Tag: war

So much for the democratic revolution

I find it amusing that the very democratic revolutionaries who support the open immigration of Muslims and other third-worlders to the USA as well as the forcible imposition of democracy throughout the world expect us to be shocked and horrified when democracy actually triumphs:

Mindful of its lopsided electoral triumph in Egypt, which has been so enthusiastically welcomed by the Obama administration and top Democratic emissary John Kerry, the Muslim Brotherhood has announced plans to submit the Camp David Accords — the treaty that has kept the peace between Egypt and Israel for over 30 years — to a popular vote.

The amazing thing is that Egypt is objectively more democratic, and its Muslim Brotherhood government is objectively more legitimate, than most of the governments in the European Union. If the world democratic revolutionaries were genuinely more committed to democracy than to their bizarre Israel Uber Alles policy, they would be celebrating the fact that Egypt’s government is proving itself to be more democratic and more respectful of the will of its people than the former European democracies, or even, in some cases, the United States itself.

But, of course, they’re not, and we always knew they weren’t from the start.

Neocons complain about the inevitable

Andrew McCarthy actually appears to be surprised that the USA is finally following the example set by the Soviet and British empires:

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban….

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

That’s an absurd claim. It only ends the shameful chapter that began when the USA didn’t immediately bring its troops home after exacting its revenge for the Taliban’s support of 9/11. From their surprise over the failure of the “Arab Spring” to their complaints about the “surrenders” in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with their collective refusal to confront Islamic expansion in the West, it is clear that the neocons have the collective strategic cognitive capacity of a slow-witted World War I infantry general. They genuinely believe that sending more troops forward is the answer to every military question.

Their strategic perspective is Hitlerian. The German Reichskanzler had the same inability to understand that retreat must always be an option if you don’t wish for your troops to be utterly destroyed every time there is a temporary setback.

The neocons don’t recognize that the clash of civilizations is much larger than a single nation here and there, and that each nation merely represents a single salient. And it is no more “surrender” to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan or Iraq than it was for Von Manstein to extricate his troops from the Korsun Pocket in World War II. In fact, it is the exact opposite of surrender, because the withdrawal preserves the troops and allows them to fight another day.

McCarthy and his strategically ignorant colleagues quite clearly don’t know the first thing about military history, war, or how it is fought. And given the way in which the governments of the West still refuse to lift a finger against Islam in their own countries, but only fight it in lands afar, it is readily apparent that these are merely the opening skirmishes in the greater conflict to come.

The inevitable result of the “Arab Spring”

Perhaps, my dear anklebiters, you may recall when you said I had no idea what I was talking about when I scoffed at the idea that the “Arab Spring” would lead to that vision of shiny secular democracy that is dying in the West and will never exist in the Middle East. After all, weren’t there STUDENT LEADERS speaking ENGLISH to CNN reporters? Surely the ability of two or three twenty-somethings to appear presentable on camera must have been a reliable indicator of their political power in Egypt! And I’m sure you haven’t forgotten all your pooh-poohing of the idea that democracy would lead directly to rule by religious fundamentalist parties:

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

Quelle surprise! The entire point of establishing the various kings and military dictatorships at the end of the European colonial era was to avoid popular governments and thereby prevent the revival of violent Islamic expansion. And I have no sympathy for the neocons, particularly the Jewish ones who loudly advocated democratic revolution in the Arab world and will soon be shrieking about how their precious Israel is now increasingly threatened by the democratic governments they helped establish.

The neocons have clearly already made geo-politics much more unstable with their unrestrained interventionist strategery. I suggest they all shut the hell up and simply watch as the Arabs, Israelis, and Americans go about pursuing their national interests without the “benefit” of advice from the idiot interventionist lobby.

Democracy is not, and has never been, an intrinsic good in and of itself. It is not freedom. It is not liberty. And very often, it is a very good way of ensuring that human freedom and liberty are repressed.

It’s all fun and games

It’s all fun and games being a neocon, invading other countries, and spreading world democratic revolution, right up until the moment that someone accidentally pokes a nuclear power in the eye with “collateral damage”. If “well, we didn’t mean it” doesn’t work for kids, it’s probably not going to work for nations either:

NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis.

Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in just under a third of the alliance’s supplies.

Pakistan should cease all cooperation with the US military. Why should they tolerate the US killing Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan any more than we would tolerate the Pakistani military killing American soldiers in the USA?

Times must be bad

It appears Obama may be considering the time-honored strategem of attempting to distract the populace with fireworks during a time of economic difficulty.

Yesterday we reported that the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria. Today, we get an escalation which confirms we may be on the edge. Just out from CBS: “The U.S. Embassy in Damascus urged its citizens in Syria to depart “immediately,” and Turkey’s foreign ministry urged Turkish pilgrims to opt for flights to return home from Saudi Arabia to avoid traveling through Syria.” But probably the most damning evidence that the “western world” is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria, and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor, which always has some very interesting if always controversial view on geopolitics, where we find that for the first time in many months, CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked… right next to Syria.

Apparently the Libyan affair ended too quickly and neither Yemen nor Uganda ever really heated up enough to crack the front page. One wonders what sort of vital American interest is supposed to be at stake in Syria. And I’m curious where all the Syrian immigrants will be settled, Nebraska or Idaho?

Mailvox: the dangerous Ron Paul

The cognitive dissonance at work in N’s email, written in response to yesterday’s column, is remarkable:

I like Ron Paul but I don’t like him closing all our bases around the world and bringing our army back home. This isolationist view is DANGEROUS and will only empower and embolden our enemies and actually bring us closer to WORLD WAR, this time right at our DOORSTEPS!

Is that what you want???

