J. B. Kelly noted in his celebrated Encounter essay ("Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies"), written in 1979, that the United States for decades had a "Twin-Pillar" policy in the Middle East, relying on the assured stability and friendship of those two "staunch allies" Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Three Stooges, Carter and Brzezinski and Gary Sick, aided by others of that uncomprehending ilk (behind every Robert Hunter was a Shirin Hunter -- all of them still going imperturbably strong by the way), allowed that First Pillar, Iran, to sink into the swamp of Khomeini and Islam. That is, they allowed it to revert to what the short-lived Pahlevi Dynasty, going back to the mid-1920s, had tried to change. In their own way, the Pahlevis tried to limit the power of Islam. Certainly they managed to mightily improve the treatment of non-Muslims and create, as was never created in any Arab state, a thinking elite that was open to the West and to taking an interest in, even deliberately cultivating, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic aspects of Iranian history.
Thanks to the Three Stooges, each with his act, Carter the Pious, Carter the Good, Carter the Saintly, Brzezinski the Deep Geopolitical Thinker, the "Strategist" (deeply resenting the fame and money and glory of Henry Kissinger, who was in fact not a great deal better than Brzezinski in his comprehension of the Middle East and Islam), and of course the inimitable Gary Sick, who cost taxpayers millions in Congressional investigations of his wild charges. Google "Gary Sick" and "Daniel Pipes" for a bit more on the man who, predictably, has ended up as some kind of pooh-bah director of something-or-other at Columbia, which has become in all things middle-eastern the last refuge for scoundrels and dopes.
Iran did not have to be lost. The Shah could have been encouraged to hold on. Even the left in Iran, that had foolishly made its deal with the Islamic devil, might have been assuaged had, early on, the corruption at court been modified, had a Bakhtiar been propped up. But it didn't happen. Carter wrote to Khomeini, hailing him as a "fellow man of faith." It was all there, written in Farsi, what Khomeini's views were, and what he planned to do. Bernard Lewis had read it; he knew what was to come. But no one in the Carter Administration, least of all Brzezinski and Gary Sick, would have figured out that just perhaps, while Khomeini was still in his French exile, but movie theatres with hundreds inside were already being burned to the ground by Muslim militants in Iran, they should have those texts translated so as to find out what Khomeini was all about. (Of course Sick can't read Farsi -- he's only an "Iranian expert," not a "Farsi-reading Iranian expert.") As for the 1942 statement by Khomeini, the one he adhered to all his life, the one quoted repeatedly at this website, that insists that the essence of Islam is making war and killing the Infidels -- that remark never came up. The contents of those cassettes that Khomeini made in Neauphle-le-chateau, after he was kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein (and the government of France so trustingly took him in), were never translated and never listened to -- not one, I am sure -- by Carter, by Brzezinski, by Sick. They were flying blind, making things up, the way they and so many others in successive administrations do whenever the subject of Islam or Muslim peoples and polities comes up.
So the First Pillar of the "Two-Pillar" Strategy fell. That left the Second Pillar -- Saudi Arabia. It was, and for some remains, our "staunch ally." It is nothing of the sort. It is nothing of the sort because the Al-Saud, and those over whom they lord it, are all suffused with Islam. And their Islam is un-modified or softened by anything else, such as a non-Arab ethnic identity, that might tug them slightly away from Islam. They see themselves as the purest Arabs (they are that) and the purest Muslims (they are that). As such, the Infidels, however much they may need to be used or manipulated for Saudi ends, are and can only be the enemy. It is our "staunch ally" that has spent, over the past several decades, nearly a hundred billion dollars on world-wide campaigns to spread Islam, to build and maintain mosques and madrasas all over the Western world, to finance campaigns of Da'wa, and to spread the worst kind of anti-Infidel propaganda -- the kind that Freedom House managed to pick up in Saudi-financed mosques in this country and report on.
