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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Comparative Politics

    Compare two similar political situations;

    This from Huffington Post by way of Babalu Blog;

    Thousands of Hondurans are now in the streets to protest the coup d’etat in their country. They have been met with tear gas, anti-riot rubber bullets, tanks firing water mixed with chemicals, and clubs. Police have moved in to break down barricades and soldiers used violence to push back protesters at the presidential residence, leaving an unknown number wounded.

    Now compare that to this from the Jerusalem Post by way of Little Green Footballs;

    As the Iranian authorities warned the opposition on Tuesday that they would tolerate no further protests over the disputed June 12 presidential elections, a report emerged of the hangings of six supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

    Speaking after Iran’s top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told this reporter in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday.

    Tear gas and rubber bullets versus hangings and full metal jacket bullets.

    Which one does our president decide to condemn? The same one that shows respect to him and our flag (in this picture from Weasel Zippers, by way of Ace of Spades) and with popular support the media won’t cover (in a photo at Babalu Blog). The government which treats their dissenters with a bit of humanity.

  • Soltz: Surge is a failure

    John Soltz, who sheepishly admits that he didn’t fight any Chinese in Iraq, is still clinging to the old MoveOn line that the surge is a failure. He’s written it twice in as many days this week and does it again on MSNBC, where he’s apparently living in a broom closet these days. Soltz comes in at about 4:30 in to this video;

    The first time he wrote it was at HuffPo;

    Now we see that, indeed, the surge meant nothing without political progress.

    Then he wrote it again yesterday to throw water on the Iraqi’s Sovereignty Day celebration;

    And so, if the U.S. pulls back, there’s a powder keg ready to explode, with an ill-equipped Iraqi military left to try to hold things together. In fact, we’ve already seen violence ramp up in Iraq, as surge troops have left and others began their pull back from cities.

    So, Soltz’ solution is a Vietnam-style withdrawal from Iraq – as violence increases, the pace of withdrawal should increase as well.

    So President Obama needs to make it clear—if they won’t settle their differences, we won’t be around to save them, because we’ll speed up our departure. Most importantly, he must make good on the promise if it comes to that.

    Failure at any price. We promised the South Vietnamese that we’d defend them if the North invaded, then we stood by with our hands in our pockets and watched T55 tanks roll into Saigon. Soltz would love nothing more than to hang a picture of the last chopper leaving the Green Zone behind his desk in his MSNBC broom closet.

    Although, it would seem on the surface that the surge may be proven a failure if violence increases, I submit that it’s the Democrat policy of the last five years that’s failed. President Bush warned that setting an arbitrary withdrawal date would result in increased violence – that seems more likely the cause than the surge, doesn’t it?

    In fact, the reason the surge worked to bring peace to Iraq is because when the insurgents expected Democrats to force a withdrawal from Iraq in 2006/7, President Bush instead increased the US presence there, proving that he was dedicated to seeing the war through during his term.

    Threatening to increase the pace of withdrawal isn’t the way to quell violence. Showing resolve is what wins in the Middle East, not showing our collective ass. But Soltz and MoveOn and the Democrats are more enamored with the idea of calling Iraq a failure than making the world a better place.

    As long as Democrats are frightened of dealing with the real enemy in the region, and instead prefer to pick on pockets of democracy, we won’t have any progress in the terror war or in the advancement of liberty and freedom.

    One question I’d ask Soltz; Why are you so sure the Iraqis will fail? Because they’re brown people?

  • 100% wrong

    The current administration seems to be making their decisions by asking themselves what George Bush would do and then doing the complete opposite. They coddle dictators and thugs from the Middle East to Central America despite the fact that it can do nothing to further the cause of peace or democracy. Gateway Pundit has a video of Charles Krauthammer saying the same thing.

    While Obama is stroking Ahmadinejad over the election dispute in Iran, Secretary of Defense Gates reminds us that Iran has ratcheted up their support of Shi’ite militias in Iraq. From the Wall Street Journal;

    Some of the Iraqi Shiite extremist groups that the U.S. claims are backed by Iran say they are ratcheting up attacks in Iraq in tandem with Tehran’s post-election crackdown on protesters.

