The Middle East
US diplomatic efforts are afoot in the Middle East. What they are intended to achieve is unclear, but the tone is unmistakeable: let’s make a deal. Hillary Clinton is going to Egypt with a bag of money for reconstruction while John Kerry heads for Damascus.
“The secretary will be coming to Cairo on the second of March,” Aboul Gheit said. “We expect lots of commitments from everybody, lots of commitments for reconstruction.” The United States has already contributed nearly $60 million since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza this winter, most of it going to international institutions on the ground in Gaza, including the United Nations and Red Cross. … The US is also eager to show its appreciation to Egypt for working to bring a cease-fire between the different parties and playing a high-profile role in addressing the conflict, according to observers.
No one knows what Kerry will say to Assad, but the press hints at what they may talk about: Hamas and Hezbollah and unspecified ‘other’ militants. By implication they will also talk about Israel, Lebanon and Iraq which is where all these proxies operate. A Reuters report on the Kerry trip describes the coordinated offensive to “engage”:
Kerry met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, Jones said. Syria and the United States are on poor terms because of Damascus’ support for the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Under Bush, Washington withdrew its ambassador in Damascus following the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and accused Syria of allowing Islamist fighters to infiltrate Iraq. Cooperation between Syria and Iran has also angered Washington.
That’s going to change to an extent still unknown. Each of the three shadow participants in this diplomatic dance — Israel, Lebanon and Iraq — the other parties, have recently passed or are nearing political milestones themselves. Israel and and Iraq have just finished crucial elections and Lebanon is heading for one. Each will want something to say about the deals that the Obama administration is preparing to make. Take Israel: they are fed up with diplomacy at the very moment Obama is enamored of it. Despite Netanyahu’s inability to build a coalition government, recent elections in Israel have widely been seen as a ‘shift to the right’. The Washington Post says
Israel’s election this week left doubts over who will become prime minister, but a clear majority of voters supported parties that regard military force, rather than peace talks, as the best way to safeguard the country.
The shift away from politicians who emphasize negotiations with Palestinians and the country’s Arab neighbors means that Israel’s right, after years in the political wilderness, is almost certain to be back in control no matter who forms the next government.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of people rallied to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Rafik Hariri’s assassination at the hands of what many believe to be Assad himself. The LA Times writes, “The rally on the fourth anniversary of the Sunni leader’s assassination came as Lebanese politicians launched campaigns for crucial parliamentary elections, which will pit the nation’s Western-backed coalition against the Hezbollah-led camp supported by Iran and Syria.” What they fear most is a sell-out to Damascus.
Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian leaders called on voters to head en masse to the polls in June, telling the crowds that the election would boil down to a decision between an impartial and sovereign country and a state mired in conflict with neighboring Israel and dominated by regional powers.
The June 7 election “is a crossroads in the life of the democratic Lebanon,” said Saad Hariri, head of the parliamentary majority and son of the leader, who was killed Feb. 14, 2005, by a bomb in central Beirut.
Thus at the very time that Clinton and Kerry are looking to make a deal or at least explore the possibility of one, political elements in both Lebanon and Israel are likely to resist being turned into bargaining chips. On the Gaza front, as if Netanyahu’s election were not enough to give Hillary a headache, domestic politics also served notice that it too had appearances to protect. The Jerusalem Post says that Congressional leaders want assurances that the bag of carrots Hillary is taking with her to Cairo won’t wind up being gnawed by Hamas, which is of course the point of the carrots if Hamas is to be negotiated into anything.
Meanwhile, more than 50 members of the US House of Representatives signed a letter to Clinton calling on her to halt US contributions to the United Nations Relief Works Agency until more stringent reviews show whether any Palestinian terrorists are receiving money from the refugee organization. The letter, co-authored by Steve Rothman (D-New Jersey) and Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), said the representatives support US assistance to Palestinians but want to make sure none of it is reaching Hamas supporters.
The Kerry trip comes two weeks before an international tribunals is scheduled to start proceedings which may indict the Syrian President himself in the Hariri murder. Whatever Assad wants from Kerry, assurances that he — and his near associates — won’t be doing the perp walk is likely to be one of them. Hillary has apparently promised Hariri’s son justice, but what that will mean remains to be seen. As the BBC report went on to say, Syria may have already been given assurances that Assad is off the hook, though that is still a speculation.
On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the murder that changed Lebanon’s history, Saad Hariri, the young leader of the country’s pro-Western Sunni parliamentary majority, received a phone call from Hillary Clinton.
The US secretary of state was ringing to assure him that the new American administration would do everything in its power to bring to justice those who killed his father, Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri….
According to Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, the West has also changed its attitude towards Syria. “In the beginning the UN investigation was clearly geared towards regime change in Syria, and now this is no longer the case,” he said. The aftermath of the car bombing that killed Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005 The killing of Rafik Hariri sparked outrage in Lebanon
“I think now, both in Europe and in the United States, there is a realisation that the Syrian government is here to stay.”
Unlike their predecessors, first President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and now US President Barack Obama have made it clear that they want to engage with Damascus.
Meanwhile looking West to Iraq, ‘other militants’ aside from Hamas and Hezbollah may have been plying their trade among pilgrims hailing, ironically enough, from their partner Iran. But these are expendabe. A recent attack on Shi’ite pilgrams may be the work of Sunni militants with connections to Syria. The VOA writes:
Anbar’s police chief told al-Arabiyah television that the Iraqi suspect, Sadi Nayif, carried out sectarian killings of Iraqi Shi’ites. Al-Qaida in Iraq is a Sunni militant group. The Anbar police official says Nayif recently returned to Iraq from Syria.
Elsewhere, a bomb exploded Sunday in Baghdad’s predominantly Shi’ite Sadr City district, killing one person and wounding 18 others. In other violence, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier and a civilian Sunday in separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul. The U.S. military also says an American soldier was killed Sunday in a bomb attack in southern Iraq.
Still, engagement is in the air. The Saudi King has “sent his son to Damascus to discuss with Syrian President Basher Al-Assad best ways for improving their bilateral ties, which reached low ebb over Lebanon, Iraq and to a lesser extent, Palestine.” And the best way to restore unity, according to Damascus, is to put the Palestinian issue front and center.
“Assad sent a reply message on latest regional events particularly after the Israeli aggression and the importance of Arab solidarity in the face of challenges confronting the Arab nations, particularly in Palestine,” read the statement, carried by government-run Syrian Arab News Agency. The Saudi King told his fellow Arab leaders in Kuwait last month that he was declaring an end to “the recent period of quarrels” and “opening the door of unity.”
All of which brings us back to Hillary’s bag of carrots, Netanyahu and the Lebanese democracy movement again in a full circle. The concessions that Obama and Hillary plan to offer may have the effect of destabilizing rather than calming the region. Whoever gets voted out in diplomacy’s ultimate reality show is sometimes prone to returning in the next episode with machete swinging and guns blazing. Watching developments in the distance of course, is Syria senior partner Iran. Obama hasn’t even begun feeding that beast yet.
Forgive me fodder, for I have sinned. Maybe, maybe not.
“money reconstruction” or “reconstruction money”?
starling,
fixed the typo.
For Damascus the moment of greatest fear of a regime change has clearly passed. The Lebanese democracy movement made its move at a time when Syria trembled at the sight of US troops across the border with Iraq. To some but a lesser extent, the advent of an international tribunal raised the prospect that there would be a price to pay for political assassination in the region. But with the existential threat to Syria clearly removed, it may feel its oats again.
There’s always the danger in “engagement” of accidentally greenlighting further attacks on yourself. After all, if the crown now rests easy on Assad’s head, what’s to prevent him from reneging and saying ‘we lied’?
Funny you should mention Hillary. We all know the story – First Lady, Senator from New York, Secretary of State – none of which would have happened had she not married Bill. The true story of how Bill and Hillary met has not been told, except to me, by an acquaintance from Arkansas, who knew them back in the sweet used to be.
Young Hill, fresh out of school of law
While driving south for pleasure
Did chance to be in Arkansas
Which she thought was a treasure
She thought she’d stay a little while
But not for long, no, mercy
The backwoods didn’t suit her style
But better than New Jercy
She thought she better get a job
A good one would be dandy
She asked a guy whose shirt said Bob
Who said see Bill or Randy
You’ll find them in old Frank’s Saloon
Most evenin’s after dinner
You’ll know them, Randy’s a balloon
While Bill’s a little thinner
She wondered what they did for funs
In woods so deep, my gracious
And stuffed a pair of tiny guns
Into her bra capacious
Inside she found a lookin’ guy
A-grinnin’ and a-leerin’
He fixed her with his wand’rin eye
So graciously endearin’
She said hello and might by chance
You’re either Bill or Randy
I’m both he laughed and we can dance
To good old boy Moe Bandy
They spun the floor, her head awhirl
They danced the floor so lightly
She thought I’m just a college girl
He’s holding me too tightly
And what is more he is for sure
So absolutely charming
I know I’m just the girl du jour
This feeling is alarming
She knew she had to pry him free
She’d have to try the pistols
She hated how he hummed off key
She didn’t like the whistles
She pulled her guns, said you’re too much
I like my men more strangerous
He grinned, said ah could tell by touch
Them mammalia was derringerous
You weren’t all that scared, she said
Are guns in bras so normal
And with a grin he shook his head
Said not when goin’ formal
He said a gal he sometimes saw
Who every woman hates
She always carried in her bra
A pair of 38s
They fell in love right then and there
To everyone a mystery
They pledged their lives they each would share
The rest, they say, is history
The Israeli press and blogs are all saying that Avigdor Lieberman and his party with their 15 seats are out and a coalition between Likud and Kadima with almost everyone from Labor on to the right is in. That would leave just Meretz, Lieberman and the arab parties in opposition. Debka seems to believe it also but that does have to mean that it is untrue. The good news is that such a coalition would be resistant to blackmail by threats of defection. That threat by small partners is the curse of proportional representation coalition governments. The bad news is that such a government may be stable but to broad based to actually accomplish anything. Israel faces hard choices and will need to make decisions, both domestic and in foreign policy, that a compromise government may be unable to make.
