Spotlight on Repressive Gulf Sheikhdoms and Their Support for ISIS Already Dimming

In the aftermath of the November 13 Paris terror attack there has been a noticeable uptick in coverage of the repressive authoritarian nature of the Gulf monarchies that the U.S. calls its allies. Along with a spotlight on sentencing artists to death, flogging bloggers and torturing activists, The New York Times has also devoted its pages here and there to limning the ideological links between the Islamic State and the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam that is officially endorsed by the royals who rule in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

An excellent example of this was the Gray Lady's publishing of Kamel Daoud's "Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It" a week after the Paris attack. Then this past Saturday there was an excellent piece by Joe Cochrane, "From Indonesia, a Muslim Challenge to the Ideology of the Islamic State," contrasting the tolerant form of Sunni Islam practiced in Indonesian, the planet's most populous Muslim nation, with the violent Wahhabism exported by the Sheikhdoms of the Gulf. The Indonesian Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is stepping into the fray to counter the jihadist propaganda of ISIS:

"The spread of a shallow understanding of Islam renders this situation critical, as highly vocal elements within the Muslim population at large — extremist groups — justify their harsh and often savage behavior by claiming to act in accord with God’s commands, although they are grievously mistaken,” said A. Mustofa Bisri, the spiritual leader of the group, Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian Muslim organization that claims more than 50 million members. 

“According to the Sunni view of Islam,” he said, “every aspect and expression of religion should be imbued with love and compassion, and foster the perfection of human nature.”

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The campaign by Nahdlatul Ulama, known as N.U., for a liberal, pluralistic Islam also comes at a time when Islam is at war with itself over central theological questions of how the faith is defined in the modern era.

In a way, it should not be surprising that this message comes from Indonesia, the home of Islam Nusantara, widely seen as one of the most progressive Islamic movements in the world. The movement — its name is Indonesian for “East Indies Islam” — dates back more than 500 years and promotes a spiritual interpretation of Islam that stresses nonviolence, inclusiveness and acceptance of other religions.

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Analysts say the theology developed organically in a place where Hinduism and Buddhism were the primary religions before Islam arrived around the 13th century. Indonesian Islam blended with local religious beliefs and traditions, creating a pluralistic society despite having a Muslim majority.

Indonesia today has more than 190 million Muslims, but also has a secular government and influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

Such liberalism poses a counterargument to the Islamic State, analysts said.

“We are directly challenging the idea of ISIS, which wants Islam to be uniform, meaning that if there is any other idea of Islam that is not following their ideas, those people are infidels who must be killed,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary to the N.U. supreme council. “We will show that is not the case with Islam.”

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The Islamic State’s theology, rooted in the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement, takes its cues from medieval Islamic jurisprudence, where slavery and execution of prisoners was accepted. . . .

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“The problem with Middle East Islam is they have what I call religious racism,” said Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar and former rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta. “They feel that only the Arabs are real Muslims and the others are not.” 

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the main source of financial support for Wahhabism worldwide, has had more success in imposing its interpretation and has even made inroads in Indonesia. Analysts say a steady flow of money from Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supports an active and growing Wahhabist movement here.

So there you have it. A rare admission of how the global jihadist efflorescence operates. A main U.S. ally in the Middle East waters it, fertilizes it and watches it grow. Then the U.S. military steps in to prune it a little. This is the prescription for perpetual warfare.

Certain U.S. senators in the employ of the Gulf sheikhs make sure there is no end to this process. Note the following blurb that appears in this morning's "Situation Report" by Foreign Policy's Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley:

Pounding sand. That air war might have a larger international ground component, if a few influential U.S. Senators have anything to say about it. In a Monday appearance on CNN with Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for the creation of a 100,000-strong “regional army to go into Syria” to fight the Islamic State, claiming that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were already on board with the plan. And now it looks like you can add the United Arab Emirates to the list.

Speaking with local media on Monday, Emirati State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said his country would "participate in any international effort demanding a ground intervention to fight terrorism,” and “regional countries must bear part of the burden” in the Syrian fight. Speaking with reporters on a trip to Baghdad over the weekend, Graham -- who is running for president on the Republican ticket -- also called for more than doubling the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,500 to 10,000.

