Why Does The Obama Administration Sponsor the Enemies of The US?

By Barry Rubin

Is there any sponsor of anti-American terrorism in the Middle East that the Obama Administration hasn’t tried to sponsor?

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told Radio Pakistan, September 17: “The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago, that was the work of the Haqqani network….There is evidence linking the Haqqani Network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop.”

Do you realize the significance of those two sentences? It goes something like this:

–The United States gives billions of dollars to the Pakistani government to fight terrorism.

–Instead, the Pakistani government doesn’t do that very much. Remember where Usama bin Ladin was hanging out without Pakistan’s regime doing anything?

–The Pakistani government gives money to al-Qaida and Taliban-linked terrorists—the Haqqani Network. The Haqqani Network and other terrorists sponsored by Pakistan murder hundreds of people in India. They also attack Americans.

–A week ago, the Haqqani Network attacked the U.S. Embassy with rocket-propelled grenades. It took the Pakistani military 20 hours to get them out of a nearby building.

–Thus, U.S. taxpayers are paying money to the Pakistani government to fight terrorists attacking America that the government then uses to help terrorists attack America.

Might this be a problem? Could this be a central example of the insanity of U.S. policy that also, for example, gives money to the Palestinian Authority which is allied to Hamas, a genocidal, anti-American group, and successfully pressed Israel to reduce sanctions so that the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip can flourish.

And Obama Administration policy was nice to Syria for 2.5 years, until it literally was forced to change that policy, despite the fact that Syria’s regime was giving money to kill Americans in Iraq. It also tried to be nice to Iran but Iranian intransigence and domestic pressure finally made it impose more sanctions.

The Obama Administration has also made the Turkish regime its favorite Middle East ally despite that government’s support for Hamas, Hizballah, and Turkish Islamist groups. It has even to some degree become the patron of the Egyptian and Syrian Muslim Brotherhoods which are profoundly anti-American, pro-terrorist groups.

In ordinary times, this sort of thing would be a major scandal. Front-page media stories would daily skewer the Obama Administration for aiding, abetting, and financing major sponsors of terrorism. Academic experts would pour on scorn; members of Congress would demand investigations. Yet in this era nothing happens.

The U.S. ambassador, under instructions from Washington, stamps his foot and says that Pakistani government support for anti-American and murderous terrorism “must stop.” But it won’t stop. And the Obama Administration won’t do anything about it.

Obama Middle East policy has strong parallels with the scandal about supplying weapons to Mexican narco-terrorists and then seeing them used for the murder of many people, including Americans, and the destabilizing of U.S. interests.

The Myth That the Mainstream Media Helps Us Understand The World

By Barry Rubin

People ask me why I write so much and I explain that I don’t want to do so but keep coming across such important events, missed stories, and outrageous nonsense that I feel compelled to say something. So it is in this case.

Here’s the problem: a remarkable amount of what's written on the Middle East in the mass media—and certainly the efforts to analyze it as opposed to reporting events—is nonsensical. It makes the region harder to understand. It misleads the reader.

An example is Anatol Lieven, “5 Myths about Pakistan,” Washington Post, June 5, 2011. Lieven is a professor at Kings College London and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He has just written a book on Pakistan.

One of the techniques often employed in the creation of the Fantasy Middle East is to misstate totally the issues at stake. Note the use of that technique in Lieven's article.

Alleged Myth One: Pakistan is a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.”

Pakistan, he writes, just follows its own interests. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it isn’t. Fair enough, that’s what allies generally do. But the policy question is: whether Pakistan is helpful often enough to merit being treated like an ally and given huge amounts of aid. The answer is”no.” Neither the question nor the answer is addressed.

Incidentally, it’s pretty outrageous that Lieven suggests that Pakistan supports the Taliban because India is inciting other groups in Afghanistan to seize power. Yet since Pakistan’s policy has been the same for 30 years--it has long supported radical Islamist forces in Afghanistan--how can India be to blame for relatively recent policies? To bash India for Pakistan's behavior in Afghanistan is absurd.

If a country supports to a major degree the two groups that attacked America on September 11—the Taliban and al-Qaida—plus is a major sponsor of terrorism against India, the answer to question 1 isn’t “Sometimes” but "Definitely not!"

Alleged Myth 2: ”Pakistan is an ally of the Taliban.”

Again, Lieven turns this into a “straw man” argument. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, he says. But the real answer is "yes," if one is talking about the Afghan Taliban, which is what the United States is mainly concerned about! It is only an enemy of the [Pakistani] Taliban that tries to take over Pakistan. So, again, Pakistan IS an ally of the [Afghan] Taliban, the group--along with al-Qaida--that the United States gives it billions of dollars to fight against!

