RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mme. Halfbright is runner up to John Kerry for the worst Sec. of State in recent history. rsk
Does the Middle East need to take responsibility for charting its own future? According to a recently released report from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force, the answer is yes. But critical analysis of that report reveals serious flaws that must be addressed.

MEST co-chairs former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley presented the report to a standing-room-only audience in Washington, D.C. Albright acknowledged that people around the world are all affected by the “toxic brew” of challenges centered in the Middle East – such as terrorism and refugee flows. In response, Hadley pointed out the report’s theme of a “different, smarter way of engaging with the Middle East that does not require a Marshall Plan or a 2003 Iraq invasion.”

Under the report’s Compact for the Middle East, nations that adopt reforms will gain greater diplomatic, economic and technical support from outside countries like the United States, according to Albright, who referenced the report’s extoling of “green shoots of citizen-based entrepreneurial and civic activity occurring throughout the region.

She added,

Across the region, civic activists are working to make their local communities stronger and more resilient. Entrepreneurs are building small and medium-sized businesses rather than relying on the government to be the employer of first resort. And some leaders are beginning to recognize that the region’s greatest resource is not its oil, but its people.

Hadley said that he believes future foreign assistance should encourage “governments acting more effectively, inclusively and justly in empowering their citizens to realize their full potential and to win their loyalty. Fundamentally, it is a bet on the people of the region and a strategy to empower them,” he said, analyzing the report’s strategy, which included proposals for a regional development fund for reconstruction and reform. It also features a regional framework for dialogue and cooperation akin to regional organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Although it cites certain advances to living in the Middle East (e.g., the Arab world’s literacy rate, which surged from 58 percent to 80 percent between 1990 and 2010), the report does highlight the enormous hurdles hindering a peaceful and prosperous Middle East. “The Middle East crisis is the most difficult global challenge since the end of the Cold War,” Albright and Hadley wrote. “The world will be wrestling with this set of problems for a long time.”

In the six months since last November’s U.S. presidential election, there has been a near ‎avalanche of innuendo-filled stories, based primarily on leaks from ‎‎”government or intelligence officials,” suggesting (while providing no actual ‎evidence) there may have been nefarious activity involving Trump campaign ‎officials or supporters and the Russian government and people connected to it, to influence the election.

One popular MSNBC cable TV host has given more ‎than half her airtime to weaving tales of how the two sides may have colluded, ‎proving mainly that a loyal left-wing audience can put up with repetition of material ‎utterly absent of substance for a long time, as long as it bashes the right ‎individual and political party. The conspiracy theory is that Donald Trump was bought by ‎the Russians, who got him elected and now he is doing their bidding. The fact that ‎the Trump administration has not behaved toward Russia or its proxies in a ‎fashion consistent with this conspiracy theory has done ‎little to quiet the true believers of the collusion litany. Neither is there any evidence ‎of Russians blocking Clinton voters from showing up in Wisconsin, Michigan, ‎Pennsylvania, or Florida, or providing troops to keep Hillary Clinton from making ‎campaign appearances in some of these states. ‎

In the last few weeks, there has been a counterpunch of sorts from Trump ‎supporters, alleging that former President Barack Obama’s officials in the Justice Department and intelligence ‎services launched a surveillance operation during the campaign to potentially ‎derail the Trump campaign, and after the election, to keep the Russian story alive ‎through leaks to eager journalists, to delegitimize his presidential victory and his ‎ability to govern. ‎

At this point, based on what is known as opposed to what is ‎believed or hoped for by partisans, it is highly likely that both themes are probably exaggerated, ‎and maybe even totally false, though the leaks from Obama loyalists still in ‎government seem to provide some support for the charge that there has been an ‎organized campaign to damage his successor.‎

In the meantime, a blockbuster story in Politico provides much new information on how far the Obama ‎team was willing to go to get a nuclear deal with Iran done, and then to please the ‎mullahs in any number of ways after the agreement was reached, to demonstrate ‎U.S. allegiance to their needs and demands. In any case, no journalist sympathetic ‎to the Obama narrative on the Iran deal would dare call it collusion. ‎

The Politico article revealed for the first time the extent of the trade the Obama ‎administration was willing to make with Iran to obtain the release of five American ‎prisoners. The U.S. announced the release of seven Iranians, ‎described by the administration as civilians, none involved with terrorism. In fact, ‎several were regarded by Obama’s Justice Department as clear national security ‎threats, involved in weapons procurement. The administration also dropped ‎charges and arrest warrants against 14 other Iranians, all of them fugitives, ‎several of them also involved in weapons procurement for Iran’s nuclear program, ‎‎. ‎

‎”Through action in some cases and inaction in others, ‎the White House derailed its own much-touted National ‎Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was ‎making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s ‎proliferation networks,” the report said. “In addition, the Politico ‎investigation found that Justice and State department ‎officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors ‎and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly ‎countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice ‎and State, at times in consultation with the White ‎House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects ‎already in custody overseas, according to current and ‎former officials and others involved in the counter‎proliferation effort.”‎

When critics of the Iran deal argued that despite the agreement, Iran was ‎continuing to develop and procure long-range missiles and spread havoc through ‎its expansionist aggression in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and support of ‎terrorism, Obama officials always chimed in that the deal only dealt with ‎eliminating the nuclear threat, and not any other issues. Of course, the deal ‎eliminated nothing. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was reduced, but not ‎eliminated (similar to Syria’s supply of poison gases after Obama wimped out on ‎enforcing his own red line), and Iran’s centrifuges, many of them now an enhanced ‎variety, continued to operate. In any case, every time a report surfaced about Iran ‎violating some term of the deal, the president’s team, led by then-Secretary of ‎State John Kerry, was quick to provide a legal brief on their behalf.‎