But after November 13 there are those in government and the Fourth Estate who have decided that the ideological incubator of Wahhabi jihad needs a little daylight. That is why on Monday of last week there were two -- two! -- stories about the backward, violent, medieval nature of the Gulf Sheikhdoms: Ben Hubbard's "Artist’s Death Sentence Follows a String of Harsh Punishments in Saudi Arabia" and Kareem Fahim's "Bahrain Abuses Continue Despite King’s Pledge, Rights Group Says."

This is unusual. If there is any untoward news about U.S. allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Gray Lady usually limits it to a small paragraph nestled among the other Reuters and AP wire reports. It is as if the Islamic State's backers, safely ensconced in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi, are being warned to tether their jihadists; otherwise, the spotlight will grow more intense.

The ballyhooed U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State's black-market oil convoy to Turkey have already largely ceased to exist (from yesterday's Foreign Policy "Situation Report"):

The war on the Islamic State’s oil smuggling operations looks to have slowed down a bit after a series of recent high-profile strikes, however, with only one airstrike having been conducted against the group’s oil operations since Nov. 22, according to figures provided by the U.S.-led coalition. Back on the 22nd, a raid on a convoy of oil trucks in eastern Syria demolished 283 oil trucks, following on a similar raid days before that tore through another 116 oil trucks.

The same can be said of the recent focus on the Gulf Sheikhdoms support for ISIS. It is already dimming. More a temporary warning than a policy change, perpetual war will proceed as before.

The Trump Boom Will Not Bust Quietly

Nate Cohn is the Nate Silver simulacrum that the Gray Lady slotted in to replace the FiveThirtyEight blog which Silver sold to ESPN in 2013. As simulacra go Cohn is a good one. Though it is hard to match up with Nate Silver, whose predictions of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections were phenomenally accurate, I have found Cohn's writing clear and his data-based assessments compelling.

For instance, his bucket of cold water on Hillary Clinton's candidacy, "Hillary Clinton Is More Vulnerable in 2016 Than You Think," is terrific, as is the wet blanket he draped over Bernie Sanders, "Why Bernie Sanders’s Momentum Is Not Built to Last."

The other day Cohn adjusted his gun-sight to Donald Trump and his boom of the last couple of weeks, "The Trump Campaign’s Turning Point."

The turning point referred to in the headline are statements that Donald Trump made on Saturday in Ames, Iowa at the socially conservative annual Family Leadership Summit. Trump questioned the heroism of longtime GOP senator and 2008 presidential standard bearer John McCain. This is how those statements were reported by the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is again criticizing a well-respected member of his own party.

Speaking at a conference of religious conservatives on Saturday, Trump was pressed on his recent description of Arizona Sen. John McCain as "a dummy." 

The moderator, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, described McCain as "a war hero." McCain spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down during combat in Vietnam. 

Trump said McCain "is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." 

Trump is among 10 GOP presidential candidates on the program for the Family Leader Summit in Ames, Iowa.

Half-an-hour later AP reported that Trump tried to walk his criticism back while other GOP presidential aspirants set up a withering crossfire:

During a news conference after his appearance, Trump did not apologize but tried to clarify his remarks: "If a person is captured, they're a hero as far as I'm concerned. I don't like the job John McCain is doing in the Senate because he is not taking care of our veterans." 

Trump said he avoided service in the Vietnam War through student deferments and a medical deferment, then said he didn't serve because "I was not a big fan of the Vietnam war." He added he wasn't a protester.

Other 2016 hopefuls were quick to attack Trump's comments. In a statement, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the remarks make Trump "unfit to be commander-in-chief." On Twitter, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said: "After Donald Trump spends six years in a POW camp, he can weigh in on John McCain's service." Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wrote on Twitter: "Enough with the slanderous attacks. @SenJohnMcCain and all our veterans — particularly POWs have earned our respect and admiration."

