Filed under: Election 2012, Global Warming, Islam, Middle East, Military, Politics, The United States | Tags: Afghanistan, Electoral Politics, The American Military
Uncle Jimbo, from Blackfive, takes exception to President Obama’s ‘strategy’ in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t have gone for the idea that the troops were fighting on Obama’s behalf either. The administration’s plans to ‘dialogue’ with the Taliban seem to be some vague part of the ‘strategy,’ whatever that is. It seems to be about— getting out before the election. There’s certainly a lot of rather large problems that must succumb to electoral politics.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Terrorism | Tags: Ignoring Congress, Separation of Powers, The Imperial Presidency
The White House seems to have an odd relationship with the separation of powers. The 2010 mid-term election when Republicans took over control of the House of Representatives was a sharp rebuke to the administration and congressional Democrats. Rather than understand that as a call for more cooperation and bipartisanship, Obama saw it as a sign that he should just go around Congress, accomplishing his goals by executive orders and agency regulation.
The Friday night news dump showed that Obama had exceeded his own guidelines. He decided that he would ignore the restrictions of Congress’s Palestinian Accountability Act with a “waiver.” He made the decision to pour American taxpayer dollars —$192 million — into the coffers of the Palestinian Authority despite its being illegal. This was first printed in the foreign press (AFP), where many of the more interesting things about this administration first appear.
Congress mandated that no funds may be made available to the Palestinian Authority until it ends its terrorist activities and an independent audit is conducted of its finances. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said it would ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” This is the same moderate government which has tried to form a pact with Hamas. He added that “the PA had fulfilled all its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.”
In the real world, the PA is not only not moderate, but has reneged on all its commitments. The whole thing is a blatant lie.
Obama’s thinks of himself as an imperial president, above mere laws. His rant against the Supreme Court in the wake of the ObamaCare hearing was a disgrace. The Supreme Court is a fully equal branch of the government to the executive branch, and they decide what is Constitutional — not the president, who was a part-time lecturer on the 15th Amendment at the University of Chicago —not a professor of Constitutional Law.
Obama instructed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to inform Congress of the move, on the grounds that “waiving such prohibition is important to the national security interests of the United States.” Embarrassing.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy suggests that Congress should slash the executive branch’s budget— perhaps with a treble damages rule. Will they do it? remains to be seen, but unless they respond definitively, the imperial presidency will continue. Obama doesn’t think anyone will dare to do so.
Filed under: Islam, Military, National Security, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Militant Islam, The Long War, Understanding the Stakes
The following is an excerpt from an essay in the Claremont Review of Books about wars and how they end. This excerpt refers to Lessons for a Long War by Thomas Donnelly and Fredrick Kagan of AEI.
Today the United States is engaged in a worldwide struggle with militant Islamist terrorists and insurgents—a true war and one that has already lasted decades. Many Westerners would like to think that the stakes of this war are not vital; that it is all the result of some terrible misunderstanding; that the United States itself may be primarily to blame; and that in any case we can and should disengage ourselves at little cost. … But the jihadists understand the nature of this struggle better than we do. All we have to do is listen to them, since they are happy to state their claim. They say very clearly and with obvious conviction that they aim at the restoration of a trans-national Islamic caliphate; the overthrow of secular governments within the Arab world and beyond; the complete ejection of Western influence from the non-Western world; the restoration of Islamic rule in historically Muslim territories; the destruction of Israel; and the death of millions of Americans. They declare not only that they are at war with the United States, but that this war can have no ending short of utter defeat for one side or the other. And they pursue this war primarily through the deliberate killing of innocent civilians — a barbaric policy not adopted even by Nazi Germany. One would think that the moral and geopolitical stakes could hardly be clearer. Yet somehow respectable mainstream thinking in Western intellectual circles has come to the conclusion that this is a morally troubled and overhyped struggle. Indeed, Barack Obama said as much when running for president.
I thought that was a strikingly true and correct statement by Colin Dueck who is an associate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University. He is the author, most recently of Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II.
Filed under: Islam, Israel, National Security, Politics, United Kingdom | Tags: British Conservative, Debate at the Cambridge Union, Douglas Kear Murray
Here is Douglas Murray at the Cambridge Union last year, debating three members of the British establishment. Murray is a British Conservative, writer and commentator. He appears regularly in the British broadcast media commenting on issues from the conservative standpoint, and is frequently critical of Islamic fundamentalism. Only 33, he is author of a number of books, and skilled at debate. An interesting young man.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Iraq, Islam, Middle East | Tags: Accidents/ Incompetence/ Rebellion?, Explosions in Iran, The Mediterranean Aflame
Nearly two weeks ago, a mysterious explosion destroyed an Iranian missile development base. The Israeli Military reported on the effect of that explosion, and on the same day, Iran’s official news agency FARS reported that a loud blast was heard in the Iranian city of Isfahan at 2:40 pm local time. A security official confirmed that the explosion had occurred, but refused to give further details. The head of the security department said “we have no exact information; the incident is being investigated.”
