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Obama has responded to every defeat by doubling down and radicalizing; and it’s not about (Samantha) Power, just about power

by Speranza ( 112 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Fatah, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Palestinians at June 7th, 2013 - 2:30 pm

Kerry buys completely into the old canard that “Palestine” is the key to peace. Well the fighting in Syria has absolutely nothing to do with “Palestine” and if Israel and “Palestine” would both have disappeared there still would be over 80,000 dead in Syria.

by Caroline Glick

US Secretary of State John Kerry looks like a bit of an idiot these days. On Monday he announced that he will be returning to Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Jordan for the fifth time since he was sworn into office on February 1. That is an average of more than one visit a month.

And aside from frequent flier miles, the only thing he has to show for it is a big black eye from PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

When Kerry was here last month he unveiled a stunning plan to bring $4 billion in investment funds to the PA. If his plan actually pans out, its champions claim it will increase the PA’s GDP by a mind-numbing 50 percent in three years and drop Palestinian unemployment from 21 to 8 percent.

[.........]

Abbas and his underlings wasted no time, however, in demonstrating that indeed, Kerry’s plan is fantasy. Abbas appointed Rami Hamdallah, a Fatah apparatchik with perfect English, to replace America’s favorite moderate Palestinian, Salam Fayyad, as PA prime minister.

As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has pointedly explained, Hamdallah was appointed for two reasons. First, to facilitate Fatah’s absconding with hundreds of millions of dollars in donor aid to the PA and to Palestinian development projects precisely of the type that Kerry hopes to finance with his $4b. grant. The second reason Abbas appointed Hamdallah the English professor from Nablus was because his language skills will enable him to make American and European donors feel comfortable as his colleagues in Fatah pick their taxpayer- funded pockets.

[.........]

But that wasn’t the only thing the Palestinians did. Again, as Abu Toameh has reported, the popular Palestinian response to last week’s World Economic Forum in Jordan, where Abbas and Kerry rubbed elbows with President Shimon Peres and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, was to attack the businessmen who accompanied Abbas to the conference. [..........]Led by Fatah activists, Palestinian writers, unions and others also went after Palestinian businessmen from Jenin who went to Haifa to meet with Israeli businesspeople at the invitation of Haifa’s Chamber of Commerce. The “anti-normalization” crowd is calling for Palestinians to boycott Palestinian businesses that do business with Israelis.

[.......]

Israeli leaders for the most part have reacted to Kerry’s constant harping by rolling their eyes. He seems like a complete lunatic. Obviously he will fail and the best thing we can do is smile and nod, like you do when you are dealing with a crazy person.

Even when Kerry claimed that the reason Israelis aren’t interested in peace is that our lives are too happy, we didn’t take offense. Because really, why take anything he says seriously? And aside from that, they ask, what can the Obama administration do to us, at this point? Every single day it becomes more mired in scandal.

The Guardian’s revelation Wednesday that the US government has been confiscating the phone records of tens of millions of Americans who use the Verizon business network since April is just the latest serious, normal-presidency destroying scandal to be exposed in the past month. And every single scandal – the IRS’s unlawful harassment and discrimination of conservative organizations and individuals, the Justice Department’s spying on AP journalists and attempt to criminalize the normal practice of journalism through its investigation of Fox News correspondent James Rosen – makes it more difficult for President Barack Obama to advance his agenda.

As for foreign policy, the whistle-blower testimony that exposed Obama’s cover-up of the September 11, 2012, al-Qaida attack on the US Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi has caused massive damage to Obama’s credibility in foreign affairs and to the basic logic of his foreign policy.

Ambassador Chris Stevens was tortured and murdered by al-Qaida terrorists who owed their freedom of operation to the Obama administration. If it hadn’t been for Obama’s decision to bring down the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, who had been largely harmless to the US since he gave up his illicit nuclear weapons program in 2004, those al-Qaida forces probably wouldn’t have be capable of waging an eight-hour assault on US installations and personnel in Benghazi.

With the Benghazi scandal hounding him, the Syrian civil war and, for the past week, the antigovernment protests in Turkey all exposing his incompetence on a daily basis, these Israeli leaders take heart, no doubt in the belief that Obama’s freedom to attack us has vastly diminished.

Although this interpretation of events is attractive, and on its face seems reasonable, it is wrong.

[........]

Since he entered office, Obama has responded to every defeat by doubling down and radicalizing.

When in 2009 public sentiment against his plan to nationalize the US healthcare industry was so high that Republican Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts for the sole purpose of blocking Obamacare’s passage in the US Senate, Obama did not accept the public’s verdict.

He used a technicality to ram the hated legislation through without giving Brown and the Senate the chance to vote it down.

And now, as his Middle East strategy of appeasing Islamists lies in the ruins of the US Consulate in Benghazi and in the cemeteries interning the Syrians murdered in sarin gas attacks as Obama shrugged his shoulders, Obama is again doubling down. On Wednesday he announced that he is elevating the two architects of his policy to senior leadership roles in his administration.

Obama’s appointments of UN Ambassador Susan Rice to serve as his national security adviser, and of former National Security Council member Samantha Power to serve as ambassador to the UN, are a finger in the eye to his critics. These women rose to national prominence through their breathless insistence that the US use force to overthrow Gaddafi in spite of clear evidence that al-Qaida was a major force in his opposition.

Power is reportedly the author of Obama’s policy of apologizing to foreign countries for the actions of past administrations. Certainly she shares Obama’s hostility toward Israel.  [......]
In a nutshell, Power’s vision for US foreign policy is a noxious brew of equal parts self-righteousness, ignorance and prejudice. And now she will be responsible for defending Israel (or not) at the most hostile international arena in the world, where Israel’s very right to exist is subject to assault on a daily basis.

