The King’s Speech
The left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz says that Egyptian army officers in Cairo’s central square have tossed aside their helmets and joined the crowd. “The Army and the people are one,” they chanted. MSNBC’s photoblog shows protesters jubilantly perched on M1A1 tanks. The real significance of these defections is that the army officers would not have done so had they not sensed which way the winds were blowing — in the Egyptian officer corps.
And even as Mubarak tottered, the Saudi king threw his unequivocal backing behind the aging dictator — not hedging like Obama — but the Iranians continued to back the Egyptian protesters. The Saudi exchange tumbled 6.44% on news of unrest from Cairo. Meanwhile, the Voice of America reports that Israel is “extremely concerned” that events in Egypt could mean the end of the peace treaty between the two countries. If Mubarak isn’t finished already, a lot of regional actors are calculating like he might be.
But Washington will not be hurried. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that President Obama will review his Middle Eastern policy after the unrest in Egypt subsides. The future, in whose spaces the administration believed its glories to lie, plans to review its past failures in the same expansive place. Yet time and oil wait for no one. Crude oil prices surged as the markets took the rapid developments in. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu observed that any disruption to Middle East oil supplies “could actually bring real harm.”
“If this can happen in Egypt, there is no reason that it can’t occur in Libya or Saudi Arabia,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy.
Unrest within, and therefore the loss of Saudi Arabia to the West, is now a thinkable proposition.
Indeed, events in Egypt are likely to prove as damaging to Riyadh as to Washington. Teheran will have won a great diplomatic victory over the kingdom if Mubarak is thrown out on his ear. Iran backed the demonstrators; the Saudi king backed Mubarak. This follows on the heels of the Saudi defeat in Lebanon. Washington had been counting on Saudi Arabia to hold off the Hezbollah, and the kingdom lost. With the Hezbollah in power, the flag of Iran may soon symbolically fly over Beirut and Cairo.
Worse, the Sunni coalition which Washington counted on to contain Iran is now a broken reed. The horse President Obama hoped to ride to the battle is now broken down and being hauled to the glue factory. With a Shi’ite dominated government in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a Muslim Brotherhood that may keep Egypt in neutral or tacitly accept Teheran’s leadership, how could things possibly get worse?
They can if Saudi Arabia starts to go. And what response can the U.S. offer? With U.S. combat power in landlocked Afghanistan and with the last U.S. combat forces having left Iraq in August 2010, the U.S. will have little on the ground but the State Department. “By October 2011, the US State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police and this task will largely be carried out by private contractors.” The bulk of American hard power will be locked up in secondary Southwest Asian theater, dependent on Pakistan to even reach the sea with their heavy equipment.
The Obama administration made fundamental strategic mistakes, whose consequences are now unfolding. As I wrote in the Ten Ships, a post which referenced the Japanese Carrier fleet which made up the strategic center of gravity of the enemy during the Pacific War, the center of gravity in the present crisis was always the Middle East. President Obama, by going after the criminals who “attacked America on 9/11″ from their staging base was doing the equivalent of bombing the nameless patch of ocean 200 miles North of Oahu from which Nagumo launched his raid. But he was not going after the enemy center of gravity itself.
For all of its defects the campaign in Iraq was at least in the right place: at the locus of oil, ideology and brutal regimes that are the Middle East. Ideally the campaign in Iraq would have a sent a wave of democratization through the area, undermined the attraction of radical Islam, provided a base from which to physically control oil if necessary. That the campaign failed to attain many of objectives should not obscure the fact that its objectives were valid. It made far more strategic sense than fighting tribesmen in Afghanistan. Ideology, rogue regimes, energy are the three entities which have replaced the “ten ships” of 70 years ago. The means through which these three entities should be engaged ought to be the subject of reasoned debate, whether by military, economic or technological means. But the vital nature of these objectives ought not to be. Neutralize the intellectual appeal of radical Islam, topple the rogue regimes, and ease Western dependence on oil and you win the war. Yet their centrality, and even their existence is what the politicians constantly deny.
Events are unfolding, but they have not yet run their course; things are still continuing to cascade. If the unrest spreads to the point where the Suez and regional oil fall into anti-Western hands, the consequences would be incalculable. The scale of the left’s folly: their insistence on drilling moratoriums, opposition to nuclear power, support of negotiations with dictators at all costs, calls for unilateral disarmament, addiction to debt and their barely disguised virulent anti-Semitism should be too manifest to deny.
The Resident’s follies have the power of genocide.
Since destruction is much easier than construction the Zero is making rapid progress indeed.
The exodus — from the Gulf — is ramping down our production there at quite a clip.
Macondo would’ve been good for 200,000 bbls a day all by itself.
In every way the Resident is trying to Cloward-Piven our gas tanks. One reason for this is in his personal life the Resident rarely bought gas and certainly never had a long commute. It is beyond his keen that the proles need to drive to work, He could always walk or bike to work, they should too.
At an emotional level the 0 wants to persecute fossil fuels and make America ‘fuelrien.’
Then we can all hang out like Eloi and get stupid on 0′s agitprop.
The USA had Iran surrounded in 2004. Unfortunately Bush got timid and didn’t push ahead to finally solve our problems in South Asia / ME. I know the European allies were against expanding the MISSION, but the case could have been made with straight forward reasoning and stragetic explanation. Instead we chose not to rock the boat and Hope for the best, with the mistaken idea that a “free Iraq” would inspire Western aligned revolutions and governments. All underestimated Islam, preferring to categorize the Anti-Western factions as fringe elements and not the core of the religions adherents. Now it is too far gone and add the US no longer has a leader that would even begin to consider Islam a threat to the World. “It is just another nutty religion to these people. The left leaning people I know dismiss all threats all together by claiming the US is too strong to be defeated. Once we are hit with an oil embargo like in the 1970s. Then we will see how things work out. We need more nuclear. Power now.
I doubt even that small irony would last too long.
I noticed that you didn’t mention Isreal. Are you thinking that, in this possible environment, the country isn’t much longer for the world? Or is it while Isreal is ostensibly friendly to the US, the current administration isn’t?
KRB
–yup, that’s pretty much the size of it, wretchard. appreciative your compression, not easy to do.
For example, it would change the entire cognitive landscape if the disaster falling upon the administration happens to be exactly what the administration wants –anti-western revolution with a DC “i didn’t read the bill” deniability.
And there’s these guys we have taken off our terrorist list:
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/10/muslim-brotherhood-declares-war-on-america
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willy @ #2, re 2004 –i think what happened was the presidential campaign –the Democrats shocking sudden scrap of the 9/11 comity in favor of a Vietnam-style anti-war attack on Bush, in order to get John Kerry elected.
#1
We are supposed to use public TRANSIT, accessed after undergoing TSA scan. Eliminates all kinds of problems. No guns no drugs no illicit publications….
An amazing phenomenon
–the police have left-and the population of Cairo has self organized into very effective neighborhood watches.
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
I’m glad you mentioned the Iranians (no one else is). Could it be that Iran learned a lesson from its “Green Revolution” that it put down after its own crooked elections? Might that lesson have been that if they could do something similar in the Sunni Arab countries they could destabilize the West’s only strategy for containment of Iranian influence in the region? Is it possible that (mal)factors paid/influenced by Iran brought widely-felt grievances onto the streets, hoping that larger citizen’s groups would join them? Could that be why the Muslim Brotherhood (never a fan of Khomeini-ism) was not terribly involved at the inception of the riots? Exploiting a political wobble in Tunis, might agents of Hezbollah or Iran have been involved at some level in bringing about these “spontaneous” riots? Could this been what the Iranian government learned from the 2009 “Green Revolution”?
Your point may be off…
Obama’s entire life has been devoted to returning to the 3rd world what is theirs. Obama wants to see the Islamic crescent from north africa to indonesia.
Nothing would please Obama MORE than seeing Arabia, UAE (and others) fall from our orbit and join the Iranians in a new 1973 oil embargo.
Every SLIGHT movements in this direction will drive the price of a gallon of gas up to $5-9. This is the price that Obama wants the arrogant Americans to embrace. The world is NOT ours to plunder.
So what if the fact that many in the arab world only earn 2-3 dollars a day and that OPEC’s price gouging has driven up the cost of basic food stuffs (shh dont tell them) because OIl is a major component of FOOD and Packaging and transport.
Obama want to cuckhold the USA, humiliate us and spit in our faces.
He is far on his path to do just that.
There is NO ally of the USA at this moment that TRUSTS America they way they did 3 years ago. Obama has given new meaning to be the weak horse.
Our enemies see how we do not act in our own interests anymore..
We have been cuckholded.
It’s everything Obama was raised as, married to, and listened to..
Can you say Frank Marshal? Bill Ayers? Rev Wright? Edward Said?
In 23 months the US will lack an effective and flrxible strategic response. It will lack a tactical response to WMD. The Navy and the Air Force will have a third of the platforms of 25 years ago. What remains will be either rusting or if new to cheap and inflexible, LCS & drones, to survive a real hostile encounter. The Army will be shrunken feminized loaded with gays and grievance collectors. The Marines will be lucky to survive. The senior officers will have been politicized. Socialists are of two minds or three about the military. Some honestly just despise it. Some alternate between wishing for a Chavez and hoping for tame soldiers they can order around. Perhaps they fantasize about “rough trade.”
Vic the police haven’t left…
They’ve left their uniforms at home…
The neighborhood watches are certain to be organized by LEOs who don’t want chaos and who don’t want to wear Mubarak’s ‘colors.’
That’s why the police have disappeared from conventional duties. They’re back in their own neighborhoods covering the homestead.
The Army is going to have to pick up the slack.
As I posted days ago…
Normally by the time the Army is called out it’s critically late in the game.
My best guess is that the Secret Police are chasing down every known player they can get their hands on — especially at night.
It would not surprise me if the M1 tanks ( they look like early model 105mm guns ) have NO main gun ammo. Thusly, they are wonderful props for mass psychology but are useless for creating REAL damage. Instead, they’re just a heavier version of an M-113.
THE key element of the Egyptian armed forces is their Air Force. As long as they stay loyal Mubarak has the upper hand. The Navy is not even in the fight.
Any Army unit that flips is likely to find its gas cut off. Then again, M1s run on dang near anything.
As for food — such disruption should empty out the grocer’s shelves in VERY short order. Bellies should already be getting empty.
The King of KSA is talking large: he may be flinging some cash into the fray. The last thing he can tolerate is a Radical sandwich. The irony abounds. KSA is ground zero for salafist sentiments. Can you say Blow-Back?
this analysis is rather poor. it comes across as nothing more than an attempt to blame the bourgeois progressives for the inevitable disaster that is currently unfolding while ignoring the fact that the bourgeois right’s backing of numerous repressive, autocratic regimes opposed to democratic expression (the shah in iran, mubarek in egypt, etc.) has led directly to this mid-east mess.
instead of throwing away billions in resources on an attempt to secure a future source in a global dwindling resource base (oil in iraq), the US should have instead used those resources to bootstrap the transition to an energy constrained world (serious investment in rail, nuclear power, etc.).
The complete failure of the neocon and other reactionary elements’ grand strategy is now on the horizon. if these populist uprisings take hold in KSA or pakistan, the disaster will be complete.
****
blert, 200k bbl/day is a spit ball in a tempest. it’s a joke, really. the US alone consumes 18 million bbl/day. in short, drill all you want – i am all for it, but nothing will change the fact that oil production will one day soon begin to irreversibly decline. we are hitting physical resource limits. sorry, it’s not an infinite world.
Attempting to write on a phone is just to hard. Everything is to hard and unpleasant these days.
Yes, Iraq was the right place to insert a catalyst for change in the Middle East; a site to insert the actual opportunity, not just the intellectual idea, but the experience of freedom, democracy, private enterprise.
The ME runs as a tribal political and economic system; that’s a two-class structure, with authoritarian Elite Rulers – and the Masses who are without any power. That is collapsing under the weight of the enormous population increases, the industrial urbanization – and the observation by electronic media, of freedoms and powers in other parts of the world.
The only people who can reject radical Islamism – are the people themselves. At the moment, Islamic fascism is, like all leftist ideologies, purely an intellectual pursuit, attractive for its ideological isolation, its concepts of purity, utopia, perfection, stability. The fact that, again, like all leftist ideologies, utopia must remain fictional and can never be factual – is ignored. After all, the radicals in the safe comforts of the West, well-fed and housed, can thus intellectually spout radical Islam. They don’t have to live it. Indeed – the only people who did live it – were the Taliban – and that required massive repression.
Even in Iran and SA, trying to set up an Islamic ideology requires repression – and dissent exists and is repressed.
What I think will happen is that even if the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda etc move in first, with their utopian rhetoric, they will not last long. Because the people want, not repression, but freedom – and Islamism denies freedom.
This whole thing in Egypt is very heartening. Just think, with capitalism in China and democracy in Egypt it doesn’t seem impossible that we might attain it here in the United States if we tried a little harder. Mubarak may have been a heavy handed tyrant but I bet he would not steal candy out of a laughing babies mouth let alone steal everything that a future generation would ever own by way of loans against the future to pay for the vicious tyranny of a Harry Reid or a Nancy Pelosi. Forget guns, stockpile rocks.
am @ 14: LOL
Gotta laugh so we don’t cry.
Looks like Egypt is gone, but we just don’t know yet to where.
And they don’t know either.
I’d say our stock market should drop 5% on Monday morning too, except that it’s now in the pocket of the Fed and Treasury, so they’ll decide where it goes, and then how long before we’re out in the street and Egypt is watching us?
So, how would it work out, Suez closed leading to blockade Hormuz: who is hurt more, those who lose some oil or those who lose all their income?
will at 11 makes harsh, unpleasant points that are nevertheless points. He begs the question, what are we exactly? Are we 1776 Americans who should back the Cairo street? or are we realistic Americans who should back the president of the USA? But, which one is the president, is he Obama the president, or is he just playing one on TV? Is the American green left, the anti-energy left which somehows always mirrors our worst adversaries, American? If not, what are they? If so, then what are we, who write right here on this blog?
A fine point usually not considered re Lincoln’s ”house divided” speech. He didn’t mean it simply ‘couldn’t’ stand, he meant that it couldn’t because it wouldn’t –that something would happen to make the division disappear.
***
Gordon, 4% of the oil and 8% of total goods pass thru the Suez. If the idea of closing it to oil (“saving the patrimony of the Ummah”) is to transfer wealth west to east, just that would do, via a sub-casus belli price increase. If it were to move past sub casus belli, then it’s easy enough for jihadis to back down –on a ‘humanitarian’ basis.