FARS news agency said that the blast was heard distinctly in several parts of the Iranian city. they posted a picture from an April bomb attack in Kashmir, and subsequently took it down. The Iranian regime announced that there was no explosion in Isfahan. Members of the Green democracy movement confirm, that there was indeed an explosion in Isfahan. So there you have the news from Iran.
Israeli military intelligence reported earlier today on the last explosion in Iran, which destroyed a missile technology production site at a military base in Tehran which killed one of Iran’s heads of the missile projects:
“The blast in the site where surface-to-surface missiles were developed can delay or bring to a complete halt the production of the missiles at that site,” said head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence Research Section Department Brigadier General Itai Baron at a briefing in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“However,” Baron cautioned, “It must be emphasized that Iran has other development sites other than the one that was destroyed.”
So, accident, bad luck, incompetence, Iranian opposition, some outside source? Who knows? According to one blog, at least 17 gas pipeline explosions have been reported since last year. Nearly a dozen major explosions have damaged refineries since 2010. Michael Ledeen suggests that the opposition is abandoning its commitment to non-violence. J.E. Dyer says the attacks seem to be poorly designed, if that’s what they are, but the idea of a war against the mullahs seems a possible explanation.
It’s all speculation at this point. The Middle East is aflame from one end to the other. Not exactly the “Arab Spring” of fantasy. Assad is living on borrowed time, Egypt is near revolution and running out of money, the Muslim Brotherhood is winning across the Arab countries. Saudi Arabia is worried about the development of shale oil. Lots of inspiration for thriller authors, lots of confusion for the rest of us.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Iraq, Islam, Middle East, National Security, Politics | Tags: American Foreign Policy, Arab Spring?, Considering the Middle East.
Arab Spring they called it, as if a million flowers of Democracy were about to bloom. Which was more the triumph of hope over reality. Ghaddafi is gone, but Libya has just announced that their new government would be Islamist in nature and follow Sharia law. And the first thing to be abolished would be the laws against polygamy.
The Arab states of North Africa were revolting against controlling dictatorships, and there were plenty of warnings that they may have not liked their ruling tyrants, but they also had no experience of Democracy. Tunisia had their first election yesterday and it was reportedly a clean, enthusiastic election. Turnout was at 90%. The country adopted a proportional system during the transition that limits the ability of any party to hold too much power. If this remains as a check before new constitutions are adopted it will be a good thing.
The Islamist Nahda party claimed victory by a significant margin. The other main parties conceded. Nahda won about half the votes. Two secular parties did well, and one will probably join Nahda in a coalition. The new constitution is supposed to contain a bill of rights, divide government power, and protect minority rights. After the constitution is adopted, a new round of elections will be held in a year.
The country is one of the most modern and homogenous nations in the Arab world. The dictator Ben Ali family ran a mafia empire, yet today Ben Ali lives in exile in Saudi Arabia. It will take time — lots of time— to see how it will turn out, and it will take a better foreign policy on our part.
Obama’s foreign policy czars are gone. One by one, they have disappeared. Obama’s appointment of the original czars was seen as a way of empowering hand-picked senior officials to instigate a transformational foreign policy without having to submit them to congress for confirmation. Obama’s focus on humility and apology in diplomatic engagement was supposed to be a sharp contrast to the “hard power” emphasis of the Bush administration:
Now that none of them has achieved the diplomatic breakthroughs so naively expected by the newly elected Obama, ambitions have been reduced to not making things any worse—and even that may be difficult.
Barry Rubin has been reporting ever since Barack Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009 on Obama’s disastrous Middle East Policy. His column today is a review and summing up, in the wake of the Arab Spring debacle, of the Obama foreign policy. It’s not pretty. The now dominant view, he says is:
This interpretation considers the virtually sole danger to be al-Qaeda and its terrorist attacks against America. In order to ensure Islamists aren’t radicalized to behave that way, they want to co-opt radical Islamists they consider far less threatening. They insist that such Islamists are far less extreme than people like me say and that holding power will moderate them.