Obama’s decision to appoint Rice and Power in the face of the mounting scandals surrounding his presidency generally and his foreign policy particularly is not the only reason Israeli leaders should not expect for his weakened political position to diminish Obama’s plan to put the screws on Israel in the coming years. There is also the disturbing pattern of the abuse of power that the scandals expose.

To date, all administration officials questioned have denied that Obama was in any way involved in directing the IRS to use the tax code to intimidate with the aim of discrediting and destroying conservative organizations and donors. Likewise, they say he played no role in the Justice Department’s espionage operations against American journalists, or in the intentional cover-up of the al-Qaida assault on US installations and personnel in Benghazi.  [...........]

So, too, as Andrew McCarthy reported last month in National Review, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted that Obama spoke with then secretary of state Hillary Clinton at 10 p.m. on September 11, 2012, during the al- Qaida assault in Benghazi.

[........]

The one thing all the scandals share is a singleminded willingness to pursue radical goals to the bitter end. The IRS’s targeting of conservatives was an appalling abuse of executive power, unlike anything we have seen in recent history. The passage of Obamacare in the face massive public opposition was another means to the end of destroying his opponents. The cover-up of the Benghazi attack was a bid to hide the failure of a policy in order to double down on it – despite its failure. The only reason you would want to double down on an already failed policy is if you are ideologically committed to a larger goal that the failed policy advances.

Read the rest -Wounded …….but dangerous

Col. Ralph Peters take on Obama’s latest picks – Susan Rice and Samantha Power

by Ralph Peters

There are three big losers from President Obama’s cynical appointment of Susan Rice as his new national security adviser: Secretary of State John Kerry, Congress and the American people.

As for the nomination of left-wing activist Samantha Power to replace Rice as UN ambassador, the losers are our foreign policy, our allies and the lefties bellowing for the closure of Gitmo. (It ain’t shutting down soon; this nomination’s a consolation prize to O’s base.)

These personnel choices are brilliant hardball politics — but, once again, the Obama White House has elevated politics above serious strategy.

Underqualified — but sure to be influential: Susan Rice (c.) will help make US foreign policy even more disastrous than in O’s first term.

AP
Underqualified — but sure to be influential: Susan Rice (c.) will help make US foreign policy even more disastrous than in O’s first term.

Media pundits promptly opined that Rice’s appointment will alienate Republicans. But our president’s written off Republicans as dead meat. Bringing Rice into the Executive Branch’s innermost circle rewards her for being a good soldier in taking the fall on Benghazi, and it makes it virtually impossible for Congress to subpoena her for a grilling, thanks to our government’s separation of powers.  [.......]

Pity poor John Kerry, though: He really, really wanted to be a noteworthy secretary of state. Already held at arms-length, now he’ll be relegated to visiting countries that never make the headlines and handing out retirement awards (plus working on the Middle East “peace process,” the ultimate diplomatic booby prize).

Rice has the weakest credentials of any national security adviser in the history of the office, but she has the president’s ear as his old pal.  [.......] Proximity to POTUS is trumps in DC. Kerry’s desk in Foggy Bottom might as well be a hundred miles from the Oval Office.

However incompetent, Rice may become the most influential national security adviser since Henry Kissinger eclipsed the entire State Department. Which means that Obama’s foreign policy, already disastrous, is now going to get worse.

As for the earnest Ms. Power, she has zero qualifications to serve as our UN ambassador. She’s a left–wing militant who has yet to show the least interest in defending America, rather than merely using our might as her tool. Her cause is human rights abroad, and that’s her only cause.  [........]

Both Power and Rice consistently advocate using our military to protect the human rights of often-hostile foreign populations. Of course there are, indeed, times when measured intervention is strategically wise and morally imperative — but our military’s fundamental purpose is national defense, not mercy missions to those who spit in our faces.

(By the way, I know of no instance when Power has vigorously defended Jews or Christians murdered or driven from their homes by the Arabs she wants to “save”; guess human rights aren’t universal, after all.)

As leftists cheer both choices, one can’t help recalling the cries of “Chicken hawk!” directed at the neocons in the Bush years. [.........] Now we have leftist kill-for-peace activists who never served in uniform. That’s different, of course.

On a purely practical level, Power is a terrible choice to be our UN rep. It’s a job for a veteran, polished ambassador who understands the arcane ways of diplomacy and the UN’s exasperating rules and procedures — which the Russian and Chinese ambassadors employed to humiliate Rice. It’s not a job for a zealot on a hobby horse.

Obama knows that, of course. But the Power nomination’s a win for him, even if she’s not confirmed. He just covered his left flank on the cheap. It’s not about Power, just about power.

Read the rest – O’s cynical picks

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Fatah, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Palestinians | 112 Comments »

File this under: “I Told you So” (The Kidnapping of Ambassador Stevens)

by Rodan ( 82 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Blogmocracy, Guest Post, Libya at June 6th, 2013 - 3:00 pm

Guest Blogger: Doriangrey

 

Back on April 30th I related a rumor to you about what supposedly really happened to Ambassador Christopher Stevens during the assault on the Consult in Benghazi. Most of you no doubt filed it away with a chuckle under super crazy tin-foil hat conspiracy theories. Here is what I told you back then.

Why we should hang the Fifth Column Treasonous Media talking heads.

