It won’t decide the 2012 election, but the meltdown of Barack Obama’s Islamophile foreign policy has to hurt. Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons humiliates a president so committed to dialogue with the evil lunatics in Tehran that he refused to support a mass outpouring of democracy demonstrators during the summer of 2009. Obama’s closest foreign policy friendship is with the Islamist president of Turkey, who has jailed more journalists than China and steered his country towards imminent economic disaster. Tayyip Erdogan may not be a terrorist, as Rick Perry said in last week’s debate, but he backs them, including Hamas.
And then there is Egypt: Even the New York Times has noticed that Egypt’s economy is collapsing, and that the country faces disaster as it runs out of money.
The reasons for his plight have been piling up all year: a virtual cutoff of foreign investment, a 30 percent decline in tourist visits and the stagnation of economic growth. The official unemployment rate is 12 percent, but among young people the real rate of unemployment is at least double that figure.
The military rulers have also presided over a period of financial turmoil. Inflation has surged into double digits, and the exchange rate for the currency, the Egyptian pound, is under heavy pressure. Foreign exchange reserves have plunged, as the government is spending about $2 billion a month in a losing battle to prop up the pound. Foreign currency reserves have fallen to about $10 billion, after certain obligations, from about $36 billion before the revolt.
Readers of this blog are familiar with the story. The only piece of news in the Times’ very belated offering is the estimate that Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves are down to just $10 billion (rather than the reported $18 billion), or import coverage of a month and a half, preparing an “all but inevitable further devaluation of Egypt’s currency that could send the prices of food and other goods soaring.” In an Asia Times essay last Monday, I observed that the Egyptian government no longer could borrow from its own capital markets, suggesting that reserve figures were much lower than reported; the Times does not say where it got the $10 billion number, but it sounds reasonable.
Dave;
If Obama really gave a rat’s ass about US influence in the ME and around the world you would be correct.
But frankly, he is a marxist leninist who hates absolutely everything about the USA and if his actions hurt, destroy, minimize, marginalize, etc., the US militarily, politically or economically, he is ALL FOR IT !!
The mistake you make – and many others make – is that you honestly believe Obama’s policies are naive and thus harmful.
But if you examine his upbringing and associates (Marshall, Ayers, Wright, etc) AND his ideology, his actions are all of a piece.
The goal of any marxist leninist is the destruction of the USA. And as president, the best way to achieve this is to bankrupt – literally – the USA and destroy it from within economically.
Towards that goal, Obama is doing a great job.
His foreign policy is geared simply to promoting – via indifference or merely useless words – any and all allies of the USA.
Obama is the personification of a hate america first Manchurian Candidate.
I’m pretty sure that Obama cares deeply about the success of the Muslim world, for personal reasons that he’s stated frankly and openly.
Obama is not naive. He wants revolution in the islamic and arab world. He was friends with Hamas before he was elected, he was pals with known palestinian terrorists & activists (wannabe terrorists that put the mantle of “academia largess” on themselves ((edward said comes to mind).
So Obama is giving the yoke of eurocolonialism the toss in the trash for the arab (and non-arab islamic) world.
Congrats to Obama with his liberation from the 1st world (and thereby destroying America’s influence) for Egypt and others.
I hope the liberated jew hating, christian hating masses in the arab & islamic world get the freedom they wish. I just hope we will cut all funding to those peoples and nations that take a page from the moslem brotherhood’s playbook.
I hope they enjoy the starvation they richly deserve.
David, you are certainly correct that Obama’s heart resides with Islam, but this presents a question. Do you find it strange that his on the ground actions always harm individual Moslems? Or is it of a piece, as always was the case with communists, where a few million deaths was worth the price to restructure society?
That is, does he have no care for the individual he claims to love, but feels only a lofty, heartless, COLLECTIVE love of the “dar al islam”, just as Mao, and Pol Pot, felt as they promoted their communism? I wonder, because, if so, all of us inside the “dar al haram” should feel uneasy.
Many Muslim countries are destroying themselves. Obama can’t do anything to stop it; his efforts to fix things, e.g., by kicking out Mubarak, made things worse.
Yes, I get that. But o you think he cares?
Correction: President Obama didn’t kick Mubarak out, the Egyptian people did. Obama didn’t and couldn’t have done anything one way or the other. America may have some influence over the Egyptian army but it has absolutely none over crowds in the street.
Islam is an ideology based on two opposing contradictory sets of mandates from Mohammed’s writings. During the Mecca period, he was respectful of Judaism and Christianity – but in the Medina period, he began to descend into insane hatred for them and a desire to conquer the world. He invented his own religion and laws (Sharia), declared himself the only true prophet. Any philosophy or human mind that holds contradictions will be unstable, conflicted and eventually devolve into rage.
This is the problem with Islam. If Islamic countries are not at war with their neighbor, their tribes are continually warring with each other. Violence is prevalent in their homes and in any nation under Sharia law. Murder of women has increased 1400% since Sharia was instituted in Turkey.
Islam is a large, violent, aggressive, misogynist, hate and human rights violation group and should not be allowed in the civilized world…or the UN.
Obama has tried to normalize and propagandize (through Hillary’s office as Sec. of State) for Islam and several other intolerant people groups, the radical environmentalists, greenies, sexual agenda groups, etc. There is no science, reason or evidence to commend them – quite the contrary, the evidence is against all of these causes. To make policy on the basis of PC lies, popular wishes and political pressure is irresponsible, irrational, insanity…dangerous and deadly.
You’ve touched upon something important; That of Hitlery’s embracing of the violence in the middle east against women. She, and other bull-dykes like her, think this is all grand. Perhaps it’s because, for them, it’s like watching their insane, drunken neighbor who beats his wife and children and simply turns a blind eye to it, or more likely, perhaps, it’s her deeply entrenched marxist roots whereby she believes that eventually, with the flapping-eared wonder in the white house, it will come to war but not until the sand-people have inundated our society (with their blessings) to such a level that the government will “have to step in” thereby setting up a de-facto US dictatorship to “keep the peace”.
It may seem hard to fathom but if you look at Yurp right now, they are in the midst of a divided society and struggling with “multiculturalism” (pronounced, “oops, we did it to ourselves again”)and are now stuck with a two-standard system with sharia on one side and western values on the other and constantly at odds with other, as predicted by even every seven year old on this side of the Atlantic.
This is kismet for the national socialists if only they can keep the current pathway to national destruction clear and win again in 2012. Believe me, it’s not just Obama who is simply a good figurehead and source of blame for most, but a great foil to keep our eyes off of the rest of the brownshirts who want more control (of the money) and power (over the people) in order to somehow claim their moral superiority uber alles. Largely, though, looking at Hitlery, Reid, Pelosi, Gore, etc, they are driven by a deep festering hatred and anger. Of What? I really couldn’t say. Mostly they seem to just generally hate people and, by extension, themselves. But all of them seem to have some deep unresolved childhood issue. Maybe it’s that Gore was always “the fat kid” in school and got laughed at for his speak patterns. Maybe Harry was the skinny kid who couldn’t do a layup in basketball during gym class. Maybe Hitlery was always slightly odd and that crush she had on a girl in class ended up in her humiliation. We’ll never know but what we DO know is that they are angry, bitter people who should not be manipulating policy and interpreting law.
