Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Okay.  Now that it’s clear that Obama has screwed up again, and that Gadaffi is, in fact, strong enough to defeat his opponents and stay in power, what does America do next?  We all know why the French pushed for this war, because they’re the only Western power with zero oil contracts in that country.  But why should we, who have been treated well by Libya, alienate the family that awarded us these contracts and who will clearly emerge victorious in this battle between war lords? 

As I’ve written before, I have worked with the Gaddafi family for the better part of ten years, and if America could find a graceful exit to this quagmire, I have no doubt that the family would be willing to forgive Obama’s betrayal and re-embrace us as brothers.  I mean, what message does it send to our friends and enemies that of all the countries we could have attacked, we chose Libya, which not even six years ago renounced terrorism and publicly came over to our side?

I listened to the President’s speech, so I understand his supposed rationale for entering this conflict.  We needed to make an example out of someone to keep the region from going completely haywire, so we chose a leader that has no friends and a landscape that is flat, non-urban and without trees so a no fly zone could actually make a difference.  In other words, sure, we’ll stop genocide but only if the perpetrator is friendless and lives in an open desert.  What kind of message is that to be sending to our allies, adversaries and the young people of this planet? That when America needs a scapegoat, it chooses a friend, someone who opened his fields to our oil companies and joined us in the war against Al-Qaeda. If you’re going to sacrifice someone, I say, make it someone who resisted you, like Syria or Iran, as a lesson to others.

Let me reiterate who the opposition in Libya is; Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.  And to my African-American brothers and sisters, let us not forget that many of Gaddafi’s best fighters are black Africans.  It is the opposition that is arbitrarily killing black Africans under the pretense that they are on the side of Gaddafi. 

And the most important point I leave for last:  Gaddafi is going to win (unless we commit boots to the ground, which is not going to happen), which means he’ll continue sitting on enough oil and capital to make a real difference to our struggling economy.   Just think about it: Instead of closing fire houses and libraries, we could be opening new businesses and expanding employment. 

As those of you who read my column know, I have developed a particularly close relationship with Al Saadi-Gaddafi over the years, and he has reassured me that if America tacitly resists the French and allows Gaddafi to retain his power, “no grudge will be held.  The opposite, as a gesture of gratitude, we will continue to invest our petro dollars in your country.  As any economist will tell you, in ten years time, SWF holdings (Sovereign Wealth Funds, read: Arab oil money) will equal the entire American GDP.  That 33 billion that your government seized is nothing, less troublesome than a mosquito bite.  One of my brothers, who shall remain nameless, could go through that in a weekend.  So as America’s infrastructure and cities crumble, please know that you can have a friend in the Libyan people, if you so choose. We’d be more than happy to help you pay your firefighters and keep your libraries open.  How much would that cost?  Less than your president is spending dropping bombs on innocent people, camels and livestock.  Like I’m known to say, look to the future, not the past.  The French are the past.  SWF’s are the future.  So I beseech you, don’t let those back-stabbing French cowards, who instigated this war for purely economic reasons, as they’re the only country without current oil contracts in our country, push you into a conflict that is clearly against your national interest.  I love America.  I have been there many times.  And not just to Los Angeles and Miami.  To Kentucky even, where one of my brothers owns a racetrack.  Even here in Libya, I watch Entourage and my new favorite, Boardwalk Empire.   And because I feel to the American people like I do a brother, I offer you the chance to change your bet and pick the horse that we all know, in the end, will win.”

I’m not saying I agree with every word uttered by my former client, but in the interest of saving our once great country from a humiliating and crushing debacle, I think we should at least listen to what this self-proclaimed lover of America has to say.

Hats off to my old protege James O’Keefe for blowing the lid off of NPR’s cozy relationship with terrorists, latte drinkers and the pointy-headed liberal elites.  As a result of James’ undercover sting, it looks like Vivian Schiller and NPR’s glory days sucking at the trough of government largess are finally done, and the budget deficit now can be balanced.  I think the world deserves to know, though, that your motives were as personal as they were political, and for that I am proud of you.

It was just over a year ago, when you congratulated me on the overwhelming critical success of my book (#3 on the Washington Monthly’s top 8 books of the year), I distinctly remember the long walk we took near the reflecting pool when I cursed NPR and that perpetually befuddled Terry Gross for not doing a proper book interview with me.  I mused at the time that it could be because of an ill-fated encounter I’d had with NPR’s Vivian Schiller near the firepit at the Four-Seasons in Foggy Bottom.  (We were two attractive consenting Washington adults, so how could she take such umbrage for me wanting to split the bar tab, after what had just transpired in the coat check room?)  But you had my back, James, I can see it now.  “That harpy will rue the day she messed with Martin Eisenstadt!” you told me, and I must say, my heart filled with pride.  Like with many of my former interns over the years, perhaps I’d been too hard on you and not given you enough credit for your long-term loyalty.

I know over the years I’ve cringed occasionally that you were succeeding with the very tactics I once taught you, and that you arguably have been riding on my coattails since I first recruited you out of Rutgers.  Yes, I know that for tax reasons we officially had you on the books working at the so-called “Leadership Institute” in Arlington, Virginia, and I thank them for their paperwork support.  But anyone who played in Washington’s Think Tank Softball League knows full well that LI could never mount a full team and that you played (quite admirably) as our third baseman for at least a full season. (I even penned a chapter about it in my book, called “When Think Tanks Play Softball…“, and Vivian’s beloved NPR did a piece about the League but conspicuously didn’t mention Team Harding - further proof of her vendetta against me.)

