Waning American influence in the Middle East

Here is a nice article discussing waning American role in the Middle East. Regardless of your attitudes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the George Bush foreign policy, anyone who is not blind to the facts would acknowledge that the decline of the American influence is due to the inefficient management of the foreign policy by Washington in the past two and a half years.

The quoted article points out the shocking truth - even Israel can afford to care about the US policy much less than it used to:
"In addition, from the Israeli government’s perspective the United States is a less useful ally in the new Middle East that is emerging, analysts say.
“Why does the U.S. have less influence with Israel right now? In part because the U.S. has less influence with the Arabs,” said Robert Malley, a special assistant to President Clinton on the Arab-Israeli conflict."

The article however focuses on teh Arab-Israeli issue, whereas the scope of the US failures in the Middle East is much broader. These include:
1. Alienating Israel and Israelis by consistently picking fights with the Israeli prime minister and reneging on the promises of the previous US administrations. In particular, it includes Obama's overexaggerated focus on the settlements, his insistence on the "1967 borders" (1949 armstice lines), and the policy of linkage (nowadays quietly forgotten), which made Israel responsible for all of the Middle East problems.

2. Failure to exert any preassure on the Palestinians, which allowed their leaders to disregard the US opinion altogether.

3. Failure to influence Turkey and prevent the break of the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel, both of which are US allies.

4. Failure to stop Iran nuclear program. The biggest achievement in this field were weak sunctions adopted by the UN Security Council. The recent reports suggest that Iran might have past the "point of no return" in its progress toward nuclear weapon, and, if necessary, can produce such a weapon within a few weeks.

5. Failure to support anti-Ahmadinejad protests that followed the rigged election in Iran.

6. Failure to oppose transition of power in Lebanon from the democratic government to Hezbollah, and failure to promote the international court indictment against the Hezbollah members indicted over the asassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

7. The multiple failures to take a clear and strong position during the Arab spring:
 a) the US attitude to the Egyptian protests went through a full 180 degrees turn;
 b) US allowed brutal suppression of the protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia;
 c) US "led from behind" in Libya, calmly watching the mutual slaughter, showing no indication that it wants  Gaddafi gone till the very last moment, and ridiculously refusing to call the events in Libya a "war";
 d) no action in respect to the continuing mass murder in Syria, which has already claimed thousands of human lives.

History of Keynes and Hayek

Some worthy reading on the history of economics and the two influencial economists (I have mentioned Keynes-Hayek debate in the past here.)

One quote:
"After Britain declared war on Germany, Hayek found himself shut out of war work on account of his alien status, despite having become a British citizen. His contribution, he decided, would be to write a book warning Western intellectuals that -- as he had concluded from his own country’s history in the 1920s and 1930s -- the road to totalitarianism, whether of Hitlerian or Stalinist variety (Stalin then being Hitler’s ally), started on the slippery slope of well-intentioned government interference in the private sector."

On stereotypes

Some stereotypes are so persistent that journalists don't even bother to check, whether the stereotype is true or not. A sentence that caught my eye in this article is:
"The only president who absolutely refused to tell jokes at his own expense was Richard Nixon."

It turned out that I know a clear example to the opposite: here is a video of Nixon's farewell speech to the White House stuff: "As you know, I don't like to read books... I am not educated, but I do read books [laughter in the audience]"


Addition: in today's issue of The New Republic you may enjoy extremely funny (and relatively truthful) character assassination piece on Michele Bachman and Rick Perry.

Rothschild or Tahrir? - Spectacular ideological failure of the "Tent City"

While the "tent city"  protests in Israel were supported by the majority of the population and lasted for a few weeks, their ideological failure was spectacular:

- The protesters have never managed to formulate coherent and realistic demands, beyond vague requests for cheaper rent/real estate prices and even more vague "social justice"

- Despite wide support among population, they failed to change in any significant way the support given by the Israelis to various political party. The ruling coalition maintained its support by simply refusing to cave to the silly demands and continuing to propose realistic solutions.

- The protesters failed to form a coherent political movement, apart from jump-starting the political careers of a few leaders.

- They have alienated many observers in Israel and around the World by marching with portraits of mass-murderer Che Guevara, as well as by carrying red flags (Russian Israelis, most notably, could not bring themselves to protest alongside a red flag)

- The p;rotesters's naivete perhaps culminated in renaming the Rothschild boulevard into Tahrir square. This showed the protester's inability to distinguish between what happened earlier this year in Egypt and the protests in Israel: Anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir square fought for for basic rights, risking their lives during this fight. The well-off middle-class Israelis in the Rothschild demanded even better life, and used their right to p[rotest, guaranteed by the Israel's democratic system.

Yet, renaming Rothschild into Rothschild-Tahrir demonstrates even greater irony in the "tent city" protesters's quest against the rich and for "social justice": Rothschild was a very rich man who contributed greatly by his fortune and political influence to help the Jewish people and to build the Jewish state. The Tahrir protesters have recently showed that the one thing that is more important for them than "social justice" is... their hatred for Israel.