dawn.

Only “aware of it”. Did NATO have no active part in it?

Oh, yes, it did.  Haroun would not deny NATO had played a role.

“Honestly …

Savor that “Honestly”!

“Honestly, NATO played a very big role in liberating Tripoli — they bombed all the main locations that we couldn’t handle with our light weapons,” said Haroun.

And AP hastens to bear out the honest confession of Haroun by adding details anyone can check out:

Analysts have noted that as time went on, NATO airstrikes became more and more precise and there was less and less collateral damage, indicating the presence of air controllers on the battlefields.

Targeted bombings launched methodical strikes on Gadhafi’s crucial communications facilities and weapons caches. An increasing number of American hunter-killer drones provided round-the-clock surveillance as the rebels advanced.

Okay, that’s accepted. But that was all?  Any suspicion that European soldiers were on the ground would be wholly unfounded?

What if European foreign offices were to give out a different tale?

Diplomats acknowledge that covert teams from France, Britain and some East European states provided critical assistance.

Oh? Of what sort?

Well, quite a variety when we get down to it:

The assistance included logisticians, security advisers and forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as intelligence operatives, damage assessment analysts and other experts, according to a diplomat based at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Only advisers, not trainers, mark you. But what if European military personnel were actually spotted among the rebels? Well,

Foreign military advisers on the ground provided key real-time intelligence to the rebels, enabling them to maximize their limited firepower against the enemy. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the Qatari military led the way, augmented later by French, Italian and British military advisers.

So a foreign but Arab army was “augmented” by European advisers.

But only “later’. How much later? We’re not told, but they couldn’t have been too far behind considering the speed of the advance.

This effort had a multiple purpose, not only assisting the rebels but monitoring their ranks …

There’s a good word – “monitoring”. It implies “merely observing, merely taking note”.

… and watching for any al-Qaida elements trying to infiltrate or influence the rebellion.

Ah, watching for al-Qaida elements. That’s old policy, perfectly legitimate.

And besides, most of the observing was still being done from the air. Assistance given without the use of any actual Europeans at all:

Bolstering the intelligence on the ground was an escalating surveillance and targeting campaign in the skies above. Armed U.S. Predator drones helped to clear a path for the rebels to advance.

Baja said as the time for Operation Mermaid Dawn came close to execution, NATO began to intensify their bombing campaign at Bab al-Azizya and near jails where weapons were stored and political prisoners were held.

And then the people rose up.

The dramatization is brought to a climax with the last line.

We cannot prove – yet – that the story is a lie. But we are fairly persuaded that it is: a false account seasoned with little hints of the truth to allow the fibbers to say later if challenged, ‘But we said that NATO did this, and the British and French did that, and okay we may have left out details of what they actually did…” in a red-faced effort to minimize their deception.

The AP account serves only to confirm to us – contrary to what it wants readers to believe – that NATO troops were the commanders and effective fighters in the attack on Tripoli.

But it suits the US, Britain and France politically to pretend that it was a victory for the rebels, both in order to seem to be adhering to their declared limits of engagement, and also, most importantly, to make it seem that the Libyan people fought and won their own battle.

So yet again, Arab pride is boosted – truth be damned.

*

And here’s the latest DebkaFile report which, if it turns out to be accurate, would confirm our suspicions:

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that British, French, Jordanian and Qatari Special Operations forces Tuesday, Aug. 23, spearheaded the rebel “killer strike” on Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and Tripoli fortress at Bab al-Azaziya, Tripoli. This was the first time Western and Arab ground troops had fought together on the same battlefield in any of the Arab revolts of the last nine months and the first time Arab soldiers took part in a NATO operation.

Our military sources report that the British deployed SAS commandos and France, 2REP (Groupe des commando parachutiste), which is similar to the US Navy DELTA unit …

The main body of the rebels to the rear of the combined foreign force was nowhere near being a unified military force.

*

And one lie has already been exposed.

A story was put out by the rebels that Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, had been captured  – and then he appeared at a Tripoli hotel before foreign correspondents.

Even the Guardian was embarrassed by the apparent exposure of this lie. Its report is here:

There was no doubt about it: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s second son and heir presumptive, had been captured. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), declared on Monday that he was “being kept in a secure place under close guard”. …

News of the supposed arrest, which came without a date or a location, was a huge boost for the rebel movement. …

Yet just hours later, journalists at the Rixos hotel in Tripoli were woken during the night by a knock at the door and told to go downstairs. There, inside a white armoured vehicle, with a mobile phone next to him and a smile playing around his lips, was Saif himself. …

The revelation that the man they had declared to be in captivity was in fact touring parts of regime-held Tripoli and doing the V-for-victory sign for a crowd of apparent supporters seemed to stun many rebels as much as it did the rest of the world. …

A spokesman for the NTC leadership, had no explanation of Saif’s sudden reappearance, and could say only: “This could all be lies.” …

The image it projects of the rebels is hardly flattering – and while Saif’s dramatic reappearance is far from the only occasion on which the international community has had reason to question the credibility of the fighters, this particular misstep could prove damning. …

A British spokesman hastened to excuse the liars.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, was keen to avoid chastising the NTC leadership. “I think it’s inevitable in this situation, with the warfare going on … that there will be some confusion.” …

We have a vision of the ghost of T.E. Lawrence hovering over Mr Mitchell in the BBC studio.

China is becoming militarily stronger, and the US militarily weaker.

