01-Dec-15: For this Washington insider, "successes" with Arafat, Hamas and Iran are but prelude to the ISIS chapter

Malley is third from left in this March 2015 group photo of the 
negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland towards the glorious signing of a 
peace agreement with Iran [Image Source]

Over at the Liberty Unyielding group blog, Commander J.E. Dyer provides some startling analysis today about a new appointment to the influential post in the US administration of "ISIS Czar". This concerns a man who 

favors talking to terrorists, and has urged the world to do just that with the homicidal baby-killers of Hamas.  As a bonus, he made contacts with Hamas himself, something that you would still be under hostile surveillance for by U.S. agencies, if you had done it. And now he’s going to be Obama’s top advisor on ISIS.  Yay! ["Not-the-Onion: Obama appoints Hamas homie as his top advisor on ISIS", November 30, 2015] 

Commander Dyer's personal blog made us aware just a couple of weeks ago of another startling aspect of the White House's approach to the battle to defeat ISIS, namely that

75% of the strike sorties flown against ISIS by our aircraft return to base without bombing anything.  U.S. Central Command reported that in operational statistics months ago, and it was picked up by stateside media as early as May 2015. But there was a focus in May on the lack of immediate tactical intelligence on potential targets: without boots on the ground to direct airborne strikes, the implication was that we couldn’t use air power effectively... [Now it appears] the issue is not so much the lack of tactical intelligence, as the paralyzing fear, in the White House, of collateral damage from dropping bombs under any circumstances. ["Theoptimisticconservative's Blog", November 21, 2015]

That appointment of a "czar" for America's ISIS strategy concerns Robert Malley. An Obama insider for years, he was abruptly dropped as foreign policy adviser in the first Obama campaign (2008) in the wake of revelations about the man's personal contacts with Hamas. Dyer terms that evidence of his "ridiculous unsuitability for a major post with a mainline party candidate". We think that's a spot-on assessment.

Years before, as "Special Assistant to President Clinton, he was a member of the U.S. peace team and helped organize the 2000 Camp David Summit." That total failure, we recall, led directly to the outbreak of the bloody Arafat War (the so-called Second Intifada) launched by the Palestinian Arab leadership just two months later.

His re-emplacement inside the circles of Washington power has been dramatic. In March 2015, he was elevated to Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region. In that capacity, he

put his stamp on the negotiations with Iran in 2015.  (In fact, we are advised that he participated in the celebratory toast, with a bottle of fine Madeira donated from Portugal, enjoyed by lead negotiators John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.  Take that, ISIS!) [Dyer again]

(More about the wine here in the Washington Post.)

From a quick reading (we admit we don't know his work-product well), he has what seems like an idiosyncratic way of looking at the Islamist terrorists of Gaza. Some comments he made about them in the wake of their bloody crushing Fatah to grab control of the Strip betray an astounding degree of openness to happy endings, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He wrote this in 2006:

Hamas' electoral landslide might optimize conditions for its political transition, for victory is likely to inhibit it far more than would have defeat. The more Hamas exercises government responsibility, the less it is likely to revert to violence; the greater its electoral mandate, the lesser its freedom of action... If dealt with wisely, the Islamists' victory could present an opportunity for the United States to promote its core interests without betraying its core principles..." ["Making the Best of Hamas' Victory", Robert Malley via Common Ground website, March 2, 2006]

Knowing what we know about Hama's exercise of "government responsibility", and what this has brought the region and especially Palestinian Arab children, we're wondering if we somehow missed the retraction and apology that Malley published - somewhere.

And did we mention that, in Wikipedia's words, he's "involved in the J Street project"?

And now he gets to be involved in providing ISIS-directed advice to the Leader of the Free World. That's really worrying.