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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Paranoid…or just cautious

    I read with interest the Wall Street Journal online opinion piece by Ion Mihai Pacepa this morning. I was going to comment on it here, but as I looked around, I noticed it was being covered broadly. I’ve always been a Cold War buff, having spent time on the bayonet point of Western Democracy in the old West Germany and spent some time studying and writing about the US foreign policy of those days.

    This evening I stumbled onto Gateway Pundit (one of my favorites, by the way) and read his take on it. Of course, it focused on John Kerry’s shameful performance in Congress back when I was 16 years old. GP noted the stunning similarities between Pacepa’s piece and Kerry’s testimony.

    But at the bottom of GP’s post there was a link to somewhere I’d never been – Maggie’s Farm. Maggie wondered aloud in her post “Paranoid” that in light of GP’s highlighted text, perhaps we should be concerned about Bill Clinton and his trip through the Iron Curtain countries of the era. Well, I’ve always thought that was suspicious.

    But then I remembered the foreward of a book I read a few years back. The book was The Haunted Wood, by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. I met Weinstein lately, but I wasn’t able to bring up the question that had plagued me since I read the book the first time in 1999.

    Weinstein wrote the book directly from research he conducted personally in the Soviet KGB archives in the years immediately following the collapse of our old enemy. He had intended to clear Alger Hiss’ name by proving he wasn’t on the Soviet payroll – unfortunately for the life-long Democrat, he couldn’t infact he found records that proved that the Soviet Union was paying not only Hiss but also other employees of the Federal government, congressmen and actors.

    Being a rare type of researcher, Weinstein wrote the book the way the research led him. Of course, there was quite a bit of furor in academia.

    His research was dismissed – not because of the lack of proof, but because when Weinstein reached the part of the archives that stored the records of the 1960s and forward, Weinstein was abruptly banned from the archives and the archives was closed to western researchers. With no explanation from Russian officials. With the archives closed, no one could verify Weinstein’s research, so it was largely dismissed by the Left.

    But, I’ve always wondered what other secrets remain in the KGB archives and what caused them to suddenly curtail Weinstein’s research. And who’s skeletons are buried there. Of course, there’s plenty of room for speculation and I’ll just keep my speculation to myself.

  • Undermining our allies in the War Against Terror

    We all heard Barack Obama flex his puny foreign policy muscles while threatening to attack Pakistan for not killing enough al Qaeda operatives to suit Obama, and, of course the Pakistanis criticized Obama for his indiscretion, and brave Obama stands by his comments. if only he could be that resolute over Iran and the support they give opposing forces in Iraq.

    Well, I was reading my favorite writer on Latin American politics, Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal, and I’m starting to see a pattern here. O’Grady writes in her The Real Uribe Record;

    Congressional Democrats out to quash the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement argue that the terror-torn South American country doesn’t adequately protect human rights and thus doesn’t deserve FTA status. In the Democrats’ book, the way to make Colombia more just is to deny it the chance to deepen its commercial relations with the U.S.

    This is curious thinking, and all the more so coming from a party that also argues that the U.S. ought to lift its trade embargo on the Cuban dictatorship as a way to help the Cuban people. Given Cuba’s dismal track record on human rights and the hard work Colombia has done over the past six years to defend human life, it is hard to square that circle.

    O’Grady goes on to recount that Uribe’s tactics in countering communist guerillas and terrorists in Columbia have driven their numbers down;

    Mr. Uribe’s government has demobilized 43,000 illegal armed combatants. Some 33,000 were paramilitary members and 10,000 were guerrillas. But the president notes that the country started with some 60,000 “terrorists,” so there is still work to be done.

    But Ms. O’Grady points out that Vermont Senator Pat Leahy is the major opponent of the the US-Columbia Free Trade Agreement;

     Funny enough, Mr. Leahy, like many of his colleagues — including New York Rep. Charles Rangel in the House — has no such qualms about trade with the despotic regime in Havana. The senator has said that the U.S. should seek engagement with Cuba by “lifting the embargo” and increasing “contact between Americans and Cubans — in other words, we should be tearing down the barriers between our countries not building them ever higher.”

    The Cuba Mr. Leahy wants to get closer to isn’t simply accused of failing to prosecute human-rights violators, as is the case of Colombia. It is a human-rights violator. It is regrettable that the senator apparently believes that the murder of thousands of Cubans, the torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of others, the exile of millions and the denial of all human rights, including the right to organize unions, is irrelevant.