…and of course, we in the USA would really need a cap n trade system, to stabilize things and get us off that dangerous foreign oil.
A rise in oil prices is not in itself a good or a bad thing. It all depends on whether you let the market react as it should. It should bring more oil into production, create the demand for nuclear power. It should. But it might not if regulation prevents it Remember carbon dioxide is now a pollutant.
Food too should work in favor of the producers. But you can’t use food ‘as a weapon’ in the same way you can use oil as a weapon. Nor can you, like a starving man, steal a barrel of oil like a loaf of bread. That’s immoral, even if you need it to run the dialysis machine for your sick child.
If anything the unrest in the Arab world should have been an opportunity — like Iran’s unrest was an opportunity — had the US been poised to use it. But the unrest was a bug, not a feature; born I think of the assumption that Arabs were different from us. They didn’t want freedom, they didn’t want markets.
What the next years are going to prove, I think, is that nothing comes out of the ground or into the mouth without markets and price signals. Democracy is really the political expression of property rights; of self-possession. In the short term I agree with those of my friends who say, “this is the end of the Hezbollah”, but only in the sense that Pearl Harbor was the end of Hitler.
In the short term people will want food they can’t get; oil they can’t buy; to sell oil they can’t sell. And in their desperation they will blame — the Jew. That’s what the Jew is for. And when that doesn’t work, there’s always America to hate.
If you don’t mind waiting out history, it’s the best of times. If are hoping to vacation in the Middle East this summer, it’s the worst of times. But the beginnings of recovery are in the mind. They are always in the mind.
The current administration is but an expression of a vast fantasy. I will grant there is enough blame to go around. But since we are speaking in the main, the fantasy central of the world is the soon to be deceased transnational liberal politically correct, end of history project.
Until that idea is grasped and rejected we will stay in the short run; in the worst of times. Only when we get the idea right — and it is not a sophisticated idea — simply one in which common sense is allowed to be valid, will we come into the best of times.
Annoy Mouse:
Mubarak has no 3,000 page “laws”
China does not prosecute farmers for raising dust…
—
There goes Larsen again, slandering the bourgeois progressives.
—
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
~ H. L. Mencken
will @ 11
“instead of throwing away billions in resources on an attempt to secure a future source in a global dwindling resource base (oil in iraq), the US should have instead used those resources to bootstrap the transition to an energy constrained world (serious investment in rail, nuclear power, etc.).”
You must have dropped in yesterday. All of your progressive notions have long since been answered here.
Let’s start with ‘securing a resource base.’ That’s a complete invention on the part of the Left. At NO TIME did the Bush administration even dream of ‘securing’ oil supplies from Iraq. There were never any negotiations/ demands that American interests have now or ever preferential access to Iraqi crude. And that’s what securing a resource base requires. Instead, at all times, the Iraqis were left to sell their exports into the open market at whatever price they could obtain.
While America did import crude from Iraq it was always on the same terms as all other parties. We didn’t need a war to do that. While Saddam was in charge we simply would not buy. The French were more than able to handle the action.
The Democrats and the Republicans have a chronic status quo foreign policy. Blaming Washington or the Foggy Bottom for the politics of the Middle East indicates you’re probably of college age. Washington reacts — just like you’re seeing now. No attempt is made at creating that perfect world that seems so do-able for college professors.
Neocons are by definition NOT reactionary. They want to change the world into something new. Your daffy-nitions are all screwed up. Again, you’ve got to be in college to post that junk.
America does not, per se, consider populist uprisings any kind of disaster at all. We got started that way, ourselves! For us it’s a disaster if things get even worse than before. Like the Shah was an autocrat. But the mullahs are MUCH, MUCH worse. Further, they are aggressively attacking all of their neighbors. France is convinced that Tehran is behind the worst of the car-b-ques.
Democracy is antithetical to islam. Mohammed says so in the koran. Since islam is never to be tinkered with — there’s ZERO reason for any legislative body to make up new law. Period. The only form of government acceptable to Mohammed is despotism. That fits because he, himself, was a despot.
200 bbl/dy is a serious amount of oil — if you owned it. Macondo is but a SINGLE strike in the Gulf. Current industry talk is that production in the Gulf is going to drop 700,000 bbls per day year over year and KEEP DROPPING. It would seem that the ultra-deep wells squirt like crazy and have high output — which then fades more rapidly than shallow deposits like East Texas.
Sorry on the Peak Oil mantra. Again, you must be young. I’ve heard that schtick for forty years now. The reality is that mega-deposits have been struck recently in China, off Brazil and in Russia. Canada is ramping up her tar sands MASSIVELY. On current trends Canada may end up displacing all of our imports from Araby. After all, Canadian tar sands hold much more oil than KSA. And then there’s the Bakken…
For your own education — do review the older posts at the Belmont Club. Virtually any ‘wise’ and ‘informed’ comment that you might think to post has already been covered.
Softly, in the distance, so far and yet so near
The warm and gentle breezes grow in strength
And slip ever so quietly to our unhearing ear
And swirl around unheeded until, at last, at length
The built on sand foundations of our policy gives way
And the house of cards comes tumbling to the ground
While the president still claims he cannot feel the slightest sway
And denies his policy is quite unsound
The once were gentle breezes now climb up the Beaufort scale
And kingdoms and dictators fall apace
And wind-borne chaos whips the sand of time into a gale
And all in danger scurry for a place
Of quiet harbor safety till the storm blows itself out
They cry to Washington to ease their fears
But Washington is busy, turning deaf ears to the shout
Though many have predicted this for years
gotta salute your ability, wretchard, to take the long view, look across the chasm. you don’t happen to have a schedule handy for all that stuff, do you?
I think we’re due for a lot of very amusing theater in our own politics pretty much ASAP in reaction to upcoming events in the real world.
G.W. Bush set the Middle East aflame with the fire of freedom.
Obama has been trying to piss on it to put it out.
Or perhaps Obama thought the “new view” of the U.S. resulting from his election would make the people over there happy in their oppression. He clearly thinks it will make them happy in their unemployment in the U.S.
In any case, in Chicago they don’t beleve in real democracy, and they don’t in Sub-Saharan Africa, either, so why would someone from that background be expected to?
>France is convinced that Tehran is behind the worst of the car-b-ques.
Blert, I’d like to see a source for this. That’s veddy intadesting — if true.
“Any Army unit that flips is likely to find its gas cut off. Then again, M1s run on dang near anything.”
Yesn but… IT isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. The injectors have to be changed. IT isn’t very hard but it takes time. Right noe US technicians do it. I have my doubts about Egyptian techs getting it done in a timely manner. An M1A1 can run the tank dry in a couple of hours if it is doing a lot of hi-speed work. 3 or 4 just tooling around the battlefield. By the time enough get changed out to make a difference, it will all be over. Besides Helios and Armored Cars work best for crowd control.
20. blert
Trick question. IF Egypt was a long term democracy What would the riots be like?
Trick answer. The tea party movement.
If America was not democratic and the Obomination a real despot instead of a wannabe one, those riots would be in America, not Egypt. Having votes and ballots doesn’t stop revolutions, it just gives them a different form.
gotta salute your ability, wretchard, to take the long view, look across the chasm.
What else is there to do? The protesters atop tanks in Egypt remind me of the EDSA days. The difference of course was that Ronald Reagan did not have a harsh choice between Ferdinand Marcos and the Communist, Jose Maria Sison. If Reagan had been restricted to the choices then maybe the Philippines would have wound up in Sison’s grip.
You choose between the paths that are given you. But the paths are made. They do not spring into existence by making a speech.
The reason why EDSA ended well was because the resistance was heterogeneous. You had Cory, the conspiracy among the businessmen, the church, the non-Communist underground. Alternatives to the Commies. But this heterogeneity was no accident. It was the result of work and sacrifice and faith.
There was a choice at EDSA because people whose names the world will never know paid the price to keep the alternatives from simply being the old corrupt dictator or the new corrupt Communist one. I am sure there are similar people in Egypt, and throughout the Muslim world who want something more than a new leash.
Whether they have any chance to thread their way between Mubarak and the MB, I cannot say. But you’ll never know until you try. And the great mistake of this administration was to stop trying. The US maintained a consistent policy against the Sovs for nearly 50 years. The Democracy agenda lasted only four or five years before half the US policy abandoned it, ultimately embracing the “engagement” policy which is falling about the administration’s ears now. Well that’s water over the dam.
But if victory begins in the mind, with correct ideas, or the return to good ideas, it is upborne by faith. Not the corny faith that Hollywood disparages, but the faith which sustains those who crossed the beach at Omaha, or who died in some stinking hovel in the Philippines, in the words of Rizal, “without seeing the dawn”. To give people options on the day that might never be, because the real risk in all these cases is that the dawn may not come. And yet you cross the beach anyway.
Faith is no guarantee of victory. But despair makes a certainty of defeat. The question is simple: “what now?” And the answer is equally simple: “do the right thing”, and don’t give up.
And as to seeing the dawn, who gives a sh*t.
doug/19; i take a fence to that assertion. on the con trary, i think the boojwah progressive attitude “Lets you and him fight!” is some sort of ultimate apotheosis, or something.
wretchard/18 puts him on the same wavelength glenn beck was on yesterday, when he did a dramatic reading –with explanatory asides aplenty –of Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”. Special emphasis on the final verse.
…in other news, fox just reported that in the dead of the Egyptian night, 19 jets with ‘wealthy egyptians and arab businessmen aboard’ have taken off en masse for parts unknown.
BTW, Kipling’s objective in writing such a didactic piece was the forestalling of the approaching WWI (which of course, did not have that name at the time).
After the break-up of the USSR the good old USA lost its way and is now disoriented. Marinade disorientation in corruption and voila we have President Sputnik’s dysfunctional WTF.
Right now, there is no other country (including today’s America) that can rival the canny world leadership and spread of freedom that the USA of (say) 1941 to 1990 achieved. Sure there are disasters all over the globe, but the most important disaster is right here at home – the American disaster. To my mind that’s the disaster to fix first. In the meantime, willing but small countries like Australia and Canada will have to contribute more.
24. Phil Ossiferz Stone
When stuff is this sensitive the truth tends to get corralled by lies.
If you have a good memory then you’ll note that the President of France ( Chirac ) delivered a speech in which he alluded to an atomic response to an unnamed hostile power if said power were harming France. All of the elliptical jargon being the standard code for: stop that crap or it’s the bomb for you!
At the time his sound bite got great press — since even an elliptical threat of atomics was never uttered before.
——–
And of course, the speech was delivered after a stretch of car-b-ques.
Now the internet is a loose talk kind of place — so you’ll hear even the truth. Anyhow, various Parisians alleged that their cops caught Molotov cocktail ‘factories’ run by players holding Iranian passports. The cops had already told all vendors to NOT sell gasoline to minors, nor anyone wanting petrol in a gas can. So how in hell are the kids getting unlimited access to gasoline?
Modern French cars have locking gas caps. The cops are not seeing enough siphon jobs to explain the amazing amount of cocktails that keep popping up. Then they run across loose lipped teens who tell of the factory and it gets busted.
The next night the tempo drops quite a bit. Further effort finds ANOTHER factory. It gets busted. More Iranians. Inspector Clouseau starts to smell something’s fishy.
Vigorous pursuit of this angle ends up shutting down the rampage.
Inspector Clouseau reports his results: what started out as amateur hour was ramped up massively by agents of a foreign power. It was as if Tehran was running a ‘wet-run’ on the West.
Naturally, this is the kind of story/ rumor that is best suppressed / ignored. But then, how to explain the Presidential speech and deliberate media attention given to it?
—–
As for KSA, Egypt and the Levant: Tehran has been CONSTANTLY caught with it’s agents in the cookie jar. Chronic attempts have been made to assassinate Mubarak and the King using one front after another. Tehran has been caught by Tel Aviv using Sudan as a staging place to run weapons up the Sinai and on in to Hamas.
Iran is a global menace. Unlike Hitler the mullahs are always keen to use cut-outs and wet-work.
If you read the Wikileaked cables Arab fear is thick. ALL of the Gulf States are paranoid about Tehran.
With Atomics, Tehran figures to pull the ‘Saddam surge’ — and with the Zero at the tiller — get away with it!
Wretchard says, “And as to seeing the dawn, who gives a sh*t.”
Comments like this make me want to take out my shovel, go to the back yard and dig up my wee 6 foot, two handed, claymore and go looking for heathen to smite.
Instead, I think I shall sit in zazen and contemplate the flame of a digital candle.
blert/30 –don’t neglect south america –look up israeli embassy in buenos aires (iirc).
western canadian/29 –thanks for that –comes at a good time –
emrys/31 — re w’s 27; yes, me too –
…as to what happened to that old America, it was Bill Clinton –his immoral leadership and the ‘end’ of the cold war happened too close together, and made cheep trix seem the ”cool”.
Digital candles
Can light flames that spread and burn.
Listen to the tweets.
Its about ready to blow up all across Asia and North Africa from Turkey to Pakistan. When one pillar of a cracked and broken temple falls it tends to bring the whole structure down, and it is, in many ways, a single interconnected structure.
The cultures of the region simply cannot exist in the modern world, politically or economically, with few exceptions. The great talent of the West in past days was to have a culture that didn’t in itself have an objection to its own culture evolving and changing over time. Very little was deemed to be set in stone and untouchable. Not so for them.
And the time is now for those who wish to tear it down to act. The unfortunate thing is that most of the organized groups who want to tear them down are worse in their rigidity than the people they want to replace.
For now the holder of the position that might have a chance of stopping the explosion is an idiot who thinks the rest of the world can be cowed by issuing a threat that if they annoy the One sufficiently they won’t be invited to his birthday party.
The only silver lining I see to the Presidency of the One is that our enemies, both foreign and domestic, are beginning to cast off their masks so we can see who and what they truly are.
America has bargaining power with the Egyptian people –and whoever takes the reins of power– that has only been briefly touched on so far. If the Mubarak regime was worth one billion a year on foreign aid, surely a peaceful, democratic Egypt is worth ten. Yes, deficits are out of control. But imagine the cost if the Muslim Brotherhood gained control of the Suez and oil had to be transported round the Cape of Good Hope. Whether Obama will use that power is the question. IMO he should be speaking about this right now –directly to the Egyptian people– rather than looking like a deer in the headlights wondering which faction to cozy up to and making oblique comments about reassessing US aid.
