N. Africa and Middle East: U.S. Security Policy Faces a Dramatic Test

US security policy in North Africa and the Middle East faces a dramatic test: will we be able to weave a strong tapestry of help for our allies and take down our enemies or will a new stronger coalition or “Axis of Jihad” banner arise from Iran to Tunisia?

This coalition is now intent upon establishing its hegemonic control over the Islamic world, including a significant portion of the oil and gas resources of the world, from which to finance a war against the West and most particularly against the United States. It has been a war off and on for fourteen centuries.

This one is different, however. It involves nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and has the financial clout of sovereign funds primarily supported by petro-dollars, but also infused with cash from widespread criminal enterprises including piracy and drug trafficking.

Of immediate attention is our campaign in Libya, to the extent we know what it is, although as Judith Miller explains, events in Egypt are of far more importance. According to the US chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, there appears to be two missions in Libya:

1. A military mission run by NATO in which the US is a key participant to protect the civilians of the country from Qadhafi and;
2. A political mission we hope as a result of these moves results in the removal of the Qadhafi regime from Tripoli either voluntarily or by force.

The military missions of establishing no fly zones has had mixed success. We also do not fully know the opposition we are helping and arming. From the air alone said the chairman it would be most difficult to achieve the latter political objective. Even though he sympathizes with Senator Graham’s call for taking out Qadhafi now and “moving on,” ruling out “boots on the ground” makes achieving such an objective ever more remote.

The chairman understands that a key objective of the administration was to protect civilians. He also explained that a key part of this was again according to administration briefings “How the rest of the world would look at us if we did not protect the civilians.”

Expanding on this idea was David Sanger of the New York Times who wrote that the actions of the US in and over Libya–as well as throughout North Africa and the Middle East—have been designed to focus on the key objective of stopping the nuclear weapons program of the Mullahs in Iran.

It is here that the test to which I referred earlier comes into focus. For many American analysts, terrorism is simply a matter of “grievances.” One expert said of the terrorists: “Their narrative has been utterly disrupted. The dictators they sought to replace have been ousted, and not by them or their violence.”

Another story tells us that a “senior New York Police Department intelligence analyst pointed to at least one short-term benefit of the upheavals: Home-grown Islamic radicals in America, too, had been stunned and shaken by the protests and the loss of what he called their ‘narrative of oppression’.”

One fact of the “revolt in the desert” which started in Tunisia and has spread to Iran, Syria and Yemen, is the virtual absence of protests against either the United States or Israel. No trampling of our flag or the burning of our political leaders in effigy. In one rebel held Libyan city one soldier waved a huge American flag. No call for Jews and Christians alike to be killed. As National Review’s Rich Lowry explained in “The Death of an Illusion”: “In the great Middle East whodunit, the verdict is in: The Jews are innocent. They aren’t responsible for the violence, extremism, backwardness, discontent, or predatory government of their Arab neighbors.”

In fact, the universe of revolt and protest has been a call for both economic freedom and opportunity for the hundreds of millions unemployed and shacked to economic failure in country after country in the Arab and Islamic world. And for the political freedom needed to achieve such dreams.

One would hope therefore that this character of the revolt would finally drive a stake through the “grievance theory of terrorism” which has too often been at the heart of American security policy, especially among our intelligence community and its friends in the media, Hollywood and academia.

For example, former President William Clinton said only a few weeks ago that granting the Palestinians a homeland would end most terrorism directed at the United States. Former President Carter has said much the same thing.

Contrary to their assertions, the terrorism we face is primarily state-directed. It is not grievance directed. It is nothing more in large part than simple war and revenge directed against us but by means often difficult to attribute.

Thus the outcome of the desert revolts is not without consequence. The bad guys should not gain ground. In particular, the current Iranian regime constitutes a threat because of its very identity as a jihadist state – the nukes, other WMD, especially biological weapons, its state directed terrorism, the massive human rights abuses–these are merely the manifestations to be expected of a jihadist state.

And Iranian is but a leading part of a coalition of terror states and their terror group affiliates. Tehran provides weapons, financing and training for thugs in both Iraq and Afghanistan who kill Americans and our allies. Hezbollah and Hamas are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Mullahs, as they seek to complete the plan to turn Lebanon into a proxy of Iranian terror. Iran also allies itself with Chavez in Venezuela who in turn works with the drug cartel and terror group FARC and Hezbollah to plan terror attacks against Columbia, Mexico and the United States. An Iranian Shahab launched from off-shore Venezuela can hit down-town Miami.

North Korea, China and Russia help provide missile and nuclear technology to Iran. The attorney for the city of New York indicted one Chinese company on 104 counts of helping Iran with such technologies. Is the drive-by media in this country asleep?

Similarly, rocket engines from the BM-25, a missile originally produced by Russia, made their way from Pyongyang to Tehran. This gives Iran a missile with a range near 4000 kilometers which puts all of Europe under its shadow, says Uzi Rubin of Israel.

