Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Praised at White House as He Subverts U.S. Interests

By Barry Rubin

"So fragile was the structure of their reality that a single unsubsumed consciousness, a solitary ripple in their little pond was enough to roil the waters into a frothing, burbling foam.”—Norman Spinrad, The Void Captain’s Tale (1985)

Consider five factors that had no effect on the very warm reception given by  President Barack Obama to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

--While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama while being hosted by him that he is going to defy the United States.

This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama—and U.S. policy nowadays—and how little Obama will do about it.

--Equally bad is the fact that Erdogan directly promised Obama that he would conciliate with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooperated because Obama asked him to do so. That’s what U.S. allies do. But immediately Erdogan showed he would pay no attention to the agreement he made.

His negotiators subverted it in several ways, including the demands for ridiculously large amounts of money, the delay in the promised return of the Turkish ambassador to Israel, the continuation of legal action against Israeli officials involved in the Mavi Marmara affair, when Israeli soldiers were attacked by Turkish terrorists demanding to sail to Gaza to deliver equipment to Hamas.

So a second time  Erdogan betrayed Obama and make the president look foolish (that is, if anyone in the mass media pointed it out). Again, there was no U.S. criticism of the move or apparent pressure to make Erdogan keep his promise.

There are three other ways that Erdogan has subverted U.S. interests with minimal costs. In fact, the Obama Administration has usually furthered this behavior.

--Some small U.S. diplomatic protests were made about the growing internal repression in Turkey and human rights’ violations there. Increasingly, the country lives under a reign of intimidation even as the Western media mostly ignores this situation. Since the United States keeps praising him, Erdogan can demoralize his opponents, who cannot hope for foreign help, even as he carries on a policy of spreading anti-Americanism in Turkey. The political power of the Turkish armed forces--the traditional guarantor of the republic and stability in the country was dismantled by Erdogan with U.S. approval. The Turkish media was subverted with only an occasional American squeal of complaint. Now he's destroying the independent judicial system, the last barrier to his assault on democratic rule. The U.S. embassy in Turkey consistently warned about what has been happening; the White House ignored this information.

--With the Obama Administration’s permission, the Turkish government violates the sanctions against Iran with ever-larger trade and major bilateral cooperation projects. Erdogan's consistent defenses of Iran's policies (though the two countries are at odds over Syria) have been forgiven and forgotten by the White House.

--Finally, in many ways the Turkish government has been taking the lead on setting U.S. policy toward Syria. It was Erdogan who largely determined that the official opposition exile leadership would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, a path followed by Obama. (I can't prove it but I'll bet that Turkey's regime promised Obama that if he would declare support for the rebels verbally and let them be armed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia then Assad would easily fall. I'd also bet that Erdogan assured Obama that if the president helped the rebels a moderate government would emerge in Syria.)

Meanwhile, Obama has praised Erdogan unstintingly. Obama thinks Erdogan is the very model of a “moderate Islamist” and since Obama's strategy is to support such people in much of the Arab world, Erdogan has been his guide to the region, though this has meant supporting the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is especially ironic is that Obama believed that Erdogan's goals were essentially the same as those of the United States while Erdogan was in fact following a profoundly anti-American policy designed to bring hostile Islamist governments to power. Remember this is no longer the old Western-oriented Turkey of previous decades but a radical--if concealed--Islamist regime.

At the Washington meeting, Obama and Erdogan agreed that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must go. But who will they replace him with and how will they get rid of him? Obama said that the Syrian dictator, “Needs to transfer power to a transitional body….That is the only way we're going to resolve this crisis."

But that is demonstrably false because Assad won’t step down. So what’s the United States going to do about it?

Once again the Turkish government has taken the lead on U.S. policy by pushing for direct U.S. aid to the rebels. That means giving money, weapons, and other aid to the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical groups to take power because the real moderates in the Syrian opposition are rare.

And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective? 'Will he continue to follow advice from Erdogan which has already proven to be wrong  because it is based on the interests of a Turkish Islamist regime seeking to promote Sunni Islamism and Turkish influence in the region?

Obama’s expressed hope of creating a Syria that is “a source of stability, not extremism” is very dangerous because he might well hope that but it is not a realistic goal. And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective?  

[Incidentally. the U.S. government has apologized to Israel for U.S. officials confirming to the New York Times that a ground attack within Syria earlier this month was staged by Israel. Publicly stating this information forced Syria (and Hizballah and Iran) to officially threaten Israel with retaliation, thus endangering Israel.] 