Nate Cohn predicts that the Trump's swelling levels of support will now begin to deflate. He dismisses Trump's surge in the polls as nothing more than saturation media coverage combined with the overwhelming name recognition that Trump enjoys as a reality television celebrity:

Donald Trump’s surge in the polls has followed the classic pattern of a media-driven surge. Now it will most likely follow the classic pattern of a party-backed decline. 

Mr. Trump’s candidacy probably reached an inflection point on Saturday after he essentially criticized John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War. Republican campaigns and elites quickly moved to condemn his comments — a shift that will probably mark the moment when Trump’s candidacy went from boom to bust.

His support will erode as the tone of coverage shifts from publicizing his anti-establishment and anti-immigration views, which have some resonance in the party, to reflecting the chorus of Republican criticism of his most outrageous comments and the more liberal elements of his record.

His surge in the presidential polls began on June 16 when he declared his candidacy. Announcements of that type always yield a wave of media coverage, just as they did for candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. So far this year, media attention from announcements has helped the best-known candidates by an average of six percentage points, with the effect degrading steadily afterward.

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But media-driven surges are not sustainable. Eventually, the media coverage shifts from whatever initially propelled the bounce — an announcement, a strong debate performance, a convention — toward a more serious examination of the candidate newly at the top of the polls. Some candidates can withstand this scrutiny. Most do not.

Lynn Vavreck, who contributes to The Upshot, and her fellow political scientist John Sides described the cycle of boom-bust candidacies as “discovery, scrutiny and decline” in their book “The Gamble.” Mr. Trump, who already enjoys high name recognition, may not present a typical case of “discovery,” but it’s highly unlikely he’ll avoid decline after encountering scrutiny.

Even a cursory look at Mr. Trump’s political record revealed a candidate with serious liabilities once journalists and campaigns started taking him seriously. He has donated more to Democrats than Republicans over the last decade. He has even donated to Hillary Clinton, who he has said he likes, and the Clinton Foundation. He has supported universal health care and seems to continue to do so. He has supported a $5 trillion dollar tax increase and has said he is “very pro choice,” although he has since changed his position on abortion. He is self-evidently unelectable in a general election, combining terrible poll numbers with an unpresidential persona. 

Conservative candidates and their supporters view him as a rival. They have every incentive to publicize those of his views that the G.O.P. considers heretical. More moderate and establishment-friendly Republicans oppose his statements and views on immigration. They fear that his tone will alienate Hispanic voters, who are considered essential to the party’s general election chances now and in the future. Mr. Trump’s supporters will start taking cues from the uniform opinion of their fellow partisans.

In his article Cohn quotes a piece, "Two Good Reasons Not To Take The Donald Trump ‘Surge’ Seriously," by FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten that compactly summarizes the limitations of Trump's campaign:

But the polling points to another, less sexy story: First, Republican voters don’t rate Trump as all that conservative, and second, he’s actually polling about equally well among all sections of the GOP. In Trump speak, this means he is loved universally; in reality, the broad, shallow nature of Trump’s support suggests it’s due mostly to near-universal name recognition, thanks in part to being in the news more often than the news anchors.

Trump is not conservative enough for the GOP.

While I think Cohn's analysis is on the mark there are a couple points that need to be mentioned, both of which fall under the header of "This Time There's Something Different Going On."

Point one, let's not forget Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2003 gubernatorial recall election victory. The liberal Schwarzenegger was able to get elected as a Republican in the deep blue state of California. He rose above a splintered field of contenders to win decisively. The analogy is not perfect but it is close enough since the national electorate is obviously more progressive than the Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. Nonetheless, Trump will have to survive the GOP primary minefield, which I don't think he can do.

Which brings us to point two: Trump is not going to go quietly. The Donald will continue to toss bombs right up to the convention, where he will demand a prominent slot. I don't think he has any intention of running a third-party campaign once he fails to win the Republican nomination, but he will cause a lot of damage to the GOP -- with the party's ability to attract Latinos and independents.

Just as Bernie Sanders has little chance of winning the Democratic Party nomination and whose substantial number of supporters will be difficult to integrate back into the nominee's camp, Trump represents a similar problem for Republicans. The 2016 presidential election is shaping up to be a dead heat like 2000's Bush v. Gore.