Not only did Barack Insane Obama refuse to send Ambassador Stevens any help, their is considerable evidence to suggest that he actively prevented any help being sent. Moreover their is even rumor to the effect that that hep was specifically denied because the Whitehouse under Barack Insane Obama’s direct orders were engaging in a covert operation that was suppose to result in the kidnapping of Ambassador Stevens and 15 or 20 of his staff who were to be held as hostages so that the Obamanation Administration would have political cover for releasing Blink Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman to Egypt.

Moreover, their is even the suggestion that Ambassador Steven was intended to be killed at some point during that exchange because Ambassador Stevens was cooperating with known Al Qaeda terrorists in a trade of small arms and ammunition in exchange for a significant number of shoulder fired surface to air missiles that had been stolen from the US during the fall of Qaddafi’s Libya.

If you were chuckling the first time you read that, well today you will be chocking on your coffee.

Possible Poisoning
Al Qaeda weapons expert says U.S. ambassador to Libya killed by lethal injection

An al Qaeda terrorist stated in a recent online posting that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi went bad.

The veracity of the claim made by Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials as a known weapons experts for al Qaeda, could not be determined. However, U.S. officials have not dismissed the terrorist’s assertion.

An FBI spokeswoman indicated the bureau was aware of the claim but declined to comment because of the bureau’s ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attack.

“While there is a great deal of information in the media and on the Internet about the attack in Benghazi, the FBI is not in a position at this time to comment on anything specific with regard to the investigation,” Kathy Wright, the FBI spokeswoman, said.

A State Department spokesman also had no comment.

So there you have it. Al Qaeda admitting that the attack on the American Consult in Benghazi was a kidnapping attempt that went wrong. Did Ambassador Stevens actually die by lethal injection? Personally I doubt it. More likely his death was exactly as initially reported, accidental due to inhalation of smoke in a fire cause by one of the mortar rounds fired in the attack. No doubt Al Qaeda is claiming they killed Steven via lethal injection so as to mask their own brutal incompetence in the attack.

There is no doubt that the intervention of CIA special operatives Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods totally screwed up Al Qaeda and the Whitehouse’s plans to kidnap Ambassador Stevens. Exactly who in the Obamanation Administrations Wiley Coyote Super Genius inner circle (yes you can read imbecilic moron circle jerk in place of Wiley Coyote Super Genius inner circle) came up with the plan of having Ambassador Stevens kidnapped is still a mystery, was it Valery Jarrett and Susan Rice? Who knows, but Barack Insane Obama himself absolutely had to know and sign off on it or it would have been utterly impossible for the Stand Down order to have been given to the US Military and the CIA.

Yes, this is the level of corruption, arrogance and narcissism that permeates the Obamanation Administration. If the Carter Administration taught us anything at all, it was with his Operation Eagles Claw, and what it was, was that the more complex a covert operation is, the greater the probability is that the operation will fail. Nobody in the Obamanation Administration seems to be aware of this reality. They like to think of themselves as the smartest people in the room, when in reality, they are just the most corrupt and ruthless.

It is what it is, worst of all, congress is full of either straight up Marxists who will fall on their own swords to protect Barack Insane Obama or who are scared to death of being accused of firing America’s first Affirmative Action (yes you can read Black here) President. To call Congress a bunch of corrupt cowards is to ascribe to congress far more honestly and courage then they deserve.

Barack Insane Obama should have been impeached and Erick Holder prosecuted and sent to prison over the “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal because congress was so corrupt and cowardly that did not happen, instead we ended up with a Presidential Administration that attempted to orchestrate the kidnapping of an American Ambassador by Al Qaeda terrorists which resulted in that Ambassadors murder.

(Crossposted@ The Wilderness of Mirrors)

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Blogmocracy, Guest Post, Libya | 82 Comments »

American ambassadors have gone from untouchable to dead

by Speranza ( 148 Comments › )
Filed under History, Libya, World War II at May 14th, 2013 - 4:00 pm

An attack on an American Ambassador ought to be considered an attack on an American president and treated as an act of war.

by Shmuley Boteach

I just finished one of the best books I’ve read in a long time: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. The book tells the story of William Dodd, President Roosevelt’s first ambassador to Hitler, and chronicles the slow descent of Germany into Nazi tyranny. One of the most striking features of the narrative is the fear that slowly descends on the German populace as they become terrified of expressing an opinion about Hitler and his police state, even in the company of close family and friends.

Yet Dodd and his family were utterly immune to such fear. Though they lived in a home that was owned by a Jewish banker; regularly hosted journalists who wrote critically of Hitler; drove by the home of Franz von Papen – the deputy chancellor – to show their support even after he had been placed under house arrest by Hitler for his Marburg speech of June, 1934; though Dodd openly snubbed Hitler every year by refusing to attend the Nazi Nuremberg rally where Hitler was celebrated as a god, Dodd never had anything to fear.

He did not have to worry that the SA would ransack his Berlin home in the middle of the night. He did not have to fear that his daughter Martha, who even had an affair with Gestapo head Rudolf Diels, would be summarily shot for her increasing disillusionment with Hitler’s regime. [.......] And he did not have fear that roaming bands of Nazi thugs would attack him for his protests to the German foreign minister against unprovoked attacks that threatened the lives of Americans.

And why didn’t he fear? Because even a monster as evil as Hitler, arguably the most dangerous man that ever lived, wasn’t going to mess with the American ambassador.

In fact, one of the stories told in the book is of the day Dodd took a walk with French ambassador André François-Poncet in the Tiergarten, when the latter told him he would not be surprised if he were shot in the street by the SS. Dodd was astonished. It had never occurred to him to worry; he was the American ambassador.

