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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • The best reason to vote against Obama

    I saw this over at Little Green Footballs. It seems the whole world is excited that the Democrats nominated Barack Obama as their candidate (AP link);

    Excitement about Barack Obama emerged as a global phenomenon Wednesday as commentators and citizens around the world welcomed the news that he had sealed the Democratic presidential nomination.

    The excitement was less about Obama’s foreign policies — which remain vague on many fronts — than a sense that the candidacy of a black American with relatives in Africa and childhood friends in Asia marks a historic moment.

    Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, said Obama’s win “has sent out a lot of positive signals around the world.”

    “He has a very appealing persona — elegant, fluent, strings lots of sentences together into paragraphs,” Cox said. “But in terms of (his) actual policies towards the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, China, Europe — actually, we don’t know.”

    One thing I learned in all of the years I’ve lived outside the United States is that when foreigners are happy with our government, it’s because our government is doing something against our own interests.

    They claim that they don’t know anything about Obama’s policies towards the rest of the planet, but they really do. He’s going to give them our stuff. Obama won’t hesitate to trade off our national security for a moment’s smile at the camera. He’ll drag bags of money to North Korea like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. He’ll make empty promises to Africans and throw our tax payers dollars at them…like Bill Clinton.

    See, we Americans need a President who’ll represent us on the world stage, because the whole rest of the world wants our stuff…free. And if our President is dead set towards pleasing the rest of the world, we’re going to be out there all by ourselves, cuz there’ll be no one between us and the world treating us like a gigantic rummage sale.

  • Mugabe at the Food Conference

    Maoist Robert Mugabe has been at the UN’s “food conference” this week in Rome at a time when many of his own people in Zimbabwe have nearly forgotten what food means. While his own country is starving, the menu at the food conference contains many delicacies I’ve never even heard of;

    Vol au vent with sweetcorn and mozzarella
    Pasta with cream of pumpkin and shrimps
    Veal olives with cherry tomatoes and basil
    Fruit salad with vanilla ice cream
    Vin Orvieto Classico Poggio Calvelli 2005

    While Mugabe dines, aid organizations charge that he’s forbid them from feeding Zimbabweans (Reuters);

    The accusation came a day after CARE International said the government had ordered it to suspend its operations in Zimbabwe over allegations it was backing opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s presidential campaign. It denies the charge.

    Other humanitarian groups have been told to stop their work for the same reasons, the government said on Wednesday. It did not respond to the charge that it was using food for political advantage in the election race.

    “The decision to let people go hungry is yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election,” said Tiseke Kasambala, the rights group’s researcher for Zimbabwe.

    “President Mugabe’s government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome.”

    So who does Mugabe blame for food shortages? Why, the West of course (AP link);

    He contended that while land reform was “warmly welcomed” by most of his people, it has “elicited wrath from our former colonial masters.”

    “The United Kingdom has mobilized her friends and allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe,” he said.

    Although Mugabe pins much of his nation’s plight on the sanctions, the measures are narrowly targeted at him and his allies. Humanitarian aid, with the Europeans the biggest donors, continues to flow, but is channeled through aid groups instead of the government.

    “I find it very cynical that someone who has driven people in his country into hunger and the country into ruin dares to show up at such a conference,” German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who is representing her country at the meeting, said on ZDF television Tuesday.

    State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Mugabe’s “misrule” serves as “an example of what not to do in terms of managing agricultural and food policy.”

    But, Mugabe is only embracing his Marxist roots, following a long line of his ideological antecedents like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il and the Castros. A little over a decade ago, Mugabe was hailed as a liberator – he was even awarded knighthood from the Queen, an honor that might be withdrawn according to CNN;

    British officials have not ruled out revoking the knighthood of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, a foreign office spokeswoman said Tuesday, following a report that the government was taking the first steps to strip him of the title.

    Mugabe was handed his honorary knighthood by British PM John Major’s government in 1994.

    “We’re listening to the views of those who wish to see Mugabe’s knighthood removed and we’re not ruling out taking action on this,” the spokeswoman said, who declined to be identified in line with policy.

    Mugabe is still considered a revolutionary hero by man, including the Islamic Republic’s Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – people with whom the ideological Left think we should be negotiating. But how do you negotiate with people who support a tyrant who won’t even let his people eat?

    ahmadinejad-mugabe1.jpg

  • Obama’s Iranian advisor; Part II

    I’ve been pouring through some of the material available on this Trita Parsi fellow who is advising Barack Obama on his Iran policy and as near as I can tell, Obama is relying strictly on this one guy based strictly on his one book. In this BBC interview, Parsi states unequivocally that diplomatic relations should begin with Iran without preconditions so as not to derail the negotiations.

