Posted on 02/24/2009 5:45:43 AM PST by SJackson
America: A freight train is heading your way and you're standing right on the tracks, looking in the wrong direction.
Or perhaps it is like a horror film in which the killer sneaks up behind the hapless victim while the movie audience yells: "Turn around! Turn around!" And then blood spatters the screen.
Unfortunately, in this case, it might be our blood, and it won't be produced by a special effects department.
Today, US policy and the dominant thinking are not based on realpolitik but on international affairs as a popularity contest. Its motto might be, "The nice will inherit the Earth," as the Obama administration tries to prove that it's not like that mean old Bush.
Before we get to the oncoming train, consider two small but indicative examples.
Scene 1: The UN committee planning the Durban-2 pro-racism - I mean "anti-racism" - conference. Libya chairs the committee, Iran is the vice-chair, Cuba, the rapporteur, and Russia is presiding. The plan is designed to ensure that the conference limits free speech, bashes Israel and enshrines Muslims as the world's only and perpetual victims.
The US representative stands to propose amendments. Is the speech a thunderous denunciation of dictatorship and a defense of liberty? Not exactly. Here is the key sentence: "I hate to be the cause of unhappiness in the room... I have to suggest [amendments] and I offer my sincere apologies."
How's that for speaking softly and carrying a big pillow? (US president Theodore Roosevelt a century ago famously described diplomacy as "speaking softly and carrying a big stick.")
Scene 2: The camera pans and the screen fills with an invitation to a conference being held by the Brookings Institution in Washington. The purpose is defined as asking, "How should Europe engage Russia to put relations between the West and Russia on a more positive and sustainable basis?" There is no room for pressure, opposition or criticism as part of the package; no hint of the need for flexibility to be accompanied by toughness.
Russia invaded Georgia, fought a surrogate war against Azerbaijan, blackmailed Ukraine and Lithuania. It has opposed sanctions on Iran, sold huge amounts of arms to Syria and committed real human rights' violations in Chechnya. It is the dawning of the age not of Aquarius (as the film Hair once said of the utopia predicted in the 1960s) but of Aquarium, in which the sharks are put in charge.
US policy is putting the emphasis on conciliation with Iran and Syria, and a soft line toward Pakistan, despite its lack of cooperation on fighting terrorism against India or in Afghanistan.
The only thing you can do with a strategy of carrots without sticks is to make carrot cake. Now consider what is sneaking up on the US government as it hands out candy:
On March 29, local elections will be held in Turkey. If the current government wins these municipal races, especially in Ankara and Istanbul, the country will be encouraged to go even further down the road toward Islamic extremism. Whatever happens internally (where the nature of Turkish society forces it to go more slowly), Ankara's foreign policy is increasingly aligned with that of the radicals in the region - not only Hamas but also Syria and Iran.
Turkey's many friends are hoping that moderation and its traditional political virtues win out. But what's happening there may well be the most important political event in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago. Think of what it means if, in whole or even in part, Turkey goes from the Western to the radical camp; clearly this is a world-changing event.
Then on June 7 come the Lebanese elections. Given the vast amounts of money they have spent, their use of violent intimidation and demoralization due to the Western abandonment of the moderates, it is likely that Iran's Syrian clients will take over Lebanon's government. This does not mean domination by Hizbullah but by four allied forces: pro-Syrian Sunni politicians; Michel Aoun's Christian forces; and the two Shi'ite groups, Hizbullah and Amal.
Already, Lebanon's president and former armed forces' commander Michel Suleiman is very close to the Iran-Syrian orbit. This doesn't mean that Lebanon will be annexed or militarily reoccupied by Syria, or that Lebanon will become an Islamist state internally. But it does mean that Lebanon will become a reliable ally of what Syrian President Bashar Assad calls "the resistance front."
In the region, these two developments will be perceived as two big victories for Teheran, and a sign that the Islamist-radical side is the wave of the future.
And what is the United States doing to fight, stop or manage this visible crisis?
Nothing.
FINALLY, ON June 12, presidential elections will take place in Iran itself. The likelihood is the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, either fairly or through manipulation of the ballot. The Iranian ruling establishment, which might have been persuaded to endorse a less extreme candidate if there had been enough Western pressure to make the incumbent look bad, has backed an openly aggressive anti-Semite.
