Sep 16 2008

History hasn’t ended: the next President had better have some idea how to deal with Iran: Bumped

Category: Iran,Islam,Israel,middle east,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 11:59 pm

Bumped for Jerusalem Post update, link at bottom of post.

Only military action can stop Iran, experts tell European Jews – Haaretz – Israel News

The Iranian nuclear crisis may have crossed the point of no return while the threat of nuclear terrorism is on the rise, according to a panel of experts on proliferation. These somber assessments where voiced Monday during a seminar on nuclear capabilities hosted by the European Jewish Congress in Brussels.

“Only military action can stop Iran, or else Iran will acquire nuclear weapons to the great detriment of regional and even global stability,” the panel stated.

Continue reading “History hasn’t ended: the next President had better have some idea how to deal with Iran: Bumped”

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Sep 13 2008

Foreign travel, foreign policy “experience” and judgment

Category: election 2008,Iraq,McCain,media,middle east,Obama,Palin,politics,White House — harmonicminer @ 11:19 pm

As usual, the Obama campaign is still playing catchup to Sarah Palin. Now the big question is whether she actually crossed the border into Iraq by a half-mile, or stayed at the border.   Obama camp suggests lies over Palin visit to Iraq – Yahoo! News

The question of whether Sarah Palin has ever been to Iraq pushed Obama aides Saturday to accuse the McCain campaign of outright lies, distortions and distractions to the American people.

Since Republican presidential nominee John McCain tapped the Alaska governor to be his running mate on Aug. 29, questions about her experience have been fueled by her relatively brief tenure in office, as well as a dearth of foreign travel.

What matters isn’t how many countries she’s visited, or even how many heads of state she knows on a first name basis.  What matters is the judgment and values of the candidate.

When Russia invaded Georgia, Obama’s first response was to hope that both sides would exercise restraint, in a perfect-pitch-for-the-left rendition of moral equivalence, the natural born instinct of leftists everywhere.  That tells us what we need to know about Obama’s judgment and values.  Obama’s warm reception during his grand international P.R. tour doesn’t change who he is, a person who can’t quite define evil, and isn’t quite sure what we should do about it….  in his own nuanced way, of course.

I doubt an academic study can be found to demonstrate that shaking hands and chatting about inconsequentials with foreign leaders (the usual meaning of “getting to know them”) has produced better decisions than are reached by simply considering the facts at hand.  Roosevelt “met” with Stalin, and still gave away half of Europe.  Bush met with Putin and “saw into his soul”, and still didn’t understand, it would seem, what a fascist Putin would turn out to be.  Kennedy “met” with Kruschiev, and that resulted in the Cuban missile crisis when the Communist dictator decided that Kennedy could be rolled.

It’s decisions based on evidence that matter, not face time.  And tourism is not a pre-requisite for the Presidency or vice-Presidency, much as the Left might wish it was.

In the meantime, whether Palin made it 2500 feet into Iraq, or stayed at the border, matters not a whit.  The Obama campaign must really be spooked by this lady.  They should be…  she is something beyond their experience, a genuine person who simply says what she means.

OH, and the lead sentence to the quoted article is truly hilarious:  Imagine, the Obama campaign was “pushed” into calling the McCain campaign liars.  Gee…  you mean they just couldn’t help themselves?

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Aug 24 2008

Petraeus on the war. Subtext: we REALLY need a grown-up in the White House

Category: Afghanistan,election 2008,Iraq,McCain,middle east,Obama,Petraeus,politics,terrorism,White House — harmonicminer @ 8:47 am

Q&A: Gen. David Petraeus on Leaving Iraq | Newsweek Iraq War | Newsweek.com

we have to be very careful, and we are with respect to Anbar. We know [the insurgents are] trying to come back in … and we have picked up a number of those individuals who have tried to come back in. And of course they attacked and killed several of our marines and sheiks in the attack [June 26 in Karmah, near Fallujah]. But the fact is that the level of violence in Anbar is the lowest in our recorded history, literally, the lowest of any of our data.

Read it all. Hope he enters politics someday. He seems to tell the unvarnished truth.

h/t: Michael Yon

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Aug 18 2008

Memo on evil: it’s real

Category: Europe,freedom,liberty,middle east — harmonicminer @ 9:47 am

There are many people who have dealt with “the problem of evil” by ascribing it to societies and culture more than to individuals who get into positions of power. The “end of history” has not come, nor will it until the Second Coming. Michael Ledeen has again written a document that perfectly skewers the conceit of the Left that humanity is perfectable, if only we could live in better, fairer societies. Read the whole thing for essential background, but here are the concluding graphs:

It was all wrong, as are most beliefs in the vast impersonal forces that are held to determine human events. The great constant in man’s affairs is change, the direction of that change is determined by human actions, and many of the men and women who take those determinant actions are evil. Machiavelli is not the only sage who recognized it, but he put it nicely: “Man is more inclined to do evil than to do good.” Rational statecraft starts right there.