An article in Investor’s Business Daily suggests that Obama is granting this alteration in the balance of power to the Chinese in exchange for their indulgence as the US’s chief creditors:

The White House suddenly announced it wouldn’t sell F-16 jets to Taiwan — a huge strategic favor to the Chinese. Was there a quid pro quo?

Explicitly or not, the U.S. seems to be offering them a deal — buy our bonds and pay for our out-of-control spending, and we’ll let you build a massive military presence and expand your influence in the Western Pacific.

China might see that as a good investment, one that will deliver them one of their much-cherished, long-term strategic goals: a weaker U.S. military.

That nation is already challenging the U.S., increasing defense spending at double-digit rates year after year, in what a U.S. Air Force website recently called “the most remarkable expansion of military power since the U.S. geared up for World War II” … is busy building a blue-water navy to challenge America, and just this month it launched its first aircraft carrier, with plans for more. It already has 2 million men under arms — a third more than the U.S.

At the same time, it’s building its unconventional warfare capabilities, extensively testing anti-satellite weapons and … engaging in a massive, five-year cyberattack on at least 50 U.S. government agencies and corporations.

China’s new generation of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, submarines, sophisticated new radar and minelayers is premised on … forcing us out of East Asia, leaving allies such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea unprotected.

Some deal. They buy our bonds while we watch their defense buildup. Clearly, China’s preparing for conflict. What are we preparing for? National bankruptcy?

On China rising to space superiority, this report comes from the Heritage Foundation:

As NASA sends its shuttles to museums, China is making great strides in its space program—with preparations under way for the launch of a Chinese spacelab in the next few weeks. These advances are beginning to threaten U.S. space superiority and America’s ability to support its friends and allies and to deter aggression. …

In the past several years, China’s space efforts have become increasingly prominent. …

The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has concluded that the high ground of space is essential to the information gathering, transmission, and exploitation necessary to fight and win future wars. …

As Beijing expands its space program, the United States must maintain and expand robust space capabilities, develop alternatives to space-based systems to reduce American vulnerability …  Only then will the United States be able to maintain its superiority in space …

Hasn’t that already been abandoned?  NASA’s mission now is “to improve relations with the Muslim world“, by order of President Obama.

Which will be worse, the US falling under Islam and sharia law, or China and communism?

To prevent either catastrophe, the US needs a president who will defend the nation – on earth and all around it.

Now he’s wooing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the chief Islamic organizations driving the jihad against America and the rest of the non-Muslim world. It is not “moderate” or “secular” as Obama and his henchmen say it is. It’s agenda is to destroy the United States, establish a world-ruling caliphate, impose sharia law, force Christians to pay for being allowed to live, wipe out the Jews, and keep women subservient to men.

Islam is the active enemy of the United States. And the president of the United States is on its side.

His heart is with Islam.

But, you might protest, he allowed the execution of Osama bin Laden. Yes, he did – reluctantly, we believe – because he had to seem to be against the most obvious and violent enemy who had plotted the 9/11 massacre of Americans. The order he gave to the Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden provides Obama with cover for his continuing support of the enemy and undermining of the country he was disastrously elected to lead.

An analogy would be if the British had elected Oswald Mosley, the Nazi-sympathizer and friend of Hitler and Goebbels, to lead them through World War Two.

Here is a timeline, from Investor’s Business Daily, which traces  the steps Obama has taken towards pleasing and finally embracing the Muslim Brotherhood:

2009: The White House invites [the Islamic Society of North America] ISNA’s president to President Obama’s inauguration ceremonies, even though the Justice Department just two years earlier had blacklisted the Brotherhood affiliate as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial — the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.

2009: Obama delivers his Cairo speech to Muslims, infuriating the Mubarak regime by inviting Brotherhood leaders to attend.

2009: The White House dispatches top presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett to give the keynote speech at ISNA’s annual convention.

2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which strongly supports the Brotherhood. [Its name was changed in June this year to The Organization of Islamic Co-operation – JB]

2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood’s grand mufti in Egypt.

2010: Obama meets one on one with Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: “The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”

2011: Riots erupt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak’s ouster, storm government buildings. The White House fails to back longtime U.S. ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.

2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood’s extremism. Clapper testifies the group is a moderate, “largely secular” organization.

2011: The Brotherhood’s spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — is given a hero’s welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad. Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, had been calling for “days of rage” before the rioting in Egypt. Before Obama’s Cairo speech, he wrote an open letter to the president arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.

2011: The Brotherhood vows to tear up Egypt’s 30-year peace treaty with Israel. Since Mubarak’s fall, it has worked to formally reestablish Cairo’s ties with Hamas and Hezbollah.

2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians.

2011: White House security adviser gives friendly speech to Washington-area mosque headed by ISNA’s new president. 2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas. …

Frank Gaffney reports and comments at the Center for Security Policy:

Muslim Brotherhood fronts are routinely cultivated by federal, state and local officials. Representatives of homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently meet with and attend functions sponsored by such groups. … Individuals with family and other ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have actually been given senior government positions. The most recent of these to come to light is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin [wife of the former Congressman Anthony Weiner]. …

The Obama administration’s efforts to “engage” the Muslim Brotherhood are not just reckless. They are wholly incompatible with the President’s oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the similar commitment made by his subordinates.

