The Debate Over the U.S. Military Role in the Gulf

Maximalist proposals calling for near-total withdrawal or expanding the U.S. military footprint are unrealistic. The task is to find effective ways of doing as much, or more, with less.

NOTE:
Political leaders, policy analysts, the media, and the public are engaged in a vigorous conversation regarding the future of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, which is concentrated in the Gulf Arab states. In the series Refining the U.S. Force Posture in the Gulf, AGSIW intends to help frame the larger debate and explore options for restructuring the United States’ policy goals and military presence in the region. Through written analysis and conversations with scholars, experts, and practitioners, the series will explore new conceptual frameworks and search for constructive ideas for a more realistic, effective, and pragmatic approach to reshaping the U.S. force posture in the region.

AGSIW joins this complex, multifaceted discussion with the clear goal of strengthening U.S. national security and serving the interests of both the United States and its regional partners. A continued strong U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military presence in the Gulf and Middle East as well as a renewed focus on the United States’ relationships with its key partners are central to promoting stability in the region and securing the U.S. national interest.

It is high time to move past the assumption that the only real or effective U.S. response to any significant challenge is the use of military force. It is time to find ways to apply political will and diplomacy effectively, in concert with the United States’ allies and supported by strong military capability and options. The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates both the futility of trying to prescribe the future of other societies, even with extended periods of military deployment, but also the delusion that an absence of U.S. forces will bring stability or prosperity. Plainly, a middle way beckons from lessons that need, at last, to be truly learned.

I invite you to join AGSIW and others in this crucial conversation in coming months, starting with this analysis by AGSIW Senior Resident Scholar Hussein Ibish.

Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman
President, AGSIW

An overdue debate is underway regarding the scope and utility of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region. It is being amplified by the controversial U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which all sides cite as a vindication of their existing perspectives. On one side of the debate, some are pushing for the continuation or expansion of the current posture. The other extreme demands the elimination of all or nearly all fixed U.S. military facilities in the region. Both constituencies are loud and passionate, but a strong new consensus falling between these two positions is nonetheless emerging. It is time for the United States to rethink the distribution of its assets to make them more effective and, where appropriate, smaller, leaner, and more flexible, while at the same time recognizing that long-term deployments of U.S. forces in the Gulf region remain essential to the interests of the United States, and those of its regional and global partners, and for regional stability and security.

This debate arises from a growing sense of war weariness and desire to focus on domestic projects among many Americans. On the Republican right, this is the “America first” agenda, while for Democrats, it is the “build back better” initiative. There is also a growing focus on great power competition with Russia and China – which begs the question of how the U.S. presence in the Gulf contributes to, and is interlocked with, those complex policy aims.

Despite consistent calls for a de-prioritization of the Middle East – that, even within the government, date back to the second term of President George W. Bush and have been echoed by all subsequent administrations – the likely negative consequences of any dramatic shift have prevented it from happening. The strategic and economic importance of the Gulf region and its crucial energy supplies, especially to the economies of South and East Asia, is obvious. And there are many other reasons for the United States not to pull back too quickly or drastically. Still, most among the U.S. public, political leaders, and policy analysts have concluded that the military footprint largely inherited from the 1991 Desert Storm operation in Kuwait and 2003 invasion of Iraq has become ill-suited to evolving U.S. interests in the region.

Long-established security architecture in the Gulf, such as the U.S. naval presence in Manama, dating back to just after World War II, is also under pressure, even though it has repeatedly demonstrated its importance in helping ensure the free flow of oil and commerce in vital maritime passages such as the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. 5th Fleet also serves as the headquarters and hub of the Combined Maritime Forces, a 34-member coalition dedicated to combating piracy and smuggling and promoting maritime security in most important international shipping lanes, including the Indian Ocean and adjacent waterways.

The impulse to scale back the force posture in the Gulf dovetails with a transition away from post-9/11 entanglements in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq as well as the small but effective presence in Syria. Those three deployments are all very different, but the end of U.S. involvement in the Afghan war, restructuring of U.S. forces in Iraq to exclude combat missions, and persistence of the limited presence on the Syria-Iraq border to continue the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and to block Iranian control of the Iraqi-Syrian border crossings all illustrate the need for a potential adjustment of assets.

The Debate

The debate is bookended by opposing hard-line hawkish and isolationist positions. The resurgence of isolationism has arisen among right-wing nationalists and libertarians as well as liberal progressives. Such leanings have always been present but were effectively forced to the margins after World War II, through the Cold War and into the subsequent decades of the United States acting as the sole global power. Given the absence of a Cold War-style consensus about a defining existential threat, the return of isolationism was, perhaps, inevitable. International relations have become increasingly multipolar with the return of Russia to the world stage and, especially, the growth of China into an emerging global power competing with the United States. In addition to these great power rivals, regional powers, including in the Middle East, are increasingly asserting their strategic autonomy and attempting to diversify their partnerships and options.

Most striking is a convergence of conservative Republican and liberal Democratic versions of the isolationist resurgence. Both advocate that the United States should remove its military presence largely or even entirely from the Middle East (as well as the rest of the world, for example, Korea). These arguments are usually based on downplaying threats from adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran, and a thoroughgoing rejection of U.S. international leadership as wasteful, provocative, and counterproductive.

On the other extreme, some hawkish blocs, many of which emerged out of the neoconservative perspective, not only defend the current military posture but frequently demand an intensified U.S. military presence in the Middle East. This is typically tied to calls for increased military cooperation with and support for Israel and robust defenses of Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. Others take a more traditionally hawkish stance that simply opposes virtually all force posture drawdowns around the world.

These two extreme positions, though aggressively promoted by well-funded and highly visible institutions, remain maximalist outliers. There is, instead, a growing consensus that, while the United States should not entirely withdraw its military presence from the Gulf and broader Middle East, it should also not reflexively maintain the current posture, let alone inflate it. A broad-based expansion of the U.S. military role might be welcomed by some U.S. allies, including Israel and some Arab states, but many U.S. analysts believe that the current posture, formed in a different era, is not well suited to achieving present-day U.S. national interests in the region.

Defining U.S. Interests

One of the most important tasks in conceptualizing a new framework for the U.S. military role in the Gulf and broader Middle East is to identify, and hopefully forge a consensus around, a clearly defined understanding of core U.S. national security interests.

Most analysts agree that the United States has a vital interest in maintaining maritime security in the waters of the Gulf and global access to trade and energy resources through the Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandeb strait, and Strait of Hormuz, and beyond that, the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The U.S. military posture around the globe is an interwoven, interconnected web of assets that support and reinforce each other in complex and often mutually indispensable ways. It would be difficult for the United States to continue to play a major global role without taking the lead in securing access to what remains the energy lifeblood of the global economy. Ceding this role to the competing interests of regional powers or the hegemony of a rival international power would effectively signal the return of an isolationist foreign policy.

