Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Oy Vey Uyghur!

China, Foreign Policy, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Palestinian Authority, Russia, Terrorism

“Oy vey, or just oy,” writes Wikipedia, is a [Yiddish] exclamation of dismay or exasperation meaning ‘woe.” Woe indeed. The Uyghurs, as far as I know, are to China as the Chechens are to Russia: fractious Muslims, with mayhem on their minds, a state-of-being also described as a quest for “self-determinism,” when used by left-liberals vis-à-vis the acting-out Palestinians, Uyghurs and Chechens do.

Yet, for the life of me, I cannot locate on Wikipedia a reference to the Muslim faith of the estimable Uyghurs, now rioting in China’s Xinjiang region.

Wikipedia does note, without elaborating, that China sympathized with the US after 9/11, but leaves hanging the reaction of the Uyghurs. Did they dance in the streets as their Palestinian coreligionists did?

Ever consistent (NOT), expect neocons to weigh-in on the side of Uyghur independence (forgetting that they just bemoaned the release from Gitmo of a couple of Uyghurs), as liberals like Obama, on a Disney-like tour to Russia, imperiously counter with calls for Georgian and Chechen independence. Idiots all.

‘Chest-Thumping Interventionists’

Foreign Policy, Iran, Neoconservatism

Alan Bock is scathing about the “heedless and self-important” “Fox-type personalities”; the people who “have spent most of their careers being wrong,” and their pronouncements about Iran.

“It is difficult to exaggerate the perniciousness and childishness of those who, as the Iranian situation unfolds, are practicing what Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal column Friday called ‘Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else’s delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.'” a

…You can find them in full-throated bellowing mode on Fox News, at National Review online, and elsewhere in the various corners of the conservative – and sometimes moderate or liberal – blogosphere.”

I’m glad Peggy, who cheered for Bush’s war, his body parts—and for his every other bombastic utterance—has wizened up.

'Chest-Thumping Interventionists'

Foreign Policy, Iran, Neoconservatism

Alan Bock is scathing about the “heedless and self-important” “Fox-type personalities”; the people who “have spent most of their careers being wrong,” and their pronouncements about Iran.

“It is difficult to exaggerate the perniciousness and childishness of those who, as the Iranian situation unfolds, are practicing what Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal column Friday called ‘Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else’s delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.'” a

…You can find them in full-throated bellowing mode on Fox News, at National Review online, and elsewhere in the various corners of the conservative – and sometimes moderate or liberal – blogosphere.”

I’m glad Peggy, who cheered for Bush’s war, his body parts—and for his every other bombastic utterance—has wizened up.

Update II: 'The Narcissism Revolution'

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, History, Intelligence, Iran, Old Right, Propaganda

Richard Spencer of Taki’s Magazine makes astute observations about the cloying American coverage of what he dubs “The Narcissism Revolution.” “The blogosphere has been far worse. If Republicans are saying, ‘We’re all Iranians now!’ then with the bloggers it’s, ‘The Iranians are all Americans now!’ It’s the Narcissism Revolution, and everything that happens in Tehran is, pretty much, all about us.”

Richard captures the self-absorption madness. To apply his whipping words to McCain (they were meant for Jonah Goldberg): “Hate to break it to [you], but [Iranians] don’t like you, they really don’t like you.”

Does anyone think Iranians are hanging on the words of the sanctimonious moron who let loose with the ditty, “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran”? I don’t think so.

I don’t get the National Geographic Channel. My impression is that it’s stacked with skirts such as Lisa Ling, transmitting the propaganda du jour, as they travel through “dying” forests and straddle “dissolving” icecaps.

Now that Ling is preoccupied getting her sister free after the latter was caught nosing around in North Korea, they’ve allowed an intelligent man, in-the-know, to impart to a mind-numbingly ignorant people something of the history of American interference with Iran.

I believe Michael Scheuer is associated with “Iran and the West,” although I can’t see his name among the list of credits.

It should be worth watching.

Update I (June 22): “The Narcissism Revolution” is in full swing. Glenn Beck, indistinguishable from the neocons on foreign affairs, entertained a guest on his show, from one of the Spread Democracy think tanks. The man said, and I paraphrase, “the Iranians are holding up signs in English; they are speaking to us.” As Spencer observed, “It’s all about us.” The same contention I’ve heard made repeatedly by the Republican Mullahs.

Update II (June 23): A good post by Prof. Bainbridge, who conjures Russel Kirk in support of the paleo-libertarian, in my case, (paleo-conservative in Buchanan’s case) mitts-off approach to Iran:

Of Bush 41’s war on Saddam, Kirk wrote that: “Now indubitably Saddam Hussein is unrighteous; but so are nearly all the masters of the “emergent” African states (with the Ivory Coast as a rare exception), and so are the grim ideologues who rule China, and the hard men in the Kremlin, and a great many other public figures in various quarters of the world. Why, I fancy that there are some few unrighteous men, conceivably, in the domestic politics of the United States. Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away? Just that is what happened in the Congo, remember, three decades ago; and nowadays in Zaire, once called the Belgian Congo, we zealously uphold with American funds the dictator Mobutu, more blood-stained than Saddam. And have we forgotten Castro in Cuba?” To which one might now add Hamas in Gaza.

Kirk pointed out that the policies of Bush 41 resulted in a situation in which, “in every continent, the United States is resented increasingly as the last and most formidable of imperial systems.”

Bush 43 made that situation even worse by trying to impose democracy by military means.

And that’s what paleos despise.

Concludes Bainbridge: “I’ve changed my mind in recent days about Obama’s handling of this issue. On this issue, I think he’s being remarkably prudent in Kirk’s sense of the word.”