Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘iran’

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Baker, Bush, and the loss of vision

Posted by Richard on November 23, 2006

Events in Lebanon — and what’s sure to be an ongoing struggle to turn it into Hezbollahland — leave me even more displeased and disgusted by the prospect that our policy decisions regarding the Middle East, Iraq, and the War Against Islamofascism are going to be shaped by James Baker, Bob Gates, and their pals from the Bush 41 administration.

Baker has a history of being anti-Israel, and he sucked up to Syria as Secretary of State. Take a look at Ed Lasky’s American Thinker piece about Baker and Ray Close, an ex-CIA "expert" who’s playing a key role in formulating Baker’s Iraq Study Group recommendations. Close is at least extremely pro-Arabist and anti-Israel, and possibly a raving anti-Semite. And Baker’s not much better, according to Lasky:

The American-Israel alliance once again appears to be in the crosshairs of James Baker. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert may not have the strength to defend the American-Israel relationship. …

Olmert is up against an influential man with a long record of opposing the American-Israel alliance and who has a long record of coddling dictators and close business ties with Arab oil potentates. His track record would not seem to justify the influence he wields. As James Hoagland of the Washington Post put it,

[These are the] “policymakers who failed to anticipate and then opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union; who were not realistic enough to see, much less prevent, the Balkans from plunging into flames; and who coddled dictators from Beijing to Baghdad.”

Baker is true to form if his plan for dealing with Iraq will consist of coddling dictators from Damascus to Teheran. What other cards does Baker have up his sleeves? Has Baker stacked the deck against Israel? Based on the evidence so far, the answers are not very comforting.

G.W.B. appears ready to abandon his vision of advancing freedom and democracy in favor of the Kissingerian realpolitik of his father, his father’s associates, and a long line of pragmatists and accommodationists stretching back at least to the people who said "we can do business with Uncle Joe" Stalin. And the irony is that this long line of "realists" is responsible for a long line of failures, miscalculations, and disasters.

We’re on the verge of dumping Sharansky for Scowcroft, and I think it’s a terrible, terrible mistake.
 

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Thugs and crazies

Posted by Richard on November 22, 2006

There isn’t really any doubt that the thugs of Syria, the crazies of Iran, or both are behind the attempt to topple the Lebanese government via assassinations. Gateway Pundit has a good roundup of what’s happened, with lots of updates and links.

The prospect of civil war in Lebanon — or a quick Hezbollah takeover — follows closely on the heels of rumors that Baker’s Iraq Study Group will recommend making deals with Syria and Iran. Mary Madigan wrote a great analysis of the situation:

Discussions about Middle East politics remind me of a bit from a comic, Pearls Before Swine. One of the characters is a Zebra, who can’t understand why the lions keep eating his fellow Zebras. So, he writes a letter to the lions filled with philosophical questions about peace, understanding and the nature of being, asking why can’t they all get along, why can’t they be friends..

The answer comes back from the lions "we eat Zebras becuz you taste gud."

One of the main reasons why we’ve been so ineffective against the mob politics in Syria, Iran, Hezbollahland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc. is the way we allow ourselves to be distracted by their propaganda and by our own desire for peace. We don’t pay enough attention to their goals and their actions.

If we listen to their propaganda, we can tell ourselves that we’re dealing with a group of people who are motivated by religion and philosophy. We’re fighting an ideological war.

If we pay attention to their actions, we realize that we’re dealing with a bunch of gangsters. They’re well-organized gangsters, funded by millions in oil money, but they’re gangsters all the same. They want more money and power (as much as they can get), and they use guns to get them. Some are knuckle draggers and some wear suits and move money, propaganda and religious dogma around.

If the Gottis and Gambinos had wised up to the power of multicuturalism, leftist self-loathing and the multitude of hiding places provided by the skirts of religion, they could have ruled the world.

Reading Madigan’s piece, I was reminded of how Ayn Rand used to speak of the Witch Doctor and Atilla (symbols of faith and force), and how they seemed so different, but were very much alike in their rejection of reason. The Islamofascists — enemies of modernity, the Enlightenment, and Western Civilization — are actually a dangerous fusion of the Witch Doctor and Atilla into one. Crazed thugs, if you will. All the more reason they must be taken seriously and opposed with all our might.
 

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Jews don’t matter to mainstream media

Posted by Richard on September 21, 2006

There was a rally in New York on Tuesday protesting the Iraq war. About 2,000 people attended. Apparently, nobody of any significance spoke (well, Jesse Jackson). But Reuters, AP, NBC, and other mainstream media organizations all covered the rally. The wire service stories were widely picked up throughout the world. AP and Reuters did mention that at the same time, about 200 Iranian-Americans protested against Ahmadinejad.

On Wednesday, there was another rally in New York. Across the street from the UN headquarters, 35,000 people rallied in support of Israel and to protest the man who wants to "wipe Israel from the map." Speakers included Gov. George Pataki, Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel, Ambassador John Bolton, and Professor Alan Dershowitz. Did you see anything about it on the TV news or in your morning paper? Me neither. Meryl Yourish searched widely for coverage:

Can you find a news source for the rally against Ahmadinejad at the UN yesterday? Correction: Can you find a non-Jewish media source, or a non-blogger source, for the rally?