A second point of near unanimity is the vital interest in combating and deterring terrorism aimed at the United States and U.S. interests overseas. Counterterrorism is among the most important and effective pillars of U.S. leadership and influence, especially in the Middle East, and is imperative in reinforcing Washington’s network of alliances, above all NATO. Much of the focus of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks has been centered on counterterrorism efforts, whether effective or misguided. Despite many flaws, the policy has been substantially effective: There has been no repetition of the 9/11 attacks, and the fight against violent extremist groups has largely been taken to wherever they originate rather than in the United States.

However, many post-9/11 policies, notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ended up bolstering radicals in Iraq and Syria, eventually leading to the formation of ISIL, and empowering Iran. Pro-Iranian extremist groups continue to target U.S. forces and interests in Iraq and elsewhere. And the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIL, even to domestic U.S. targets, persists – particularly given the Taliban takeover of most of Afghanistan, the deadly suicide attack by an ISIL affiliate on the Kabul airport, and the release of large numbers of al-Qaeda operatives that had been in Afghan prisons.

Another issue frequently cited as a vital U.S. interest in the Middle East is the security of Israel, but that has become increasingly linked to the security of other U.S. regional partners. Israel and several key Gulf Arab countries agree that Iran and its militia network pose the greatest threat to their national security and regional stability. This shared threat perception and strategic convergence led the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to begin normalizing relations with Israel in 2020, which brought three key U.S. partners closer together. Saudi Arabia remains undecided but is clearly keeping its options open. The security of Israel and Gulf Arab states now overlap in ways that will likely provide important new opportunities for U.S. allies to cooperate both with Washington and each other in ways that also enhance U.S. regional strategic and policy goals.

Other key concerns include counteracting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; helping to avert new devastating regional wars; limiting human displacement and containing refugee crises; promoting U.S. values where possible; and addressing climate change and human security issues. The United States needs to forge a consensus about what requirements are essential to secure these interests, and what is needed to maintain support for a range of global imperatives.

Many analysts argue that the United States should transition from the post-Cold War effort of securing and defending a Pax Americana in the Middle East to a more traditional regional balancing role. This could make sense from both a U.S. and regional perspective, but there is no broadly shared understanding of what such a balancing role would entail. Some argue that the United States should seek, in effect, to foster a regional balance of power between Iran or Turkey and their Arab rivals. Yet balancing cannot mean accepting all existing actors’ policies as equally legitimate, particularly Iran’s promotion of sectarian armed militias in neighboring Arab countries, which has strongly contributed to the disintegration of these states and is the major impediment to national reintegration and regional order and stability.

Options for Force Posture Restructuring

To effectively adjust and restructure force posture, it may be necessary to adjust expectations at home and among U.S. partners. Many Americans assume that any action that is not kinetic, or at least essentially military in nature, cannot be considered effective. And many among U.S. partners in the Middle East and the Gulf assume that real commitment is only sincerely expressed and enacted through military assets and actions. Such attitudes need to evolve, given how effective nonmilitary tools can be when backed by a credible option of force.

The present configuration of major U.S. military assets in the region, which are largely concentrated in Gulf Arab states, needs careful evaluation: Which assets remain useful, which are cost-effective, which might be expanded, and which could be transitioned into a lighter, more flexible, and more responsive framework? An important corollary involves consideration of what the political and strategic landscape might look like following any possible adjustments. An empty space, with the United States over a horizon but still able to achieve significant objectives, is one thing; a new normal in which Russia or other U.S. global or regional competitors are effectively invited to fill such a vacuum, whether or not they actually can, would be a far greater concern.

A great deal of important, albeit at times speculative, work has already been done on the subject by a range of military and security experts, many of them with direct experience in the Middle East. The complex issue of burden sharing is directly related to restructuring, which could include the relocation of forward headquarters, possibly back to the United States. This depends in part on successfully strengthening the capabilities of U.S. regional partners, itself a complex and controversial task, including more integrated and robust missile defense systems and enhanced local maritime security capabilities, including minesweeping.

That requires a deeper discussion of arms sales to partners as the United States readjusts. Yet, even at its most successful, burden sharing based on strengthening local partners inevitably involves a lessening of direct influence. U.S. dismay over the consequences of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen serves as a good example of the potential downside of burden sharing. The United States and its partners will also have to find effective ways of combating the major threat posed by the emergence of cheap and dangerous drones, especially when combined with precision, or even hyperprecision, guidance systems. In the Middle East, Iran and Turkey have pioneered the application of drones and precision guidance and demonstrated the extent to which those new technologies have radically altered the strategic equation. The actual and potential use of such weapons by violent extremists and nonstate militias adds a further alarming element to the problem.

Numerous experts have already floated options for rightsizing the U.S. force posture but in a largely piecemeal manner. Some have pointed to increased emphasis on diplomacy as a necessary component to rightsizing. However, diplomatic capabilities, while still substantial, have been underfunded for decades, raising questions about what more diplomats could take on, especially since a strong military backstop is often helpful to make diplomacy effective. There are also key economic, commercial, and human security dimensions to facilitate the transition to doing more with less, all of which need to be utilized to their fullest.

As a global power, the United States remains unique, and massive benefits accrue to the American people from this global leadership role. International relations is not a zero-sum game, but global and regional players certainly keep score, and rivals will seek to fill areas the United States withdraws from or positions of influence it cedes.

The U.S. presence in the Gulf, therefore, remains crucial to both Washington and its partners. But to make it more effective and sustainable requires a new approach to regional security. A finer balance is needed between diplomatic – or even commercial or private sector – initiatives and traditional hard power, while retaining a robust military option to provide leverage and, where necessary, a last resort.

Carefully distinguishing among the various types of U.S. military presence – naval versus based aircraft versus boots on the ground and extensive training missions and small, temporary special operations force deployments or military assistance missions based in embassies – will help in creating the persuasive rationale needed to warrant an effective, sustainable force. What is required is a posture designed to serve flexible coalitions with partners to meet challenges without expecting or demanding that all partners contribute to every mission.

The United States needs a much clearer understanding of precisely what challenges require the long-term presence of forces, and the possible use of force, and under what conditions. Without that, policy will continue to drift without clear direction. This is why a new consensus on national security goals in the Gulf and broader Middle East is so important. The ultimate aim must be to foster a new regional security paradigm that includes all major players and is oriented to seeking win-win solutions rather than zero-sum confrontations. Whether this is achievable can only be determined by a thoroughgoing effort to promote and pursue it.

A wide-ranging conversation is required about how and why to restructure the U.S. force posture in the Gulf, what vital national security interests and missions these assets must serve, and what other tools advance these aims. The U.S. role in the Middle East has evolved since the establishment of major bases such as the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain and forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command at Al Udeid air base in Qatar. Given technological and strategic developments in recent years, and lessons learned from the post-9/11 era, the United States should now certainly be able to do more – or at least enough – with less.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2021/08/29/despite-criticism-biden-is-on-his-firmest-footing/

It is his handling of the Afghanistan exit that has been panned – not really Biden’s decision to leave.

