This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • British point finger at Iran

    From the London Sunday Telegraph by way of the Washington Times;

    A missile that brought down a Royal Air Force Lynx helicopter and killed five British service members was smuggled into Iraq by Iranian agents, an official inquiry into the attack will reveal.
        The Sunday Telegraph has learned that a British Army Board of Inquiry (BOI) into the events surrounding the May attack will state that the weapon, a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile known as an SA14 Strella, came from Iran.
        The attack, which was responsible for the death of Flight Lt. Sarah Mulvihill, the first British servicewoman to be killed on active service since World War II, appears to provide further evidence of Iran’s direct involvement in the deaths of British troops serving in Iraq.

    Ahmadinejad the Denier had better take stock of who he’s pissing off here. The Left can’t protect him from the neocons forever. Ask Saddam.

  • Albright; Iraq policy worst disaster in US foreign policy history

    The ugliest, and arguably the most worthless Secretary of State in history, Madeleine Albright, claims that Iraq may be the greatest US foreign policy failure in history;

    “I think that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy,” Albright said, with former President Jimmy Carter at her side in one of a series of “Conversations at the Carter Center.”

    “We have lost the element of goodness in American power, and we have lost our moral authority,” she said. “The job of the next president will be to restore the goodness of American power.”

    I guess she didn’t hear that Haiti is still going badly, the Somalis just now rid themselves, for however briefly, of the al Qaida influeces in their country after the Klintoons bailed on them nearly 13 years ago. How’s that Bosnia thing going, Maddy? Remember the one that you and the guys promised we’d be out of 11 years ago?

    And do you remember that Yassir Arafat was begging for a peace deal with Israel under President Bush 41, but by the end of your administration, he was strutting around rejecting the sweetheart deals you and your boss were offering?

    Since you had Jimmy Carter next to you, ask him how the hostage crisis went in Iran. Ask him about the 9,000 Soviet combat soldiers that were stationed in Cuba to prevent us from responding to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (as if Carter would have responded anyway). And I guess a reasonable person could draw a straight line from the policy failures of Carter and Clintoon to the troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan today, couldn’t they?

    Let’s talk about the “goodness” of American power. The truth is, Maddy, most Americans could give a tiny rat’s ass what the rest of the world thinks of us as long as we have food on the table, clothes on our backs and a roof over our heads. And we’re not worried that we might get blown to pieces on the way to the supermarket this morning. 

    Regardless of what you might think, the “goodness” of American power is in the eyes of the beholder. Countries who don’t see the goodness of America’s power today aren’t acting in the best interests of their own people, and they certainly don’t care a whit whether you, an American (I’m guessing you’re an American this week) are still breathing in the morning.

    Oh, and then, all pumped by Maddy, Jimmy Carter (my favorite pointer-outer of American failures) started yapping;

    Carter said all previous presidents have said the United States would go to war only if its security was endangered, but that President Bush made it clear that there is a new policy of pre-emptive war.

    Um, Jimmy, do you remember the Carter Doctrine? Do you remember that you pre-emptively stationed a couple of US warships in the Persian Gulf to protect the free flow of Gulf oil at market prices? Apparently not.

    This what is killing the Democrat Party. The people who claim to be the voice of the Democrat Party just act like they’re so damn smart – and there are enough syncophantic lunkheads out there who want to be thought of as smart, too. So they just nod and smile like a class full of college freshmen who just heard the first paragraph of The Odessey read to them in Greek.Then the lunkheads go forth and regurgitate this baseless, vile stuff everywhere across the internet on discussion boards – then they link to mierda like this as if it’s some sort of evidence of their towering intellect. And other lunkheads join the choir.

    Someone prove me wrong and tell me about one enduring foreign policy triumph of either Carter or Albright. Just one. Successfully forcing the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1988 by boycotting the Moscow Olympics in 1980 doesn’t count, however.

  • Call Putin what he is; adversary

    Today in the Washington Times AP’s Vladimir Isachenkov writes that;

    Russia’s defense minister yesterday harshly criticized U.S. plans to deploy missile-defense sites in Central Europe, saying Moscow doesn’t trust the U.S. explanation that they are intended to counter missile threats posed by Iran and North Korea.
        Sergei Ivanov, speaking during a trip to India where he co-chaired a bilateral commission on military ties, said neither Iran nor North Korea has or will have a capability to build missiles that can reach Europe.
        “They don’t and won’t have intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Mr. Ivanov told reporters. “And a question comes: whom it’s directed against?”

