fuagf -- they forgot to demand all young female virgins be handed over to be digitally deflowered by the kingdom's new bestie, Honorary Sheik Tiny Hands Pussy Grabber -- he's gonna be pissed rather than pissed on -- not a good scenario
Do Liberals Have an Answer to Trump on Foreign Policy?
"Qatar given 10 days to meet 13 sweeping demands by Saudi Arabia"
“There is a big open space in the Democratic Party right now,” says Senator Chris Murphy.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Uri Friedman Mar 15, 2017 Global
Chris Murphy sensed well before most people that the 2016 election would largely revolve around U.S. foreign policy. Not foreign policy in the narrow, traditional sense—as in, which candidate had the better plan to deal with Russia or defeat ISIS. Rather, foreign policy in its most primal sense—as in, how America should interact with the world beyond its borders and how Americans should conceive of nationhood in an age of globalization. On issues ranging from trade to terrorism to immigration, Donald Trump reopened a debate on these broad questions, which candidates from both parties had previously treated as settled. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, focused on policy specifics. We know who won that argument, at least for the moment.
This was what worried Murphy months before Trump announced his candidacy, when the Democratic senator from Connecticut warned .. http://www.buzzfeed.com/katenocera/connecticut-senator-aims-to-be-the-elizabeth-warren-of-forei?utm_term=.rnkoM1V1vq#.dg5D6ajazv .. that progressives had “been adrift on foreign policy” during Barack Obama’s presidency, and that “non-interventionists, internationalists” had to “get their act together” before the presidential campaign. Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote an article in early 2015 titled “Desperately Seeking: A Progressive Foreign Policy .. https://medium.com/@ChrisMurphyCT/desperately-seeking-a-progressive-foreign-policy-b46bf45007a8#.feaw9xi6h ,” in which he noted that the modern progressive movement, as exemplified by organizations like MoveOn.org and Daily Kos, was “founded on foreign policy,” specifically opposition to the Iraq War. It needed, in his view, to return to its roots.
Ultimately, however, neither Bernie Sanders nor Clinton, whom Murphy endorsed for president, “really represented my views,” Murphy told me, “and I think that there is a big open space in the Democratic Party right now for the articulation of a progressive foreign policy.”
The open question is whether Murphy can fill that space. “I think Donald Trump believes in putting a wall around America and hoping everything turns out OK,” Murphy said in a recent interview. “I believe that the only way that you can protect America is by being forward-deployed [in the world] in a manner that is not just through the point of a spear.”
- [INSERT: Yes, Trump won on his lies, and his promises of "simple" solutions when there are no "simple" solutions. And Trump won with his tough guy posturing when simple tough guy promises failed miserably with terrible consequences in Iraq, and have failed in Afghanistan for so many years. So how do Dems fight that? Surely, by focusing on the failure of Trump policies, for one.]
One another front note the particularly mean parts of the GOP healthcare bill don't come into force until after the 2020 election campaign. -
“There are no easy answers anymore,” Murphy said. “The bad guys are super-shadowy or are sometimes not the bad guys. One day China’s a bad guy, one day they’re an indispensable economic partner. One day Russia’s our enemy, the next day we’re sitting on the same side of the negotiating table with them. That makes for a really confusing moment.” (Trump’s “America First” platform, it’s worth noting, features its own contradictions and isn’t necessarily coherent itself.) What’s progressive about his philosophy, Murphy explained, “is that it’s an answer to how we exist in the world with a big footprint that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the Iraq War.”
“American values don’t begin and end with destroyers and aircraft carriers,” he told me. “American values come by helping countries fight corruption to build stability. American values flow through tackling climate change and building energy independence. American values come through humanitarian assistance whereby we try to stop catastrophes from happening.”