In Gaffney’s view, it’s a step too far:

These officials’ now-open embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a geo-strategic tipping point … Instead of relying upon – let alone hiring – Muslim Brotherhood operatives and associates, the United States government should be shutting down their fronts, shariah-adherent, jihad-incubating “community centers” and insidious influence operations in America. By recognizing these enterprises for what they are, namely vehicles for fulfilling the seditious goals of the MB’s civilization jihad, they can and must be treated as prosecutable subversive enterprises, not protected religious ones under the U.S. Constitution. …

The policy toward the MB in Egypt will, Gaffney explains, strengthen and encourage the organization in America:

By engaging the Ikhwan [Arabic for the Brotherhood] in its native land, the Obama administration is effectively eliminating any lingering impediment to the operations of its myriad front groups in this country. Even before Secretary Clinton’s announcement, many of them have already been accorded unprecedented access to and influence in the U.S. government. …

The EU is following Obama’s lead in embracing the MB.

Robert Spencer writes at Front Page:

Following quickly after the revelation that the Obama administration had resolved to establish contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, the European Union has announced that it, too, is interested in talking with the group. …

So why is the Western world rushing to talk to this malignant group? Why the determination to ignore and deny what it stands for and says it will do?

If the Western world is to survive the Islamic jihad onslaught, it will only manage to do so by decisively rejecting this fantasy-based policymaking. …

Even commentators like Spencer and Gaffney who see clearly what is happening and what must follow, do not confront the most obvious explanation for Obama’s acting as he does towards this powerful spearhead of Islam, setting an example for others to follow, perhaps because it is  “too dreadful to contemplate”  as used to be said of nuclear war breaking out between the West and the Soviet Union.

The too-dreadful-to-contemplate answer is that this is not “fantasy-based policymaking”, but policymaking with a view to achieving the very results that are being achieved: the slow but steady, step-by step conquest of the West by Islam.

We’re saying that Obama wants Islam to succeed.

Melanie Phillips sees Obama’s cozying up to the MB as capitulation. She writes:

The abject capitulation of the Obama administration to the forces waging war on the western world was laid bare a few days ago when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US now wanted to open a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood.

And she asks in bewilderment:

Why does supposedly arch-feminist Hillary want to ‘engage’ with a movement that would promote the mutilation of Egyptian women?

Whether Hillary Clinton and the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton understand what it will mean if Islam achieves its aim of  world domination – the universal imposition of sharia law, dhimmification of Christians, annihilation of the Jews, the subjugation of women, a descent into another age of darkness – we don’t know; but we suspect they simply don’t allow themselves to think that those horrors could, let alone will, ensue. For them they would be too dreadful to contemplate.

As, perhaps, would be – for most Americans – the idea that a victorious Islam is the change Obama hopes for.

Should the United States refrain from any intervention in the world beyond its borders except in its own incontrovertible interest?

Or should it act as the world’s policeman? Does it have a “responsibility to protect”- if so, whom from what? Populations from their rulers? Vulnerable groups from any and all attackers?

To bring the debate to the moment and the actual, should the US keep its forces in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting savage peasants and failing to crush them? Should there still be a US military presence in Iraq? In Germany? In South Korea? Should the US be fighting – as it is –  in Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen?

Should it not be using force to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power? And immediately against Iran’s ally, Bashar Assad, the bloody tyrant of Syria?

Should it not be outspending China on defense?

Should it not be helping Georgia liberate two of its provinces from Russia?

Should it be protecting South Sudan from its northern neighbors and their Ugandan proxies? Or the Nigerian Christians from their Muslim persecutors? Or the ethnic African Muslims of Dafur from the Arab Muslims who are raping, robbing, hounding and massacring them? Or destroying the pirates of Somalia? Or putting an end to the Arab/African slave trade?

Can those who answer yes to the first question fairly be called “isolationists”?

David Harsanyi considers, in a column at Townhall, whether the label is apt when applied to those who want America to withdraw from Afghanistan and refrain from any further participation in the NATO intervention in Libya:

There’s been a lot of talk about an alleged turn in American public opinion — particularly among Republicans — toward “isolationism.”

In a recent debate among GOP presidential hopefuls, there was some discussion about ending the United States’ commitment to the tribal warlords and medieval shamans of the Afghan wilderness. This induced John McCain to complain about the rise of a new “strain of isolationism” … McCain sidekick Lindsey Graham went on to notify Congress that it “should sort of shut up and not empower Gadhafi” when the topic of the House’s potentially defunding the military — er, kinetic, non-warlike bombing activity over Libya — came up. It would be a mistake, he vented, for Republican candidates to sit “to the left” of President Barack Obama on national security.

So if you don’t shut up and stop carping about this non-war war of ours, you are abetting North African strongmen. Makes sense. It’s the return of Teddy Roosevelt-style Republicanism, in which arbitrary power (and John McCain’s singular wisdom) matters a lot more than any democratic institution.

Sure, some on the far right and swaths of the protectionist, union-driven left oppose international trade agreements and [are] endlessly freaking us out about foreign influences.

Our interpolation: Is this protectionist section of the left aware of the left-elite’s longing for world government?

But isolationists? Judging from our conduct in the real world of economy, we’re anything but insular. So perhaps McCain simply meant noninterventionists — as in folks who have an unwavering ideological aversion to any and all overseas entanglement.

That can’t be it, either. Maybe, like many Americans, some in the GOP are simply grappling with wars that never end and a war that never started.

And with plenty of troubles here at home, it’s not surprising that Americans have turned their attention inward.