    [youtube Eepaf5aCpBI nolink]

    From Barack Obama’s campaign website;

    Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

    In this screen shot of an exerpt from Parsi’s book, he expalins that we Americans are just a bunch of ignorant asses who believe that the problem in the Middle East is between a democracy (Israel) and a tyrannic regime and that we believe that because we believe everything the Israelis tell us to believe instead of a clash of cultures;

    untitled001.jpg

    Except we understand all of that and we didn’t need Obama or Parsi to tell us. From what I’ve read of Parsi’s book (admittedly just excerpts on Amazon), the West are just a bunch of rubes who don’t understand the Iranian’s true intentions. In this interview for the CFR, Parsi actually argues that the Iranians don’t have nuclear ambitions, they just want to look like they do…then stop developing the nukes just short of the actual warheads;

    Well, I think they definitely are looking for a nuclear option, being — as you mentioned — like Japan or Sweden or Belgium — having the capability to be able to go for a nuclear weapon, but stopping short of that. And that is exactly the same approach that the Shah took during the 1970s. He wanted to have the option, but he also recognized the strategic disadvantage for Iran to actually go for a weapon.

    […]

    So the Iranians do have strong incentives not going for a nuclear weapon, but because of them living in a very tough neighborhood, they definitely want to have the option. And I think that’s what they’re aiming for now. I don’t think they have made a strategic decision to go for a weapon, but if tensions between the United States and Iran were to increase further, then that decision would probably be reassessed.

    So I guess we just cross our fingers and hope that even though they go through all of the motions, they stop short of the goal. I guess that’s part of that “Hope” mantra from the Obama campaign.

    In this interview on CNN, Parsi waves away Ahmadinejad’s letter to the UN last year condemning liberal western democracies in an attempt to bully the West to delay sanctions. Parsi says it’s a plea for negotiations with the US, when it’s clearly not. He goes on to blame the US for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, when there are a 160 other nations in the UN – why does the US have to talk with everyone?

    [youtube -ijxxRrBQ-I nolink]

    Parsi, of course, doesn’t mention the fact that relations with the Islamic Republic began with the seizure of our embassy and holding 50 hostages for 444 days. Ahmadinejad happens to be one of the perpetrators of that international crime. In this lecture to the Congressional Progressive caucus, Parsi falsely claims that the Bush Administration didn’t have a foreign policy towards Iran in the first four years. When did he make the “axis of evil” speech?

    [youtube wPFgktONas4 nolink]

    There’s always been a national policy towards Iran – just because Mr. Parsi disagrees with it, that doesn’t make it nonexistent. But Parsi’s philosophy shows through on Obama’s campaign website;

    Iran has sought nuclear weapons, supports militias inside Iraq and terror across the region, and its leaders threaten Israel and deny the Holocaust. But Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. That’s why Obama stood up to the Bush administration’s warnings of war, just like he stood up to the war in Iraq.

    As a result of Obama listening to this bumbling halfwit hiding behind his sheepskins, Obama has become and easy target for John McCain (New York Times link);

    “We hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before,” Mr. McCain said at the pro-Israel lobby’s convention in Washington. “Yet it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another.”

    The Obama campaign countered that Mr. McCain “stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure,” adding that during the Bush administration Iran had made gains with its nuclear program, that it had expanded its influence in the region through groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and that Hamas had taken over Gaza.

    Obama and Parsi just figure that since the Bush Administration hasn’t been able to unscrew what Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton left us, simply do the complete opposite. But that’s the way stuff happens on Bizzarro World.

  • Obama’s Iranian advisor

    tp_portrait.jpg

    Yesterday, on Gateway Pundit, I read that Obama had an Iranian on his staff, so I did some research and found Trita Parsi’s website. It seems that Parsi is indeed Iranian by birth, but he was raised in Sweden. Do I think he’s an agent of Iran? No, not directly. But the fact that he’s on Obama’s staff and an advisor on Iran is fairly disturbing, not because of his ethnicity, but because of his scholarly work.

    I haven’t read his book Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007), but what I’ve found in interviews should cause alarm. In John Hopkins Magazine;

    Among Parsi’s primary conclusions is that for years the U.S. and others have misunderstood the relationship between Iran and Israel, and that misunderstanding has played to those countries’ interests. “The most important false perception,” he says, “is that the conflict is ideologically driven.” He argues that for too long, Western governments and opinion-makers have looked at the two nations and seen an intractable ideological conflict between a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy and the Middle East’s only democracy. He says that actually Israel and Iran are rational pragmatists who have nurtured this wrong idea. Iran maintains the support of Arab countries and diverts attention from its own hegemonic ambitions by portraying itself as the vanguard of Islam and a selfless supporter of the Palestinians’ struggle with Israel. In turn, as long as Israel can portray the conflict as a fight between a democracy and a theocracy ruled by “mad mullahs,” it is assured of support from the U.S. and Europe.