Can we get Assad to keep Kerry?
Blast, meant “does that have to mean it is untrue?”
This diplomatic double effort is scary. No good will come of it. F
@ 5. Fat Man
Sadass is a bast’id but not insane. I am sure he’d maintain that Teresa Heinz is certifiably insane and thus has full rights to keep John F****n Kerry.
@ F
Nothing good will come of it. Just pieces incoherently shuffling on the chessboard, followed by consequent misreading of signals. TSWHTF sooner than I thought.
So Hillary’s gonna spend some dough
On gentle people Hamas
I’d rather spend that dough you know
On poor Israeli mamas
Who have to watch their children run
From gentle Hamas rockets
And killers who think it’s just fun
While digging in our pockets
And Kerry’s gonna see Assad
And what will they be talking
About how Georgie Bush was bad
And how the region’s walking
That bright fine line ‘twixt peace and war
And how that makes Ker nervous
My guess is he will only bore
Assad with swiftboat service
It is quite possible that the Obama administration may create new enemies for the United States without losing any of the old enemies, for he who sells out his friends cannot expect to have friends in the future.
Questions abound. Why is John Kerry, who I think has neither an official position nor cabinet post in the current administration, going to Dasmascus instead of, say, VP Biden?
AlJazeera International (the English language service) reported last night that an International Criminal Court indictment for the Sudanese Prime Minister Omar Hassan al-Bashir. http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSN11382183. Could Syrian President Bashir al Assad be worried that he’ll be Bashir #2?
If Assad does feel the ICC breathing down his back, how can Kerry help? Given that the USA (along with China, Russia, and India) have not joined the ICC, what pull would Kerry
have?
FatMan:
That is a beautiful thought…..Ahhh, one can dream, can’t one?
I have had a nagging premonition that I hope for the sake of the world does not come true. The world-wide recession will get far worse, and with the democrats making the wrong foreign policy moves, the planet edges closer to war. Which will put us back to 1938. God help us.
TYPO: that an indictment… [is imminent.]
There was an article, I can’t remember who by, in the WSJ detailing Carter’s approach to the ME question. He wanted the “big bang,” a comprehensive settlement, of everything: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinians, Israel, the whole thing. Coming from the perspective (shared by Obama btw) that Israel’s existence creates war and terrorism, the trick is to negotiate it out of existence.
Sadat was interested in peace with Israel, facing threats internally and on his Sudanese and Libyan borders. He broke, deliberately, with Carter and made his peace. Now Carter was in a bind. He officially sanctioned the deal though he seethed at it.
Now, we have not even a Sadat eager for a side-deal. Hamas and Hezbollah will stop attacking Israel, nor will Iran (the latter for domestic reasons). Syria will not stop holding on to Lebanon nor will it deal with Israel, who in turn will not deal with it either.
Obama can offer all the carrots he wants, he cannot get even a side-deal. He can tell Assad there will be no indictment. What would Assad care one way or another? An indictment is meaningless, only military action removing him is a threat.
Israel is likely to bet on military action, not diplomacy, no matter what Obama says or offers. In fact, Obama’s habit of throwing allies like Eastern Europe or India under the bus means no one in Israel is likely to trust him, his Muslim background and sympathies and pro-Muslim Baker/Power aides aside.
Iran is likely to up it’s hand in the region, and Obama can offer them nothing but abject surrender that would make them happy.
A fool’s errand, by a fool.
This whole thing has the feel of my neighbor’s kids negotiating the sale of MY house while I’m out back grilling burgers.
@Starling: I am trying to figure out that Kerry angle too. I have to confess to a bad gag reflex whenever that *&^%*$ of a #$(*&^
pops up. (Looks like Elroy and Fatman have the same reaction.)
Putting that aside, there almost has to be either some crooked deal in the works or maybe this is Kerry’s reward for being an Obama supporter. Let him pretend to be a star diplomat for a while.
Keep your ear to the ground on this one. If you get any insights, please let us know.
PS Great quote from Thomas Sowell:
“Anybody who has been in the South has heard
of poor white trash. In Teresa Heinz Kerry, we have rich white trash.”
@ 13. Elroy
Sorry, the premonition is mutual. It’s not a question whether it’s coming but when. And the various actors are so busybodied to bring it about quicker.
Rohan: “What can man do against such a reckless hate?”
Trying to explain islamic expansion by polygamy is about like trying to explain Russian expansion by monogamy or American expansion to the Pacific Coast by the same.
As for Biden he may be MIA because he’s drunk.
@ 19. bob
Re Islam and polygamy… not entirely without a merit. But it is just a part of the whole pattern that was at the inception of Islam. It was not the cause, just a symptom of the expansionist, parasitical, warlord lifestyle of the first adherents. But once the pattern got normalized, became a part of the established cultural behavior, it became an underlying factor and it chained the whole society to 7th century behavioral model. A self-perpetuating mechanism that endowed dysfunctional patterns that are prevalent in ME muslim culture to this day. The disparity of “acquisitions” creates a tension in the society, and a sizable chunk of young males have a little chance to express themselves sexually with females. Creates a nice jihad fodder, doesn’t it?
There were other cultures where polygamy was practiced, China until about late 1930 would be one. It was not a polygamy in the real sense, I’d call it a mistressiate, a contract that was on one hand governed by cultural norms and on another by an agreement of parties that entered into it. It was not that common, though, only very rich could afford it, and in these times the ratio of males to females was able to accomodate this arrangement without creating tensions in the society.
Ambassadors, Kerry, Levey, Sanctions, and Peace
Fredric C. Hof’s name was floated in a Kuwaiti paper as the next ambassador to Damascus. Sami Moubayed picked up the story, but soon published a denial from Hof, who explained that he had not been offered the job. Hof said,
“To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of my impending appointment are greatly exaggerated. Indeed, they are false. I have maintained a lifelong habit of not accepting jobs I’ve not been offered, and this one will be no exception.
When I was an American Field Service exchange student in Damascus in 1964 I promised my Syrian friends I’d someday return as Ambassador. Some of them will be disappointed to learn that your report has no basis in fact. Others will be relieved.”
The last sentence of Hof’s denial highlights the struggle now being waged in the halls of the State Department and White House over the selection of the next ambassador to Syria.
His name was probably leaked to the notorious Kuwaiti “source” in order to “burn” Hof’s candidature, as one Syrian official suggested to me. Read this article by Aimee Kligman in the “New York Foreign Policy Examiner” to see how threatening the Hof selection is to some. Not only does Hof speak Arabic, but he lived for almost a year near Shahbandar square in the Mazraa section of Damascus and enjoyed it.
“US diplomatic efforts are afoot in the Middle East. What they are intended to achieve is unclear, but the tone is unmistakable: let’s make a deal. Hillary Clinton is going to Egypt with a bag of money for reconstruction while John Kerry heads for Damascus.” -Wretchard
Hillary will be swindled out of her bag of money while leading Israel into a deceive and delay political trap.
Kerry will be fed a big bowl of taqiyya while being pumped from behind for US military secrets yet, he will probably get another Purple Heart for a sore bunghole. Kerry will also be fleeced for as much money as possible.
The US tax payer will be left holding bag and Israel will be worse for the wear.
Pakistan imposes Islamic law in Taliban stronghold
Suspension of disbelief redux
[Victor Davis Hanson]
On her initial tour abroad, Sec. Clinton announced that she would follow an approach that “values what others have to say”:
“Too often in the recent past, our government has acted reflexively before considering available facts and evidence or hearing the perspectives of others.” And then she promised a policy “neither impulsive nor ideological.”
At some point the unifying, bipartisan Obama team should cease all this ad nauseam “Bush did it” since this perpetual campaign mode, when taken abroad, is not healthy for the country in all too many ways:
1) it assures enemies that their past problems with the U.S. were largely of our own making due to our impulsiveness or ideology, not the fault of their own, or intrinsic differences;
2) it assures allies that there are not so much honest differences in our relationship as much as agreement that Bush et al were toxic (as if Germany otherwise would have fought well in Afghanistan, and now of course will);
3) it has a short shelf life: we are into the second month of the Obama administration and have seen really nothing new abroad other than the “we’re not Bush”;
4) it only sets up more of the same hypocrisy of what we have seen—hubris leading to nemesis—as inevitably in the bad/worse choices to come, Ms. Clinton will find herself often simply continuing existing (Bush) policy, and so like Obama on rendition, FISA the Patriot Act, Iraq, etc. adopt what she trashed;
5) very quickly Team Obama is using up their good will, as the American people are now quite aware of the tired modus operandi—talk of unity, togetherness, bipartisanship, and then trash your predecessor to lower expectations and magnify your own agenda.
The mere thought of Barack Obama and John Kerry in the same room discussing American foreign policy overwhelms my synapses. It makes the very concept of democracy a whimsical farce. It is self evident proof that human beings are not capable of self government.
John Kerry! My God …
One first-season episode of Babylon 5 showed two ambassadors from worlds at war forced to leave the bargaining table. Leaving their assistants at the table, each said to the assistant “Don’t give up the homeworld.”
What will John Kerry say or promise?
Doug,
I agree with VDH that Obama may be stumbling, still, by continuing to frame his administration as the “anti-Bush.” But, the necessity of doing so isn’t hard to guess at.
Just vis the Middle East, allowing an opponent to save face and demonstrating a willingness to engage in cunning deceit are still useful negotiating skills in many parts of the world. But it’ll be necessary to put some steel behind Hill’s and John’s “congeniality front” if Obama wants these deals to last long. And the only “steel” his administration has is the credible military deterrent that Bush modeled in the region.
The message is: If Araby doesn’t get in line and soon, America’s clingers will elect another Republican, and it’ll be harder at a later date for America’s Democrats to obstruct President Palin like they did Bush.
So, as much as it might burn our eardrums and crash our brains, unfortunately, this means we may have to tolerate Obama’s playing-off of Bush’s robust deterrent for many years to come. I can hack it, if it yields results.
We are all Israeli’s now. Never give up.
