Sources Say, Erik Prince was hired by crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together a 800-member battalion

Fascinating:

According to the New York Time, Erik Prince billionaire founder of Blackwater was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by a reputable source.

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.

The U.A.E.’s rulers, viewing their own military as inadequate, also hope that the troops could blunt the regional aggression of Iran, the country’s biggest foe, the former employees said. The training camp, located on a sprawling Emirati base called Zayed Military City, is hidden behind concrete walls laced with barbed wire. Photographs show rows of identical yellow temporary buildings, used for barracks and mess halls, and a motor pool, which houses Humvees and fuel trucks. The Colombians, along with South African and other foreign troops, are trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion, according to the former employees and American officials.

When I heard the Prince had moved to Abu Dhabi I knew that this could be the only reason.  From the ruling family's perspective this makes perfect sense.

four years after the start of the Arab Spring, the new Middle East looks more and more like the old one—only worse.

SMART DIPLOMACY ALERT

From the Wall Street Journal

While U.S. airstrikes have put Islamic State forces on the defensive in Iraq, they haven’t had the same effect in Syria. Our story looks at why military action by the U.S. has not stopped Islamic State militants from expanding their control in Syria and considers the implications of this failure. We note that some administration officials have been pushing America to focus more attention on Syria, but powerful voices oppose any idea that would drag the U.S. military deeper into a country where few see options that will improve the situation. However, the “Iraq-first” strategy is likely to be questioned in the coming weeks when the new Republican-controlled Congress holds hearings on the president’s game plan in the Middle East. Meanwhile, we report that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State is coming under growing criticism in Iraq, complicating the mission as Washington ramps up its forces in the country. And we look at the wider region, noting that four years after the start of the Arab Spring, the new Middle East looks more and more like the old one—only worse.

Before we deployed Barack Hussein Obama's SMART DIPLOMACY in the Middle East as the Arab Spring unfolded the area was controlled by a few long time dictators and Arab "royalty" who were content to not cause trouble.  Today, after deaths counted in the hundreds of thousands, crazies are roaming the sands forests bringing back the 7th century and importing it into a Western world which though it left that all behind centuries ago.

Well, (as Glenn Reynolds often notes) this is the 21sc Century, you know.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Assassination pushes Libya towards civil war two years after Gaddafi death

Fighting rages in Benghazi as Tripoli braces for fallout from the kidnapping of prime minister Ali Zaidan

We swear it was a spontaneous act cause by a video.

Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to 'detect' gay people and stop them from entering the country

Looks like a problems for the new Obama military.

Iraq wants US assistance now

The Associated Press reports that Iraq is asking the US for aid to help them tamp down on violence that has wracked the country with 1000 deaths in July, the highest number of casualties since 2008

Like the Arab Spring, you knew it would come to this, didn't you? It's a place where "soft diplomacy" doesn't work.

Egyptian Belly Dancer to Obama: “we are the Alpha”

Via Instapundit



How's that "Smart Diplomacy" working out for ya?

For nine decades, Egypt has fled modernity.

Mark Steyn again.  Read the whole article, it's always worthwhile to read Steyn in full.

It is hard to be too cynical about Egypt ... or about the entire region referred to as Arabia.  Just as you though things are really bad, they get even worse.  Read, for example, Gang Raping Your Way to Democracy

But Egypt is a special case because it is the biggest country in the region with a long history. Forget the Pharaohs, the Romans, the caliphs who ruled, the two millennia of history until the English and French set up a king.

Ninety years ago, Fuad I’s kingdom was a ramshackle Arab approximation of a Westminster constitutional monarchy: Even in its flaws and corruptions, it knew at least what respectable societies were supposed to aspire to. Nasser’s one-party state was worse, Mubarak’s one-man klepto-state worse still, and Morsi’s antidote to his predecessors worst of all — so far.

Steyn gives us the history of "modern" Egypt via the life of Princess Fawzia, the aunt of the last King of Egypt who died the other day at age 91 in Alexandria. 

A long life reminds us of how short history is: Princess Fawzia outlived the Egyptian monarchy, and the Nasserist fascism and pan-Arabism that succeeded it, and the doomed “United Arab Republic” of Egypt and Syria, and the fetid third-of-a-century “stability” of the Mubarak kleptocracy. And she came within 24 hours of outliving the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief, disastrous grip on power. In the days before her death, it was reported that 14 million people took to the streets of Egypt’s cities to protest against Morsi (and Obama and his ambassador Anne Paterson). If so, that’s more than the population of the entire country in the year Princess Fawzia was born. The Mubarak era alone saw the citizenry double from 40 million to 80 million, a majority of which live on less than two dollars a day. The old pharaoh was toppled by his own baby boom, most of whom went for Morsi. The new pharaoh was toppled by his own stupidity. The Muslim Brotherhood waited 85 years for their moment and then blew it in nothing flat.