That report should be required reading for everyone even remotely connected to policy-making and to the security services in this country, and indeed all over the Western world. But Saudi money has also gone to financing certain "academic" centers and individual professors, and to buying goodwill through the carefully-targeted largesse (when Bill Clinton became President, it was the turn of the University of Arkansas to receive Saudi money) to Presidents and ex-Presidents, to Presidential libraries, to the Baker Center at Rice, to their favorite charities which so often are their private fiefdoms or domains. This lessens the general interest in this report. Yet the Saudi textbooks that contain the most incredible -- and yet entirely predictable -- rantings against Infidels were not new, but had always been there. Saudi Arabia has not changed; it always was this way, but only recently have some begun to understand it differently. Yet still there are those who cling to the idea that Saudi Arabia is our friend, because the "good" side -- the corrupt and worldly Prince Bandar and his supposed allies -- will win.
But Prince Bandar, for all of his blague, is not and cannot be a friend of the West, or insure that Saudi Arabia will stop being the chief funder of the Jihad, the Jihad whose chief instruments are the "money weapon" and Da'wa and demographic conquest. (Paying for mosques and madrasas makes the conduct of Muslim life easier, makes it easier to settle deep within the Lands of the Infidels, and to retain a belief-system that is inimical to the well-being of those Infidels). And finally, the buying-up of influence, especially in Washington, by the Saudis, has been the main obstacle to an energy policy that recognizes the need to diminish the use of fossil fuels.
Now the Two Pillars seem to be together again -- but not in a way that bodes well for the United States. One of the Pillars is the Iran of Ahmadinejad, with his support for Hizballah and his clear determination to efface the Infidel state of Israel from the map. If some Arabs -- "Palestinians" -- must die, so what? It doesn’t matter to Iran or to other Muslims, for what counts is the impossibility of tolerating control of the land, no matter how tiny that sliver of land may be, by non-Muslims.
And the Second Pillar is Saudi Arabia, which may seem, but only to those who want to be fooled, temporarily a force for good, for “moderation.” But what motivates the daggers-and-dishdashi rulers of Saudi Arabia? Not any desire to improve the wellbeing of the United States, or to prevent its conquest, or that of Western Europe, by Islam. Certainly not the wellbeing of any Infidels. That would not make sense. That would be contrary to Islam. They are motivated, in the main, by two desires: to promote Islam, its power and glory, and of course, above all other things, to secure and promote their own well-being, the princes and princelings and princelettes of the Al-Saud. If they can come to some understanding with the Shi’a fanatics now running the Islamic Republic of Iran, that will allow the Sunni fanatics now running Saudi Arabia to avoid having to deal with Shi’a unrest in the oil regions of Al-Hasa, or just outside the confines of Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain and other sheikdoms with smaller Shi’a populations (such as Kuwait), or for that matter with Shi’a tribes in Yemen, a place that has always worried the Al-Saud. And they are worried with reason, given its larger population, and the many Yemenis who manage to come across the border for work, but who have historically been a source of Saudi disquiet.
One doubts if the Carter Administration, as it flailed about as the Shah fell and then during the hostage crisis, ever had compiled a file on Khomeini and his beliefs, or the beliefs of the True Believers in Shi’a Islam. One doubts that the Bush Administration today -- much less those that preceded it -- has ever thought to fully inform the members of that Administration, or rather the thousand most powerful people in the Executive and Congressional branches, by compiling a file marked "Islam: Main Aspects of the Belief-System” and distributing that file. And such a file would have to get beyond, far beyond, the simple-minded business of Islam as a “tolerant” faith, or Islam as a matter of Ramadan and Iftar dinners, but get to the heart of the matter: how, in Islam, are Infidels viewed? How, in the history of Islamic conquest, have Infidels -- all kinds of Infidels, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others -- been treated? No more room for potted apologetics whether from the likes of John Esposito (who during the Clinton Administration was actually consulted by them, apparently -- a man who, were things seen correctly, would be disgraced for his deliberate, constant, well-reimbursed dissembling about the nature of Islam). No more room for the others who make up the Fifth Column of MESA Nostra, and who have captured the minds of the impressionable and innocent young.