BTW, what bothers VDH (and most conservatives) appears to be the crass cynicism that the Democrats demonstrate by “playing-off’ of Bush.
Even leaving the merits of the tactic off to one side, the ploy certainly ought to rankle: at its best, it is tacky, urban, political cynicism operating on an international scale. At its worst, the Democrats have been actively mediating Araby’s grievances in our nation’s legislature and media-markets, and at a time of war.
The most unseemly appearance is, in so far as this “mediation” has contributed to civilian’s and American soldiers’ death-tolls in the theatre, Obama’s party is vandalistic and perhaps even treasonous.
This is just one of the reason’s Obama’d better not overplay his hand, here – and I think Axelrod knows this.
One may want, as usual, to consider the money path. Massive amounts of apparently laundered Arab money flowed into the Obama coffers. What was the mother lode source for all of those anonymous small donations to the Obama compaign. Maybe Soros? Maybe oil money? Is there a difference? All of the sources want to squeeze Israel, preferably via soft power strangulation.
Large donations continue to flow into Clinton coffers and Carter coffers. This money does not buy results. But the money creates the incentive of future money, which is a powerful incentive for current policy.
Talk now, continue to collect later. Collect now and later and then continue to exercise the great be-all and end-all, political power.
Steveaz: VDH calls himself a Democrat. That said, I don’t think he supported Obama.
Mark #30: The money path is very important, and overlooked by most pundits. But the Clintons and Obamas are NOT working together to generate funds for a common goal, so stand by for a falling out. As for Hillary carrying $$$ to Egypt, that country is already #1 or #2 in US foreign assistance, or was when I was in the service. What’s the absorptive capacity of that country and its leaders? I know, the answer is generally thought to be “infinite,” but after a while increased generosity does not buy much.
F
If Israel finds the cajones to a do a number on Iran, Syria and Hiz b’ allah, what will our Deceiver in Chief do?
Would Obama attack Israel?
How much leverage does Obama as President have over Israel?
Why would the US government sell out a democratic country in favor of a terrorist dictator? The only reason I can think of is liberals just prefer evil. It’s more authentic to them.
Hey F,
If I was Bush, I’d actually be encouraging Obama to point at me in international forums as if I’m America’s vicious pit-bull with the implication being America’ll unleash me on ‘em again if they don’t behave. That’s what good deterrence is for.
Continuing to badmouth me domestically on the economy, though, may be another thing. Still, when the economic stats come out again in eighteen months, the comparison with Bush’s first eighteen months may not be so complimentary to Obama anymore, and he’ll probably stop doing it then.
I wasn’t aware of VDH’s political affiliation – and I’m not sure it’d have made much difference to me. He is one of my favorite publishing “Hoovers.” His feet are firmly planted in Helenism and ancient military history, and, because he is an agrarian, I associate his underlying themes with the American Naturalist’s ones, such as their aversion to catastrophism and a skepticism of modern trends.
He’s a sturdy guy, a PJM’er, and I read him often.
Why would the US government sell out a democratic country in favor of a terrorist dictator? The only reason I can think of is liberals just prefer evil. It’s more authentic to them.
Basically these people live in bubbles and cannot imagine that anybody who wields any power is not just like them. In other words, they can be bought off so they think that everyone else can too. The idea that there are people with whom no compromises can be made is inconceivable to them.
There are some situations where they can be no deals. If someone wishes to rape your daughter there is no middle ground; there are no compromises possible as to what particular acts he can do or for how long. Unfortunately most of our political class is incapable of understanding such a concept except in situations where their own political careers are in peril.
Whoops—in #35 I meant to say:
There are some situations where there can be no deals.
Is this World Typo Day?
I agree with Tcobb – they really do live in some kind of bizarre, paradoxical shared solipsism. I’ve been trying to gently point out certain things to my friends, every one of whom is a lefty, consciously or unconsciously, over the years, and especially lately the attitude – without default Bush hysteria to fall back on – is *yes yes don’t tell me about that I don’t want to know about it I like my head to be ordered this way, thank you, otherwise how could i watch the E! channel and 60 Minutes and be friends with my friends – thank you very much have a nice day.*
They literally do not want to know anything else. *This* is their “culture,” which they take for Culture itself. Honestly, it really is pathetic. But it’s important to remember that it’s much, much pathetic than it is malevolent, really. Of course the effect is not terribly different, but you know what I mean. These people are just f-cking idiots.
The acid test will be when Susan Powers’ plan to insert the US military into “occupied Palestine” moves froward. The military will not mutiny whatever they think and Obama knows it. Will the Americans open fire on the Israelis? Will the Israelis open fire on the Americans? The anti-Semitic and anti-American and anti-military convergence are having a wet dream imagining the possibilities.
*more pathetic than it is malevolent
By the way, did anyone else catch Bob Baer’s little vignette on the CBS Sunday Morning show? What a ludicrous person he is – why are we burdened with these “go-to” guys, and all these goddam speechwriters like Buchanan and Matthews and whomever. What mediocrities govern the US imagination; it is pathetic.
Anyway Baer, who was a 23 year covert operative for CIA in the Middle East, beginning in Beirut, says the only way forward in the Middle East is normalize relations with Iran, acknowledge its self-image as rightful regional hegemon, and incorporate it into the community of nations. We should acknowledge the “Persian Superpower.”
Holy crap. A gas-station country co-opted by a retrograde Islamo-Leninist junta responsible for almost all terrorism-by-proxy in the region, implementing Russian technology – this is a superpower? Why – because it has “70 million people,” as if that means a goddamn thing? The CIA’s public image is disgusting. Who are these people who think it’s so brave to walk into a camp of barbarians with Viagra in one hand and $50 million in the other? Oh wow, what artfulness that must require, what courage. And *this* horesh-t is what we get for it!? At least the KGB could co-opt countries – and get no one to want to do anything about it. What can we do, besides subvert our own natural patriotic instincts? Horrible.
America going Nazi on the Israelis would detonate the entire middle east.
It would tear up all of our international credibility and cost us a couple of fleets.
Yeah, that’s a tranzis wet dream, alright.
Remember Biden’s famous dictum that Obama will be tested within the first six months?
No way is the gaff master to be sent on a mission.
He doesn’t want to be part of the fiasco…
And Barry doesn’t want to send him…
Now would be a good time for people like Rudy, Koch,lieberamn, et al. to start taking Powers to task in the media and plainly spell out the potentialities her notions would bring.’
might just derail powers long enough.
Kerry has been double-crossing USA for so long now that you have to wonder what the hell is the matter with us.
Obama’s whole campaign was based on a pose of all-healing, partisan-transcending, activist-rewarding, big-business-punishing not-Bushism. It was preceded by an unprecedented six-year negative campaign directed against the Bush administration by the MSM, which arguably created the Obama candidacy out of nothing but PC and glibidity. Of course the new admin is cementing its victory by continuing the antiBush warcries (and massively bribing its base with our hard-earned money).
Unfortunately, the Middle East is shaping up to be the place where antiBushism by this administration morphs into very dangerous and powerful antiAmericanism, particularly in the places where ‘a deal’ is struck by massive giveaways of safeguards created by Bush policies. It will still take those chickens some time to come home to roost, however, since the MSM itself would have to be the means of educating the public in general about the drawbacks and dangers – and the MSM is still absolutely devoted to Obama’s political success.
Any deal with Syria might be mostly about Iraq, not about Israel. Syria might agree to recognize and normalize relations with the Iraqi Government and to suppress anti-Iraq operations based in Syria.
Obama might be trying to make a similar, secret deal also with Iran.
Then Obama can withdraw all US forces from Iraq in 16 months and declare victory as a strategic genius.
What would Obama offer to Syria and to Iran for such a deal?
I think it’s possible Obama might get a very good deal for the USA and not a horrible deal for Israel or Lebanon. Syria and Iran both might be ready to improve their political relations and economic cooperation with the USA.
Playing against American diplomacy is how you make your bones in Iran. It’s always been so.
Syria can’t do anything to upset her pimp: Iran.
Mike, of course that’s the entire premise of the initiative. what else would it be?
The best VDH quote about this arrogant lot:
“their hubris will call forth their own nemesis”
Unfortunately those of us that dont agree with their approach will be forced to deal with what bane is wrought.
It must be clear to both Syria and Iran that:
* Iraq will not fall apart
* President Obama wants to withdraw all our forces as soon as possible from a reasonably peaceful Iraq.
Syria and Iran could facilitate Obama’s desires for their own advantages. The sooner and more completely that the USA withdraws from Iraq, the better for Syria and Iran.
Then all three of those countries might want to buy lots of US military aircraft.
The Syria-Iraq-Iran region is where a grand deal with the USA is possible and mutually advantageous.
The Palestine-Israel-Lebanon region is where a grand deal is still as impossible as it ever was.
Playing the Good Guy Bad Guy routine is one thing but pissing on your predecessor’s head because he was a hard ass isn’t going to make any fast friends anywhere, particularly in the Middle East. You don’t see the Arabs playing games with the Russians or the Chinese because they would scoff at such bull. If you can not speak with some unity with your own government than you belittle your own cause. Why deal with you when just another 2 to 4 years down the road you’re out on your head. I government with no continuity is not a partner in parlay.
We are constantly falling all over ourselves to make them like us, but even your enemies admire someone who is steadfastly predictable and stable, even in opposition. The question should not be; “why don’t they like us?” but “why do we give a crap?” Negotiating for “everyone’s” interest is a suckers game. What right does the weak have shape it?
It would be a terrible deal for the USA since once we’d reduced below some minimum physical presence/capability, iran/syria could subvert the iraqi system, such as it is, and yet preserve appearances for the sake of a certain notoriously venal US political party and its silly president.
this will likely be the strategy in pakistan/afghanistan too. “you get a deal which will allow you to escape the trap we know you know we are setting, but we will do it in such a way that allows you to benefit politically at home, making it look like a victory for you and for international comity generally. then, we will get to do whatever we want – including, for example, screwing you politically later when it suits our purposes. also, you will kindly pay us at least hundreds of millions of dollars. take it or leave it, schmuck.”
in that way they both get what they want and preserve and strengthen the impression among the lefty and the default-left in the West that their version of reality is correct. that will make The Blow, when it comes, that much more surprising, disorienting and effective.
