Big focus on foreign policy

There will be a lot of focus on US foreign policy next week, beginning today with the NATO summit in Brussels, where Rex Tillerson addressed the group. Monday President Al Sisi of Egypt will be trump's guest. Al Sisi's friend Jordan’s King Abdullah II will meet with Trump and Tillerson on Wednesday. Then, on Friday Trump and T Rex host the entire China delegation of President Xi Jinping for the weekend in Mar-la-go, the Winter White House. Trump tweeted Thursday that he expects the China meeting to be difficult, since "we can no longer tolerate unfair trade balances and job losses."

hat tip The Conservative Treehouse

Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel against Iran?

Bookworm reports,

There’s land if the Palestinians want it. Did you know that President al-Sisi in Egypt has offered the Palestinians a state that would include Gaza plus 618 adjacent square miles in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula? This offer reflects the fact that the Egyptians, like the Jordanians, Saudis, and every other Sunni Arab state around can’t stand the Palestinians.

With Iran looming on the Iranian, the Sunni nations are becoming more aware that Israel is their bulwark against Iran. If they can get rid of the Palestinian issue — and get the troublesome Palestinians out of their countries — they can unite to face off against Iran. You can read more here.

"They want to go back home."

Jose A. DelReal reports in the Washington Post,

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson — fresh from a recent visit to two Syrian refugee camps in Jordan — called Sunday for the United States and its international allies to focus on supporting existing facilities that shelter those who have fled the Syrian civil war.

“We're hearing that they all want to come here to the United States. And that's not what they want. They want to go back home,” Carson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week," live from Amman, the Jordanian capital. “But they said the United States and other nations could be much more supportive of the herculean efforts manifested by the Jordanians in taking in people at a lot of expense to themselves.”

...He added that other countries in the region also should be asked to step in and accept a greater number of refugees, which would keep them near their home country.

...When pressed on how he would combat the Islamic State, Carson indicated that he was in favor of continuing to work with Kurdish forces in the region.

“What we've discovered that works is, you know, for instance, when we took Sinjar back. The Kurds were able to cut off the supply routes. and that softened the target,” Carson said, referring to the Iraqi city that was recently recaptured from the Islamic State. “And then, our special ops people were able to work with the Kurds very effectively, along with our air power, to take it back. That's a model that works. And that can be applied to other places, you know. Why reinvent the wheel? Just take the things that work.”

Read more here.

"Bush may have been feckless, but Obama is mad."

David P. Goldman shows how a demographic peak and an economic trough are creating some of the Middle East problems.

It could have been avoided by the cheap and simple expedient of bombing Iran’s nuclear program and Revolutionary Guards bases, followed by an intensive subversion effort aimed at regime change in Teheran. Former Vice President Dick Cheney advocated this course of action, but then Secretary of State Condileeza Rice persuaded Bush that the Muslim world would never forgive America for an attack on another Muslim state.

The Bush Administration was too timid to take on Iran; the Obama administration views Iran as a prospective ally. Even Neville Chamberlain did not regard Hitler as prospective partner in European security. But that is what Barack Obama said in March to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: “What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.” Bush may have been feckless, but Obama is mad.

With Iran neutralized, Syrian President Basher Assad would have had no choice but to come to terms with Syria’s Sunni majority; as it happens, he had the firepower to expel millions of them. Without the protection of Tehran, Iraq’s Shia would have had to compromise with Sunnis and Kurds. Iraqi Sunnis would not have allied with ISIS against the Iranian-backed regime in Baghdad. A million or more Iraqis would not have been displaced by the metastasizing Caliphate.

ISIS by itself is overrated. It is a horde enhanced by captured heavy weapons, but cannot fly warplanes in a region where close air support is the decisive factor in battle. The fighters of the Caliphate cannot hide under the jungle canopy like the North Vietnamese. They occupy terrain where aerial reconnaissance can identify every stray cat. The Saudi and Jordanian air forces are quite capable of defending their borders. Saudi Arabia has over 300 F-15′s and 72 Typhoons, and more than 80 Apache attack helicopters. Jordan has 60 F16′s as well as 25 Cobra attack helicopters. The putative Caliphate can be contained; it cannot break out into Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and it cannot advance far into the core Shia territory of Iraq. It can operate freely in Syria, in a war of attrition with the Iranian backed government army. The grim task of regional security policy is to channel the butchery into areas that do not threaten oil production or transport.

Ultimately, ISIS is a distraction. The problem is Iran. Without Iran, Hamas would have no capacity to strike Israel beyond a few dozen kilometers past the Gaza border. Iran now has GPS-guided missiles which are much harder to shoot down than ordinary ballistic missiles (an unguided missile has a trajectory that is easy to calculate after launch; guided missiles squirrel about seeking their targets). If Hamas acquires such rockets-and it will eventually if left to its own devices-Israel will have to strike further, harder and deeper to eliminate the threat. That confrontation will not come within a year, and possibly not within five years, but it looms over the present hostilities. The region’s security will hinge on the ultimate reckoning with Iran.

Read more here.

Thanks to Maggie's Farm for linking to the Goldman article.

Remember when the F.B.I. was respected?

What has happened to the F.B.I.? Congressmen Darrel Issa and Jim Jordan have stated that the F.B.I. has impeded a Congressional investigation and interfered with a Congressional Committee's (Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) access to documents and information. The Congressional Committee has given the F.B.I. Director until 5 p.m. on December 16 to produce documents the Committee has been requesting since September 6, 2013. The Congressmen remind the F.B.I. Director of the criminal penalties (fines and imprisonment) he faces if he continues to deny the Committee the information it is requesting, which pertains to the F.B.I.'s targeting of people and groups that believe in conservative political views.