The Blind Leading the Blind
Or the Deer in the Headlights. (note this is a composite video from two sources)
As President Morsi attempts to face down opposition to his assumption of absolute power in Egypt the question is: what will he do to unite his recently divided constituency? Will he play the solid statesman, as so many pundits believe for some reason? Or will he be tempted to turn a blind eye of Hamas’ reammunitioning? For nothing unites a divided Arab country so much as conflict with Israel. Moreover by allowing Hamas more ammo, he can force Washington policymakers to tread warily. Moreover, they can rationalize doing nothing to oppose Morsi’s putsch on the grounds that it will “drive him to extremism”.
Thus the stage is set for an even more dangerous chapter in the saga of the Arab Spring.
The question has to be asked: how is Morsi going to guarantee the Gaza ceasefire when Egypt itself is so badly riven and may soon need a ceasefire of its own? The Dream Train has just gotten derailed. Only 22 hours ago the Business Recorder reported: “Morsi receives praise from Obama, US commentators”
Just as she appeared to be enjoying a trip to Asia alongside US President Barack Obama on Air Force One, the president cast her into the morass of the Middle East….
When Wednesday’s cease-fire was announced in Cairo less than 20 hours after Clinton arrived in the region, she looked confident, dressed in a green suit – the same colour as in the Hamas flag – standing alongside Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr.
She praised Egypt for its work in brokering the cease-fire, adding that she looked forward to working with Amr and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on the next steps toward “a comprehensive peace for all the people of the region.”
The New York Times was recounting Obama’s fulsome praise just hours ago. “The White House phone log tells part of the tale. Mr. Obama talked with Mr. Morsi three times within 24 hours and six times over the course of several days, an unusual amount of one-on-one time for a president. Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver.”
Yep. Straight shooter.
If history is any guide, the next step solving the crisis in Egypt will probably be a tireless effort by Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice to track down the YouTube video producer that caused this latest catastrophe, in partnership with Bill Clinton, who John McCain has recommended as an “honest broker” to help settle the issues. McCain “joked that Clinton would hate him for floating his name for the difficult task. But if he accepts, he could always rely on his wife for counsel.”
That he could. That he could.
But events in the Middle East now threaten to get away from the Obama administration. The Can, after being kicked an innumerable number of times down the road, now threatens to roll along of its own accord into uncharted territory.
Now is the real test of the Obama administration’s commitment to democracy. Are they prepared to sanction Morsi for arbitrarily seizing power? Is the Left prepared to treat Morsi like a fascist regime? What they have done if Netanyahu had done what Morsi just did? Would they continue to send aid to the “Netanyahu regime”?
Or is there one standard for Islamist regimes and another for the rest of us? And what does that say about the internal value system of the Obama administration?
Bonus question: what famous film production used Lizst’s preludes as its theme?
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
Tip Jar or Subscribe or Unsubscribe
I see via influential Twitter user “Sandmonkey” that there are large protests taking place in Tahrir Square against this assumption of dictatorial powers. I can’t wait for the MSM network news to rush down there once more to report on blossoming of democracy again! …hmmmm….Anderson Cooper…where are you?…
OK, I looked it up: Flash Gordon. (I do seem to have a slight memory of it from watching reruns on our old Dumont TV in my early years.)
With a “cease fire” aka hudna in Gaza and Hamas re-armament on the near horizon from the ever helpful Islamic theocracy of Iran, Israel faces a continuous bleeding ulcer akin to Spain as Napoleon’s soft underbelly of Europe.
The Israelis have expended tens of millions of dollars’ worth of high tech munitions stopping cheap Chinese rockets from impacting in cities and towns and pulled tens of thousands of reservists away from their regular jobs to stand around the borders of Gaza in uniform to threaten an invasion they seem unwilling to undertake. All the while, the bleeding to the Israeli economy continues apace with business and agriculture paralyzed in Southern Israel by the threat of continuing rocket attacks and now the absence of tens of thousands of military reservists from their regular jobs slashing economic output every day.
How much more can they bleed before they must either beg Obumble for a hand out or they bleed out entirely?
The realistically foreseeable way to end this particular mess on positive terms for the Israelis is to stop playing around and go to war with Hamas in Gaza. Go for all the marbles in a real declared war!
Give “non-combatants” 72 hours to evacuate the Gaza strip to Egypt or on Israeli provided vehicles to the West Bank. At the end of the 72 hours, unleash Hell! Use WWII rules of engagement and end it all in a week or two.