Murphy’s message amounts to a gamble; he’s betting on active U.S. involvement in world affairs at a time when many Americans are wary of that approach .. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/05/key-findings-on-how-americans-view-the-u-s-role-in-the-world/ .. and tired of remaking other societies in their image. “I think progressives understand that we are Americans at the same time as we are global citizens,” he said. “We are interested first and foremost in creating peace and prosperity here at home, but we aren’t blind to the fact that injustice anywhere in the world is meaningful, important, and worth thinking about. I felt this moment in which even some Democrats and progressives were maybe thinking about closing doors. And I want to make the case that the progressive movement should be thinking about the world.”
- “The world is more chaotic today in part because the United States doesn’t help you when it comes to promoting stability.” -
This may be true in the cases of Iraq and Libya, but the United States isn’t the main cause of the nightmarish conditions in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, and it certainly didn’t bomb and create nightmares in Iran or Sudan, the other countries included in Trump’s immigration order. Yet Murphy defends the point, and maintains that Syria’s catastrophe is directly attributable to the U.S. invasion of Iraq: “Here’s what I’m trying to say: When the U.S. is an active participant in a foreign war, what comes with that is an increased responsibility to try to rescue civilians from the harm done in part by U.S. munitions and U.S. targeting.”
Murphy is profoundly skeptical of military intervention—a conviction the 43-year-old lawmaker attributes .. http://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/events/chrismurphy .. to coming of age politically, first in the Connecticut General Assembly and then in the U.S. Congress—amid the debacles of Afghanistan and Iraq. He maintains .. http://chanceforpeace.org/ .. that it’s foolish for the U.S. government to spend more than 10 times .. http://www.newsweek.com/2016/07/08/state-department-pentagon-diplomacy-475655.html .. as much on the military as it does on diplomacy and foreign aid. He asserts that climate change is a security threat to the United States and the world, and that U.S. leadership abroad depends on the U.S. government’s commitment to human rights and economic opportunity at home. And he argues that terrorism, which he considers .. http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20170207/us-sen-murphy-fear-of-attacks-by-terrorists-in-america-outstrips-reality .. a serious but manageable threat that politicians too often exaggerate, should be fought without resorting to torture; with greater restrictions than currently exist on the use of drone strikes, covert operations, and mass surveillance; and in a manner that addresses the “root causes” of Islamic extremism.
Many of these positions put Murphy at odds with Trump, particularly in light of the president’s reported plans .. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/rex-tillerson-state-department-cuts-236015 .. to dramatically increase defense spending while slashing funds for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Murphy likes to point out .. https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/836240116154785796 .. that after World War II, the U.S. government spent 3 percent .. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/98-916.pdf .. of the country’s gross domestic product on foreign aid to stabilize democracies and economies in Europe and Asia, while today the United States is only spending roughly 0.1 percent of its GDP on foreign aid. “We’re getting what we pay for,” Murphy told me. “The world is more chaotic today, there are more unstable, ungovernable countries in part because the United States doesn’t help you when it comes to promoting stability.”
Murphy proposes a “new Marshall Plan,” a program of economic assistance to Middle Eastern and African countries plagued by terrorism, and other nations threatened by Russia and China, modeled on U.S. aid to Western Europe after World War II. The aid, he says, could be contingent on the recipient countries implementing political and economic reforms. As for why he has more faith in ambitious economic interventions than in ambitious military ones, he cites “the old saying that no two countries with a McDonald’s have ever gone to war with each other.” (Military conflicts between the United States and Panama, India and Pakistan, Israel and Lebanon, Russia and Georgia, and Russia and Ukraine have put some dents .. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/04/04/mcdonald_s_pulls_out_of_crimea_will_tom_friedman_be_retroactively_proven.html .. in this theory, developed .. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/opinion/foreign-affairs-big-mac-i.html .. by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, but Murphy maintains that countries with strong economies and democratic systems tend to be more risk-averse when it comes to war.)
[Like many theories Friedman's has some truth, while in itself is too simplistic as a solution for complex situations.]
