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   From: mzuker@oldbreed.com   
      
   In article    
   "Lee"  wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   >   
   > U.S. Military Official   
      
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   Any military officer, who publicly supports Barack Obama, isn't   
   fit to breathe free air.  They should be handed a pistol, the   
   door closed, and if they have any honor whatsoever, will do   
   their duty as a serving officer of the United States of America.   
      
   * * * * * *   
      
   The (Obama) administration has caused or exacerbated most of the   
   current problems in the Mideast. The Syria policy of the Obama   
   administration is the main reason for the growth of the Islamic   
   State (or ISIS)  – and with it, for the current crisis in Iraq,   
   and for a greatly increased danger of terrorism in Europe and   
   America.   
      
   Administration policy has fanned the rebellion in Syria and kept   
   it going for three full years, while doing nothing to bring it   
   to a successful close. Sometimes the administration has   
   explicitly tried to keep the rebels in a stalemate with Assad;   
   Secretary of State Kerry said that it was his policy to do just   
   that, in order to promote negotiations and “peace.” The result,   
   so obvious as to make that statement a shameless Orwellianism,   
   has been to keep the war dragging on.   
      
   This has provided the hothouse for the growth of the extremist   
   Islamic State. In due course, it spilled over from Syria into   
   Iraq, and it has issued threats against the American homeland.   
   The Obama-Kerry policy has also made for the more than 190,000   
   deaths in Syria, 500,000 wounded, and 8 million refugees (more   
   than 2 million abroad, 6 million inside Syria) — this, out of a   
   population of about 22 million.   
      
   It is hard to imagine a policy more irresponsible, or worse from   
   a moral standpoint. Yet it has been the long-standing policy of   
   Obama and Kerry — and it was Secretary of State Clinton’s, too,   
   until her last weeks in office, when she finally seemed to be   
   getting serious, only to have her new plans thrown out by Kerry.   
      
   Fanning a rebellion just up to the point where the country is   
   bleeding continuously — what could be more horrible? As the   
   saying goes, “It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.” Worse,   
   because it keeps compounding the crime, as a matter of   
   principle. But absurd behaviors often have their causes in   
   beliefs.   
      
   This policy has been a logical product of the attitudes and   
   ideologies of the Obama administration: anti-anti-Islamism,   
   moral posturing, moral inversion — enthusiasm about toppling   
   allies like Mubarak, nervousness about toppling adversaries like   
   Assad — and, under the guise of peace, an ideological neutralism   
   directed against one’s own side, something very different from   
   an honestly neutral objectivity.   
      
   There are several other self-defeating U.S. policies that have   
   nurtured the rise of the Islamic State, directly and indirectly.   
   They go beyond Syria; indeed, they span the entire Mideast:   
      
   1. The “little and late” character of the current air strikes in   
   Iraq. The U.S. for months ignored Iraq’s requests for help. It   
   just let the Islamic State keep growing. The belated help has   
   been minimalist, and it is given a false, self-limiting   
   rationale. Militarily, the refusal to put boots on the ground   
   means that we lack the guidance needed for fully effective air   
   strikes. Politically, Obama has relied on Iraq’s democratic   
   parliamentary process to make essential changes, and the most it   
   has been capable of delivering is another leader from within   
   Maliki’s Shi’a party, hardly a good beginning for winning back   
   Sunni trust. What was plainly needed was a figure from Ayad   
   Allawi’s mixed Shia-Sunni party instead.   
      
   2. The prior complete withdrawal from Iraq. This compounded the   
   mistake of the Bush administration in destabilizing Iraq, while   
   undoing Bush’s self-corrective measure, the surge. Obama argues   
   that he had to withdraw, after failing to get a new status-of-   
   forces agreement, but that failure was far from a mere objective   
   fact. Obama did not keep pushing by the usual methods that have   
   gotten America status-of-forces agreements and allowed us to   
   keep adequate long-term residual forces on the ground elsewhere.   
   He was too interested in satisfying his domestic base with a   
   total withdrawal.   
      
   3. Promoting “democracy” through demanding free participation of   
   religious and sectarian parties in elections. As I wrote earlier   
   this week about our actions in Gaza, America regularly calls for   
   “democratic” elections, open to all parties, including religious   
   ones. This policy began under Bush, but he retreated when he saw   
   that it worked badly; under Obama it became America’s fixed   
   ideology, applied without regard for consequences throughout the   
   Mideast. Uncritical democracy promotion is a very dangerous   
   ideology. The elections we demanded brought Iraq to the edge of   
   civil war. Elections have kept it there pretty much ever since.   
      
   The one relatively happy political period in the entire post-   
   Saddam history of Iraq was prior to elections, under Allawi,   
   whose party was genuinely inclusive religiously. Then the   
   elections brought Maliki’s Shia confessional party to power, and   
   it all went for naught. What was needed — what is still needed —   
   is not robust-sounding electoral democracy but civilized power-   
   sharing among the different religious communities.   
      
   This is called “consociationalism,” and it entails cooperation   
   among the elites of different communities, with decisions made   
   by consensus among their leaders. The aim is to distribute the   
   benefits of decisions among the communities and avoid winner-   
   take-all outcomes. That way, the common power structure is not   
   perceived as a threat to any of the communities or as something   
   they need to get control of in order to keep it out of the hands   
   of an opposed community.   
      
   Such a system is not easy to create or sustain. Professor Arend   
   Lijphart, its most important proponent, thought it works fine as   
   a form of democracy, indeed better than ordinary democracy. His   
   highly influential books spoke of Lebanon as a case in point.   
   Lebanon’s consociationalism was blown apart a few years later,   
   largely because of the country’s democracy. The logical   
   conclusion is that what is needed in countries such as Ira, is   
   the consociation, not the democracy that Lijphart connected it   
   with.   
      
   Consociation doesn’t work so wonderfully after all; its virtue   
   is that it is the least bad option in a badly divided country.   
   But it is fragile. It can be blown apart by democracy.   
   Democracy, with its powerful claim to majority legitimacy, tends   
   to overpower the delicate consociational compromise   
   arrangements. So do the passions stoked by election campaigns.   
   Some very mature polities, such as Switzerland and the   
   Netherlands (Lijphart’s native country), can fairly reliably   
   continue consociational power-sharing even while they also hold   
   democratic elections and rely on democracy as the legitimizing   
   doctrine.   
      
   In Lebanon that juggling act has proved too often impossible.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)