1,000 prisoners just escaped from a prison 1 hour south of Cairo
–and are now heading north towards Cairo.
Hope those Army tanks have Beehive Rounds for their main guns–because the police have run away.
Max Boot writes:
Alas,no. Once upon a times never come again. But we can salvage what was correct from a past idea and adapt it to the changed circumstances.
Blert
our president constitutional prerogatives are foreign policy, while our prime Minister has Domestic policy’s.
Only Sarkozy was showing hyper-activity and was on both fronts, I note that he calmed down lately, he’s got to win the next elections campain.
As far as Chirac’s “unwanted” revelation about our nuclear agenda, it was after that he paid a visit to one of our nuclear submarines base, and after having offered our nuclear umbrella to Germany, who said, “nein, danke, wir haben genug mit Nato and the Americans at home”, hey, they are “greenies”
I suppose that he made a subliminal message to Bush administration and to Israel, that France wasn’t some kind of appeasing country, and that she was seriously taking care of the real and latent threats of the rogue states
I don’t see any M1A1 tanks in those pictures on MSNBC, only M60A3s, and of course, the ubiquitous M113 APC.
This from “Arabia, the Gulf and the West” by J.B. Kelly (pub, 1980):
[America]…has spurned the lesson to hold aloof from entangling alliances with the Al Saud, and the futility of propitiation as a mode of treating with that dynasty. Instead, the United States government has placed itself in an ignominious position vis-a-vis the Saudis, having confused the role of cicerone with that of cicisbeo. Not only is it tied to the Al Saud and to the preservation of the status quo in Saudi Arabi, but it is also, to all intents and jpurposes, committed to upholding the integrity and independence fo the kingdom against it foes from without. What this may portend is anyone’s guess.
@37:
“But he understood that basic human desires for freedom could not be repressed forever.”
Do devout Muslims, inside or outside of Muslim lands, have a “basic human desire for freedom”? On the answer to that question all else hangs, and so it behooves us to think seriously about it first. The current powers that be prefer to point the damning finger inward – the centuries-long dysfunction of the Muslim world is somehow made in Washington and Jerusalem, not in the sharia, the Koran and Islamic supremacism, and the grip they allegedly have on the Muslim mind – but that doesn’t excuse responsible people from thinking about it.
The modern era teaches us that sometimes the collective will of a people simply is not oriented toward freedom, or voting, or ITunes, or cosmopolitan engagement with the rest of humanity. Sometimes people wrap themselves up in something bigger – the race, say, or the ummah – and this way of thinking simply must be defeated outright before they can be assumed to be ready for “freedom.” Is this one of those times? The evidence from Iraq is arguably positive for the Bush doctrine on balance, but perhaps only because tens of thousands of Americans are there babysitting them.
I still see opportunity. Yes, things are going to ‘ell in a handbasket. Think of it as a chance to sell handbaskets.
Yes, the ME is falling apart. That means a chance to put it back together right.
Opportunity knocks, Gentlemen. Somebody get the door.
So I’m reading that Israels diplomats that were in Egypt have arrived safely in Tel Aviv. I see Rand Paul has inheirited his Daddy’s anti semitism thinly disguised as anti-zionism, in his yammer to cut US military and economic aid off for Israel. So If Israel believes that they are losing both left and right support in the US and that Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria will all be actively against them in the near future, will they strike out while they can? What kind of weapons are on those Israeli submarines in the Red sea. Did they get stuck their with their route back throught the Suez canal blocked. What kind of warheads do the have for the cruise missles they are rumoured to have?
Meanwhile the State Department and the Whitehouse are doing the “Bewiched, Bothered, and Bewilderd” song to as a duet.
Allow me to be ridiculous and ridiculously optimistic.
Everything goes south in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood take Cairo, and the Shi’ites create the Caliphate that is their biggest wet dream of a Caliphate.
Middle Eastern oil becomes truly a liquid form of gold and drives the world into a massive frenzy.
We retreat, “but it is not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning” ( Winston Churchill so prophetically).
The West takes its’ cue from this event, digs deep into its’ technological wellspring and starts the 21st & 22nd century as the new North American Century.Hard drives replace axel drives and North America goes into high gear. Forget about Europe. (the rope in Europe is the rope their going to hang themselves with).
Apple, Google and Microsoft start making smart cars and the technological wellspring sees cities like Detroit, Buffalo New York and Cleveland as places to rebuild into truly modern American cities.
First we’ll dump the P’regressives into Lake Erie along with the Party and leader of “present”. Elect a whole lot of imaginative and vision oriented leaders (no Bushisms) and find the the Frontier that is inside each of us and realize that frontier is in front of us and that is our American cities towns and our country.
We don’t need no stinkin high speed rail system. We need to prepare our future to be oil free. And as that old guy in the suit said to Dustin Hoffmann’s character in the 1968 cinema classic “The Graduate” “Plastics”, Let that same gentleman say today in 2011. “Hard drives” Magnets baby!
Europe and the Middle East can go medieval and we can go head head with the Middle Kingdom. We will win. One reason and one reason only’ we can feed the world and they can’t and don’t want too.
Yes, I left out of my rant a lot of serious detail and messy little factoids. But I did say allow me to be ridiculous.
Max Boot assumes that Egypt has the preconditions necessary for “liberal reforms” without mentioning the vast and generally determinative disparities between Arab countries. See Stanley Kurtz of the National Review here today for a more realistic take:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/258366/egypt-democracy-or-disaster-stanley-kurtz
Iraq was a special case because of its occupation by United State forces.
Also see yesterday’s article by James F. Dunnigan of Strategy Page, though he gets more optimistic at the end.
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/algeria/articles/20110128.aspx
“… Like their counterparts throughout the Arab world, the demonstrators want competent government, less corruption and more economic growth. The young want jobs, opportunity and a future, things too many of them don’t have now.
Algeria, and the other North African nations, are all Arab dictatorships, and all worried about the growing, and increasingly organized, popular demonstrations against the ruling groups. It’s basically a revolt of the young (teenage to early 30s) men who suffer high unemployment (often 30 percent or more) and encounter constant reminders that education and talent is no match for political connections when it comes to getting a job.
The dictatorships all operate in the same model. The government is run by a skillful politician who has set up a system whereby those who support the dictatorship get jobs or economic opportunities. In this way, about ten percent can live off the other 90 percent. The problem with this system is that it tends to try and be hereditary, and that means that after a few generations, natural selection sees to it that the ruling class is less able and the unhappy other 90 percent has more political talent, often enough to overthrow the government.
The only problem here is avoiding the leaders of the revolution from establishing another. That is supposed to be avoided via democracy, but some of the democracies established in the wake of the 1989-91 collapse of communist governments turned into dictatorships pretending to be democracies. Most of the Arab states are already doing that, and the patronage and corruption system dictatorships thrive on is more resilient that the dictators themselves. Thus while the dictator of Tunisia (Zine al Abedine Ben Ali) may have been gone for two weeks, thousands of his cronies (government ministers and bureaucrats) are hanging on to power. This will always happen, and is difficult to deal with, as many government employees have needed skills for keeping basic government functions going. In Tunisia, it’s been a struggle in the last two weeks to force out Ben Ali’s key henchmen, the guys who actually supervised the details of oppression and corruption. These guys are often less able to flee into comfortable exile, and the further down the food chain you go, the more desperation you will encounter.
… There’s been a growing sense among educated, and young, Arabs that the world has passed them by and that it’s not someone else’s fault. In other words, the problems, and the solutions, are in Arab hands. There have been lots of revolutions in Arab nations over the century, and the only form of government that seems to have any staying power, democracy, has been the least popular. There have been socialist and religious dictatorships, as well as many monarchies (Jordan, Morocco and most Gulf States). And with socialism and Islamic radicalism discredited, the dictatorships are now just plain-old-dictatorships. It’s all about the money, and the power to get the money with the least effort.
The leftist and religious radicals are still out there, but the majority of people in the street don’t want leftist or religious leaders. They want democracy. The leftists and religious zealots can form parties and participate, but the new idea is to let the people rule the people, for the people. It’s a novel idea in the Arab world, and it has the traditional rulers checking their guns, and their offshore bank accounts …”
In Arab countries it rarely matters what the majority of the population wants. A large and vicious enough minority can always dominate. That is generally the Islamicists. Reports indicate that this is the case in Egypt. See this summary by Barry Rubin:
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2011/01/interview-on-egyptian-revolt
[question] “4) How the Arab status quo can be reformed and changed without letting the Jihadist fanatics take power? Is it possible to have democracy and liberalism?
[answer] One would need strong leaders, strong organizations, an ability to repress opposition, a clear program, and unity, among other things. None of this is present on the moderate democratic side. Again, I wish it was otherwise. More than any other country, reformers–though not all of them–have believed they can work with and then manipulate the Islamists. That seems like a mistake.
The chances for democracy and liberalism are different in every country. Tunisia has a good chance because there is a strong middle class and a weak Islamist movement. But in Egypt look at the numbers in the latest Pew poll.
In Egypt, 30 percent like Hizballah (66 percent don’t). 49 percent are favorable toward Hamas (48 percent are negative); and 20 percent smile (72 percent frown) at al-Qaida. Roughly speaking, one-fifth of Egyptians applaud the most extreme Islamist terrorist group, while around one-third back revolutionary Islamists abroad. This doesn’t tell us what proportion of Egyptians want an Islamist government at home, but it is an indicator.”
Here is the Pew Poll Mr. Rubin links too:
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/
The reason Iraq’s Sunni minority lost was because the United States prevented them from forming large enough groups during the U.S. occupation to dominate the Shiite majority, at least until the Shiites got enough experience and organization to ethnically cleanse large urban areas of Sunnis. That happened after the Al Aska mosque bombing, at which point the bulk of the surviving Sunnis decided that only an alliance with the Americans would save them from Shiite death squads.
Max Boot assumes that Egypt has the preconditions necessary for “liberal reforms” without mentioning the vast and generally determinative disparities between Arab countries. See Stanley Kurtz of the National Review here today for a more realistic take:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/258366/egypt-democracy-or-disaster-stanley-kurtz
Iraq was a special case because of its occupation by United State forces.
Also see yesterday’s article by James F. Dunnigan of Strategy Page, though he gets more optimistic at the end.
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/algeria/articles/20110128.aspx
“… Like their counterparts throughout the Arab world, the demonstrators want competent government, less corruption and more economic growth. The young want jobs, opportunity and a future, things too many of them don’t have now.
Algeria, and the other North African nations, are all Arab dictatorships, and all worried about the growing, and increasingly organized, popular demonstrations against the ruling groups. It’s basically a revolt of the young (teenage to early 30s) men who suffer high unemployment (often 30 percent or more) and encounter constant reminders that education and talent is no match for political connections when it comes to getting a job.
The dictatorships all operate in the same model. The government is run by a skillful politician who has set up a system whereby those who support the dictatorship get jobs or economic opportunities. In this way, about ten percent can live off the other 90 percent. The problem with this system is that it tends to try and be hereditary, and that means that after a few generations, natural selection sees to it that the ruling class is less able and the unhappy other 90 percent has more political talent, often enough to overthrow the government.
The only problem here is avoiding the leaders of the revolution from establishing another. That is supposed to be avoided via democracy, but some of the democracies established in the wake of the 1989-91 collapse of communist governments turned into dictatorships pretending to be democracies. Most of the Arab states are already doing that, and the patronage and corruption system dictatorships thrive on is more resilient that the dictators themselves. Thus while the dictator of Tunisia (Zine al Abedine Ben Ali) may have been gone for two weeks, thousands of his cronies (government ministers and bureaucrats) are hanging on to power. This will always happen, and is difficult to deal with, as many government employees have needed skills for keeping basic government functions going. In Tunisia, it’s been a struggle in the last two weeks to force out Ben Ali’s key henchmen, the guys who actually supervised the details of oppression and corruption. These guys are often less able to flee into comfortable exile, and the further down the food chain you go, the more desperation you will encounter.
… There’s been a growing sense among educated, and young, Arabs that the world has passed them by and that it’s not someone else’s fault. In other words, the problems, and the solutions, are in Arab hands. There have been lots of revolutions in Arab nations over the century, and the only form of government that seems to have any staying power, democracy, has been the least popular. There have been socialist and religious dictatorships, as well as many monarchies (Jordan, Morocco and most Gulf States). And with socialism and Islamic radicalism discredited, the dictatorships are now just plain-old-dictatorships. It’s all about the money, and the power to get the money with the least effort.
The leftist and religious radicals are still out there, but the majority of people in the street don’t want leftist or religious leaders. They want democracy. The leftists and religious zealots can form parties and participate, but the new idea is to let the people rule the people, for the people. It’s a novel idea in the Arab world, and it has the traditional rulers checking their guns, and their offshore bank accounts …”
In Arab countries it rarely matters what the majority of the population wants. A large and vicious enough minority can always dominate. That is generally the Islamicists. Reports indicate that this is the case in Egypt. See this summary by Barry Rubin:
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2011/01/interview-on-egyptian-revolt
[question] “4) How the Arab status quo can be reformed and changed without letting the Jihadist fanatics take power? Is it possible to have democracy and liberalism?
[answer] One would need strong leaders, strong organizations, an ability to repress opposition, a clear program, and unity, among other things. None of this is present on the moderate democratic side. Again, I wish it was otherwise. More than any other country, reformers–though not all of them–have believed they can work with and then manipulate the Islamists. That seems like a mistake.
The chances for democracy and liberalism are different in every country. Tunisia has a good chance because there is a strong middle class and a weak Islamist movement. But in Egypt look at the numbers in the latest Pew poll.
In Egypt, 30 percent like Hizballah (66 percent don’t). 49 percent are favorable toward Hamas (48 percent are negative); and 20 percent smile (72 percent frown) at al-Qaida. Roughly speaking, one-fifth of Egyptians applaud the most extreme Islamist terrorist group, while around one-third back revolutionary Islamists abroad. This doesn’t tell us what proportion of Egyptians want an Islamist government at home, but it is an indicator.”
Here is the Pew Poll Rubin links too:
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/
The reason Iraq’s Sunni minority lost was because the United States prevented them from forming large enough groups during the U.S. occupation to dominate the Shiite majority, at least until the Shiites got enough experience and organization to ethnically cleanse large urban areas of Sunnis. That happened after the Al Aska mosque bombing, at which point the bulk of the surviving Sunnis decided that only an alliance with the Americans would save them from Shiite death squads.