Taliban Commander’s Death Ends an Afghan Embarrassment
Three months ago, he pulled off one of his most audacious raids, destroying an Afghan Army convoy and killing at least 13 men in a battle that ended only when helicopter gunships arrived to reinforce the 200 besieged Afghan soldiers and police.
But it was not the ambush in and of itself that made Mr. Dastagir famous across Afghanistan.
Two months earlier, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, had personally intervened to release Mr. Dastagir from jail, where he was being held on charges of conspiring with the Taliban.
To many Afghans, the ambush seemed to vividly confirm one of the most biting complaints here: that the corrupt and the criminal often find a way to get out of jail. And it did it in a way that seemed to implicate the highest authority in the land.
The presidents’ aides protested that Mr. Dastagir had been pardoned only because tribal elders had begged for his release and vouched for his future conduct.
Leaving aside that Iran is the main agitator in the region, I agree basically with Mike’s Syria/Iraq analysis, but Annoy Mouse’s and Dan’s calls to caution resonate, too.
John Kerry. Hillary Clinton. Richard Holbrooke. Larry, Moe and Curly. These are the guys that brought us 2001′s North Korean nuclear-fuel deceit, which, once discovered, convinced Congress to approve Bush’s “trust but verify” and multi-party approach to NK.
The depths of this crowd’s gullibility has already been plumbed. It’s really deep.
Oops! The depth…has already been plumbed.
Things are only going to get much worse from here. The only thing that has caught me off guard is the speed with which Obama and his henchmen are proceeding to implement their policies on all fronts. For awhile, prior to his taking office, I thought perhaps he would embrace some pragmatism and centrism. Now, I know that was just a put-on by him and his handlers.
Israel is going to need strong leadership and its people are going to be in for some very trying times. They need to really embrace the reality that their national survival is at stake. They may even have to fire on American troops and if we put troops in the region to enforce a massive land grab by the Palestinians THIS WILL BE THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE THE UNTHINKABLE WILL HAPPEN: ROOTING AGAINST MY OWN COUNTRY!
I pretty much despair of the entire idea of our military rebelling against the President. Cannoneer No. 4 has disabused me of that possibility.
Will we still have a Credible Nuclear Deterrent in 4 years?
Your political deity – Bush Junior – never criticized his saudi owners, during his entire term of misrule. you get what you wish for.
belmont club must attract every arrogant mutt on the east coast. i hope you all get foreclosed, you disgusting wastes of human flesh.
Calling Old Blue:
Petraeus per RedState says that Iran has been training the Taliban for a while.
Fred, you’re not really rooting against your own country, you’re rooting against the traitors who have taken over this country.
Obama is well on his way to royally pissing off Seniors, now he may be pursuing pissing off Jews.
I wonder how the news media would shade the truth on sending troops against Israel. These largely heavily and loyal Democrat constituencies of Seniors and Jews could destroy support for the media and our Dear Leader over time if our Dear Leader continues down this marxist anti
American path.
It ‘s almost as if Obama believes the public has so lost it’s real voting rights and it’s ability to throw out the bums that he ‘s untouchable now.
Sprat,
Just because you cannot understand what is being discussed here doesn’t make us “arrogant mutts”. Your screed does however call into question your intelligence and your manners.
For the record, I live in “flyover country” and I don’t expect any foreclosure proceedings due to my lack of debt.
Now, run along to Mom’s basement and play your games.
Regards,
NP
P.S. Why is it the liberal nitwits cannot engage in a political discussion without sinking to hurling personal insults by the second improperly constructed sentence?
Kerry specializes in this –not just Vietnam (remember his wedding trip [no the one before that private plane crash made tess the widow heinz] to Paris, where he ‘worked in’ a secret meet with the Commie delegation preparing to sign a Paris Peace Accord it had zero intention of respecting. And then there’s the deal he & tom harkin (who is busy now in DC posing behind ‘card check’ podiums –another great idea for America) cut with the central american commies, to not take aid from USSR. He brought back a piece of paper and utterly too obtuse to’ve ever heard of Munich or Chamberlain, waved the piece of paper in front of congress, which then cut off aid the the anti-communist contras. The contras suddenly in mortal danger now, put RR into an awful position, which called on Ollie North, who worked the secret trade awhile before the Dems ‘caught’ it and parlayed it into the Reagan II-busting Iran/Contra Scandal. Ollie no doubt knew it was a Dem set up but did it anyway, only way to save some allies in the jungle.
The piece of paper? Oh, right after congress went out of that session, iirc a few days later, ortega hopped on a Soviet plane and flew to Moscow and had a public loans and cooperation signing ceremony with beamish Leonid.
What did Kerry have to say about it? Oh, boy, he as EVER so peeved, and he said so, too. then he donned his tights and went para sailing.
It ’s almost as if Obama believes the public has so lost it’s real voting rights and it’s ability to throw out the bums that he ’s untouchable now.
Sir:–with his plans to take over the census and his willingness to send Federal money to ACORN to raise the armies of the Dead to vote, the public may soon find that they really don’t have any REAL voting rights. Undercount in the Red states and over-count in the Blue States, and make sure that no dead Democrat is denied their right to vote come election time and the weasels will soon take over the hen house in a rather permanent fashion.
They’re not ‘nitwits’ –they’re Nazis. Nazis are always disgusted by ‘wastes of human flesh’, which with just a little effort could make nice lampshades.
BTW Israelly Cool has a link to an archive spread, out of Russia it seems, of Life Magazine photos of Hitler and the adoring crowds. Damn damn damn.
http://community.livejournal.com/photo_polygon/991878.html
buddy – whattaya think? mere venality or something worse? the record is suggestive but egotism is so succulent…
steavez,
It’s not gullibility, they’re taking bribes.
One of many reasons to feel unhappy about Chavez getting his prize the third time he tried is that it encourages the Democrats wilder dreams of a perpetual revolution in America. It also encourages EU advocates who do not want to take “No” for an answer. You will keep voting until you deliver the correct answer, after which voting will become a compulsory but meaningless ritual.
LotM/64 –kremlin has been rehabbing Stalin for nearly a decade –he now wins popularity polls among schoolkids. check it out. Nazis marched in Dresden just a few days ago, lots of ‘em –big crowd, police said 10,000 which means 20,000. Nazism never died –it went dormant where WWII burned hottest, but infected Islam soon broke out with the boils, the jihad. People don’t see it because the ‘national’ part is now ‘one world’. i think its the Beast, the Thing that says human life is meaningless –the ancient Evil that all the religions developed to fight against, with the idea that human life CAN have meaning but only if we make it so.
dan/65: neither, strictly –more an over-ambitious, not-so-bright, attention-needy, character-deficient tool. look at the Tides Foundation and associations. publically known associations.
@buddy larsen,
Well said. Take the time and go through the images, the horror of it is how normal they all look. Sure they are addicted to funny uniforms and big flags but that could be a High school rally. These aren’t slavering creatures from under a rock. Some of the aids, Goebbels for example, have a peculiar look but most seem very focused calm and normal. Hitler listens respectfully to people and charms the ladies. These aren’t skinhead sadists on parade, except that we know that they were.
Jimmy Carter must be pissed –after giving away the Panama Canal and jump-starting Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, he still can’t sell a tee shirt, while that damn Che sells million of ‘em and he hardly did shit except execute the fifty thousand Cubans who could read before they got the books burned.
@69 LotM
It has been called “the banality of evil”.
“All there is to know about Adolf Eichmann”
by Leonard Cohen
EYES – Medium
HAIR – Medium
WEIGHT – Medium
HEIGHT – Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES – None
NUMBER OF FINGERS – Ten
NUMBER OF TOES – Ten
INTELLIGENCE – Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
2×4: Squint you eyes and they look like Democrats, particularly on the grandstands.
Sure matches up with the banality part.
I said this a year ago and I will say it again:
It all comes down to the character of the American people. Are we the same people that we were?
So the issues are:
1) Can they understand what is happening?
2) Do they want to do what is necessary?
3) Will they do what is necessary?
I hate to admit it, but I have no answer at this point one way or another to these questions.
Just a handful of years ago we were still fighting the Cold War. just 12 years ago the nation was solidly behind welfare reform.
Were these struggles in vain?
We have never had so many of our elites, so many of our institutions lined up to destroy the nation before. We have never had our “betters” so full of hatred for teir own civilization. We have never had so many people in power across institutions so irrational. And they are irrational.
We have had the most amazing economic run in history the last 30 years and yet people are acting like we have just lived through the Wiemar Republic. They are pushing Labor Unions, for Pete’s sake, an notion that died years ago and has been disproven and cast aside for generations in most sectors.
They are out in the open with their corruption.
I have never seen this before.
The fact that the Democrats have such open contempt for public opinion send chills down my spine.
And yet there is no outcry.
My only hope is the sure knowledge that the people that went oer the line to elect Obama did not waht this hard lft turn. I know that that does not matter when the election process has been completely corrupted, but it is about the onlything I can hold onto.
We have neverinsit
I wish I could understand why it is that America’s interests seem to be equated to Israel’s interests for so many.
I really have a hard time with why so much American time and money go towards supporting a country that has virtually no strategic value to America. In fact, for all the grief America gets for supporting Israel, it feel like it has negative strategic value.
Sometimes I wonder, if people had the chance for a do-over on the Israel thing would the do it again? Maybe they would say — “A new Israel in Palestine? Nah, that’s a crappy idea. That’s a lousy neighborhood. No water. No resources. Bad neighbors. And those Arabs, always fighting… Let’s look elsewhere, Menachem.”
@twobyfour,
My nom de plume is from Hannah Arendt, who invented the phrase.