Alleged Myth 3: “Islamist revolution is coming to Pakistan.”

Why is this a myth? Because, says Lieven, less than one-fifth of Pakistanis view the Taliban favorably in a poll. As if, that’s the only Islamist group! He cites one Pew poll number but other polls and other questions show a remarkably high level of support for Islamism among Pakistanis. Putting such a spin on one item and leaving out others verges, to put it politely, on deliberate dishonesty.

Indeed, a recent Pew poll shows that Pakistanis support Islamism by a whopping 47 to 15 percent margin. Thus, this argument that Pakistanis don't want Islamism is a total myth. That's why Lieven misrepresents the issue to "prove" that Pakistanis don't want the Taliban's specific brand of Islamism.

I'm not saying that Pakistan will have a radical Islamist revolution. But it is certainly possible. If Turkey and Egypt can become Islamist, surely Pakistan could do so.

Alleged Myth 4 “Massive U.S. aid lets Washington dictate Pakistani policy.”

This one really made me angry. Nobody seriously argues such a thing. The real issue is whether the large amount of aid and support the United States gives Pakistan provides some American leverage to get Pakistan to do things that the United States wants and needs to be done. If this aid does no good at all then it shouldn’t be given in the first place.

The correct formulation is: Does giving Pakistan massive aid provide Washington with any ability at all to have the slightest effect on Pakistani policy.” If billions of dollars cannot even get them to help find Usama bin Laden what good are they?

Alleged Myth 5 “Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the front in the war on terrorism.”

The front? I don’t know anyone who says this either. That's just a phony issue. The real question is: Does Pakistan provide really positive aid in fighting terrorism or not? But if one frames the question in that way the answer is not likely to be in the affirmative, which is presumably why this question isn't asked.

So what’s the bottom line? The author writes what he's been setting up for that entire misleading essay:

“None of this means that the United States should pursue more aggressive policies against Pakistan to win the war on terrorism….Any U.S. action that endangered the stability of the Pakistani government would be insane.”

In other words, U.S. policy is just fine and there's no need to change anything. Who cares if they support the Taliban, hide al-Qaida leaders, and launch terrorist attacks on India? Just keep sending them money and keep giving them support.

Precisely the same argument has and will be used to rationalize such things as:

U.S. aid and support to the Palestinian Authority (even if it refuses to negotiate or make peace and brings Hamas into the government);

Turkey (despite its regime's growing support for Iran,

Syria (the regime supposedly wants to reform itself and you can't expect it to abandon the alliance with Iran so who cares if they shoot down thousands of unarmed citizens and help terrorist groups along with opposing U.S. policies and interests);

Lebanon (even if Hizballah will be in the government and the country is dominated by Syria and Iran);

and no doubt soon Egypt (with a radical nationalist-Islamist regime that will be against the United States.

You can easily adjust the five "myths" to suit each circumstance. Indeed, if Iran's leaders didn't keep "stubbornly" refusing to make some phony deal on their nuclear program the Obama administration and many "experts" would no doubt be advocating the same ideas about Iran, too.

Why was that article written? Like so many, to turn something obvious through "sophistication" into a brain-dead conclusion. Let's state it briefly to make the point stand out:

High-ranking elements in Pakistan have just got caught hiding Usama bin Ladin, the world's number-one wanted terrorist who killed 3000 Americans on September 11and have repeatedly been caught helping bin Ladin's enablers, the Afghan Taliban, and terrorists murdering people in India. No apology, no investigation, no change of policy by Pakistan.

The expert recommendation? U.S. policy toward Pakistan shouldn't change at all.

This is the foolishness dressed up with deception and double-talk that so often substitutes for serious debate in America's mass media today.

I would call the kind of article I'm analyzing here not only “misinformation” but ”anti-information.” In other words, the person reading it would be worse informed afterward than they were beforehand!

And the same goes for much—most? Almost all?—of the material of this nature in the mass media. Not only do we face this propaganda barrage but contrary opinions are generally  barred from mass media publication or broadcast altogether.

What I've done with this article and others can be done with many of the items on the Middle East that appear daily in prestigious publications. It's not just about getting details wrong, it's about total misdirection. A few minutes of serious analysis can totally demolish what they are saying while exposing their hidden (wrong) assumptions.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

President Obama’s “Reset” of Relations with Muslims and a Massacre in Pakistan

By Barry Rubin

There’s something particularly poignant about news that at least 80 people were killed in Charsadda, Pakistan, by a Taliban attack on a police training center there. It isn’t that the event was so unique—except for one feature—but it is a suitable symbol of the situation in the Muslim-majority world today and how messed up is the Western perception of that part of the world. 