Now, too, Iran, Russia, and Hizballah are stepping up support for Assad. It is clear that Russia will block tougher action in the UN Security Council.  It is also stepping up arms shipments to Assad. If Russia provides Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles these could be used to shoot down any U.S. planes that tries to enforce a no-fly zone. Yet Obama doesn't have the credibility or leverage with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who from every indication holds him in contempt as a weakling, to stop Moscow from showing that it is the stronger, more reliable ally. Hizballah has up to 5,000 fighters inside Syria now, though they have been mainly employed in holding territory vital for Assad's survival.

The rebels will not win without a lot of U.S. help. This civil war is becoming an international test of wills in which Obama--for reasons that are not unreasonable--doesn't want to fight. Yet does that mean the United States will accept a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tehran and Moscow? Fortunately, while the rebels cannot win, they also are likely to hold much of Syria. In other words, Assad can't put down the rebellion either. But the result will be: stalemate; continued war for two years or more; tens of thousands of more deaths.

One day there will be congressional investigations on how U.S. policy armed terrorist and even, albeit unintentionally, al-Qaida groups. It will be too late.  The situation in Syria makes the Iran-Contra affair--U.S. involvement during the Reagan Administration in supplying arms to pro-American Nicaraguan rebels--look like a picnic.

The situation is getting very dangerous and with a "friend" like Erdogan it is clear that Obama’s policy toward Syria, Iran, the advance of revolutionary Islamism, and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” is in serious trouble.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

More Violence in Benghazi Shows After-Effects of Scandal

As I've noted, Libya is starting to fall apart and the Benghazi scandal cover-up prevented the Obama Administration from taking serious action in regard to that country, including retaliation against the terrorist group that the United States knows was responsible.

In the last week, there was a car bomb and four attacks on Libyan military posts in Benghazi. The al-Qaida affiliate that murdered four Americans controls parts of the city and is unchallenged by the central government, which has been too weak to confront those who reject its authority.

Al-Qaida still controls part of the city's entrances and the hospital where the U.S. ambassador's body was taken by them last September 11. It has faced zero retaliation by the U.S. government and no pressure from Washington for the Libyan government to crack down on it.

Remember that the government's attempt to make people forget the scandal and the insistence that the attack was caused by a demonstration against a video gone wrong has prevented the highlighting of the actual murders and action taken against them.

Who’s More Dangerous: Sunni or Shia Islamists?

By Barry Rubin

There is a passionate, but somewhat academic debate, over the following issue: Which is the greater threat, the Sunni Muslim Islamists (Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza Strip, and perhaps soon to be Syria) or the Shia Muslim Islamists (Iran, Lebanon, at the moment still Syria)?

I would say the answer would be the Iran-led Shia bloc. But two reservations: the margin isn’t that big and it also depends on the specific place and situation.

To begin with, Iran is still the greatest strategic threat in the region. It is moving as fast as it can toward nuclear weapons and it is still the main sponsor of terrorism. At the moment, it is still, too, the most likely state that would initiate an anti-Western war, though that possibility is smaller than often believed. It has lots of money.

What has gone largely unnoticed is that it is almost the middle of 2013 and the Obama Administration has barely begun negotiations with Iran that will probably drag on without success for a year or more. In addition, after Iran’s June elections, which will presumably pick a radical who is less obviously extremist than current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the U.S. government and mass media will probably proclaim a new era of Iranian moderation.

Iran is also the main backer of Islamist revolution in Bahrain (where it has failed); Lebanon (where its Hizballah clients are the strongest force); and Syria (where its regime ally is in serious trouble).

One final point is that Tehran is having some success in drawing the Iraqi (Shia) government into its orbit. Baghdad is certainly cooperating with Iran on defending the Syrian regime, though one should not exaggerate how much Iraq is in Iran’s pocket. At any rate, nobody would want the Iraqi regime to be overthrown by the al-Qaida terrorist opposition.

So a strong case can be made that Iran is the greatest threat in the region.

On the other hand, however, a Great Wall of Sunnism has been built to prevent the extension of Iranian influence except for Lebanon. The Sunni bloc contains few Shia Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood, the even more radical Salafists, and other Sunni Muslims (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, for example) have said that the Shias are a worse threat than Israel.

Perhaps the fear of Iran provides some common cause with the West. But this is also a scary proposition since the Obama Administration’s promotion of Sunni Islamism (Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and even Turkey) could use this point as an excuse. Perhaps America could be said to be building a united front against Iran but at what price? Turning over much of the Arab world to repressive, anti-American, and antisemitic Sunni Islamism as Christians flee?