No, one doubts that there is such a file that circulates in the government today, for fear that it might get out, for fear that it would fall into the hands of those who would report it. Then the government would feel it would have to distance itself, would have to apologize to the world's Muslims for correctly describing the nature of Islam -- as described by every single Western scholar of Islam, and writer on Islam, for centuries. If, for example, the brilliant analysis of Islam written by one of the greatest American statesmen, John Quincy Adams, were to be circulated today by the American government, or put into the Congressional record by a Congressman, it would promptly be denounced by editorialists everywhere. How dare such views be given expression, or even circulated within the government?
But until some home truths about Islam -- the same home truths that this weekend the most important domestic experts on Islam, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and other apostates, are expressing -- are generally recognized, sensible policies which both recognize and exploit the natural fissures within Islam will not be created.
As Ahmadinejad meets the Saudis, Shi’a and the Sunni make peace, trying to head off hostilities. What is your reaction to that meeting? Is it one of pleasure that “instability” in the Middle East may be avoided? Are you glad to see such signs, not so much of reconciliation, but of “peace-making” between Sunni and Shi’a? If you are commonsensical, of course you are not glad. You hope that such efforts fail. You hope that Ahmadinejad and Abdullah do not really make peace.
But then ask yourself this: who, in this country, apparently wants them to succeed? Who in this country is willing to spend the lives of American officers and men, spend another few hundred billion (at least), ship over still more war materiel – so much that the National Guard has very little left for use here at home, as the “National” Guard – in order to do exactly what Abdullah and Ahmadinejad are attempting to do, that is to prevent “sectarian violence”?
Yes, the United States is apparently back with its old “Twin-Pillar Policy” that J. B. Kelly described in 1979, the policy of pretending that America’ s interests could be furthered by relying on Saudi Arabia and Iran as those Twin Pillars. And now we see an Administration that obstinately cannot admit how mistaken it was in its failure to properly label the campaign that Infidels are, or should be engaged in. Instead they call it, idiotically, a “war on terror” which, among other things, does nothing to rally people in Western Europe against the growing menace of islamization in their own lands, as long as the instruments of that islamization do not include “terror” – and why should they, when things are going so swimmingly without terror as one of those instruments?
So if you are happy with Ahmadinejad and Abdullah attempting to head off sectarian strife, then you should be mightily pleased with the Bush Administration’s effort to do the same in Iraq.
On the other hand, if you share my view that sectarian and ethnic fissures within the Camp of Islam, offered on a platter in Iraq, offer Infidels the very best hope for dividing and demoralizing the Camp of Islam, then you will realize, with a pang, that the Bush Administration’s folly in remaining in Tarbaby Iraq is beyond measure, scarcely beyond comprehension, and it is a folly shared not only by loyalists of the Administration, but by all those who brightly speak or write so self-assuredly of “catastrophe” that would follow an American pullout, without ever asking the most obvious next question: “catastrophe for whom?” Nor do they begin to rethink assumptions about how best to weaken the Camp of Islam, and to arouse Infidels out of their somnolence. There is nothing like a Demonstration Project of Muslim violence, Muslim aggression, especially if it is if the kind where Infidels are nowhere in sight, for their presence so often blocks the view.
And it is a folly that has not been properly pointed out by those opposed to Bush and his Iraq nonsense, because they do not themselves see things accurately. They and attack him for the wrong reasons, not for the right and unanswerable reasons that have been presented at this website for three long and infuriating years.
So do you support the attempt to make Iraq a place where the “catastrophe” of sectarian violence can be headed off, and support the use of American troops, and the sacrifice of American lives, to do that? Do you? Then go ahead, support President Bush, and President Ahmedinejad, and King Abdullah, for all three of them agree with you. “Catastrophe” must be avoided.
The Three Stooges deserve better than to compared to Jimmy Carter, Zbig and Gary Sick.
Couldn't agree with you more on the criminal ineptitude of Carter et al.
A reasonable argument can be made that had the islamists been crushed when they took out embassy, we would not be on the path we are on today.