In every dictatorial government, the dysfunctional personalities of the apparatchiks become glaringly evident. We have arrived at that point in our own government. Never in our history have we seen such blindness toward the government operative’s personal psychosis as we are now.
What unabashedly oputrageous, nay…insane garbage is this? Surely noone capable of writing a complete sentence actually believes this garbage, do you? Is this merely practice for later introduction into US echo-chambers that actually do panfer to the truly stupid?
And to invoke science as evidence that Obama, the left in general, and liberals in particular as persons guided by irrational fantasies or rabid ideological agendas is an irony I must share.
Do you know nothing of the mountains of psychological rsearch gong for decades after the revulsion felt by many at Nurembergs revelation showing how “banal” those capable of true evil actually are. Can you percieve irony even?
(from peer-reviewed science journals) “It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development” (Boshier, 1983, p. 159). This is supported by a study conducted by Walker, Rowe, and Quincey (1993) in which there was a direct correlation between authoritarianism and sexually aggressive behavior. An investigation done by Muehlenhard (1988) revealed that rape justification and aggression toward subordinate individuals was much higher in traditional (conservative personality) than non-traditional personalities.”
“Persons who had a dogmatic belief in religions and adhered to the teachings of absolutist and perfectionistic religious groups, tended to be more frequently and more intensely emotionally disturbed than those who followed less dogmatic religion (Ellis, 1986). Authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism were positively correlated, with scores on authoritarianism significantly related to those on ethnic and racial prejudice, hostility toward homosexuals, and punitiveness in prison sentencing (Wylie & Forest, 1992). According to Parker (1990), dogmatism and orthodox belief were incompatible with ethical acuity.”
, “Conservatism is not the doctrine of the intellectual elite or of the more intelligent segments of the population, but the reverse. By every measure available to us, conservative beliefs are found most frequently among the uniformed, the poorly educated, and the less intelligent” (McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52, 27-45.).
EDUCATION-CONSERVATISM
In my class, you would get a D+ for sloppiness. One uses a hyphen in no-one, for example. The comma after “garbage” should be a period (although a semi-colon is defensible). The second paragraph is incomprehensible: “an irony I must share” is confusing. I assume you mean “going” for “gong,” and so forth. I don’t mean to be too hard on you; perhaps these problems are the result of trauma to the frontal lobe?
On that, I happen to agree with you. Well deserved it is. My only excuse is the mountain of stimulants taken over the last three days to keep me awake so I can earn my keep as a researcher. Never again!
“Success” in the muslim world will mean totalitarianism under sharia law. That’s what the muslim world wants. Are you agreeing that that is what Obama wants too?
“And as president, the best way to achieve this is to bankrupt – literally – the USA and destroy it from within economically.”
Yea. That marxist-leninist G.Bush!
Total cost of new policies:
Bush:$5.07trillion
Obama: $1.44 trillion
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html
Hmmm. We have three years of trillion dollar budget increases, but somehow this only adds up to 1.5 trillion. Also, including the Bush tax cuts as a “cost” is something only an economist could love (actual revenue didn’t decrease until years later due to other unrelated events – actual revenue is all that counts). I am quite confident these comparisons could be completely fisked, but I have better things to do. It’s nice outside. See ya.
My goodness, you still seem to think that “The New York Times” is the “newspaper of record. Did you just wake up from a twenty-year nap? Not only is it NOT “the newspaper of record,” it’s no longer fit to be cited in footnotes. The “newspaper of record” regularly lies, dissimulates, hides stories that it does not care for…and really needs to change its name to PRAVDA.
Neocons in Foreign Policy Hell — The neocons who control foreign policy in the Republican Party are extremely unpopular — with good reason — with Conservatives (and the American people). We threw the Republicans out of power in 2006 and 2008 because the neocons had captured the Republican Party. George Dumbo Bush and his neocon misadvisers destroyed the Republican Party, and they destroyed America as a superpower.
The neocons were on display for all to see during the disastrous administration of George W. Bush. There was NOTHING Conservative about their foreign policy. Neocons are Wilsonian idealists… The neocons don’t understand reality. They are oblivious to the real Middle East. They are oblivious about what is important in the Middle East — ethnonationalism, tribalism and Islamic fundamentalism.
Blaming it all on Obama is pathetic and intellectually dishonest. History didn’t start yesterday. It all started to unravel with George Dumbo Bush and his neocon misadvisers at the helm. Since the Cold War ended, the neocons have been screwing up US foreign policy. You neocons are despised by the majority of Americans. You neocons have been utterly discredited in the eyes of the American people. Your dreams of empire are coming to an end before your very eyes.
Your neocon foreign policy is coming to an end — for (at least) 2 reasons.
1) America is bankrupt with a $15+ Trillion National Debt — 100% of GDP (and rising).
2) Americans of European ancestry are down to only 63.7% of the US population, will be a minority by 2041, and only 46% by 2050. The emerging Hispanic-Black-Asian majority does NOT support the neocon foreign policy. Why? You’re pretty intelligent. I’m sure you can figure it out on your own.
I’ve attacked the “idiot twins of American idealism” here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK03Df02.html
Not all neo-cons pushed nation-building. I’m a neo-con, after all (although probably more of a theo-con). My friend Daniel Pipes, for example, argued from the outset that we should install a strongman in Iraq and get out.
Notice that I didn’t say the Republicans should attack Obama for “losing Iraq.” That would be a bit disingenuous. But he certainly contributed to the Egypt disaster, and he owns part of that problem.
DPG wrote: “… I didn’t say the Republicans should attack Obama for “losing Iraq.”” – I disagree. Obama waged a disingenuous campaign in 2006 to 2008 (for example, depicting the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment as the precursor to a US invasion of Iran) which emboldened the Iranians in their attacks on our forces in Iraq, demoralized our actual and potential Iraqi allies, and (IMHO) undercut any intent or ability Bush might have had about striking at Iranian bases which supported the terrorists attacking our troops.
While I don’t concur with Gene’s point below about converting the conquered Iraqis, a more suitable pro-US arrangement was possible. Such a pro-US Iraq could have served as an effective platform against Iran.
As screwed up as our effort in Iraq was, it did produce an Iraqi government which (with US/UK) help, fought a successful campaign against pro-Iranian militias and their Iranian supporters for control of oil resources around Basra in Spring 2008. The example of “Iraqacy” also served as an inspiration to the Iranian protest movements in 2009.
