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| Who is Walid Phares, Trump's Mideast adviser? |
| 2016-11-16 |
| ...Being Trump’s right-hand man for the Middle East is a long way from the Beirut of the 1980s, when Phares trained Lebanese militants in ideological beliefs justifying the war against Lebanon’s Muslim and Druse factions, according to former colleagues who were quoted in an investigative piece published by Mother Jones magazine in 2011 after Phares was named as an adviser by then Republican nominee Mitt Romney. These colleagues said Phares advocated that Lebanon’s Christians work toward creating a separate, independent Christian enclave. The article, to which Phares did not respond, also alleged that he was a close adviser of Samir Geagea, a Lebanese- Christian warlord. Phares did not depart from his hard-line Christian nationalist views even after he moved from Lebanon to the US in 1990 and launched an academic career. He became an American citizen. Seven years later, he tried to lobby the Israeli government to carve out a state for Christians in the security zone Israel maintained in southern Lebanon, despite the fact that Israel had been burned badly when it allied with Lebanese Christians in 1982, that most of zone’s inhabitants were Shiite Muslims and that Israel already had its hands full dealing with an insurgency by Hezbollah. The Christian state could be viable, Phares insisted, with its capital in Marjayoun and a port in Nakoura. It would be a non-Arab state and natural partner of the Jewish state, because the Lebanese Christians are not Arabs, he asserted. Israel, wasn't particularly enthusiastic, but it was then. ...Matthew Duss, director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace sees things differently, however. "Phares is one of a number of close Trump advisers with extremely troubling foreign- policy views which basically mirror those of Islamic extremists: Islam and the West are at war. It’s difficult to overstate how counterproductive it would be for the US to adopt this vision," he said. Looks very productive to me. So, he understands Islam, and his only drawback - his primary loyalty to Maronites not USA. Which is not a problem if Trump keeps it in mind. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #1 Note to JPost - that's Dr Walid Phares. |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2016-11-16 10:52 |