No-Fly/Buffer Zone for Syria Still in the Works

The Gray Lady is not just the paper of record, it is also a vital propaganda organ for the United States government. Take, for instance, today's story by Michael R. Gordon, "Touring Refugee Camp, Kerry Sees Mounting Syrian Suffering." There is nothing newsworthy here. The massive size of the Zaatari refugee camp on the Jordanian border with Syria has been subject of previous reports. We know that its population is over 100,000, the majority of which are children, and that it is costly to operate and that the United Nations has struggled with its administration. The point of the story is not about refugees and the audience that six of them had with Secretary of State John Kerry. The point of the story is to keep the bad idea of a no-fly zone in the news. Refugees are quoted plaintively demanding military succour:

But as frustrated Syrian refugees appealed for Western military intervention to halt the attacks by the Syrian government’s forces, Mr. Kerry’s visit soon became a graphic illustration of the limits of the Obama administration’s policy. 

“We are not satisfied with the American answers,” said Jamalat Abdulraouf al-Hariri, 43, after her meeting with Mr. Kerry. 

“We just need an action,” she added, noting that the refugees wanted the United States to establish a no-fly zone or a protected area for civilians inside Syria. “We always hear words.”

Kerry's response is quoted at the end of the story:

“We are trying to help in various ways, including helping Syrian opposition fighters have weapons,” Mr. Kerry added. “We are doing new things. There is consideration of buffer zones and other things, but it is not as simple as it sounds.”

And the propaganda function is fulfilled. When the story appeared yesterday on Google News the lede was about no-fly zones. So once again no-fly zones are in the news, despite the fact that the Syrian government is widely regarded to have all but won the civil war. An interesting alteration is how a "buffer zone" is now being introduced along with "no-fly zone" as an interchangeable term when clearly it is not. Establishing a no-fly zone would do little to change the facts on the ground because much of the fighting is conducted without air power. But a buffer zone entails claiming Syrian territory by full military means.

It is important to keep in mind here what Franklin Lamb reported on the Counterpunch web site last month, that the prevailing wisdom of Congressional staffers he polled on Capitol Hill was that a no-fly zone would be in place by the end of summer.

The story today tells me that a no-fly/buffer zone is still in the works. War pig Senator John McCain's block on General Martin Dempsey's second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pending his fulsome proclamation of support for the rebels is more proof.

Syrian War Expands

Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that two pro-Hezbollah Sunni Lebanese leaders have come under attack.

Hwaida Saad and Hala Droubi report this morning of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley increasingly feeling like a war zone:

On Sunday, Israeli warplanes buzzed over Lebanon, violating its airspace and deepening the sense of anxiety. In Baalbek, a resident said that the overnight clashes between Hezbollah and the rebels were only the latest sign of a growing crisis. The resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said gunfire around Baalbek from nearby villages had become routine as had the funerals, for both Hezbollah and opposition fighters killed in battles across the border.

Anne Barnard reporting from Damascus has a piece, "Rushing to Aid in Syrian War, but Claiming No Side," worth reading about the work of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. There are no good guys and bad buys in this civil war story. Just emergency medical technicians doing their job. One interesting and dispiriting note is struck at the end of Barnard's report. She interviews two brothers who work for the Red Crescent in Damascus. They predict that the city is going to be devastated:

Yet their outlook is also dark. They debate whether rebels will “take revenge” on Damascus for not rising up sooner; Hamza says yes, Mohammed no. They worry that rebel sleeper cells will fight newly armed government militias, and that if rebels enter the city, the government will shell it. 

“We are waiting for this bubble to explode, and we know it will,” Mohammed said.

“The waiting is killing us,” Hamza added. 

That, they say, is why they volunteer in central Damascus, not in “hotter” areas. They want to be here to help, when the storm comes.

John McCain was on Face the Nation yesterday calling for an act of war, U.S. missile strikes on Syria. There is no appetite in this country for yet another war. Of course that doesn't stop elites from doing as they please.