It was in our post-game soirees in particular that I remember having long conversations with you about how gullible the left-wing media is, and how easy it is to set up phony websites and shoot hidden video.  In fact, I specifically recall telling you how easy it would be to entrap the community organizers at ACORN, and that I had already done such a video that was incorporated into a BBC documentary.  My loyal readers will recall this video we posted over a year ago showing very specifically how you’ve used my techniques.  Naturally, I was a bit too conflicted at the time to fully reveal the nature of our relationship, but I think the video speaks for itself:

But again, now that you’ve taken down one of my old adversaries, I am forever grateful to you, James, and wish you the best as you continue to further refine the lessons I’ve taught you.

In an interview in the U.K., my dear friend and sometimes nemesis Sarah Palin denies the “rumors” that she didn’t know that Africa is a continent.  Now I know you can be a tad touchy and uncomfortable when discussing matters pertaining to intelligence, grammar and/or education, but Sarah, that wasn’t a “rumor”, at least as defined by the Webster dictionary.  There, “rumor” is defined as “talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discerning source.”  Well, here there clearly was a discerning source and his name is Carl Cameron of FOX and he even expressed his “sourciness” on TV.   Behold the clip (at the bottom).

So just to be precise, a trait even your foes respect in you, what you call a rumor was actually a “leak” from one or more McCain insiders (who saw you up close and spent significant time with you) to Carl Cameron, hardly a liberal apologist.  As the “insider” credited with making that leak, I thought I would set the record straight.   And if you doubt me, I even wrote a book about it which you’re more than welcome to purchase on Amazon.

It is a dangerous precedent for the United States of America to support civil uprisings against shrewd and heavily-armed, secular governments that side with us in the War against Terror.  And who am I to make such a bold statement?  I was a foreign poilcy advisor to John McCain, and I have intimately known members of the Gaddafi family for more than a decade now.  I was even mentioned in Wikileaks.    

And I quote, “A friend of Al Saadi el-Gaddafi, Martin Eisenstadt, a Washington-based consultant and campaign advisor, arrived in Tripoli Airport in the same plane as the playboy, football-playing son.  Apparently, they met through a Russian oligarch, at least according to Eisenstadt, after he’d guzzled four straight vodkas at the embassy bar.  What exactly Eisenstadt’s role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber was we cannot gauge.  But it does appear that al-Saadi trusts and depends on him.”

Granted, there are elements in this cable I should take umbrage, if not issue, with, like the implication that Al Saadi is a skirt chaser when, in fact, the opposite is true.  It’s the women who seek him out.  That just comes along with being a professional athlete, something we in America should have no problem with.  Are our NBA players any different?  In person, Al Saadi is actually humble and giving and beloved by the people.  A real mentsch, just so you know.       

So why have we chosen to isolate Libya as a pariah state?  You don’t think the Clinton, Bush and Pelosi families also enjoy decadent lives, just like the Gaddafi offspring?  I would venture to say that our oligarchs own and spend even more.  So what are we fussing about?  This is America.  We believe in capitalism, remember. I mean, what do you think would happen if Tea Partiers seized the Midwest or African-Americans killed the white sheriffs and took over the South?  We too would retaliate and subdue the rebel forces by any means necessary.

So let’s not get our panties too much in a bunch here and remember that Gaddafi is a wise man, wise enough to stay in power for 41 years, through Cold Wars and hot wars.  I mean, what can be more stable than a regime that’s lasted 41 years?  And he’s truly a genuine friend of the West.  I can attest to that as I have lay beside him in his tent on more than one occasion.  So why is there currently turmoil on the shores of Tripoli?  Because of Al Qaeda.  They are the ones fomenting this uprising for they seek to turn the eastern half of Libya into the next Afghanistan as part of a larger global jihad strategy.  Mark my words.  What the Somali pirates are doing in the Red Sea will now become de rigeur for the Mediterranean.   

That’s why it is more important now than ever to support the current regime in its time of struggle.  Libyans are a proud people who’ve given the world many great things.  For those of you who forget your American history, Tripoli is even lauded in the official Marine Corps hymn.  Which is why I adamantly suggest that Obama is making a historically fatal mistake.  He is picking the wrong side again, I would argue, because of faulty information provided to him by his Trotsky-leaning State Department.  That’s why we at the Harding Institute are so committed to broadening the public debate about this high impact political issue.

At this point, like Charlie Sheen, no matter what the Gaddafis do or say, they will be branded by the liberal, tabloid media as insane or barbaric, when in fact those of us in the know will tell you that the opposite is true.  The Gaddafis are a proud family unit simply trying to prevent terrorist fundamentalists from turning their homeland into the jihad generating incubator of the 21^st century.  And I’m sorry.  The billions of dollars that Western oil and telecommunication companies would lose as a result of undesirables taking over Libya is simply unacceptable given the current challenges facing the global economy. 

So America, I beseech you.  Take a moment to think and breathe.  What is so barbaric about a government defending its sovereignty from secessionists?  And how can we condemn the Gaddafi family for its wealth and its travel?  Do our elites not roll in the same manner?  Do they not stay at expensive hotels.?  Are they not accompanied by bodyguards?  Do they not jet set and throw parties?  So let’s stop judging others and together re-think our Libya policy so we don’t end up painting the whole region with a broad patronizing stroke, but rather judge each uprising separately and with a discerning eye to American interests. 

If interested in sitting down with and/or interviewing Al Saadi el-Gaddafi or even his eminence Muammar himself, please contact my assistant Danny Sadler at dannysadler@hardingintitute.org.