Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Israel Can Do Without Thief-In-Chief

Barack Obama, Elections, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Military, Palestinian Authority

A transfer of funds via wire is faster than a good-will state visit. So brazen is Barack Hussein Obama about using the people’s purse to feather his own nest—that he doesn’t even bother with appearances. To upstage Mitt Romney’s campaign stop in Israel,

Obama is authorizing an additional $70 million in military assistance to [that country].
The official says the funds will go to help Israel expand production of a short-range rocket defense system. The system, called Iron Dome, helps Israel defend itself against rocket attacks.

(Politico)

Chicago politics? Make that DC as usual.

The American Founding Fathers believed that politicians had no right to be benevolent with funds belonging to the people.

From “Is Ron Paul Good For Israel?”:

HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE. For foreign aid, Israeli leaders have been forced to subordinate their country’s national interests to Washington’s whims. This is bad for both allies. Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane U.S. foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, especially Israel, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.

There’s something else that might surprise Americans, who’ve been convinced that unless they intervene to assist, Israel won’t make it. Israel’s doing alright. Relatively speaking, its economy is better than that of the US.

The crazies are threatening it on the north (Lebanon & Syria), the south (the lovely Egyptian revolutionaries), and the east (the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and beyond), but, as the US and most of Europe decline, Israel’s economy flourishes. Here are Israel’s fiscal fundamentals, courtesy of Bloomberg.com:

• GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year
• A raised credit rating of A+
• Very low unemployment
• “60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China.”
• “The largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.”
• A ranking of “third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI’s list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.”
• “Israel’s exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology”: This means the stuff the Israelis make adds real value and jobs, unlike Obama’s state-manufactured jobs, which result from moving money around.

SADLY, that thing we in the US celebrate and anticipate—the Arab spring—threatens commence, innovation and economic prosperity in the region’s most productive oasis.

On the military front, Israel doesn’t need American assistance with rocket-deflection technology. The Israelis (a contractor called Rafael and the US-based Raytheon) vastly improved upon the American patriot missile system that misfired so badly at Dhahran.

At the time, the Israelis had already identified the problem and informed the US Army and the PATRIOT Project Office (the software manufacturer) on February 11, 1991, but no upgrade was present at the time.[citation needed] As a stopgap measure, the Israelis recommended rebooting the system’s computers regularly, however, Army officials did not understand how often they needed to do so. The manufacturer supplied updated software to the Army on February 26, the day after the Scud struck the Army barracks.

(Wikipedia)

To remedy the problem, the Israelis developed,

David’s Sling, expected to have a longer range than the Patriot and also to one day replace the Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in air defense missions.

As for a system designed to stop short-range rockets; the Israelis have that covered too. They’ve had to. How else do you live (and prosper) near the oasis known as Gaza?

My in-house wireless expert tells me that to deflect short range, small, fast-moving rockets, the RF radar tracking system of the Iron Dome is already “impressive.”

Israel is good to go.

Upbraiding Police State Britannia

Britain, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Republicans

Mitt Romney must be really confused if he equates being bold and unafraid about articulating conservative principles, with going abroad to upbraid the British. Show our English cousins some respect, will you, Mr. Romney! After all, they are every bit as capable as Americans of running a police state.

The 2012 fascistic Olympics will be just fab; the pride and joy of a nation of sheep (and shopkeepers).

As far as I can tell, Romney didn’t say anything that bad. You be the judge:

“The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging,” Mr. Romney told NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

And Mitt was quick to assume his obsequious pose, showing deference to any and all, not least to protocol: “‘Discussions of foreign policy should be made by the president and the current administration, not by those that are seeking office,’ he said, in an unusually deferential bow to his rival.”

UPDATE II: Mitt’s Foreign Policy Is Obama’s With A Daisy Cutter On Top (Unbridled, Bellicose American Exceptionalism)

Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

Today, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada, Mitt Romney renewed his allegiance to the Obama-Bush Warfare State, only with a cherry on top.

Or make that a Daisy Cutter.

Romney accused BHO, aka, Killer Drone extraordinaire—the man who has “developed” new theaters of war for America across the world—of compromising the US’s bloated military-industrial-complex by cutting its budget.

“I am not ashamed of American power,” Romney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention …, adding “I do not view America as just one more point on the strategic map, one more power to be balanced.”
…Romney said he wanted to bring an “American century” in which the United States has the world’s strongest economy and military that secures peace through its strength.
“And if by absolute necessity we must employ it, we must wield our strength with resolve,” Romney said to applause. “In an American century, we lead the free world and the free world leads the entire world.”