Indeed, Hitler and the Nazis never harassed Western ambassadors.

It therefore matters that just 80 years later a bunch of terrorist thugs think they can murder an American ambassador, in full sight of the world, without consequence.

American diplomatic staff were once the safest people in the world, representatives of a superpower that would rain hell from the skies should you touch one.  [......]

The revelations coming out of the Congressional hearings on Benghazi, Libya – such as that the Obama State Department watered down public statements on the attack, cleansing them of any mention of al-Qaida and terrorism – are a travesty and demonstrate a lack of moral will to call evil by its proper name.

ABC News and Fox News reported this past Friday that the department’s talking points were revised fully 12 times to purge them of any mention of terrorism. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland asked the CIA to remove mention of their own security warnings about Benghazi. According to ABC News the original paragraph read, “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. [......]

We cannot rule out [that] individuals [have] previously surveilled… US facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

But Nuland was concerned that the line “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that, either?” I have earlier written about how ambassador Susan Rice was an utterly inappropriate choice as secretary of state based on her efforts to disassociate the word “genocide” from the Rwandan mass slaughters of 1994 so as not to commit the Clinton administration to intervention. In a 2001 article published in The Atlantic, Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem of Hell and arguably the world’s foremost voice against genocide, who currently serves on the National Security Council as an aide to President Obama, referred to Ambassador Susan Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton administration as “Bystanders to Genocide.”

[........]

Worse, the attempt to whitewash the Benghazi attacks and describe them merely as “a protest that turned violent” trivializes the death of ambassador Chris Stevens and the three Americans murdered with him, and threatens to cheapen the life of every American diplomat currently serving in a dangerous post.

We need to accept that the fear the United States once instilled in those with evil intent against our diplomatic staff has worn thin and the only way to reintroduce that fear is to understand fully what happened in Benghazi, and to rain fire on the culprits so that this never happens again

Read he rest - American ambassadors: from untouchable to dead

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Posted in History, Libya, World War II | 148 Comments »

An Islamic nut job set off a bomb today at a French Embassy

by Rodan ( 3 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, France, Headlines, Islamic Terrorism, Islamists, Libya, Muslim Brotherhood at April 23rd, 2013 - 9:13 am

Despite assisting al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood against Qaddafi, the Jihadists continue to show their ingraditute. A car bomb exploded outside of the Libyan Embassy in Tripoli, Libya.

A car bomb went off outside the French Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, on Tuesday, a Libyan Foreign Ministry official said.

The official said two guards were hurt, but no one had died.

Television images showed extensive damage to buildings in the area.

“I think there were two blasts, the first was very loud and then there was a smaller one,” a  witness told Reuters. “There was some black smoke at first, and then it turned white.”

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned what he called a heinous attack and said everything would be done to find the perpetrators, the news service reported.

John McCain has no comments over the actions of his heroes.

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Posted in Al Qaeda, France, Headlines, Islamic Terrorism, Islamists, Libya, Muslim Brotherhood | 3 Comments »

British pro-Palestinian activists raped in Libya according to reports

by Speranza ( 8 Comments › )
Filed under Crime, Gaza, Headlines, Israel, Libya, Turkey at March 29th, 2013 - 11:34 am

No comment other than to say somehow it will be the fault of the Jooooos!

Two British activists with a humanitarian convoy destined for the Gaza Strip were subjected to a brutal gang rape by five men in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, the deputy prime minister said Thursday.

The two women of Pakistani origin “were brutally raped in front of their father,” Awadh al-Barassi said on his Facebook page, condemning “a horrible act.” Barassi said he had been to see the two victims in Benghazi on Thursday, and that the family was “in a very bad psychological state.” The women, accompanied by their father on the convoy organised by Turkish NGO IHH, had been destined for the Palestinian coastal enclave blockaded by Israel when it was blocked from leaving Libya and entering Egypt.

The three decided to return to Benghazi accompanied by two more Britons, with the aim of getting a flight home. But when they arrived in Libya’s second city they were abducted by five unidentified men.

A Western diplomatic source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the group had been abducted, but was unable to say the women had been sexually assaulted, pending medical reports.

The diplomatic source also said there had been arrests in the case, without specifying how many.

Another source said the family was now being looked after at the Turkish consulate in Benghazi.

Posted in Crime, Gaza, Headlines, Israel, Libya, Turkey | 8 Comments »

Unstable truce with the Axis of Crazy; and America’s support for Israel at all time high

by Speranza ( 48 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Libya, Libya, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Turkey at March 18th, 2013 - 11:30 am

I love Rand Paul’s reference to John McCain and Miss Lindsey Graham being “stale and moss covered”.

hat tip – Powerline

by Mark Steyn

I greatly enjoy the new Hollywood genre in which dysfunctional American families fly to a foreign city and slaughter large numbers of the inhabitants as a kind of bonding experience. Liam Neeson takes his estranged wife and their teenage daughter for just such a vacation in Taken 2, in which the spectacular mountain of corpses in Istanbul brings the family back together again and ends with them (spoiler alert) enjoying a chocolate malt back at the soda fountain in California and getting to know the daughter’s new boyfriend. “Don’t shoot this one, Dad,” she cautions. “I really like him.” And they all have a good chuckle over it. In Die Hard 5 or whatever we’re up to, Bruce Willis and his estranged son fly to Moscow and do to the Russians what Neeson does to the Turks and Albanians.  [.......]