After victory, settle the Gaza strip with Israelis and incorporate it entirely into Israel proper.
That is the humanitarian way to “win” a war, although the U.S. and western civilization seems to have forgotten.
At this point, what have they got to lose?
Sincerely, Armageddon Rex
Bonus question: what famous film production used Lizst’s preludes as its theme?
Flash Gordon, Franz Lizst’s Le Preludes.
For me, it’s like the theme to The Lone Ranger. Nothing can ever make it JUST a piece of classical music again. Too many childhood memories.
Didn’t Flash Gordon also use Wagner’s “Entrance of the God’s Into Valhalla” from Das Rheingold? I seem to remember that Flash Gordon introduced me, at a very young and impressionable age, to Wagner’s music. So much so that, the first time I heard Wagner played in a symphony concert, I thought, hey, they’re playing Flash Gordon music!
The preludes were also known as the Flash Gordon song, but in later years it was used as a theme in wartime newsreels. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyFKbLGGCVY
See if this rings any bells. I used it to score the missile video precisely because I remembered. There is a glamor to aggression. Back in the 1930s the really beautiful people were either Fascists or Communists. The Cambridge spies, the Mitford sisters, the intellectual class.
The worst thing to be, then as now, was a Colonel Blimp dinosaur, like Churchill, fat, balding, old and conservative. If you really wanted to be in back then you either Fascist or Communist.
I guess it’s the same today. If you announced conversion to Catholicism, say, then ho-hum. But show up the next day in a hijab and you might make the cover of vogue. The bad guys in the 30s had the good press, the nice camera angles, the facile poetry and the stirring musical scores.
Just think: if you were a young man in the 1930s, who would you like to go out on a date with? Leni Reifenstahl or Golda Meir?
And yet, in the long perspective of history, it was not glamor which proved to be beautiful.
I have only two questions about this, why did he do it, and who is objecting?
IOW: WTF?
And I’ll try again to say what I garbled on the last thread: Morsi only has Obambus as his exemplar, as Mussolini reputedly had Woodrow Wilson.
Four Cargo Ships equals four targets. It is time for submarine warfare. No reason for publicity. Things vanish, like in the Bermuda Triangle. Israel is at war with Iran. The Israelis must pursue this war choosing targets to paraphrase Dulles, “In a time manner and place of their own choosing.” When it ends the Iranian people may long for a restoration of the Pahlevis as a best case option.
The source of the threat is in Iran. If Israel crushes Iran then almost all the other threads, Gaza, Egypt, and Syria, will resolve or at least become manageable. Without Iran Israel’s threats will be KSA Wahabi agitation, Egyptian chronic dysfunction, and Russian and Chinese Great Game playing. Dealing with them once the blunt tool of Khomeinist Iran has been rebuked and removed from the table are problems that Israelis grew up handling. For Israel it would be a return to what must seem like the Good Old Days before Peanut One entered the White House.
BftP…
I strongly suspect that Israel is already thwarting the mullahs, strategically-economically.
It’s of some solace that the Sevastopol Campaign was followed by Case Blue ( Fall Blau ) … followed by Uranus.
I rather suspect that Bibi is playing a deeper game of chess than Tehran.
=======
On a different tack: Israel had better do a better job of voter ID in the up coming election.
Ours was a travesty.
6. wretchard
Hmm. It would appear that I’m confusing Lizst for Wagner.
Wretchard, your title ” the blind leading the blind” implies Morsi and Buraq know not where they are going. I must disagree. They know exactly where they are going.
The funny thing is Ol’ Buraq must be jealous of Morsi. Buraq too wants absolute dictatorial powers. We’re close to giving up on this Constitutional Republic thing, but we’re not quite there yet. Poor Barry!
The Rino Pubs are trying their best to help Buraq out, though. If we had a real opposition party, hearings on this IMF loan, what are we on the hook for, and why are we funding an Islamic Dictatorship would be in the process of being scheduled for early next week. No such luck with Speaker Boehner in charge. He has already purged the leadership of anyone who might object to appeasing Barry. So another treasonous outrage by Buraq Hussein will be acquiesced too. Again.
If I were Prez, I’d show the proud Muslims some rockets, and then check back in to see how they were doing after 5.26 years or so…
I sure hope that when the inevitable R2P effort is launched to protect the Egyptian Arab Sping Protestors from the Dictator Morsi that we just subcontract it out to the IDF.