Why, Murphy asks, do U.S. leaders have so much confidence in the military and so little confidence in the country’s non-military means of influencing international affairs? Just because the United States has the best hammer in the world, he argues .. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/new-foreign-policy-for-america , doesn’t mean every problem is a nail. Murphy supported .. http://www.nhregister.com/article/NH/20150309/NEWS/150309527 .. sending weapons to the Ukrainian military as it struggled with Russia, but he questions why Congress hasn’t focused more on, say, helping the Ukrainian government fight corruption. He’s a backer .. https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/820346496776224768 .. of the NATO military alliance, but he asks why the United States doesn’t also seriously invest in weaning its European allies off their dependence on Russian energy sources. He regularly wonders .. http://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/events/chrismurphy .. why the Defense Department has more lawyers and members of military bands than the State Department has diplomats.
Yet Murphy, who represents .. http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-murphy-foreign-policy-20160502-story.html .. a state where a number of Defense Department contractors are based, doesn’t advocate for reducing defense spending, even though the United States currently spends more on its military than roughly the next seven countries combined .. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/ . Murphy says he believes in “peace through strength”—an idea Donald Trump also promotes—and wants the United States to maintain its military advantage over other countries. He seems to want it all—the military trombonists and the Foreign Service officers. He notes that Trump’s proposed $50-billion increase to the defense budget could double the State Department’s budget if directed there instead.
If the United States remains fixated on military strength, he warns, it will fall behind its rivals and enemies. “The Russians are bullying countries with oil and gas, the Chinese are making massive economic investments around the world, ISIS and extremist groups are using propaganda and the internet to grow their reach,” Murphy said. “And as the rest of the world has been figuring out that power can be projected in non-military means very effectively, the United States has not made that transition.”
Murphy departs from Obama, who himself offered a type of progressive foreign-policy vision, by further downplaying the efficacy of military intervention. In particular he argues that Obama’s policy of arming the Syrian rebels amounted to “just enough support to the rebels to keep the fight going while never enough to be definitive.” While “restraint in the face of evil feels unnatural, it feels dirty, it feels awful,” he said in a recent interview .. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/ .. with the journalist Paul Bass, the United States could have saved lives by not taking sides in the Syrian Civil War. His own standard for taking military action: “It has to be because U.S. citizens are threatened and we have to know that our intervention can be decisive.”
- [That in itself poses problems. There could be a human imperative to intervene, to prevent genocide, eg, where military intervention was seen to be justified. Gotta say at least maybe to that. Knowing the intervention would be decisive is problematical, too, but still Murphy's is a superior position to the one taken by Bush to intervene as he did in Iraq.] -
- “A progressive foreign policy isn’t just looking at the back-end of terrorism, but is also looking at the front-end of terrorism.” -
But Murphy also advanced .. http://www.cfr.org/middle-east-and-north-africa/chris-murphy-roots-radical-extremism/p37471 .. a controversial argument among progressives, many of whom reject associations between terrorism and Islam. He said the United States shouldn’t be unconditionally assisting Saudi Arabia when billions of dollars in Saudi money have financed the spread of Wahhabism—a fundamentalist version of Islam—across the Muslim world, from Pakistan to Indonesia, largely through the creation of madrassas, or seminaries. This strain of Islam, in turn, has influenced .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-islam.html .. the ideologies of Sunni terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
“A progressive foreign policy isn’t just looking at the back-end of terrorism, but is also looking at the front-end of terrorism,” Murphy told me. “And at the front-end of terrorism is bad U.S. military policy in the Middle East, is the Saudi funding of a very intolerant brand of Islam that becomes the building block of extremism, and poverty and political instability.”