There is also another weakness of Sunni Islamism, however, that also makes it seem relatively less threatening. In contrast to Iran, the Sunni Islamists do not have a wealthy patron comparable to Iran. They can depend on money from Qatar and to some extent from Libya but they have fewer resources. Sometimes the Saudis will help Sunni Islamists but only if they tone down their warlike and anti-Western actions. There is no big banker for Sunni Islamist destabilization of the Middle East.

Equally, they do not have a reliable source of arms, in contrast to the Shia who have Iran and also at times Russia. True, in Syria the Sunni rebels have U.S. backing to get weaponry and arms from Libya and elsewhere paid for by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Yet Syria is an exceptional case. The Saudis are not going to finance the Muslim Brotherhood and its ambitions. Bahrain has declared Shia Hizballah to be a terrorist group even while the European Union refuses to do so.

So arguably one could say that the Shia Islamists and Iran are a bigger danger. But a second danger is a U.S. or Western policy to promote Sunni Islamism as a way to counter the Shia, a strategy that has intensified regional dangers and the suffering of Arab peoples. Then, too, there’s the fact that al-Qaida is a Sunni Islamist organization, and the al-Qaida forces are getting stronger in Syria.

One would have to be very foolish to want to see Sunni Islamism make further gains, to overthrow the monarchies in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, or Bahrain, as well as the Algerian regime. One would also have to be foolish--but here the Obama Administration is so--to want to see Muslim Brotherhood regimes succeed in Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, and Syria.

What we are seeing, however, is that Islamism is becoming entangled at present with the power it has gained, especially in Egypt. The country is innately in economic difficulties and these are being intensified by Muslim Brotherhood misrule. Rather than raise their countries to the peak of military-economic efficiency, the Islamist regimes are wrecking them.

But there are some very significant wild cards in the deck:

--If Sunni Islamist regimes in Egypt and Syria face significant problems with instability and economics, they might adopt the time-honored, traditional tactic of Arab dictatorships by stirring up foreign quarrels and promoting anti-Americanism. This could unleash future Arab-Israeli wars.

--Sunni Islamist regimes in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and probably Syria would give extremely radical Salafist forces a free hand in attacking Christians, moderates, women’s rights, foreign embassies, and possibly Israel. Human rights in these countries—if anybody in the West cares about that—are going to suffer severe hits.

--Hamas will probably attack Israel in future, perhaps with at least some Egyptian backing though the Egyptian regime is now trying to restrain Hamas in order to consolidate rule at home and get Western money.

--Al-Qaida is gaining strength in Syria and for the first time its possible takeover cannot be ruled out, at least in alliance with other Salafist groups.

--The stronger the Sunni Islamists the more uncooperative the Palestinian Authority (PA) will be with attempts at a “peace process.” It is possible that the PA would face a considerable challenge from Hamas on the West Bank while forces within Fatah, the PA’s ruling party, might form alliances with Hamas. Israel should be able to keep the PA in power—a situation wrought with irony—but its stability could crumble.

In short, while one can make the case for Shia Islamism being the more dangerous—at least as long as Iran might get nuclear weapons—one must very carefully examine the implications of that judgment in every specific case. Promoting Sunni Islam is no panacea but rather substitutes longer-term for shorter-term threats.

This article is published on PJMedia.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

The Ultimate Painting for Understanding Modern Jewish History

By Barry Rubin

The picture below has special significance for me. It is Moritz Oppenheim’s "The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs." It was the painting I wanted for the cover of my book, Assimilation and its Discontents but was overruled by the publisher in favor of a post-modernist monstrosity.

[Assimilation and its Discontents, a history of Jewish assimilation and identity debates, can be found here.  For downloading instructions see the end of this article.]

The painting shows a Jewish soldier who fought for Prussia against Napoleon. Now the war had been won, the land liberated, and so he returned home to his family, presumably in 1814. 

He is the center of attention for, presumably, his loving parents, two older sisters, and younger brother. The second brother is examining something else. 

So even if they still follow the “old customs,” that is a pious Judaism, they have modernized already to some extent. Notice the clothing which is quite contemporary and the furnishings. This is a German middle class family very much attuned to the surrounding society which is also an Orthodox Jewish family.They even have a pet cat, emerging from under the table.