Since the first incident in Teheran where our embassy was invaded (first of two) to 911, the Carter - and succeeding - administrations showed faint backbone. Whether through bungled diplomatic efforts or the non-existent to timid military responses, our actions have done nothing but embolden these cave dwellers.
We have the strongest, best equipped and best trained military the world has ever seen and it has been deployed in an apologetic manner. Instead of rapid, overwhelming force, our men and women have been forced to take on the role of targets by vacuous decision makers.
Without bold. meaningful and nationalistic decisions and actions, we are heading to the dustbin of history. A once great and proud country, betrayed by the greed and ignorance of our venal officials.
Another superb article.
One thought though - Carter's mismanagement did irreparable damage to US esteem throughout the world and arguably gave succour to today's madmen. What level of reputational damage would the US suffer from a swift withdrawal - both at home and abroad?
"What level of reputational damage would the US suffer from a swift withdrawal - both at home and abroad?"
-- from a posting above
If done correctly, none. If done correctly, in conjunction with a much harsher line toward Islam, which can be semaphored, not very subtly, in a hundred ways -- an expeditionary force that seizes the southern Sudan and Darfur, in order to meet a "humanitarian crisis," and the scenes of those grateful black Africans surrounding their American rescuers from the Muslim Arabs who have tormented and murdered them, will signal no retreat. And other acts, such as the calling of a special meeting of Western defense ministers (NATO minus Turkey)to discuss the internal security threat that a large-scale Muslim presence, and Muslim members of the military and police forces, will further signal a new realism. The promoting of the message of apostates -- not fake "reformers" but apostates -- who should testify before Congres, should meet with members of the Executive branch, should be training the officers and men in the real, not the fake, CAIR-vetted Islam -- that will all show that the American forces becoming unstuck from Tarbaby Iraq, however shrill the initial cries of Muslim victory, is part of a different and saner worldview, not to bring, the American government now assuming its wonted rule as the Little Engine That Could, bringing toys and good things to eat to the children and even the adults, those "ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East" who want "freedom" as the Administration in chorus keeps puffing and chuffing -- that "surge" and other "surges" possibly to come -- that I-Think-I-Can, I-Think-I-Can, and we are all left to gape in disbelief that the imperviousness to reality of those who claim to lead us, or rather, to "take a leadership role."
No, after a few weeks of crowing and ululating, it is the Muslims who will come to realize that the Americans are no longer going to continue the farce of bringing "freedom" or "democracy" (never interpreted as more than mere head-counting, which is why the Shi'a liked it, and the Sunnis didn't) many Muslims, now left to deal with by themselves the fissures, ethnic and sectarian, that always existed inside (and indeed outside Iraq), will soon realize that their "victory" over the Americans is Pyrrhic, and for them, a potential catastrophe.
Those fissures were not caused, as some would have it, by the Americans, but go back to the first century of Islam, and Sunni mistreatment of Shi'a can be seen, has been seen, for many decades in Pakistan, in the entire history of Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in Lebanon, and even in Yemen. The only thing that the Americans did is to remove (were inveigled into removing, by all those plausible smiling Shi'a-in-exile) Saddam Hussein's regime, a regime of, by, and for Sunni Arabs (behind the facade of a Ba'athism open to all), that is no longer and will not be reconstituted.
Saddam Hussein, the Sunni Arab despot whom no other Sunni Arabs denounced for what he did to the Kurds (not a peep from the Arab League or any Arab government, or indeed any Arab of note, save for Kanan Makiya), nor did any Sunni Arabs appear bothered about the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Shi'a Arabs in the south, after the 1991 revolt.
No, it will be perceived as an American "loss" for about a month, at most. And then reality will set in. And who lost, and who really gained, from the American withdrawal -- some three years after it ought to have taken place --will then become apparent. And there is nothing the Arab rulers can do to stop this.
Thank God.
Mr. Fitzgerald, you are incomplete in your understanding of the issue. Carter did not bumble or let the Khomeini regime come into being by accident. It was deliberate.
Brzezinski is a globalist of the Rockefeller clan who is allied with the Rothschilds. The British communist sect of MI 6 are the ones who got rid of the Shah. See Kermit Roosevelt provided the coup which installed the Shah and put Iran into the American sphere and not British.