Alas, outside Hollywood, foreigners are somewhat less pliable than the body count of Liam Neeson’s and Bruce Willis’s obliging extras would suggest. The funniest line in Taken 2 was Neeson’s advice to his daughter in an emergency: “Go to the U.S. embassy. You’ll be safe there.” It opened a couple of weeks after Benghazi.

There are drones, of course, which offer the consolations of technological badassery, as if Liam Neeson could take out all the Albanians from the X-Box in his basement. But don’t worry.  [.......]

Meanwhile, back at the GOP, Senator Rand Paul is no Dick Cheney either: At CPAC this week, the narrow bounds of his smash-hit filibuster — questioning drone assassinations on Americans in America — broadened somewhat, not just to questioning drone assassinations on Americans anywhere, nor to questioning drone assassinations on anyone, nor even to questioning the “war on terror” or war in general, but to questioning the very assumptions of American global order, starting with our bankrolling of Mohamed Morsi in Cairo. The Egyptians send mobs to torch the U.S. embassy, the Saudis wage ideological warfare against Western civilization, the Turks call Israel a “crime against humanity” and threaten a cultural and demographic takeover of Europe, the Pakistanis are ramping up nuke production to sell to any loon in town — and those are just our “allies.” [........] There are fewer and fewer takers for the burdens of global superpower, and whoever wins the nomination in 2016 will be considerably less Cheney and more Randy.

And, to be fair, even Dick Cheney isn’t Dick Cheney, at least in the sense that Dick Cheney isn’t Darth Vader. After a decade of inconclusive war, Americans are understandably receptive to the notion that it’s time to “come home.” Thus, newly appointed defense secretary Chuck Hagel faces, in the words of the Associated Press, “the jarring difficulties of shutting down a war in a country still racked by violence.” “Shutting down”? Yes, the defense secretary is now doing to the Afghan War what Romney’s Bain Capital did to midwestern factories. [.......] Some personnel can be reassigned, but thousands of EU nation-building consultants, cousins of Hamid Karzai, and tribal pederasts enjoying free Viagra from Washington (seriously) may have to be laid off.

“Shutting down” Afghan wars can be a tricky business, as the British discovered during their 1842 retreat from Kabul, when the locals offered them “safe passage” and then proceeded to massacre all 4,500 troops plus 12,000 wives, children, and attendant locals, leaving only Dr. William Brydon and his horse to make it through to Jalalabad. His mount died upon arrival; Dr. Brydon lived to tell the tale, albeit missing part of his skull, sheared off by a Pashtun tribesman.
No doubt things will go better this time. Two more Americans died this week at the hands of one of their Afghan “allies,” a man trained, paid, and armed by the United States. If you slaughter thousands, you can still just about get our attention, as Mullah Omar discovered after 9/11. But the slow bleeding of two deaths here, three deaths there, week after week after week takes a psychological toll, rotting out purpose and strategy. So in Washington this will be a war we “shut down”; in Kandahar and beyond, it will be a war we lost.

As one war “shuts down,” are any others likely to open up? This week Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that “we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon.” So Tehran, fresh from playing the bad guys in Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning blockbuster, is going nuclear? Hey, relax, says the president: “I continue to keep all options on the table.”[........] The best option would be if the Israelis just got on with it, absolving everyone else from a tough decision and simultaneously affording them the deliciously irresistible frisson of denouncing the Zionists for their grossly disproportionate response.

More likely, Iran will be permitted to go nuclear — followed shortly thereafter by Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and anyone else who dislikes being conscripted under the Shia Persian nuclear umbrella. North Korea and Pakistan both anticipate a lively export market.

Pakistan has a nominal per capita GDP of about $1,200, with North Korea’s barely detectable. By comparison Sweden’s is about $58,000 and the Netherlands’ about $50,000. But North Korea is a nuclear power and the Netherlands isn’t, and has no plans to become one, and any party so minded to propose otherwise would soon find itself out of power. [.......]

Perhaps this improbable division will hold. Perhaps the Axis of Crazy will be content just to jostle among itself leaving the Axis of Torpor to fret about lowering the retirement age to 48 and mandatory transgendered bathrooms and other pressing public-policy priorities. But, even under such an inherently unstable truce, the American position and the wider global economy would deteriorate.

As the CPAC crowd suggested, there are takers on the right for the Rand Paul position. There are many on the left for Obama’s drone-alone definition of great power. But there are ever fewer takers for a money-no-object global hegemon that spends 46 percent of the world’s military budget and can’t impress its will on a bunch of inbred goatherds. A broker America needs to learn to do more with less, and to rediscover the cold calculation of national interest rather than waging war as the world’s largest NGO. In dismissing Paul as a “wacko bird,” John McCain and Lindsey Graham assume that the too-big-to-fail status quo is forever. It’s not; it’s already over.

Read the rest - The Axis of Torpor

Despite The New York Times, Barack Obama, Chuck Hagel, 60 Minutes, CNN, The Washington Post , and Little Green Balls – American sympathy towards Israel remains overwhelming.

by Haviv Rettig Gur

Americans’ sympathy for Israel is at a 22-year high, according to Gallup figures released on Friday, just five days ahead of Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel as president.

In figures gleaned from the polling organization’s early February World Affairs poll, 64 percent of Americans say their sympathies “in the Middle East situation” – Gallup’s term for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace talks – lie more with the Israelis than with the Palestinians. Just 12% favor the Palestinians.

Nearly one-quarter, or 23%, said their sympathies lie with both parties, neither, or had no opinion.

The figures mark a 22-year high in sympathy for Israel. The last Gallup poll that showed 64% sympathy came in 1991, at the height of the First Gulf War and in the midst of the first intifada.