If Reagan said America was that “shining city on the hill”, dimming it around the world with an isolationist view will only make stronger the darkness of this world. We need to keep shining that light shining everywhere, bud. The cost of peace ain’t cheap, but war is a hell of a lot more expensive!

Yes, that is precisely what I want. All military bases closed, all American troops back in the USA. To argue otherwise is indicative of a shockingly stupid perspective which is not only illogical, but blatantly ignores both the historical record and the observable reality of present U.S. foreign policy.

First, the argument about “the cost of peace” is a non-starter. America is presently engaged in military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Iran. (Don’t kid yourself, there are already CIA and most likely special forces in Iran right now.) It may still be active in Libya. That is hardly peace.

Second, the USA is bankrupt. It can’t afford ANY military operations at all. Thanks to the expected failure of the Congressional supercommittee, automatic defense cuts must be made. As the global economic contraction continues, the U.S. military will have to shrink.

Third, it is American military operations that have not only brought enemies to our DOORSTEPS, but have brought them into the country. The Saudis who attacked the Two Towers on 9/11 were angry about the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and were “studying” in the United States. There are far more Somalis in the USA than there were before U.S. troops invaded Somalia and more Iraqis than before U.S. troops invaded Iraq.

Isolation is not dangerous. American strength and wealth waxed during its isolationist period and has declined steadily ever since, just as both the Roman and British empires declined once they started attempting to police the world. As I wrote in the column, the irony is that the one Republican presidential candidate whose policies would strengthen the American military and best protect American interests is constantly attacked by stupid and ignorant Republicans who wrongly believe that the more troop deployments that take place, the stronger the nation is.

No wonder they also fall for the Neo-Keynesian argument that the more money you spend, the wealthier you become.

Mailvox: is God on our side?

JH wonders:

I have read your coloumn faithfully for years, and have come to admire your level-headed and logical approach to the problems you present.

I have a question. Most social conservatives declare that life begins at conception, thus concluding that all abortions are murder. If you take this stand then you must conclude that America has the blood of 50 million innocent lives on her hands.

What right do we have then to drop bombs on ” ragheads and goat herders ‘ and the like if this is so, and how can we possibly think that God will bless our troops in foreign wars when we can’t possibly be on HIS side?

It is so. And America has no more right to bomb the goat herders of the Middle East than Rome had to invade Pontus, Armenia, and Parthia. Nor does America have any better reason to believe that God will bless their invading troops than the Romans or the National Socialist-era Germans did. Gott war nicht mit der Wehrmacht, their belt buckles notwithstanding, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that a nation whose government increasingly denies and rejects God, a nation that has slaughtered more of its own children behind closed clinic doors than the Moloch-worshipping Canaanites ever threw into the fires, enjoys divine favor.

America was founded on predominantly Christian principles, but she no longer lives by them. She is profligate, gluttonous, murderous, and repressive. She can no longer be reasonably described as either the land of the free or the home of the brave, but rather the land of the fat and the home of the indebted. I concluded some time ago that America was already finished in the historical sense, but it may take some time for most Americans to realize it or for America’s foreign policy to reflect that reality. This is entirely normal, few Britons understood that their empire was in decline until the sun had already set upon it.

It would, of course, be deeply ironic if the neocons were to get their way and America were to eventually learn of her loss of global superpower status not too terribly far from where Marcus Licinius Crassus lost his seven legions and met his death at the hands of the Parthians. Interestingly enough, Crassus, rather like Bush and Obama, failed to abide by the legal forms of making war before launching his ill-fated invasion.

Fuck the Police

Thus sayeth the United States Marine Corps after the Oakland police attack on Marine veteran Scott Olsen:

As God is my witness. I will fight tooth and nail to restore the decency this country was founded upon. The politicians, banks and large corporations have ruined this country. I find it difficult to notice any sense of politeness on the streets anymore. But it goes farther. As a Marine and a citizen I am outraged. I am sick to death of the world my children are being raised in.

So I ask all of you, can you too sense the tipping point? When will enough be enough? If not now, when? I feel the problem is that the average Joe citizen is ignorant and comfortable. These, in addition to selfishness have become the standard for the majority of the population. As long as people are comfortable they remain silent. Well, I’m really fucking uncomfortable and I’m sick of seeing this sort of shit happening. The Occupy protests that are going on are our first glimmer of hope. If we can take this and move it further, get every lazy ass off their rocker and open their eyes; then maybe, just maybe we have a chance.

Semper Fi brothers, and remember who you are. Protectors of a great nation, not politicians or wealthy money grubbing bankers and the like. When it comes time, I know we’ll stand strong.

So, the Washington-Wall Street Axis of Corruption have the police, the media, and the Mexican gangs to whom they are selling guns and with whom they are laundering drug money. We the People only have the angry veterans of the USMC on their side.

I like their odds.

The U.S. Constitution is to be defended against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. And there isn’t much question about who the domestic enemies of the Constitution are.

Arab Spring in Libya

Once again, the neocons have supported the expansion of popular and democratic Islam:

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its “basic source”….

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy. In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya’s economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. “Interest creates disease and hatred among people,” he said.

So, how is this in the American national interest, exactly? And actually, if you think about it, what is the real difference between formally banning interest, as Abdul-Jalil has directed, and reducing the interest rate to zero, as Bernanke, King and Trichet have done.

Obama gets it done

Give credit where credit is due. Obama is pulling the troops out of Iraq and leaving no US bases there:

President Obama announced Friday that the United States will withdraw nearly all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, effectively bringing the long and polarizing war in Iraq to an end.

“After nearly 9 years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” said Mr. Obama. He said the last American troops will depart the country by January 1 “with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.”

It would seem there is a silver lining in every failed presidency. And notice how the “Tea Party” candidate, Michele Bachmann, actually opposes the pullout. Because foreign occupations are so eminently consistent with small and frugal government.