IAF strategist (Lt. Col, Reserve) Ron Tira had an excellent description of why Iran beat the US in Iraq (from and excellent 2011 Policy Review article on the impracticality of deterring an Iran w/nukes, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/94336): “… Iran does not tend to be a paradigm-sharing partner of its opponents, but exercises strategies that counteract opponents’ paradigms. This is done by series of crises and brinkmanship, defiant behavior that passes the escalation buck to the opponent (the “rational” and “responsible” opponent sometimes acquiesces to the defiant act to prevent escalation), deliberate creation of vague “in-between” situations, operation outside the spectrum of the opponent’s plans and concepts, deliberate ambiguity concerning Iranian positions, frequent changes of stance, undermining the opponent’s determination and strategic credibility, use of proxies, etc. Iran specializes in creating lines of operation not necessarily identifiable by its opponents. An example is Iran’s near victory in its eight-year struggle with the U.S. on the hegemony of Iraq, essentially a war of an indirect and multi-dimensional nature which made many officials in the U.S. fail to admit that it was taking place. According to the American paradigm, war is an exercise in weaponry, defined in time and space, relying on organization, resources, and logistics. For the Iranians the war on Iraq is an open-ended marathon undertaken in order to wear down the political and public will of the U.S., and to break apart, intimidate, and bring closer the Iraqi system by a gamut of unconventional and indirect means”.
Col. Tira’s article sounds excellent indeed. I’ve been saying something similar for years, for example, here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB14Ak02.html
and here
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LC16Ak01.html
My biggest mistake was to believe that the Bush administration would call Iran’s bluff. But Iran used the threat of higher casualties against American soldiers to blackmail Washington — the tar baby aspect of the Iraq occupation.
With all due respect to Col. Tira, a lot of senior people at the Pentagon understood just what was going on, but Condi Rice had the ear of the President (as did the First Lady).
David,
Thank you for your reply.
I thought your big picture Iran analysis was brilliant, particularly the influence of demographic and oil reserve factors to the analysis.
I disagree with you on the operational details of Iraq. The Iraq “Surge” was not a “Petraeus Village”, buying peace from the Sunni Arabs with cash. Although cash was part of it, it was more a case of Petraeus offering the Sunni “Plata o Plomo (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/17/60minutes/main20074732.shtmlstuff)”.
You should appreciate that as it was a very “Spenglarian” offer. Petraeus set up conditions whereby the Sunni tribal elders understood that they could either experience the end of their community’s 1,300 plus years of history in Iraq (caught between the Shia and McCrystal’s door kickers) or agree to swallow a toad and settle for a share of the political pie more in line with their proportion in Iraq’s population (I would agree with your description of A-stan. It’s a scandal).
I agree that the dominant political forces in the US did view US forces in Iraq as hostages to Iran and this gave the Iranians leverage. But, the fact that our political elites had this view really puts a spotlight on the extent of our national political/strategic sickness.
In 2007 to 2008 in Iraq we had at least four US Army/USMC combat divisons, two mostly UK/Polish/Czech combat divisions, numerous squadrons of fighter bombers, attack helicopters and support aircraft (as well as nearby aircraft carriers, air assets in Kuwait, and heavy bombers based in the Indian Ocean), and many units of the most capable special forces in history. That this splendid force was required to operate, not as a mortal threat to the government of Iran, but as hostages and punching bags, still makes sick.
It would have been tough for the Iranians to set up a Zugzwang if we had placed their king in check.
The contribution of the Iraq War and aftermath expenses to our $15 trillion debt is a tiny smidgen north of zero. Indeed, total military spending is a small fraction of U.S. spending.
Going into Iraq was not a mistake. The mistake was not using Iraq, once we were there, as a staging area from which to remove the leadership of Iran. A second mistake was not to do what we did after WWII with Japan – a culture as alien to ours (including “Japanese jihadism” – kamikazes – the belief in a duty to sacrifice one’s life for the Emperor: write a new constitution for, and impose it on, them; and change their religion (ordering them not to teach that the Emperor is divine and that people must give their lives for him).
No, the mistake was not going into Iraq, the mistake was not going farther and not imposing our will upon our defeated enemy.
I guess $1-3 trillion (= 6-20 per cent) counts as a tiny smidgen for some. Would you care to pay off a tiny smidgen of my mortgage?
Exactly. The whole basis of going to war is to destroy the culture that foments the enemy.
Only in wars of aggression. Which, btw, are considered as criminal and whose perpetrators must face judgement as a war-criminal.
Its soldiers with notions of war just like that who are most responsible for US embarrassment and ill-will against it when their idiocy winds up on YouTube, Al Jezeera, and CNN. Iraqs refusal to extend their stay, or grant US immunity to prosecution for doing what they did, is the whole, complete, entire picture for why it lost the war with Iran for local dominance.
1,000 amens Gene. That’s why we’re still fighting today, and we will be until we as a country figure that out. My son will inherit this war from me.
Except we never changed their religion or told them the Emperor cannot be worshipped as divine. In fact granting them the ability to keep their Emperor was one of the few concessions to what was otherwise an unconditional surrender.
Dying in battle for the defense of the Emperor was a military tradition (Bushido) tradition not unlike that of many military traditiopns throughout the world.
And in fact, it was only since the Intifada began revealing that Palestinians too were willing to die for something that the present trend equating it with either breathtaking stupidity, evil insanity, or just plain hatred took root.
knew what elections would bring in egypt so obama knew all about it too, the difference is he wanted it to happen
KA, u have clearly not read David’s GREATEST essay of all time. Three years later and I still read it from time to time. Its a classic!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html
But as far as destroying the nation from within…Bush gets just as much credit as Obama. David discussed this better than anyone in this essay:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK03Df02.html
Bush and Obama were equally destructive. Bush’s motivation was better than Obama’s…but no less destructive.
And what paves the road to hell?
Bush may have had good intentions but the polarized opposites of the two presidencies show even more clearly that good intentions versus intention of destruction can be a distinction without a difference.
“Egypt’s horrifying descent into Somali-style chaos will be an extended, excruciating object lesson for those who thought democracy was an exportable technology.”
Well, us Wilsonians didn’t get Europe quite right after WWI either, did we? IMO the important thing is not just to break existing governments but to instill democratic values as supreme. The de-nazification model of Western Germany would have been a more effective model for Iraq than what we did there.
As for Egypt, there is no occupation there and I stressed to some of their liberals the importance of values and abandoning the corrupt state structure. They are only grasping these lessons now in the wake of electoral defeat. Where they go now I don’t know but I can’t see any better move for the U.S. than to cut off all financial support to the regime. Let the Egyptians generate their own political concessions to entice others to keep supporting them!
Solomon2 – The equivalent of de-nazification for Iraq would be de-islamization.
The U.S. didn’t eliminate emperor-worship in Japan; we just made it less militant and violent.
I don’t think that comparison is valid. The Emperor was god-like to the people of Japan and still is today. MacArthur recognized how important he was to the people even after they were defeated and used the Emperor to help rebuild Japan. There was nothing god-like about their dictators in the eyes of Europeans. Hitler was widely revered at one time but was never widely worshiped as a god-like figure outside of the ranks of the SS and a few other small groups. Mussolini was simply reviled by much of the population at the end.
One man’s failure is another’s success.Do not underestimate Obama’s genius.His leftward swing in the past two months is breathtaking.He bought off the GOP with some carriers and tax cuts and now has control of healthcare, real estate,energy,education,and the media.No president ever got help from the Fed like he has, not even FDR or LBJ.From the viewpoint of the Wright’s and Powers’ of the world, his foreign policy has created the revolution of their dreams.If we have to spend 500 billion on weapons that won’t work,all the better.As long as those pyramids create jobs,you can build yours and we will build ours. Just send the bill to the grandchildren.
