Israel Matzav

Jihad Watch on the Baker Commission

James Baker has a clear sense of what is and what is not relevant. Asked by Senator Lieberman whether Iran might demand, as a price of agreeing to talks with the United States, a promise by the Americans to end its effort to prevent Iran from continuing pell-mell in its nuclear program, Baker replied with a fixer's suave assurance: "That's a very good question, Senator. We would simply make it clear that there is no connection between talking to Iran about Iraq and Iran's nuclear project." (Words not recalled verbatim, but to that effect).

Why, then, is there "no connection" between Iran's nuclear project, and any talks between Iran and the United States about Iraq? Because James Baker says so.

And why is there a necessary connection between the situation in Iraq, and what has come to be known to Bakerites of this world as the "Israeli-'Palestinian'" question, or still worse, becuase of the sinister reification involved, the "Israel/"Palestine" question, and Iraq? Because James Baker says so.

The Royal Fiat, or Firman, of the Texas Fixer. In one case, no connection at all because James Baker asserts no connecton. In the second case, a very important connection, because just like the Hitlerites who saw "the Jewish Question" as connected to everything under the sun, there are those in Washington -- and some of them are named James Baker (head of the Commission, who in his long career, in and out of government, with all his dealings with the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs, never sounded any alarms about Saudi attitudes, Saudi textbooks, Saudi use of oil revenues to fund mosques and madrasas world-wide, and lifted not a finger, in all of his years in and close to power, to push for the slightest effort to lower OPEC oil revenues, that might easily have been achieved beginning at the very beginning of OPEC's existence, or indeed at any time since), and Edward Djerijian (former State Department flunkey and "diplomat" who, in all his years of working in and about the Muslim Middle East, never understood, never felt the need to understand, the nature of Islam), now the head of the modestly-titled James Baker Center for Somethingorother (World Peace? Peace and An End To Poverty? World Peace, An End to Poverty, and Pie in the Sky in the Sweet Bye and Bye? I forget.), and special expert -- called in by Baker himself -- one Raymond Close, the former C.I.A. agent who has been up to his neck in Saudi dealings, at the latest, by 1977, when he resigned as Station Chief in Riyadh to go into business with two Saudis, at least one of them with Saudi intelligence connections, and, even though he was then found involved in the B.C.C.I. scandal, was apparently just fine as an "expert" as far as James Baker was concerned. (Not a single investigative journalist has seen fit to find out why Raymond Close was one of Baker's chosen "experts" for the Iraq Study Group, and it is doubtful that others on the panel knew much of anything.

James Baker doesn't have to explain anything. Iran's nuclear project is irrelevant to policy in Iraq. The Israeli refusal, or quasi-refusal, given Olmert, to speed up the pace of its chosen course of slow suicide through negotiation and surrender to devotees of Al-Hudaibiyya (say, did any Senator ask Baker about the Treaty of Al-Hudiabiyya? They didn't? Why didn't they, do you think? And do you think, if they had, he would have any idea what they were talking about? And do you think, since Baker spent years negotiating with assorted Arabs, traipsing back and forth, for example, to Damascus -- where he let slip information to Hafez al-Assad, in a fit of demonstrating just how much he knew, that led to the seizure and execution of two Israeli spies by the Syrians -- one more triumph of James Baker)--that he's ever cracked Qur'an, Hadith, the biographies of Muhammad, or has the faintest idea of what Muhammad's treaty with the Meccans in 628 A.D. means for Infidels signing treaties with Muslims today?

The hollow man. Leading mostly other hollow men. The kind of people business men like to appoint to their boards, or many boards, so that they can pick up an extra few hundred thousand for a meaningless meeting or two every year -- meaningless, but not quite as malevolent, in their non-influence as smiling potted plants, "dignified" people "worthy of respect" because of their "long experience" and all the rest of it, and therefore entitled to be ridiculously rewarded by others just like them, but here they had a serious task, and they produced a jumble of naive nonsense.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:49 PM