Contrast the Nazis with the Islamists. The Germans used the scary images to an extent, to whip up and unify the crowd, to emphasize the reduction of the individual to a totalitarian ideal. Robert Hughes pointed out that the same tricks are used in Nuremberg and Mussolini’s EUR and Lincoln Center in New York. Hopefully for the last that effect will be reduced after the current renovation. However on the whole the Germans stressed retaining an appearance of normalcy. They held off even going to a full economic mobilization. It is possible that if the war had lasted longer or the Soviet Union had collapsed that the wilder and more medieval fantasy aspects of the regime would have become more visibly dominant.
The Islamists have the formula backwards. First they stress their unworldly separation from normal society. Even when resident in Western countries they make a point of dressing in the beards, baggy trousers and loose vests that mark a hard core Al Qaedist, and which are rare among men in most moslem countries, as the burkha was rare until recently among most moslem women. It is true however that even at its origins Islam distorted its adherents social relations so as to isolate them and control them. The isolation of women also advanced that goal.
Now this is not unique to Islam. Other groups, for example, Hasidic Jews, the military and the police, also use ritual and costuming to identify and control members of the group. However what any resident of NY knows is that members of the Hasidim and other distinctive minority groups make a point of interacting with the greater host community in a decidedly productive and positive way that imposes the minimum of inconvenience on members of other communities with whom they deal. Even police when off duty do not seek to impose on others.
For Islamists the goal is quit different. They seek to dominate and coerce the submission of others to the will of their group. So they absorbed all of the supremacist ideology from the fascists and the glorification of violence without any of the sense of a need to pay tribute to forms of traditional bourgeois courtesy.
I normally avoid the newspapers, as I do not feel like subsidizing the Democratic Party. However, when we went out to lunch today, the front page on the Denver Post referred to a doubling of car registration fees [the Democrats got our Taxpayer Bill of Rights suspended for a few years, so if it moves, it will be taxed]. I got the paper, and when I looked on page 2; there was an article about a joint statement by Holbrooke and Iran about Iran having a role in “stabilizing” Afghanistan.
Time to get our troops out. Hussein Pasha’s regime has just surrendered to the enemy, and any further deaths in Afghanistan are on Obama’s hands.
Subotai Bahadur
69 LoTM
This is the thing — the Nazis were excellent at theatrics. The flags by the hundreds that festooned every rally, the ceremonial “blood flag” consecration, the torchlight processions, the music and parades and purty young Aryan maids & lads, the charismatic leader with the impassioned speeches, the projection of strength and pride ….
Seventy-plus years on, it’s easy to miss how & why it appealed at the time. But appeal it did.
A few weeks ago, while Pittsburgh was enveloped in football mania, I was showing color pictures of the Nuremberg rallies to my film students the other week, to give them some historical background to “Judgment at Nuremberg.” At the sight of all the Nazi flags and mass crowds and cheering hysteria, one of the guys remarked, “It’s like an evil version of a Steelers rally.”
Funny, and yet ….
Would we be complacent to think that just because it didn’t happen here in America, then, means it could never happen in America, ever?
I sometimes ask myself … if it did appear, here, today, what would it look like? What would be the American version of the popular entertainment hook? (snarky comedy sketch?) The American version of the Zeppelin Grandstand? (Greek temple, anyone?) The American version of Horst Wessel Lied?
I don’t really know what it would look like. Except that it would be vewwy, vewwy earnest, frightfully self-regarding, and without a shred of self-irony.
In other words — all Daffy, no Bugs.
BT, for me, i just like the Jewish people. I like their culture, how it has held itself together for five millenniae against the best that tyranny and inhumanity could throw against them. I like how they run their families, with loyalty and respect and a long view up and down the time line. I note that monsters invariably target them, and tho i can’t understand it, it does present a revelation of something permanent about humanity, you have to admit. On a smaller scale, they invent stuff, entertain, help keep society witty and ironic, are by and large too fair and forgiving for their own good, and pay plenty of taxes so other elements of society can get away with demanding less of themselves, should they so wish.
All that said, yes, had modern Israel been set somewhere beside their homeland, we would have less mideast trouble –unless you believe that oil drives the modern world and having such a staunch ally with such a great army in the oil neighborhood has maybe kept the superpowers from launching on each other.
lastly, right or wrong re bad neighborhood, they are there and another holocaust is being revved up. On Nov 4th, it just took a great leap forward. if we turn our back on them and they disappear, we’ll be right behind. for one thing, there’s conscience (oops, we looked the other way again ?), and for another, there may really be a God, and he may get really angry, Finally.
@bogie wheel,
It can happen here. There was a lot of fascistic imagery in play in America during the early 1930′s. Mussolini was very popular for time. See Thomas Wolfe’s “You can’t Go Home Again” especially the “Credo” at the end.
I think the enemy comes to us with the face of innocence and says to us:
“I am your friend.”
I think the enemy deceives us with false words and lying phrases, saying:
“See, I am one of you–I am one of your children, your son, your brother,
and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become–and all because
I am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful I
am–and all because I am one of you–shaped in your way of life, of
thinking, of accomplishment. What I am, I am because I am one of you,
your humble brother and your friend. Behold,” cries Enemy, “the man I am,
the man I have become, the thing I have accomplished–and reflect. Will
you destroy this thing? I assure you that it is the most precious thing
you have. It is yourselves, the projection of each of you, the triumph of
your individual lives, the thing that is rooted in your blood, and native
to your stock, and inherent in the traditions of America. It is the thing
that all of you may hope to be,” says Enemy, “for”–humbly–”am I not
just one of you? Am I not just your brother and your son? Am I not the
living image of what each of you may hope to be, would wish to be, would
desire for his own son? Would you destroy this glorious incarnation of
your own heroic self? If you do, then,” says Enemy, “you destroy
yourselves–you kill the thing that is most gloriously American, and in
so killing, kill yourselves.”
subotai/76; that’s worrying the hell outta me, too. Holbrooke is truly creepy –do a search on his career in Indonesia esp. What is he doing back in this role? What was he doing in Georgia last August, as a private citizen? he was also instrumental in covering up oil-for-food, acting as Soros’s agent in setting up Soros boy Mark Malloch Brown as Kofi Annan’s new CoS (in order to, recall, save Annan’s job). Bad stuff –the best we can hope for is if somehow the global conspiracy has some interest in keeping us the sheeple herd tranquil awhile longer.
@bogie wheel,
I liked teaching, wish I was doing it now. Heck, wish I was doing anything now. There are plenty of books laying out the parallel imageries of the various totalitarians and how they bled over into the democracies. Personally I find the Obama iconography frightening.
Be a sport, give the perceptive Steelers guy an A.
our young have been prepped for that o iconography, by years of an excess of cynicism in the pop culture.
Would we be complacent to think that just because it didn’t happen here in America, then, means it could never happen in America, ever?
If anything, America is more vulnerable to it than many places. For the most part the American people live in a culture in which the government has (by relative standards) had little to do with their lives in terms of micro-management. That is one reason that voter participation is so low. For the most part the government hasn’t affected their lives much at all, so they don’t concern themselves with it much at all.
That soon may change. We live in interesting times.
62. Tcobb:
It ’s almost as if Obama believes the public has so lost it’s real voting rights and it’s ability to throw out the bums that he ’s untouchable now.
Sir:
“–with his plans to take over the census and his willingness to send Federal money to ACORN to raise the armies of the Dead to vote, the public may soon find that they really don’t have any REAL voting rights. Undercount in the Red states and over-count in the Blue States, and make sure that no dead Democrat is denied their right to vote come election time and the weasels will soon take over the hen house in a rather permanent fashion.”
—
This has been my concern since day 1.
No one ever offered a counter-argument when I brought it up.
Can anyone now?
Not me doug, it worry=ies me to no end.
The only other thing I can think of is some sort of “Reichstag event” supplied by his Muslim friends which allows him to declare martial law. One would thing that that would be plan B or C.
(I have not gotten to the point where I am considering knowledge of Alien Invasions, or the Mayan prediction of end of the world in 2012 yet).
And it is not just Obama, it is the whole Democrat political structure that seems to feel that they can just disregard the voter. They are way too detached and confident, ever for them. It is as scary as it is unprecedented.
That is why we need large rallies and soon.
one would thinK
Actually Bob, Islamic expansion through polygamy does indeed explain much. You have a surplus of young men, with no hope for women, and convenient infidels next door ready for conquest and slavery. Indeed long after the balance of power had passed to the West, Muslim raiders seeking slaves and money made war upon Westerners in the Western Med and finally got colonized for their troubles. The instability expresses itself in internal strife, since one in a Muslim land is either the Big Man or a slave. Osama bin Laden’s father had 22 wives and 57 children. It’s like a factory dedicated to producing psychopathic raiders.
Russia and America expanded because they could produce more resources, better technology, better social organization, than the people they conquered. Geronimo was a brave, canny guerilla warfare operator, perhaps the greatest Indian warrior. He was no match for the sheer resources the US Army could throw at him. Which was the result of cultural differences on how family and society was formed.
China’s polygamy created massive turmoil. Little known in the West, the Taipeng Rebellion killed twenty million people. With Muzzle loaders. That’s around the death toll on the Russian Front. With pre-Civil War era firearms. It also made China weak, divided, the plaything of Mongols, Westerners, and whoever wished to conquer them, despite their technical and manpower advantages. It’s telling that though a polygamist himself, Mao enforced monogamy for the masses ruthlessly to prevent what he saw as a major cause of the success of the Communist Rebellion.
Color this under fundamental truth only an Intellectual could fail to grasp it: men won’t die for the approval of a patron, distant ideology, or religion. They WILL kill and die over women and always have, always will.
——-
Regardless there is no deal. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran have bet it all on Israel’s destruction, as has Syria. Lebanon can deal but not deliver. Israeli politics is too divided to deliver the one thing: Israel’s destruction, that would entail a deal.
Obama will throw Israel to the wolves, formally, which only formalizes the process already begun, and is likely to cause Israelis to strike first, in a nuclear manner, at both near and far enemies.
Obama is of course pro-Muslim, as he has reminded everyone, and is widely believed (probably correctly) to be a secret Muslim himself. This probably makes India and Israel both with itchy nuclear trigger fingers, as they are on their own.