The unique aspect is that the attackers said they are taking revenge for the killing of Usama bin Ladin by the United States.

And so as Americans cheer, 80 Pakistani families are in mourning. Let me quickly add that I do not blame the United States for this new mass murder. The crime is on the terrorists’ head. Nor do I believe the United States should not have killed bin Ladin. Not at all.

But this is a teachable moment so let’s summarize the lessons.

--Terrorism goes on. The death of one man or even of one organization won’t end it.

--If the United States had not killed bin Ladin on that particular day, in that place, or in that way, the Charsadda attack would have happened anyway. Thus, terrorists use specific events as excuses to do what they would have done anyway.

--Pakistan, albeit not to its credit, had nothing to do with the killing. In fact, major elements in the government protected bin Ladin while even more of the regime opposed the U.S. attack. Terrorists don't kill people because their victims are "guilty" nor do they need a "good reason" for murder. Their reason is the attempt to stage a revolutionary transformation of their society which they believe is mandated by the will of God and also would give them wealth and power. 


--The main cause of terrorism is not America (or Israel, or any other country) killing terrorists but revolutionary Islamism’s attempts to seize state power or of those revolutionary Islamists (and their allies) already in power (see Iran, Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and perhaps soon the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?) to overthrow neighbors. 

--These policemen were targets not because they were oppressive instruments of capitalism or imperialism but because the revolutionaries want to destroy order so they can operate in a situation of anarchy which they hope to replace with their own rule.

--Most of the victims of terrorism are Muslim but those who proclaim their love of Muslims and of Third World people (the Western left and most Muslim activists there) couldn’t care less about these thousands of killings. Their only interest is to blame them on America, Israel, the West, or Islamophobia. In fact, they attempt to interfere with the battle against the terrorists and revolutionary Islamists, thus leading to the death of more Muslims.

--Revolutionary Islamism uses terrorism because it is a reflection of the movement’s ultimate totalitarian and repressive aims.

--If revolutionary Islamism was just a heretical caricature of Islam then no Muslims would follow it. Why did millions of Iranians support the Islamic Republic? Why has Hizballah come to dominate the Lebanese Shia community? Why will millions of Egyptians vote for Muslim Brotherhood candidates? The reason is that revolutionary Islamism is a "legitimate" interpretation of Islam based on its texts and traditions. But it is not the only, or "best," or most beneficial (for Muslims and others) interpretation. To deny that Islamism is derived from Islam won't convince any Muslims because they know better. This is a battle over politics and interpretation, not "Islamophobia," a concept largely created by Islamists for their own benefit.

--Relatively moderate Arab governments are not just using the threat of revolutionary Islamism to stay in power (although they do that also) but as a reflection of a very real danger to their countries and societies. Whatever one thinks of the Mubarak regime, a Brotherhood regime would be worse. In contrast, it is ridiculous to protect the Assad regime in Syria because it is an ally of revolutionary Islamists, helping them to murder people in Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.

--Any true friend of Muslims would want the revolutionary Islamists defeated and the regimes supporting them overthrown. Such a person would join the fight against not only al-Qaida but also Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and the Taliban.

--Most of the obsessive demonization of Israel today does not spring from some humanitarian impulse but is orchestrated by revolutionary Islamists and their Western allies (witting or otherwise) to commit genocide on Israeli Jews, expel or oppress Palestinian Christians, and impose a totalitarian state on Palestinians.

--Until Western leaders understand the above principles, their policies will not only fail they will be counterproductive for the interests of both their own countries and millions of Muslims, who do not want to be ruled by revolutionary Islamism. 

Now here's an interesting question. Suppose the above list of propositions was submitted to leading politicians, policymakers, journalists, and academic experts, how many of these points would they accept as obvious and how many totally reject? If this list was given to average people how many of these points would they say that they've never heard expressed by their mass media or leaders?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at Pajamas Mediahttp://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

Bin Laden's Many Posthumous Fans

By Barry Rubin

As so often happens, a peripheral issue has taken over the Western debate regarding the killing of Usama bin Laden. Whether or not the U.S. government releases a photo of the body isn't so important. If bin-Laden isn’t dead let him prove it by sending a video to al-Jazira. The issue is whether or not killing him was a good thing.

As for photos, those who believe that bin Laden isn't dead won't be convinced by photos. Ironically, many of them will simultaneously say that the United States didn't kill bin Laden but the fact that the United States killed bin Laden is a crime for which revenge should be taken.