    So by these two examples, I see a pattern emerging – the Democrats are willing to throw our partners under the bus while rushing out to embrace the worst criminals the world has in it for purely political reasons. Sure Pakistan and Columbia aren’t paradise for the people living in them, but certainly those conditions were created by the criminals the governments have to deal with every day.

    And while Leahy and Rangel engage in the old political  shuck and jive, Chavez is reaching out to the terrorists – I wonder who’ll get to the Columbian people first. I think Uribe has been very tolerant seeings how his father was killed by narco-terrorists. O’Grady ends her article;

    Even if none of this progress had occurred, it would make little sense to reject the FTA. Colombia needs the free trade agreement, Mr. Uribe said in New York, because it’s how “we can generate more employment of a higher quality, send more of our products to the U.S. market and in this way we will have less illicit drugs, less terrorism, more peace, more security, more well-being for the Colombian people.” If only the government in Havana cared as much about the Cuban population.

    Indeed. And if only our government, the one in DC, cared about people as much as they like to tell us they care.

  • Chavez tightens grip on military

    Little Hugo Chavez has consolidated his grip on the military in Venezuela. Anyone who has spent a day studying current affairs in Latin America knows that political leaders serve at the pleasure of their military.

    Coming from the military, and himself having been involved in a coup attempt, Chavez fired his defense minister, General Raul Baduel and replaced him with General Gustavo Rangel – former head of Chavez personal protection force and palace guard.

    Baduel left with these parting words, according to Martin Arostegui of the Washington Times;

    “A socialist regime is not incompatible with a democratic system of checks and balances and division of powers. We must separate ourselves from Marxist orthodoxy.”

    This move will more firmly entrench Chavez in his palace as he becomes more isolated from the people – the supposed beneficiaries of this socialist revolution. Retired Venezuelan general Muller Rojas warns that this move against Baduel signals a purge of the ranks;

    Another recently retired general, Muller Rojas, believes Gen. Baduel’s resignation signals a purge of the high command, which he says has become “highly politicized and partisan.”

    The new defense chief, Gen. Rangel, underwent military instruction in Cuba and is expected to merge the regular army with politically directed militias armed with new AK-103 rifles purchased from Russia.

    “By naming Rangel, Chavez imposes his military thesis on the high command. The president conceives of a tactical doctrine combining professional armed forces and militias, which are the basis of the asymmetrical warfare strategy of the people in arms,” said Venezuelan defense analyst Alberto Garrido.

    Of course we now know why Chavez was warning Venezuelans the George Bush was coming to get him – so he could tighten the security around himself. The next move after purging the ranks is the quelling of the “White Hands” student movement.

    I suspect that some national emergency will emerge soon after the purge of military officers that would require tossing “suspects” in prison, much like the Iranians are doing to their student movements. Think Chavez and Ahmadinejad were talking about sports jackets in Tehran last month?

    In fact, Chavez is cranking up his anti-US chatter this week. He blames the US for blocking Venezuela’s entry into the Mercosur trade bloc and he has put out feelers to Columbian communist rebels and terrorists.

    Miguel at The Devil’s Excrement (celebratin five years of bloggin in English from Venezuela this weekend) reports money woes in Venezuela;

    Because the country is a basket case and only oil prices going higher all the time will be able to sustain the madness.

    For example…It went unnoticed that in the last three weeks, bolivar denominated Government bonds, mostly in the hands of the banking system, dropped 20-30% in value.

    Or that Venezuela’s Global 27 bond fell 30% since March and gyrated 8% on a single day last Friday.

    And that Fonden’s indiscriminate sale of its Venezuelan and Argentinean bonds, destroyed the market for some of them and increased spreads by 300% due to the amateurish way in which this was done.

    And this all spells trouble in the economic front at a time when oil prices are at an all time high…imagine if they happened to go down.

    Daniel at Venezuela News and Views begins a series on Chavez proposed constitutional changes to further ensconce him in office;

    Here in Venezuela we are not fooled: chavista and anti chavista alike know perfectly well that the objective is to make Chavez president for life. The only difference is that the formers have no problem with that and the later will resist it. The bottom line will come from a not insignificant fraction of chavistas who are having increasingly second thoughts about giving Chavez a final blank check that this time will wipe their democratic account once and for all.

