Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED: Were Walid Phares Jewish, He’d Be A Pharisee

Anti-Semitism, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

Dr. Walid Phares is the Fox News Channel’s Middle East and Terrorism Expert. He has been advocating a muscular military response in Libya. Somewhere on the Fox News’, moving-pictures-only website (in this vicinity), there is an interview in which Phares says that, “If the opposition in Libya cannot cross the Syrt line on the coast and head towards Tripoli, it is clear that there will be stalemate and only international intervention would end the crisis. The US must consider the fact that if the crisis stretch too long, even the uprising areas could be infiltrated.” (The excerpt is from Dr. Phares’ more script-friendly website, here.)

Pharisee,” which originally referred to a “member of an ancient Jewish sect that emphasized strict interpretation and observance of the Mosaic law in both its oral and written form,” has also come to mean a “hypocritically self-righteous person.” (FreeDictionary.com)

I wager that if Walid were a Jewish neoconservative, and not an Arab one, he’d be accused of being “a fifth columnist; a person with dual loyalties, a ‘binational.'”

UPDATE: Tom, I fail to see why you think my post is such a harsh criticism of Phares. It shows you how lukewarm and insipid public discourse has become if a sharp dig at the good doctor’s interventionism—or more likely, at the non-reaction to his militarism—is considered a devastating blow. Nonsense.

I like Phares on some counts; not on others. He just gets a pass because he is not a Jewish interventionist. If he were a Jew, the usual suspects would accuse him of recruiting poor American boys to die in order to safeguard oil for Israel, or something like that. I can never get conspiracy theories straight, as they are so unintuitive to me.

UPDATED: The Tyrant’s Intellectual (& Non-Egghead) Enablers

Celebrity, Critique, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Intellectualism, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, The Zeitgeist, Uncategorized

Much has been made of the American singers who sang for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Nothing has been said of the intelligentsia that has sung his praise. There is a big difference between singing for your supper and singing songs of praise for this, and other, odious characters. Paul A. Rahe at The Chronicle of Higher Education dissects “The Intellectual as Courtier.” (Here, with thanks to my Canadian friend, Dr. Grant Havers.)

“If, in The Washington Post, one were to describe the elder Qaddafi as ‘a complex and adaptive thinker as well as an efficient, if laid-back, autocrat,’ if one were to call him ‘flexible and pragmatic,’ if one were to go on to suggest that ‘Libya under Qaddafi has embarked on a journey that could make it the first Arab state to transition peacefully and without overt Western intervention to a stable, non-autocratic government and, in time, to an indigenous mixed constitution favoring direct democracy locally and efficient government centrally,’ one would be apt—and with good reason—to be compared with Leni Riefenstahl, as Benjamin Barber was by Ken Silverstein at Harper’s Magazine.

Worse criticism would justifiably be in store for the intellectual sycophant who chose to write on the eve of the Libyan uprising, as Barber did at The Huffington Post, that Qaddafi ‘is not detested in the way that Mubarak has been detested and rules by means other than fear,’ especially if he were to add, ‘His son Seif, with a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the London School of Economics and two forthcoming books focused on liberalism in the developing world, has pioneered a gradualist approach to civil society in Libya, insisting along the way that he would accept no office that wasn’t subject to popular elections. No dynasty likely there.'”

READ ON.

[SNIP]

Because of their wide reach, Peggy Noonan (and her ilk)—while no intellectual— serves as a greater court courtesan than does the academic sycophant. As I chronicled in “LETHAL WEAPONS: NEOCON GROUPIES,” Noonan has gone as far as to conflate President Bush “with a Higher Power – Peggy believes God speaks through George W. Bush. From his furrows to his genitals, her high-flown linguistic banalities have lovingly depicted her man’s every inch. (See “He’s Got Two of ‘Em.”)

There are other culprits, of course.

UPDATE: Myron: You’re the funniest ever here on “nuance.” Why not cross-post this and other posts to the Facebook page, where the blog posts appear automatically? You’ll spice up the place in no time.

No To Strafing Libya

Foreign Policy, John McCain, Military, Neoconservatism, Reason, UN, War

“No-Fly Zone” is one of those Orwellian coinages; it conjures a protective shield from high-above. But why not ask the Iraqis about this manna from the heavens? Before the US invaded Iraq, it had been bombing the place illegally—and immorally—over the unilaterally established No-Fly Zone. Not such a comfort if you’re on the ground. I’ll give the Obama Administration this: at least one of its officials has called a spade a spade. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush era, has explained what a “No-Fly Zone” over Libya actually entails (See CBS):

“A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses.” He added that it couldn’t be done by a single aircraft carrier off the coast. “It’s a big operation in a big country,” Gates said. … In other words, there is no need to establish a no-fly zone, at least for now, and no desire within the military to do it period. The U.S. military has long experience with no-fly zones — more than a decade over Iraq — and knows what it takes, not just jets but tankers and early warning aircraft.

The neoconservatives were champing at the bit to take the battle for Libya away from the Libyan people and put it where it belongs: the US military. Steven Hayes of the Weekly Standard made a weak case on FoxNews. Essentially, the US needed to quickly and self-righteously compensate for its lackluster reaction (here’s mine) to the Egyptian revolt.

Fumed McMussolini: “We are spending $500 billion not counting Iraq and Afghanistan on our nation’s defense. Don’t tell me we can’t do a no-fly zone over Tripoli. (FoxNews) Impeccable reasoning, as always, from the senator. To wit, even if the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan were essential to the defense of the realm—and they are certainly not-–why does it follow that Libya is too?

Sen. John McCain should know a thing or two. In all, he lost five jets during his time. (As Steve Sailer once quipped, “To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness.”)

There’s one more pesky detail. CBS again: “Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same subcommittee that the Pentagon has no confirmation that Libyan strongman Muammar al Qaddafi is using his air force to kill civilians.”

Fibbing our way into occupying a country: Remind me why that sounds familiar.

The Dawn of Democracy

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East

Diana West notes the under-reported “triumphal return to Egypt of the poisonous Yusef al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s favorite cleric who just drew 2 million Egyptians back to Tahrir Square where he prayed for the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.” She ponders the “delusional belief that American principles — freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equality before the law — have a natural place as ‘universal principles’ in a culture grounded in Shariah principles. This is the pure fantasy that has driven our foreign policy through a decade of ‘nation-building’ wars. …”

One quibble: The revolution in Egypt had its own momentum. The US and its incoherent foreign policy had little to do with the Changing of the kleptokratic Guard in Egypt.

More at “Big Peace.”