Sympathy for Israel then declined through the 1990’s, though it remained comfortably ahead of sympathy figures for Palestinians. The number who said they favored Israel reached a low point of 38% in 1997, during the first government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the early 2000′s, Americans’ sympathy for Israel saw turbulent spikes and drops as US public opinion responded to successive terror attacks on Israel’s cities and the subsequent Israeli military incursions that drew civilian casualties.

[........]

The figures are bad news for the Palestinians, as sympathy for their side remained relatively steady — and low — throughout the past three decades, hovering between a high of 20% and a low of 7% since 1988.

Even in periods when many Americans stopped saying they favored Israel in the conflict, most did not switch to the Palestinians, but rather said they favored neither side.

Sympathy for Israel among respondents aged 18-34 is at 55%, compared to 71% among those over 55. But both groups favor the Palestinians in equal measure, at just 12%.

“Younger Americans show less favoritism toward Israel than middle-aged adults and, in particular, seniors; however, they are no more likely to favor the Palestinians,” Gallup notes. Younger Americans “are simply less anchored about whom they favor.”

The poll also found that “Palestinians receive the highest sympathy from Democrats, liberals, and postgraduates, but even among these, support tops off at 24%.”

Self-described “liberals” show the highest level of sympathy toward the Palestinians — 24%, compared to 51% for Israel — while 19% of Democrats are partial toward the Palestinians, and 55% toward Israel. Sympathy for Palestinians is at just 5% among both Republicans and self-described “conservatives.”

Read the rest – American’s sympathy for Israel at 22 year high

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Posted in Democratic Party, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Libya, Libya, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Turkey | 48 Comments »

Nixon, Obama and Bob Woodward

by Speranza ( 131 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Cult of Obama, Democratic Party, History, Libya, Media, Patriotism, Republican Party at March 4th, 2013 - 7:00 am

Memo to Roger Ailes:  More Pat Caddell’s and less Karl Rove. Nixon was called an Imperial President by Kennedy court historian Arthur Schlesinger, yet Barack Obama can give the Kennedy’s lessons in royalty.  Another thing, for whatever their faults  JFK and Nixon were patriots. Obama not so much.

by Patrick Caddell

It is not without a bit of irony that, in the 40 years since the explosion of the Watergate story, Bob Woodward would again be under attack from the White House for trying to tell the truth. But this time the attack is coming from a Democrat.

While Barack Obama may not share the Nixon pedigree, he and his White House are the closest thing to the Nixon regime of any that we have seen since then — both in the extent of their paranoia and their willingness to suppress the truth and push the boundaries of law.

In my lifetime, in over 40 years in national politics, Mr. Obama is the only president who comes close to rivaling Richard Nixon for fundamental disingenuousness.

[.......]

As the youngest person on Nixon’s enemies list in 1972, I am particularly sensitive to a White House where they have utter disregard for trampling on dissent and on the rights of individuals.

Since Benghazi, when I raised the alarm about a media that was not only willing to blatantly support one political party or one political a candidate but for the first time seemed willing to suppress or ignore the facts and truth as related to a disaster of American foreign policy, my fear has been that we are now on a slippery slope. Almost everything since then has helped to realize that fear. Chuck Hagel, the sequester, Mr. Obama’s speeches — all of these have revealed a mainstream press that has absolutely decided to wear its bias openly as outriders of the Obama administration.  [.........]

What this Woodward, White House sequester battle highlights is the crisis in our democracy. Not so much for what it says about Mr. Obama and his administration but for what it says about the establishment press and all the members of my own party.

During Watergate, there were a number of Republicans who were willing to stand against the president of their party in defense of the United States of America.

Sadly, as as Democrat, I must confess, that today there is no Democratic Senator or member of the House who appears to be willing to publicly put the country ahead of Barack Obama’s White House.

[........]

During the Chuck Hagel confirmation fight, it was revealed that to this day, neither the public nor the Congress know the names of those who were evacuated out of Benghazi.  [........]

The White House’s excuse, that this information cannot be revealed because of an FBI investigation, is eerily and frighteningly similar to Nixon telling H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to “turn off” the Watergate investigation as it threatened national security.

Sadly, it now appears that Director Mueller and the FBI are willing to serve, once again, as an instrument of cover up for an administration — this time following a tragedy in which 4 Americans are now dead.

As much as I have always admired Bob Woodward and admire now him in the sequester fight and for his willingness to take on the White House, I cannot refrain from expressing my disappointment that this man, who did such a service for the country 40 years ago, has essentially taken himself off the boards of the Benghazi fiasco. I wish that if Woodward were to get in a fight, he would do it on an issue that really matters to the safety of the United States.

Read the rest -  Obama is the closest thing to Nixon we’ve seen  in 40 years.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Cult of Obama, Democratic Party, History, Libya, Media, Patriotism, Republican Party | 131 Comments »

Contrary to popular beliefs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the cause of Middle East instability

by Speranza ( 130 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Egypt, Iran, Islamists, Israel, Libya, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinians, Syria, Taliban at February 8th, 2013 - 7:00 am

The vast majority of conflicts in the Middle East have little or nothing to do with the Palestinians or Israel. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard or read some “expert” claiming that “Palestine is the key to peace”. There is no linkage between Israel-Palestine and peace throughout the Middle East. If Arafat had signed an agreement in 2000 and actually lived up to it, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, et al would still continue to exist and Iran would still be trying to get a nuclear weapon.

by  Jeffrey Goldberg

Among many Middle East analysts, particularly those of the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy thought, “linkage” is a holy doctrine. It holds that peaceful compromise between Israel and the Palestinians will lead to a generally placid Middle East. But it’s a false notion. One of its more famous advocates is Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense.