    Well, who do you think it’s directed at, Serg? Probably an adversary who supplies our adversaries with anti-aircraft missiles, an adversary who blocks necessary sanctions in the UN Security Council against enemies of world peace, an adversary whose citizens are selling weapons grade uranium from a plastic bag in their shirt pocket (Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters goes in depth on this today)

    While taking in fists full of cash from the Iraqi government in the years leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Russians blocked actions against Hussein. What would the Russians do if the US were supporting the Chechnyans in anyway like the Russians are supporting Iran?

    But more importantly, where are the US officials asking in the media against from whom will those anti-aircraft defend in Iran? Any air attack on Iran from the US or Israel would be to neutralize their nuclear program which at this moment threatens the stability of the region.

     Putin and Russia still see the US as an adversary, and they’re still pursuing their old Soviet policy of engaging us and containing our military and economic strength through proxies.

    It’s time we recognized that the old Soviet Union is alive and well in Putin.

  • Changes coming in France

    Excellent and informative piece by Matthew Kaminski in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Section explaining current French politics;

    The French presidential campaign started in earnest this week after the ruling center-right party tapped Nicolas Sarkozy to face off against Socialist Ségolène Royal. His nomination also brings closer the day that Charles de Gaulle will be laid to rest. Wait, you say, the man is dead and buried since 1970. True, but he’s gone in body, not in spirit. The general has shaped France’s view of the world and itself from the closing days of the last great war. Come May, with a new resident in the Elysée Palace, that looks bound to change.

    In Sarko or Ségo, as they’re widely known, France would get its first head of state born after World War II. More than a change of the generational guard looms on the horizon. Neither of the presumptive successors to Jacques Chirac sounds beholden to a Gaullist creed characterized by the prickly defense of the Fifth Republic’s “grandeur” and a knee-jerk anti-Americanism. To judge by their rhetoric, the two leading candidates are willing apostates, particularly on foreign policy. The repercussions should not be minimized.

    The 74-year-old Mr. Chirac is a Gaullist par excellence — whether storming out last year when a Frenchman dared speak English at a European Union meeting or grandstanding over Iraq in 2003. “I have a simple principle in foreign affairs. I see what the Americans are doing and I do the opposite. That way, I’m sure to be right,” he’s told colleagues on several occasions, according to Franz-Olivier Giesbert’s “La Tragédie du Président,” a political obituary of Mr. Chirac published last year.

    Electoral setbacks, poor health and plummeting popularity make it unlikely Mr. Chirac will dare seek a third term or be able to hand the reins to a trusted ally such as Dominique de Villepin, the neo-Napoleonic (much less Gaullist) prime minister. Mr. Sarkozy, a nemesis of both men, won their party’s Sunday primary with 98% of votes.

    On nearly all matters, Mr. Sarkozy sees what Chirac is doing and does the opposite — especially on America. Mr. Sarkozy hails the Yankee “can-do spirit” and openness to newcomers. France and America, he says, have a common enemy, terrorism. In a visit to Washington last fall, he enthusiastically met with George W. Bush and lashed out against “French arrogance”; neither won him plaudits back home. One of his nicknames — Sarko l’Américain — isn’t intended as a compliment.

    It goes on to describe the Leftist candidate, Ségolène Royal, as an intellectually void, pretty face. I’d really like to see France join the rest of us in the 21st century.

    I’ve always said that Paris is a wonderful city, if only it weren’t filled French people.

  • Our new neighbors

    Daniel Ortega, newly-elected President of Nicaragua, signed a socialist trade pact yesterday with Venezuela, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba according to an AP story. Our good buddy Hugo Chavez was on hand to pass out goodies to the Nicaraguans in attendence including a few tractors to some farmers in front of an electrical plant shipped from Venezuela the day Ortega won his election.

    “Think of what Nicaragua would be like today if the North American imperialists had allowed Daniel to continue his revolution!” [Chavez] said.