Khomeini was installed to bring all that oil money back into European and not American coffers with skimming cuts and literal funds.
The premise that Iran and Saudi Arabia were 2 pillars is a misnomer. They were instead a "balance of trade" where oil money was returned to the west for massive military bases and weaponry. That is why the Rockefellers allowed OPEC to jack prices in the 1970's to fund this money laundering scheme.
Iran is Islamocommunist and Saudi Arabia is Islamofascist and never the 2 shall meet. I have hinted that the European order is in league with the Russians for the expressed purpose of starting a nuclear exchange between Iran and Saudi Arabia which will destroy the oil fields for 5 years and make Russia blackmail central to create the Eurasian Bolshevik empire with the Europeans being the Euro money men.
The real play is not in the middle east, but in Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin and the Vatican.
The American policy has been out flanked and there are just enough crazed leaders from Assad with biological weapons tested in Darfur for Europe and Iran with it's nuclear arsenal and the Saudi's with the Pakistani funded nukes that a real war is being set up with just enough horror in it for the Eurasian cabal to cement power.
The contents of those cassettes that Khomeini made in Neauphle-le-chateau, after he was kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein (and the government of France so trustingly took him in), were never translated and never listened to -- not one, I am sure -- by Carter, by Brzezinski, by Sick. They were flying blind, making things up, the way they and so many others in successive administrations do whenever the subject of Islam or Muslim peoples and polities comes up.
Funy you should mention these cassettes. I recall quite clearly hearing of them on the German evening news and on several news shows as well. They were translated into German for the perusal of the audience. It is hard to imagine [but then stranger things indeed have happened] that the American political establishment would know less about the abominable assahola than a German evening news audience.
My feeling is they simply failed to act on the information. And blame the French for allowing this vermin to stay in their country for so long. He was saying lots of things against the French people and europe as a whole WHILE HE STAYED ON THEIR SOIL!!
The mofoes have no sense of hospitality and gratitude. you can save one from certain death and as soon as he's able he'll have a knife in your back.
moslems - NEIN DANKE!
PS. Everybody read the writings of a certain Martin Luther. He described the situation of Mahomet and his evil spawn to a "T".
Martin Luther warned of "The Turk" and that his "satanic religion" gave cause to his complete lack of a work ethic. You may get a chuckle out of how Marin Luther describbes how they treat women - including their own. If it all weren't so sad it would be so very laughable. If it weren't for islam the world could fix its problems in less than 10 years.
If you remember seeing the "Fight Club" you will recall the hallucinating protagonist who starts a movement based on intimidation and mayhem. And when things get out of hand and Bob gets shot by police the followers are on auto-pilot where even their leader can no longer stop what he put in motion. Islam could well be called "Operation Mayhem".
Sometimes I think that many in our leadership know that the world as we know it has a limited shelf-life and they are just grabbing chips off of the table before the game’s over. Pardon the political-economic rant:
Year; Social Spending as a Percent of Federal Budget:
1930; 0%
1939; 6%
1947; 10%
2006; 60% and growing rapidly
Do the math on Social Programs:
1. Paying 13% of a $45k/yr salary into the system for 25 years yields $146,000. The government must waste 10-20% in processing, leaving around $125,000 for the retiree.
2. The average retiree lives ten years and pulls a check of around $1,400 per month, a total of $168,000.
3. Social Security disability payments must be a moneymaker based on the amount of TV advertising its facilitators buy. Figure a 20% burden on the system for lifetime benefits ($30k/head).
4. End-of-life medical care can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The taxpayer eats most of this.
I come up with a $3 Billion dollar per day deficit (compared with $166 million per day in Iraq), all unfunded future liabilities.
45 million Americans are on Medicaid (free government health care for young people) and around the same number gets senior benefits. Nearly half of the voting-age population gets federal handouts. Very few of this demographic belong to the 12% of the population that pays 90% of the taxes. It has become impossible for elected officials to enact responsible policies.