We can’t be in a constant state of war. Then again, Afghanistan is not a war per se, but a precarious social engineering project that asks our best and bravest (or, as our ally Hamid Karzai calls them, “occupiers”) to die for the Afghan Constitution, which is roundly ignored — except for the parts codifying Islamic law, that is. But all these conflicts come with the price of endless involvement. We almost always win.

When and where? Since World War Two, where has America won a hot war? Oh yes – against Granada.

But we never really go home. …

Did sometimes. From Granada after victory. From Vietnam after defeat.

This week, we learned that Obama rejected the advice of lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department who questioned his legal authority to continue this nonmilitary military involvement in Libya without congressional authorization. Instead, the administration offered a string of euphemisms concocted to bypass the Constitution.

Without any tangible evidence that this conflict furthers our national interests or any real proof that we are preventing a wide-scale humanitarian crisis, it’s not a surprise that Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we’re “leading from behind” — which is, in fact, as stupid and deceptive as the case it doesn’t make.

Are you an isolationist for questioning those who continue to weaken the Constitution? … Are you an isolationist for questioning this brand of obfuscation? Are you an isolationist for wanting American forces to win and leave the battlefield rather than hang around for decades of baby-sitting duty?

And Tony Blankley writes, also  at Townhall:

I was one of the first GOP internationalist-oriented commentators or politicians to conclude that the Afghanistan War effort had served its initial purpose and that it was time to phase out the war. As a punitive raid against the regime that gave succor to Osama bin Laden, we had removed the Taliban government and killed as many al-Qaida and Taliban fighters as possible. …

But as the purpose of that war turned into nation building, even GOP internationalists had a duty to reassess whether, given the resources and strategy being brought to the new purpose, such policy was likely to be effective.

Now many others in the GOP and in the non-isolationist wing of the Democratic Party are likewise judging failure in Afghanistan to be almost inevitable. That is not a judgment driven by isolationism. Neither are we isolationist in our judgment (along with the opinion of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and almost the entire uniformed chain of command) that we see no national interest in Libya.

This is not isolationism; it is a rational effort at judging how best to advance American values and interests in an ever-more witheringly dangerous world.

Both Harsanyi’s and Blankley ‘s opinions are apt as far as they go.

But  the problem is deeper, the questions that need to be raised about foreign policy harder than those they are answering.

Can America have a coherent foreign policy that America itself and the other states of the world can depend upon for any useful length of time? The two political parties are now so divided ideologically that foreign policy will depend on whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat. It will necessarily chop and change. Or if relations with some states stay more or less the same for a while, they will do so unreliably.

Could the very uncertainty characterize foreign policy usefully? No foreign state being secure in its relations with the US, each would have to be vigilant, tack according to the US wind, adjust to the changes. A case could be made that a Machiavellian preference to be feared by other nations rather than loved might serve America well.

But there are other developments to be considered. In countries throughout the world – led in this by Europe –  there is an ideological tendency towards world government. The nation state is not liked: new political alignments, such as the European Union, are trying to phase it out. Democrats, for the most part, are in sympathy with the movement; Republicans are not. Democrats – like most leftists everywhere – have a vision of the UN turning into a world government; Republicans – many of them at least – would be happy to see the monstrous institution disbanded. It cannot continue long as it is: being a house of lies, it must fall down.

NATO is weakening. Letting Turkey into it was fatal. No longer secular, Turkey is now in the camp of Islam, inimical to the West.

The world as it was conceived to be after World War Two is changing kaleidoscopically under our eyes.

In relation to the rest of the world, what are American interests? How should they be pursued?

Should America concentrate on preserving itself as a fenced-in area of freedom on an otherwise unfree planet?  That would be isolationism. Should it form a union with other as-yet-free nation-states: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel? India perhaps? Honduras? Papau? …

What would such a union do, what would be in its joint interest – “spreading democracy”, “protecting civilians”, “building nations”? The questions troubling America now would trouble it jointly, and the answers remain as hard to find.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, is to address a joint session of Congress next week. Congress is sympathetic to Israel. President Obama is not. He is to address the Arab world before the world hears what Netanyahu has to say.

Caroline Glick anticipates what will be said and done:

Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more. …

The Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.

Obama seems to be still in pursuit of a “two-state solution” negotiated between Israel and — some Palestinian representatives. Up until recently Israel’s negotiating opposite was supposed to be Abu Abbas, powerless head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which sort of governs the West Bank. Hamas, governing Gaza, was ostensibly not supported by the US or any Western Power because it was designated a terrorist organization. Abu Abbas also represents a terrorist organization – Fatah – but that is politely overlooked. In fact, Hamas’s terrorism is overlooked in practice: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directs lots of lovely lolly its way – to use for “humanitarian” purposes of course, not terrorism! (Did no one ever tell her that money is fungible?)

Now the PA and Hamas – which have a record of killing each other’s personnel – have cozied up together in a partnership to declare a Palestinian state later this year. Will Obama and his people – such as Hillary Clinton, and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – pretend that Hamas is suddenly respectable enough to deal with?

Sarah Honig, a Jerusalem Post writer always worth reading, sees as self-deluding those Israelis who still think a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict is possible.

Unflaggingly they peddle tattered, intrinsically disorienting delirium. Incredibly they never seem to tire of pulling the wool over their own and our eyes. They present themselves as possessors of singular insight, as harbingers of a greater truth and as wise beyond our plebeian grasp.

