Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Updated: The "Blessings" Of Bush Ongoing In Iraq

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

The heyday for Iraq’s Christian community was under Saddam Hussein, when “Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq’s population in 1980. By 2008,” thanks to the Bush pig, “they were merely 0.89 percent.” Iraq’s “dwindling Christian community,” “whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries,” has suffered a terrible loss today.

“Militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 58 people dead and 78 wounded — nearly everyone inside.”

Judging from the outcome of the “rescue” raid led by the Iraqi security forces, the latter took almost as much care to avoid casualties as the militants themselves. We trained those Iraqis well, now didn’t we?

If you think Americans are capable of changing the fundamental disregard for the sanctity of human life, endemic among Muslims in that part of the world—you’re an idiot.

UPDATE: Here are some of the headlines coming out of Iraq, via Antiwar.com:

21 Bombs Across Iraqi Capital: At Least 110 Killed

Church Massacre Another Blow for Iraqi Christians
Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy
Iraqis Fear al-Qaeda Revival After Church Siege
Tuesday: 117 Iraqis Killed, 322 Wounded

But what of those ink-stains digits? Democracy is a mess of pottage. It does nothing to safeguard what matters: life, liberty and property.

UPDATED: Tea Party Must Go To War With The War Party (Abu Ghraib à la Afghanistan)

Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

Ending the warfare state is the only ray of hope for down-and-out, indebted America. With laser-like precision, Pat Buchanan zeroes in on the tack the tea party must take if it is to tackle the federal-induced “deficit-debt crisis, a national debt nearing 100 percent of gross domestic product and a deficit of 10 percent of GDP.” There is only “one place where a bipartisan majority may be found for major spending cuts: defense and the empire, the warfare state.”

“After Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Buchanan, in “Tea Party vs. War Party?”, “the American people are not going to give the establishment and War Party a free hand in foreign policy. Every patriot will do what is necessary and pay what is needed to defend his country. But national security is one thing, empire security another.”

There is another matter I have raised in “Statism Starts With You!” and other recent columns, and it is “America’s fondness for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which combined, account for close to half of the federal government’s budget.” “Only 7 percent of the country will consider slashing the first two welfare programs. And a mere eleven percent of those living in the ‘Land of the Free’ are prepared to pare down Medicaid. Keep the government out of my Medicare!”

For a lack of any other viable option for stalling State spending, the Tea Party must position itself in opposition to Obama’s volitional and inherited wars; ignore Mr. Hannity’s nagging about “Empire security,” and preach and proselytize about the end of Empire.

If ever there was a religious cause, ending America’s military forays abroad is it.

UPDATE: Abu Ghraib à la Afghanistan. You remember the pornographic pictorials from Abu Ghraib prison, starring some sadistic and slutty servicemen and women? Well, GI JOE and GI HO have relocated. And they will continue to do their thing until the US government stops unleashing them in other countries. (Place them on the US-Mexico border where they can scare some gangsters their own size—drug cartel members—if that’s not posse comitatus.)

HERE goes:

Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses and severed fingers.
The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.

UPDATED: Tea Party Totals GOP Candidate

Elections, Foreign Policy, Iran, Media, Politics, Republicans

I know little about Christine O’Donnell (other than that she admires The Hildebeest), but she sure seems a sweetheart. She has just “defeated veteran politician Mike Castle for the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware.” The GOP has responded to the whipping of one of its crooked politicians with this throw down:

“Republican aides told Fox News Tuesday that the National Republican Senatorial Committee will not be funding O’Donnell’s general election campaign, leaving it up to Palin and the Tea Party Express to do the heavy lifting.”

Given GOP good will, why is O’Donnell already talking about cooperating with establishment Republicans “for the common good”?

Reaching across the aisle to get things done is a euphemism for relinquishing principles in favor of political expediency. As one hardcore tea partier said to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “the only time I want my representative to reach across the isle is to grab a Democrat by the throat.”

Read more about what mainstream media are calling “an upset.”

* Unrelated: I am traveling to a WND event. I will be back at my desk in a few days. My WND column will resume next week.

UPDATE: (Sept. 20): Lew Rockwell wonders whether Christine O’Donnell can be all bad since she is “hated by Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, John Cornyn, the Club for Growth, and Dick Armey’s KochWorks.”

Alas, “she calls for murdering the unborn and everyone else in Iran, and is, in general, a foreign policy neocon.”

UPDATE III: 2010 Battle For Baghdad

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Law, Military, War

“The futility of establishing the rule of law in a place which has no tradition of it, notwithstanding, even if some color is given to the claim that the surge [has] ‘worked,’ it has to be clear that force is a limited weapon against a cause with unlimited recruits. It can cut back the number of insurgents by killing lots, it cannot eliminate the causes fueling the insurgency—these are, predominantly, the religious animus between Shia and Sunni that dates back to AD 680, and the American occupation. Brute force will temporarily curtail the first, but will only inflame the reaction to the last.”

That is how I summed up a September 14, 2007 column, on the week of the tiresome testimonies of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker as to the surge-related success in reducing violence in Iraq. During that week, 79 Iraqis were murdered and 38 were wounded.

Tell me if anything has changed, 3 years on. According to the AP, “Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.”

Read MORE.

Of course, now the battle is on for the spoils of occupation. Without one strongman to provide law and order in that blighted and benighted spot, many smaller, less benevolent dictators have been loosed on the long-suffering Iraqis.

UPDATE I: To Mike: Bibi Netanyahu might have waxed fat about the wonders of exporting democracy, but did he adopt this American—previously French-Jacobin—form of oppression? Not on your life. Israel pretty much sticks to defending its threatened borders.

UPDATE II: Mike, Bibi speaks a superb Hebrew too. As a matter of fact, his son recently won Israel’s prestigious National Bible Quiz for Youth. I will be pleasantly surprised if the US has an equivalent competition. You have to be very bright to win this prize. It was always big deal and we all watched it on TV as youngsters. (You’d try and shout out the answers, but could seldom keep up with the talent.)

I think Chelsea Clinton is a hard-working, smart young woman (and pretty refined). But I can’t imagine the Bush, Obama, or McCain brood doing something seriously intellectual; the kind of thing that required unadulterated brain power (a degree in math), rather than feel-goodism (speak up for gay marriage).

UPDATE III: BACK to the topic. From PBS come the stories of Iraqi refugees on the joys of Daisy-Cutter delivered democracy (and yes, neo-creeps, Iraq once had a very viable professional class):

“DR. JALAL AL BAYA, dental surgeon (through translator): I had the largest dental practice in the country. And I had to abandon it when I fled to Jordan. There were lots of threats. And most of the scientists and doctors were targeted, so we had to reach out for a safe haven that was closest. And, for us, that was Jordan.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The large family home was destroyed in a car bombing and shelling that ripped through their Baghdad neighborhood. That’s when Al Baya joined an exodus of Iraqi professionals, fleeing threats of kidnapping or just running from the wrong side of a political or religious divide. By some estimates, since 2003, at least 60 percent of Iraq’s doctors have either left or stopped practicing.”

MORE.