Obama has expanded the drone war.
“Egypt’s crisis was the easiest market call since Moses warned Pharaoh about the frogs;….:”
LOL
Mr. Goldman……….Awesome
Any predition when the conflagration in Iran will occur?
Above my pay grade.
Probably never, we’ll go straight to surrender.
And 50% of the Israelis will emigrate when Iran goes nuclear (according to polls) so say goodbye to that country.
and watch the Arabs do to present day Israel what is happening to Egypt and Syria today. It’ll take them 5 years or less to dismantle the jewel of the middle east if all the Jews leave. One has to wonder why all they seem to accomplish is destruction when left to their own devices.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, Mr Goldman, I’m sure Obama will find
a way to bail Egypt out. We are, or were, giving Egypt a billion
or so per year, all Obama has to do is to give his pals in the
PRC a call and they’ll lend us the cash to bail out Egypt.
It’s quite simple, really. Sarcasm: on
Egypt will need something like $12 to $15 billion a year.
Maybe if they offer to make their next set of martyrs Apple fanboys instead of Google employees?
But seriously, don’t you think it unlikely that in the short term at least the outside world will let Egyptians starve en masse?
$15 billion is a rounding error to the Fed which will support Egypt through international banking.real question: why does printing unlimited dollars effects all currencies but ours?The value of money is what it earns.Lower interest lowers the value of money.
Your claims are wildly inaccurate in the case of the Turkish Lira and heavily exaggerated in historic terms in the case of the Egyptian pound not to mention your prediction that Egypt would be starving a month ago already. The pound going from 5.75 to 6.04 over the course of a year in the midst of a revolution is a sign of strength not weakness. I once saw a 30% devaluation of the Brazilian currency in one day with nothing of moment taking place; that’s weakness.
Please state a disclaimer that you have no financial interests by way of currency speculation in the Lira or Pound or anything to that effect as I am starting to look at your claims with a weather eye.
What wildly inaccurate? Se
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/01/20/turkey-reviving-the-lira/
Turkey’s central bank has been spending huge amounts of money to support the lira, which was the worst-performing EM currency last year, and (as the FT points out) it’s not out of the woods yet. One can have diverging views but no-one would call my negative view on the lira “wildly inaccurate.” Brazil is a commodity exporter; the moment its currency devalues most of the economy (including wages) reprices to world levels. All that changes is the unit of account. Turkey is a commodity importer — it has essentially no raw materials. When its currency devalues, it can’t compensate. The devaluations have quite different meanings, as anyone with elementary knowledge of finance can tell you. the difference between a banana republic and Egypt or Turkey is — the bananas. As for Egypt: the NYT says they’re down to a month and a half of reserves, and there are reports of spot food shortages already. I never gave a precisely deadline, but I continue to believe that an economic crash for Egypt is coming soon, with attendant starvation.
Saile Furman, please try not to be such a pompous jerk.
Mr. Griffith, we can have this conversation without name-calling. Ms. Furman is badly informed, but there’s no need for this kind of language.
…I’m corrected.
“It won’t decide the 2012 election, but the meltdown of Barack Obama’s Islamophile foreign policy has to hurt.”
Obama’s going to steer clear of this issue and concentrate on class warfare at home. For his “Islamophile foreign policy” to move to the front burner, Israel will have to wake up one morning and decide it’s the day to take care of the Iranian threat – by itself.
I’d be willing to bet the plans have been laid and a date circled on the Israeli calender for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Don’t look for Zero to approve of the coming action.
The newly elected “Parliament” in Egypt is a sight to behold. Beards, robes and “rags” (aka the “Brotherhood”). Sitting beside them, the old aristocracy, minimum age 78, heads doddering and spittle oozing out of parched mouths, wearing 1940′s “suits”. Supervising them all, the “Army”, headed by General Tantawi who looks like a resucitated Pharoah of the 1st Dynasty with a bad case of dysentery or bulimia, dressed up in a laughable military uniform. Pathtic.
Meanwhile, out in Tahreer Square the “techies” still protesting…”Is this what we fought for” they proclaim?
We haven’t seen anything yet, I predict. And Gaddafi loyalists have just “taken over a town” somewhere in Lybia.
What nobody will admit to is what old Middle Eastern hands have known for decades. The Middle East cannot be “saved” by any stretch of that word. It will remain as backward as it was in the Middle Ages. The best that can be done is to “isolate” them and really have nothing to do with them.
I agree with your last sentence: Conservative must stop kowtowing to the reality of political correctness and stand up for their own values instead of blowing around like a weather vane at each media assault.
Conservatives must stand up for their values and state clearly that the Constitution does not extend out beyond our borders and bestow rights and that illegal foreign nationals have no rights in America merely because they snuck in. Conservatives should conspicuously call for an end to all immigration, especially that from Islam. Conservatives must declare America is in fact not an multicultural airport at the service of the Third World and its endemic failure.
Yes the Conservatives will be out in the weeds for awhile but at least people will know what they stand for when push comes to shove rather than running and hiding every time the media portrays them as old white (read racist) men who in reality are coming off as a slightly less politically correct version of the Democratic Party.
It is not all that important for the Republican Party to have central power since America’s problem is disconnected from the two party system and resides in disconnected bureaucracies that run on their own momentum regardless of who controls congress or who is President. Along side that is the endemic Marx-based Critical Pedagogy that fuels those bureaucracies. How in the world can the immigration bureaucracies of both the UK and America continue just as before with such high unemployment. The answer is that they are immune to reality and must be dismantled. To do less is to invite cultural suicide which is well underway thanks to the wholesale transfer of Third World populations from cultures where failure is a watchword and concepts like the greater good non-existent.
Pied Piper is right. Plus, Assad remains in power. Libya’s not yet in the hands of the Saud’s.
Perhaps, “Moses telling Pharoah” about the frogs, misses the point entirely.
The point is the Saud’s who’ve bankrolled all the American decisions you’ve seen Dubya make … came up EMPTY. What have they won? Where have they gained?
While in America, we’ve got pompous ash-hats at the Pentagon. And, at State. The best one, so far, was Hillary Clinton denying that Dubya gave Arik Sharon any guarantees. She said she’s see “no paperwork.”
Do you know what, besides Egypt, has fallen by the wayside? When was the last time you heard “cycles of violence?” Or were they circles? The Quartet. Was that a singing group?
The map actually stays the same. If the Egyptians thought kicking out Mubarak’s dynasty would be a plus … they guessed wrong. While Mubarak was never a friend of Israel’s.
What the Israelis learned decades ago, is now becoming a fact in the USA. You can’t trust what you hear anyone from Washington say.
Who knows? I can’t predict the future. But, boy, what if Newt Ginrich “reorganizes” the press’ campaign to get Romney nominated?
The news isn’t boring. It’s just that it seems inaccurate. And, unable to predict much.