They won’t let go of the grand delusion that underlies their self-professed wisdom and purported truth. Their two-state delusion was certainly sweet – simplistically and seductively so. It claimed that all conflicts can be amicably and fairly settled by just dividing up whatever is contested. It touted idealistic goodwill and seemed compellingly rational. But it was from the start delusionary.

By all empirical yardsticks, that delusion has finally and undeniably crumbled into grimy dust. The illusion of a reasonable accommodation with genocidal foes – which without fail anyhow failed the test of coolheaded analysis – ignobly disintegrated when Ramallah’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas banded back together, at least pro forma, for the sake of expediency.

Whatever their motives and whatever the long-range plans of the old-new partners, their joint venture should persuade even the most diehard of our peaceniks that the time has come to finally wise up and lose the illusion.

The prevalent illusion thus far was that we face two dissimilar Palestinian entities – negotiation- espousing Ramallah and Gaza, whose unaltered goal is Israel’s annihilation. Now that the pair has retied the knot, their deception has been exposed. That should mean that the illusion has been shattered irrefutably once and for all.

In reality the only distinction between the two always was tactical. Ramallah excels at propaganda warfare, while Gaza fires rockets. Ramallah is funded by the Quartet, while Gaza is underpinned by Damascus and Tehran. Both wish to obliterate Israel, but Ramallah is more cunning and Gaza more candidly confrontational.

Neither Ramallah nor Gaza was ever a reliable or viable peace partner. Only our indomitable wishful thinking and obsessive illusion kept conjuring up interlocutors on whom we could unload slices of homeland, directly atop the soft underbelly of our densest population centers.

Gaza’s Hamas thumbs its nose at us and glorifies the IslamoNazism of infamous Second World War-criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini, who from his Berlin residence avidly abetted Hitler’s Final Solution, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue even of several thousand Jewish children.

Conversely, in his Moscow Friendship University PhD treatise, Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas attempted to dwarf the Holocaust’s proportions drastically, while simultaneously accusing Zionists of colluding in Holocaust perpetration – i.e., it didn’t happen, but Israel is guilty. This history-warping dissertation is compulsory study material in his fiefdom’s schools.

Abbas’s Fatahland is nothing but a more outwardly decorous version of Hamastan. All the rest is desperate illusion. …

Most members of the dysfunctional family of nations indeed advocate the two-state solution, but we alone are delusional. All the others are stimulated by cynical vested interests, which impair our self-preservation prospects. In other words, other states don’t push us into the two-state abyss for our own good. Quite the contrary.

In our post, Now is the time for Israel to define its borders, March 10, 2011, we did not say where we think the borders should be drawn, only that Israel should define them before the Hamas-Fatah terrorists who dictate Palestinian policy try declaring a Palestinian state as they say they will.

We see plainly enough, however, that no negotiated two-state solution is possible, because Palestinian leaders do not and never have wanted it. They rejected every offer of a Palestinian state in the past because it would mean co-existing with Israel, and the present leaders have no intention of establishing a Palestinian state that would co-exist with Israel in the future.

Their solution is one state: Palestine.

The Israeli solution ought to be one state: Israel – from the Golan to the Red, from the Jordan to the Med.

Israel would continue to have Arab Israeli citizens. The Palestinians who do not want to live in Israel should be welcomed into the Palestinian state that already exists, and has existed longer than Israel: Jordan.

Jordan was given illegally to the Arabs (as the Emirate of Transjordan); cut out of mandated territory reserved, by legally binding instruments, for the Jews. But since it exists, it should be recognized as the Palestinian state that it is. The British foisted Hashemite rulers on to its mostly Palestinian Arab population, to “reward” the Hashemites for feebly supporting Britain in the First World War, having been prodded every inch of the short way by that notorious charlatan – and abiding hero to the British Foreign Office –  T.E. Lawrence. There are Palestinian voices calling for the Palestinian majority in Jordan to overthrow the dictatorial monarchy and establish a democratic republic. A Republic of Palestine in Jordan would be home to all Palestinian refugees. It might have normal diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, and even allow some Jews to live in it.

But we must not delude ourselves that the Western powers are likely to support the idea. Their policy is to propitiate the Arab states and Islam, and the Arabs states and Islam want the obliteration of Israel.

R2P is the doctrine according to which Obama has authorized US military intervention in the Libyan civil war.

Its name in full is “the responsibility to protect”.  The UN. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, referring to it as a justification for the use of military force against Gaddafi’s regime in Libya,  said that it sets an “international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”’

One of its most enthusiastic proponents is Samantha Power, adviser to Obama in the role of Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs [sic] at the National Security Council.

It seems that she and Hillary Clinton (once bitter enemies, now allies) persuaded a hesitant Obama to go to war against Gaddafi in the name of R2P.

Power may be sincerely keen on protecting civilians in Libya. Obama may be too. But there is reason to believe that for Power the attack on Libya in the name of R2P will serve a purpose nearer to her heart. It will provide a precedent for a military intervention she has been advocating for at least eight years.

In an article at Front Page, Chris Queen tells us more about her:

Much of the motivation behind Obama’s Libya policy stems from from the ideology of Samantha Power, the Irish-American, hard-Left humanitarian activist who has been the president’s Director for Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council since 2009 (and, incidentally, the wife of Obama’s “Regulatory Czar” Cass Sunstein). Power is the woman behind the curtain in terms of Obama’s policy on Libya, but a look at what she advocates reveals a troubling agenda.