What? There is not going to be a Egyptian R2P effort? Now, why would that be?
Revisionist history has dinned into the current generation the stereotype of the fat evil Nazi. But if you go back and watch the movies made in the late 1930s they were clearly making the opposite argument. They urged resisting the glamor of ‘virile’ fascism in contrast to the ‘decadent’ democracies. The bad guys were the pretty boys and one suspects, the glamor girls. Just look at Diana Mosley or Leni Reifenstahl. They may have been Nazis. But they were babes.
The “Master Race” trope was powerful not because it was ridiculous but because it was believable. In many ways the bad guys treated the good guys in much the same way that the liberal elite treats the NASCAR set. Nor was it confined to Europe.
Subas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist, was “living in Berlin asked Himmler for “special SS training” of Bose’s fellow anti-British émigrés so that when the Germans reached India, there would be a cadre of SS-trained Indians to work with the Einsatzgruppen in killing the Jews of India”. He is still admired in India to this day. It was never determined if he died in a supposed plane crash. He may haved lived out his life under the protection of Stalin. There was a cachet to being “anti-imperialist”. That you took orders from Himmler was nothing to the point.
Patrick Buisson, director of France’s History Channel claims that French women fell head over heels or the German occupiers: “they were so handsome and so brave in comparison with the drunken French soldiers who had surrendered the fight.”
My mother remembers the daughter of a pro-Japanese Filipino exile doing a tour of her school during the war, beautiful and dressed in riding breeches and quasi military shirt. By contrast the real guerillas were often smelly and lice-ridden with the “patong-patong” shirts (tattered shirts worn one on top of the other so that the whole parts of one covered the holes of the other).
The movies have got it all wrong. If the French resistance were as seductive as they are made to look in the movies, they couldn’t have done much. My guess is that until the roof fell in on the bad guys they were regarded as the Alpha Males.
The fascists paid special attention to fashion. The SS uniforms were professionally designed. Many of them were sewn by the original Hugo Boss. In contrast, the British Tommy worse hairy and shapeless wool. It is perhaps only a small exaggeration to say that people went to see Valkyrie because they wanted to see Tom Cruise in a German uniform.
Max Hastings, recollecting his wartime childhood, noted that American GIs were distinguished not so much by their moral superiority over the fascist enemy, but by the magnificence of their equipment.
It’s the cultural equivalent of might makes right. Power is an aphrodasciac. It is little wonder that Obama — and probably Morsi and Hamas with their guns — are so so attractive to the press, why Asma Assad was so appealing to Vogue. Conservatives think that it is enough to be good, upright and moral.
They are wrong. It is important to be good, upright and moral. But for as long as the bad guys have power, it is they who will have glamor and obtain the votes of those who are attracted to it.
The Administration sent Hillary! abroad to keep her from having to testify about Benghazi. They my want to re-think that; having her testify might be preferable to the long-term damage she’s doing overseas.
” Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies
..It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler and the Nazis.
Godwin’s law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread Reductio ad Hitlerum form.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Reductio ad Hitlerum seems to be the popular meme for today applied to Egypt-it does not work-no more than it worked when applied to Saddam’s Iraq.
Saddam’s idol was Stalin/Communism-not Hitler/Nazism-because Stalin succeeded and murdered many more people.
Part of the issue in the Holy-land/ Levant is Fascism and its focus on “Blood and Soil” Blood and Soil (German: Blut und Boden) an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors.
1/ Descent (Blood (of a folk)) and
2/ Homeland/Heimat (Soil).
Fascism was very popular in Europe-Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Scandinavia etc-and also among Zionists in the 19th and 20th centuries and it popularity lasted way past the end of WW2.
There are fascists on both sides of the conflict in the Holy Land and they both need to dial it down and settle for a two state agreement.
Christianity broke through the ancient tribal, blood/soil cycles of hatred and revenge –it is Catholic- a universal faith which renounces cycles of hatred and revenge, and ” To Utter What Has Been Hidden Since the Foundation of the World”
Tragically those who are suffering most in the Holy Land and the larger Levant are the Christians.
The US, Russia, EU, NATO and the Vatican must protects the Christians in the Levant and ME.
