Middle East Focus-Arabia Deserta: Foggy Solutions: On Hezbullah, al-Qaeda, Multinational Terror, and Coming in From the Cold

Arabia Deserta

Foggy Solutions: On Hezbullah, al-Qaeda, Multinational Terror, and Coming in From the Cold

“For eight years of the George W Bush years the dominant American political school mixed between “Islamist”, “Radical”, “Extremist”, “Jihadist”, and “Terrorist”. The Bush administration did not distinguish between the Islamists’ radical political message and the violence of the Jihadists.They could not understand that there are fundamental differences between local resistance movements like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbullah and the transnational Jihadist groups like al-Qaeda that have been at was with the USA and her allies since the early 1990s.......They have managed to convince Bush and Cheney that political Islam as always movements that do not recognize borders are equal threats to the West.....”

So, is it time to bring Hezbullah, the Shi’a fundamentalist party, ally of the Iranian mullahs, in from cold?
It has never been out in the cold anywhere except in Washington and to a limited extent with the Sunni fundamentalist government in that other bastion of democracy and freedom, Riyadh. Hezbullah has not been out in the cold in a Lebanese, Arab, or general Middle Eastern sense. It has not been out in the cold in a European, Asian, or African sense either.

It has been completely out in the cold only from the point of view of the American political establishment. Even the rival Saudis, after two years of intense efforts to undermine and weaken it have only somehow managed to strengthen it (perhaps based on a good Arab saying about “measuring a man by who his detractors are”, sort of like “with enemies like that……”).

So, if the Hezbullah bloc gets the foreign ministry again in the new cabinet, will Mrs. Clinton continue to avoid talking with her Lebanese counterpart as she has been doing so far? Will she continue to go to the figurehead president for her dealings, even though he can’t legally make policy decisions? She can’t go to the Prime Minsiter, even if it is Sa’ad Hariri, Saudi Arabia's main ally, for that will create a cabinet crisis among the various factions.
It is an interesting puzzle that only the denizens of Foggy Bottom may be able to solve. It is a foggy puzzle that may require a foggy solution, as it surely will.

(Something about that term and place name has always made me think of foggy minds, ever since I first saw it. But minds are usually at the top, at least outside most Middle East corridors of power, where they tend to be elsewhere., from the looks of things).
Cheers and Ramadan Kareem
mhg
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