Power has advocated a foreign policy that can easily be described as …  “humanitarian interventionist.” Power and other activists like her seek to build American foreign policy around merely stepping into situations in the name of preventing genocide and other humanitarian aims. This type of foreign policy relies heavily on international law and multilateralism. …

While this type of foreign policy agenda might in some small way make sense to some people in a situation like the one in Libya, it is absolutely dangerous as the basis for an entire foreign policy. You see, Samantha Power and her supporters have Israel in their sights as a target for American military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

He posts a video clip here of Samantha Power declaring that the US should use military force against Israel to protect the Palestinians from Israel.

And he notes:

In another interview five years later, Power stated that we in the United States brought terrorist attacks on ourselves because of our relationship with Israel.

We don’t know what arguments she used to Obama, but we think it likely that if she pointed out to him how an attack now on Libya would be useful for future action against Israel, that may have been the very one that persuaded him.

Read more about this here and here and here.

At the request of our valued reader and  frequent commenter Frank, we have written this article on foreign aid and what would happen if it were stopped. He was prompted to think about it when he watched a news video reporting that in this time of recession and severe unemployment, hundred of millions of US taxpayer dollars are being sent abroad for the refurbishment of mosques in Islamic countries, many of which are known to incite terrorist attacks on US targets.

(Note: Requests are welcome, though we can’t promise always to grant them.)

*

“Foreign aid is the transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

There’s disagreement on who first said that, but it doesn’t matter. The question is: is it true?

The first part is not entirely untrue: among the tax–payers whose money goes to foreign aid are many who are poor, or at least not rich, by their own country’s standards.

The second part is almost entirely true. Foreign aid is paid by the donor states to the governments of the recipient states, and very little of it goes any further. The dictators, the kleptocrats, the oligarchs, the once-elected-always-in “democratic” panjandrums, the tribal chiefs who rule weaker tribes by tradition or conquest, pocket the lion’s share of the incoming largesse, distribute some of it to their kinsfolk, chums, influential supporters and selected rivals, and only then, if there’s anything left – which would likely be by oversight for which someone gets fired or shot – it’s flung from the balcony of power, in a little glittering shower, down upon the ravenous masses who scrabble for it in the dust.

Our own sort of government is not like that. Ours is accountable to us, at least in theory. The present government of the US has acted on a different understanding, but even the worst members of the Obama administration cannot – as far as we know – be accused of the venality of, say, African dictators, or even the routine corruption that characterizes the unelected leaders of the European Union.

Now what may be virtuous in an individual can be a fault in government, and vice versa. You, sir/madam, may not kill, but governments must in war. You may not demand money with menaces, but governments must when they tax you. You may not hold someone against their will, but governments must imprison convicts. You may give away your money, but a government is a trustee of others’ money and should spend it only for the benefit of those who earned it. Generosity is a virtue in a person, a vice in a government.

Those who want a government to be a wellspring of cash to pay for all their personal needs, vote for socialism. A socialist government is extortionist, the idea being that those who earn money should be forced to hand it over for the benefit of everybody else. A central agency – which can only be government as it’s the only institution with the legal power of compulsion – must gather it in and deal it out again “fairly”.  Some toil, and all hold their hands out. The system is not just, though it’s devotees call it “social justice”.

Socialists think of an economy as a pie, of which everyone should get an equal slice. They assume there is a fixed amount of wealth in the land, established once and for all long ago by divine grant, so if some are richer than others they must have become so by theft. A few are rich – they imagine – because the many are poor: the many are poor because a few are rich. They cannot grasp, or will not learn, that wealth is created, and where it is created some become rich and many become richer. (A fine example is the “second industrial revolution” that began to the world’s wonder and glory in Silicon Valley about half a century ago. Apple orchards gave way to Apple computers – to sum it up – and where there had been hundreds of poor field workers there are now millions of prosperous industrial workers, and the persons who were free to invest their own money, time, innovative ability as they chose, not only became rich themselves, but have also benefited hundreds of millions of people all over the world. That’s what capitalism and the free market – so dreaded and hated by socialists – can do.)

Foreign aid is a socialist idea. It is redistribution of the “world’s wealth”. That pie idea again, writ very large. Equal slices. A fixed amount that needs to be distributed “fairly”.  (Ideally, to the true believers, by a world government.) Those who advocate it get a warm glowing feeling inside. Puffed up with moral pride, they simply know they are virtuous. They hold compassion to be the highest value, and bestow their compassion, by means of other people’s money, liberally on the wretched of the earth.

But have they actually done any good?

They claim to have “helped” poor countries by bringing plenty where there was  scarcity. The more realistic among them, not entirely persuaded by the pie theory of wealth, see the free grants of cash from the First World as seed money with which  to grow profitable projects that will make many an economic desert bloom.

Has the looked-for transformation ever come about? Has US aid – for instance – ever actually promoted economic success anywhere?

Well, yes. Once. Maybe. European economic recovery after the devastation of World War Two was probably boosted by the aid it received through the Marshall Plan. About $13 billion was distributed in varying amounts to the west European states, including Italy and  Germany  (and even neutral Sweden but not Spain), Britain getting the most. It’s  impossible to know whether Europe would have recovered as well, less well, or better without it. It was given, it was used (much of it to buy goods from the United States), and Europe did recover and prosper, so you could say that the aid wasn’t wasted.

But can as much be said for other hand-outs to foreign lands? If you hunt about you may light upon a successful outcome from a grant being well used here and there on our big round globe. But in general the answer is no. Aid has not proved a successful means to help poor peoples to thrive. And that isn’t all of the bad news. The rest of the story is worse. For the most part aid is squandered.  Worse still, it has often had the effect of making poor countries poorer – a point to which we shall return. And arguably worst of all, it sometimes goes to strengthen the aid-giver’s active enemies. (See our post, Aiding our enemies , March 14, 2011.)