SB – “the Denver Post referred to a doubling of car registration fees ”
That is the recovery plan in California too. Double car taxes and fees, increase gas tax and other means of pissing in the soup. The state unions are so powerful they’ll have us shining their boots before it is all done.
Unbelievable.
“our young have been prepped for that o iconography, by years of an excess of cynicism in the pop culture.”
buddy – funny you should mention the cynicism thing. The week before “Judgment at Nuremberg,” we watched “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which almost none of them (out of a class of 29, college undergrads) had seen. They REALLY, REALLY liked it.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on why. Jimmy Stewart is extremely likeable as an actor, and that certainly counts for a lot. But I think the big answer is the optimism (or idealism) of Capra. The film just oozes with decency, faith, neighborliness, family, and the happiest of endings, with nary a snark-shot in sight.
One of the students’ comments damn near broke my heart. He said he kept expecting the increasing pressure on George’s & Mary’s marriage, and George’s perpetual frustration at having his dreams postponed, to eventually lead them to get a divorce, “but maybe that’s just my generation,” he added. I told him that it is indeed his generation but that his/their reaction is to be expected when they’ve grown up in a 50%-divorce-rate culture. Poor kids!
So, yes, they do indeed respond to idealism. In fact I think they are positively starved for it. For a world in which it would never occur to a George & Mary to phone their respective lawyers. Is that the secret of this film’s appeal to young people?
And I will take Capra’s real idealism over the phony, mongering O idealism any day. But will the 20-year-olds know the difference?
bogie: Show them Harvey.
Whiskey, as a practical matter polygamy is much less of a social force and much less of a problem in Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa than you make it out. And the more modern the country, the less significant it is.
The reason, quite simply, has to do with the way in which one manages four wives. Here in the Gulf, only the wealthiest men can have four wives because it requires the maintenance of a separate household for each wife. I can’t read the Koran but my male and female students both assure me that a man can have four wives only if he can treat them equally. That can be interpreted various ways, but what it surely means is that in a material sense that everything tangible given to one wife and children has to given to the others. Think about that for a moment…that’s a definition of hell for anybody but a very wealthy man…and even for him it probably gives pause.
So again, for the average Middle Eastern man in the Gulf countries, including Iran and Iraq, and across North Africa, polygamy is a lot less prevalent than you make it out to be. The state of war with neighboring infidel countries whose wives can be thrown over shoulder and taken back home- that’s not happening anywhere or on a scale that would be necessary to explain the pathologies to which you direct our attention.
Far more important, far more ubiquitous, and far more damaging is the practice of cousin marriage. No need for me to expound upon why– Stanley Kurtz at NRO did three very nice articles on this topic about two years ago. The titles are
Marriage and the Terror War I
Marriage and the Terror War, II
Assimilation Studies
Here’s an excerpt from the last of the three:
“A preference for marriage with cousins characterizes large sections of the Muslim world. In two previous pieces, “Marriage and the Terror War” and “Marriage and the Terror War, Part II,” I’ve argued that the Muslim preference for cousin marriage (along with several associated social practices) helps explain why it has become difficult to reconcile Islamic social life with modernity, why Muslim immigrants in Europe have been slow to assimilate, and ultimately, why we are engaged in a war with Islamic terrorists.”
boghie, i can’t imagine a better way to understand the culture than Turner Classic Movie channel (despite Turner’s name). i’d bet what moved your students most was not script or anything deliberately ‘directed’ onto the screen, but something about the way people reacted, and moved, and held their space –on the screen because the actors were people from an era of bigger people. i dunno, it’s hard to explain –confidence? reminds me tho that nahncee nearby was talking about a friend’s daughter just laid off and worrying, and i had meant of offer the advice to start watching TCM and go to job interviews acting like a girl from the 40s or 50s, and not only would she get the job, she’d probably be running the company soon enough.
Whiskey, interesting bit on China’s polygamy.
Obama will throw Israel to the wolves, formally, which only formalizes the process already begun
I have to mark another prediction of John Titor as correct. I hoped he was making things up.
***
Mongoose, since I mention John Titor, his take on 2012 is that it would be a very unusual event. Specifically he compared it to parting of Red Sea, but I think it was just a concept based on his understanding of the biblical reference.
A world war in comparison with the actual events associated with Exodus would look like a picnic. These events were contained in about 25 years of extreme hardship. The old Hebraic documents stipulate that at the end of this period, only every 50th man, woman or child survived, of all the people that left Egypt. There were places that had no one left alive, two cities in Hindus valley, with canalization and water distributed through plumbing–concepts that were not put in use until the last 180 years, yet they were part of the city’s planning 3,500 years ago–they were burned to a crisp, bricks melted together and vitrified.
I have to hand it to Moses, he tried to find a silver lining, and he was rather successful, choosing the love of life as a guiding principle, while many other cultures resorted to appeasement of forces that they did not understand, through human sacrifices, putting death on the pedestal, as it seemed that was what the gods were after.
Psyche of humanity suffered a heavy trauma. Little did it help that some 800 years later, there was a repeat, albeit not as dramatic in scope and casualties. I don’t think we did recover, yet, these events are imprinted in our genetic memory (or whatever mechanism is used to reach back over millennia), how else I can explain my dreams as a little child, dreams for which I did not have any points of reference in the real world around me?
You will find somewhat generalized description what happened (encompassing both events and merging them) in the Book of Revelation, once you discard some imagery that is used as a device to provide a frame of reference for contemporary readers, and other concepts that don’t fit into these two narratives and may be attempts to reference future events. The leftover core description is fairly on the mark.
The rule used to be that you could tell the difference between children and adults. Adults are easy for a skilled con man to hustle, the more they think that they are wise to the hustle the more likely they are to be the mark. However an adult who has dealt with a variety of people learns to detect something wrong about the fantasist who is not processing the available information the same as everyone else. A child has an untarnished BS detector that protects them for the confidence man but leaves them open to the lunatic who truly believes in himself. Elwood Dowd saw the corruption and falsity of the world and retreated to a childlike simplicity. Fortunately the messiah who’s fantasy he followed came from his own pure heart rather than some Leader’s.
The question with BHO is whether he is a fraud or a lunatic. Are his devotees gullible children retreating into an extended adolescence for a large well meaning rabbit who may be wrong headed but who means well and really believes with them that if you really really believe in hope then you can change the world? Or are his followers cynical small time grifters looking to rip a free ride out of some targeted hate group,such as rich people or Jews, and deservedly doomed to get taken to the cleaners for their sins?
(snip from this excellent American Thinker essay)
*******
“In short, the boys begin to realize that justice and happiness in a community rests upon the moral condition of its citizens. This is what Socrates meant when he said: “The state is man writ large.”
Near the end of the Republic Socrates decides to drive this point home by showing Adeimantus what happens to a regime when its parents and educators neglect the proper moral education of its children. In the course of this chilling illustration Adeimantus comes to discover a dark and ominous secret: without proper moral conditioning a regime’s “defining principle” will be the source of its ultimate destruction. For democracy, that defining principle is freedom. According to Socrates, freedom makes a democracy but freedom also eventually breaks a democracy.
For Socrates, democracy’s “insatiable desire for freedom and neglect of other things” end up putting it “in need of a dictatorship.” The short version of his theory is that the combination of freedom and poor education in a democracy render the citizens incapable of mastering their impulses and deferring gratification. The reckless pursuit of freedom leads the citizens to raze moral barriers, deny traditional authority, and abandon established methods of education. Eventually, this uninhibited quest for personal freedom forces the public to welcome the tyrant. Says Socrates: “Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.”
(end snip)
LotM/93
Both, the gullible children and looking to rip a free ride. In fact, in their minds, there is no contradiction. They have been indoctrinated to see the world as a zero sum game, so if you are successful, to them it means you somehow built it on their backs, exploited them. This “moral” justification can override any type of apparent hipocrisy and they can live with themselves (somewhat unhappily–they never seem to be really satisfied, seeking to take from others to rectify their grievances, while it is all inside). Until a mugging by reality occurs. Some would mature under that pressure, some are hopeless.
@twobyfour,
Last year, before Axelrod packed the caucuses and stole the Democratic nomination for BHO, we all speculated on what Hillary as POTUS would be like. Despite my misgivings, from having met the person, I was often told not to worry since she is so ambitious, corrupt and cynical that she could be relied on to do the right thing when it came to defending America, even if it was for the wrong reasons. My question now is not so much for his followers as for the man himself. Is Obama simply a Red Diaper Baby true believer, as crazy as Dinnerjacket, and able to sweep along the children of the Kossite left and millions of whiskey‘s hysterical women because he really believes that he is the Messiah? Is he a cynical and deeply corrupt tool of the Chicago political machine who, as his memoir indicates, spent his youth practicing how to manipulate and deceive the white society that he despises? If the latter, is he the leader or the lead? Does he write the script or is Soros pulling his strings? We still do not know.
I still think that the “missing Soviet Nukes” ended up in Israeli hands.
Remember, over half of their strategic nuclear arsenal is aimed at Russia.
Buddy@82
It has been my contention that the (other) vari-coloured furless monkees that operate the star making machinery behind the popular songs with may I say, their prehensile feet, did, decades ago, crack open the DSM-iV-TR and reverse engineer pop music.
bogiewheel@77
Best you know. There are newsreels and the front pages of newspapers of the time.
There were hearings, much like “Oil for Food” post war that were dissolved as they prepared to name names.
Here’s a primer.
“Trading With The Enemy” -Charles Higham
There is a clinical name for the personality of Barack Obama, and that is a narcisist.
I suspected as much last fall, and now the man’s attitudes etc. are more out in the open.
So, LoTM, he probably, at some level, DOES believe he is the annointed one to deliver America (and maybe, the world) to a trans-national utopia of economic and racial harmony, and just a big enough jerk to try to do anything necessary to accomplish it.
It’s like so many other man-made utopian fanatasies that litter history. The greatest ‘humanitarians’ that ever lived paved the road to the future with a stack of human corpses.