The American Founders knew it: recognizing man’s innate capacity for evil, they designed a system of checks and balances to thwart the accumulation of power by any group, lest the entire enterprise fall into wicked hands. They knew the battle for liberty would never end, Benjamin Franklin famously warned we would have to fight to keep our republic.

All of this wisdom has been dangerously undermined by the foolish notion that man is basically good, that all men are basically the same, and that all we need do is to permit history to take its preordained course. Are these not the tenets of contemporary education? Are our children not forbidden to criticize “others,” whether of different pigmentation or religion? Has debate on our university campuses not turned into the moral equivalent of the Inquisition? And it rests on the sands of a demonstrably false vision of man. We are not naturally inclined to do good. Quite the contrary; left to our own devices we produce genocide in Europe, Asia and Africa. And the evil spreads, eventually it threatens us, it kills our people here at home and it is straining to kill more of us. Ask the Georgians. Ask Middle Eastern Jews and Christians, or the Iranian, Iraqi or Syrian peoples.

The basic debate needs to begin with a recognition that we have bought into a fable. Without that recognition, we will be incapable of designing the policies we need in order to survive this perilous moment.

Continue reading “Memo on evil: it’s real”

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Aug 03 2008

A Cautionary Tale of Post-Ideological Politics in Israel: Visions of a future Obama presidency?

Category: Hamas,Hizbullah,Israel,middle east,Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:16 am

Pretty much anyone who can read, and bothers to, knows that the Olmert government in Israel is hopelessly corrupt. The old notion of a “fish rotting from the head” comes to mind. Olmert is the target of seven different corruption investigations, a likely candidate for prison unless he cuts a deal before leaving office, and the most feckless leader in recent memory at fighting Israel’s enemies and protecting its people.

Building a governing coalition based on the Kadima party, the self-confessedly post-ideological creation of Ariel Sharon, a party which claimed to be neither right nor left (shades of Obama’s claim to “unify” and be “beyond old categories”), a party which would simply do what was necessary without reference to previously stated ideological positions, Olmert has actually accomplished nothing but to stay in power and stretch out his tenure, while causing great harm to Israel’s security.

This is all made very clear by Caroline Glick as she describes the ebb and flow of the Israeli electorate in response to events on the ground, and the way a “post-ideological” leader is captive to swings in public mood, but lacks the strength to actually carry out a coherent policy:

With the nation in a left leaning mood in the run-up to the last election, Kadima announced its plan to give Judea and Samaria to terrorists from Fatah and Hamas. Distinguishing their party from the radical left, which shares their plan, Kadima’s leaders explained that they sought to place Israel’s major urban centers in Palestinian rocket range not in the interest of peace – as the leftist ideologues would have it – but in the interest of the hardnosed “demographic” aim of putting all the country’s Jews in one concentrated area.

Before the nation had an opportunity to fully understand what Kadima’s “convergence” plan entailed, Israel’s body politic shifted to the right in June 2006 after the Palestinians attacked an IDF post near Gaza and kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit. Two weeks later it shifted further to the right when Hizbullah carried out a nearly identical attack along the border with Lebanon and abducted reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Noticing the public’s rightward shift, Olmert and his colleagues followed immediately. When Olmert launched the Second Lebanon War, he sounded downright Churchillian as he promised the nation nothing less than the total defeat of Hizbullah and the return of our hostage servicemen.

Continue reading “A Cautionary Tale of Post-Ideological Politics in Israel: Visions of a future Obama presidency?”

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Jul 31 2008

Challenge lies, or ignore them?

Category: Hamas,Hizbullah,Israel,media,middle east,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

A writer in the Jerusalem Post observes that US newspapers constantly attack Israel in editorial pages and with slanted, distorted coverage and wonders what the appropriate response is. To defend, or to ignore? It’s hard to know what will be most effective:

Verbal attacks on Israel in US papers and other media outlets are ceaseless, and can be demoralizing. But how do we measure their impact on the average American? Should we simply assume that a pro-Hamas op-ed in The New York Times is far more damaging to Israel’s cause than a local activist’s letter in a minor paper? Perhaps we should assume that Times’ readers are less likely to fall for obvious spin because they are more sophisticated than local media consumers? It’s impossible to be sure.

My inclination, which the writer eventually seems to share, is that if you want to affect public opinion, you have to fight unfair assertions, every single time.

The Bush administration learned, too late, that when you don’t answer outrageous assertions, and those assertions are constantly repeated, they have a way of becoming received wisdom in the relatively uncritical public mind. By the time the Bush administration wised up a bit and began to try to counter the main stream media’s narrative that Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction, and that the presence of those weapons was the only reason for going into Iraq, it was just too late to affect the public understanding with facts.

