The Middle East Goes South

By Alan Caruba

They’re rioting in Yemen and have been for eight months, trying to get rid of their president who, it appears, cannot take a hint. It shares a border with Saudi Arabia.

They’re rioting in Syria. Its president says he is going to have a new constitution drafted, presumably to meet the demands of the crowds in the street, but in the meantime his forces will just shoot as many of them as possible.

The troubles in Syria have caused Turkey to park a large number of its troops on its border and Jordan has done the same. Turkey already has lots of Syrian refugees who wisely fled when they could. Turkey, once one of the more rational nations in the region and an ally of the U.S., has been tilting toward Islamism in recent years and that has got to be bad news for everything, but especially Israel.

They’re rioting again in Egypt. Having gotten president Mubarack removed, the problem now seems to be the military that—surprise—have no intention of giving up power. They have also made it clear that any peace treaties with Israel are kaput; the first thing to go, a demilitarized Sinai between them and Israel.

In Tunisia they are preparing for an election after having rid themselves of a long time dictator. And that may be the only good news from the region.

There are attacks on government buildings in Kabul, Afghanistan, but that’s a headline going back decades. The Taliban are the problem, but particularly since they come in over the border from Pakistan.

Pakistan was, is, and will always be a tinderbox and basket-case. Formerly home to the late Osama bin Laden, only the military represent any hope of stability and, if that means shooting a bunch of Taliban every so often, they will do so.

The occasional bombs go off in Baghdad, Iraq, but since President Obama is pulling out all by a relative handful of troops, what could possibly go wrong there, eh? Hint: It shares a long border with Iran.

Oh, did I mention that there is still fierce fighting in Libya and no one knows where Col. Gadhafi is, but a provisional government is going to see if it can keep the northern and southern parts of the nation, highly tribal, together.

There is a reason that the people of these nations have a difficult time getting their arms around democracy and that’s because Islam has a stranglehold on their brains. That’s why the formal name of these nations is usually “the Islamic Republic of” wherever.

The worst of these alleged republics is, of course, Iran. It had a spate of riots in 2009, but Iran is the poster child for a complete dictatorship and, after killing and jailing anyone who even looked like they were protesting something, quiet has returned to the street of Tehran. This has permitted their military to plan operations like assassinating the Saudi ambassador to America in America.

The Supreme Leader of Iran and the lunatics who surround him hate the Great Satan (us) and the Little Satan (Israel) with such passion that, at some point, they will have to be killed to avoid World War Three. Most Iranians love the U.S. and will be greatly relieved if we free them from their bondage.

In Israel, in order to secure the return of a single Israeli soldier, kidnapped five years ago by Hamas, the government has decided to swap a couple of hundred murderers of Israeli citizens that have been in their jails. It’s symbolic, but it is also very, very dangerous. The Israelis value the life of every one of their soldiers. Hamas values no one’s life including Palestinians. They hide behind women and children whenever the Israelis show up to dispense some justice. Then they go back to firing rockets into Israel.

Now, as the rest of us go about our lives, trying to get our heads around why a bunch of spoiled brats and leftover Sixties potheads are protesting against Wall Street in New York and elsewhere, a sizeable portion of the planet, the Middle East, is in a life-and-death turmoil that is, I suggest, going to get a lot worse.

None of this, coming as it does in disparate reports from places many find hard to find on a map, bodes well for the second decade of the 21st century or possibly also the next one.

The so-called “Arab Spring” is rapidly turning into yet another Arab nightmare (and, yes, the Iranians are Persians, but they are doing what they can to influence events to their advantage.)

Complicating the immediate future is the question of whether the European Union will come apart over monetary issues. As for the U.S., we have to get to the 2012 elections and put right the worst mistake this nation has ever made by ridding ourselves of Barack Hussein Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Al Qaeda Sends a Message Again

By Alan Caruba

On March 11, 2004, just days before general elections in Spain, bombs went off on trains in a series of coordinated attacks that killed 191 people and wounded 1,800. An investigation determined that they were the work of an al Qaeda “inspired” terrorist cell, though it was said at the time there was no direct connection.

The ruling party, Partido Popular, had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a policy that was generally unpopular with Spaniards. The result was that its opposition won the elections.

I do not believe in coincidences and news that two explosive devices were found on cargo planes headed for America just days before our general elections suggests a pattern.

The larger pattern, of course, has been a number of recent terrorist attacks from the Christmas Eve “underwear bomber” to the more recent Times Square bomber. The only thing that seems to have protected Americans from being murdered as infidels is the sheer incompetence of those involved.

That kind of luck does not last forever.

Ironically, on October 27th I posted a commentary that was intended to be a reminder that, as we got ready to go to polling places on November 2nd, we have been too distracted from the fact that outside of America there is still a dangerous world.

Al Qaeda has sent us a message. The first part of the message was that they are still around and still at war with the Great Satan, America. The second was that they believe they can influence the outcome of our midterm elections. Though unintentional, the third part of the message is that they are a bunch of incompetents who, unlike Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City infamy, cannot put together a decent bomb.

That, of course, is an overstatement because Arabs, whether al Qaeda or not, have been blowing up each other’s mosques with regularity throughout the Middle East. There’s an Arab saying that goes something like “I against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. My brother, my cousins, and I against the world.”

Even the Mafia had more internal cohesiveness than these sons of Allah whose biggest problem in life is who to kill next.

Unlike the Spaniards who voted to run away from the Iraq conflict, these would-be bombers have seriously misunderstood how Americans think. You attack us, we send in the Marines—and the Army—and the Air Force—and we park a couple of Navy carrier groups off the coast..

If the Yemenese do not get serious about their jihadists, finding and killing them, they will eventually get a visit from Uncle Sam. They don’t have that many friends in the world and that includes their neighbors in Saudi Arabia, so it’s likely to get very nasty for them.

The American military will be exiting Afghanistan in 2011 because President Obama never wanted to be there in the first place. I hate to agree with anything the man says or does, but in this he is correct. The Afghanis are tribal. When not finding a reason to fight one another, they will join together to fight anyone from outside. And that is likely to include the Taliban at some point.

The troops we are leaving in Iraq will be there when our grandchildren have grandchildren. The U.S. has a long history of never leaving a nation once we have invaded. Just ask the Germans, the Japanese, or the South Koreans, all of whom appear to have found that arrangement to their advantage.

Aside from the operational failure of this latest terror attack, what stands out is the lack of terror among Americans. Even the stock market took it in stride on Friday.

On Tuesday Americans are going to clean house in a Congress whose members are so unpopular that the survivors and the new winners will have gotten the message voters will have sent.

That’s not just a problem for Democrats. It’s a problem for al Qaeda, too.

© Alan Caruba, 2010