Across the US, flags are at half-mast, honouring the fourteen US military personnel who were killed in an ISIS suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport, along with many more Afghans. But, despite what his critics hope, these flags are not at half-mast for the president’s administration, which is not, in fact, in a crisis over Afghanistan.

The anguish of the attack sums up the entire experience that US President Joe Biden is determined to end with his unhesitating decision to remove US forces from Afghanistan, and bring to a close the longest war in the country’s history.

Americans are a proud and martial people. They do not like to be informed that one of their overseas adventures has, unsurprisingly, failed. It is, after all, a country that has revelled in deluding itself that it “never lost a war,” at least until Vietnam, though that was never true.

ISIS’s mass murder at the airport and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan should be viewed through three partially overlapping frameworks.

At the human register, it is a catastrophe. Strategically, it is a potentially risky gamble that will have to prove itself in due course. Politically, it seems like a good bet for Mr Biden.

The tragedy is hard to overstate. Thousands of Afghans who aided US, Nato and other now-disfavoured forces will inevitably be left behind in the chaos and may well be harmed or even killed.

From this perspective, it would have been much better to have begun with a mass human exodus mission before any major military drawdown. Mr Biden insists that the Afghan government at the time begged him not to do that for fear of sparking a panic. Apparently, they were well aware how brittle their regime was, but Washington probably made a whopping mistake by acceding.

Strategically, Mr Biden is on more solid ground. No one knows what the future holds, but the idea that a few thousand US troops, backed by air power, could have prevented the Taliban from capturing Afghan cities into the foreseeable future seems very implausible. If the US had stayed engaged, it surely would have been drawn ever-deeper into an intensifying war.

Politically, Mr Biden is on his firmest footing. Criticisms are mainly based on the Biden administration’s handling of the exit but, crucially, not the decision to leave.

Despite angry denunciations by former US President Donald Trump and his allies, Mr Biden is, in fact, implementing Mr Trump’s own agreement with the Taliban. Mr Biden actually extended Mr Trump’s deadline a little bit.

It is highly unlikely that a second Trump administration would have handled the situation any better, to put it kindly. And it is almost impossible to imagine him welcoming thousands of Afghan refugees to the US.

One of the few things Mr Trump and Mr Biden agree about is that most Americans want to leave Afghanistan and that they are not terribly particular about the details.

Even though the oldest US soldier killed at the airport was just 31, and at least two were younger than the Afghanistan mission itself, the terrible poignancy will only go so far politically.

And how will this all influence next year’s congressional midterm elections, or Mr Biden’s reelection chances in 2024, if he runs again?

Probably not much, if at all. It could even help him.

The cold, hard, political fact is that while Americans in general are deeply moved at the human level, and have very mixed feelings about the exit from Afghanistan, none of this is a major consideration in shaping midterm and general election votes.

Mr Biden will be heavily criticised, but he will also claim to have been the first leader in 20 years to have had the guts to rip off the bandage and finally end a pointless and quixotic campaign to reshape Afghan society.

That will resonate with many war-weary Americans.

And unlike in the earliest days of the exit crisis, he can now point to the extraction of at least 120,000 refugees, the overwhelming majority not US citizens, under very difficult conditions.

Indeed, the biggest political threats to Mr Biden and his allies have nothing to do with foreign policy or Afghanistan.

He is in a good deal of trouble, but mainly because of economic concerns tied to inflation and the heavy impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus pandemic, which is hitting Republican-ruled states, with very low vaccination rates and no real mitigation mandates, particularly hard. Yet, as president, Mr Biden may be punished for the irresponsible actions of many Republican governors.

The US political calendar is effectively on hold during August and will resume after the first week of September and US Labour Day.

At that point, there will be a massive effort to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, a separate and vast Democrats-only infrastructure package, and some form of voting access protection.

Just one of these would count as a significant success, especially given the incredibly tight margins in Congress and the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill Mr Biden signed in March.

Americans are looking at the Afghanistan tragedy primarily through the prism of emotions, not politics. Those emotions are, however, incredibly powerful.

They include, for many Americans, despair at the inability of the country to accomplish the impossible, but widely endorsed, project it undertook in 2002 to reshape Afghan society.

There is also considerable anger about the futility of the deaths and suffering of Americans and their Afghan allies over the past 20 years, and the present failure to rescue many of those heroic allies.

Such reflections induce powerful feelings of individual and collective guilt. But they compete with less widespread but extant contemptuous impressions of Afghans as unsalvageable or ungrateful wretches.

There is also tremendous sadness at recent losses, especially from the airport bombing, and for those facing possible death at the hands of the Taliban.

But, above all, most Americans – especially those who were not personally connected to the war – will primarily be experiencing relief that the “endless” war is finally over.

Critics charge that either the Taliban or, if they lose control of the situation, some even more extreme successor like ISIS, will once again make Afghanistan a hub of global terrorism, and therefore draw the US right back into the fray.

But most Americans don’t anticipate that right now.

So, Mr Biden is unlikely to be politically hurt, and may even be bolstered, by his decision to rip off the bandage and finally end the longest war in US history.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-26/who-will-be-the-taliban-whisperers-the-pakistanis-or-the-qataris?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

Islamabad has long fostered the fighters but Doha has recently sheltered prominent members of the group. Will its deeper pockets make a difference?
by Bobby Ghosh and Hussein Ibish

As the Taliban settle into their second stint as Afghanistan’s rulers, any hope of avoiding a reprise of their first period of rule may rest on a competition for influence in Kabul between Pakistan and Qatar. The outcome will determine what role the wider world, and especially the West, can play in the country after the withdrawal of American forces.

Most Afghans — as well as foreign governments, aid agencies, donors and investors — will be rooting for Doha over Islamabad. Memories of how the previous Taliban administration performed under Pakistani tutelage allow for no optimism about how things will play out this time. The Qataris are a relatively unknown quantity in South Asia, but they could hardly do worse.

Who wins will be determined in large part by another contest, within the Taliban. Although the group is headed by a supreme leader, Habitullah Akhundzada, it is not a monolith. Qatar is aligned with the political faction led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, while Pakistan is backing the military wing, marshalled by the likes of Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of former supreme leader, Mullah Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the dreaded Haqqani Network, designated a terrorist group by the U.S.   

On the surface, things are looking good for the Qataris. Baradar, who has lived in Doha for the past three years, hasarrived in Kabul and is expected to head the new government. The Biden administration seems to have determined that it can do business with him: Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns held secret talks with Baradar on Monday.

This will alarm the Pakistanis, who are thought to be in bad odor with Baradar. They first gave him shelter after the U.S.-led defeat of the Taliban, then arrested him in 2010. He was reportedly tortured in captivity. The Qataris, on the other hand, have been treating him as Afghanistan’s leader-in-waiting, and have built strong ties to others in his faction.