Das – that’s a great book. It is interesting, however, that Kelly should be so distracted by the moral issue of Saudi primitivism after having given such a wise rendition of the subversion of Yemen by Soviet front groups.
As for Egypt – my first question is, has a credible narrative been established yet for the Tunisian uprising? Of course half a city out on the streets and fleeing dictators do establish a certain impression, but what was the catalyst? Are the people just supposed to have spontaneously freaked out?
Say I was the sponsor of Iran; say I provided direct diplomatic cover to Hamas at the highest level. Say I was the long-time and well-known backer of Syria. Say I had put into place – or Iran had put into place, or whomever – the infrastructure of revolt over the course of a few years. There were front groups, compartmentalized and disciplined networks, likes with disaffected officers within the security services – sleepers, left long ago. Say I also helped make sure Hezbollah was armed as virtually a conventional military force might be. Say I interfered with the Hariri investigation – but quietly, merely making my displeasure known to those down the hall who make the decisions about what will and will not be eventually released as a press package. Say I experienced, myself, a nasty suicide attack on my major international airport, allegedly by a Caucasian man. Say no one thinks of me whenever these Islamic bombs go off anyway.
Say Hezbollah took over Lebanon without firing a shot.
Then say I wanted to start the dominos falling, partly to protect that coup d’etat by dispersing the responding forces’ power over various crises. Maybe I would start the process in a nominally socialist, progressive country ruled by a dictator. After all, no “Islamic” narrative would leap to mind then, instead – just People Power… But perhaps, just perhaps, an explosion at a far away airport was a signal…
kf @ 39: I don’t see any M1A1 tanks in those pictures on MSNBC, only M60A3s, and of course, the ubiquitous M113 APC
Glad to hear it, I believe Egypt has requested M1′s and has been promised them by Obambus, but did not recall that they had ever received any before now. And just what is Egypt ever going to need an M1 for, that the M60 won’t do for them? Better not ask.
–
Interchanging mind control, come let the
Revolution take its toll, if you could
Flick a switch and open your third eye, you’d see that
We should never be afraid to die, so come on
Rise up and take the power back, it’s time that
The fat cats had a heart attack, you know that
Their time is coming to an end, we have to
Unify and watch our flag ascend, so come on
They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious, so come on
Muse, Uprising
In my own humble opinion, the greatest sin of the West in regards to the Third World was never allowing them to admit that Third World societies were intrinsically flawed when they were. All that it did was to perpetuate a fantasy propped up by foreign aid that they actually were viable societies.
And the same can be said for Western Europe. More so than economic aid, we let them let us take on the military burdens of their defense.
The times are changing. The little spouting people who accuse the US of doing every wrong may be surprised if events change so that the US actually starts doing the things it is accused of. If they actually did the little craven coward journalists wouldn’t dare to criticize out of fear as to what might happen to them.
W 18: “Only when we get the idea right — and it is not a sophisticated idea — simply one in which common sense is allowed to be valid…”
Common sense is the enemy of totalitarian government because common sense means recognition and acceptance of truth; common sense means sanity. Under modern tyrannical government, as Orwell noted: “The heresy of heresies was common sense.” The heresy of heresies is truth – the heresy of heresies is sanity.
The sanity of common sense is the opposite of Doublethink insanity.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the lie and the truth), and accepting both of them (insanity)… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” George Orwell – 1984
Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth (sanity)… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.
evan 41: “Do devout Muslims, inside or outside of Muslim lands, have a “basic human desire for freedom”?”
First of all let’s define freedom. Don’t worry – Thomas Jefferson saved us the trouble.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” Thomas Jefferson
So, the question boils down to: Do devout Muslims, inside or outside of Muslim lands, have a basic human desire for the equal rights of others? According to their Koran and Hadiths Muslim men have superior rights compared to Muslim women – unequal rights. According to their Koran and Hadiths Muslims have superior rights compared to non-Muslims – unequal rights. So, it follows that devout Muslims, inside and outside Muslims lands, have no desire for freedom – because they have no desire for equal rights – because devout Muslims have a pre-existing and overriding desire to follow their Koran and Hadiths.
Tyranny is obstructed action according to someone else’s will (the tyrant’s will), within limits drawn around us by the superior rights of others.
#44 hallmonitor. Ridiculous 2.0. What if Adam Smith was really an Arab – Adamfir Mohammed Smithawari? Also what if, his great Arabic book “The Treasure of Caliphates” was unearthed besides the bones of a camel, long buried in the desert around Medina. Moreover what if, copies of the Great Work were freely distributed to the faithful across the Arab world? Might this kick-start some economic common sense in the middle east and bring some prospects to their young people?
Until that idea is grasped and rejected we will stay in the short run; in the worst of times. Only when we get the idea right — and it is not a sophisticated idea…
Yeah, well, there’s your problem right there. Not a sophisticated idea. Ergo not acceptible for people who have nothing but ideas. The Left have ideas, but no accomplishments, or at least none that are to their credit. You’ve propbably come across people like this in the Software business, people Joel Spolsky (Joel On Software) calls Architecture Astronauts. They can make these incredibly complicated, supposedly sophisticated, plans for marvelous software. Actually writing or debugging the code to make the project work is beyond them though. In a Progressive Utopia, we’re all mis-routed suitcases on a Denver International Airport baggage carousel.
Buddy/28
Gods of the Copybook Headings is one of my favroites. Lots of burnt fools- wonder when will we run out of bandages for their fingers?
It looks like the developments in Tunisia and Egypt will lead to a Pan-Arab movement and a political/economic union–KSA will be very late to join the party.
None of these street protests have any significant anti-American rhetoric– that is very good for us moving forward.
This new Pan-Arab Union has choices –
It must avoid these two evils
Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/
“Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds.
Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people—tens of millions, it was often claimed—in the endless wastes of the Gulag.
For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory.”…….
“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none”
-Thomas Jefferson
sr @ 51: Do devout Muslims, inside or outside of Muslim lands, have a basic human desire for the equal rights of others?
Aha. Well, though not in the Koran, the Arabs and as far east as Pakistan are culturally tribal, which basically limits their beneficient interest in others to how close they are in tribal terms. Outside the tribe, the assumptions are all negative. The American model is very individualistic, based on the Protestant view of man relating directly to God, which one may argue is based on the Jewish model as well. One can then take a survey of other Islamic and non-Islamic cultures to evaluate tribalism and respect for the rights of others, and to make a long story short, you will find at best a mixed bag.
-
btw, how is it that in all the use of this title, we haven’t had any jokes about the King’s Peach?
Wretchard seems to say:
You, and Andrew Bolt, seem oblivious to the preponderance of Jewish involvement in the left.
The anti-Semitism of the great unwashed masses of the left seems to me to be a delicious irony. Ride the tiger, baby!
oil is not a problem.
we are clever people.
the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Sinicism seem to be similar. It is true that the Chinese have been called the Jews of Asia, however, at first glance, that analogy only makes sense to the dumb. For one, the Chinese are some two orders of magnitude more numerous than the Jews.
On the other hand, in much of South East Asia, Chinese can pass as locals, just as the Jews can pass as Americans or Caucasians. So, in that sense there is something to the analogy.
Of course, the ability of these “Jews” to outperform the respective hosts is never cited as the cause of the pogroms against them.
Victor #54 “None of these street protests have any significant anti-American rhetoric– that is very good for us moving forward.”
That is good news. Hopefully they are also forgoing antisemitism. That would be showing maturity and seeing through the demagoguery foisted on them. Dare we hope for an Egypt that is democratic, stable and peaceful? If it happened, look for the regime in Tehran to become angry and defensive. Perhaps, just perhaps, later historians will look upon Cairo as an ideological Gates of Vienna where the forces of darkness were halted in their advance and turned back.
Western Canadian #52. My answer. No. Islam as a philosophy as a religion, as a cultural stance is simply misogynistic.
Any society that in all the variations and degrees that misogynistic expressions have free and tolerable levels of expression are” Dead on Arrival”, type of societies.
Of the many great cultural expressions that modernity has given to the world, that is regrettably only finding full expression in the Western European and North American societies, is that women have co-ownership of this society.
As long as Asian, African and Middle Eastern Societies treat women as serfs and baby makers they will struggle and be grim places of dark ignorant expression.
Amazingly we are befuddled and unsure of what we have wrought as women become more emancipated from the paterfamilias, well look, we’re wealthier and freer societies.
Eastern societies waste tons of energy and brain power and wealth in enslaving their sisters and Moms.
What a terrible waste of time and something to keep out of our own societies.
–don’t miss this –for the info both per se and per accidens :
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/114006/
RF: This follows on the heels of the Saudi defeat in Lebanon.
It seem to me that the Saudis backed their Lebanese proxies with words, whereas the Iranians backed Hezbollah with money, weapons and training. If the Saudis could divert just a fraction of the funding from their global mosque and madrassa building binge, they might be able to affect events in Muslim countries in ways apart from indoctrinating Islamists who then turn around and accuse the Saud family of having Jewish roots.
h/t charles nearby, this is excellent for condensed info indicating economic conditions in Egypt:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7425
–some factoids here will lend insight on a whole lot of questions. One thing that leaps to mind –USA needs to kill the ethanol mandate like yesterday, and try to ameliorate the world grain price spike. Iowa agribiz can take a marginal setback, let’s do something with heart.
Haaretz, which is Israel’s left-wing newspaper says that Barack Obama will go down in history as the man who lost Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey.
Interesting that Haaretz counts Turkey as “lost”. It observes that he would have lost all these ironically enough, without asserting any great principle. They were lost like a child loses his marbles, by smarter players grabbing them while he was distracted by the wrong things.
“Now Obama will try to hunker down until the winds of revolt die out, and then forge ties with the new leaders in the region”, that is to say, wait till the house burns down and salvage what he can from the wreck of the formerly imposing future mansion of Hope and Change.
In an article which reads almost like a political obituary, the Haaretz article described Obama’s dilemma: he was unwilling to advocate the democracy agenda of GWB, convinced that Israel was the problem in the Middle East, secretly sympathetic to the democratic aspirations of the population but afraid to destabilize the region.
He was of several minds and temporized. But he was overtaken by events and his march stolen by the more purposeful actors. Now the Iranians have got his number nine ways to Sunday. Now, as Obama surveys the catastrophe overtaking the Western position in the Middle East, he must be wondering “how could it have come to this?”
The army is orchestrating this “coup”. Look at the small number of casualties and the slight damage done.
Again I ask, what is Israel to do about securing the Sinai and the Suez canal?
And as importantly, what is the United States going to do about neutralizing the toys (F-16s and tanks, e.g.) it has given these barbarians?
For those offended by my use of barbarian, look at the wanton damage done to the museum by looters.
Those of you who claim that Obama wants all of this (give it back to the 3rd world) give Obama way too much credit. You think he knows and understands as much as you.
He doesn’t understand those things. He understands pure folly:
1) Once socialism is installed (even through trickery), people will love it and vote for more.
2) The bad actors in the Middle East act badly because of us (the US). If we change our ways, they will change their ways.
3) Poverty in the 3rd world and in the cities of America is caused by rich people in the suburbs. They deserve some of the wealth back.
Reality will eventually tell him that his beliefs are folly. But once he understands that, he will have nowhere to turn and not know what to do. In his book “Radical Son”, David Horowitz explains how he felt a profound emptiness inside of him when he discovered that leftist ideas don’t work. It took him years to understand a philosophy that did work. Obama doesn’t have years, he has months – maybe even weeks.
If anything Wretchard understates the difficulties, though the people under Obama probably have a better understanding.
The dynamic in Egypt comes down to a few opposing facts:
1) The worst possible leaders will do things to gain power that the better leaders will not. Advantage disaster.
2) Everyone remembers Iran and what happens when you let the Islamicists take over. Various players will try to stop that from happening. Advantage hope.
3) Obama and his people (especially his people) are aware of what happened to liberalism when Jimmy Carter let the worst happen. Do they have the confidence to do anything about it? Advantage who knows.
Given facts 1 and 2, it sure would be nice to have a competent leader about now. God help us.
Allen…
You don’t think that the Egyptians are REALLY maintaining their high tech gear by themselves do you?
Withdrawal of American ( and other ) private contractors will cause the mighty Egyptian war machine to decay — very rapidly if used in the Sinai.
FYI: Germany, Britain, Italy, France and America all have had the displeasure of operating military equipment in the Sahara. Breakdown rates in the desert are 3 to 7 times as rapid as in Northern Europe.
( That’s the untold story of the Afrika Korps: it took astounding German resources to field a pitiful force in the Sahara. You will gasp when you study what victories Rommel had with such meager forces. On any given day 70% of his equipment was down for repair over something.)
What was true for Rommel was true for everyone else. It only got worse for the Italians. The Sahara/Sinai desert is the ruin of machine.
——-
For those not aware: the Treaty is broken entirely if Egypt brings tank forces into Sinai. It is a demilitarized zone. Only limited assets are allowed there. THAT’S the reason Israel coughed up the Sinai. Begin was no fool.
LONG before Egyptian tanks reach the Negev Israel will have counter-invaded the DMZ and begun mobile operations against what is acknowledged by all to be a gross violation of the Treaty.
Cairo would have to go insane to disturb the Treaty. To do so is to hazard the end of canal operations and FEES. The loss in revenue would be lethal to any government in Cairo.
——
Begin and Sadat crafted a WISE Treaty. It’s terms mean that both parties would rather glare at each other than come to blows.
That, plus the wisdom of Jordan, means that the only party crazy enough to task the Israelis is Tehran. ( Even Damascus doesn’t want to push Tel Aviv’s buttons. )
Of course, any serious dust-up will mean that Damascus loses her watershed.
Why should Israel flail about in the briar patch when the puppet quasi-master sits in Damascus?
Iraq and Israel do have one thing in common: Damascus intends to go on hurting them, and hurting them….
Syria is caught between Iraq and a hard opponent…
It looks lousy from here. If the Hez act up: punish Assad — badly. Ruin the entire economy of Syria. Take away the watershed of Damascus.
Haaretz, which is Israel’s left-wing newspaper says that Barack Obama will go down in history as the man who lost Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey.
Tunisia.
Mexico.
Arizona, Texas.
UK.
Wikileaks.
BPleaks.
Well what the heck, soon we’ll be down to only 51 states.
And two years to go.