I vaguely remember reading a Canadian’s book about two SS Divisions and what happened to them after the Normandy invasion and their opponents. In it there was a brief comparison about pay scales between the British and American forces. If I remember correctly he stated that a British Col. made about ten times what a British Private did in the American forces a Col. made about four times what an American private did and yes the Americans were paid more than the Brits.
The GIs may have looked spiffy to Max Hastings and his countrymen, but not so to the Germans. Toward the end of The Forgotten Soldier, a recently demobilized Guy Sajer, who spent the entirety of his war on the Eastern Front(s), encountered his first GIs. Sajer was disdainful of them, appalled by their baggy trousers and blouses, their slovenly comportment, their gum-chewing habit. He judged them to be men devoid of joy, lacking the exultant martial spirit of a true German soldat. I always thought Sajer (aka Guy Mouminoux) was a jerk. Great writer, but a jerk. Also, maybe, a liar or a fabulist. Still is, probably. He’s still alive. Last I heard, he owned a bookstore in Paris.
Wretchard@14: “It’s the cultural equivalent of might makes right. Power is an aphrodasciac. It is little wonder that Obama — and probably Morsi and Hamas with their guns — are so so attractive to the press, why Asma Assad was so appealing to Vogue. …But for as long as the bad guys have power, it is they who will have glamor and obtain the votes of those who are attracted to it.”
Gosh, Wretchard, are you channeling Whiskey? Back then, the Fascists were sexy and macho. And today liberal women swoon at the sight of those swarthy alpha-male Hamas warriors?
Wretchard@14: Not for nothing does the Catholic Baptismal Rite include the words “Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?”
Toadold @17
http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Inferno-Panzer-Corps-Normandy/dp/1885119445
Try this^^^^^^^^^^^^
======
@ 18 SBW
Gavin sent a contingent of ONLY his most decorated parachutists to a ceremony in Berlin, 1945.
Every man in the front rank was decorated, time and again; this, in the 82nd Airborne.
The Soviets were not so impressed.
Only later, they discovered that American medals really meant something.
Specifically, they were killer-angels — not pretty-boy soldiers.
In his humble opinion, troops that march superbly — are typically worthless in action.
If you are drilled — endlessly — when could you see action?
Strangely, the IDF has adopted Gavin’s ‘rules’ as their norm.
They are lethal on the battlefront — NOT so much in the goose-stepping department.
Wretchard, you should really do stand up comedy.
In your essay, you said, “But events in the Middle East now threaten to get away from the Obama administration.”
That HAS to be the punchline to some cosmic joke.
Of course, your set-up has to be some painted-canvas-set with Obama poised like Washington crossing the Delaware, with the two Clintons yanking ineffectually at the oars. (How many of his czars fit in one of those old whaleboats?)
The Prez would as usual, be gallantly balancing at the stern of the boat facing backwards, and the boat would be solidly elevated upon the back of a giant sea slug, which is in its turn supported by a titanic rhinocerus, standing on a great bronze targe… i.e., an endless chain of fabricated causes stretching back and marking the trail of lies this administration has been vomiting out since before their inauguration. Guess that’s how they hope to find their way back…
I apologize for my intemperate use of hacknied clichés.
It’s just my way of saying I don’t believe any of the events of the last four years</b) has been under the control or even influence of the clowns in the w.h. Any consequences favorable to the U.S. have been entirely accidental.
wretchard @ 14
Or, as my dad remembered it: overpaid, oversexed and over here!
Another musical choice:
“Die Gotterdämmerung”
(uncredited)
Music by Richard Wagner
Played briefly when Yosemite Sam tells Bugs to start walking
That’s according to IMDBs.
Mad Fiddler…
You left out turtles.
It’s turtles all the way back.
SBW #18 and Blert #21:
Someone wrote that the Germans had observed that the French attacked singing, the British attacked shouting, and the Americans attacked quietly, just killing. And that scared the hell out of them.
After WWII I believe it was Col Blakeslee that led the first deployment of jet fighters across the Atlantic, using the newly developed aerial refueling technique. After arriving they were surprised to be told that they would perform a Pass In Review for the dignitaries who came to greet them. None of them had marched in years, and all being WWII combat veterans they mostly had joined at a time in which such niceties were not a priority. Blakeslee managed to form up his men, get them around the parade ground without losing anyone, and did not think they did too badly, considering. But afterwards Winston Churchill said to him “Colonel, I fail to understand how you could lead your men across the Atlantic and be unable to lead them around this parade ground.”
In ROTC we were told that the only real reason we learned to march was that civilians expected the military to be able to do that.