    One danger for the U.S., says Parsi, is that misconceptions limit its options. For example, if Iran’s government is seen as irrational and driven only by ideology, that rules out diplomacy or deterrence. How do you negotiate with or deter someone who is not rational? That leaves military action as one of the few remaining options, and a military strike could serve Israel’s interests more than those of the U.S. Parsi says, “If you wanted to convince the United States to take military action against Iran, that is the tack you would take.”

    Parsi claims that we (the US) are too susceptible to Israeli propaganda that Iran hates Israel because it’s a democracy. Um, why would we believe that since Ahmadinejad constantly makes references to the Holocaust when speaking about Israel? Hitler didn’t hate the Jews because they supported democratic government, for pete’s sake.

    Parsi tries to make the point that the Islamic Republic is not irrational – arming forces in Iraq to fight against the US when we haven’t threatened Iran’s interests is fairly irrational. Holocaust denial as a national policy is fairly irrational. Building nuclear weapons to eradicate a neighbor is fairly irrational.

    Parsi fails to recognize that nearly every leader in the region has positioned himself as a champion against the Jews – including Saddam Hussein. Did we misunderstand Hussein’s intention, too?

    No, it’s not Parsi’s birthplace that’s disturbing, it’s his politics and it’s no wonder that Obama thinks he can reason with the Islamic Republic’s leaders – he’s been misled by an idiot scholar who happens to be Iranian by birth.

    The Infidel Bloggers Alliance has videos of Parsi. I’ll have to look at them later, when I’m through earning my pittance for the day.

  • Cluster bomb treaty

    According to the Associated Press, 111 nations have pledged to abide by a measure that bans cluster bombs from warfare. The AP article headline reads “111 nations adopt cluster bomb treaty, but not US“.  Reading down further in the article, one finds that the US isn’t the only nation who didn’t sign it;

    Twelve days of negotiations ended after diplomats from scores of nations delivered speeches embracing the accord. It requires signatories not to use cluster bombs, to destroy existing stockpiles within eight years, and to fund programs that clear old battlefields of dud bombs.

    However, the talks did not involve the biggest makers and users of cluster bombs: the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. And the pact leaves the door open for new types that could pick targets more precisely and contain self-destruct technology.

    In other words, the 111 nations that approved the treaty probably don’t even have an Air Force that they can use to deliver the munitions. It’s like non-smokers regulating smoking.

    They hope to discourage other nations from using them using some sort of international peer pressure;

    Norwegian Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide, whose nation launched the negotiations in February 2007, said he was confident that the treaty would discourage the United States, Russia, China, Israel and other proponents of cluster bombs to use the weapons again.

    “The reality is that states do care about not only the legality of their actions, but also the perceived legitimacy and appropriateness of their actions,” he said.

    The United States has used the cluster bombs sparingly and only against armies in the field, however the nations who are lucky enough to live under the umbrella of the protection of US military want to distance themselves from the application of US military might. But cluster bombs save US troop’s lives. That might not seem like a big deal to some linguine-spined diplomat from Norway.

    I drove my Bradley over a cluster bomblet after the Gulf War – it took a week for my driver to get over the shakes.

  • The worst President in history

    The other day, I wrote a post on Eagles Up! Talon about the dishonesty of the media and how it takes some folks pounding away on their Dell laptops in their living rooms to bring the real news to the fore. In that post, I referenced a John Hinderacker post at Powerline which declared that we have indeed been made safer in recent years by the war in Iraq – despite what Barack Obama and his moon-eyed minions chant;

    2003
    May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.

    October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.

    2004
    There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

    2005
    There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

    2006
    There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

    2007
    There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

    2008
    So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

    I have omitted from the above accounting a few “lone wolf” Islamic terrorist incidents, like the Washington, D.C. snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd. These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the “lone wolves” were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore could not have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al Qaeda leaders.

    It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field. Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.

    Of course, nothing we can say will change their minds – the truth is a bitter pill. This morning, in the Wall Street Journal, Thane Rosenbaum, a Fordham law professor who admits that he “didn’t vote for President Bush – twice”, makes a startling admission;

    We all waited for terrorism’s second shoe to drop, and, seven years later . . . nothing has happened.

    Other cities around the world became targets: Madrid, Glasgow, London and Bali; the entire nation of Denmark; and, of course, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Here in America, however, the focus moved from concerns over counterterrorism measures and the abuse of presidential authority to the war in Iraq, the subprime mortgage crisis, the failing economy, the public meltdown of Britney Spears, and now, the presidential elections.

    All this time Americans have been safe from suicide bombers, biological warfare and collapsing skyscrapers, while the rest of the world has been on red alert. And yet President Bush is regarded as the worst president in American history?