1/ I disagree with many of Obamas domestic policies
2/ Obama is the commander in chief of our troops, until the next election–as an American I support our commander in chief in foreign policy–even if I disagree with it.
Agree and commit, disagree and commit—or quit
Other members of ECHELON have much more discretion in their critique of US foreign policy.
3/ There is a new world order in the Arab world and the US and Europe need to get ahead of it–there will be a new pan-Arab political and economic alliance.
4/ We will never permit the destruction of Israel, but they need to face reality, adapt, get rid of “Benito” Lieberman, and end their colonial project–it may have worked in the 18th or 19th century but times have changed
— everyone knows that Israel is doomed if it maintains its momentum path–it is what it is. It is over.
5/ The developments in the Arab world will be good for American fundamental interests-if we play it right–and as we do– Iran will come to its senses soon–
“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none”
-Thomas Jefferson
w/64; excellent eulogy for Obama Case One. Not for Case Two, however, the case where young Obama’s formative immersion in a familial and peer communist, muslim, communist muslim, and muslim communist milieu are what is losing the mideast, the raw materials, the financial, the credit & currency, and the psychological morale wars for America.
***
a/65; re museum, could be Arabs out to destroy ancient Berber artifacts. There is heat over the ancient Egyptian origin –many claim the Berbers were the originals in the Nile valley. Arabs don’t like the claim. Or so it is said by some –see what search turns up –kinda eye opening, really.
If things go from bad to worse, what are the odds that President Obama could persuade Joe Biden to resign and get former President Bill Clinton to take the Vice Presidency? Then he himself could resign to a well-deserved retirement in Chicago or Hawaii or wherever?
That would of course make Bill Clinton the President again for half a term. I don’t know enough about the Constitution to know if it is kosher, but suppose it is.
This would of course have to happen in the context of a political, bipartisan package. No questions about Bill Clinton’s possibly unconstitutional route to half a term in exchange for an acceptable figure who enjoys the trust of the Democratic Party and who has some claim to competence.
In exchange, Clinton would agree to national unity program which would include the repeal of Obamacare via an Interstate Compact which would devolve the welfare functions to the states; a harsh reduction of the deficit and an emergency program to remove all regulatory obstruction to doubling American energy resources in two years. New technology nukes and drilling wherever at all feasible. Build, baby, build and drill baby, drill. And oh, an end to ethanol.
If this succeeds then as per the oil drum analysis, the USA will emerge from this crisis with the energy bullets and the food cannons too.
The unity program could examine the foreign policy crisis as one of its priorities and act decisively to at least stop the rot and re-establish a credible force in being the Middle East whose role is to hold the ring but not to look for trouble. Mostly it would be to signal Iran to stay out Iraq and keep anyone from starting a fight with Israel.
That would put the strategic emphasis in all the right places, using fundamentally nonviolent means. Energy, food, deregulation, deficit reduction and deterrence is a whole lot better than palaver, palaver and palaver.
The correct strategy successfully implemented could see all these oil dependent, but unproductive fundamentalisms implode on themselves. You win by emphasizing your strengths and pitting them against the enemy weaknesses.
Something along those lines. Something constitutional, legal and bipartisan. But something to change the leadership team before 2012.
Ok, it sounds crazy but if crisis follows on crisis and the US credit rating gets downgraded it will start looking less and less lunatic.
W
The Constitution as amended prohibits Clinton from being even Vice-President. He’s all-the-way-out.
#67 blert
Your assessment has much to commend it. The only flaw, and I say this with respect, is its dependence on Arab/Muslim rationality.
With that in mind, paraphrasing Mr. Eban: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
If the Egyptian Army is in control, the outcome may prove better for Israeli security than outright chaos and/or the MB. With this said, Israel will have to do something about this flaw in security. No modern state can function with its very life on the line daily.
Reports from Jordan this evening are not encouraging.
Best
Ju-Jitsu the whole arc of decline, wretchard –i like it!
***
related, if i wasn’t such a dunce, i’d check and see if “revelations” is climbing the search list –
29. westerncanadian,
I have to commend you: I’ve never seen anybody use “marinade” as a gerund before.
How many dollars
yearly goes to enemies,
to purchase food for our foes?
Let them feed their own.
They claim they hate us any way.
Can they live without food?
emrys…
Ah…
Thats the rub…
Here are the biggest ‘excess’ food producers:
America ( corn to ethanol to idiocy — a massive religious folly )
Canada
Australia ( hard hit )
Russia ( currently out of the market – almost entirely )
Argentina ( over rated — ships meat much of which ends up in Brazil )
Further down the list
New Zealand
France ( French food exports are massively to EEC so that only a trickle leaves the EEC )
Ukraine
You will note the absence of China, India and any land of the ummah.
That would of course make Bill Clinton the President again for half a term. I don’t know enough about the Constitution to know if it is kosher, but suppose it is.
…
In exchange, Clinton would agree to national unity program which would include the repeal of Obamacare via an Interstate Compact which would devolve the welfare functions to the states; a harsh reduction of the deficit and an emergency program to remove all regulatory obstruction to doubling American energy resources in two years. New technology nukes and drilling wherever at all feasible. Build, baby, build and drill baby, drill. And oh, an end to ethanol.
I’ll drink to that.
If Bill will just produce a birth certificate, has to be at least as legal as what we have now.
–
But really, I’m not sure Bubba is in the mental or physical shape to pick up the burden again, even if it was offered to him on a silver intern. Nor would he want to take the pay cut.
There is a new world order in the Arab world and the US and Europe need to get ahead of it–there will be a new pan-Arab political and economic alliance.
Says who? I doubt that any major faction in the Middle East is thinking as far ahead as next month, let alone next year, let alone imagining any new “pan-Arab political and economic alliance” in the near future.
If there were a major superhighway, telephone lines, and electricity running from Casablanca to Cairo, that would be an achievement. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride!
At the zenith of the last pan-arab nation, back in 1970, Nassar had a fatal heart attack. At the funeral, the only non-arab contingent in attendance was that of soviet premier alexei kosygin.
If things become so bad that Obama wears out his base and his adoring press, he will have no protection from any number of issues that would have Democrats calling for his resignation–if only to save themselves. Aside from Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Wilson, the country did not gain a permanent Imperial Presidency until FDR. Biden would wield no power, and that is a good thing. A better solution will have to wait for ’13, but a lot has to be learned in the meantime in any case, and unlearned.
The major contests of two centuries have been won. If we must in some fashion fail and reboot, no better time has been provided for it within the last century.
a thought -
get bubba and gwb as advisers to the won,
hillary must resign from politics and biden ask the scarecrow for a brain.
save the republic and peace on our dime – oops peace in our time.
I don’t know if it matters, but some critical voices are saying that the Muslim Brotherhood may have waited a bit too long to support the protest and their response when it came was more in the nature of standing behind the original protestors and offering to hold their coats and wallets. How much of this is actually comming out from Egypt itself is pretty speculative IMHO.
Anybody heard or read confirmation??
W/71, blert/71
I dunno, seems like the Dems aren’t picky about Constitutional requirements. Maybe Bill Clinton could produce a Hawaiian Birth Certificate or the fake ID he used to buy beer in High School and claim he gets another two terms on the alternate identity.
The real question for me is, why would Obama agree to it? What’s in it for him? His presidency appears to be transitioning from the “swirling” stage to the “gurgling past the P-trap” stage. Maybe he’d be glad to walk away and be done with it. He certainly seems to be a different personality than most who have held the job. Even prior awful Presidents like Carter and Wilson had proven their determination and willpower before being elected. The Big Zero seems to have been born on Third Base (or at least is a naturalized citizen of it) and sent home by the umpire on a balk.
Previous Presidents may have quit for the good of the country, but I couldn’t see Obama doing that. On the other hand, I don’t think any previous President would have walked away for lack of willpower, but I could see that from this one.
JMH:53 “In a Progressive Utopia, we’re all mis-routed suitcases on a Denver International Airport baggage carousel.’
I got a laugh out of that, and it’s as good a description as I’ve seen.
I doubt that any major faction in the Middle East is thinking as far ahead as next month, let alone next year,
I can guarantee you that Iran, Hezbullah and Hamas are thinking further ahead than next month (though, perhaps you might not agree that Iran is in the Middle East).
#75 Matt: Thank you (I think) but my grammar is wrong – the verb is marinate. You forced me to look up “gerund” in the dictionary. I thought “GErund” was a new electric car developed by Jeffrey Immelt, but the dictionary said something else. We live and learn.
71:Wretcherd
Nah, we’re probably stuck with this crew for two more years. Maybe the DEMS will get panicky and start rooting around for O’s birth certificate, and then if there is a problem, feed the info to the GOP and try to bait them into impeachment hearings? Who knows what’s going to happen anymore? BC, even if this was Constitutional, would be a lame duck and nothing, I mean nothing, would convince the DEMS to give up the advantage of an incumbent in 2012. Power is all they know.
Looks like we may be in for a whole bunch of “regime change” in the ME, but long term I don’t know how bad that is. Of course, it helps that I’m not an Israeli – the dangers multiply for them for obvious reasons.
Let’s say Egypt 2011 turns out like Iran 1979, with the MB in charge. They may make a lot of noise about abrogating the treaty with Israel, and they may even do it, but then again maybe not.
Would they close the Suez? Possible, but that brings a lot of danger and a severe loss of revenue.
Then KSA, Libya, Jordan, Syria follow with their own revolutions. Everyone assumes the Persian, Shia Iranians would be the leaders of this pan-Muslim ME, but my guess is that they’d quickly get busy fighting each other for prominence.
In this age, when things go much more quickly and communications are much better than the last quarter of the 20th Century, it’s not gonna take 20 years for the populations of these Countries to get the picture. Islamicism is a dead end, and maybe this is what’s needed to prove that point. If there wasn’t oil and Israel there no one would give a rats ass what happens in the ME.
Iran may be loving this, but how do they stop this from reigniting their own Green revolution? Maybe they killed, tortured, and cowed enough people so that there’s no stomach left in Iran for another try, but who knows? Do they really want these images shown to their people?
If there’s anything this whole situation highlights it’s that we need to find new energy supplies that don’t rely on the ME. Drill Baby Drill, and lets start with the Nuclear plants and serious R&D for the future. Maybe we’ll need another oil embargo to open our eyes. A planned embargo, or a defacto one due to political diruption of supply, are maybe what we need to help us see things as they are. $10 a gallon gas may open up some eyes.
Short term things are looking bad everywhere, here included, but I’m still optimistic long term. Our main goal vs the ME should be clear: verify that our National economy is not dependent on a place that appears to be making a headlong dash back to the 7th Century.
We make the mistake of thinking the other guys are always holding the high cards, even though history tells us otherwise. The fact is, long term we have the upper hand here, assuming we can find some adult leadership, soon.
If there is a future it won’t be Islamicist. The only question is – will there be a future?
Barky is a blithering idiot. It appears that Ahmadinejad and his al-Quds commander General Suleimani have out maneuvered Barky and are systematically dismantling Arab countries friendly to the USA.
Ahmadinejad and Suleimani want the Muslim Brotherhood in and Mubarak out. It looks like Ahmadinejad and Suleimani will get there way – with little or no fight from Barky.
Haaretz:
“Suleimani was appointed commander of the force some five years ago… In the past few years, most of the activities of the al-Quds fighters have been channeled to helping the Mahdi army in Iraq, the Hezbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad… They [al-Quds] are also accused of supplying special sophisticated explosives that are used by the Shiite militias against the American forces in Iraq. That is one of the reasons that Suleimani is on the black list that the American treasury published, which forbids American companies and citizens from holding commercial ties with him. A ban on ties with him is also mentioned in the United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 1747 of March 2007, which imposed sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend its nuclear activity and to stop enriching uranium. According to intelligence sources in the West, Suleimani was the main person responsible for equipping Hezbullah with missiles and long-range rockets, and he served as the moving spirit in formulating the doctrine to be used in a future war against Israel.”
http://tinyurl.com/4ustyyj
Debka [Take it with a grain of salt]:
“…however the Egyptian uprising turns out, and in whichever direction it is pushed and pulled by the United States, it will end in a new parliamentary election and a new civilian government in which the Muslim Brotherhood will be substantially represented… For 15 years as Al Qods chief, he has overseen all of Iran’s clandestine, sabotage and subversive operations in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq, managed Hizballah’s terrorist and spy cells active in West and East Africa, built up Hizballah as the leading military force on home ground in Lebanon, and developed the military prowess of the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami in the Gaza Strip. Soleimani feels triumphantly vindicated in his decision to build up Hamas as Hizballah… and furnish the Palestinian extremists in the Gaza Strip with the missiles and weapons systems required to make them a formidable military force… Al Qods Brigades chief now takes credit for Hamas’s readiness for the enhanced role it has gained from the popular uprising in Egypt.”
If half of this is true, Barky is at best an idiot and at worst a gigantic wrecking ball. Barky should be given a legal pogo stick up the tail pipe and bounced out of Washington. Biden should take his place.
Biden will be considerably less dangerous and modifiable. He will not be able to play the race card. Biden may even go for drilling where Barky stubbornly will not. The quicker this is done the better.
I forgot the link to Debka. Here it is:
http://www.debka.com/article/20606/
I like Barky. It is much easier to type the the Oboniation.
I don’t think the tank in that picture is a M1A1. I think it is a M60a3TTS.
All you can see is the muzzle, which seems to be a 105. Egypt never had the M1, which had the 105 with TTS. Egypt started with the M1A1 which had the 120. Rgypt did get about 500 M-60′s. They were used. AS them we replaced by M!’s they went straight to Egypt, Turkey and I think Either S, Korea or Taiwan. One of the European allies got some too.
The muzzle has a ‘windage’ guage, which was part of the TTS (Thermal Sighting System). Couldn’t see if the tube was rifled or not.
O’juxtapose.
“The U.S. Embassy in Cairo told its citizens in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible,”.
WrongWay Hilda.
…-
“Armed gangs free Muslim militants in Egypt”
CAIRO – Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn Sunday, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo told its citizens in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible, and said it had authorized the voluntary departure of dependents and non-emergency employees, a display of Washington’s escalating concern about the stability of its closest Arab ally.”