The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the Purges by Stalin, the Third Reich, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the forced collectivization of China after Mao finally won the Chinese Civil War.
I don’t think that Obama is a ‘monster’, just a man that will make the most idealistic decisions based on his ‘trust’ of those that do not deserve it, and betrayal of those who thought him to be their friend. His own ego will drive him to do things no rational, sane man would do.
Just by reading the Belmont Club, we cannot wall ourselves off from the larger reality around us. That is, the praise, the fawning of the Media, the Celebrity class that falls all over the man and adores him. This feeds the need he has deep inside him that cannot be filled, and will make him do things that will appall us more in the times ahead. In this he is aided by the imbecilic (Pelosi) and the corrupt (Reid), who both believe they will ride out the storm to their own personal profit. Unhappy fools they will be in the end.
They should remember, that as the fable was told, the Ring can only have one master.
I hope that I am wrong and have misread it all, but I fear that I haven’t.
Sprat – I think you are a sore winner….I would be proud to have almost any regular commentor at this Blog be a guest in my home. I would be honored to be able to be their guests. Most are civil, polite, and think before they speak, even when they disagree, unlike most of your allies.
BT – I don’t think america does support israel. I however DO. I support them, because they are willing to survive when everyone around wants them dead. I support them because they will not submit to the fate their enemies desire.
I also will not submit.
Aaron
@907ie,
Don’t make policy based on a hunch like that without reasons. Some of the old Soviet weapons may be lost but where and to who would be a good question. The good news is that for very solid engineering reasons it is extremely unlikely that any Soviet era weapon that has not been maintained and overhauled at a State Weapons factory in Russia, or at an equivalent such as Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos in America, would be functional. The bad news is that it still could be a source of radioactive material for a “dirty bomb” or less likely but potentially for a reengineered fission device. These are inherently dangerous objects and should be kept off the market.
It is very hard to hide such weapons, unless shielded they will be detected and people are looking. So the scheming jihadi cab driver and his cousin the transfer student in engineering can not hide one of these in a garage or storage locker. The most likely source of a “dirty bomb” would be diverted hospital supplies and other radioactive waste. Such a bomb would kill few but would cause wide spread panic and financial disruption. On the third hand, the good news now is that if such a bomb went off on Wall Street, with market conditions as they are, no one might even notice.
LotM, you seem to be under an impression (maybe it is just a way to formulate a question, tho) that the two concepts are somewhat in contradiction. Due to feedback (whiskey’s hysterical females — I’d hesitate to call them women and gushing lefties of various age) he is becoming convinced that he is special. Whether a Messiah, don’t have a faintest, but a Great Leader, yewbetcha. Actually, as time progresses and his rating are on the downward trend, he’d think there is some sort of conspiracy going on because the reaction of 0bots was so… clear. He’d reveal some nasty traits as he’d try to reconcile the disparity. He’s also cynical and deeply corrupt. And a skilled manipulator. But these are just tools, yes, just. That is how he sees it. It is all highly moral in his view, because as a Great Leader, he has to have means of disciplining his underlings.
And yes, at the same time, he is used by certain people. Soros may be something of a front man too. When they picked him, they knew the score as his personality gos. The endeavor has certain inherent risks that he may go rogue if his ego is on the unchecked growth, but it was a tradeoff, it was his personality and manipulative skills that were essential for pulling this whole thing off. All the right components, carte blanche as his bio and stint in the senate goes, and rather a murky circumstances surrounding his birth that would not matter much when election is over and can be yanked into spotlight if something goes awry–a nice blackmail package. What’s not to like?
@E. Nigma,
I think of my fellow Belmontons as being like the memory people in Fahrenheit 451, we keep civilization alive as the darkness gathers. Perhaps I should start a blog called Rivendell.
@aaron,
Thank you Sir, I am ashamed of my housekeeping under the circumstances.
Bogie, you’re right that the young are tired of cynicism and are starved for idealism. You can see this in the last election, in which youth participation went way up. The previous generation, gen X, was cynical and detached. They never voted in large numbers. This generation, however, wants to beleive in something, and to participate in civic life. Unfortunately, they have turned to Obama. The Dems, with their cronies in the mass culture, are better prepared with political theatrics than our side is. We got caught flat footed. Not sure if we will be able to break the hold Obama has on this generation that is now coming of age.
Keep up the good work with your students, keep teaching them true history through films. We need more people like you teaching the young.
@twobyfour,
You might be right but my original thesis was that the gullibility of children and that of adults are incompatible in their objects. If he really is a cynical fraud then the children should have smelt it and rejected him. If he was a true believer then adults should smell something wrong and reject him. Perhaps we have been so infantilized that there really were not enough adults around. Regarding Soros et al I agree, it is rather like a set of Russian dolls. We can speculate on who will come out as the tiny one at the end and yell “Surprise.” If he ever goes rogue on them and tries to act according to his own values, which could be in some scenario in America’s interest but all in all I’d sooner even trust Hillary, then whoever controls the media strings would crush him. Think of “Meet John Doe.”
@ 104. elby
See, there is the thing… When I was a kid, a preschooler, the commie indoctrination started in the earnest. But almost form the beginning, small cracks in the facade appeared. Easily dismissable as inconsequential or a margin of error if I were to translate my concepts as a kid into more formal language. But in time, the cracks got larger and more frequent. By the age 10, a feeling that the reality and ideas don’t match got entrenched, but still a chance that the ideas are correct but reality lags behind was pretty solid in my mind. Two years later the weight shifted towards the doubt. By the age 14, I saw the scam for what it is, in it’s naked ugliness. In fact, a majority of my peers did, I believe, even if bit later in their teens.
As they say, there is nothing that can replace the first hand experience. Some people can model the whole thing in their minds and can get the gauge on it without a direct xperience, but many people can’t. Not only that, but they also missed the history class, whether by their own doing or facilitated by indoctrinators (or educators as they are called).
Afraid history lessons not learned are bound to be repeated. .
LotM/105,
sorry skipped that part. We are not dealing with blacks and whites as human mind and behavior is concerned. Imagine it more like scales of greys, with intersections all over map. In other words, the children have been somewhat corrupted and their detection ability is reduced. The main factors are the the confusion of moral relativity and the spoiled brat factor. In fact, the later may be a point for identification/projection (“he is one of us”)
@bogie wheel,
The movie I used to teach life under Stalinism was Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Inner Circle starring Tom Hulce. It is a true story and a good movie but unfortunately it has not been released on DVD.
Now I would use F. H. Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) which is available in English on DVD. When I was teaching Katarina Witt was very popular. I pointed out that the Stasi had bugged her bed. That being every adolescent’s worst nightmare it ended the debate about the morality of Communism.
I hope that Obama administration could eventually realize that if the United States betrays even one ally in order to gain the approval of our enemies, the effect would undermine America’s future ability to have allies at all. (Possible allies would ask, “…but what if you Americans elect another president such as Obama? You might not betray us, but what about your successor?”)
Diplomatically speaking, any double cross of an ally would put the United States in danger of facing a rout as devastating as the rout of Nationalist Chinese forces in 1949 or Thieu’s order to evacuate the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1975.
President Obama needs to understand that if he clenches his fist toward his domestic opposition while opening his hand to America’s most implacable enemies, he will have shown his hand on who he truly regards as his enemies. President Obama must show that he regards America’s enemies as his own.
LotM,
Hillary would be a lesser evil. I agree. In the short run. She would not overreach. Maybe that would be more insidious in the long run. Slower boiling, so no one would notice they’re being cooked.
@ 109. Alexis
0′s interests are predicated by 2 factors: himself first and his sponsors second. In some cases these interests may coincide with interests of American people, in some cases they may not. That is the scope of it. Nothing convinces me to expect anything else.
One of Pol Pot’s senior officers, Kang Kek Leu, just went on trial in Cambodia. He ran the Tuol Sleng Prison, murder-torture facility, from 1975-1979. One of the deal-makers for old Kang kek Leu is coincidentally in the news himself, though not on trail. That would be John Kerry (who isn’t sure anything bad happened to SE Asia after …well, you know).
2 x 4, I’m afraid you’re right. The young can’t see the cracks in the veneer of socialism. Right now they believe in the potemkin village of socialism presented by the media. You see, europe has socialized medicine and everybody gets free care, while we ugly old capatilists let the poor die in the street. Or some such version. They never find out about the reality of socialized medicine since they aren’t living it here and must rely on the media to tell them about the situation in other countries.
Other elements of socialism that the young will learn the hard way: when they are shut out of jobs. Why do the youth riot in Greece and France? Because they can’t find jobs. Why? because socialist policies make firing people nearly impossible, so there is a great reluctance for new hires. But our young don’t see that. Just the potemkin villages constructed by the media.
I’m afraid we’re about to learn a very hard lesson. I knew the answer ahead of time by studying history, and you knew by living it, but it won’t matter. We’ll have to relearn it, like it or not. The real villains are not the young so much as those in the media and educational establishments that refused to teach them the truth.
OT: http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
RED ALERT: FX Dislocation In Process – Updated (11:47 PM)
8:17 CT
I do not know what is going on here, and I don’t think I want to.
Someone, apparently someone in Asia, wants dollars. A LOT of dollars. There is a forced-liquidation event underway that is massive, it is against all asset classes and it is spreading.
It originated at approximately 7:15 CT this evening and originated out of Asia somewhere. All of the primary currency crosses got hit at once – Euro, Pound, Yen – all weakened dramatically against the dollar and it is still going on. The Asian stock markets got walloped at the same time in coordinated waves of forced selling.
At the same time the US futures markets got nailed as well, down some six handles on the /ES in a near-vertical drop. While this sounds “not that big” to move these markets in a coordinated fashion like this is a trillion-dollar enterprise – this is not some small company that went bankrupt, or even a large company.
There is no news coverage at the present time identifying the source of this but it is not small and contrary to some reports it is not “automatic selling”; this is forced liquidation.
Folks, if this translates into Eastern Europe where there are severe instabilities already brewing literally everything in the financial world could come apart “all at once.”