In this regard, he acknowledges some overlap between his views and those of some Trump advisers, who emphasize .. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/trump-islam-authoritarianism/516627/ .. the ideological dimension of terrorism. But he also diverges from Trump’s aides by calling for American humility in this ideological struggle. “I don’t think there is any way that the United States is going to decide which version of Islam ultimately prevails globally, and it would be frankly improper for us to try to play that role,” he told me. “What I’m saying is that it should speak to who our allies are and who our allies aren’t. We should be choosing alliances with countries that are trying to spread moderate Islam and … we should question our alliances with countries that are spreading intolerant versions of Islam.”
As a result, Murphy explained during a 2015 event .. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/new-foreign-policy-for-america .. at the Wilson Center, while “it sounds really good to say that the American objective is to defeat ISIS,” U.S. policy “should be to eliminate the ability of ISIS to attack the United States. Whether ISIS is going to be wiped from the face of the Middle East is really a question for our partners in the region.”
But often there isn’t an American solution—especially not a military one, Murphy argues. In such heresies, Murphy feels he has a sliver of something in common with his adversary in the White House. “I appreciate a president who is willing to ask some big questions about the prior rules of the game when it came to how the United States funds or directs foreign policy,” he told me. It’s on the answers where Murphy hopes to prevail.
Related Video[You Tube of embedded video]
Donald Trump's Foreign Policy Isn't Fantasy
The Atlantic Published on May 18, 2016
Americans have heard it over and over again: Trump is going to build a beautiful wall along the southern border and Mexico is going to pay for it. Yet, most of Trump’s critics view the proposal as pure fantasy. This, as Atlantic staff writer Uri Friedman explains, is a big mistake. Trump’s wall should be taken very seriously. For one, it’s been the centerpiece of his campaign since he announced his candidacy in June of 2015. Secondly, the wall is an encapsulation of Trump’s America-First worldview that provides a glimpse into what his foreign policy might look like in practice. .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE6d7HjDM7g
The Palace Intrigue at the Heart of the Qatar Crisis
The Saudis don’t believe the young emir of Qatar is really running the country — and they’re looking for regime change.
By Simon Henderson June 30, 2017
Who is the real leader of Qatar? On paper, it is Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the 37-year-old son of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who abdicated in Tamim’s favor in 2013. But the leaderships of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have become involved in a messy diplomatic squabble with Qatar, think it is actually Sheikh Hamad, now known as the “father-emir,” who is still pulling the strings. The truth could dictate the outcome of the Gulf crisis, where the United States is trying to broker an early settlement while Iran watches mischievously from the sidelines.
There are a variety of judgments of who is really in control in Doha, none of which are particularly complimentary to the Al Thanis, the onetime desert tribe that number a mere few thousand but effectively own the world’s third-largest reserves of natural gas.
“Hamad dislikes the Emiratis and the Bahrainis, but completely loathes the Saudis” was the opinion of a former diplomat who lived in Doha for several years, who insisted that the father is still the driver of Qatari diplomacy. The 65-year-old Hamad apparently takes a historical and “intensely personal” perspective. Standing in a room festooned with ancient maps, he once lectured a visiting British defense minister for five consecutive days on the historical links of the Al Thani to distant locations, now mostly in Saudi Arabia. Hamad, in the judgment of a onetime insider, is “forceful” and “dangerous.”
Those with a less intimate acquaintance with the Al Thani family take a more benign view. “Tamim is willful, but his father is a restraining force” is the judgment of one European official involved in Qatar’s 2022 hosting of the World Cup, which involved billions in infrastructure building on top of the alleged bribes .. http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-fifa-garcia-report-20170627-story.html .. paid to be chosen as a venue, estimated by a European intelligence agency at $180 million.
Such an amount is almost pocket change for Doha. Qatar’s gas has given it the highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. During his reign, Hamad leveraged that wealth to set up Al Jazeera, the region’s first satellite television network, which dramatically increased Qatar’s influence — while upsetting its neighbors because it provided a platform to opposition voices and troublesome preachers like Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Over the years, Hamad was unmoved by diplomatic protests at the station’s output, often blandly and incredulously responding to a range of ambassadors that Al Jazeera was either independent or should be allowed freedom of expression.