You know, the recent events in the Middle East as well as the US election led me to recall something and put it in a new context.
Back in 1983 I was in a shopping mall with a friend, a Jewish girl, and a woman walked past us, striding confidently. She was wearing olive drab shorts and a tan shirt, her long black hair in a ponytail, all in all looking rather military.
My friend pointed to her, “See her? She looks like an Israeli. I wish I was like that.”
I was surprised. My friend originally came from New Jersey. Her father was a college professor. She was of a definite liberal bent, although not extremely so. But she respected the image of the Israeli woman, even if she had no evidence that the woman so dressed was for real.
Now today, the image presented to the world of young American woman is that of Sandra Fluke, claiming it was unreasonable for her to pay for birth control herself. And the image is that of that twit doing that “voting for Obama is like having sex” video.
What say you, ladies? I think the image of the Israeli woman is pretty much unchanged from 1982. The events of the last few weeks tend to reinforce it. But, as for me, if my image had been distorted the way the Democrats did to that of young American women, I would be madder than hell.
When Hillary Clinton retires, we ought to install Jo “The Supernanny” Frost as Secretary of State. She’d send Morsi to his room for a timeout!
You can tell where the British is headed when Frost’s replacement is a Michelle Obama lookalike. The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules again!
RWE & Blert:
Good comments. Many thanks.
RWE, that observation concerning the style of Americans attacking silently appears in “The German Generals Talk” by the redoubtable Basil H. Liddell Hart. I forget which general Hart was interviewing, but I recall that it was the same general who compared and contrasted British and American operational/offensive styles. Montgomery, the general explained, was quite deliberate, a practitioner of the carefully wrought and executed set-piece battle. Hart recounts how, at this point in the interview, the German general stood and enacted what he was describing: taking one step forward, firmly planting both feet, pausing, then taking another step. The Americans, on the other hand, were all movement, constantly in motion, hence unpredictable and difficult to defend against.
Interestingly, the Japanese did not go in for fancy drilling. You will find no videos of Japanese formations goose-stepping through Tokyo. And a Japanese army on the March looked the part of a disorganized rabble. In China, pre-Pearl Harbor, a Japanese officer remarked to a Western reporter, who was standing at the side of a road watching Japanese army units advancing to their next encounter with the Chinese, “You know, we are the most undisciplined army in the world.” Unfortunately, this was true, and applied on several levels–as the Chinese in Nanking, and nearly everywhere else, would discover. Away from the battlefield Japanese officers simply could not control their men. More’s to the point, Japanese senior officers could not control their middle-ranking and junior officers. And the Japanese government, such as it was, could not control its senior officers. The Japanese military was at every level out of control. Great fighters, though. Dirtbags, cruel and sadistic; but great fighters.
Technically, we are still in the first term and the White House is trying to send money to support an islamofascist regime.
Not bad. Imagine the second term.
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED! seems to be seeping into the consciousness of those inside the Beltway. The New Orleans Times Picayune reports White House’s Libya ‘editing’ causes controversy similar to BP moratorium report http://tinyurl.com/cpm7zx9
Just imagine millions of kids crying because Obama smothered Flipper’s lungs in crude oil! He’ll soon wish the mobs treat him the way Mussolini was!
Or put another way, “…it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
‘Sleeping with the fishes’ does seem to be an increasingly useful fate for evildoers. Obama and Osama could compare notes in Hell!
Wretchard, You started the memory machine mentioning ‘Les Preludes.’ I miss the use of classical music for theme music. There was Alfred Hitchcock who used Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’, Reznicek’s ‘Overture to Donna Diana’ was used on ‘Sergeant Preston of the Yukon’, Prokofiev’s ‘Love for Three Oranges’ for ‘This Is Your FBI’,and a permanently welded Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture’ to the ‘Lone Ranger.’
I don’t know if clothes make the man or not but I lived through the days when boys would refuse to go to school if their shoes did not have the requisite Nike swoosh on the sides of them. Apparently, they were convinced it was the shoes and not the clothes that made the difference.
Re differences between armies:
In the late 50s I worked with a welder who’d been a Marine in the Pacific and was in the early battles in the Solomons, etc. In all that horror he didn’t get a single combat-related injury (”not even a scratch”), just jungle rot, etc.