    He promised a slew of aid and investment, including 100,000 barrels of oil under preferential terms and the construction of an oil refinery and factories for Venezuelan products. Later, Ortega and Chavez signed agreements giving Nicaragua $20 million in loans with little or no interest for the country’s rural poor as well as help improving health care and education.

    All the while Chavez railed against US policy in the region, policy Chavez has claimed ruined Central American economies. But, not as much as communist guerillas in the region have ruined economies, I’ll wager.

  • China joining the community of nations?

    In the Jerusalem Post (by way of Best of the Web) reports that the Chinese are having a change of heart about Iran’s nuclear program;

    In January 2006, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who diplomatic officials in Jerusalem have said is as concerned about a nuclear Iran as Israel, went to China and reportedly told the Chinese leadership that Saudi Arabia would make up for any oil shortfall that might arise were the Iranians to cut back oil to China as punishment for sanctions.

    Whether this is what had a decisive impact on the Chinese is uncertain, but it is clear that in December the Chinese, who historically have proven allergic to the idea of sanctions because of a fear that they may be used against it over issues such as human rights, Tibet and Taiwan, did support the initial UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

    I’m sure that Iran’s falling oil production has something to do with it, too. Since the Chinese have decided that they want to trade with the world and lean towards free markets, they’ll be more civic-minded when dealing with other nations. Probably less so towards their own workforce, though.

    While Iran does not pose a direct threat to China, Beijing is concerned that a nuclear Iran would destabilize the region, something that could push oil prices way up and jeopardize the flow of oil – both of which could have a devastating effect on China’s breakneck economy.

    The power of capitalism at work.

  • Commie spies not popular in Poland

    I was reading this article about the resignation of Stanislaw Wielgus, the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw. He was forced to resign after admitting a few days ago that he’d cooperated with Poland’s communist-era secret police. I’m sure we can find some Leftists around somewhere that will sympathize with him and explain away his traitorous behavior using the awesome power of hindsight the Left seems to treasure.

    Afterall, look how the Left still defends Alger Hiss. Despite the fact that Hiss has been proven guilty of treason using the VENONA Project files (made famous by the scholarly work Venona; Decoding Soviet Spies in America ) and the KGB’s own archives (The Haunted Wood; Soviet Espionage in America – the Stalin Era by Allen Weinstein), they still defend him and fend off charges that he was a traitor by sniffing that he was only found guilty of perjury – not espionage.

    Yeah, the good archbishop should see if he can get a job as Archbishop of Berkely or Cambridge. I’m sure they can find room for an old commie.

  • How to disengage in the Middle East

    Russia is tapping into it’s vast reserves of oil buried under the Arctic tundra in Siberia. Cuba has hired an Indian oil company to begin supplying it’s meager petrol needs from reserves in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile we’re still enforcing the decades old Carter Doctrine demanding the free-flow of oil from the Persian Gulf states while we own some vast reserves of our own buried beneath our own Arctic tundra and off our own shores in the Gulf of Mexico.

    While the third world is winning the race to energy self-sufficiency, we’re mired in empty platitudes from the Democrat Party about “saving the earth” and “alternate fuels”, despite the fact that in 1979, Jimmy Carter, in his now famous “Malaise Speech“ promised that

    I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. 

    We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    But the Luddite environmentalists stand in the way of our self sufficience, with the Democrats in tow. That’s not all that surprising, really. What is surprising is that the Democrats are turning their backs on the poor and the unions. The less wealthy Americans are stuck paying higher energy costs like some kind of tax hike. The unions want the added jobs created by exploration and development of energy reserves and the increased manufacturing production that would result in cheaper domestic energy.

    The Democrats are happiest when we’re miserable – that would mean the perception that government (ie. the Democrats) would save us (most of Jimmy Carter’s Malaise Speech was the announcement of new government programs and agencies). They don’t particularly care that we would be able to ignore the petty bickering and power struggles in the Middle East (like we ignore the same from non-oil countries in Africa), nor would Chavez’ words have much weight if we developed our own oil and gas sources and we weren’t so dependent on the whims of country who aren’t afraid to exploit their oil and gas reserves.

    So even though we hold the key to our own energy dependence, we are also our own worse enemy.

    Â