…-
“(Hillary) Clinton heads to Haiti to mediate political crisis”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is flying to Haiti to mediate in a political crisis there while other administration officials are keeping watch on violent protests halfway across the world in Egypt. Clinton will meet Sunday with President Rene Preval and the three candidates vying to succeed him during her visit. She will also see a treatment center for the cholera epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index
m/92; State Dep’t spox are reporting that after Haiti she has scheduled an emergency trip to the war-torn Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
#67 blert
Re: Syria
I argued vociferously, tirelessly in the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon War that Israel was punching the wrong speedball, as psychically liberating as that might have seemed. Syria was then and remains the bulls-eye of any strategic shift in the Israeli policy.
And I certainly agree that Israel would be well advised to “hit’em where they ain’t” (MacArthur on Rabaul). In the case of Syria, that means seriously weakening the civilian infrastructure while also hurting the armed forces to the point of vulnerability to attacks by ostensibly smaller opponents. Such cracks in Syria’s armor may entice Hezbollah et al to attempt exploitation, leading to a general war among the current allies. In a war of attrition among foes lacking sufficient reserves to strike a coups de grace, all sides end substantially weakened – for some mortally so.
Best
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance
to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either
to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry
which can on no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant
factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations,
when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth;
(4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.
5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete
accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him
regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat,
times and seasons.
8. Earth comprises distances, great and small;
danger and security; open ground and narrow passes;
the chances of life and death.
9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom,
sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
10. By method and discipline are to be understood
the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions,
the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance
of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the
control of military expenditure.
11. These five heads should be familiar to every general:
he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them
not will fail.
12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking
to determine the military conditions, let them be made
the basis of a comparison, in this wise:–
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued
with the Moral law?
(2) Which of the two generals has most ability?
(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven
and Earth?
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?
(5) Which army is stronger?
(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?
(7) In which army is there the greater constancy
both in reward and punishment?
14. By means of these seven considerations I can
forecast victory or defeat.
Considering the first 14 chapters of Sun Tzu there only remains the emergence of the “Second General” . . . there is little doubt that the second general will be from the military . . . clearly Mubarak is ALREADY a looser. I would think that what is happening right now . . .”Egyptian military delegates are negotiating with the “third parties” . . . Most probably the third parties include: Turkey, Iran, Saudi, Russia, China, EEU, UN and the weakest of all (Morally) the US of A.
We will see a new government in Egypt within the next few days. Do not expect the USA to have much influence . . . they know OUR money is worthless . . .
Clearly an arms war is possible . . . all it takes is for the army of Egypt to raise them in a single moment of loss of control. If that happens, Katy bar the door, the entire earth will disintegrate again into the chaos of war. Will it happen . . .. NO. For there is one aspect that every nation on earth clearly realizes . . . the US of A will whip their asses . . . but for how long? War today is not the war of yesterday or even of that of 25 years ago. The power of instant damage is not the power of long term conflict. Even Stalin realized that “quantity will win over quality every time.” Thus the US of A is a marginal player. We have only the power to Isolate ourselves and prevent the foreign invader from winning . . . we do not have the power, the gold, nor resources to withstand the guerilla war that exists in those countries . . . we can not even protect ourselves from the single minded terriorist.
We are witness to a profound change in the demographics of the nations that speak Arabic. The greatest confusion in the US of A is to think that all the nations where Arabic is the spoken language are Arab nations. They most assuredly are not Arabic. To call an Egyptian an Arab is similar in nature to calling an African American the “N” word. No one in this country realizes that or there are few that do realize it anyway. So we see a vastly different demographic, from Tunsia to Turkey to Iran . . . all closely tied via the concept of Heaven, Morals, Earth, strong Armies (considering the regional limits) and we have one of two things . . . a new Confideration of Languagistically Allied Countries . . . or we see the chaos of No Joy.
The influence of the Western world has kept those lands in the No Joy chaos for nearly 100 years . .. with many of the independent nations only becoming so after WWII. Thus, the evolution of alligences say . . . either come together as a loose organization or degenerate in to chaos and war.
Either be reborn or die.
one thing is sure is that these arab revolts aren’t worshipping the fate that Koran tought them, for them it’s not the delusional “c’est la vie” anymore. That’s may-be a good thing for all of us too, the fondamental islamists will have lesser impact on them as a “resistant” movement to external western influences
A Haiku…
Obama has failed
The worst President ever
Jimmy Carter smiles!
Reports the Army just stormed the interior ministry and arrested its head – maybe this is an internal army succession plan after all?
I’m not sure the USA needs to do anything. OR should do anything. Barky is too slow to do anything. Hill-de-beast is off to last weeks crisis. They don’t dare wake her up at 3 AM. The State Dpt. firmly believes in the old adage; “let sleeping dogs lie”
One of the federal bureaucracies will seize the opportunity to expand their turf at the expense of State. When Carter lost Iran, he did an under the table deal to help Saddam ‘punish’ Iran. So I got to witness the strange turn of events that had one part of the US bureaucracy finding holes in the Iranian air defence while another bureaucracy feed the Iranians the Iraqi attack plans.
Not sure if the bureaucracies even thought about the fact they were working at cross purposes or if it was intentional. After all from the US POV, the more Iran and Iraq kill each other the better. My personal concern was with the poor performance of the Soviet weapons the Iraqi’s used. Their actual battlefield performance was about 10% of our best estimates. Coupled with the maintenance problems ( Russian techs, so it wasn’t a “monkey problem”) we reached the conclusion that SEAD by the Soviets was a suicide mission. That was good, since they assigned their best pilots to SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences). When one attrits, starting at the top is the way to go.
It is only natural for underlings to do something, anything to protect themselves when the power at the top isn’t paying attention. This gets magnified since Barky has clearly lost control of the bureaucracy. Appointing all those ‘Czars’ was a huge mistake. A clever bureaucrat, when put under a political flac who knows nothing and is there as a pay-off for political favors will shamelessly use that flac as a ‘screen’ (basketball), blocker (football) to get closer to the goal. At least until they train them to prance on the leash and pee on bushes not carpets.
After all, Egypt is not the first Dictatorship to have a revolution. Dozens in the last few decades. The ran out of colors to name them after and started on shrubs. How many ‘stuck’? Poland is the only one I can think of that avoided the “one man, one vote, one time”.
So Wretcherds leach analogy sounds about right.
“Strike off the chains of democracy.” “the Mullah knows best.”
So the federal government has demonstrated systematic failure in handling the transitions from dictatorship to democracy.
Lets fire them! 2010 put them on notice, 2012 is when they get their pink slips. Rif the whole dam gubbermint and start over,
Top down, Clean sheet design.
I like it when blert decides to spank a poster, as long as it is not me.
At BC, we should not lose sight of something that America has lost sight of. We were intended to be a Constitutional Republic. That is, we elect wise people (Electoral College) who then decide on which wise person should be president and vice. It has degenerated. Nowhere does it mention candidates from Republican or Democratic parties.
Ours had descended into current mess that we often call a democracy. Popular vote allows unscrupulous people to gain power by promising to shovel greater largess from the public treasury to purchase the popular vote. Bribing the public with the public’s money. Tyranny of the majority results.
Democracy – not so good. Constitutional Republics, limited government – better.
If Saudi Arabia goes, We Are In A World Of S***
Blert
“( French food exports are massively to EEC so that only a trickle leaves the EEC )Ukraine”
Except for corn, that is indexed on world stocks exchanges. Harvests are sold before corn is sown. Nowadays our corn Brie and Beauce producers are becoming millionaries, with bad harvests in Rusia, today Australia seems to be in need for such importations
One of the reasons for Egypt’s poverty is that they don’t do property rights very well. Most property remains outside a formal legal system. You can’t buy & sell it easily and you can’t borrow against it.
HERNANDO DE SOTO ON EGYPT
http://knowledgeproblem.com/2004/02/23/hernando_de_sot/
How interesting that the Obama regime is blocking new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and throwing obstacles in the way of nuclear power and natural-gas fractional production at exactly the time when we will need them the most. It be that the regime is patriotic and believes its strategy will strengthen the nation; but if they hated us, how would they behave differently?
A good and necessary read is Norvell B. de Atkine’s piece: Why Arabs Lose Wars. It is necessary due to the shift of the ranks of the officers in Egypt to side with the people…
Any military organization is a reflection of its society, save for the true outlaws waging Private War, and from that the direction of the Egyptian military must be understood. It is not that they have fearsome weapons – but can they maintain them absent a coherent power structure? Now the officers step up to side with the people to maintain the internal order of the army. That is a demonstration to society that this can be done and, as these are their fellow countrymen doing this, that those in society can do so, also.
It is not always the fates of leaders of Nations or of rabble that set the tone and tenor of such change: military leaders through self-restraint and keeping their organization organized can do wonders to change the course of events. Far more than Iran can – the Egyptian military can show how to do this and not turn this into a bloodbath.
And if some elements get out of line… well “Giving them a whiff of grapeshot.” can do wonders and Napoleon pointed out.
O’party O’narcissist. Is it O’eid?
…-
“As Egypt Burns, Obama and News Media Party Hearty Saturday Night
As thirty years of United States Middle East strategy teeters on collapse, Barack Obama spent Saturday night at a going away party for David Axelrod who is leaving the administration to set up Obama’s reelection campaign in Chicago. The party was held at the Dupont Circle condo of former Obama aide Linda Douglass.
Douglass, who is now with the National Journal, played host to a gathering of cabinet secretaries including Arne Duncan (Education), Timothy Geithner (Treasury) and Steven Chu (Energy) and prominent reporters including Major Garrett (National Journal), Jake Tapper (ABC), Chuck Todd (NBC) and John Harwood (CNBC/New York Times).
Obama spent nearly two hours at the party.
Greta Van Sustern appears to be the only one in the media to report on Obama’s party with her colleagues. Were it not for her posting the pool reports by the National Journal’s Rebecca Kaplan at Fox News’ GretaWire, the public would not know that Obama spent Saturday night partying with the media while Egypt burns.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2665709/posts
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/015952.html#comments
“Interesting that Haaretz counts Turkey as “lost”. It observes that he would have lost all these ironically enough, without asserting any great principle. They were lost like a child loses his marbles, by smarter players grabbing them while he was distracted by the wrong things.”
This is due to the fact that leftists by and large regard foreign policy as a nuisance, a distraction that takes resources away from their domestic agenda. Radical transformation within their own countries is something that they desire so lustily that it clouds their minds to all else. I suspect that what the White House regrets the most is not the actual events, but the fact that so many Americans are paying attention to them: “Hey look, there’s Sarah Palin!”
“Tory Jew Scum”
Makes me feel dirty even quoting the NUS protestors. Seventy years after hundreds of thousands of Britons died to destroy a EUropean state dedicated to the annihilation of Jewry, the self-appointed best and brightest, and most privileged of Great Britain use “Jew” as insult.
Can we revive their grandfathers as zombies and set them to slay their own grandchildren?
Haaretz now seeks to place the blame for its ideology everywhere but on its own words. Haaretz: reap what you sow.
Bolton stated that it is possible that although it appears the crowds are co-opting the military, it is in fact the military co-opting the crowds…
Muslim Brotherhood throws support behind ElBaradei: Opposition figure calls on Mubarak to “leave today,” calling… http://bit.ly/hvgrhu
heard on radio that Mubarak is is leaving
ElBaradei:I am looking forward to making contacts with the army: http://tinyurl.com/6egju5m
With all of the payola that el Baradei received over the years from Tehran…
Why shoudn’t I regard him as the mullah’s man in Cairo?
brownline/104; as far as i can tell, there has been no original use of “Macondo” other than this:
http://students.kennesaw.edu/~ccole34/
Since the book, a few organizations have used the name from the book as an honorific to the book.
Where –or why –BP came up with it is the speculation that dare not utter its name.
Unless one happens to’ve roughnecked his way thru school, working derricks (the derrick hand is the drlg crew’s mud maintainer –not the operator’s, that’s the ‘mud engineer’ –who gives his orders to the derrick hand), and who then went thru the specialist schools in Houston and became a drilling fluid (“mud”) engineer, who then won an award from a very large company as Gulf Coast top technical representive, who then was recruited by a CorpoVen contractor to wildcat the deep hot eastern Venezuela E&P of the 70s-80s, in which case one understands that among the ”mistakes made on the Macondo well” is one set in particular, having to do with the vital monitoring of the volumes of fluid inside the wellbore, a function as basic as the existence of the iron the rig is made of, that there was no possible explanation for other than to guarantee that if the wellbore began filling with gas, the volume increase as it made its way upward would not, could not, be noticed until it was so near the top that the crew would have to shut the well in at the blowout preventer with zero time margin to note that –oops –the blowout preventer didn’t work.
This is the blowout preventer now at a NASA facility in New Orleans, where–oops –the forensic examination, despite the eyes and ears of a hundred litigants and experts in round the clock attendance, has nevertheless, natch, now been utterly and irretrievably compromised, please check search & see for yourself.
The new congress won’t be able to ask Climate Czarina Carol Browner, of Love Canal and Environmental Super Fund fame, about Macondo, which was converted under her direction to the notorious, mysteriously immoveable lifted-but-not-lifted Moratorium, since she a couple days ago resigned from the administration.
Maybe she’s gonna disappear overseas, like the BP supervisor on the well did after taking the 5th at the hearing.
Maybe they’ll both show up in Russia, which just bought 10% of BP, the world’s largest oil company that is so active at every global oil pipeline, nerve center, new E&P horizon, and choke point of every type, including, now that it has bought Amoco, both slopes of Alaska.
One thing they won’t be doing is hanging out with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who was killed in one of those consarned plane crashes (a few days after BP whistleblower Matt Simmons drowned in his hot tub) after donating his private BP files to University of Alaska at Fairbanks, after which BP offered UAF a million bucks to let BP ”catalog” same.
Oh, i could go on and on. but i’ll mercifully stop here.
Look north my American friends. Canada’s oilsands hold more BBLs of oil than Saudi Arabia.
Time for a North American energy pact. Obama wants a Sputnik moment……turn lose oil and gas exploration.
110. Marie Claude
That reminds me. Decades ago I remember reading that French farming was having a problem due to Inheiritance laws causing privately owned farms to be split up among the heirs. This resulted in smaller and smaller plots that couldn’t meet effiency of scale. Was the law changed or did something else happen??
toadold
since the fifties our agriculture achieved its “neo-liberal” (european sense) revolution, elder farmers couldn’t transmit their properties to their offspring, small farms weren’t enough rewardful as economical means, so the SAFER, the lobby of big farmers made impossible that even farmers’ kids, but that had another profession could inherit of their fathers, thus lands were obligatory bought by SAFER, at its price and conveniently displayed to big farmers, at the same favorable price. (It’s how my parents’ lands were sold, not big enough to fulfil EU diktats, where 300 ha are considered a small property)
see this article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005777,00.html
I was in Tehran before the revolution when the Shah tried this trick: Fighter jets swoop over Cairo in show of force.