But even if Baradar heads the government, the real power in the Taliban lies in Akhundzada’s “shura,” or council, where Yaqoob and Haqqani wield considerable sway.  From 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban last ruled, decisions made in Kabul were routinely overruled by the high council in Kandahar, the group’s spiritual base and home of its supreme leader.

If Pakistan’s proteges emerge as the dominant clique, Islamabad will likely be their principal go-between with the world. We’ve seen that movie before, and it ends badly. The last time around, rather than encourage the Taliban to develop a modern, inclusive state, Pakistan indulged their obscurantist ideology, defended their reactionary worldview and excused their atavistic domestic agenda.

Western governments, and especially the U.S., paid handsomely for Pakistan’s services as the designated Taliban-whisperer, but this only enriched and empowered the military and intelligence establishment in Islamabad, and did nothing to alleviate the plight of the Afghan people or abate the terrorist threat emanating from their country.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan provided the safe havens for them to regroup, rearm and return to the fray. Over the past 20 years, governments in Islamabad have made little effort to ameliorate the attitude of their guests. Now that they’re back in power, it is hard to imagine Pakistan will temper their tendencies.

Can Qatar do better? Over the past decade, the tiny emirate has emerged as an effective interlocutor between the West and the Taliban. By brokering peace negotiations in Doha, the Qataris paved the way for the American withdrawal and the insurgents’ return to power.

Their bid for influence in Kabul will depend on Baradar being grateful for services rendered — and wanting still more. If the Taliban want international recognition for their government, the Qatari auspices will be more effective than that of Pakistan, which is itself regarded with suspicion by the West.

And if they want money — aid or investment — Doha has much deeper pockets than Islamabad. This will be especially important in the first months of the new administration, when Western governments and donors will hold back funding while they take the measure of the new dispensation. Even if they remain suspicious of the Taliban, those inclined to keep assisting the Afghan population will feel more comfortable using Qatar as a conduit than relying on Pakistan.          

But don’t rule out the Taliban’s old patrons just yet. For one thing, the Pakistanis have a major advantage in proximity. The two countries share a 1,650-mile land border, whereas Qatar and Afghanistan are separated by the landmass of Iran and the Persian Gulf. Pakistanis and Afghans also share ethnic and cultural ties that the Qataris can’t hope to match.

More important, the Pakistani state has a history with new rulers in Kabul that goes back to the Taliban’s birth, midwifed by Islamabad’s intelligence services, in the early 1990s. Some of those ties were frayed when the government of General Pervez Musharraf enabled the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, but the group could not have survived without continued, covert Pakistani backing. Baradar may have suffered at the hands of his jailors, but many in the military wing, leaders and fighters alike, will feel they owe their recent hosts a debt of gratitude.    

And finally, Pakistan also has much more at stake. For Doha, a friendly government in Kabul would be a very good outcome; for Islamabad, it is an existential imperative because Pakistani military doctrine has long held that Afghanistan provides the country with “strategic depth” in its rivalry with India. So, count on Pakistan to fight much harder than Qatar for influence in Afghanistan. This contest could yet get very dirty.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2021/08/22/theres-only-one-way-for-the-taliban-to-hold-power/

Successive governments in Kabul, including the one led by the group in the 1990s, have failed to share power, spelling their doom.

Welcome to Afghanistan. Not the Afghanistan of the Western imagination. The real Afghanistan. 

This is not to say that the Taliban are “authentic” or more representative of Afghan society or culture than any other group of Afghans. Plainly they are not, and huge numbers of Afghans are horrified and terrified to see these vicious extremists back in power.

But it means that the manner in which the Taliban have returned to power and, conversely, that the US-backed government and military simply evaporated in a few days, reflect the traditional Afghan way of war and dynamics of power.

Afghanistan is a complex patchwork of numerous identity groups, cultures, ethnicities, tribes, regions and traditions. It has almost always resisted top-down rule by a strong, centralised and homogenised far-off national government. Power-sharing and a due deference to local mores and interests, and the dignity of local leaders, has, by contrast, produced long periods of tranquility.

Whenever a heavy-handed force, whether Afghan or foreign, tries to set up a centralised national government in Kabul to rule the country – especially when local sensitivities and leaders are not treated with sufficient respect – uprisings are virtually inevitable and often successful.

Viewed from this perspective, more than the familiar anti-colonial narrative, the American project in Afghanistan was doomed to failure because it was attempting to create a virtual impossibility. The US even decided to try to create a miniaturised version of the US military, as well as a familiar, western-style government. The past two weeks have demonstrated the overwhelming failure.

Yet this is an equal opportunity problem. The Taliban themselves fell into the same trap when they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, in a harsh manner, which prompted a potent armed opposition.

When US special forces and intelligence services joined the Northern Alliance (officially called the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan) after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Taliban rule collapsed remarkably quickly as well. The campaign began on October 7, 2001. On November 13, the Taliban fled Kabul. By the end of that month, virtually the whole country was in the hands of their enemies and most of the Taliban had fled to Pakistan, although remnants held out in Kandahar.

In short, in 2001 the shoe was on the other foot. It was the Taliban whose forces evaporated and fled. And it was the Northern Alliance that were suddenly in control of all the key cities.

And yet, by 2003 a new Taliban insurgency had coalesced, and by 2006 it became a significant threat.

This seems to be a consistent pattern in Afghan history. A dominant power can control the cities, but if it does not share power and accommodate the diversity and complexity of Afghan society, an armed insurgency will almost certainly develop. Events can, as they just have, lead to the conquest of the cities by what had been a largely rural guerrilla force. This is exactly what has happened as the Taliban and the US-backed government have, with great rapidity, simply changed places.

In Afghanistan, the historical approach to war, generally, does not resemble the western idea of a zero-sum, binary, fixed and straightforward affair. Changing sides is common, and very frequently the side with the momentum will use negotiations, bribery and amnesties to ensure that the formerly empowered losers simply dissipate, handing over areas, and even the main urban centres, without many pitched battles.

And now, from its traditional redoubt in the Panjshir Valley, the old forces of the Northern Alliance have announced the formation of a new insurgency. If the Taliban try again to rule without accommodating diversity, over time they will surely face growing armed opposition. If, on the other hand, they engage in power-sharing negotiations, and govern with a lighter touch, they might be able to sustain power in relative calm. It’s up to them.

A key factor in their recent victory was an effective outreach campaign to tribal and village elders, many of whom had reportedly been alienated by the previous administration. Now that they have won, this apparent openness to other perspectives will be seriously and quickly tested.

And this time they will try to rule a population that, especially in the cities, has become used to a remarkable degree of freedom and western influence. These populations and the Taliban will meet for the first time in coming weeks and it is unlikely to be pleasant.

This whole experience has come as a terrible shock to the US, but there is really no excuse for that. The West, and especially the English-speaking world, has had ample opportunity to learn this lesson. After the first British fiasco in Afghanistan ended in total annihilation during the retreat from Kabul in 1842, the army chaplain in Jalalabad, Rev G R Gleig, summed up the experience.