But I’ll take a guess. Housing prices stay low. Job opportunities are gone. And, neighborhoods no longer have retail tradesmen. (Which means teenagers have no jobs to go to after school.) Unlike the weather, this won’t change for a long, long time.
Gee. If you want to take a trip, how do you decide between visiting Egypt, or visiting Greece?
Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt for which it gave up the Sinai peninsula. The MB has already said, it won’t recognize Israel (although it will allow the embassy to stay in Cairo for the time being). So, de facto, the peace treaty is kaput. If your prognostications are correct David, dollars to doughnuts says that the MB will find a reason to blame Israel and to tear up the peace treaty, de jure. So, Israel will have traded land for peace and in the end will have the neither, demonstrating the utter bankruptcy of the land for peace equation (to mix my metaphors). Why would anyone make any agreement with West bank Arabs when down the road a Hamas takeove would lead to the very same thing?
The MB has 2 billion reasons not to tear up the treaty. They are however, saying it will be put up for referendum, which will of course vote it down. It’s effectively a dead letter.
nadine – You’re thinking rationally. The MB hates Jews (and Christians) more than they love themselves.
I think war is inevitable with Israel. Egypt faces starvation. The Military-Muslim Brotherhood alliance must know they’ll be next if there is not a distraction. Hence, War. The only way that could be bought off is by Washington airlifting actual cash for Egyptians. I figure about $1 trillion ought to do it. [Because the regime will steal most of it just like the old one.]
Since that is not in the offing, my guess is that Egypt and Turkey team up. They both covet the natural gas field, that alone promises Turkey’s long term salvation. If Israel in response kills a lot of Egyptians, less mouths to feed is my guess on their leadership thinking.
I seriously doubt if the Military/Brotherhood alliance is just going to sit there and starve. More likely launch with Turkey an all out assault. They might just win, Israel is tiny, cannot sustain much extended operations, won’t use nukes (they did not in 1973 when they faced for a while certain disaster), and is looking East. Towards Iran. The regime thinking is likely along the lines of how to stay in power. Wars with Israel have historically proven useful on this account.
And Obama will back them. I would be shocked if the US Military did not intervene — on the side of Egypt/Turkey. That would be wildly popular in Berkeley, Detroit, Oakland, Atlanta, Palo Alto, and Malibu. That’s Obama’s base after all. Universities, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the Ghetto. He figures he’ll be running against Newt. And a hunk of dirt could beat Newt Gingrich.
A hunk of dirt maybe, but a piece of dung like Obama?
You’ve got to realize that Israel’s hole card is not really nuclear weapons so much as the threat “Back off, leave us alone, or the oil wells and distribution centers get it.” That’s where all the Arab money comes from. Without oil the Arabs are nothing and do not have the money to support terrorism or armies — and their oil supply and distribution complex is impossible to defend. Only about 20% or so of the world’s oil supply comes from the middle east. Losing that 20% would be difficult but not impossible for the rest of the world — and Israel — to handle.
whiskey,
The second excellent comment I’ve read from you in two days on different threads. I want to amplify where your comments are leading. Non-ideological westerners always underestimate fanatics. I take the Muslim Brotherhood’s statements and commitment to their beliefs at face value. And what they say they believe is little different than what you can find in Mein Kampf or the Protocols. Sooner or later, probably sooner, I expect a war.
Israel didn’t use nukes in ’73 because they had the US buffaloed into thinking they would use nukes unless resupplied with conventional arms. After the Viet Nam war we were flush with all kinds of spare equipment. Not a problem resupplying equipment lost in combat. Personally, I don’t think they were kidding one bit.
Next time, obama calls their bluff… except it aint gonna be a bluff. obama has weakened the US and there will be consequences in the middle east. What spare equipment do we have to give away now? The end result is not going to be pretty.
Personally I don’t want to see people starving in Egypt. I think we should send them all the pork based products they can eat.
SPAM alert! ;D
The Obama administration is slowly learning that Perception isn’t Reality and that Good Intentions line the road to hell.
Hopefully the lesson will be fully absorbed before mushroom clouds start blooming in the Middle East and the United States, but I doubt it, Obama lives in a bubble so powerful it constitutes an alternate reality.
constitutes an alternate reality alright, but it’s loaded with bad intentions, not good ones
You are quite correct Mr. Goldman Foreign Policy will have little effect on the 2012 election. Obama killed Osama,that is all the 52% ers have to hear.To them, that equates to a sound overall policy.
And then there was Libya. You remember Libya? Everything was supposed to be sunshine and roses if we overthrew Gaddafi. That nasty old dictator had to go and Obama decided to wage a war with no authority from either the US Congress or the American people. He just decided to enter into a civil war that we had no business ever being in, and now that Gaddafi is gone how is Libya? Just swell. It is turning into another Somalia, complete with fighting militia groups and tribes only this time they are all killing each other for the oil wealth in that country. And it shows no signs of stopping. Wouldn’t it be amazing if a new Gaddafi or dictator came to power and restored order? Now that would be something to see. Obama went to all this effort to get rid of a dictator, and then he’s replaced by either a mullah or another dictator. You’ve got to to hand it to Obama and Clinton. That “smart power” sure is something!
As much blame as President Obama deserves for his handling of Iran, it’s hard to see much difference between his policies and those of Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II.
The mullahs have been killing Americans with near impunity for over thirty years. Our elected representatives do nothing but cower, pulling out U.S. troops as quickly as possible, so as not to anger the nice Iranians. Worse still, they deliberately hide from Americans the extent of the crimes of the Iranian regime.
The mullahs kill 241 Marines in Beirut on a peace keeping mission and for decades the main concern of our government is keeping this fact from Americans.
Iranian arms and sometimes men kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s wikileaks, though, who informs us just how serious the problem is.
Embassy? Hostages in Beirut? Hezbollah hijackings ordered by the Iranian regime? Murder of activists on American soil? Kidnapping of American citizens, time and time again. Bombing embassies? Killing those who work there?
Again and again, the courts find Iran guilty of supporting acts of terror against American citizens, and the executive forbids that the plaintiffs be allow to collect from frozen Iranian assets.
A hundred years ago, far smaller acts of war would have occasioned massive punitive expeditions. Now, they’re just an opportunity for our presidents to sacrifice more American lives to the dark gods in Teheran.
Good post, I agree 100%.
The unholy tryst between jihadism and small c communism is spawning a thousand consequences.
While these seem strange bedfellows from a cultural/mores divide, the takedown of Western capital structure is nearly completed in Europe and certainly the Middle East is a tinderbox, sitting on a house of cards.
China is teetering on the brink, …the once might Atlas, holding up the globe, the world’s only hyperpower…has been shrugging. The Fabian in the White House who clearly cares not one whit about the Constitution, legislative or judicial checks and balances,…and even less about Israel and Rashid Khalidi’s enemies…has Atlas in a vice grip. Some might say by the throat, others might choose a more sensitive part of the body.
Either way, every time he forces Atlas to shrug, the chance for world recovery becomes geometrically less likely.
The small c communist/jihadist goal is to destabilize Western might by toppling its greatest strength. Starvation…and more devastatingly…lack of drinking water and water for crops will hasten the global revolution. The Fabian in the White House has to keep energy independence (and fiscal recovery through natural resource development) at bay.