In my Bloomberg View column, I look at Hagel’s views, and try to understand how linkage became such a dominant doctrine when it is so provably false:
“The core of all challenges in the Middle East remains the underlying Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hagel said in 2006. “The failure to address this root cause will allow Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists to continue to sustain popular Muslim and Arab support — a dynamic that continues to undermine America’s standing in the region and the Governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, whose support is critical for any Middle East resolution.”

As Martin Kramer wrote: “The vocabulary here — ‘core,’ ‘root cause,’ ‘underlying’ — is taken from the standard linkage lexicon, which elevates the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a preeminent status.” [.........]

In his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” Hagel wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “cannot be looked at in isolation. Like a stone dropped into a placid lake, its ripples extend out farther and farther. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon feel the effects most noticeably. Farther still, Afghanistan and Pakistan; anything that impacts their political stability also affects the two emerging economic superpowers, India and China.”

I would love to hear Hagel’s views on this subject today, because his theory of linkage — and his belief that a Middle East freed from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would be a “placid lake” — has been utterly discredited by events. [........] But these same terrorists are unalterably opposed to a compromise that would allow two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side, because they are opposed to the very existence of Israel. They try to subvert the peace process because they fear it will legitimize the existence of a country they hate.

[........]The past two years have proved the theory of linkage to be comprehensively false anyway.

Come with me on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The Syrian civil war? Unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The slow disintegration of Yemen? Unrelated. Chaos and violence in Libya? Unrelated. Chaos and fundamentalism in Egypt? The creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would not have stopped the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, nor would it have stopped the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism in Algeria? Unrelated. The Iranian nuclear program? How would the creation of a Palestinian state have persuaded the Iranian regime to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Someone please explain. Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq? The unrest in Bahrain? Pakistani havens for al-Qaeda affiliates? All unrelated.

Read the rest -Is Palestinian-Israeli peace the key to happiness in the Middle East ?

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Egypt, Iran, Islamists, Israel, Libya, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinians, Syria, Taliban | 130 Comments »

The only remaining virtue in the Democratic Party is shamelessness

by Speranza ( 115 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democratic Party, Elections 2016, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Libya, Media, Politics at February 5th, 2013 - 7:00 am

To prove the Knish’s point, one needs only to  look at Obama’s appalling first term and yet the poseur was re-elected. Good economy, bad economy, foreign policy triumphs, foreign policy disasters – it does not matter if you are a Democrat. Right now (and it can change) I think that Hillary Clinton if she wants it will win the presidency in 2016 despite the fact she looks awful.

by Daniel Greenfield

On Friday, Hillary Rodham Clinton left the Harry S. Truman Building of the State Department after doing a grand media tour of every media outlet with a camera and a microphone. Meanwhile in Benghazi, where it was twenty degrees warmer, foreign organizations were fleeing the city while the killers who stayed behind still walked the streets.

In her joint appearance with Obama on 60 Minutes, Clinton claimed that her critics were not living in an “evidence-based world”. This is the same world of which she wrote in her goodbye letter to her State Department colleagues; “I am proud of what we have accomplished together.” Those accomplishments are hard to find among the debris of three failed wars, two failed containment policies in Iran and North Korea, and more attacks on American diplomatic facilities than ever before.

Hillary Clinton presided over the first murder of an American ambassador in thirty years. It was the closest thing to a notable moment in her time as Secretary of State, which concluded, in true Clinton style, with a cover-up, Senate hearings and more finger-wagging.

And yet, despite all that, the media threw her a farewell party in preparation for the 2016 election.  Four Americans died in Benghazi and in four years, Hillary Rodham Clinton expects to take the White House.

There is a certain symmetry to that. A year of political exile for every man she left unguarded and unsupported while lavishing millions on mosque renovations, embassy paintings and assorted trinkets. A year for every man whose blood was spilled on the warm streets of Benghazi. Four dead men and four years in which to prepare to do the same thing all over again as President of the United States.

[.........]

The Benghazi attackers came out of Al Qaeda in Iraq; an organization that is showing more staying power than General Motors, and like the maker of the Aztek, it’s spending a lot of time and energy expanding internationally.

When Obama turned his back on Iraq, discarding the sacrifices of the Surge, like he did the lives of the four men murdered in Benghazi, the terror didn’t stop. Al Qaeda bombs have kept going off as Iraq melted down into a conflict between its Iranian-backed Shiite government, the Kurds and Sunni Islamists. And Al Qaeda found new wars. Like a persistent suitor, it followed BHO and HRC to Benghazi.

[.........]

Like Hillary, Obama has never been held accountable for any of it. And Hillary’s very lack of accountability, her immunity from accountability makes her eminently qualified for the top spot in a Democratic Party where it’s more important to know how to shrug off accountability than it is to get things right.

Bill Clinton ushered in the post-accountability era, where evidence no longer mattered and the law was something that you could ignore if you felt like it. It is the thing that Obama, Clinton 2 and Biden all have in common. They are the poster-children of the post-accountability era where the synergy of media and party is so complete that it no longer matters what you do; only which side you’re on.

Jimmy Carter, the man under whose administration the last American ambassador was murdered, was also the last Democratic president to be held accountable for anything. [.........]

Looking back on the last two decades, it almost seems as if the Clinton era never ended. Not only are both Clintons on television all the time, but so is Al Gore, still playing the guru in a suit, the deep thinker with a hand out to foreign governments. In the Clinton era, it was Communist China. Today it’s Islamist Qatar. At the time Gore said that he had done nothing wrong because there was no controlling legal authority. There still isn’t. Not where Democrats are concerned.