Thus it is not quite true that Oppenheim, one of the greatest German painters, sees them as fully traditional. Of course, by saying the “old customs,” he is implying that they are outdated customs. The theme of the painting is the contrast between the two role models, the two paths that Jews could take: complete modernization, secularization, and German patriotism versus a traditional Jewish life, built around religion and keeping some distance from the surrounding society.

Yet Oppenheim thought it possible to combine the two. He was highly honored by both the existing German elite, during a time when antisemitism was at a relative low, and the intellectual leaders of Jewry.

Oppenheim was born in Hanau in 1800 and died in Frankfurt in 1882. In his own life, he balanced out the Jewish and German worlds. At the time, the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement which sought to study Judaism with scholarly methods to both preserve and modernize it. While those involved didn’t know it, by rethinking Jews as being a people with secular aspects, too, they were forerunners of Zionism.

The New York Jewish Museum’s description of the painting points out two significant factors.

First, he has been wounded in the defense of his country, thus having shed his blood for his country.  And he is wearing the Iron Cross, a German medal but also as a cross a symbol of the conflict between his Jewishness and the Christianity of the state he has served.

Second, he has just arrived home by traveling on the Sabbath, thus breaking a major tenet of Jewish law. His family, delighted to have him back alive, doesn’t seem to care about that point.   

The painting was made in 1834, at a time when anti-Jewish forces were beginning to rise again and seeking to restrict Jewish rights as citizens. It was intended as a pointed reminder of Jewish services and loyalty to Germany, of attempts to assimilate without necessarily losing their distinctive characteristics. It was not making a case for Multiculturalism but rather for pluralism.

At any rate, the project of German Jewish assimilation failed, in part because it was too successful, and German Jewish sacrifices in World War One did not avail them two decades later. Indeed, Adolf Hitler's lieutenant during the war was a Jew, who the Nazi dictator later did spare.

T

There are, however, two additional ironies related to the painting’s story. Napoleon was, in fact, the liberator of the Jews and Prussia was the oppressor. The soldier proved his patriotism while fighting against his real interests.  As soon as the Prussians had won, they began restoring discrimination against the Jews.

The second is a story that fascinates me and I think should be emblematic for these issues. It concerns a young man who was the real-life contemporary of the soldier in the painting, Moritz Itzig.

One day in 1811, Itzig’s aunt, Sarah Levy, a highly cultured woman with many connections among Christians, held a concert in her home. One of the guests was the wife of Ludwig Achim von Arnim, a 30-year-old Prussian writer. Von Arnim came to pick up his wife and insulted some of the other Jewish guests.

Itzig, then 24 years old, wrote a letter challenging von Arnim to a duel. The aristocrat rejected the challenge, responding with a bunch of signed statements from his peers that since a Jew had no honor he could not be engaged in a duel and adding additional insults.  

One afternoon, Itzig came up to von Arnim and beat the larger man with his cane. Von Arnim, who whined for help rather than defending himself, turned over the matter to a court, which ruled that since Itzig had been provoked he was not guilty of any crime. Itzig’s family even persuaded some of those who had provided von Arnim with letters to retract them.

When war with Napoleon restarted, Itzig volunteered to fight for Prussia and was killed in 1813. Von Arnim stayed on his estate and did not fight at all. He lived until 1831.

The irony of the patriotic Jew and the cowardly poser who hypocritically impugned the former’s noble nature and love of country has been repeated many times. In fact, I can think of some good contemporary examples in another country across the seas from Germany.

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As Benghazi Scandal Builds, Libya Falls Apart

By Barry Rubin

A forgotten element in the Benghazi scandal is this one: If Obama had said it was a terrorist attack back in September 2012  he would have to have done something about it.

Now, not just on that one day of September 11, 2012 but for seven months thereafter (!) the U.S. government has done zero about the murder of four American officials. 

Consider the Benghazi scandal from the standpoint of Benghazi--where the militia that murdered the Americans is one of the most powerful forces in the city--and Libya itself. Suppose that from the beginning on September 11, 2012, the U.S. government announced that the  U.S.  facility was under attack by a militia group linked to al-Qaida. It would have had to explain why it had hired members of that militia group to guard the facility, a scandal in itself. We know 100 percent that this is true but it hasn't become an issue.

Next, there might have been a rescue attempt and a fire fight between American forces and that militia group in which casualties would have occurred on both sides. Note that as far as we know the militia took no killed or wounded, meaning that in its own eyes it achieved a total victory at no cost. At any rate, the United States would then have been in a military conflict with that militia. It would have to demand that the Libyan government take action and cooperate with U.S. efforts to punish it. On one hand, that would have been a headache for the Libyan government; on the other hand, it might have brought welcome aid to suppress a troublesome militia and help in getting control of the anarchy in the country (see below).