    Shiite militia leaders say a toughening resolve among hard-liners in Iran is translating into direct orders from Iran-based leaders to increase attacks, as well as inspiring militants next door in Iraq to demonstrate their influence.

    So, what is probably the worst thing that Obama could do to disrupt the successes in Iraq? How about putting the one man in charge of resolving political and tribal differences in Iraq who is universally despised by all of the groups in Iraq – Joe Biden;

    As the U.S. military met its deadline to withdraw from Iraqi cities, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama asked his No. 2 to work with Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Christopher Hill on mending fences in Iraq.

    Biden would be “working with the Iraqis toward overcoming their political differences and achieving the type of reconciliation that we all understand has yet to fully take place, but needs to take place,” Gibbs said.

    So why is Joe Biden a bad choice? Remember how his plan for Iraq was to partition the place along ethnic divisions? Why would anyone consider him the guy to “mend fences” when his plan was to build walls? A flashback from the archives of the Wall Street Journal;

    Despite deep resistance from the Iraqi government, Mr. Biden tried to turn his plan into U.S. policy, introducing a nonbinding Senate resolution that called for its implementation. But his effort completely backfired in Baghdad. The proposal ended up unifying all the disparate Iraqi factions in opposition.

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who called on the Iraqi parliament to meet and formally reject the Biden plan, immediately went on Iraqi television with a blistering statement: “[Biden] should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty . . . [He] shouldn’t be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region.”

    So you tell me…is the Obama Administration trying to sabotage peace in Iraq? It sure looks that way to me.

    And then, they side with Chavez, Castro, Ortega, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa against the legal government of Honduras. The Obama Administration continues to call it a coup (just like his new communist friends in the region), even though, it reality wasn’t. Again, lets read the Wall Street Journal;

    As military “coups” go, the one this weekend in Honduras was strangely, well, democratic. The military didn’t oust President Manuel Zelaya on its own but instead followed an order of the Supreme Court. It also quickly turned power over to the president of the Honduran Congress, a man from the same party as Mr. Zelaya. The legislature and legal authorities all remain intact.

    We mention these not so small details because they are being overlooked as the world, including the U.S. President, denounces tiny Honduras in a way that it never has, say, Iran. President Obama is joining the U.N., Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other model democrats in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be allowed to return from exile and restored to power. Maybe it’s time to sort the real from the phony Latin American democrats.

    I wonder how quickly all of those clowns would have rode to the defense of Colombia’s Uribe if he’d been shipped out in the early morning hours. And honestly, as coups go, Zelaya got off easy this time. The OAS is calling for his reinstatement to his office in two days – I’m pretty sure the next time Zelaya leaves Honduras, it’ll be feet first to preclude meddling by the thug huggers.

    But all of this contrary behavior by our own presidential administration is not in the interests of our own security, not a bit. It seems to me that Obama is now trying to deliberately destroy our economy while destroying our standing in the world making us insecure and poor just to not be Bush.

  • Spineless foreign policy

    So what happened this weekend? While the US was immersed in the useless-ass Michael Jackson news and doing their best to ignore the fact that we’ll all  be broke by the end of the year paying our new backdoor taxes on our energy needs, the rest of the world continued to turn.

    Did you hear that Iran had seized several British Embassy employees? No, of course not. I think it was nine that were detained by Iranian police for inciting the rallies against the government. Five were released yesterday and four more remain in custody according to CNN;

    British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Sunday protested the arrests, calling them “harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable.”

    Iran’s intelligence minister has blamed Western powers for stirring up protests over its disputed presidential election, singling out Britain and saying the British Embassy in Tehran “played a heavy role in the recent disturbances.”

    North Korea seems to be upset that we’ve moved missile defense assets to Hawaii. They, somehow, think that we’re moving defense systems to attack North Korea – kinda like the Murtha plan to defend the Iraqi government from Guam, I suppose. This from Australian Associated Press;

    “Through the US forces’ clamorous movements, it has been brought to light that the US attempt to launch a pre-emptive strike on our republic has become a brutal fact,” the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Monday.