    So what will it take to get the world involved in the subjegation of the Venezuelan people to the whims of a maniacal diminutive despot like Chavez? Will the world wait for the public executions to begin – it hasn’t woke up the world to the terror being inflicted on Iranians (graphic pictures from Kamangir at August the 5th here and here) Do we wait twelve years like we did for Hussein’s reign of terror on the Shi’ites in Iraq? Or an indeterminate amount of time like we have for the Christians in the Sudan?

    The US is not the world’s police force, but it’s time the rest of the world woke up to the evil and stop waiting for the US to solve the world’s problem for them.

  • Who’s afraid of the big, fat terrorist?

    Big, fat goofball, Adam Gadahn, the so-called American al Qaeda, is threatening us again for the umpteenth time, according to CBS News;

    American al Qaeda leader Adam Gadahn says al Qaeda will continue to target the United States at home and overseas, singling out U.S. embassies as a target, in a new Internet video released by as Sahab, the propaganda wing of al Qaeda.

    “We shall continue to target you at home and abroad, just as you target us at home and abroad, and these spy dens and military command and control centers from which you plotted your aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and which still provide vital moral, military, material and logistical support to the Crusade, shall continue to be legitimate targets for brave Muslims,” says Gadahn, who hails from Orange County, Calif. “Stop the Crusade,and leave the Muslims alone.”

    And there’s the money quote; stop the crusade and leave Muslims alone. Think he’s talking to our troops? Nope, they’ll fight anyone anywhere to defend the nation – from all enemies foreign and domestic. Think he’s talking to the President? Nope, the President isn’t afraid of threats from some pudgy halfwit from California. And, apparently neither are the Iraqis nor the Afghans who are killing al Qaeda operatives in droves, too.

    Nope he’s talking to Democrats – they’re the ones cringing from the outcome of this war against goat herders like Gadahn. They’re the ones who think that we can’t win this war. Democrats even invented a useless term like asymetrical warfare to project their cowardice and sense of hopelessness on the American people.

    Mostly, the Democrats are afraid that Americans might just win this war. You’ve got their candidates attacking our allies in the war against terror like Pakistan and Columbia, while they visit our enemies like Syria and Venezuela. And folks like over-fed, small-penised Adam Gadahn give them hope.

    Um, if you think that “war is not the answer”, you didn’t understand the question.

  • Hypocrisy round-up

    The word hypocrisy gets thrown around alot recently, but there are several new examples that jumped out of the internet pages at me this morning. For example, John Edwards who recently condemned Fox News, a subsidiary of News Corp. and declared he’d not appear at a debate hosted by the successful cable news channel. Well, the New York Post discovered that the former senator, shyster lawyer who channels dead babies on command, hedgefund advisor who learned about poverty by stealing from his investors, and charity manager who funnels off tax-free donations to secretly fund his campaign expenses, took $800,000 from HarperCollins, another News Corp. subsidiary;

    John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul’s companies.

    The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.”

    The campaign didn’t respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to.

    In addition to a $500,000 advance from HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp., Edwards also was cut a check for $300,000 for expenses.

    Edwards claimed $333,334 in royalties from last year’s release of the book, according to media accounts. The campaign said last night that those funds were part of the advance.

    Of course he claims he gave the money to charity, but he refuses to offer proof of his benevolence.

    The other day, I wrote about Barack Obama’s naive threat to Pakistan to invade with US troops unless Pakistan passes his test of an acceptable level of violence against al Qaeda in Pakistan. With all of the evidence we have that Iran is involved in war against us, why isn’t Obama beinging just as intolerant of Iran’s sheltering of terrorists, al Qaeda or otherwise?  Well, probably because admitting that Iran is a threat justifies our involvement in Iraq and the naive and inexperienced Obama doesn’t want to piss off the anti-war-at-any-cost whackos at Daily Kos.

    Speaking of Daily Kos, EJ Dionne of the Washington Post decided to defend the vulgar, hate-filled Daily Kos today. Comparing Marko’s internet playground for the mentally unstable to Rush Limbaugh, Dionne wrote;

    Personally, I dislike the use of obscenity on the Web, and many online posts are way too nasty. But the right wing, suddenly so concerned with the niceties of political discourse, did not worry much about what its militants said about Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry. Limbaugh even blamed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on a president who had been out of office for eight months. I’m still waiting for his apology.