 

I am being persuaded that people get the government they deserve. 

Gang-Raping Your Way to Democracy

Mark Steyn notes that in Egypt, covering yourself in the body bag known as a hijab, has practical implications.  You are probably less apt to be gang-raped, as long as you stay indoors, that is.

As in the Congolese civil war, where both sides agreed that pygmies made excellent appetizers, in the Egyptian political stand-off, the young men of both pro- and anti-Morsi forces agree on little else except that the chicks are fair game. This ugly aspect has gone strikingly under-reported in America for over two years, ever since CBS chose to downplay the rape of its own correspondent. So I’m very glad NPR chose to do a story on this grim subject, “Sexual Assaults Reportedly Rampant During Egypt Protests.” To put it in the terms famously formulated by Whoopi Goldberg, this isn’t rape-rape but rape-rape-rape:

The rights group says the latest attacks follow an all too familiar pattern since mass protests began in 2011: A few men force a girl or woman away from the people she’s with; rip off her clothes and assault her. Passersby join in the attacks, which range from groping to gang rapes that can last more than an hour.

The bar for "bloodbath" has been set awfully low

Footage broadcast by state TV showed Mursi supporters throwing rocks at soldiers in riot gear on one of the main roads leading to Cairo airport.

Young men, some carrying sticks, crouched behind a building, emerging to throw petrol bombs before retreating again.

State-run television showed soldiers carrying a wounded comrade along a rock-strewn road, and news footage zoomed in on a handful of protesters firing crude handguns during clashes.

What is a "crude handgun?"

Egypt violence: Gang throws rivals to their deaths from top of a building

Egypt needs good government, not democracy.

Walter Russell Meade on Obama: Still Wrong About Egypt—and Wrong About the World Commenting on Obama's vaporing about Egypt's transition to Democracy:

It is not at all clear that Egypt is in the midst of a transition to democracy. It is in the midst of a crisis of authority and has been wallowing for some time in a damaging crisis of governance, but is Egypt really in a transition to democracy? And is democracy really what “ordinary” Egyptians want?

Right now one suspects that most Egyptians fear that the country could be in a transition to anarchy, and that what ordinary Egyptians (who are extremely poor by US standards and earn their bread by the sweat of their brow with very little cushion against illness or a bad day at the market) want most of all right now is security. They aren’t fretting so much about when they will have a government more like Norway’s as they are terrified that their country is sliding in the direction of Libya, Syria or Iraq.

As is often the case, Washington policymakers seem to be paying too much attention to the glibbest of political scientists and the vaporings of the Davoisie. Egypt has none of the signs that would lead historians to think democracy is just around the corner. Mubarak was not Franco, and Egypt is not Spain. What’s happening in Egypt isn’t the robust flowering of a civil society so dynamic and so democratic that it can no longer be held back by dictatorial power.

Want America to look stupid and be hated?

If American policy toward Egypt is based on the assumption that Egypt is having a “messy transition” to democracy and that we must shepherd the poor dears to the broad sunny uplands, encouraging when they do well, chiding when they misstep, Washington will keep looking foolish and our influence will continue to fade. If that is the approach our foolishness compels us to take, look for more cases in which American good intentions just make us more hated—not because we are wicked, but because we are clueless.

Makes you nostalgic for the realism of George Bush.

Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt and Starvation.

Spengler:

Starvation is the unstated subject of this week’s military coup. For the past several months, the bottom half of Egypt’s population has had little to eat besides government-subsidized bread, and now the bread supply is threatened by a shortage of imported wheat. Despite $8 billion of aid from Qatar and smidgens from Libya, Turkey, and others, Egypt is struggling to meet a financing gap of perhaps $20 billion a year, made worse by the collapse of its major cash earner — the tourist industry. Malnutrition is epidemic in the form of extreme protein deficiency in a country where 40% of the adult population is already “stunted” by poor diet, according to the World Food Program. It is not that hard to get 14 million people into the streets if there is nothing to eat at home. [snip]

With the Muslim Brotherhood out of the way in Egypt, the Saudis have uncontested influence with the military. Presumably the military will suppress the Brotherhood unless it chooses to dissolve spontaneously. No one should mourn the Brotherhood, a totalitarian organization with a Nazi past and an extreme anti-Semitic ideology.