Not a chance he would let America (and Canada) lead the way to a recovery, when it is in the global geopolitical interests of the bedfellows to tamp down the hyperpower’s ability to act as savior of the world economy.
The fact that he has the poisoned information stream in his pocket, keeps his Fabian shell game intact.
Better he should feed Soros and Petrobras more money, so that he knows it will funnel back into the takedown and overthrow…replacing the free market with a sort of UN style abuse of the West and Israel.
The Global Fiscal Takedown is in full gear. The Fabian in the White House has taken some hits from his left, because they believed they had the takedown in their hands when they had both Houses controlled…and the Fabian hesitated, reluctant to pull the trigger.
When the “shellacking” came, he went into deep background. The “dreams” became smaller and more subtle.
But, the end game remains the same.
He had to make a show of taking out bin Laden…it buys him “street cred” to hide the pea in the shell game. It’s a sleight of hand trick. Pull America out of Iraq and Afghanistan, lessen its influence completely in the region…and let Israel suffer the consequences.
Make a show of the single bin Laden bullet and “joint military exercises” with Israel, but every other move signals retreat and betrayal.
The sleight of hand confuses the eye and confounds the mind.
As for Atlas…if it was me…I’d wear a cup.
“The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale.”
Then there is the GB Shaw Fabian Society of radicals working toward socialism…
We are getting the double-whammy.
This is what happens when a nation departs from congruence with God’s Law and Commandments – a devolvution into decadence, decline, disease, death… in Scripture, Israel rebelled, was besieged, pillaged, captured, suffered, eventually rediscovered the law and was restored.
Hope it will happen to the US before it’s too late.
Lemme guess…. A Birther? Truther? Illuminati exposer? Or simple trenchcoat-style exposer?
Congratulations. You take top place in todays search for examples of motivated cognition needed for instructional purposes. You gonna be famous!!!
Lemme guess. Global warming hoaxer? Absolutely no bias in media denier? Jews start all the wars, Mel Gibson groupie?
Congratulations! You win today’s Soros Sychophant award for malignant myopia.
Mr. Goldman,
Coming back from Bangkok recently the tele on the plane from K L (Malaysia Airlines for this short flight has but the 1 forced channel to watch) had a show on/ in Egypt.
A Cairo professor of all people (hope he too’s not imprisoned) spoke of the Western tourism dollars drying up frighteningly quick the past few years because and I’m paraphrasing, ‘The West no longer wishes to chance being kidnapped, their tourist bus/car/group being ambushed, robbed and/or beaten in broad daylight for starters’.
The program was put on prior to the ’11 Mubarak ousting. Nothing in the program mentioned or hinted at such.
Meanwhile my wife and my ‘neighbors’ on the plane are majority hijab, taqiah wearers watching as well.. hahaha
Yep, always *shocked* a barbaric faith 1,400 years in our rear view mirror is forever their present is stunted in every facet imaginable and blames everybody else. For progressing beyond the 7th Century or not being as enamored with a dude bedding a 6 year old – take ‘yer pick.
I didn’t know Numbers was also a chapter in the Quran?
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
Seems Moses (at the very least!) shared a taste for child virgins as well.
The difference is that Israelites/Jews graduated from that and discontinued that long ago. Also, in the Hebrew Bible all people are created in the image of God. Islam has not yet graduated from its primitive roots and it considers Jews apes and monkeys. Of course, Abraham had two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. Insofar as the Jews are descended from Isaac, he should have been monkey, and his sons would have been monkeys. Would that make Ishamel, a monkey’s uncle.:)
GDWilliams, are you REALLY comparing religions whereas 1 wrote of such despicableness and frowns upon it and the other ahem ‘faith’ is so barbaric, counterproductive and considers ALL nonbelievers to be enemies.. yet you find an equanimity amongst them?
Man go sell your nonsense somewhere else.
Perhaps Georg Soros could purchase Egypt and install himself as Pharoah. Then Egypt could respond with their well honed decades of anti-semitic training
It’s begun already! Hostage crisis in the making in Egypt?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71981.html
In a year, maybe two, Egypt will implode. How will Europe handle the deluge of Coptic refugees? And what are the odds that the ‘new’ Egypt–crumbling, starving, collapsing, impoloding Egypt–will build a nuclear weapon? Oh, roughly 100%.
That Obama has screwed up the whole Middle East as if he was the Apprentice Sorcerer himself is not in doubt. It was caused by his 20 years in a church feeding him from it’s tits of anti- Semitism and Liberation theology. So, no surprise here. What is horrifying is the US media in lock steps chanting the wonders of “The Arab Spring” while anyone with a minimal knowledge knew all along that the Muslim Brotherhood would rule Egypt and it’s siblings in Tunisia and Libya sooner or later.
Wow! I haven’t stumbled acrooss this level of paranoid hyperbole posing as actual journalism since the last time I decided to crash a “Souhern-Style Tea Party”!
Is there no concern for accuracy of detail whatsoever? Or is hasbara the whole parcel traded here?
You do know that US and international organizarions specializing in nuclear intel for many years now, that have sterling records of non-partisan, non-subjective assessments of who poses what threat to who, and how soon….say Iran hasn;t even made a decision to pursue nuclear weapons nevertheless be able to devlop such a weapon anytime soon.
Havinf said that, I believe however that the best thing this propagandist can do is read up on the decades of research showing the very strong tendency among authoritarians (= conswrvatives at r=.73)to percieve the world in a distorted manner that wont conflict with their own preconcievved beliefs about it. That they value conformity of information over rationality and truth,should that truth reveal they must reevalute prior beliefs.
Or to put it another way, they engage in magical thinking far more than any other socio-political subset.
All these “intel experts” fail again and again to foresee events. Always it is the vocal non-expert who predicts these things and is airily dismissed in favor of the credentialed “expert”. The “expert” then goes on to proclaim his surprise at the way events have turned, but still claims to be an expert. The word “unexpected” gets used an awful lot these days by “experts”. An awful lot.
Aaahh. I feel safer now. I mean now that I have been told that North Korea hasn’t even decided to make nuclear weap….oh, wait…ahhh, I feel better now that IRAN hasn’t even decided to make nuclear weapons.
It is so comforting when mommy tells bedtime fairy tales, no matter how much I age, I never tire of being put to sleep by them.
The leftist “binkie” of pure intentions by the rabidly dangerous makes all the evils of the world magically disappear.
David Albright is your mommy? In that case I have to wonder if nuclear anhilation might not be your worst problem?
“But the report by ISIS founder and nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran’s nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced lately. It was financed by the USIP, an independent, non-partisan center created by the U.S. Congress in 1984.”
Yes, I certainly have to agree with that observation.
It seems the CIA in particular has been unable to predict most every pivotal event in the world since its inception. To list a few, the collapse of the USSR, Israel’s Dimona operation, the “Arab Spring”, Ghaddaffi and Lockerbie, OBL and 9/11, the Suez Conflict…on and on. It happens so frequently I have to wonder if they aren;t instead a covert operation specialist that merely poses as an intel agency for its worth as cover for agents caught destabilzing, propping up, or “advising” foreign dictators.