I can’t. Except for the New York Sun.

I checked AP. Nothing. Reuters. Nada. I checked Google News. Nothing. 1010WINS. Nothing. I checked WABC, NY1, all the New York media sites. Gridlock alerts are the only thing you can find about the march. After all, it’s not newsworthy. The fact that 2,000 people marched a day earlier to protest the Iraq war? Oh, yeah, that made the news.
…

If you want to read about the rally, it appears that you have to go to the bloggers who were there, or whose readers sent in pictures. Or the Israeli press. Or the Jewish media. But nowhere else can you find any evidence that 35,000 people protested the Iranian president’s message of hate.

I think some in the media ignored this rally for political reasons — calling attention to it might benefit Bush and the Republicans. But I think there’s something else going on as well.

The mainstream media and the left (but I repeat myself) don’t see Jews as victims anymore they way they used to. Jews aren’t excluded from jobs, schools, and clubs anymore. As a group, they tend to be highly educated and successful. The Holocaust was long ago. Israel is a dynamic, vibrant, successful nation whose very existence is a reproach to its dysfunctional neighbors.

The mainstream media and the left love victims, underdogs, failures, fools, and incompetents — anyone who exhibits the highly desirable (to them) characteristics of dependency and dysfunctionality. But they are at best indifferent — and frequently hate-filled, contemptuous, and resentful — toward those who are competent, successful, high-achieving, and independent.

You know how folks on the left are always reminding us that they — the whole world, in fact — were united behind America immediately after 9/11? True, most of them were — but it only lasted until U.S. troops headed for Afghanistan. While smoke was still rising from Lower Manhattan and the nation was still on its knees and dazed, leftists throughout the world were brimming with sympathy. As soon as we got back on our feet and acted with strength and determination against the scum who attacked us, the sympathy began draining away and the criticism and denunciations began.

Most leftists feel the same way about the U.S. and Israel that they feel about rich and successful individuals — they despise them for their virtues.
 

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The war for public opinion

Posted by Richard on July 18, 2006

Neo-neocon made an important point yesterday about civilian deaths in Lebanon. Yes, Hezbollah has been storing rockets in civilian homes and apartments, and launching them from just outside. But Iran (which calls the shots) and Hezbollah aren’t doing this merely because they’re indifferent to civilian casualties — they’re doing it because they want civilian casualties:

… Hezbollah is well aware that if, by taking out the missile launchers, Israel kills Lebanese civilians–which is every bit as much Hezbollah’s goal as the initial killing of Israeli civilians by the rockets themselves–then, as sure as day follows night, this fact will be reported heavily by the Western media (mostly without the all-important background context), flashed around the globe, and widely condemned. Civilians are not only expendable on the part of the terrorists, they are important and vital tools–stage props. …

Read, as they say, the whole thing. Then, in the context of this Hezbollah tactic, consider her earlier post about the danger of "proportionality" in war. Israel — like the U.S. in Iraq — gains nothing by fighting cautiously, half-heartedly, and timidly. The Islamofascists will make sure, via their tactics, that even a cautious and measured response results in sufficient collateral damage for their propaganda purposes. Heck, I suspect that if there weren’t enough collateral damage, they’d secretly create it.
 

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Albright: wrong then, wrong now

Posted by Richard on June 23, 2006

Remember when American politicians of all persuasions refrained from publicly criticizing their country while abroad? Nowadays, lobbing rhetorical bombs at the U.S. from foreign soil seems to be a Democratic hobby. The other day in Moscow, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright blamed the U.S. invasion of Iraq for Iran’s and North Korea’s eagerness to pursue nuclear weapons.

What nonsense. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons so it can annihilate Israel, bring back the 12th Imam, and create a global caliphate — the triumph of Islam and extension of the ummah throughout the world. I don’t think U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would make Ahmadinejad and the mullahs lose interest in those goals.

As for North Korea, Ms. Albright and her boss, Bill Clinton, bear much of the blame for that country’s nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

In 2000, Secretary of State Albright visited North Korea and gushed about what a wonderful host Kim Jong-il was. I believe her visit came near one of the periodic peaks of the horrific famine that’s been going on for more than a decade and that’s claimed millions of lives.

While Ms. Albright strove to "normalize" relations with — and praised the lavish banquets and parties of — this monstrous ruler of a ghastly slave state, she was apparently oblivious — or indifferent — to the abject horror by which she was surrounded: People driven mad by hunger, trying to survive by eating roaches, tree bark, undigested bits picked out of animal and human feces, and grass soup. People digging up the recently buried and consuming the decaying flesh. People exchanging babies with their neighbors so that it wasn’t their own flesh and blood that they killed and ate.

But, hey, that Kim threw a great party! And the Clinton administration wanted to demonstrate its respect for the concerns and aspirations of Kim’s glorious people’s republic.

I’m not much interested in the foreign policy advice — or moral judgments — of Madeleine Albright.
 

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