Even though Ahmadinejad is not the real ruler of Iran, he and his allies are working to make him so. And of course his reelection means not only that Iran is waging a campaign to get nuclear weapons, it will mean that it is moving at the fastest possible speed, with the least likelihood of compromising and the most probability of using such a weapon (or forcing Israel to act militarily to stop the process). By years' end, or shortly after, Iran might have an atom bomb.
In short, 2009 is looking like a year of massive defeat for the US and its friends in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Washington is blind to this trend, pursuing a futile attempt to conciliate its enemies, losing time and not adopting the policies desperately needed.
Instead, the US should make itself leader of a broad coalition of Arab and European states, along with Israel, to resist Islamism and Iranian ambitions.
Alas, the new administration is fooling around while the region burns. Turn around! Turn around!
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at IDC Herzliya and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal.
We do not have any educated folks in DC. None. Period. Thanks to our sorry high schools, pathetic lib art faculties, and complete lack of MSM journalistic integrity, we’re akin to a fighter plan with the Obamaloon at the stick. (Oh, forgot, we do have the loon at the stick.)
It’s amateur hour once again in the White House. God help us all.
They aren't even standing on a track. Most are sitting in front of a TV watching mindless crap like Oprah. Too many people in this country care about entertainment more than they care about freedom.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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I suspect we're taking a pass on this fight for awhile, let countries like Israel and India engage. Islamists are way, way over there, and peaceful fellows. Both the current and last administration described them as businessmem, and we all know they practice the Religion of Peace, virtually all of them. So they're no threat to us. What are they going to do, crash airplanes into skyscrapers? The stuff of fiction. Besides, we can reach their asprin factories with impunity.
Scene 1: The UN committee planning the Durban-2 pro-racism - I mean “anti-racism” - conference. Libya chairs the committee, Iran is the vice-chair, Cuba, the rapporteur, and Russia is presiding. The plan is designed to ensure that the conference limits free speech, bashes Israel and enshrines Muslims as the world’s only and perpetual victims.
&&&&&&
And American ‘news reporters’ are saying.............
.......
Nothing!
What freight train? All I see is the Pacific ocean...
When we celebrate diversity and encourage open borders (remember that GWB did absolutely nothing to help control our borders even after 9/11) then we really lose control over who we are as a nation and, no offense, but the U.S. is now a much more pluralistic society. A large chunk of our society wants government handouts, another large chunk of our society is actively cheering on the Islamic terrorists of the world and, to put it bluntly, a large chunk of our college professors and leftists wouldn’t shed one single tear if all of Israel was destroyed.
Indeed; coming like a freight train; and too many on the tracks are suffering for an sommanulance induced by the mind-numbing, brain-damning, Leftist education per ‘political correctness’ and they appear close to irretreivable.
This should be the rallying cry of the GOP.
They have four years to figure out how to explain this to the voters of Florida and New York. Or Obama & Co. will be running U.S. foreign policy.
somnolence.
“Too many people in this country care about entertainment more than they care about freedom.”
* * *
Marx Redux:
For Germany, the criticism of religion (TV) has been largely completed, and the criticism of religion (TV) is the prerequisite of all criticism.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: Man makes TV, TV does not make man. TV is indeed man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce TV, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. TV is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against TV is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is TV.
TV suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. TV is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. TV is the opium of the people.
Federal Register: February 4, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 22)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Page 6115]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access
[wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr04fe09-106]
Presidential Documents
[[Page 6115]]
Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27,2009
Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza
Memorandum for the Secretary of State
By the authority vested in me by the constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.
You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
(Presidential Sig.)
THE WHITE HOUSE, THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, January 27, 2009 [FR Doc. E9-2488 Filed 2-3-09; 8:45 am
We could refer to Bread and Circuses.
But the modern generations do not even study the history of the Roman Empire, so they would not get the connotation.
History, as taught today, "started" when slaves were imported to America. Period.
That was simply a transfer of discretionary funds to the UN via UNWRA. That’s how it’s handled, he isn’t bringing palestinians here. The $900 million for Gaza, that he’ll have to get through Congress, unless he does it with 9 under $100 million transfers. I’m sure buried somewhere deep in the stimulus there could be a boost in disretionary foreign aid.
Nothing will change until there is Blood in the Streets.
Good post. Unfortunately, Mr. Rubin is correct.
Even though the slave importation started in the 1600s, the kind of history taught today somehow manages to skip over the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. It's obvious that it's an ideological selection of what is taught in history and what isn't, not a chronological one.
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