People in sympathy with Israel, and Israel itself, need to learn this lesson: absolutely no good comes from “taking the high road” and not responding to outrageous claims. Lies need to be countered, period.

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Jul 28 2008

Respect to our soldiers

Category: Afghanistan,election 2008,McCain,middle east,military,politics,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 9:20 am

Soldiers recount deadly attack on Afghanistan outpost | Stars and Stripes

Walker and two other wounded soldiers distributed their ammo and grenades and passed messages.

The whole FOB was covered in dust and smoke, looking like something out of an old Western movie.

“I’ve never seen the enemy do anything like that,” said Walker, who was medically evacuated off the FOB in one of the first helicopters to arrive. “It’s usually three RPGs, some sporadic fire and then they’re gone … I don’t where they got all those RPGs. That was crazy.”

Two hours after the first shots were fired, Stafford made his way, with help, to the medevac helicopter that arrived.

“It was some of the bravest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life, and I will never see it again because those guys,” Stafford said, then paused. “Normal humans wouldn’t do that. You’re not supposed to do that, getting up and firing back when everything around you is popping and whizzing and trees, branches coming down and sandbags exploding and RPGs coming in over your head … It was a fistfight then, and those guys held ‘ em off.”

Stafford offered a guess as to why his fellow soldiers fought so hard.

“Just hardcoreness I guess,” he said. “Just guys kicking ass, basically. Just making sure that we look scary enough that you don’t want to come in and try to get us.”

You need to click the link at the top, and read this whole thing. And you need to show respect to our fighting men. These men are not victims, they are heroes who choose to serve us, and they deserve the best we can give them, including the leadership we elect for them.

hat tip: blackfive

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Jul 21 2008

Preparing for the unimaginable: Israeli parents consider their childrens’ kidnapping

Category: Hamas,Hizbullah,Islam,Israel,middle east,terrorism,torture — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

A former Israeli special forces officer has hard advice for parents whose children in Israel are vulnerable to kidnapping by Islamic terrorists. It is quite unimaginable for most of us to consider such a thing in advance, and what we would do about it. Yet, this is the reality faced by parents in Israel, exacerbated by the recent trade of live terrorists from Israeli prisons for dead bodies of Israeli victims.

I am writing this as a parent that has 100% of my children, at high risk, of being victims of a kidnapping.

We must remember, Israel has never received any of our children back alive, from a kidnapping.

We must also face certain hard to face facts, our children if grabbed will be subject to torture and mutilation that would have made Mengele proud.

………..

….. think about the kidnapping of your child now, face the pain and make a plan that will keep your dignity.

You really need to read the whole thing to understand the realities.  There is truly not a moral equivalence between the Israelis and Hamas/Hizbullah, regardless of the pretensions and posturing of the Left.

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Jul 19 2008

Feminism, jihadi style, and children’s TV in Palestine

Category: Hamas,Islam,Israel,middle east,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 1:31 pm

It seems that feminism is alive and well in Palestine. (video at the link: you may need to wait a moment for it to load)

transcript here

In case you think this some kind of aberration in Palestine, here is how children are taught about crime and punishment.

transcript here

Thanks to memritv.

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Jul 17 2008

Bases loaded and full count in Israel

Category: Iran,Israel,middle east — harmonicminer @ 3:38 pm

While sports metaphors are often suspect in political matters, this may be a time when Israel gets exactly one swing at the ball.

An Israeli attack on Iran seems inevitable. If it succeeds, it will return to Israel its deterrent power and send a clear message to the saber-rattling jihadists that they were too early in beginning the countdown for the disappearance of the Jewish state.
Iranian missile tests

If it fails, or fails to achieve the majority of its objectives, it could amount to an act of national suicide. Fanatical Muslims on every side will be encouraged by the failure and outcome of an Iranian retaliation which would cause heavy damage to the whole center of our country.

Iran would unquestionably be joined by its proxies on our borders, Hizbullah and Syria on the north and Hamas on the south, the PLO jihad brigades under various names, and the Arabs of Israel. The latter have already shown their ability to block major traffic arteries and demonstrated that their loyalties rest with their Arab brethren, not with the Jewish state.

The repeated declarations of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the aim of Iran is to wipe Israel off the world map should not be taken as the empty, fiery words of a fanatical Muslim dictator, but as a plan of action. True, Iran does not need a pretext, but an Israeli attack on any nuclear installation in Iran, or just an invasion of Iranian air space could be used as an excellent reason for mounting an all-out missile attack.

We’re going to know, quite soon, whether or not Israel is going to survive as a nation.

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