This travesty is born of Western ignorance about Islam and Islamism; discounting the power of ideology and the nature of these societies; assuming that everyone thinks alike in wanting more material goods; putting all their effort into stopping another September 11 (even at the expense of massive strategic losses); presuming moderation is inevitable, etc.
These people believe that the “Turkish model” is just fine and dandy rather than seeing it as an extremely dangerous way for radical Islamists to seize and hold power to carry out anti-American and aggressive goals. This misunderstanding is key to their failure to understand Arab politics or Islamism, as is the idea that Facebook, community-organizer yuppies are any match for jihadists.
I would urge you to read Barry Rubin’s post. I think he is particularly well-informed and correct in his wide-ranging analysis. This isn’t what you will be hearing from the mainstream media who no longer do much searching analysis. If Obama says that bringing the troops home from Iraq by the end of the year is a diplomatic triumph and a praiseworthy event, that is what the MSM will report. We deserve better.
Filed under: Islam, Middle East, Terrorism | Tags: Anwar al-Awlaki, Terrorism, Yemeni al-Qaeda Leader
At National Review Online, Daniel Foster notes that British Intelligence still has a sense of humor:
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s spy agencies have a new message for terrorists: make cupcakes, not war.
Intelligence agents managed to hack into the extremist Inspire magazine, replacing its bombmaking instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.
It’s the first time the agents sabotaged the English-language magazine linked to U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist accused in several recent terror plots.
The quarterly online magazine, which is sent to websites and email addresses as a pdf file, had offered an original page titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” in one of its editions last year. The magazine’s pages were corrupted, however, and the instructions replaced with the cupcake recipe.
“We’re increasingly using cybertools as part of our work,” a British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters said Friday, confirming that the Inspire magazine had been successfully attacked.
The hackers were reportedly working for Britain’s eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, which has boosted its resources in the past several years.
Filed under: Freedom, Islam, Israel, Middle East | Tags: 27 Standing Ovtions for Bibi, American Foreigh Policy, Explaining Israel
Walter Russell Mead writing in the American Interest on May 25, said that President Obama has three times taken on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and three times he has failed miserably.
Where [Obama] has failed so dramatically is in the arena he himself has so frequently identified as vital: the search for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. His record of grotesque, humiliating and total diplomatic failure in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu has few parallels in American history. Three times he has gone up against Netanyahu; three times he has ingloriously failed. This last defeat—Netanyahu’s deadly, devastating speech to Congress in which he eviscerated President Obama’s foreign policy to prolonged and repeated standing ovations by members of both parties—may have been the single most stunning and effective public rebuke to an American President a foreign leader has ever delivered.
Netanyahu beat Obama like a red-headed stepchild; he played him like a fiddle; he pounded him like a big brass drum. The Prime Minister of Israel danced rings around his arrogant, professorial opponent. It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters go up against the junior squad from Miss Porter’s School; like watching Harvard play Texas A&M, like watching Bambi meet Godzilla—or Bill Clinton run against Bob Dole.
Mead, I should add, is a Democrat who voted for Obama. Obama’s policies have been rooted in the idea that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the primary reason for unrest and problems in the Middle East. He is wrong. President Obama has made no secret of his attitude towards Mr. Netanyahu and Israel, and many in the administration are known for their opposition to Israel. Scholar Stanley Kurtz has documented President Obama’s extensive Palestinian ties. The faculty lounge is not the place to develop foreign policy.
The “Arab spring” is unrelated to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Young educated middle class Arabs who communicate through Twitter and Facebook want democracy and liberty. Canadian journalist David Warren pointed out several years ago, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the pictures of Iraqis, and Iraqi women, voting in free elections was like an earthquake in the Middle East. Iraq is a model, and Arabs want that freedom. But there is a long way between protests in the street and a new form of government. The Muslim Brotherhood is influential and organized.
What will come of the protests in the Middle East, no one knows. The administration has misunderstood the dynamics there, but Arab nations are a puzzle to Americans. We don’t understand dictators.
The protests in Tunisia began with a man who self-immolated after the government repeatedly refused to allow him to sell vegetables from his cart, his only way of making a living. The Middle East is a place of conspiracy, suspicion, authoritarianism, deceit and guile and absolute brutality.
The administration had Syria’s Assad pegged as a potential reformer, and sent Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi off, separately, to visit. Who knew Assad would have his army shooting citizens in funeral procession as they carried the bodies of their executed friends to the cemetery. The malevolence of a despot who intends to remain in power is beyond our understanding.
