Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Claude Salhani: misunderstanding geopolitics

In this post on SpaceWar, Salhani posits that our options vis-a-vis our opponents in the Syrian and Iranian regimes are limited, and that we even need to continue giving aid to the Palestinians, rather than force them into Iran's camp.

Now, maybe it's b/c I'm fighting the last of a fever and my brain hurts, but it seems to me that Salhani doesn't get it. We want Hamas to be utterly dependent upon the mullahcracy, for several different reasons:

1. It increases the overall financial pressure on the mullahs.
2. It increases Saudi concern that the mullahs' version of Islamism will gain influence, rather than their own product, based on the Wahhabi model, and potentially dries up some Saudi funding where they're buying influence elsewhere. After all, it's no surprise that the International Food Bazaar here in Irving (where I used to be a customer) started selling anti-semitic hate literature as soon as the local mosque was completed.
3. By centralising financial support, it makes it all the easier to pull the rug out from underneath the mullahs' legates and janissaries when, rather than de-fanging the snake by taking them on one at a time, we de-snake the fang by freeing the Iranians from the mullahcracy.
4. Transparency, transparency, transparency. Whereas the Saudis are schizophrenic, giving us significant help behind the scenes while simultaneously enforcing an ideology so vicious that their own citizens flee the muttawa on sight, with Hezbollah and increasingly with Hamas, there is simply no doubt. Since the US prefers to solve its problem with a combination of stilettos and nine-pound sledgehammers, any increase in transparency is to our advantage.

But, I could be delirious... wheee.....

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