As could be expected, the border situation has deteriorated as
zealots see their opportunity to inflame and trigger a war that they
believe Allah will win. In the meantime, the Egyptian army has
decided quite rightly that they will retain the right to start a war
so long as there is any chance of fools holding the reins of power.
This is the same shakeout that occurred in Pakistan and has not yet
occurred in Iran.
It also appears that the Syrian Army is also taking charge in its own
way.
History has been unkind to a military that acquiesced to any
political leadership that radicalized. The German army comes to mind
of course as a worst case scenario and there is the Russian army
which Stalin purged in the 1930's.
The lesson is quite clear. Stay away from the exercise of political
power as much as one can, but be prepared to overturn any new regime
likely to apply violence in any way shape or form because the
blow-back is inevitable and the Army will be involved.
I suspect officer corps everywhere can appreciate the niceties and
mature corps are unlikely to tolerate ignorant egotism in their own
ranks from been given too much power.
At this point the Egyptian army is happily identifying the hotheads
that cannot be trusted and will not need a civilian order to round
them up and put them out of harm's way.
In the meantime, I find US policy bizarre and comparable to Jimmy
Carter supporting the mullahs in Iran. There were other strategies
available and supporting the military then to maintain order could
have worked as the political aspects worked out. In this case, I
suspect that the new constitution will allow political development
but certainly not allow an Islamic lock on power which is the best
way to actually eliminate Islamic pretensions. They will burn
through popular support pretty quickly.
Washington Backs
Islamists as Sinai and Gaza Explode
Posted by P.
David Hornik Bio ↓ on Jun 21st, 2012
The Los Angeles
Times reportsthat the Obama administration is “deeply
concerned” by the Egyptian military regime’s having seized powers
so as to prevent a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the country.
Pentagon press
secretary George Little said that “We…urge the [military] to
relinquish power to civilian-elected authorities….” State
Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that “We are
particularly concerned by decisions that appear to prolong the
military’s hold on power.”
As the report notes,
the military regime’s move is aimed at preventing the Brotherhood’s
presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi—if he has indeed been
elected—from “declaring war without the agreement of the ruling
generals.”
In other words, it’s
a move aimed at preventing an Egyptian attack on Israel, the total
collapse of Israeli-Egyptian peace, and a drastic regional
destabilization.
The generals are not
acting against the Islamists because they’re wonderful people who
love Israel and the West. They are, however, sane pragmatists who do
not want Egypt, with its severe economic problems, to be dragged into
a ruinous conflict.
And for their efforts,
the generals have the Obama administration up in arms and crying
foul.
How differently the
situation is viewed in Israel is revealed by, for instance, veteran
military analyst Alex Fishman, who wrote: “This is no longer
the same Egypt. It is no longer the same border, the peace treaty is
dying, and we better start to change our way of thinking.”
Fishman was referring
to how much the situation has already deteriorated since the fall of
Hosni Mubarak—hailed at the time by the likes of Obama and Thomas
Friedman—in February last year. He was also referring to a military
flare-up over the past few days that has seen scores of rockets fired
into Israel from Gaza.
The flare-up began,
however, south of Gaza on Monday when terrorists—Gaza-based but of
Al Qaeda provenance—tried to breach the fence Israel has been
building along its southern, Sinai border with Egypt to keep out
terrorists, smugglers, and illegal labor migrants.
And it is since
Mubarak’s fall that the situation in Sinai has gone to seed as this
tract of land—which figured in the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace
treaty as a peacekeeping buffer zone—has been taken over by both
Bedouin and international-terror gangs, sometimes working in tandem,
as the central regime in Cairo has its hands full trying to quell
anarchy closer to home.
The current round of
hostilities has also seen Hamas—the Islamist rulers of Gaza—openly
taking credit for the rocket fire for the first time in years. That
lack of inhibition is widely viewed in Israel as reflecting a surge
of confidence over the developments in Egypt, particularly the
prospect of Hamas’s parent movement—the Brotherhood—and other
Sunni extremists taking over or at least steadily gaining ground
there.
Indeed, a year and a
half after the start of what some may still be calling the Arab
Spring, the view from Israel is not among the more uplifting in the
country’s short history.
To the west and south,
the direct security threat steadily worsens as arms from Libya—a
country where the Western powers succeeded to sow anarchy and a
possible Islamist takeover—flow unhindered into Sinai and
Gaza.
To the east and north,
the ongoing Syrian crisis poses grave risks of the Assad regime’s
huge chemical-weapons stockpiles falling into dangerous hands
through—again—either anarchy or a Sunni-jihadist takeover.
And in the background
Iran—which hopes to capitalize on the Islamist energies of the Arab
Spring, which it more accurately calls the “Islamic Awakening”—is
succeeding along with the world powers to sustain a transparent sham
of “nuclear talks” with, incredibly, yet another “round”
having been scheduled for Istanbul in July 3 after this week’s
“round” in Moscow yielded absolutely nothing by all accounts.\
Israel’s worsening
security environment along with stubborn Western failure to
understand the regime’s dynamics—a failure that is the flipside
of sheer tiredness and cynicism—does not, then, add up to an
encouraging picture.
The situation has,
though, fostered an enhanced unity that has seen the rise of an
almost wall-to-wall, apparently stable governing coalition, and
a decline of Israel’s own delusions that not long ago produced such
bitter internal dissensus.
With Washington
backing the belligerent fanatics in Egypt against the moderates, and
still, with its allies, playing ineffectual games with Iran, Israel
will need all the unity and realism it can muster.
No comments:
Post a Comment