Since Republicans and Democrats have comparable records on sustaining the Welfare-Warfare State, you should remember that, “each party operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back. … No sooner do the Republicans come to power, than they move to the left. When they get their turn, Democrats shuffle to the right. At some point, McCain reaches across the aisle and the creeps converge.”

UPDATE I: In reply to the thread on Facebook:

While I feel immense sympathy for the poor men who were drafted, I don’t begrudge those, like Romney, who were able to avoid the draft. What I despise is when the same people talk up wars that others’ children must fight. I want a law enacted now that would draft the Bush and McCain girls and the Romney boys to the front. Oh, I already wrote a column in “support of the draft…for politicians and bureaucrats.”

UPDATE II: Romney’s unbridled, Bellicose American exceptionalism:

From Berlin to Cairo to the United Nations, President Obama has shared his view of America and its place among nations. I have come here today to share mine.
I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of this country. I am not ashamed of American power. I take pride that throughout history our power has brought justice where there was tyranny, peace where there was conflict, and hope where there was affliction and despair. I do not view America as just one more point on the strategic map, one more power to be balanced. I believe our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known, and that our influence is needed as much now as ever.

About Mormonism and American exceptionalism, Amy Sullivan at The New Republic says this:

…an enthusiastic belief in American exceptionalism is part of Mormon culture and theology. There is the sacred significance of America as the setting for the Book of Mormon and the birth of the Latter-Day Saints. But there is also the belief by early LDS leaders that Mormons would one day rescue the country when it threatened to fall apart.
In an essay on this topic last month, Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune included this quote from Brigham Young: “There is not a Territory in the Union that is looked upon with so suspicious an eye as is Utah, and yet it is the only part of the nation that cares anything about the Constitution.” Bagley explained:
The Saints saw themselves as a link in a chain beginning with the Pilgrims, continuing through the Founding Fathers, and leading up to the establishment of Christ’s righteous government.

My position is this: “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

DC Drowning In Its Hubris

Barack Obama, Bush, China, Foreign Policy, Propaganda, Russia, South-Africa, War

The indomitable Paul Graig Roberts on the US’s foreign policy and its financial (and other) repercussions:

“…the Bush/Obama regime is conducting military operations in violation of international law in Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa, organized the overthrow by armed conflict of the government in Libya, is currently working to overthrow the Syrian government, and continues to marshal military forces against Iran.

Finding the Muslim adversaries Washington created insufficient for its energies and budget, Washington has encircled Russia with military bases and has begun the encirclement of China. Washington has announced that the bulk of its naval forces will be shifted to the Pacific over the next few years, and Washington is working to re-establish its naval base in the Philippines, construct a new one on a South Korean island, acquire a naval base in Viet Nam, and air and troop bases elsewhere in Asia.

In Thailand Washington is attempting to purchase with the usual bribes an air base used in the Vietnam war. There is opposition as the country does not wish to be drawn into Washington’s orchestrated conflict with China. Downplaying the real reason for the airbase, Washington, according to Thai newspapers, told the Thai government that the base was needed for ‘humanitarian missions.’ This didn’t fly, so Washington had NASA ask for the air base in order to conduct ‘weather experiments.’ Whether this ruse is sufficient cover remains to be seen.

US Marines have been sent to Australia and elsewhere in Asia.

To corral China and Russia (and Iran) is a massive undertaking for a country that is financially busted. With wars and bankster bailouts, Bush and Obama have doubled the US national debt while failing to address the disintegration of the US economy and rising hardships of US citizens.

Despite the lack of an economic base, Washington’s hegemonic aspirations continue unabated. Other countries are amused at Washington’s unawareness. Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa are forming an agreement to abandon the US dollar as the currency for international settlement between themselves.

On July 4 the China Daily reported: ‘Japanese politicians and prominent academics from China and Japan urged Tokyo on Tuesday to abandon its outdated foreign policy of leaning on the West and accept China as a key partner as important as the United States. The Tokyo Consensus, a joint statement issued at the end of the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, also called on both countries to expand trade and promote a free-trade agreement for China, Japan and South Korea.’

This means that Japan is in play.

The Chinese government, more intelligent than Washington, is responding to Washington’s military threats by enticing away Washington’s two key Asian allies. As the Chinese economy is now as large as the US and on far firmer footing, and as Japan now has more trade with China than with the US, the enticement is appealing. Moreover, China is next door, and Washington is distant and drowning in its hubris.

Washington, which flicked its middle finger to international law and to its own law and Constitution with its arrogance and gratuitous and illegal wars and with its assertion of the right to murder its own citizens and those of its allies, such as Pakistan, has made the United States a pariah state. …”

MORE.