As we become one big happy hemisphere, the countries with the competitive advantage will be those with low taxes. The American tax base will continue to migrate south as the electorate attempts to target them to pay for expanded social programs. See Anna Nichole Smith and the current wave of AARP / AMA commercials.
This rant is on-topic because it describes the failure mechanism that will transform our soft liberal democracy into a form of government that will be able to defend itself against outside threats. It is going to be an interesting 21st Century. My bet is a military takeover of a government in chaos, a suspension of the Constitution for a number of years, centralization of all social services on some western Indian reservation (sovereign land), and a return to a Representative Republic elected by landowners.
Charles Martel threw the Islamic army into disarray by sending a portion of his men to seize war booty behind enemy lines. The Islamic line broke and the rest is history. We’ll probably see something similar with the oil fields.
I've heard so much about the muslim struggle to rule the world, but I've never heard about what happens afterward?
Has anyone ever asked CAIR what happens if they actually succeed in either converting or killing all of us infidels? Who's going to build the cars that use the oil? Who's going to grow the food to feed all these muslims? The Palistinians?
It's like the bush Administrations invasion of Iraq. . . after Baghdad fell, "Now what do we do?"
What ever happens between the 2 camps of Islam, we need to be in the middle of It. We need to make sure the split festers more.
Unfortunate as it is, Oil still needs to flow from the area. The American Public is not in the position or the mood to go from 35mpg. to 35mi. per Day.
The Enviromentilists are really going to have a bad time of it whan a State of National Emergency is declared and Drilling is ordered.
Letting Islam fight itself isn't bad. It is just a matter of who and to what degree.
Better one Pillar go down befor the other.
It would be a fine Tribute to the Memory of 9/11.
Oh, don't worry, it'll come down with a BANG ! This liberal approach to Islam is going to come to a stand-still and somebody's going to have to make a move.....it's no way out.
Looking back at the views I held three years ago, and contrasting them with where I'm at now, demonstrates the considerable shaping of my outlook caused by one year of (obsessively, almost) reading the insightful articles here by Robert and Hugh.
Yes, I held on to the belief that everyone surely just wants peace and democracy, nothing could be worse than Saddam, and whatever the outcome of the war, now change for the better was at least possible, if not certain.
Now I am cynical and disillusioned to the extent that in the defence of our freedom, anything, anything is permissible. I therefore have no qualms about the sowing of discord strategy that Hugh champions, per se.
However, I do believe that there are at least two factors to be considered, and which do not figure in Hugh's scenario: first, what about the non-Muslim minorities of the region, those that remain, who undoubtedly will face extermination should the sectarian strife, as a consequence of our meddling, become all out civil war? Are they merely collateral damage? Second, Hugh's strategy would face massive opposition by the dhimmis here in Eurabia. Huge waves of refugees would seek the borders of Eurabia, and a very, very high percentage of our own public would aggressively demand their entry into our countries. This spill over would further destabilize our continent, perhaps precipitating the day when one or more of our countries become islamic. And what will be gained, then, what with a nuclear France and UK?
Iran and the Saudis are already at war! A silent war: Iran courting Sudan and Libya; both trying to dominate Lebanon; both trying to dominate Iraq; both courting Russia; the Saudis courting the West; Iran courting China; and so on. It is silent, but deadly and disturbs world order greatly. It certainly is not for our betterment when they have endless resources to create all sorts of havoc for us.
We are not playing the monopoly of economy here, but the monopoly of lives; unfortunately, I doubt our leaders know how to play the later. The fact is we simply cannot afford to not get involved. The sooner this war ends the better off we will all be.
Right now Iran is quickly gaining ground over the Saudis. I suppose with their huge wealth, the Saudis can afford to conduct a slow war, but Iran and the West can’t. The question is: Who is prepared for modern warfare? And in how many places will we let the opponents take positions?
Are you ready for Part III?
Hugh:
As a fan of the Howard-Fine-Howard/Howard trio of slapstick comedians, I have a problem with you labelling the anything but entertaining troika of Carter-Brzezinski-Sick, the Three Stooges.