Hamad, it appears, cannot resist an opportunity to annoy his Gulf Arab neighbors, even if this risks the breakup of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which has largely protected the conservative Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms from the region’s turbulence since the Iran-Iraq War broke out in 1980. The examples of Hamad poking his neighbors in the eye are legion. Early in the Syrian civil war, Qatar tussled with Saudi Arabia over which would back the most effective jihadi fighters. Doha has also supported the Muslim Brotherhood as the wave of the future for the Muslim world, an ironic position considering that the Brotherhood disapproves of hereditary sheikhdoms like, er, Qatar.
Hamad’s antagonistic relationship with his Arab neighbors extends to the first days of his rule. After he pushed his own father to the side in 1995, the Saudis and Emiratis, with some Bahraini involvement, tried to organize a counter-coup. Several hundred tribesmen were recruited, and at least one arms dump was established in the desert. The plot failed because one tribesman informed Hamad’s court of the plot. But to Hamad’s disappointment, any condemnation by the United States was muted so as not to upset the Saudis, the larger and more important regional ally.
Washington’s concern for Riyadh’s feelings went unrewarded. In 2003, the Saudis withdrew permission for the U.S. Air Force to use the Prince Sultan Air Base. Qatar had built the giant Al Udeid Air Base essentially for just such an opportunity. U.S. military aircraft have flown from it during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as against the Islamic State.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, along with Egypt, are leading the attempt to isolate Qatar by cutting off air links, restricting shipping, and closing the overland route via Saudi Arabia. They have produced a list of 13 demands and given Qatar until July 2 to accept them. It was more time than Doha needed — this week, it rejected them all. The demands range from the apparently bizarre, such as expelling Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel (Are there any there?) to the obvious, expelling any political dissidents to their home countries in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, or Egypt. There’s also the nigh impossible, such as closing down Al Jazeera, now a billion-dollar world-class brand viewable in hotels across the world.
- Qatar does not appear to be adhering to its opponents’ playbook -
Qatar does not appear to be adhering to its opponents’ playbook, and insiders say Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were disappointed when Doha publicized the list of demands. The question is: What happens now?
In the slightly longer term, how Hamad and Tamim will respond depends on how much pressure they feel from the wider Al Thani clan. Hamad’s leadership is not fully respected; Tamim’s even less so. The former emir’s 1995 accession to the throne was resented within the extended family, and the view lingers. Bloodlines are important to the Al Thani, so it is a negative that Hamad’s mother was from the al-Attiyah tribe. Hamad is regarded, therefore, as only half Al Thani, a “cuckoo in the nest” in the words of one experienced observer. Two of Hamad’s three wives are Al Thani, but his favorite — and the mother of Tamim — is the statuesque Moza, who comes from the al-Missned tribe. So Tamim’s position within the Al Thani family is no more secure — and arguably less secure — than Hamad’s. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are probably trying to groom an alternative and more pliable Al Thani for a leadership role.
In wider Qatari society, most probably don’t want to be at odds with Saudi Arabia. Nor do they want to be dependent on Iran, which is serving as a route for food supplies no longer arriving via Saudi Arabia.
But domestic pressure for reconciliation may not be enough for Hamad to concede much, at least for now. His health could prove to be an important factor. Once very overweight, he is now much thinner but looks gaunt rather than healthy. His kidneys have been a problem — diplomats think he has had at least one transplant.
In the current diplomacy, neither Hamad nor Tamim has had much of a public profile. But Hamad could well be enjoying the developing crisis. Several years ago, Hamad bin Ali, a young Al Thani with a reputation for being capable, was tasked with setting up a food security project. At the time, diplomats thought it was perhaps to deal with the danger of the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Gulf, being closed to shipping. Now it seems that the father-emir may have been forward planning. What other tricks does he have up his sleeve?
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