It was, he wrote, “a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has been acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”.

The same could have been said about the Soviet Union’s debacle there in the 1980s and the American fiasco today.

The second Anglo-Afghan war in 1878-1880 was more successful, because the British ended up simply supporting a new ruler, Abdur Rahman Khan. In exchange for political support and money, Britain directed his foreign policy and blocked the expansion of Russian influence, which was the primary purpose of the campaign. But both Britain and the ruler allowed local Afghan tribes to continue governing themselves relatively independently.

When Britain was eventually driven out of Afghanistan entirely in 1919, the country still served as a buffer against Russian ambitions. So, not all political projects in Afghanistan, even by outsiders, are doomed to failure. There is a lesson here, repeated time and again in Afghan history. It’s too late for the Americans, at least for now.

Yet, will the Taliban understand this better than they did in the 1990s? And will they avoid once again following the country to serve as a base for Al Qaeda terrorism? Early signs are not all promising, which suggests that the struggle for power in Afghanistan has taken a dramatic turn but the real “endless war” will continue, with or without the Americans.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2021/08/15/the-most-dangerous-words-used-in-us-foreign-policy/

Afghanistan yet again shows the idea that Washington can install viable new governments wherever it likes is irrational and unattainable.

The phrase “and then we install a new government” should be permanently banned from any US foreign policy planning meeting. Installing and propping up an artificially contrived government is what the US tried to do in South Vietnam following France’s failure there. Now the same scenario is repeating itself with grim predictability in Afghanistan.

At least since the Second World War, it has simply not been possible to create a new state and polity in another society from the outside at what most Americans would consider an acceptable cost and timeframe. Great powers can have success by siding with existing, and already strong, domestic groups – whether government or opposition – to help determine the outcome of a struggle.

Russia and Iran’s intervention in Syria is a good example that this can be done effectively and relatively inexpensively, albeit in that case ruthlessly. But the American instinct is always to want to leave something “trustworthy” behind, meaning allies and institutions that are recognisably tolerable from a US perspective. In almost all cases, that effectively means attempting to impose a revolution from outside. And that simply does not work.

Overturning existing systems and creating new ones, combined with an influx of cash, goods, weapons and other support, is an irresistible invitation to corruption. There will always be civic-minded patriots who labour for the best of reasons. But it’s an irresistible smorgasbord of goodies for the unscrupulous, the selfish and the corrupt.

When a truly new order is being imposed, unless the occupying power micromanages a process that is extremely time-consuming and expensive, there will be a frenzy of what Marxists call the “primitive accumulation” of power and wealth. There’s practically no way around that, especially in developing economies where political authority depends on substantial political patronage and jobs for many constituents. People need to live, and they need help.

So, unless an outside force were to stumble on an unheard-of assemblage of saints, corruption is virtually built into the process.

In Afghanistan, corruption rapidly became the defining feature of life. Video of the Taliban ransacking one of former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum’s homes last week reveal it to be a minor monument to decades of corruption. And he’s hardly the worst. The government’s lack of popularity and viability are amply demonstrated by its sudden meltdown.

The collapse of the US project and the imminent takeover of most if not all of the country by the Taliban is an inverted pyramid of fiascoes and deficiencies.

At the bottom are the soldiers and mid-level commanders of the Afghan military, who are largely refusing to fight and simply handing over regional capitals to the Taliban as soon as the fanatics can drive there. Many were simply looking for a job, and are chronically under- or unpaid and undersupplied. And who is going to be willing to fight and die for someone else’s grift?

Many aren’t even serving in their own local areas and therefore don’t feel they are protecting their families. Washington and its Afghan allies have notably failed to nurture an ideology, or national or social consciousness that is functional, let alone able to trump the religious passion of the Taliban, among the Afghan people.

At the next level up the pyramid are the military commanders. Their army is much smaller than reported because many senior commanders have made a fortune by reporting countless non-existent troops and pocketing pay and supplies. Vast sums, well in excess of $83 billion, have been poured into the Afghan military, much more than neighbouring Pakistan has spent on its large and more effective forces during the same timeframe. But rather than creating an effective fighting force, some commanders have spent most of their time taking what they can before the US withdrawal.

Expect a massive rash of defections to the new authorities at all levels of the military and political structure in coming days.

Another step up the pyramid are Afghanistan’s political leaders, many of whom have been inept, unresponsive, cut off from the public, self-serving and self-dealing.

Finally, towards the top of the pyramid of fiascos, are successive US governments.

Barack Obama inherited an impossible mission from his predecessor, George W Bush. But he made the misguided decision to try to create a vast, sprawling Afghan military along US lines, with all the equipment and logistics required for such a force. Instead of succeeding, that infusion of support simply sent corruption to new heights.

Mr Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, made an indefensible agreement with the Taliban, agreeing to completely withdraw US forces in exchange for unenforceable and insincere commitments from the extremists.

Now Joe Biden has rushed to implement Mr Trump’s agreement and timetable, but in the most slapdash and hasty manner imaginable. He is literally having US troops run away from key installations, such as Bagram Air Force Base, overnight.

But at the very peak of the pyramid of ignominy is without question the Bush administration, which certainly had to act forcefully against the Taliban and Al Qaeda after September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Yet, instead of crushing those groups, and making clear to all Afghans that any association with international terrorism would result in the uncompromising return of massive American force, his administration decided to try creating a new state and new polity in A society they didn’t understand and to which it wasn’t in the least suited.

In other words, somebody said: “And then we install a new government.”

The devastating impact of this latest catastrophe, and similarly in Iraq, is the stigmatisation of all but the most unavoidable use of force in most US thinking, especially among the public, and the return of an isolationist trend on the far left and the extreme right, increasingly acting in coordination with each other.

A great many Americans are traumatised by these quixotic debacles – now derided as “endless wars” – and therefore ARE seized with a malady known as “kakorrhaphiophobia”, the irrational fear of failure, regarding the use of power.

The next time any senior American official says “and then we install the new government”, not only should the meeting be immediately terminated, so should that official’s employment.

Hubristic, quixotic and unattainable state-building projects on the other side of the world must, at long last, be excised from the US foreign policy playbook.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/when-they-say-they-want-kill-you-believe-them/619724/

The hyperbolic posturing of Trumpist extremists, repeated often enough, will have deadly consequences.

Decades of living in, studying, and writing about the Middle East have taught me that whenever a political faction becomes obsessed with violent rhetoric and fantasies, brutal acts aren’t far behind. And while there’s always been a strain of militancy on the American right and left fringes, there is something unmistakably new, and profoundly alarming, about the casual, florid, and sadistic rhetoric that is metastasizing from the Republican fringe into the party’s mainstream.

