Stray Threads

I sometimes feel that stray threads which unravel from the fabric of civilization tell us more about what is likely to happen than all of the speeches by politicians and all of the stories in the press. Here are a two examples today:

1) In Israel, the army got permission from the government to call us six battalions of reservists to meet the difficult situation on the Syrian and Egyptian borders. It is a minor story, one which would have been totally lost in the shuffle of the news had it not been picked up on Drudge. Even now, no one is focused on it. But what does it mean?

There is no problem for Israel on the Syrian border at the moment. The Syrian army is totally involved in killing civilians across that country and is unlikely to pose any threat to Israel. The border is quiet, as it has been for about thirty years. The Egyptian border is also relatively quiet. There have been sporadic attempts to infiltrate terrorists into Israel from the Sinai, and one of these was successful about seven months ago. Nevertheless, there is no major onslaught of terrorists trying to come into Israel from Egypt. Nevertheless, the public reason for activating the reserves is the border between Israel on the one side and Syrian and Egypt on the other.

Activating the reserves in Israel is no small matter. Six battalions is something like 6000 soldiers who have to leave their jobs and report for duty. Putting this into context, it is the equivalent of the USA calling up 300,000 soldiers from its reserves. It is not a move that is just done without much thought.

So, is this a ruse? Is there some other reason why the soldiers are being called up? Are the Israelis about to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities so that they want to have more soldiers in place when the inevitable attack from Hezbollah and Hamas comes in response? Or, do the Israelis expect that we will shortly see some international moves against the Assad regime which may lead to major problems along the Syrian border? Maybe Israel itself is about to intervene in Syria; it is highly unlikely, but not impossible. Maybe Israel has intelligence that Iran is going to unleash one of its proxies to attack Israel to take world attention from the slaughter in Syria.

We cannot know which, if any, of these scenarios is the correct one. We do know, however, that something important is happening and we need to pay attention. Israel's actions is telling us that something is up.

2) Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is back in the news one day after he left the American embassy in Beijing as part of a deal between the USA and China. According to news reports, Chen either left the embassy because he wanted to remain in China or he learned that had he stayed in the embassy, Chinese officials were planning to beat his wife to death. Chen has either asked again to leave China with his family, or he is settling down in a university town for a peaceful life. American officials either got ironclad assurances from the Chinese that Chen would be allowed to live in peace, or they pushed Chen from the embassy in order not to upset the trip by Hillary Clinton to Beijing which is beginning today. In other words, there is no way of knowing if the American government helped Chen or if it served him up on a silver platter to the Chinese government.

Despite all of the confusion, there are some lessons which can be learned from this matter. First, China remains a totalitarian state. We cannot be swayed by the economic freedom in China. There is no, NO political freedom. Second, if the choice is political security for the rulers or economic growth for the people, China chooses security. In other words, China remains a dangerous adversary of the USA. To use the old cliche, when push comes to shove, China is not our friend. We would do well to remember this.