In Libya, the areas controlled by the rebels have become an arms bazaar for Al Qaeda in North Africa. According to Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is reportedly amassing surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives, heavy machine-guns and other small arms and smuggling them to lawless areas in Mali.

Some of our allies are not helping either. Recently, Senators Kyl and Lieberman and Congressman Berman, all expressed serious concern over our failure to take seriously the Iranian threat. It is not only that this administration (and its two successors) was not utilizing the sanctions power it has under legislation passed by Congress (originally passed in 1996 but since strengthened). It was that a German located bank–the European-Iranian Trade Bank AG–had become a major conduit for Iranian companies involved in weapons proliferation

This brings us back to Libya. According to recent reports, “During the weekend, Qadhafi forces sustained pressure on Misrata and drove the rebels from Ajdabiya, for a time. Timely NATO air attacks disrupted the attack on Ajdabiya and rebel fighters reportedly pushed Qadhafi forces out of Ajdabiya. At last report rebels still hold Misrata and Ajdabiya.

But “Misrata is under siege. Except for the increasing casualties that situation has not changed significantly in two weeks. The situation at Ajdabiya is more serious because a collapse there leaves Benghazi as the next target for ground forces. Qatari’s forces face no effective ground opposition. The effectiveness of NATO air forces has been inconsistent. Qatari’s forces have the capability to reach Benghazi by the end of this week. NATO air strikes can slow but not stop Qatari’s forces.”

While the African Union has said Qadhafi has accepted their proposed cease fire, the former is but a wholly-owned subsidiary of the latter. Such a cease fire is a sham.

We have to understand Qadhafi was and could again become a key state sponsor of terrorism. Note that only when Saddam was pulled from his spider hole in 2004 did Libya give up its nuclear weapons program and its other weapons of mass destruction efforts.

The moral of this story? The ability of the US to project and exercise force is important. Maybe we could call it “smart power”! As former Senator Wallop once noted, “Diplomacy without the threat of force is simply prayer.”

For too many, however, US force when used is considered largely illegitimate. “Experts” such as Lawrence Wright in his “Looming Tower” associated the attacks of 9/11 with Al Qaeda grievances, especially about US military forces “in the land of the shrines,” (otherwise known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

But what is never commented on were the other grievances by Osama Bin Laden–that the US had kicked Saddam out of Kuwait; that we maintained “no-fly zones” over Iraq; that we had established sanctions against Baghdad; and that our restrictions on the sale of oil had supposedly resulted in millions of Iraqi children failing to get “health care.” Sound familiar?

Few if any analysts have explained Osama coming to the defense of Saddam! Given the strong Iraqi connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, (occurring as it did precisely on the second anniversary of Saddam’s surrender in Gulf War 1991), one would have thought someone would ask a simple question: who are these people working for and is it possible such terror organizations can be used by state intelligence services for their own ends? And as such, how convenient the “narrative of oppression” is for states such as Iran, Iraq, Syria Libya and others to hide their terrorist means and their empire ends!

We know from numerous pleas from the Iraq government to the US government that Syria has not stopped providing sanctuary for the “rat lines” into Iraq. Thousands of recruits traveling from the mosques and madrassas of Northern Africa fly to Damascus and from there enter Iraq and carry out attacks against US and Iraqi and coalition soldiers, police and civilians, including working with Saddam’s trained terror masters in widespread torture and bombings.

Did we really do the right thing to help oust Mubarak, simply because the youth and professionals and shop keepers of Cairo “have grievances”? As Judith Miller explains, “Cairo has been a staunch ally in America’s Arab-supported campaign to contain Iranian influence in the region and prevent Tehran from developing atomic bombs.

“Iran’s growing regional clout and aid to terrorist groups abroad threaten not only Israel, but also such Sunni Arab states as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and, yes, Egypt. The post-Mubarak government’s sudden interest in enhanced relations with the mullahs sends a signal of weakness that can only encourage them.”

But in Syria, a bonafide member of the Axis of Jihad, somehow gets the good housekeeping seal of “reform approval” by our US Department of State, leaving Syria as a place for terrorist hiding, where they can recruit, train and organize terrorists.” That we too often refer to Syria as a potential “peace partner”– when all Damascus does is facilitate a war of terror against its enemies–certainly makes the American people perplexed.

The “Axis of Jihad” is on the march, just as the Soviets and their terror master friends were in the late 1970s. The liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan were designed to take down two “terror masters,” which we successfully did. Unless we finish the job, as well as pay attention to the new jobs at hand, we could hand our enemies more real estate (and more oil) from which to plan, train, and finance, operate and recruit their armies of jihadis intent upon our destruction. State sponsors of terrorism are alive and well. US policy should not be in the business of adding to their ranks.