The notion that this band of Jew-hating jihadi thugs might become the vehicle for a transition to a functioning Muslim democracy was perhaps the stupidest notion to circulate in Washington in living memory.[snip]

Egypt probably can be kept on life support for about $10 billion a year in foreign subsidies, especially if the military regime can restore calm and bring the tourists back (although that is a big “if” — one of President Morsi’s last acts was to appoint as governor of Luxor province an associate of the Islamist terrorists who massacred 62 tourists in Luxor in 1997).

Clear insight is much better than faith that mankind is changing. The Middle East is not hospitable to Democracy.

In the Beltway, to be sure, the same folk on left and right who thought the “Arab Spring” would usher in a golden era of Muslim democracy are wringing their hands over the tragic fate of Egypt’s first democratically elected government. These include Republicans as well as Democrats, whom I qualified as “Dumb and Dumber” in a May 20 essay for Tablet. The sequel — call it “Dumb and Dumberer” — is still playing on CNN and Fox News. No matter: the important matters are now in the competent hands of Prince Bandar, whose judgment I prefer to that of John Kerry or Susan Rice or John McCain any day of the week. The best-case scenario would be for the grown-ups in the region to ignore the blandishments of the Obama administration as well as the advice of the Republican establishment, and to do what they have to do regardless.

Americans who want to conduct a great experiment in democracy will have to take their laboratory somewhere else.

The most hopeful aftermath to the Arab Spring so far

DRUDGE:



Egypt prepares for backlash as Morsi allies reject new regime...

Army warns against 'endless circle of revenge'...

Brotherhood leader arrested...

Widening Sweep...

Air of defeat hangs over Islamists...

'Friday of Rejection'...

'No more beards!'

Rival gangs gearing up for battle...

“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.”

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal: Will Mohammed Morsi join the pharaohs, caliphs, pashas and strongmen that came before him?

I’m reminded of the famous line from Star Wars where the evil Emperor Palpatine says “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.” What I found incomprehensible a few years ago is how much hope was fixed on the so-called Arab Spring. There are literally thousands of years of history in the Middle East of pharaohs followed by emperors, kings and dictators. Thinking that a largely illiterate population immersed in Islam should create a democracy is magical thinking. What struck me at the time was how many people in the “mainstream” were caught up in this fantasy. In a way, it explains the election of Barack Obama.

Guess the country he's referring to

Inexperienced 18 years olds who have grown up in corrupt, poorly governed societies, and been educated in trashy schools by incompetent hacks know very well that the status quo is unacceptable. Young people who know they are being ripped off and abused are typically not very patient. Throw in healthy doses of sexual frustration and contempt for an establishment that has lost confidence in its own capacity to lead, and you have a cocktail much more explosive than anything Molotov knew.

The description is of education in Egypt, but there is an eery echo of modern American education where millions of teens graduate from high school and get brainwashed into taking classes by tenured radicals whose main function is to replicate themselves via indoctrination while living the good life in academia. Our children are being ripped off by intellectual mobsters, leaving the university with worthless diplomas unprepared for the job market.

The system is overloading and breaking down. But perhaps that's the plan.

What excuse do intelligent people have for backing Obama?

Richard Fernandez discussing the no-win situation in Syria that Obama is in swerves on the screw-ups by the so-called smart set.

Even the liberal press, which recently discovered it was being spied upon and manipulated, is now beginning to wake up. Glenn Reynold’s discusses Peggy Noonan’s realization that Barack Obama’s presidency has been both a policy disaster and a threat to civil liberties. He is sympathetic, but one of his own commenters believe Reynold’s isn’t being hard enough on Noonan.

People like you knew and told people (repeatedly) what was coming if Obama won. You didn’t know the exact detail of the abuses of power that would come but you knew they were coming. People like Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley, on the other hand, assured us that John McCain was too unpredictable for the Presidency and Sarah Palin not worthy of the Vice-Presidency. Barry, on the other hand, had the look of a president and certainly could be trusted with the levers of power. He went to an Ivy League school, after all.

Noonan looked down her nose at us in the flyover country and tut-tutted to her Beltway friends about how us slope-foreheads didn’t know how to judge politicians like those in the political class knew how to judge them.