Even though it was a flight of 4 big fat Phantoms laying out oily black contrails and raining down shirt-shaking thunder from less than a thousand feet over downtown, it didn’t work.
Maybe Carol Browner can share food tasters with Ron Paul.
I missed the death of Matt Simmons. Still a little shocked. Last I heard from him was a suspicion that much of the oil spill – which is currently assumed to have been ‘processed’ by natural chem and bio oceanic ecosystems – surprising many of us – much of that oil is buried down there. Somewhere.
This Peak Oil subject is rapidly turning into an AGW Moment. My understanding was that existing wells were peaking, while alternative sources, such as tar sands, western oil shales and algae required another 10 years (minimum) to develop and ‘refine’ the technology. (Melting the Rocky Mtns can’t be done overnight, to paraphrase an old commenter.) There’s also the issue of adjusting to different inputs and outputs (waste streams) in substantial quantities and the scaling issue which takes time to resolve. And the dueling authorities re the Bakken yield make my head spin. I could retire as an oil hillbilly. Get my own reality TV show.
Buddy, I agree with you on ethanol. However, there is a another way to raise farm production.
Release the farmers from their CRP( Conservation Reserve Program) 10 year contracts, and let them grow food. Once ya sign acreage on to CRP, it must remain fallow for 10 years.
Corn is grown on roughly 70 million acres of America farmland. I don’t know how much is devoted to ethanol production, but I would guess less than half.
Roughly 40 million acres are under CRP . CRP is supposedly to control erosion. I don’t know how much of that acreage really is needed under erosion control, but most of the Iowa framers I know, ( I actually know a few) use CRP as a welfare subsidy, because farming is often not the most profitable enterprise. Since prices for grain and corn are risen so much, I would bet at least half of that 40 million acres would be returned to food production muy pronto.
Victor,
What is Israels colonial project ? Israel is tiny . They have restored territory taken when they were invaded to the only states that would make limited peace with them (and those states are unlikely to keep that peace when their rulers change). Eygypt refused to take Gaza and Jordan refused the west bank. They have retained land they dare not give away to those who openly call for Israels destruction. Look at gaza as example of what unilaterally surrendering territory got them . If they gave away parts of jerusalem you would have hamas 20 miles or so from the international airport, rocketing it every day. Israel has been under continuous attack for years now. And western fools keep focusing on the fantasy that somehow the injustice, tribalism, superstition and ignorance that pervades the middle east will somehow all vanish if the mythical palestinian people are given a second state (they got jordan during the 1st partition ) . It’s so much easier to beat up the only democracy in the middle east, the only state with any commitment to freedom, the only friend of western civilization than to try to admit that the west must civilize or defeat its’ barbarian enemies. Islam (submission) has been the barbarian enemy of the free for a thousand years, and still is.
My very amateur analysis. Do these things usually end up taking on ideological shades of whatever party controls the US administration? Under Democrats, we “lost” Eastern Europe, China, and Iran to either far left regimes or in the case of Iran, to a radical anti American religious regime. Under Republicans, we “won” Chile, Nicaragua and Eastern Europe for center right governments. I know this is not a complete list, individual countries may have migrated on the political spectrum since the original events, and they are hardly perfect analogies. It just seems to be noteworthy, and gives the lie to the vision that the US doesn’t have any influence on events. Cuba is certainly the odd man out, having fallen to the Left during a largely non-interventionist Eisenhower admin, with a halfhearted attempt to reclaim it under the Kennedy admin. And few remember that progressive Wilson sent US troops to Russia to fight the Reds alongside the White Armies after the Russian Revolution, so I know there are strong counterpoints. I would just throw that out there with regards to predicting the end game in Egypt. The Obama administration, being overtly leftist, and Carteresque in its ambivalence about the American experiment, will back the appropriate horse, overtly or covertly. They cannot help themselves.
“The future, in whose spaces the administration believed its glories to lie, plans to review its past failures in the same expansive place.”. Very nice sentence
. Excellent article
b @ 113: we don’t have to look north, we have natural gas, coal, and oil shale ourselves for 300 years, all of it economic at under $100/barrel equivalent oil price. that doesn’t even count the oil offshore we are not drilling for, ANWR, and the like.
W:
That would of course make Bill Clinton the President again for half a term. I don’t know enough about the Constitution to know if it is kosher, but suppose it is.
Nope. Bill Clinton has his two terms, he’s disqualified to hold the office again. And that’s a shame, because he was the last President in recent memory to cause the debt to actually decline, for three years in a row.
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All the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. Ezekiel 29:6
Sounds a lot like what has happened in the US. Only 2% of the population farms and more and more of that is corporation farming. Around my area anything under 25 hetares is a “hobby farm” and the owner works a full time job elsewhere to make it. Vegetables and products that require hand harvesting are more and more becoming imports. Back in the early 1980′s I knew a guy whose family where rasing hay for livestock feed. They kept having to buy and lease more acreage as prices dropped and get more efficient and expensive machinery to harvest it. They’d hit the point where they didn’t rebuild the machinery over the winter months but just ran it with minimal maintenance during the harvest season and then traded it in for new machines. They had to go from dawn to dusk on those machines. Now with EPA polution requirement the cost of equipment has risen and the milage has dropped. If oil prices spike, look out.
We have oil and not just from the tar sands and shale deposits. Improved recovery techniques can bring oil to market from mature conventional fields when the oil price reaches $80 per barrel. This article suggests that 14,000 wells are expected to be drilled in Western Canadian mature fields this year by Juniors. These are small companies with small outputs but it’s enterprising.
u/118; what a great idea –a say 5 yr moratorium on the conservation easement set-asides –just the news it is under consideration ought to help damp this spike we’re entering –as a signal notice of intent to be on the right side of the people. Let’s contact Palin, Bachman, and Beck/Oreilly/Cavuto –
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YBR/117; after you digest Simmons, take a look at Dr. Thomas B. Manton. Killed just weeks ago, in a mystery shanking in a Florida prison, where he had just been sent for kiddieporn found on his computer by a repairman he had taken the computer to. Connection to Simmons? Both high-profile oil industry independents and experts making a media splash with breathtaking allegations about BP/Macondo. No i’m not crazy –look it up. i do not know any details –just that outline, found while reading up on Ted Stevens’ airplane accident, and verified only via quantity of web hits on his name. Articles by him and about his anti-BP work that date from mid 2010, interspersed with articles from early 2011 about his sudden death. Missing is late 2010 –i quit looking, feeling sick and ghoulish this fine Sunday. But he is definitely a major voice on the topic, and he is definitely –like Stevens and Simmons among a very small group of ‘men who knew too much’ –dead as a fricken doornail. like if there’s five guys wearing purple bow ties in a crowd of thousands, and suddenly three of ‘em keel over dead, could be something on those purple bow ties, congress ought to have ‘em tested.
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mb/119; amen and bravo, sir.
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a/121; i noticed that sentence too, and marveled at the way he used the double-meaning word ‘lie’.
The US Constitution provides a process for removing a chief executive for incompetence, or something, I forget word used. Point being, founders were realistic regarding the potential need to remove a chief executive. That need is actual today. Surely thoughts in that direction are bipartisan.
Iran is a descendant but not the progenitor of chaos in the ME. The Family Saud’s alliance with Wahabbi/Salafi “scholars” is the progenitor. Ultimately, the progenitor is the ulema, the “scholars.” They made the Koran and the image of Mohammed they portray through it. They order the sprees against “blasphemy.”
All wars and battles are wars and battles of supply lines.
It depresses me when someone argues a need for more technology to get ahead of the world or surmount some crisis. No, the need is fundamental, a secure food train powers success in any endeavor.
That means an army to protect the supply lines. A nation rises around its army (or in modern parlance, its armed forces). No army, no nation. An unsuccessful army, a subject nation.
Iran lacks sea and air lift. Sauds and Syrians and Arabs generally are lazy and inimical to work, including sustained combat, Egyptians less so, reflecting their Greek component and British training, infrastructure and experience. Gulf Emirates lack modern armies.
No Arab country is able to resupply its armed forces from domestic production. USA and European nations are moving in that direction.
Iran has proxies and an SOF structure that is foreign-deployed but on weak supply lines, has to keep heads down and still is tracked.
“Barky” is from Shi’ite background, is doing everything possible to help Teheran. The bow to Saud was misdirection, deception and known so to everyone present to it. Saud is smirking. Clinton also is an Iran partisan, because Iran is carrying the water against the Israelis.
As mentioned earlier, the irony is substantial of-Jewish-descent presence in the anti-Israel movement, which is core principle of “Barky’s” gang. How did Freud put it? Todestrieb. Todeswunsch. Thanatos. A remarkable phenomenon.
If armies other than Egypt’s take the field, Israel’s, Hashemites’ and Saud’s will be among them, as pro tem allies. Depending on results, Hashemites may reclaim Arabia Deserta actually instead of symbolically with that famous flag hoisting years ago at Aqaba.
Hashemites are the legitimate bearers of the Prophet’s legacy. Whether they have born it legitimately will be submitted one day to the judgement of battle.
Please spare me the tired Jewih meme…This revolution cannot analysis by tired western constructs and dogma..Viva The poor..America could be next given how our poor is trashed
(duplicate post removed)
I supported the war in Iraq, even with its mistakes and misguided “nation-building”. I’ve also reluctantly supported the campaign in Afghanistan, even though it was always a misguided effort on operationally mischosen terrain. Nobody seems to have considered the isolated position with vulnerable lines of supply and communication. Now I fear we have reached a Stalingrad moment.
A brilliant summer campaign brought the Wehrmacht to the banks of the Volga at Stalingrad. By mid-October, near the factory ruins, the front lines were within pistol range of the Volga; I have been there. Rifle grenades or light mortars could drop fire over the cliffs on to the banks of the river at that point. Then in early November the snow came a bit early and everything bogged down. And on November 19, frest reserve formations of the Red Army opened their offensive on both flanks of the Stalingrad bulge. Subsequently military historians have blamed Hitler for the ensuing disaster, arguing that if he had authorized the Wehrmacht to withdraw at that point loss of the Sixth Army could have been averted. Operationally, Hitler was right. It was already too late and Sixth Army was doomed, but their two-and-a-half month Golgotha was a sacrifice which delayed Zhukov’s larger plan, which would have cut off the even larger German Army Group A then fighting in the Caucasus.
Any attempt to evacuate Stalingrad in November or December would have led to an even quicker annihilation of Sixth Army. It would have meant abandoning the major airfields at Gumrak and Pitomnik, which brought in supplies and evacuated wounded for a while. It would have meant abandoning the army’s artillery, heavy and light, its armored vehicles and motor transport, and trying to battle their way across a frozen steppe in the dead of winter with Russian troops continuously pursuing and chewing on both flanks. It would have meant abandoning antitank guns, which would have been sorely missed, and food and ammunition, and also abandoning the wounded. It would have meant abandoning field fortifications and buildings, which provided at least some shelter from enemy fire and the weather. Academic generals who talk about at least saving the troops back to the Don bend seem to have ignored Bonaparte’s experience and the slaughter at Maloyaroslavets, and also the fact that Sixth Army’s sacrifice bought time to save even larger forces. No, by November 1942 any withdrawal under pressure would have become a rout and a massacre. The time for the orderly withdrawal from over-extended and exposed positions, came and went in mid-October.
And that is where I fear we are today. Look at the map. Consider our supply lines, and our potential evacuation routes. Mounting an air bridge will become difficult if we lose any of our current regional air bases. Our enemies in Pakistan and Iran will be in no mood to help, and if they decide to commit their SAM missile and interceptor forces, to interdiction, they could make the effort costly. Putin is the closest thing resembling a benevolent agent in the region – and he has never been known for doing favors for anyone. Any shreds of mercy will come at high cost. If we make a mad dash for the transports or fight our way out in a modern Anabasis, it will mean casualties, and the abandonment of much expensive and modern equipment to our foes.
Whatever our purpose was, it has now been undone, and I fear that American efforts have been discredited in the region. Talk of school-building projects is fanciful and ignores daily reality. There is little chance at this point that representative elections will take root, a consensual strong-man is the best they can hope for. If we can bring our troops home intact, they might be useful for interdicting Muslim infiltrators coming through Mexico and Venezuela.
This DOES NOT make me happy, and we need to do some seious kicking ass andd taking names here at home.
I apologize for writing BEFORE reading all of the previous post> I sincerely do because it’s lazy and sloppy but today I just didn’t feel like wading through all the MEhistory, whose fault was what for this or that. I know BC and I’m sure with very few exceptions the posts are great…now.
How many are familiar with the following/ The prize, a set of steak knives.
* Hodge conjecture
* Reimann hypothesis
*Yang -MIlls existence and mass gap
These are but three of seven as of January 2011 unsolved math problems. Heres the take.
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The Millennium Prize Problems are seven problems in mathematics that were stated by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. As of January 2011, six of the problems remain unsolved. A correct solution to any of the problems results in a US$1,000,000 prize (sometimes called a Millennium Prize) being awarded by the institute. Only the Poincaré conjecture has been solved, by Grigori Perelman, who declined the award.
The seven problems are:
1.P versus NP problem
2.Hodge conjecture
3.Poincaré conjecture (solved, see solution of the Poincaré conjecture)
4.Riemann hypothesis
5.Yang–Mills existence and mass gap
6.Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness
7.Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
So why do I bring these up?
Well, math is precise and logical. Man is not.
The ME , Egypt and all the other Islamic countries remain totally tribal at their core and unlike the above “unsolvable math problems” that will one day be solved and proofs offered in those solutions man is not going to find any “eternal proofs” for peace on Earth. This holds particularly true in areas (read most of the world) where tribal loyalties remain the prime moving force…..sometimes with shifting alliances as swiftly moved as the sirocco moves the desert sands. And these tribes are animated by a horrific philosophy that is bent to fit their mood.
It is absolute folly for the USA and its allies to believe we can “teach” a republican form of democracy to the ME world. It would have taken another thousand years of colonial rule to extinguish the tribal hatreds, if they ever could be broken.
We simply need oil and allies for OUR own security.