“It would have happened eventually, to be sure, but the point is that it happened on Obama’s watch, as the result of Obama’s actions.”
Not so. If we had supported a transition of power to Mubarak’s son, they would not have this mess. An all-out opposition to Islam is required. The mentality must be that we cannot allow Islam to have power.
Interesting, as usual. What’s your take on the Fed’s zero bound rates until 2014? Could it be because the Fed has 3 trillion on the balance sheet, some of it mortgage backed securities? Since the value of the Fed’s balance sheet and the price of houses is also a function of the cost of money, if current mortgage rates went to the norm of 8%, then I presume home prices would tank and another twenty million people would be under water, walking away from their mortgages. Wonder how that would impact the Fed’s balance sheet, and the coming election? Does that mean 8 years of zero bound interest rates are in the offing. In the face of that economic repression, would there be a domestic revolution before then?
Well, since we’re discussing the problems of massive deleveraging, particularly in the mortgage sector while trying to not debase the currency too much, perhaps we can look at how the Chinese mercantilist system uses two different currencies to achieve the remarkable gains they have experienced over the last few decades.
The Chinese yuan is used outside of China and I seem to recall that ordinary Chinese never see yuan. Inside China, the currency is renmenbi which are worthless outside of China.
Well, we have two currencies in the United States: US dollars and food stamps. Food stamps are worthless outside of the United States and they cannot be legally exchanged for any other currency. There is a fair amount of low level bartar where food purchased with food stamps is exchanged for cash but the nature of this trade makes it difficult to turn food stamps into financial instruments.
My modest proposal is that any attempts at government stimulus should be done with food stamps rather than dollars. For example, everybody on unemployment should automatically start receiving food stamps. In an effort to reduce the rate of forclosures, anybody who has a house with an underwater mortgage should also receive food stamps. A few hundred tax free dollars wort of groceries every month would provide a serious incentive to people to stay in their underwater houses and free up some dollars to spend on the mortgage.
One of the hardy stalwarts of sci-fi literature is the universe or dimension “where our physical laws simply don’t apply.” Something like that has always been my model for the “Middle East.” It may be time to face the fact that such bedrock Western concepts like representative democracy and the Lockeian social contract simply don’t play from in that sweep of land from Pakistan to Morocco. (Regardless of what the international media pundits say.) In a land where tribal and clan loyalties are still strong, and often paramount, what else can we expect?
It may be that a form of barely controlled chaos is the best that anyone can hope for in this region. The “Arab Spring” or whatever it’s being called now seems pretty likely to result in a group of new and improved strongmen simply replacing the old models. It surely is depressing as hell but it’s what we have to live with.
If the US policy of M.E through support of regional strongmen (the Shah, Saud Royals, Saddam Hussein, etc) is allowed to continue, then your observation regarding societies structured on religious and/or secular tribalism will surely continue. Like conservatives everywhere (including here), recognition of those who truly are moderate,aspire to Western values of democracy and creature comforts comes hard for them if it doesn’t conform to the simplistic labels and sweeping generalizations like “if most terrorist are Muslims, then Muslims most Muslims are terrorists”.
Unfortunately this creates an inability to adapt by those esousing such, which in turn creates the very hostilities they see as inevitable.
Self-inflicted prophecies.
Maybe I didn’t make my point as well as I would like. (A continuing fault in my case.) I don’t believe it is a question of how many Middle East residents are “radical” or how many are “moderate.” Certainly I agree that the vast majority of thise people just want to get on with their lives as best as they can without regard to religious fanatacism.
Unfortunately these same people also want to get on with their lives without regard to moderate/democratic politics as well. During the last year we have seen the “seething Arab Street.” They may be seething but they only represent a thin crust of semi-sophisticated opinion that masks a world of tribal conflict and feudal traditions. I don’t think it’s a question of the U.S. “always backing a strongman” It seems increasingly clear that there really isn’t anything else. The entire region just doesn’t have any long-term interest in democratic institutions nor the will (on the part of both radicals and moderates) to build them. Most of this region was under Ottoman rule of one form or another for seven or eight centuries and was completely cut off from European Enlightenment. The intellectual currents that formed the basis for the American Revolution, French Revolution, and the unifications of Italy and Germany never penetrated. Despite what Arab talking-heads in the media might say (most of whom seem to have been educated at Western universities) the roots of democratic governance don’t run very deep in this area.
Whatever the present day outcome, historians will analyze and dissect Obama probably more than any other American president. He is an incredibly complex character behind the mask of a superb actor who may be filled with numerous conflicting emotions. Offspring of racially mixed parents often suffer from identity problems. Add to this the conflicting religious teachings and radical political influences and you have a man filled with a mix of frustration, prejudices, hate, ego and opportunistic leanings. He is doubtlessly intelligent enough to recognize but never acknowledge his own naivete and inadequacy. It was the superb actor who fooled enough Americans who knew nothing about him to install him in the White House and we’ll be paying for the resulting cost of this mistake for at least a generation. They gave this child to Islam until seven and deep down in his soul he is made of the same stuff that has kept Muslim countries down for 1,400 years until oil pulled a small percent of them out of their physical if not spiritual backwardness. To use Churchill’s words, “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” If a sufficient number of Americans were educated and knowledgeable enough, Obama would be thrown out of office on this issue alone.
The problem with Hussein Obama’s middle east policy is the same as Bush’s. Neither of them understood the nature of the ME beast. Even-though each of them approached the problem from opposite political point of view, at the end both solutions proved to be disastrous. The beast in ME is the the conflict between 13th century ideology and 21st century human living. Is just like trying to fit round peg onto square hole. Until someone find a way to modify he round peg or the square hole the conflict will go on forever.
Which is also a predictable result of a society run by deeply conservative elites most frequently found in a military branch, police dept or church hierarchy. So the policy of propping up that very type of person as a dictator they hope evdryone fears enough that they dont dare engage in a level of civil unrest capable of harming our ability to do business there.
Just like the ones in S.America who promised to fight communism there, in the ME we installed strongmen who promised they could suppress religious zealots over there. In both now are Third World economies, educational facilities, and witch doctors practicing medicine.
Of course.
Hostage crisis brewing in Egypt?
Son of the US Commerce Secretary and 9 other Americans prevented from leaving.
Search LaHood and Egypt in Google News.
These are strange days in the muslim world. On one hand we have Obama seemingly doing all that is possible to help the bad guys.
Then on the other hand we have the EU sticking their nose in for the palestinians by giving them 70 million for their refugee camp, while at the same time lecturing the elected government of Israel about policy.
The EU is a body of European countries initally set up as trading partners. The EU has no elected persons and are accountable to no one. They represent only themselves.
They are basically robber baron who have tricked the members countries out of democracy and having any say in the running of their own countries.
So when a voter cast their vote in the UK for their leader, it is nullified by the fact that the elected leader must alway get permission from the EU to do anything.
So how does an unelected group of robber barons get to go to elected officials of Israel and tell them about policies?