    George Bush and Dick Cheney have heaped praise on Limbaugh (“Well, Rush, you’ve got a great show, as always,” Cheney said during one of his many interviews) because he’s an effective organizer for the right — even if Limbaugh has, of late, become disenchanted with some of Bush’s policies. Limbaugh desperately needs a Democratic president. Another Clinton would be perfect.

    Um, EJ, Kos made obscenity on the internet an acceptable part of the debate. And resorting to obscenity on the internet makes the left look childish and immature, well, more childish and immature since most of the Left’s charges against president Bush are just ridiculous. So the Democrat candidates are aligning themselves with the extra-chromosone Left and you’re proud of it? And it hardly compares with Rush Limbaugh’s crowd at all.

    A Washington Times editorial alerts us to another impending CAIR lawsuit;

    Another week, another threat of lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This time, the group behind the Minneapolis “flying imams” lawsuit are targeting the Young America’s Foundation, the nonprofit that owns President Reagan’s Santa Barbara Ranch. YAF’s “offense”: Inviting author and terrorism analyst Robert Spencer to speak at a conference yesterday afternoon for a lecture titled “The Truth About the Council on American-Islamic Relations.” Among other things, the real CAIR story features less-than-flattering facts, such as the “unindicted co-conspirator” label CAIR earned in June in a Hamas terror-funding case, and the several people in the group’s orbit who have been indicted on terrorism-related charges. CAIR would rather try to frighten its critics than debate them.

    As CAIR’s lawyer warned YAF Wednesday: “Our clients have instructed us to pursue every available and appropriate legal remedy to redress any false and defamatory statements that are made at the session.” This comes from a group which claims to “encourage dialogue.”

    This is an outrageous bid at intimidation. A more normal advocacy organization would seek to debate its opponents. Sadly, this litigiousness is commonplace for CAIR, whose activities could be scarcely more different from its mission statement. CAIR claims to strive to “be a leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and to “enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.” It could scarcely do less of each. 

    It seems you can hardly mention hypocrisy these days without including CAIR in the discussion. I’ll let the Washington Times editorial stand on it’s own without my comments – they always do it so well.

  • Stop me before I buy Chinese

    The populist Senate Banking Committee moved to punish the Chinese for manipulating their capital without real evidence that they’re doing it. The Wall Street Journal’s John McCary writes;

    Efforts to sanction China over trade policies seen hurting the U.S. gained steam on Capitol Hill as a second congressional panel approved legislation aimed at pressuring Beijing to revalue its currency.

    The Senate Banking Committee, in a 17-4 vote, moved to tighten the government’s definition of currency manipulation and close an exemption that has allowed the Bush administration to avoid taking that step against China because of an apparent lack of intent. The action follows Senate Finance Committee approval of a bill to address the same problem, but with a different solution: allowing companies claiming to be hurt by currency manipulation to seek antidumping penalties on imports from the offending nation.

    Stupid, stupid, stupid. This will only trigger a legislative war worldwide. And it’s only to buy votes. Americans seem concerned about China’s economic growth (12 1/2% last quarter) yet we still buy all the cheap little plastic crap they dump in our stores.

    It’s just like those stupid Japanese cars that have flooded our highways. Everyone is worried about our “trade deficit” yet the same boneheads who complain about it are buying some over-priced version of a shitbox Toyota or Honda. Yeah, I know, the saleman told you that it was made in the United States with American craftsmanship. But if that’s true, why is it every time I lay on the beach in Miami I see these ships with TOYOTA on the side pulling up with another load of shitboxes? Don’t you feel like a tool?

    And of course we can all count on Chuck Schumer to act like a two-year-old;

    One senator said it was incorrect to raise the threat of retaliation by China as a reason to oppose the legislation.

    “If we manipulated our currency, then China should go after us. But we don’t,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

    Detroit wants Congress to put tariffs on imported cars, Congress wants to manipulate China’s currency, the FDA wants to advise China on food safety. We don’t need government to do these things – we have control over our spending, our wallets, our lives don’t we? Then why do ya’all buy that crap?