The worse news is that if this happens Bernanke will have killed us (in the US) by extending those swap lines all over the planet during the last six months. These will become utterly uncollectable and they are massive, in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
To those who are reading this, I hope if you’re in the markets you are prepared for extreme levels of violence. You must expect that the authorities will try to arrest the destruction if they are able, but you must also be prepared for the possibility that we have reached a “critical mass” point beyond which “duck and cover” is the only winning strategy.
Unfortunately.
I hope I’m wrong; this is going to be a long night.
11:47 PM – It appears that FX has settled down although the equity market damage in Asia remains significant in many areas, with South Korea (one potential flashpoint) being off close to 4%. Europe opens soon with spread better info up around 12:15 CT most mornings; if we get through the euro open without the crosses going nuts again this may remain capped. Watch the Euro crosses in particular; if there is an “ignition” sort of event you won’t miss it (a ~500 pip near-vertical move would not surprise, on top of the 150 pips we’ve already taken tonight.) Last update on this for this evening unless something pops up.
#84 Doug:
It ’s almost as if Obama believes the public has so lost it’s real voting rights and it’s ability to throw out the bums that he ’s untouchable now.—TC
“This has been my concern since day 1.
No one ever offered a counter-argument when I brought it up. Can anyone now?”
I can’t. And, I think it is a real danger.
Now, I am astounded at the size of the criminal element that is now occupying the White House. And, I am amazed at how fast Obama wasted the political capital built up over the last 8 years. It makes me want to vomit.
51. Annoy Mouse:
The starting point for all that BS you pointed out, Annoy Mouse, is a coterie of utopian elitists who think they know better than the Founding Fathers, and who disdain and are enraged by any system that empowers normal people and in so doing disempowers the elites.
The most amusing thing to me is that the poison in western culture seems to have largely originated in the Great Terror following the overthrow of the French monarchy.
And now that social disease has infected the last redoubt of western civilisation.
2×4:
I basically agree with what you say.
When the interests of BHO and his sponsors happen to coincide with the interests of the American people, they may do their job. A stopped clock is correct twice a day.
The question is also whether BHO can fake it when it comes to promoting a strong American foreign policy whenever those interests don’t coincide. I have my doubts that BHO can fake sincerity for very long. If BHO can’t fake his patriotism, problems lie ahead even for him. Nobody stays lucky forever.
68. buddy larsen:
Well put, Buddy.
These people devalue. Hillary is in the northeast Asia and the markets are breaking bad, as per twoby’s memo above. She’s saying “peace and harmony” which sound sinister as hell and people are just selling. Obama events drop markets. Geithner events drop markets. The things we need to do are clear now but these people are throwing layers and layers of complexity and subterfuge over them. confidence is all that can stop the slide and the root word of confidence is “confide” –and these people are the all time champions of the theory of the very opposite, of control by never confiding. the more they ‘fix’ the more needs fixing. Are they this stupid, or are they doing exactly what they intend to do, wipe out wealth like Pol Pot wiped out people?
well, anyway, spread this around if you have the spirit.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4069761537893819675&hl=en
From twoby’s forex link:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/799-Stupidity-In-Washington-Continues.html
This is roughly Wilbur Ross’s plan –except that Ross says split that balloon three ways, both side of the contract plus the workout lender, Treasury. gives all three a stake in the future of the transaction. if something like this had been done months ago, trillions in lost value would not have happened. Millions of lives not crushed. when i think it may all have been hung up in order that the Democrats cement themselves into control of the world, it makes me vomit too.
@ Lotm
“I think of my fellow Belmontons as being like the memory people in Fahrenheit 451, we keep civilization alive as the darkness gathers.”
Been thinking the exact same thing the last few days, including the specific movie reference…
A panicked stampede of society’s conservative thinkers and producers would be rather unhelpful. Whatever comes, it is essential that we do not lose our wits (sp?). We and others like us are the sheepdogs, and we must stand at the ready until the opportunity to turn this mess around finally comes. Our families, our country, the military that ensures our peace, and yes even the Founders deserve our very best efforts.
While I wait, I refuse to indulge my sorrow by dwelling on it – there is no room for such sentiments as we prepare to cleanup the approaching train wreck.
(… God saves us.)
Triton’sPolarSheepdog
Love the color Nazi pics.
What a bunch of theatrical, posturing little leather boys.
In the end who did these militaristic master race types ever beat? The Czechs, the Poles (with Russian help), Holland, Luxembourg, Greece, Belgium and then their pinnacle, France.
Not really a tough neighbourhood when you think about it.
Then they tangled with two real countries, either of which was capable of beating them by itself, and they came unstuck again.
Started two world wars in 25 years and lost to essentially the same people both times. They think they’re smart…hmmmmmm
Funny how they think that pissy little technology park is a real country if we leave them alone for too long.
But now times have changed and they can’t even reproduce. Problem solved!
At least that version of fascism no longer counts.
But the elitist utopian disease now infects the Anglosphere and who is to defeat it this time?
74. BT:
“I wish I could understand why it is that America’s interests seem to be equated to Israel’s interests for so many.”
1. Democracy
2. The rule of law
3. Adherence to the basic tenets of Judaeo-Christian culture.
Look around Israel’s neighborhood. What do you see?
Think about the recent Iraqi election. Think what is has done to the balance of power in the maddest part of the world.
Don’t you get it?
The Anglosphere defeated the three great fascist waves of the 20th century.
Can you see no value in that?
Did better men than you die in vain?
Do you see nothing worth defending?
97. 907ie:
What Israeli delivery systems have the range to nuke Russia???
This is what to do and the markets boom 10% on the day the gov’t says so.
While I wait, I refuse to indulge my sorrow by dwelling on it – there is no room for such sentiments as we prepare to cleanup the approaching train wreck.
Good thought, Triton. ole sheepdawg you.
Bob Murphy, i agree –interest shmenterests, such calculations are for the parlor, for winning a billiards game. the devil is trying to get his hands on the neck of our founding tribe, the Ten Commandments people. if we stand by and let him do it, we will never be the same again, the empty spot won’t be filled. we won’t be able to look up, we’ll have to study our shoes from now on. not only that, but having resolve is the only chance at not having to express it. well there’s the other, just look away. feh. tumble down.
Excellent post, Wretchard. A companion piece can be found at pajamas media, Michael Ledeen’s “We Are All Fascits Now” (two parts). Its a shame how these political systems so completely co-opt the individual (perhaps that is true of all political movements). All just different shades of gray.
Dismantle the “23A Exemptions”, force leverage back to no more than 12:1, bar banks from being anything other than depositories and lenders – that is, bar them from holding anything as an asset other than whole loans. No securitized anything. They’re free to securitize but the banks can’t hold the paper; if hedge funds and others are willing to do so, then so be it. – Stupidity in Washington
Which means repeal of the Glass-Steagall “Chinese Wall” between investment and commercial banking was a mistake (Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999, Gramm being Phil Gramm). The banking industry lobbied for repeal since the 1980′s. Interesting to read the arguments pro and con under the wiki entry.
Wayne Huizenga thinks second half of 2009 will be worse than 2008.
@34 steveaz: “Helenism” Now that’s really funny. You probably mean “Hellenism,” but your spelling conjures up all sorts of funny images.
I got it! “Helenism” is the classical form of “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with.” Or maybe, always go with the exotic guy with perfumed hair?
Annoy:
Your Assembly @ Work
#124 Bob Murphey
Israel’s Jericho II’s can reach the southern areas of the FSU. Their satellite booster is functionally and ICBM. It is interesting that while with digging, information can be found about the deployment and numbers of the Jericho II, the production rate Shavit booster also made by IAI seems to be in an information black hole. This is not a unique event, as the Israelis take national security much more seriously than we [a Knesset member who did what our Democratic members of Congress do on a regular basis; revealing national security secrets, getting intelligence agents killed (Yes, I'm talking about Patrick Leahy), etc. would either be killed by a mob or take a short trip down a rope.]
I’ve done the research on Israel’s capabilities. Range circles are interesting things.
As a general rule of thumb; if a country has the ability to place a satellite weighing 350 lbs. into an orbit 250 miles high, and choose the orbit deliberately, it possesses an ICBM capable of placing a nuclear warhead on a city sized target. They have functional counter value strike ability anywhere in the world. It takes much more precise guidance, similar to what Bill Clinton and the Democrats sold to the Chinese for suitcases full of cash campaign contributions, to achieve a capability of hitting close enough to a hardened target to have a counterforce capability.
Anyone, by the way, want to bet that Israel does NOT have that precise guidance, developed independently?
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai Bahadur@131
I recall reading that the Israelis also have several very quiet missile-launching subs that can decrease the ranges to selected targets. Do you think their response can reach Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Moscow et al, after the world enables a devastating strike on their homeland? I’d be really p*ssed at the destruction, wouldn’t you? I think that’s called the Samson option.
I hope John Kerry leaves his Zippo at home this time.
#132 Geoffgo
The project a while ago that got me researching the Israeli strategic reach was just such a Samson Option. Without disclosing specific operational modalities [and I was accused, with truth, of not being a "nice person" after those modalities were reviewed. They did not disagree with my conclusions, and they were smiling when they said it.] the State of Israel has the strategic means and capabilities to:
1) Destroy the Ummah as a civilization and culture, with no hope of recovery.
2) Inflict massive and unacceptable levels of damage on all surviving nuclear powers who might threaten any surviving rump State of Israel [deterrence], or who may have aided and abetted in the destruction of the State of Israel if it should not survive [vengeance].
The variable in the strategic equation we face is Israeli will, not any limitation of resources. Given that the Sabra spirit has died the same political death as patriotism has in this country; the issue is in doubt.
As far as a sea based nuclear deterrent, Israel has developed a 1500 km. range submarine [torpedo tube launched] based cruise missile called the POPEYE TURBO. It is nuclear capable. Israel has 3 German made DOLPHIN class diesel-electric/AIP submarines each capable of carrying 4 POPEYE TURBO’s. In 2006 it was announced that two more had been purchased, however I have not found any indication that they have been delivered.
Subotai Bahadur