For sheer pornographic sadism, it’s tough to beat Jesse Kelly’s encomium to murder and torture published by the right-wing website The Federalist. Kelly doesn’t make any real arguments, other than declaring liberals terrible authoritarians. Instead, in language that the Islamic State would envy, he describes the visceral, almost orgasmic, joy of scalping a dying enemy:

Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands. I don’t mean cradling his skull as you thousand-yard-stare at his lifeless face. I mean a real scalp, Indian-style, of some enemy you just killed on the battlefield; somebody you hated and who hated you back.

You killed him, won the day, carved off the top of his skull, and now you’re standing over him victorious on the now-quiet field of battle, with a quiet breeze blowing through your hair. Your adrenaline is still pumping with that primal feeling of victory and the elation of having survived when others didn’t.

Kelly hastens to add that he is discussing “not a real scalping, but a metaphorical one.” But he concludes the essay by warning readers that when they are stuck in a “liberal utopian nightmare,” they will want to know that before the leftists prevailed, they “rode out onto the plains and made them feel pain.”

Again, the unmistakable lesson from the modern Middle East is: When people keep saying they’re fantasizing about how great it would be, and feel, to kill you, believe them.

Most Republican leaders still don’t personally indulge in bloodthirsty reveries. But, with equal consistency, most are going out of their way to tolerate them. There’s no question that the right’s Overton window, which establishes what ideas a constituency will regard as legitimate, regarding political violence dramatically expanded during Donald Trump’s presidency and, especially, after his defeat by Joe Biden.

There was already a racial and cultural panic on the far right in the run-up to Trump’s election. In a notorious essay for the Claremont Review of Books in September 2016, “The Flight 93 Election,” the Claremont Institute’s Michael Anton described the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency as so dire that Americans needed to back a candidate as manifestly unfit and unstable as Trump. “Charge the cockpit or you die,” he wrote, because “if you don’t try, death is certain.”

Anton never said why and how the election of Hillary Clinton would mean national suicide. But he inveighed against “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners,” and in the eighth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the racial subtext was clear.

Trump’s indulgence in violent rhetoric, threats, and fantasies has been amply documented. He urged his supporters to assault protesters, police to brutalize prisoners and shoot demonstrators, and soldiers on the border to shoot migrants. He frequently voiced his admiration for, and even envy of, the brutality of foreign despots. Trump used the bully pulpit to preach the gospel of bloodshed like no other American president in history.

During his four years in office, and especially since the defeat he preposterously describes as “the greatest crime in history,” Trump’s own sanguineous impulses and visions have been migrating into Congress and the Republican mainstream, and spurring his followers to try to outbid one another in their vicious and gruesome pronouncements.

Trump once darkly hinted about “Second Amendment people” taking some unspecified actions, implicitly murderous, to protect gun rights if he lost to Clinton. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia now warns that if the government sends health-care workers door-to-door to encourage more Americans to get vaccinated, they will find that southerners “love our Second Amendment rights, and we’re not real big on strangers showing up on our front door … they might not like the welcome they get.”

Before she was elected, Greene once liked a Facebook comment that said to remove Nancy Pelosi from office, “a bullet to the head would be quicker.” On tour with Greene, her Republican ally Representative Matt Gaetz declared, “We have the Second Amendment in this country and I think we have an obligation to use it,” helpfully adding that the amendment’s purpose is “maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government.”

The former Trump-campaign chair and White House strategist Steve Bannon suggested that Anthony Fauci should be beheaded. And the Trump-friendly lawyer Joseph diGenova urged that a senior federal cybersecurity official be “taken out at dawn and shot.”

These politicians and pundits are playing the familiar political game of outbidding, always taking rhetoric to the next level in order to gain attention and become the champion of a passionate group. Another lesson from the Middle East is that words always matter.

What begins as hyperbolic posturing, when it is persistent and repeated, will eventually be taken seriously. And then not only will its proponents be stuck in a never-ending cycle of radical outbidding, but eventually some of their audience members—most of whom don’t know they’re not supposed to take any of this seriously, let alone literally—will act on it.

What are spirited patriots to do if they genuinely believe this rhetoric about the “end of America” brought about by the oppressive domination of a cabal of evil leftist authoritarians? Violent resistance is a plausibly rational response to such an existential threat. The reality that this supposed threat is merely the possibility that other Americans with different opinions might win some election is elided by the rhetoric of panic.

The past few years have seen numerous mass shootings and terrorist acts committed by radical adherents of this paranoid worldview, but none provided as terrifying a preview of where this all might be going as January 6 did. Trump knew exactly what he was suggesting when he told the crowd that day to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. His lawyer Rudy Giuliani specifically called for “trial by combat,” which is precisely what followed.

Mainstream Republican leaders initially condemned the violence, but in the subsequent seven months, most have decided it either wasn’t that bad after all or the country simply needs to move on. The congressional GOP was relatively united in trying to block any serious investigation. Meanwhile, Trump and his most ardent supporters are now openly celebrating the rioters as heroes, lauding Ashli Babbitt as a martyr and mocking police officers’ testimony about the trauma of being attacked and nearly killed by their fellow citizens, some of whom bore patriotic paraphernalia, including pro-police and U.S. flags.

Those few Republicans who are actively working to prevent any repetition of the events of January 6, including Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, find themselves marginalized, reviled, and, in Cheney’s case, ousted from party leadership.

So it’s no surprise that one recent survey found that 39 percent of Republicans agreed that if political leaders will not protect America, ordinary people should employ political violence; and that in another, 47 percent said that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” These numbers are unprecedented and alarming.

While there are certainly some violent leftists, nothing remotely comparable to this level of violent rhetoric exists among major Democratic figures; nor does the party base embrace violence to anything close to this degree. Democrats are stubbornly clinging to their center while Republicans drift ever closer to right-wing extremism.

There isn’t much anyone outside the GOP can do to stop that drift. Immediately after the January 6 riot, senior Republican figures, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, condemned Trump and his allies precisely because of the riot and the introduction of violent rhetoric and action into the American system. But since that brief spasm of criticism, almost all of them have fallen back in line.

The “woke” progressive left has a problem with intolerance and rigid ideological orthodoxies, and so does the right, especially at the state level. But the political right, including significant parts of the Republican Party, has developed an affinity for political violence in both word and deed.

Since 2015, Republican leaders like McConnell have plainly been hoping that Trump’s movement and its violent rhetoric would somehow just go away. They ignored, and thereby effectively condoned, it. But it didn’t go away. Instead, it ripened into actual violence on January 6 and seems ready to burst out again in a far more savage manner during some future confrontation.

The cancer of political violence is not an endemic American disease. At the moment, it is a Republican disease. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2021/08/09/what-will-biden-and-raisi-do-if-the-iran-nuclear-talks-fail/

For all its limitations, the JCPOA is still the best short-term solution by far.

With Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi sworn in on Thursday, the impact on efforts to revive the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement will quickly become clear. Time is running short to reach an understanding and avoid further, and possibly greatly escalated or even devastating, confrontation.