The  redistribution enthusiasts explain, in the patient tones of saints, that the waste of what is given and the hatred directed at the giver are the direct results of the rich countries not giving enough (see for example here, here, and here). They complain that no developed country in the Western world budgets even as much as the .7% of its GDP that they promised once upon a time at some international forum, some field of the cloth of gold. The richest country in the world, the USA, allots barely .2%, and the saints who want to be generous with Americans’ money feel that the US government should hang its head in shame for being so miserly.

But if the money is squandered, what justification is there for giving any at all? If it doesn’t improve living standards, does it at least secure a strategic advantage, a port or an air base? Ensure an ally where one might be needed? Engage a supportive voice in the United Nations? Yes, sometimes, for a while, if nothing comes along to put a strain on the agreement.

Does it matter if the aid money does no good for the recipient and possibly endangers the giver? Conservative governments seem to have answered this question cynically, along such lines as: “Even if a few millions bestowed on this or that Havenotistan is spent on a gold bed for the tyrant’s wife, or a fleet of Mercedes that cannot be moved from the airport where they were landed because no one knew to put oil in them before trying to drive them away (both actual examples), the amounts are too small to fuss about … chump change … and there may be some sort of  dividend coming out of it one sunny day.”

What if consumer goods are sent rather than money? Food, say? Doesn’t that reach the people who need it? Not often. It gets diverted –  to  cartels, army top brass, transport operators, profiteers in influential positions, who will sell what they don’t keep for themselves at inflated prices when famine gets severe enough. For instance, in Somalia, after such slavering packs of wolves have chewed off  their share  –  al-Qaeda linked terrorists among them in that benighted land –  only half the food sent as aid is “distributed to the needy population”. (See our  post,, Out of Africa always something familiar, March 11, 2010.)

But, it might be objected, not all recipients are unpredictable despotisms. The biggest beneficiary of US foreign aid is Israel – $3 billion per annum. Any complaint about that?

Yes. From Israel – because of the strings attached. Israel has to use some of the money to buy American military aircraft and weapons – not the ones it wants, but the sort Israelis say they can make better themselves. Some also say they don’t really need the aid at all, which amounts to under 1% of Israel’s total GDP, but are not allowed to refuse it because tens of thousands of American jobs depend on the Israeli munitions market. If this is true, Israel is not a beneficiary but a victim of aid!

From America’s point of view, however, that’s surely one lump of aid worth giving. Or is it? The economist Peter Bauer, who was Prime Minister Thatcher’s special adviser on foreign aid, pointed out that such an arrangement as that is analogous to your local store owner giving you cash on condition that you spend some of it buying his merchandise.

But let’s return to our assertion that aid often has the effect of making poor countries poorer. Here’s a quotation from an article by Matthew Rees in the Wall Street Journal [first quoted in our post, How to spread poverty, April 4, 2009]:

Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a former World Bank consultant, believes that it is time to stop proceeding as if foreign aid does the good that it is supposed to do. …  Aid, she writes, is “no longer part of the potential solution, it’s part of the problem – in fact, aid is the problem.” … Ms. Moyo spells out how attempts to help Africa actually hurt it. The aid money pouring into Africa, she says, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; it stifles investment; and it leads to higher rates of poverty – all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms. Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.

In the light of that dismal fact, foreign aid is plainly a bad idea and it should be stopped.

What would happen if it were?

It’s more than likely that the redistribution saints would wax very wrathful indeed. It would soon become plain that their motive was never so much – or at all? – the betterment of life for the hungry masses in poor countries. They, or many of them, have a higher goal in mind: global redistribution of what they call “resources” – meaning the wealth created in and by the capitalist First World.

Matthew Rees explains in his Wall Street Journal article:

The report blends the socialist and Islamic economic perspectives as an alternative to our present capitalistic system.  It has four basic themes.  Western-style free market capitalism is the villain. Redistributive justice is mandatory. New global governance authorities are required. Global taxes are also needed.

The only institution that the UN experts believe has broad enough political legitimacy to serve as the global decision making forum and eliminate the abuses of free market capitalism is, unsurprisingly, the body that gave them the platform to air their views on a global stage in the first place – the United Nations.

Since the United States is usually asked by the UN to put up at least 20% of whatever money it is raising, that would mean U.S. taxpayers would be expected to fork over $200 billion extra over the next two years.

Would we at least be able to impose some reasonable conditions on the massive grants and loans for development and other support (or “conditionalities” as the Commission of Experts calls them)?  The UN experts say absolutely not!

After all, it would be politically incorrect to expect each recipient of our taxpayers’ money to actually have to demonstrate that the money won’t end up in a corrupt dictator’s Swiss bank account because, according to the UN experts’ circular reasoning, such “conditionalities” would “disadvantage developing countries relative to the developed, and undermine incentives for developing countries to seek support funding…

Our sovereignty as a self-governing people to regulate our own economy must give way to global government for the sake of “the broad interest of the international community”.

The bid failed. But the saints never give up. They had another go by claiming that the planet could only be saved from man-made global warming by world government, which would oversee the redistribution of the developed world’s “resources”.

That would be the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs. There would soon be no more “resources” to redistribute. No one would be rich (except themselves), but there’d be that equality of misery everywhere on earth which, to the socialist conscience, is the non plus ultra of moral good.