    See, the problem isn’t that the government won’t regulate trade, the problem is that Americans have allowed salesmen to tell them what they should buy. I remember my grandfather and my father wouldn’t buy anything that said “Made in Japan” on it (fifteen years after Pearl Harbor). Neither will I. It’s that simple.

    Congress is only doing this for votes. People who don’t want to think about what they buy, people who don’t understand how protectionism triggered the Depression and our involvement in World War II are just happy to see Congress do something – anything that might help tomorrow, but will desvastate us next month. Does Congress care? Nope. The Democrats and Republicans both can blame the president for our economic woes in the next election.

  • Naive Obama; invade Pakistan

    In a stunning display of naivete`, Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press, would invade Pakistan to kill “terror leaders” without local permission;

    Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

    Well, if that’s not naive personified, I don’t know what is. Of course, the Democrats all think that the goal of our war against terror is to “get” bin Laden, as if all the terrorists in the world would just cease activities as a result. We’ve all seen how quickly terrorist leaders are replaced when we’ve removed them from their operations, well, all of us except the Democrats apparently.

    The goal of this war is to deny these heathens an unassailable training and operational base like the al Qaeda enjoyed in Afghanistan – it’s not to kill their leaders. That’s something out of the Middle Ages. Since Napolean, Grant and Sherman, the rest of the world understood that the only successful way to defeat and enemy is to deny them resources. Hitler’s Russian campaign failed because he targeted cities instead of seizing the Soviet Union’s resources first and strangling the Soviet Army.

    And can you imagine the howl we’d hear from the Left if George W. Bush had said this? Harry Reid would be trampling Congressional pages rushing to get to the microphone to condemn this plan as “expanding the war” and he’d probably throw in some Nixon and Cambodia references for good measure.

    Reuter’s gets the big money quote on Obama’s plan for failure;

    Obama also criticized President George W. Bush’s emphasis on al Qaeda in Iraq and said as president he would end the war in Iraq and refocus efforts on the al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    “The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan,” Obama said.

    So, simply by denying that there’s a war against al Qaeda in Iraq, that’ll solve the problem. The war against terror isn’t about revenge for 9-11, Barack, no matter how hard you want that to be so. It’s about our future and making terror attacks too expensive in terms of lives and treasure for our enemies. And we don’t do that by making enemies out of our few allies in the war.

  • Murtha and the mullahs share strategic goals

    So how much more do we need to prove we’re at war with Iran? How about this gem from the Washington Time’s Sara Carter;

    Four terrorists linked to an Iranian smuggling operation — responsible for targeting coalition forces with powerful bombs — were captured yesterday in Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.

    The announcement came as U.S. officials continue to investigate links between Iran and insurgents seeking to destabilize the region and who target U.S. forces on the ground.

    “I would say that it’s clear to us that there are networks that are smuggling weapons, both explosive-formed projectiles, IEDs, as well as mortar and other capabilities from Iran into Iraq,” said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander in Iraq.

    “And in fact, we believe some training is also going on inside of Iran. We have seen in the last three months a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fires into the [coalition] Green Zone and other places. We think this is directly related to training that was conducted in Iran.”

    But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because the US held “talks” with the Iranians in Bahgdad this week. how’d it turn out?

    During the groundbreaking talks, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker accused Iran of spurring the violence in Iraq by arming and training Shi’ite militias. He warned that no progress can be made unless Iranian behavior changes.

    Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi countered that Tehran is trying to help Iraq deal with the security situation, but Iraqis are “victimized by terror and the presence of foreign forces” in their country. 

    Of course, John Murtha, that brave and persistent warrior who only thinks about this country and our national security, in response to Iranian intransigence, unilaterally declared war against Iran;

    Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, said he will introduce a measure next week that would begin pulling out troops within 60 days after its introduction.

    Oh. Did I read that wrong? So that’s Murtha’s answer to the possibility that we stand to be cut off from our oil imports from the Gulf – race to the rear. Yeah, that’ll scare the mullahs. As I’ve said before and documented on these pages, Murtha’s persistance to surrender is so the anti-war-at-any-price crowd will run a screen on his ample flank for his corrupt dealings in his own district.

    So in effect, Murtha is running a screen for the Iranian mullahs. Murtha is bent on making the world a more dangerous place to line his own pockets in the near future. We can’t stop Murtha and we can’t stop the mullahs.

    We’re starting to look a little pathetic.

     

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