Under his lame-duck predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, talks made little progress. Mr Rouhani has reportedly said that he was “not allowed” to make an agreement by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close allies. That’s either because Iran’s leaders don’t want to make a deal or didn’t want Mr Rouhani get any credit for the sanctions relief that Iran desperately needs. It will soon become obvious which attitude was driving whatever obstruction he faced.

In theory, an agreement ought to be attainable. Both sides say they want one. They even agree that it should be on the basis of compliance-for-compliance with the JCPOA text signed years ago. So, what Washington and Tehran are really negotiating is what constitutes compliance on both sides, and how and when measures to restore that compliance on both sides would be taken.

Timing is a key issue, as ever with the JCPOA. Iran’s responsibilities are fairly clear, though an agreement about how quickly they would roll back prohibited activities and what monitoring would be required is necessary. US sanctions are more complex, but the Biden administration appears willing to ensure Iran gets all the economic benefits it received from the 2015 agreement.

All that may not sound like a particularly heavy diplomatic lift, but politics ensure it very much is.

There is, and always was, strong opposition on both sides to any such accommodation. Many of Mr Raisi’s allies were harsh critics of the agreement. But he has repeatedly stressed he wants to restore it.

Making matters worse from the American point of view, the 2015 agreement was a chronological gamble, providing Iran with significant sanctions relief and securing nuclear limitations that expire between 10-15 years from “implementation day” on January 16, 2016. The countdown towards the expiration of Iran’s nuclear restrictions under the deal has been moving forward ever since.

So, this same agreement is going to be a lot less attractive in 2022 than it was in 2015, because it is all based on deadlines that have been expiring the entire time. However, the costs of failure are also becoming increasingly evident.

A year after former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and began a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, Iran launched a low-intensity warfare response of “maximum resistance” against US and US-related targets in the region.

The grey-zone conflict between the US and Iran eased somewhat when the indirect talks began after Joe Biden assumed the US presidency. But Iran continues to flex its muscles, particularly in an intensifying series of reciprocal attacks with Israel.

Israel is alleged to have been responsible for a wide range of explosions, fires and other sabotage in key Iranian facilities in recent months, including its main nuclear facility at Natanz. Iran’s responses have recently included a deadly drone attack against an Israeli-operated merchant tanker travelling from Tanzania to Fujairah which killed two crew members.

Iranian tensions with the US reached a boiling point in January 2020 when pro-Iranian militias in Iraq unleashed numerous attacks against US targets and the US killed one of Iran’s most powerful commanders, and important leaders, Gen Qassem Suleimani, as well as the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Unit, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis.

That didn’t lead to a US-Iranian war, but it certainly got too close for comfort. And, even while tensions are somewhat eased, that recent history and the ongoing shadow war between Iran and Israel amply illustrate the alarming scenarios that could well develop out of a diplomatic collapse in Vienna.

Given the impasse under Mr Rouhani, and questions about Mr Raisi’s sincerity and authority, serious consideration is being given in Washington to how to manage a post-JCPOA future, especially if Iran makes a dash for nuclear weapons capability.

The West has always understood it might have to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, as it does with North Korea, but has also recognised that doing so would require a tougher, more disciplined and thoroughgoing regime of containment. That won’t be easy, and could be very risky. And because it is such an unattractive proposition, some are suggesting radical alternatives.

Israel has launched repeated attacks against pro-Iranian militia groups in Syria and Iraq, and has made it clear that Hezbollah in Lebanon, too, faces serious redlines. Last week, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said his country might be willing to strike Iran directly if Tehran and its proxies continue to attack Israeli targets.

A former senior US official, Dennis Ross, suggested that if the talks fail, Washington should supply Israel with the fearsome GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (also known as “the mother of all bombs”), a massive 14,000-kilogram bunker-buster weapon.

They “could be used to destroy [Iran’s underground nuclear facility at] Fordow” and other deeply hardened sites, he writes. He claims Iranians might doubt the US’s willingness to carry out such an attack, but not Israel’s. He also suggests such a weapons transfer could be a negotiating tactic, inducing Tehran to come to terms. But it takes very little imagination to realise that any such attack would probably unleash a maelstrom of regional violence, if not all-out war. And if Tehran is absolutely determined to develop nuclear weapons, eventually it will – such attacks and any other pressure notwithstanding.

For all its limitations, the JCPOA is still the best short-term solution by far.

One major stumbling block is that both sides plainly think they are operating from stronger positions than they actually are. And both are hoping to secure at least a little advantage over the other to fend off political criticism.

Now that Iran has a new president, progress will be required sooner rather than later. The US has said the Vienna talks cannot go on indefinitely. That is putting it mildly. The clock has been ticking since 2015, and the hands aren’t moving any slower.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-04/on-its-anniversary-the-beirut-blast-further-ruptures-a-fractured-country?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

An  FBI report says only a fraction of the chemicals delivered to the hangar exploded. What happened to the rest?

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the devastating Beirut port explosion, perhaps the worst non-nuclear blast in a heavily populated area in human history. A large stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored at the port ignited in a devastating eruption that left much of the city shattered.

The anatomy of the disaster, one of numerous calamities that have befallen Lebanon over the past two years, sums up all the essential dysfunctions destroying the country: corrupt and incompetent administration; a complete absence of transparency, accountability and justice; and the willingness of powerful forces to place the entire society in extreme jeopardy for their own narrow, selfish purposes.

The official explanation of how the chemicals, which can be used as either fertilizer or explosive material, arrived in Lebanon was always implausible and now appears beyond ridiculous. In 2013, a Moldovan-flagged vessel arrived at the port, supposedly en route to Mozambique. Eleven months later, the dangerous cargo was offloaded to hangar 12, where it remained until the explosion that killed at least 218 people and injured thousands.

But according to a 2020 FBI report completed shortly after the catastrophe, of the original shipment of 2,754 tons of ammonium nitrate, only 552 exploded. Lebanese authorities quietly agree with that assessment, according to Reuters.

There are two obvious conclusions. If the full amount had still been in hangar 12 and exploded, most of the city would have been wiped out and the death toll unimaginable. Second, while the ammonium nitrate was supposedly being stored at the port, in fact most of it was being used, and almost certainly not for agriculture.

It’s not absolutely impossible that most of the ammonium nitrate didn’t explode but was instead blown into the sea. But in the broader context that strains credulity.

It is likely that these dangerous chemicals were brought to Beirut to be used in explosives. Ever since the blast, many Lebanese have cast suspicion and blame on the pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and its close ally, the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. It would not have been the first time these forces have used the Lebanese state and society as a cover and vehicle for their nefarious activities, for which the Lebanese people have again paid an exorbitant cost. (Hezbollah has denounced allegations it was to blame.)

But there will be no accountability. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, authorities promised a quick and thorough probe. That was never going to happen. The first investigative judge was summarily fired after he sought to question key officials. His replacement has been completely unable to secure testimony from security officials and members of Parliament, or to lift the lawmakers’ legal immunity to get at the facts.

