Welcome to 1948

Long War: The parallels between 2011 and 1948 are becoming stronger day by day. The Libya War has narrowed to the city of Misrata,which Gaddafi encircled with a ring of iron just as Joe Stalin encircled Berlin in the Cold War. An airlift is now supplying Misrata as the rebels have pushed Gaddafi's army back far enough to make supply by air feasible. The similarity to the Berlin airlift is striking. And in September the Egyptian and Tunisia elections are looking exactly like the 1948 pivotal Cold War event: the Italian elections where the Communists were outmaneuvered by the CIA and democracy was established in post war Europe.

With the Libya War looking better and better our attention turns to the Egyptian/Tunisian elections and we wonder if the groundwork that occurred before the 1948 Italian election is occurring in North Africa today. Is the CIA on the job?

Imagine you are the CIA, what would you want to see happen in the Egyptian election? The first thing on your wish list is for the Islamic parties to be fractured into a lot of small warring parties, not a single monolithic Muslin Brotherhood. This is indeed happening. Small hardcore and virulent Islamic parties are being started by the hardcore Jihadists that the Egyptian Army is freeing from prison. And just today a moderate Muslim Brotherhood figure seems to be quitting the Brotherhood to start a more moderate Islamic political party, situated to the left (so to speak) of the Brotherhood. This puts the Brotherhood in the middle of the extreme/moderate spectrum of Islamic political parties. It has a lot of competition. I see CIA fingerprints in the plethora of competing Islamic parties in the upcoming Egyptian elections. I think some of these super-soft and super-hard Islamic parties are unwittingly receiving CIA funds and help.

If I am right about this then we have to add a fourth term to our "good guy, bad guy, good bad guy," terminology. The fourth term is "unwitting good bad guy." An unwitting good bad guy would be a hardcore jihadist or moderate Islamic liberal running for the Egyptian parliament while receiving help from the CIA but without knowing it. Such a person would divide the Islamic vote and deprive the Brotherhood of control over the next government of Egypt.

Time will tell if correct spadework is being done in the upcoming North African elections. For the sake of argument let's suppose the CIA is eating its Wheaties and the elections produce results favorable to the USA. The next historical parallel will be the 1949 victory of Mao in the Chinese Civil War. For the sake of the stock market we hope America doesn't make the same mistake in the Long War as Truman made in the Cold War.

Mao winning the Chinese Civil War led directly to the Korean and Vietnam wars. It was the single biggest Cold War screw-up. The screw-up started when Truman disbanded the CIA (then called OSS) in 1945. Right before he disbanded it the CIA had all the agents in pace to deal with Mao in China. All Truman had to do was not dismantle the CIA. That's it, just leave it in existence. It was a titanic mistake. Truman's greatest moment was after two years he restarted the CIA. Those two years of disbandment were very costly.

The parallel today is Obama leaving all the surge troops in place after the 2011 July Afghanistan policy review. If he does that, then he won't be following in Truman's footsteps. In this parallel, Mullah Omar is the equivalent to Chairman Mao. Handing Afghanistan to the Taliban in the form of big and sudden troop withdrawals today will be the equivalent to handing China over to Mao in 1949 by disbanding the CIA in the mid 40s.

The Pentagon is floating the idea in public of a yearly 5000 troop draw-down. This then is the Pentagon's withdrawal timetable: a 20-year long process where the results won't even be noticeable for the first ten years. The Pentagon is not marketing their plan as 20-years long of course. It is saying withdraw 5000 troops in 2012 and 5000 more troops in 2013, and then review the situation. So it is a two year plan, not a 20-year plan, as far as marketing is concerned.

If Obama goes for the 20-year long timetable being marketed as a two year plan, then he will be advancing the cause.