Muslim Brotherhood

[Jones_RE]

I think the value in dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood is the possibility of establishing personal relationships between our foreign service professionals and its influential members. Those ties will make dealing with the MB a lot easier should they come to power - and will provide us with some fair warning of their intentions should they think about committing to a course of violent actions. We can safely ignore their rhetoric, although pointing out that it is painful and embarassing to us. Trying to censor the discussion outright, on rationalist Western terms, won't have any effect.

However, I don't believe that providing financial or material assistance to Hamas (or a Hamas lead Palestinian Authority) is a wise course of action. Hamas is involved in active violence against a long standing US ally. Every dollar we give to them, even if it isn't spent on weapons, frees up another dollar for them *to* spend on weapons. The whole point of money is that it's fungible, after all. Similar logic applies to humanitarian relief - if we're shipping over antibiotics, that's money they're free to spend on high explosives.

We support elections, and a representative Palestinian government. However, that government has decided to make statements and take actions overtly hostile to the United States of America. While declaring war on them isn't in our interests, neither is it in our interests to *give* them weapons with which to clobber us. The Palestinians had a choice between a Fatah lead government that would placate the United States and Israel, and a Hamas lead government that would clear up the endemic corruption in the Palestinian state. That's a crappy choice, but they made it. Continuing to fork over money and aid to Hamas is basically paying them not to hurt us - a strategy that will not succeed. Cutting them off, on the other hand, is treating them as a peer - a fellow nation - and not some helpless bunch of refugees whose words and actions have no meaning for us.

[J.C.]

I see that supporting reform groups is a popular idea, but you must remember that Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic platforms must be used in conjunction to effect change. Assuming the military is out of the question we should progress on a diplomatic, information, and economic front in the region.

As far as groups we might work with, Hamas as an elected entity must be confronted and handled as the elected body of the Palestinian people. We should not take away their funds or use sanctions. Sanctions rarely work and tend to cause insular conditions to setup with in a society. Look at Cuba, Iran, and our ineffectual dealings with Venezuela. Economic pressure by the U.S. will only harden Hamas’ position allowing it to gain an out for lack of progress within the country. However, with money and subtle maneuvering we may be able to get Hamas to establish security, provide jobs, and have a stable government within the West Bank and Golan Heights. These conversely must be followed by reforms by Israel. If we separate the military and political elements of these groups we might see reform in the situation, but because of the networked structure of these groups, they rarely can control all elements with in their networks, requiring substantial political restraint.

Other groups such as Hezbollah might work as with the rise youth groups in Iran pushing for democratic reforms. However, U.S. cooperation with these groups is often a death blow for their leaders. Abbas was substantial hurt in more fundamentalist circles by his perceived partnership with the Bush administration and corruption of Arafat. Any of these actions will have to be back door or through covert contacts. As far as M.B. or Al Qaeda, they are too radical and have to much hate for the U.S. and too widely over arching goals to contend with them. Their might be moderates in the M.B. we could establish contacts with, but I don’t see that as a promising option. As far as hate for Israel and Holocaust denial, that is to wide spread an idea in the M.E. to become to much a factor. Wether we like it or not we will have to move past this to gian any ground in the region, while still ensuring Israels viability.

Lastly, we can not expect any group we support to operate with out a viable economy. Without it, it is like asking a one legged man to run a marathon. Large groups of young men allowed to cluster in mosques and tea shops, without a promising future, educated or not, allows them to sit and think, far too much. Employment with security and an economy to create prosperity is a must for the region. If they don’t have this, no reforms will succeed.