    The paper also accused the US of deploying nuclear-powered aircraft and atomic-armed submarines in waters near the Korean peninsula, saying the moves prove “the US pre-emptive nuclear war” on the North is imminent.

    The commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said the North will bolster its nuclear arsenal in self-defence.

    I also wrote yesterday a few times about the removal of Leftist president Manuel Zelaya from his position in Honduras. He awoken early yesterday morning and sent to Costa Rica by the Honduran Army, apparently under the orders of the Honduran Congress and the Supreme Court. The Obama Administration called the act a “coup” while the Honduran Supreme Court claims it was completely legal since the Army was only defending their constitution from a domestic threat.

    Apparently the Obama administration had their fingers in several attempts to remove Zelaya in preceding weeks according to the Washington Times;

    The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said the U.S. Embassy in Honduras was “consistently and almost constantly engaged in the last several weeks working with partners” and that U.S. officials were “in contact with all Honduran institutions, including the military.” However, the military stopped taking the embassy’s calls since the coup attempt, the official said.

    Hmmm, they stopped taking the Obama administration’s calls, huh? Probably because they weren’t being helpful. The OAS, the UN, Chavez’ ALBA members have all condemned the removal of Zelaya from office, but actually, two branches of the Honduran government, the Judicial and Legislative, both arrived at the conclusion that Zelaya was trying to change the government of Honduras, like Chavez changed the Venezuelan government to suit his own selfish purposes. It’s an internal issue.

    The rest of the world has decided that they’re going to let Iran kill it’s own citizens, let North Korea fire off missiles anywhere they want while imprisoning US citizens, but they’re not going to let the Honduran government come to conclusions about the way it’s governed?

    Oh, and Chavez said yesterday that he’s ready to return Zelaya to office with the use of the Venezuelan Army. And the world is hoping he will, apparently.

    I thought Obama was going to change the way the world looked at us. Apparently he did – the world thinks the West are a bunch of pussies now that American foreign policy doesn’t have room to defend the innocent now. This administration is too intent on grinding our economy into the dust to pay attention to the rest of the world.

  • Blame-storming Honduras

    Hoping something will stick to the United States, the International left is throwing fingers at the US for the coup in Honduras. I wrote earlier that Chavez blamed the US, but Honduran President Manuel Zelaya tells a different story. Apparently the US thwarted a coup on Friday (Reuters link);

    “Everything was in place for the coup and if the U.S. embassy had approved it, it would have happened. But they did not … I’m only still here in office thanks to the United States,” he said in the newspaper interview published on Sunday.

    “Last (Friday) morning, at around 1 or 2 a.m., Congress was passing a decree to incapacitate me and the armed forces were mobilized. But phone calls were made — I can’t say by who or from where — but these calls stopped the coup,” he said.

    Funny how that isn’t a headline across every banner on the internet, isn’t it?
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  • Honduras ignites

    r1702921191
    The President of Honduras found himself on the way to Costa Rica this morning after being rousted from his presidential chambers in his pajamas by the army. In what the president later referred to as a “brutal kidnapping”, the army rolled tanks through the streets and put Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on the next plane for Costa Rica. If he could talk about it later, it doesn’t seem to have all that brutal, to me, remembering other coups in the area over the years.

    It seems the president got on the wrong side of everyone in the country by attempting a Chavez-inspired rewriting of the Constitution. According to the Baltimore Sun he was all by himself;

    Zelaya, a leftist allied with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was arrested shortly before polls were to open in a referendum on whether to change the constitution. The Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal and everyone from Congress to members of his own party opposed it. Critics said Zelaya wanted to remove limits to his re-election.

    Of course, President Obama voted “not present” on the issue of a neighbor in our hemisphere;

    “I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter,” Obama said in a statement.

    “Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

    Well, if you want to talk about democratic norms, the Honduran Supreme Court seems to come down on the Army’s side;

    The Supreme Court said it supported the military action, which it said was aimed at defending the constitution.