We must not let it happen. Our verdict is that if foreign aid were stopped, everyone would benefit, the nations that give and the nations that receive. So what we need now – to save not only ourselves who are thriving on capitalism, but the rest of the world too – are tightfisted governments. America must elect a miser-government, the stingiest ever, refusing so much as a crumb in aid to another country. Then the wretched of the earth can imitate our ways, and prosper.

Jillian Becker   March 21, 2011

Here it comes, looming into sight over the horizon – war.

Tomorrow, Monday February 21, 2011, Iranian warships, at least one of them carrying long-range missiles for Hizbullah, will pass through the Suez Canal and enter the Mediterranean. [Monday update: their passage has been postponed to Tuesday.]

From DebkaFile:

Up until now, Saudi Arabia, in close conjunction with Egypt and its President Hosni Mubarak, led the Sunni Arab thrust to contain Iranian expansion – especially in the Persian Gulf. However, the opening of a Saudi port to war ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the first time in the history of their relations points to a fundamental shift in Middle East trends in consequence of the Egyptian uprising. It was also the first time Cairo has permitted Iranian warships to transit Suez from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, although Israeli traffic in the opposite direction had been allowed. …

Iran is rapidly seizing the fall of the Mubarak regime in Cairo and the Saudi King Abdullah’s falling-out with President Barack Obama as an opportunity not to be missed for establishing a foothold along the Suez Canal and access to the Mediterranean …

King Abdullah’s “falling-out” with Obama? The King to whom Obama bowed deeply now furious with him? Not much reported in the US, although it’s a transformative event.

The King (DebkaFile reports here) has changed his policy towards Iran as a result of what he regards as Obama’s betrayal of Mubarak.

The conversation between President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah early Thursday, Feb. 10, was the most acerbic the US president has ever had with an Arab ruler … They had a serious falling-out on the Egyptian crisis which so enraged the king that some US and Middle East sources reported he suffered a sudden heart attack. …

Those sources disclose that the call which Obama put into Abdullah … brought their relations into deep crisis …

The king chastised the president for his treatment of Egypt and its president Hosni Muhbarak calling it a disaster that would generate instability in the region and imperil all the moderate Arab rulers and regimes which had backed the United States until now. Abdullah took Obama to task for ditching America’s most faithful ally in the Arab world and vowed that if the US continues to try and get rid of Mubarak, the Saudi royal family would bend all its resources to undoing Washington’s plans for Egypt and nullifying their consequences.

According to British intelligence sources in London, the Saudi King pledged to make up the losses to Egypt if Washington cuts off military and economic aid to force Mubarak to resign. He would personally instruct the Saudi treasury to transfer to the embattled Egyptian ruler the exact amounts he needs for himself and his army to stand up to American pressure.

It’s too late for King Abdullah to save Mubarak now, but he is carrying out his threat to end his country’s alliance with the United States and turn towards Iran.

Through all the ups and downs of Saudi-US relations since the 1950s no Saudi ruler has ever threatened direct action against American policy. … [But this time] the King informed Obama that without waiting for events in Egypt to play out or America’s response, he had ordered the process set in train for raising the level of Riyadh’s diplomatic and military ties with Tehran. Invitations had gone out from Riyadh for Iranian delegations to visit the main Saudi cities.

Abdullah stressed he had more than one bone to pick with Obama. The king accused the US president of turning his back not only on Mubarak but on another beleaguered American ally, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, when he was toppled by Iran’s surrogate Hizballah.

Our sources in Washington report that all of President Obama’s efforts to pacify the Saudi king and explain his Egyptian policy fell on deaf ears. …

The initiation of dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran is the most dramatic fallout in the region from the crisis in Egypt. It is a boon for the ayatollahs who are treated the sight of pro-Western regimes either fading under the weight of domestic uprisings, or turning away from the US as Saudi Arabia is doing now.

This development is also of pivotal importance for Israel. Saudi Arabia’s close friendship with the Mubarak regime dovetailed neatly with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s alignment with Egypt and provided them with common policy denominators. The opening of the Saudi door to the Iranian push toward the Red Sea and Suez Canal tightens the Iranian siege ring around Israel.

DebkaFile lists six strategic advantages that Iran gains by acquiring an open route through Suez into the Mediterranean:

1. To cut off, even partially, the US military and naval Persian Gulf forces from their main route for supplies and reinforcements

2. To establish an Iranian military-naval grip on the Suez Canal, through which 40 percent of the world’s maritime freights pass every day

3. To bring an Iranian military presence close enough to menace the Egyptian heartland of Cairo and the Nile Delta and squeeze it into joining the radical Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish alliance

4. To thread a contiguous Iranian military-naval line from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip and up to the ports of Lebanon, where Hizballah has already seized power and toppled the pro-West government

And not improbably –

5. To eventually sever the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, annex it to the Gaza Strip and establish a large Hamas-ruled Palestinian state athwart the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea

And evidently –

6. To tighten the naval and military siege on Israel.

Israel is about to be threatened on three fronts: from Lebanon on its north, from Gaza on its west, and from Sinai on its south.

Obama’s policies have brought about this world-endangering crisis. He has weakened Israel (see here and here); relied on wrong intelligence about Egypt; lost the alliance of hitherto friendly Arab states; and above all allowed Iran to grow steadily stronger despite its president’s repeated announcements that his country intends to make war.