If it were merely a question of protecting incompetence, or even corruption, some semblance of an investigation could be possible, even in Lebanon. But a real inquiry can’t be allowed because it would more than likely reveal that the Mozambique cover story is fiction and that the chemicals were, in fact, destined for Beirut from the beginning. Eventually, it would uncover what really happened to the missing 2,200 tons and, most importantly, who is really responsible.

But the Lebanese state is in no position to hold Hezbollah and the agents of the Syrian regime accountable, or even admit to much of their activities. The irony is that the Lebanese government institutions that seem so helpless, and even hostages, to these forces are the only real alternative to the domination of Hezbollah and its allies. Calls in the U.S. to stigmatize the Lebanese government and deny it badly-needed aid will only strengthen their grip on the country.

Even targeted sanctions can backfire. U.S. Treasury Department sanctions, richly deserved on the merits and imposed in 2020, against Gibran Bassil, the son-in-law and would-be heir to Lebanese President Michel Aoun, mainly had the effect of hardening the Lebanese political gridlock that has prevented the country from reaching a desperately needed bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

The port explosion and its wretched aftermath do indeed illustrate everything that is wrong with Lebanese realities, and institutions. But if the rest of the world is rightly disgusted with the corruption, unaccountability and hijacking by extremists of Lebanese institutions, the answer is to help strengthen — not to shun — them.

The sudden devastation at the port a year ago is mirrored by a more slowly unfolding, and far worse, social and economic calamity. In both cases, the only reasonable answer is to help the Lebanese rebuild and restructure. Turning away or penalizing Lebanon will only make the tragedy, and the problem, worse.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2021/08/01/the-republicans-unsurprising-response-to-the-capitol-hearings/

Republicans have adopted a range of positions from overt support for the insurrection to calculated indifference.

Riveting US congressional hearings have been a staple since the end of the Second World War and the introduction of live television. But it has been decades since any testimony was as spellbinding as that of the police officers, who were attacked by the pro-Donald Trump mob that violently sought to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

It was the first time in US history, including during the Civil War, when the losing side attempted to prevent the winners from accepting their obligations.

Four police officers who were attacked by the mob that assaulted Congress on January 6 testified at the first hearing of a House Select Committee last week. At least 150 officers were injured and one was killed.

It was the most powerful congressional testimony since the Watergate hearings in the early 1970s, eclipsing contentious Supreme Court confirmations, impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton and, twice, Mr Trump, and even the Iran-Contra arms scandal during the Reagan administration.

Yet not only have the hearings been thoroughly politicised, so has the event itself.

The facts were well understood at the time and are being systematically confirmed. Yet most Republicans are responding with denial and derision.

Many are dismissing it as “political theatre,” calling the officers “scripted, rehearsed and phony,” and viciously mocking their emotions.

A noted Republican activist labeled one officer a “crisis actor,” meaning an impostor, and Fox News’ Laura Ingram called them all “political actors.”

Yet Republicans are in a difficult predicament.

Immediately after January 6, most key Republican leaders expressed horror at the attack. Many spoke out forcefully against the riot and especially, Mr Trump, whom they held responsible.

Soon enough, though, Senior Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy capitulated to Mr Trump’s leadership. And because Mr Trump cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the January 6 violence, perforce they must defend him and, by extension, the violence itself.

Yet Republicans are profoundly divided.

The most extreme among them express passionate support for the riot, vilify the police, and make a martyr out of the slain rioter Ashli Babbitt. Mr Trump, and representatives Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Marjorie Taylor Green, among others, (several of whom have been implicated in planning the attack by a self-proclaimed insurrection leader, Ali Alexander) are key examples.

The biggest Republican camp, particularly among House leaders, including Mr McCarthy and his deputy Elise Stefanik, effectively treat the attack on Congress as if it were a decontextualized act of nature. The real blame, they insist, belongs to the Democrats and especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

They claim Ms Pelosi had advance warning of the potential for violence and did not do enough to prepare or train the Capitol Police. But Ms Pelosi is not the commander of the Capitol Police force, and most of the missing law enforcement firepower was effectively under the control of the Trump administration.

Many centrist Republicans take the amazing position that January 6 is no longer relevant; that whatever happened then doesn’t matter and we must all move on and simply debate the Biden administration.

Most, like Mr McConnell, scorn the hearings as a “partisan exercise”.

Yet immediately after the insurrection, Mr McConnell angrily declared Mr Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the carnage at Congress. Ever since, he has effectively refused to discuss the matter further, including claiming to know nothing about the committee hearing.

Republicans had designated a respected colleague, John Katko, to negotiate an agreement for a bipartisan and independent commission and then rejected his deal with the Democrats.

In truth, they were never going to co-operate with any probe.

Yet, there are two Republican members on the House Select Committee – representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. So, even though Republicans did their best to block any bipartisan process, they purport to be outraged that Ms Pelosi is exercising the sole authority that they forced on her.

Nonetheless, she invited Mr McCarthy to appoint Republican members, which he sought to use to create a partisan spectacle. Two of his five nominees, including Jim Jordan, are vocal supporters of the rioters and major proponents of the lie about the “stolen election”, and could possibly be participants in events or at least are likely material witnesses. Ms Pelosi rightly refused to appoint them to the committee and the three other Republicans boycotted the proceedings. She then appointed Ms Cheney and Mr Kinzinger

Mr Jordan and the others should be subpoenaed by this committee, along with many Trump administration officials, including the former president.

With every passing week, it becomes increasingly evident that Mr Trump’s efforts to overthrow the election results were more far-reaching and insidious than previously known.

He had at least dozens of newly discovered conversations with state leaders and election officials across the country to try to undo the outcome. He also pressured his own government agencies to intervene without cause.

On December 27, he reportedly called senior Justice Department officials and told them to “just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me” and unnamed congressional allies.

Fortunately, they told him there was absolutely no basis for such a statement and flatly refused.

To this day, he and his supporters, including Mr McCarthy, continue to either say or imply that he is still the legitimate president and, by unavoidable implication, that US democracy is a sham.

Democrats are certainly motivated by partisan interests, but in this case the facts are almost entirely on their side. That is only likely to intensify as the hearings proceed, including questions regarding police preparation.

But that is where the process may become more politically dangerous for the Democrats.

Republicans have adopted a range of positions, from overt support for the insurrection to calculated indifference, that all paint the subject as an egregious, opportunistic and ideological vendetta.

As long as tens of millions of Americans believe some version of that, even a full explication of the truth may not break the illusion.

The hegemony of lies has become so pervasive, especially on the right, that Americans may, in this generation, never be able to develop a shared narrative about one of the worst assaults on their own political system in history.

And most alarmingly, that could become a welcome mat for another, more calculated and competent, effort to overturn a free and fair US election with a large measure of popular support.