    Reuters reports that Chavez isn’t being as shy as Obama about this coup;

    Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez on Sunday put his troops on alert over a coup in Honduras and said he would respond militarily if his envoy to the Central American country was attacked or kidnapped.

    Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, his close ally.

    Speaking on Venezuelan state television, Chavez said he would do everything necessary to “abort” the coup.

    The commie suck wads at Venezuelanalysis are claiming that Chavez said the US is behind the coup. And he ain’t being shy about what his reaction will be;

    The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, manifested his rejection, this Sunday, of the kidnapping of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, by that nation’s military, and said that North American imperialism and the extreme right are behind this act.

    “Soldier, empty out your riffle [sic] against the oligarchy and not against the people,” he said, adding, “These solders are going to know what the people are when the people start to go out into the streets.”

    Lemme see, now, that’s Iran, North Korea and Venezuela all accusing us of interfering in their business in the space of two weeks. North Korea is threatening Hawaii with missiles and Chavez is threatening the US and Honduras. Iran is just taking their belligerence out their own people for the time being. Until the concoct some reason to start a war with us, too.

    In the meantime, we can rest assured that our President is concerned about all of this.

    Added: El Universo writes that Chavez threatened the Honduran Army (in my Calle J translation);

    President Hugo Chavez said that he won’t recognize any president who takes an oath in Honduras instead of Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from the country Sunday by the military on the day that was going to realize a referendum on the possibility of the presidential re-election.

    “If they administer an oath to Micheletti (Roberto Micheletti, president of the Congress of Honduras), or to Peleletti or Gafetti or Goriletti we will overthrow, it. We will overthrow it, I say” , Chávez said, reported Reuters.

    “We will make all whole which is what we must do so that Manuel Zelaya is returned to his office”….

  • More blood on Islamic Republic’s hands

    Fox News reports that “Reports: Iran Riot Police Shooting Protesters ‘Like Animals‘”

    Twitter users believed to be in Tehran are painting a grim picture there, reporting beatings and gunfire on demonstrators supporting opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. These reports, obtained by Sky News, could not be independently confirmed by FOX News.

    Iran’s supreme leader said Wednesday that the government would not yield to demonstrators who want a disputed presidential election annulled, effectively closing the door to compromise with the opposition.

    One Twitter user I’ve been following, Persiankiwi, stopped Twittering about an hour ago;
    persiankiwi

    Here’s a video from YouTube supposedly from today – WARNING: It’s pretty gory which is why it’s below the fold.
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  • Obama; living up to his reputation as Carter v2.0

    So our President had a short-notice press conference today to rescue his plummeting numbers. From what I read in Fox News it looks like he pretty much told the Iranian protesters “Adios”;

    “What’s happened in Iran is profound and we’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out,” Obama said. “It’s not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.” He said there is a path for the country to engage with the global community.

    Obama also downplayed concerns that he’s not speaking out forcefully enough in support of the protesters, saying the Iranian people can “speak for themselves.”

    DrewM at Ace of Spades answers;

    He keeps saying this is up to the Iranian people…problem is the people trying to ‘debate’ are being gunned down. Obama won’t say that he won’t recognize a government imposed by force.

    Obama pretty much regurgitated what Dianne Feinstein said yesterday;

    “I think the president has it correct. … It is very crucial as I see it that we not have our fingerprints on this. That this really be truly inspired by the Iranian people. We don’t know where this goes. And I sure wouldn’t want to be responsible for thousands of people being killed, which is a distinct possibility.”

    The same type of namby-pamby BS that put the mullahs in power in the first place. Since the Obama administration has already decided to defund the democracy movement in Iran, I’m pretty sure they’ve already made up their minds about who is going to come out on top and they’re fine with the Iranian people being silenced as long as Obama can look like he’s making nice with the mullahs.

    In the meantime, he can’t afford to take his eye off the ball on domestic issues – so a safer world will just have to wait while he takes away our healthcare and drives taxes higher. That’s the priority right now – just ignore the unarmed Iranians facing the Islamic Republic’s thugs.