But now the rapidly accelerating nuclear proliferation, primarily sub rosa, is subverting the entire world’s safety. I have my solution but I am a man and therefore not as precise and logical as mathematics, nor is any man. However, if it is OUR security we want to protect so that our liberties are no blown by the sirocco then we must make the best irrational decision we can make and that is to subdue the threats to our nation before the sands bury us. Time and tide wait for no man. We must decide to be the winner or accept a losing position.
The steak knives await anyone who can find a final solution to a tribal world.
130. Rurik
There is a plan for that. All military personal can be evaced in 72 hours. Or at least that is what was planned for. Not sure what will happen to the non-military types. I guess they will get squeezed into the last few 747′s. Or that is what I was told when making the compar1son to Battan last year when McCrystal’s “surge” first became public. Didn’t mention interdiction by anyone. I doubt the any gobemint would take that step . First because it wouldn’t work. The Navy and Air Farce are more then capable of providing air cover. One CVN has about 48 F-18′s. More can be flown in With mid air re-fueling the Air Farce can put as many fighters over that region as they have tankers to support. Hundreds if needed.
Iran has a handful of F-14′s and some Mig-29′s. Pakis have 24 OLD F-6′s and a bunch of Mig-21′s and 23′s. What the F-18 guys would call a target rich environment. The only real question is if the Super Hornet pilots would leave anything for the Air Force to shoot down.
The air bridge itself would go over Pakistan and India to Australia.
There isn’t a lot of hi-tech stuff in Afghanistan. Not that sort of war. Nothing there that any nation not under sanction couldn’t buy from the French.
OMG!
Bush was right to engage Saddam Hussein?
The Left will commit Seppuku before they admit to such a heresy.
Yes, in 2004, Iran was looking over its’ shoulder, and we should have wheeled the Marines that were in Anbar to the West to take-down the Assad regime in Syria; while at the same time conducting “strategic reconnaissance” along the Afghan-Iran border.
But, the Chicken-Little’s that overpopulate DC were having the vapors, and that was that, and now we have a mess that didn’t have to be.
“Nope. Bill Clinton has his two terms, he’s disqualified to hold the office again. And that’s a shame, because he was the last President in recent memory to cause the debt to actually decline, for three years in a row.”
Nope. Congress created the condition for the dot tech bubble. Congress AND Clinton cut the military about 30%, which was a big boost to the economy because Congress wouldn’t let Hill-de-beast spend it on Health care. Slick Willie’s genius is for taking credit for other’s accomplishments. His talent involves Cigars.
‘
R/130–re ‘nation-building’: somewhere back in the postings someone linked “Why Arabs Lose Wars” by de Atkine, which I just finished. I recall seeing much of this on the Strategy Page site, also.
As a military is only a regimented reflection of the society surrounding it thus building a ‘nation’ by our definition is mostly doomed to fail. People everywhere may indeed hunger for freedom but in many case it mostly means the freedom to dump on their neighbor.
Rurik @ 130…
Zhukov is falsely credited with Operation Uranus. Both he and Stalin were fulsomely occupied with an operation TWICE as big: MARS.
Operation Mars gets no press because it was a total fiasco for the Soviets: 400,000 KIA and the destruction of months of tank production. It was an attempt to drive 2 German tank armies back from Moscow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Vasilevsky
Marshall Vasilevsey was the actual commander of Operation Saturn. Upon its success he was promoted to the very top — and stayed there. He made every attempt to vector all publicity onto Zhukov. He never appeared in news film.
The REAL problem for the Germans was the loss of their Enigma wireless security. The NKVD had captured one machine positioned up with the Hungarian Army. ( against explicit orders from Hitler ) This particular stunt was performed in white-out conditions.
Next, this machine was used to spoof Fuhrer commands — particularly to stop the 29th Motorized Division in its tracks as it was busy destroying the southern wing of the encirclement. Had the 29th proceeded — as planned — the Germans would have never been encircled.
Beyond that, the Soviets ordered other critical German formations East, into the pocket, and they complied. Of particular note were the mechanics for the tanks and other mission critical troops. By the time they got to the front these discovered that there was no gas, no food, no shelter. Their own commanders did not expect to see them arrive. In their haste much of their equipment was left behind to be captured by the Soviets. Sweet.
The vast bulk of the draft horses had been long sent to the rear. There was too little fodder for them. Hence the infantry formations had only a very limited ability to shift their guns.
The correct move for the Germans was to immediately breakout even before they were encircled. Due to very bad flying conditions the Luftwaffe did not inform the Army that DEEP penetrations had been effected by the Soviets. This was the first time in the war that they had done so.
By the time HQ got the news full encirclement was only a day away. Incredibly, von Paulus wired Hitler for instructions! Hitler, ever the optimist, also could not comprehend the deep strike. He dismissed the Luftwaffe’s original intel as being quite mistaken. By the time it was confirmed, the Army Group was surrounded.
Imagine, it took days to surround the German Army Group at Stalingrad — but they pulled it off!
Due to the extreme weather — which all knew would only get worse — the only correct action was to promptly abandon the heavy gear and pull back before the ring was set. Deployed tanks could have thwarted the encirclement IF they’d been tasked in time.
Subsequently von Manstein used the captured Enigma machine against the Soviets. Understanding that they were listening in — he reverse-spoofed them. Hence the 1943 Winter Miracle. Subsequently a new generation of Enigma boxes were issued — an extra rotor.
It was during the counter-attack by 6th Panzer to relieve 6th Army that it became crystal clear that the Soviets were reading Enigma transmissions in real time. Read “Panzer Battles”
http://www.amazon.com/Panzer-Battles-Study-Employment-Second/dp/0345321588
General Schwarzkopf has a signed copy, himself, and used it to great effect in 1991.
Wretchard writes: “The scale of the left’s folly: their insistence on drilling moratoriums, opposition to nuclear power, support of negotiations with dictators at all costs, calls for unilateral disarmament, addiction to debt and their barely disguised virulent anti-Semitism should be too manifest to deny.”
Oh, really? From your lips to God’s ears— but I doubt it.
The follies go back to, oh, 1919 Russia before Lenin’s NEP, and have piled up with the bodies ever since. The left continues to deny everything. Why will the 2011 mistakes and disasters make them admit reality when 2001 (9/11) or 1991 (USSR implodes) 1989 (Fall of Berlin Wall and Tien an Men Square) or 1979 (Iranian Revolution and USSR invades Afghanistan) or 1981 (martial law in Poland) or 1968 (Warsaw Pact invades Czechoslovakia) or 1956 (Hungary) or 1953 (E. Germany) or 1948 (Czech takeover, Berlin blockade) or 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) or 1936-39 (Stalinists purge the other leftists in Spain, later written up by Orwell), or 1936-38 (Great Terror) 1930-33 (Ukrainian famine and genocide) or 1928-30 (USSR collectivization), or 1966 (China’s Cultural Revolution), 1958 (Great Leap Forward), 1975-6 (SE Asian boat people)… many more that I’m forgetting.
Somehow what is happening now will lead to a different result in the minds of the useful idiot left?
I hope so, but color me skeptical.
The looting is obviously being done by the police (who coincidentally “disappeared” before the looting started). Protesters have caught looters and found they are government agents. Anyone with a brain could figure that the police were looting as a psy-ops exercise to create “chaos” to justify the brutal imposing of “order”.
Really, you people make me laugh, you’re all for your own freedom, but don’t want anyone else to have any. May I remind you that Iran was a democracy until the US and Britain ousted the democratically elected leader, the secular Mossadegh (a man who worked without pay, unlike our fat greedy Western politicians), so, thus killing democracy and installing the monstrous thug Shah and his SAVAAK scumbags, we created the perfect grounds for the Ayatollahs to take over. No democratic system to obstruct the mullahs on their path to power, because the retards at the CIA removed them.
US foreign policy, with its meddling in the lives of foreign peoples in sovereign nations, is decidedly Fascist/Communist in nature. In foreign policy, we see the parasitic statists of the Spentagon, CIA, and Statist Department, unhindered by the constitution, interfering and controlling in such a way that Stalin himself would blush with pride.
Let’s remember that the United Fruitcake Dulles brothers were Hitler-loving Nazis. Its notable that the likes of Kissinger, Dulles, and all the other Fascist parasites who sponge off the taxpayer, never met a dictator they didn’t like, but despise democracy.
Tony @116,
Could be the same jets overflew Ahwaz’ Kiampars district in late 1976.
Iran was an odd place ’75-’77. Signs are, it still is.
#138 Gary. I think that Mossadegh in Iran had many predecessors in many previous revolutions. They become the chief persuader during an interim period where competition for permanent governance takes place between strong competing interests.
A case in point is Alexander Kerensky the leader of the Provisional Government in 1917 in Russia, after the Tsar had been unseated. The Provisional Government was prey to strong challenges from both the right and the left. The competition for authority ended in late October 1917, when Bolsheviks routed the ministers of the Provisional Government in the events known as the October Revolution. I think something similar could be said for the last of the English civil wars where Cromwell eventually became a strong man dictator.
Yes, only the Egyptians can win their own freedom. This article gives some reasons why they may not be able to be free. Based on my (incomplete) knowledge of history I think that Egypt could possibly have an interim moderate government while the strong opposing interests compete for control. I also think that eventually one interest will win and take total control of the country.
All countries undergo societal change from time to time.
One can either accept it as democracies do without notice or suppress it.
The lesson of the Shah in 1979 was that the cost of suppression is that if suppression fails then you have radicalized an entire nation.
Having had mu trip to ‘the sandbox’ in early 1980 the US was in a position that anymore ‘instability’ had to be guarded against at all costs.
Even though Iraq has turned out ‘less then perfectly’ we really don’t have a regional strongman capable of capitalizing on various instabilities in the region.
Iran is not an 800 pound gorilla. They couldn’t beat Saddam.
They surely aren’t capable of getting past King Khalid Military City which didn’t exist in 1980. KKMC is the worlds second largest military facility in the world.
Iran has it’s own internal unrest to concern themselves.
It’s time to allow internal events in the Middle East unfold.
This is a fabulous essay about terrifying things, Mr. Fernandez. Thank you for writing it.
Great essay Wretchard.
Your question:
“The scale of the left’s folly: their insistence on drilling moratoriums, opposition to nuclear power, support of negotiations with dictators at all costs, calls for unilateral disarmament, addiction to debt and their barely disguised virulent anti-Semitism should be too manifest to deny.
“Because it will hit them where it hurts, in the lifestyle they somehow thought came from some permanent Western prosperity that was beyond the power of their fecklessness to destroy. It will be interesting to see if anyone can fill up their cars with carbon credits when oil the tankers stop coming or when black gold is marked at $500 a barrel.”
Is answered by something you wrote recently:
“The problem with Piven’s theory is that events in Europe have shown those “major economic reforms” to be unsustainable, if not actually ruinous. However, she appears to believe that the European crisis is only apparent, being the result of the Man hiding the Stash. Find that stash and things become sustainable again. Taking a page from the Europeans Left, Piven argues that the way to shake it loose is to ramp up the crisis. Ramp it up enough and the money comes popping out of the slot machine, just like she imagines it will.”
Find the stash! That will solve the problem.
Time for Sarah Palin to mention; drill, drill, and all of the above.
The Oil/energy disaster that Obama has been setting us up for now seems startlingly close.
there was bound to be a popular revolution either in Egypt or Iran. The Obama administration eith through incompetence and stupidity that borders on treason or actual treason assured that it would happen in Egypt.
When the Saudi domino falls so will the financial markets.
131. Habu
re: However, if it is OUR security we want to protect so that our liberties are not blown by the sirocco then we must make the best irrational decision we can make and that is to subdue the threats to our nation before the sands bury us. Time and tide wait for no man. We must decide to be the winner or accept a losing position.
You’re in good company:
“A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.” – George S. Patton
Blert @ 136
Thank you for that exttensive reply. No, I was not aware of the Soviet enigma machine capture and use, though I was aware of some of the other details, such as Mars. Of course the Soviets have never publicized information about any of their cyber successes. Much better to attribute all success to The Great Zhukov, though there has been some murmering about reconsidering the evaluation of the The Great One. But it never seems to go official. However, I’m still not convinced a late breakout would have succeeded. Trudging across that terrain in a harsh winter would still have been a major goatrope.
As for stoicheion’s reassurances #132, I will hope you are correct, as you obviously know more about these matters, than I (and thankfully are not blabbing). However, I have been trained to the school that “Anything that can go wrong will, and anything that cannot go wrong also will. But perhaps the other side may have its full share of ineptitude as well.
Rurik…
You underestimate how fast men will march to home and freedom.
BTW, the Soviets encircled the Germans — at least in the South — on foot and horse. Getting trucks and tanks across the Volga is a nightmare. During the freezing process ice-quakes cause the surface to be more disturbed than a blasted battlefield.
That’s why a single motorized division could cut a multi-corps offensive to shreds: only the light elements could get across. It took days to hammer out an ice bridge. It was a tricky business since the area was still within range of long range counter-battery guns.
The Germans had plenty of fuel to disrupt the Russian southern advance — and should have crushed it. But, upon word that the Luftwaffe was going to save the day, idiot von Paulus hunkered down and used the fuel just to stay warm. Because of the cold, the gasoline didn’t last hardly any time at all.
If Rommel or Guderian had been in command Hitler would have found out about the withdrawal after the fact. Come to think of it, both did such things during the war.
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Any attempt by Pakistan/ISI to pocket the ISAF would be doom for Islamabad. For starters an oceanic embargo would have the citizens in the streets within a week — no food.
Beyond that Pakistan is BROKE. The big boys steal everything that is not bolted down.
In the meantime, the ISAF can sustain itself from the north. All restraint WRT AQ and the Talibs would be gone.
And now:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/maersk-idUSDKT00523620110131
Maersk is suspending terminal operations in Egypt.
What could go wrong?
Sorry, but those distinctive shapes are absolutely M1A1′s.
From Defense Industry Daily…
In the modern era, Egypt was a Soviet client for a long time, and its arsenals still contain their share of Soviet weaponry. Military assistance relations took a sharp turn for the worse in the early 1970s, and the country has used the US military aid program that accompanied the 1979 Camp David Accords to replace much of that equipment with American items. The country began a co-production program for M1 Abrams tanks in 1988, which involves kit assembly in Egypt but outsources sensitive functions like adding the M1’s special armor. To date, this program has produced 880 tanks, a total that would rise to 1,005 M1 tanks with this order.