Congress would have given full bipartisan support to punishing those found responsible--by a quick and conclusive FBI investigation, including putting forces on the ground in Benghazi.

In practice, U.S. policy is still acting as if it believed the attack was due to a video creating a spontaneous riot and not a terrorist attack!

Note--and this is very important--that the scandal is not restricted to what happened on September 11, 2012, and the Washington cover-up that followed.

As a result of the cover-up there has been no effort made to punish those who we know now to have murdered four Americans.

Think of that point. You cannot punish the terrorists if you haven't officially deemed them responsible for the attack, when an Egyptian-American provocateur, who is supposedly the real guilty party, is in prison already.

Meanwhile, Libya is suffering serious problems that are undoing whatever good the Obama Administration's intervention to overthrow the old regime achieved.

As a result, the terrorists who murdered four Americans are going free; the group that carried out the attack is still enjoying popularity and even playing a role in running Benghazi. Libya itself was the biggest donor to the Muslim Brotherhood-led, U.S. handpicked Syrian opposition and a source of a massive outflow of arms to terrorists.

In other words, as a result of the policy failure and cover-up, Libya faces a much greater threat of a revolutionary Islamist takeover, anarchy, and even becoming an al-Qaida base. (Imagine, for comparison, the situation if the U.S. government had denied al-Qaida involvement in earlier terrorist attacks.)

Meanwhile, Libya is suffering serious problems that are undoing whatever good the Obama Administration's intervention to overthrow the old regime achieved. Even as the Benghazi scandal is growing in the United States, the situation in Libya is deteriorating further. 

Ignoring the actual threat of revolutionary Islamist militias—and attributing problems to a video last September plus the botching of the investigation of the attack due to the cover-up also led to mishandling post-attack U.S. Libya policy. 

Here are some of the current developments  in Libya where, a recent article in the Egyptian newspaper, al-Ahram, explains, “militias at the command of various ideological camps and rival interest groups” increasingly dominate the country’s politics.attack, when an Egyptian-American provocateur, who is supposedly the real guilty party, is in prison already.

Here are some of the current developments  in Libya where, a recent article in the Egyptian newspaper, al-Ahram, explains, “militias at the command of various ideological camps and rival interest groups” increasingly dominate the country’s politics.

--“Since last week, the ministries of foreign affairs, justice and the interior in Libya have been under siege by armed militias demanding [passage of a] law that would ban all associates of the former regime from positions in government….”

--There was a recent terrorist attack on the French embassy in Tripoli.

--“As though the situation were not fraught enough, more than 100 policemen stormed the Ministry of Interior headquarters…where they began an open-ended sit-in to press previously voiced demands for adequate protection for the police in the course of the performance of their duties, health insurance, better job and pay conditions, and the restoration of the prestige and full rights of policemen.”

--“The following day…other militia bands stormed the Ministry of Finance located in downtown Tripoli and began to assault the guards. These quickly withdrew in order to avoid a confrontation with their attackers.”

--A band of armed men attacked a Ministry of Justice police vehicle that was transporting prisoners and three escort vehicles.” One prisoner was killed and several others were severely injured during the attack.

--On May 13 a car bomb exploded near Benghazi's main hospital killing at least 13 people.

--Prime Minister Ali Zeidan warned that “if the violence and security breakdown continue, the international community may be compelled to intervene.”

--Despite Zeidan’s threats the militias are not scared.

--The Birka Police Station in downtown Benghazi was struck by a massive explosion that destroyed the building.

--In southern Libya, Chadian forces advanced 100 kilometers into Libyan territory without even encountering the Libyan armed forces. As al-Ahram remarks:

“The incursion further throws into relief Libya’s weak security at a time when neither the army nor the militias are capable of controlling the country’s far-flung borders….

“Yet, it appears that the militias nevertheless have the upper hand. They are better armed than the government forces and they are also said to possess sophisticated eavesdropping equipment which they use to spy on government officials.”

--As a result of the violence the German embassy has suspended operations. British Petroleum has evacuated non-essential personnel.

What does this mean: that NATO will return to shore up the regime it put into power? The UN resolution permitting intervention in Libya is still operative. But one additional element of the Benghazi cover-up is that it allowed the U.S. government to ignore the serious state of Libyan security. Remember that the Libyan operation was another of President Obama’s supposed successes that must be made to seem triumphant during the 2012 election.

This article is published on PJMedia.