Al Gore, whose palm always itches for money from the enemies of the United States, nearly made it to the White House, where his influence peddling would have taken place on a whole other scale. Clinton, who did make it, deported a little boy to a Communist country at gunpoint and murdered more children at Waco, in the world’s bloodiest training exercise.

But again no one was held responsible. It’s a long way from Benghazi to Waco, but the Clintons retain their talent for walking over corpses to reach their ambition. And their critics, who notice the bodies, are accused of harboring personal vendettas and of not living in an “evidence-based world.”

The Democratic Party in the last two decades has absorbed Bill Clinton’s ability to avoid accountability. The ranks of its congressmen are full of liars, felons and lunatics. It is a party so devoid of accountability that the likes of Sheila Jackson Lee can sit on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics without being able to tell apart the Moon and Mars, while Hank Johnson can warn that Guam may tip over if too many Marines land on it.

The Party of Jefferson has made the long sad trip to a party that views Massachusetts scandal machines like Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank as elder statesmen, instead of criminals who were never locked up, on account of their political influence. And it is full of these elder statesmen, men like Joe Biden, whose only gift is an inability to shut up and a media unwilling to condemn even the worst of their shenanigans.

The only remaining virtue in the Democratic Party is shamelessness. Those Democrats who have no shame prosper, those who do turn themselves in and serve their time.

After having trashed the housing market, the likes of Barack Obama and Andrew Cuomo step forward as reformers. After having murdered a woman, Ted Kennedy retired as a champion of women’s rights.  [........] And four years from now, Hillary Clinton will be touting her experience in Benghazi as a reason that she should be elected to the White House where she will be able to do it all over again.

Read the rest – Things only a Democrat could get away with

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Posted in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democratic Party, Elections 2016, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Libya, Media, Politics | 115 Comments »

Some questions Hagel should be asked at his confirmation hearing

by Speranza ( 81 Comments › )
Filed under China, Iran, Israel, Libya, Syria at January 21st, 2013 - 11:00 am

I would love to hear Hagel’s answer about his refusal to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

by George F. Will

Senate hearings on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary will be a distinctive Washington entertainment, a donnybrook without drama. He should be confirmed: Presidents are due substantial deference in selecting Cabinet members because they administer presidential policies and, unlike judicial appointments, they leave when their nominators do. Hagel will be confirmed because Sen. Chuck Schumer, after hesitating theatrically enough to propitiate supporters of Israel, of whom there are many among his New York constituents, has decided not to oppose Hagel. Opposition would have ended Schumer’s hope to make the nation nostalgic for Harry Reid by succeeding him as Senate Democratic leader. Still, the hearings will be sound and fury signifying renewed interest in national security policy, which can be illuminated by Hagel addressing questions like these:

●In 1997, 28 years after you returned from Vietnam with two Purple Hearts, we heard a May 27, 1964, taped telephone conversation in which President Lyndon Johnson said to his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy: “I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and I don’t think we can get out.” Johnson also said: “What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country?” At the time, there were only 16,000 U.S. forces in Vietnam, where there had been only 266 U.S. deaths. The U.S. deployment would peak at more than 500,000 in 1969 and 58,000 would die there. How did this tape, and Vietnam generally, shape your thinking?

● Your critics say that you managed to be wrong on Iraq twice, by supporting the 2003 invasion and by opposing the 2007 surge. If the surge had not happened, what would have happened in Iraq?

● How many sorties, including attacks on Iran’s air defense systems, would be required to significantly degrade and delay Iran’s nuclear program? Can Israel mount such an air campaign alone? Would you favor U.S. cooperation, with intelligence and special munitions?

●Did you refuse to sign a 2006 letter urging the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization because you consider that designation inaccurate? From your 2009 endorsement of U.S. negotiations with Hamas, can we conclude that you oppose the policy of not negotiating with terrorists?

[........]

●Do you agree with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s judgment that cuts under sequestration would “hollow out the force”? Can you give examples of procurements or deployments that justify your description of the Defense Department as “bloated”?

●The Navy has nine aircraft carriers. Aircraft carrier groups are the principal means of projecting U.S. power. And they are very expensive. How many should we have? How is your calculation influenced by the fact that, seven weeks ago, China for the first time landed a fighter jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier?

●Congress’s power to declare war has atrophied since it was last exercised (against Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary on June 5, 1942). Should Congress authorize America’s wars?

●In 2011, President Obama, using a passive syntax, said our military “is being volunteered by others to carry out missions” in Libya. The original rationale for this — before mission meander embraced regime change — was “R2P,” the responsibility to protect civilians. Do you support applying this doctrine to Syria? If removing Moammar Gaddafi was an important U.S. interest, why was it, and when did it become so? [.....]

●Speaking of the imperial presidency, do you believe that the use of drones to target specific individuals means presidents have an unreviewable power to kill whomever they define as enemies?  [.......]

●In 1949, one of NATO’s founders said its purpose was “to keep the Americans in (Europe), the Germans down and the Russians out.” What is its purpose now? Given that U.S. military spending is three times larger than the combined spending of NATO’s other 27 members, is it not obvious that those nations feel no threat?

Bonus question: Might fewer than 54,000 U.S. forces in Germany suffice to defend that country, or Western Europe, from whatever threat they are there to deter?

Read the rest – Some questions for Hagel

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Posted in China, Iran, Israel, Libya, Syria | 81 Comments »

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