When they were taken back to Australia to rest and resupply they did a march through the city to sort of boost the morale of the civilians, enjoy the cheers, and show the flag. They were mostly in new utilities, not their old ragged stuff from the jungle; nobody was in any sort of dress uniform.
The Aussies were of course used to the heel-clicking, arm-swinging style of marching and when the Marines came parading by they seemed to be almost stalking and practically silent (no heel taps on the boots).
Later he and some buddies were in the company of some ”sheilas” and they told about this, about this silent-but-deadly look, as they saw it.
Re music and memories: the radio show ”The Great Gildersleeve” used classical music. I remember the use of ”Dawn” from the Peer Gynt Suite to show the passage of time, ie that the scene had moved to the next morning.
And let’s not forget Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture for the Mynah bird.
Morton, are you suggesting the use of Cobalt bombs? You do realize that the intense radiation makes the land completely uninhabitable and Co-60 is carried on the wind, right?
I recall a cartoon involving Elmer Fudd as a hunter going after Bugs Bunny. The accompanying music was “Ride of the Valkyries” and the words sung by Elmer were “Kill the Rabbit, Kill the Rabbit.”
Eeeeehhh….Doc, it was “Kill the Wabbit”! / erc
That was “What’s Opera Doc”, Chuck Jones homage to Wagner.
WSL @ 36 – The cartoon is “What’s Opera, Doc? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI9Nbt7oJG0&feature=fvsr and the music is The Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhausen by Wagner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfoCvCxNAw4 .
Patrick Fitzgerald and the Kabuki Dance of the Valerie Plame Thing
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/11/24/patrick-fitzgerald-and-the-kabuki-dance-of-the-valerie-plame-thing/
Erich Remarque wrote a follow-up to “All Quiet on the Western Front”, called “The Way Back”, in which he described what German veterans experienced following World War I.
As his unit wearily marched east, a US column caught up with them. That was the point at which Remarque realized that it would have been foolish for Germany to have continued fighting. The US troops were so well-fed, well-armed, well-equipped — and eager.
Jumping to the present day — even in our sadly diminished current state, we are not like those worn-down Germans. Any Western nation (even France!) could put a definite end to the thugs of Hamas or the pharonic ambitions of Morsi, if we chose to do so. Instead, we subject ourselves to a politically-correct Death of a Thousand Cuts in Afghanistan, and pay Danegeld to assorted small time hoodlums in the Levant. Why?
Of course, Soetero’s bankrupt administration does not have real gold to pay off those modern would-be Vikings. But then, the petty bullies of Hamas are not in the Viking class either. So Hamas’s payoff in BernankyBucks is as much as a sham as their hudna-style ‘Cease Fire’. Obumble, Morsi, Hamas — they deserve each other! But what did we all do to deserve them?
Yep, I found a small voice in the back of my head signing “Kill da wabbit, Kill da WAAAAbit…” while I watched the missile video.
Neither Bill nor Hillary is the right person to send. If we want peace, we should find whoever it was that negotiated the cease fire between Bill and Hillary that got her to stop launching Fajr-5 ashtrays and desk lamps at Slick Willie’s head. That truce has lasted longer now than most anything negotiated in the ME.
Morsi certainly seems to be a snappier dresser than Mubarik. Not in Qadaffy Duck’s league of course, but the Duck of Death (er, now the Duck of Dead, I guess) kind of went over the top and slid into self-parody. I’m sure his knuckling under to Reagan in the Gulf of Sidra back in the early 80′s put a serious dent in his bad-boy ca-Che with the Lefties. But what is the modern style-maker to do?
I ask in all seriousness, because Wretchard is right about this, the violent revolutionaries of the 20th Century got much of their support from being fashionable with the in crowd. Leftists are groupists after all, and ones place in The Movement is central to a leftie’s motivation. Fascists had the snappy, stylish uniforms and urbane sophistication (well, for PR purposes anyway). But going crazy and losing the war sort of destroyed that look (that it’s since been appropriated first by low-rent biker gangs and then by gays puts the cap on it for the left – for all their GLBT lip service, Progs really don’t like gays as anything but stage props and circus pets).
So then the commies came on the scene. The Rooskies were hopeless in the style department, but Mao tapped into that Eastern Mystic vibe with the plain peasant-army outfits. And Che, with the wild eyes and deshevilled guerrilla uniform (and the motorcycle! An “intellectual” on a motorcycle! How exciting!), well that worked for a time.