We should have learned this from September 11, since many say that al-Qaeda wasn't responsible and it was done by the U.S. government and Israel while, at the same time, saying that it was an operation that made Muslims and Arabs feel proud and America deserved it.

Welcome to the Middle East!

Today--and for some years now--people in the Middle East haven't hated America because of its policies so much as defining whatever it does as hateful because America is already an enemy.  If you don't want revolutionary Islamists to take over countries, repress all freedom, suppress women, wipe Israel off the map, and expel all Western influence from the region then you are their enemy. You can be a weak, contemptible enemy or a strong bullying enemy but that's about the extent of your choice.

The reaction to the killing of UBL takes place in this context, Those Islamists and radical nationalists who saw bin Laden as a rival in life are finding him a useful martyr in death. Again, the issue is not whether bin Laden is dead but whether the United States was bad in killing him.

So far Hamas, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the highest Muslim cleric in Egypt, and Western favorite phony moderate Tariq Ramadan have all basically endorsed UBL as a great guy, a real martyr, and the victim of an evil United States.

The al-Aqsa Brigades of Fatah also apparently said so though it quickly withdrew the statement when it made the public relations’- conscious Palestinian Authority leadership uncomfortable. Yet the idea that this is just another American atrocity--one more reason to hate the United States--is a powerful force among Palestinians and also in public opinion in Egypt and Jordan.

And so the killing of UBL will enter the long list of U.S. policies for which America is disliked by many Muslims and Arabs in particular. There is a lesson here: whatever the United States does will be criticized because America as a great power, a civilization, a set of policies, and a presence internationally is hated by many, especially by revolutionary Islamists.

Consider the very “moderate” and sophisticated Mr. Ramadan, or perhaps I should say Professor Ramadan since he’s currently at Oxford University and Notre Dame wants to hire him. That’s pretty good for the grandson of a Nazi collaborator and the son of an agent working for a Nazi collaborator (Amin al-Husaini, the mufti of Jerusalem).

Not only did Ramadan criticize the killing of UBL but also called the burial at sea “against all the Islamic rituals.” Well, was bin Laden behind the September 11 attacks, Ramadan replies: "We don't know. Nobody knows—even the Americans." So much for moderation.

The killing poses a complex issue for Iran, Syria, and Hizballah. Iran is harboring scores of al-Qaeda leaders but the Tehran government—and also Hizballah—are Shia Muslims, a group that bin Laden despised. So no tears will be shed though perhaps some anti-Americanism can be stirred up in the Sunni Arab world by Iran.

Syria worked closely with al-Qaida in Iraqi terrorism but Damascus has also blamed al-Qaeda for internal attacks (ranging from possible regime hoaxes to democratic demonstrations) and so it isn’t well placed to cheer UBL now.

Regarding Pakistan, it has been an open secret—even published in the mass media—that the Pakistani government has sponsored terrorism and collaborated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Yet the U.S. government continued to pour money into the country.

Consider the murderous attack on Mumbai, India that took hundreds of hostages and killed so many people in cold blood. The group that conducted it operates from Pakistan with the knowledge of the authorities there. That government refused to cooperate with investigation or to extradite terrorists. We’re now supposed to be surprised that bin Laden was sheltering there?

In an official press release, the Pakistani army simultaneously claims credit for killing UBL and criticizes the United States for doing so. An official statement from the chief of staff of Pakistan’s army states:

“[We have] made it very clear that any similar action, violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, will warrant a review on the level of military / intelligence cooperation with the United States.

“The Corps Commanders were informed about the decision to reduce the strength of US military personnel in Pakistan to the minimum essential.

“As regards the possibility of similar hostile action against our strategic assets, the Forum reaffirmed that, unlike an undefended civilian compound, our strategic assets are well protected and an elaborate defensive mechanism is in place.”

So the U.S. killing of bin Laden is a cowardly attack on “an undefended civilian compound;” if the United States tries something like that again the Pakistani army will fight America; and the Americans are to be punished by expelling some of their personnel.

That’s quite a highly subsidized ally you have there!

Speaking of allies, a lot of the European media coverage revolved around whether the U.S. government broke international law by killing UBL. See previous paragraph.

And, once again, let me point out that al-Qaeda is a terrorist threat but not a strategic threat. The real problem is with revolutionary Islamists: Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood. If U.S. policy goes soft on these groups—even helping them at times—terrorism, anti-Americanism, and instability are going to get worse.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist for PajamasMedia at http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.