And the 70 million dollars they gave to palestians refugee, that money belongs to the taxpayers, not the EU.
Yes, it is very strange days, these days.
David … I think that obama knew that Egypt would go the way it did after removing support for Mubarak.
I think that was the plan. Any reluctance was just because of the pressure from the Saudi’s.
regards
I had noticed when the Egyptian transitional gov’t took over those 17 NGO offices.
The thing that seemed to set off the gov’t was the reporting that they were not treating females with human rights respect, a la the west’s ideals.
You know, no ”virginity testing” for females who complain about policies.
And, maybe it would be proper to fill out a police report when parents come in (even non-Muslim ones) complaining that their young daughter has disappeared.
So far the gov’t has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from all these NGO offices and promised NOT to return it.
But now that the foreign NGO members are on ”no-fly lists,” the game is on.
Obama already talked to the Egyptian gov’t and got nothing.
At least our Congress is seriously considering holding our $2 billion in military aid there as a hostage until all these people are free.
It was announced today that Obama is accelerating the pace of American aid to Egypt, according to a spokesman from the State Department. Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a U.S. delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide “more immediate benefits” to Egyptians. Under the plan, some non-urgent U.S. aid slated for other countries – he did not name them – would be redirected to Egypt. And funding in the pipeline for long-term programs in Egypt would be shifted to quick-impact projects, he said. It was unclear whether the total amount of U.S. aid to Egypt would be increased.
Rushing to financially aid a country that voted overwhelmingly to support the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism, both groups of which are anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel, antisemitic, antiChristian, homophobic and misogynist is somehow supporting the US’s goals in the middle east? The Obama middle east policy is incoherent and the policy of supporting “revolutions” whether or not they result in radical Islamic regimes is bizarre, indefensible, and shows poor contact with reality.
I see tremendous potential here. Egypt’s population is growing and its means of support dwindling. Simply put, time is not on that country’s side in any way, much like the frog in slowly heating water.
What will happen is a lot of noise and no real action simply from lack of resources. The US will continue to pay, until an accord develops, sub rosa, that it is time to stop.
I love it when people here compare Egypt’s fate to Somalia: no look at geography or demography shows any similarity. The place is headed toward total stagnation and nonentity, and will be less a threat to anyone except as one of many foci of read disease.
Egypt stops US Transport Secretary’s son, three others, from leaving country Travel ban affects members of pro-democracy group.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46144773/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/
Take a look at a map of the middle east and you will see the the United States has military bases in every country that surrounds Iran. The only foreign policy crisis Obama has is the one rumbling around paranoid republicans heads.
“Medicins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity, is suspending operations in Libyan detention centres because they were being asked to make torture victims fit for further interrogation.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9041103/Libya-UN-alarmed-over-failure-to-stop-torture-of-detainees.html
Obama and Clinton are a special class of idiots.
But Bush, Blair and Rice engaged in a PR campaign intended to reform Ghaddafi as a fellow warrior in Bush’s WoT. They did this because a few oil conglomerates had been invited by Ghaddafi to view all the concessions he would grant them in return for their lobbying of western powers to let him come back and play as someone importtant, not the pariah status he underwent after Lockerbie was traced back to Libya. And Bush, Blair, and Rice (remember the Condeleeza, an oil supertanker that Shell(?) named after her? YOu dont get those kind of honors for being a “team player” or Employee of the Month).
Then, when Ghaddafi’s palace was overrun, a photo album was found that featured nothing but pictures of Rice and a n obviously smitten terrorist by the name of Mohamor Ghaddafi. Like Shell, he too felt compelled to bestow honors on her that ..yet again….no one seems to have any idea what they were for.
But Obama rescued a rebel army on the verge of a defeat that woul;d surely have meant lengthy tortue and death in the very same “black sites” the US sent it’s foes. How despicable.
‘Obama rescued a rebel army..’ – interesting. Did Uhbama swoop in Rambo II style or just fire his howitzer or kalashnikof from a moving chopper and pile the rebel army aboard?
And here I thought NATO forces had a tiny hand in this outcome. There being in charge of operations and all. Silly me.
GDW, I agree the Libya war was rotten and based on bogus premises from start to finish.
Mark in Texas is more right than he knows. There are many in D.C. who look on the Chinese model with envy.
whiskey is the only guy that ever managed to get banned from the Belmont Club, to my knowledge, though maybe La Raza or his Londonistan equivalent got banned over there too. whiskey did it by trying Wretchard’s patience, not so much with his ‘all white women dream of having sex with neanderthal men with lots of money’ schtick as his unapologetic racially-centric views.
I on the other hand, have been banned from Preston and Simon’s blogs for the mere crime of asking Preston why he didn’t hate Ron Paul so much back when he worked for the Texas GOP in the early 2000s, or asking Simon how he can back regime changes that are likely to lead to an Islamist takeover in Syria.
David: I have been fan/avid reader of you for years, but your Obama hatred is clouding your judgment. You are probably correct about the disaster facing Egypt. But your critique presumes that Obama had some better unused option when Egypt’s population turned against Mubarak. Sometimes there are no good options; only less bad ones. If Obama stands with Mubarak against his own people, and Mubarak is deposed anyway, the same outcome results with the exception that the US loses what little influence it has. Pro US autocrats and dictators are fine so long as they are tolerated by their own people. Standing with such autocrats against their own people does no good in the long run.
Vegascat,
Autocrats are not necessarily worse than their people. The Egyptian people mutilate the genitals of 90% of their women. A third marry cousins. Mubarak was enlightened by comparison (his wife campaigned, unsuccessfully, against genital mutilation). But the important thing is that Mubarak was our friend and ally, such as he was, and we should not have pulled the rug out from under him. The Egyptian “people” to whom you refer were an oil-slick on top of a deep and stagnant pond. Now we are finding out what’s in the pond, and we’re not going to like it. The result of the rebellion well may be chaos and loss of life on a grand scale.
TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY RAY LAHOOD’S SON BANNED FROM LEAVING EGYPT BY MILITARY REGIME: A SLAP IN THE FACE TO OBAMA
In his State of the Union Speech Tuesday Barack Obama optimistically said that America was back on track, and that the renewal of American leadership could be felt across the world. And nowhere is this more evident than in democratic, post-Mubarak, liberated Egypt. After all the butt kissing, kowtowing and appeasement of Egyptians and the “moderate” Moslem Brotherhood; after his fawning, fatuous, pro-Islamic Cairo Speech (and supporting the uprising against Mubarak (America’s ally and friend)), it’s payback time to Barack Obama for being a naive fool.
On the first anniversary of its democratic revolution what better way for Egypt’s military rulers to celebrate the ousting of Mubarak than to ban the son of an Obama cabinet official (an Arab American) from leaving the country. This deliberate slapping of Obama’s face is meat to the anti-US/Obama-hating Egyptian public, and the Islamist mobs who stormed the US embassy last September while police and military looked on. This is just one of many signs that American respect and power in the world are wanning; that Obama’s Moslem Outreach program has failed; and that the Arab Spring which Obama enabled is crashing down on his head-and will become a political liability by Election Day.