But Mao’s discredited, Che’s dead, Castro’s old and boring. The Left really is vulnerable in the Cool department, if we have the courage to hit them there.
Kinauchdrach @ 41
Why? To keep the “peace”, or at least the illusion of peace.
WWI finished the British Empire, although it toddled along for another generation. War kills people and wrecks stuff.
This country has hardly been touched by war in the last century, really. The most destructive war in American history was our own Civil War, War of Secession, War of the Northern Invasion, whatever you want to call it.
It wrecked a lot of the South and it really took several generations to rebuild. And that was with 19th Century weapons.
It is disgusting to see the appeasement and counter values to our beliefs re-inforced with subsidy and Danegeld, but this is the script that the Trans – National Progressives have written, and this is the way it will play out for the forseeable future.
Until it doesn’t play anymore. If you give the Arabic, Asian or Persian Muslims a big enough box of matches, eventually they will either set themselves or the rest of the world on fire.
On negotiation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oKwg6W05MU
One of my favorite scenes from the Fifth Element.
OT: a new threat is on it’s way: locust
http://www.fao.org/ag/locusts/en/info/info/index.html
and take a look at the map
http://www.fao.org/ag/locusts/common/ecg/75/en/DL121122.jpg
good luck with that one.
SF
#7
I have only two questions about this, why did he do it, and who is objecting?
I suspect that with all the credit and superlatives that the Obama administration has been heaping on Morsi, he has “understood” the message and concluded that he is currently able to do anything he wants to.
(Think about how Saddam Hussein “understood” April Glaspie in 1990 and the conclusions he drew from his understanding….)
Basically, we don’t understand them. They don’t understand us. IOW, watch out….
To be sure, in true Pavlovian spirit, Morsi may also well have concluded (and he would be entirely justified, given the way he “thinks”) that whenever he’s a bit short of cash, he can, um, hint to the home boys in Gaza that they might think about notching up the, um, festivities a bit with their Israeli neighbors.
So there’s something for Israel and Israelis to look forward to!
#9
On a different tack: Israel had better do a better job of voter ID in the up coming election.
As far as I know, there’s strict voter ID vetting using the ubiquitous Israeli ID cards, not that this can’t be abused, of course. Moreover, I don’t believe there is any machine voting in Israel—AFAIK, it’s all done by chits selected and placed in an envelope behind a curtain for privacy and then placed in boxes in front of the voting officials. FWIW
Or is there one standard for Islamist regimes and another for the rest of us?
Aside from Morsi having “learned” that he can expect COD from DC whenever he helps Gazans and Isrealis “achieve” a “cease fire” (as explained above), the other lesson of the most recent brouhaha in Gaza is that one is permitted to target the civilian populations of one’s neighbor with absolute impunity, as far as the UN and the larger world is concerned.
Or should that be, Hamas (and only Hamas) is permitted to attack Israeli (and only Israeli population centers?
(While, quite clearly, Israel is not really supposed to fight back in a way that might prevent it.)
Well good luck with that…since once the genie is out of the battle, try getting it back in (proportionately and no more).
Many years ago, a panel discussion including Daniel Schorr–who was old even then–got to the question of the press and the Pal terrs.
Schorr opined that the Pals, with their unbridled hair, emotional outbursts and brandished weapons were more attractive [I think he was hinting "attractive" in "that way"] to the press than the uniformed, professional, booooorrrring IDF.
My father’s unit, in the ETO, was flanking a Highland regiment set to cross a river against the Germans. Dark, fog, smoke, dead silence. Boats set off and the piper started in. They don’t care who knows they’re coming. Trying to put myself in the position of a Wehrmacht OP, also dark, not exactly sure where your flanking buddies are, can’t see squat, and then you hear….
Happy Thanksgiving to all the USA Belmonters.
To paraphrase Cecil Rhodes, “Remember that you are an American, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life”.
We have much to be thankful for.
41. Kinuachdrach
But what did we all do to deserve them?
OH…that’s the easiest one. We willfully strayed from our Father, our founders, and our fathers.
No guts, no air medals. Just, “Omigosh, what do I(we) do next?”
The fact that we don’t know what to do next, I mean really know what to do next, and have a cadre of others who also know…is a very bad place to be.
We have been culled out of “that” herd, and we are all, now, alone.
You can’t win by yourself, especially if you “…don’t know what to do next.”
I hope we can learn, again. But we will be starting from scratch until we recapture the three “F’s” above.