    […]…when a professed enemy succeeds as wildly as al Qaeda did on 9/11, and seven years pass without an incident, there are two reasonable conclusions: Either, despite all the trash-talking videos, they have been taking a long, leisurely breather; or, something serious has been done to thwart and disable their operations. Whatever combination of psychology and insanity motivates a terrorist to blow himself up is not within my range of experience, but I’m betting the aggressive measures the president took, and the unequivocal message he sent, might have had something to do with it.

    Well, maybe not startling for those of us who’ve been paying attention, but startling in the context of a Fordham law professor noticing it. Of course, we won’t hear any of that from the purely partisan Democrats in Congress or on the campaign trail. Because of their opposition to virtually everything President Bush and the Republican Congresses did, the Democrats would have to admit they were wrong. Nancy Pelosi’s inability to credit our troops with the relative calm returning to Iraq shows the depths to which they’ve sunk.
    Democrats had hoped that spineless cowards like Chuck Hagel would have some sort of influence on the Republican Party and the war would end before it became successful. Their gamble failed when General Petraeus’ strategy worked and a majority of Republicans stuck with the President.

    Now it’s time to make the Democrats pay at the polls for their treasonous undermining of our national security.

  • Pelosi in new depths of denial

    Nancy Pelosi never fails to amaze me. Ace of Spades explains because I’m nearly speechless;

    Having blurted out, probably accidentally, that the surge was in fact successful, Granny Rictus McBotoxImplants now scrambles to credit the enemy nation murdering our troops with the victory our troops accomplished through blood, sweat, tears, and more blood.

    It’s not our troops. It’s not Petraeus’ leadership. It’s not the Iraqis turning on the Al Qaeda murderers. No — it’s Iran’s goodwill.

    Isn’t that grand? The wonderfully rational Ahmadinejad finally decided he’d killed enough Iraqis and Americans and stopped. From Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine;

    Asked if she saw any evidence of the surge’s positive impact on her May 17 trip to Iraq she responded:

    Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

    This is an inexcusable slander. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki brought the Sadrists militias to their knees in a month-long battle that enabled Iraq’s largest Sunni bloc to rejoin the government. Furthermore, when Pelosi met with Prime Minister al-Maliki in Mosul she sang quite a different tune. She had “welcomed Iraq’s progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation, and a bill paving the way for the provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials,” and stated, “We’re assured the elections will happen here, they will be transparent, they will be inclusive and they will take Iraq closer to the reconciliation we all want it to have.”

    Is it possible that anyone else on this planet is so prepared to throw our troops, the Iraqis, under the proverbial bus faster? Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard writes;

    Just two months ago, Pelosi said, “I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra.” It seems she was only talking about glorifying the role of the U.S. military and our Iraqi allies, who were in fact victorious. Apparently glorification of the enemy is still allowed.

    This is the extent to which the Left goes to make a political point. These are the people we’ve chosen to represent the people of this nation. I’d expect that from some back-bencher in Canada, not our own Speaker of the House – third in line to being our head of state. If this doesn’t drag those conservatives out to vote, I don’t know what could.

  • Really Bad News for the Surrender-crats!

    Really Bad News for the Surrender-crats!

    “We are not safer.” Barack Obama

    The Strategy Page, as usual, has an excellent piece up.

    Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This “betrayal” is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.
    ………..
    When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the “surge offensive” of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.

    Bill Roggio is reporting a similar phenomenon within the Mahdi Army. And he is quoting no less than the Los Angeles Times!

    A common narrative about the war in Iraq is that fighting against the enemy in urban environments creates more insurgents, thus it is fruitless to even try. But today’s Los Angeles Times finally asked Iraqis in Sadr City what they think about the recent fighting and how it impacts their views of the Mahdi Army. The answer: The Mahdi Army has lost significant support from not only residents caught in the crossfire, but from Mahdi Army fighters themselves.

    In fact, some Mahdi Army fighters were so discouraged by the recent fighting that they vowed to never join the ranks again. “I had faith. I believed in something,” a former Mahdi Army fighter told the LA Times. “Now, I will never fight with them.”

    The bottom line: WE ARE SAFER. Sorry about that Barry; wrong again.

    The Democrat talking point that “Killing terrorists creates more terrorists” is an abject lesson in the danger of nuanced thinking.

    The thinking is that killing a terrorist makes the terrorist’s brother join the fight to avenge his brother. This is the kind of thinking at the very heart of appeasement and it NEVER works.

    Do you know why the terrorists are discussing “what went wrong”? Because they got their collective ass kicked, that’s why.

    Obama’s nuanced academic approach is akin to the argument that the death penalty does not deter criminal behavior. Maybe it doesn’t but there is one unassailable fact about the death penalty. When used, it significantly impacts the likelihood of said individual ever becoming a repeat offender.

    This is a fairly simple concept actually; when someone is trying to kill you, anything you do other than kill him first is counter-productive.