The administration does not grasp the relationship between the people of United States and Israel. Walter Russell Mead captures that as well. The ideas of the faculty lounge don’t translate well into foreign policy. Mead said:
As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America. …Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God,
These juxtaposed images of a young Bibi Netanyahu and a young Barack Obama demonstrate the life experiences and outlook of the two men. Bibi Netanyahu did not, as some say,”lecture” to the American president. He explained, with deep passion, the position of Israel. Obama seemed not enlightened, but angry.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, National Security | Tags: Arab Middle East, Egypt, Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden has, according to some stories, been holed up in his compound in Abbottabad for six years. His goal ,we were told, was a return to the seventh century Muslim Caliphate. He fought with he mujahadeen in Afghanistan and with American help they drove the Russians out. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he came to believe that he had a big hand in the Soviet collapse. The Soviet Union was a paper tiger, projecting far more strength than they actually possessed. Osama assumed that America was also a paper tiger and by attacking what he saw as the central symbol of American power — the World Trade Center, he believed he could bring down America. How bringing down America would restore the Caliphate is unknown.
The sands are surely shifting across the Arab Middle East, but they are not shifting in the direction of al Qaeda. The demonstrators are energized by an opposition to the corruption and repression of their former leaders. They want jobs, justice, modernity, and perhaps even democracy. These desires would seem to be the very opposite of the aims of bin Laden and al Qaeda whose goals are even more restrictive, harsh, and narrow.
Yet these countries and these people have no experience of democracy. None. They have no experience of real freedom, of private property, of entrepreneurship, free markets, all those things that we take for granted that are part and parcel of modernity. They have known only corrupt police states or corrupt playboy monarchies.
Last week the Egyptian caretaker government brokered a deal between Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza, and Fatah in the West Bank. Cairo didn’t bother to tell either Israel or the Americans. The agreement will be signed today and it empowers Hamas, which is a terrorist group. The Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized political group in Egypt. It condemned the bin Laden killing.
Cairo also plans to establish diplomatic relations with Iran , and an Iranian destroyer was allowed to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Not signs of a government deeply interested in democracy. Both the US and Israel will face some tough choices. If Cairo wants closer ties with terrorists, America’s long support for the Egyptian military would have to be reconsidered. Have we delivered that blunt message?
We will come to regret our lack of support for the anti-Mubarak forces. Robert Kagan remarked that “It is not pragmatic to cling to the status quo in a revolutionary ers.” In Bahrain and Yemen, the outcome of uprising is far from certain. Kagan warns that so-called pragmatism may not be the safest course.
Filed under: Capitalism, History, Islam, Military, Terrorism | Tags: Abbottabad Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, SEAL Team Six
As usual, all the initial stories were not quite right. No cave. Bin Laden was living in a large compound in Abbottabad, a town in northeastern Pakistan close to Islamabad. The walled compound gave evidence of having been built especially for bin Laden, with barbed-wire topped walls and two security gates. Secretary of State Clinton said they had help from Pakistan’s ISI , their security service. Others said that many Pakistani army personnel and ISI personnel lived in the town, so his presence must have been an open secret.
It was a pre-dawn raid by a dozen members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six. Helicopters dropped the SEALs behind the walls. The CIA and the White House monitored the situation in real time. Bin Laden returned fire, using a woman as a human shield, but was shot in the head.
The news services have tried to gauge reactions from the Islamic world, which range all over the map. The Palestinian Authority welcomed the killing as “good for the cause of peace,” while Hamas said “We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior.” That more or less encapsulates the reactions, but only time will tell how it plays out. The Arab world is engaged in popular revolt against oppressive rulers. We don’t know how that will play out either.
There were big celebrations last night, and it was good to see the smiles on the faces of the New York Fire Department members. They lost so many of their friends and fellow firemen on 9/11, that it must bring some sense of closure. That’s a term that has been flung around for years, and I never quite understood it, but it fits this event. A sense of closure. At least for me, there was no desire to celebrate, just the feeling of ending a story or turning the last page.
Filed under: History, Islam, Military, Terrorism | Tags: al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, U.S Military
Good. Killed in a covert operation by US special forces. America reportedly has his body, and DNA confirmation.
No celebration. Just a sense of satisfaction that the long search is over. And congratulations to our splendid military who have tried for so long to locate him.
It’s more like checking a necessary task off the ledger. We don’t need to review his unfortunate life. That’s done, let’s get on to the next problem.
ADDENDUM: Here is the statement from President George W. Bush:
“Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”
President Barack Obama deserves credit as well, for maintaining the difficult battle in Afghanistan and the pursuit of bin Laden, over the objections of many of his supporters. That wasn’t easy.
[ed: incorrectly reports initially claimed it was a bomb, since corrected.]