Look what you gave us, Peggy-O.

There is a ring of truth to this. The blame for Barack Obama’s accession to power can hardly be blamed on Obama himself. He would of course have spun things his way and fought his own corner. He would naturally want the reins of power. The more serious responsibility lay with the Gatekeepers; with those who should have known better and still gave him a pass to the White House.

The low-information types at least have the excuse of being what they are. But what excuse do the intelligent have?

In the dramatic climax of the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg” the eminent jurist Dr. Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster, makes the same point. The Janning character rejects the efforts of his own defense counsel to invoke his eminence by pleading guilty as charged. Turning to his co-accused Janning says words to the effect that ‘I am more culpable than these men because they were idiots. But unlike them I clearly knew right from wrong. I could see through things and my reputation would convince others to think, well if Janning goes along then it is alright. But it was not alright and therefore I am not only guilty as charged but more guilty than any of these my co-accused. I made my life an excrement because I walked with them.’

Reasonable people would like to think that after Obama screws up so royally that the system begins to collapse, his syncopants will fall away.  Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen.  After all, people cried when they heard Stalin was dead.

The worst of it is that altogether too many members of the Gatekeeping class are still of the belief that more of this Obama BS will see things through. It won’t. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Whatever one can say of Noonan it must be said that though she learned late, she learned.

After purging the military, the Turkish government begins ti implement Islamic practice.

The Islamist government of Turkey first had to purge the secular military leadership so they could have a free hand to transform Turkey from a secular to a Islamic state.

Now the time has come for the next step.

Mr Erdogan has been in power since 2002 and some in Turkey have complained that his government is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Last week, Turkey's parliament approved legislation restricting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks.

The regulations would prohibit retail sales between 22:00 and 06:00, ban all alcohol advertising and promotion, and stop new shops and bars from opening within 100m (330ft) of schools and mosques.

Mr Erdogan said he wanted to stop young Turks from "wandering about in a state of inebriation" and was not trying to impose Islamic values.

The prime minister's Justice and Development (AK) Party has its roots in political Islam, but he says he is committed to Turkey's state secularism.

In two totally unrelated development, Eric Holder said he is in favor of a free press and the IRS says that it only targeted conservative groups to improve customer service.

Rand Paul: My colleagues just voted to arm the allies of al Qaeda

The American government has been incredibly stupid about developments in the Middle East.  Having failed at the right time, the Congress is determined to fail at the wrong time.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, which voted overwhelmingly to arm elements of the Syrian opposition in a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). "This is an important moment," Paul said, addressing his Senate colleagues. "You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It's an irony you cannot overcome."

Christians under siege as mob attacks Cairo cathedral

Alastair Beach sees gunfire exchanged as armed gang descends on funeral of five Christians killed in recent sectarian clashes

It's not safe to be Christian in Egypt, or here where Christians are routinely accused of wishing to create a theocracy, oppress women and enslave blacks. Of course when you demonize people it's only natural that they should be killed.

Wael Eskandar, an Egyptian blogger who attended the funeral, said he saw people being showered with broken bottles from the roof of an apartment block opposite. After being attacked, he said, the people “started racing out of the side street and destroying the nearby cars”. He added that he was not sure if those attacking the vehicles were mourners. As night fell the streets around St Mark’s were echoing to the sound of gunshots and exploding tear gas canisters. Young men on either side of the 18ft-high compound wall exchanged a continuous hail of rocks and broken masonry. Others hurled Molotov cocktails and let off fireworks.

The security forces positioned outside the cathedral launched volley after volley of tear gas into the compound. Some of the thousands of onlookers gathered in the road cheered as the canisters rocketed towards Christians perched on the walls overlooking the main street.

One young man, his right hand clasped around a shiny steel handgun, clambered on top of a petrol station alongside the cathedral and blasted a single round at those trapped inside. He was helped down by a friend who was also carrying a handgun, before they both jogged off through a nearby line of riot police who had been watching the young man take aim. Soon afterwards there was a flash from inside the compound as a young man stepped up on to the perimeter wall and fired a weapon towards the thousands of onlookers below.

 

This is what the Arab Spring looks like.  How's that working out for you? 

The Coming War in the Middle East

That "Arab Spring" is morphing into World War 3.  It will not be contained to "Arabia."   Oil is too important.   

But don't worry, Team Obama is in charge.  Kerry is Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel will be Secretary of Defense and Barack Hussein Obama is overseeing everything.

What a nightmare.