A response to Alon Ben-Meir: Paris, Brussels and the stirrings of “World War Three”
By DAVID TURNER
Regarding the West's policy on refugees you and I pretty much agree. Last year sociologist Rael Jean Isaacs posted a blog, A Watershed for America’s Jews? in which, as the title declares, her concern is Obama's proposal to increase the American quota for Syrian refugees.Isaac's concern, and it was valid so far as she went, is that Jews as a "bloc" are supportive of helping refugees even as we are the single group most likely to suffer absorbing the refugees. Not necessarily physically but at the ballot box. As was your blog, I responded to her with three interrelated discussions. My first was to her concern that Muslims would soon outnumber Jews with the result that we would lose ground at the ballot box with the resulting erosion of political influence. Secondly I addressed the impact of the growing US Muslim electorate regarding America’s dominant religious population, Christians. And finally, and most important, I discussed radical Islamism’s “Crusader” Agenda. As espoused by radicals today (and not just Daesh) based on a millennium-long grudge: the three centuries-long Crusades. Not the favored term for westerners, "crusaders." And then there is the more recent and no less humiliation of the occupation by Western Imperialism just now coming to an end. Obama's "pivot east," as was Bush’s “surge,” was intended to provide a fig leaf, some dignity to mask America's retreat from the Middle East. In 2007 the Surge covered the failure of American arms and the final defeat of transferring control of Iraq to to Iran. The JCPOA of 2015 lifted Iran to regional power, transferred overall custodianship of the region to resurgent Russia. Obama fulfilled Kenneth Waltz’s dubious dictum regarding the need for nuclear balance as stability for the Middle East (see my response to Waltz's FP article, Why Iran Should Get the Bomb, http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/The-Jewish-Problem---From-anti-Judaism-to-anti-Semitism/Why-Iran-Should-Get-the-Bomb-the-argument-For-365432 ). American weakness is not lost on our former regional allies and enemies neither in the region nor beyond. Iran jubilantly parading its captive American seamen soon after signing Obama's JCPOA was just one more intentional humiliation visually presented on the world stage. Whatever possible benefits the Iran nuclear deal may eventually provide the JCPOA clearly describes a tired "superpower" leading an aged and exhausted EU as eager as the past superpower to be rid of the chaos the West created the region over the past two centuries. Without analyzing the limp process which birthed the JCPOA as compared to Iran's voluntary 2003 offer to Bush of "full transparency of [its] nuclear program and withdrawal of support for Hamas and Hezbollah, in exchange for security assurances from the United States and a normalization of diplomatic relations.” It was reported that Iran also offered recognition of Israel. The proposal was reportedly blessed by the Iranian government, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Compare the limp JCPOA to the 2003 offer; consider the images of America’s seamen, hands behind head and on their knees, testament to the region and the world of America itself on its knees before Iran triumphant.Even should Daesh be defeated in the field, terrorism it will not be so in Europe and, eventually, the US. As you write, my friend, Brussels is just the beginning, the opening phase of decades of Islamist terror against the West which is already being described to as the Third World War.My article in response of Isaac’s (A Watershed for America’s Jews, the complete article) is at, http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/The-Jewish-Problem---From-anti-Judaism-to-anti-Semitism/A-Watershed-for-Americas-Jews-the-complete-article-430573