Category Archives: Foreign Policy

“North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic…The North Koreans opened the door to some 400 people, the largest contingent of Americans to visit this isolated, totalitarian state since the Korean War ended in 1953. The group includes musicians, orchestra staff, television production crews and 80 journalists, as well as patrons who paid $100,000 a couple.

The Philharmonic will play in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the American and North Korean national anthems, is to be broadcast live on state radio and television. That will be a novelty for a populace shut off from the world by government censorship.”

And it would have been a novelty in the US had stations other than CNN broadcast this positive event. Perhaps America would once again adopt the “novel” idea that genuine change is best achieved through peaceful trade and voluntary exchange of cultural products.

Celebrating the Creeping Caliphate in Kosovo

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Islam, Media, War

Is there any doubt that by intervening in Kosovo, we strengthened the al Qaida-backed, Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, and Islam’s greater project, to the detriment of Orthodox Christian Serbs? Is there any doubt who the neocons are supporting when they get in Putin’s face about Chechnya, another terrorist entity?

Republicans blasted Clinton, and for good reason, for warring against Serbia. The same principled people have made lingering in Iraq, and loving that equally unjust foreign policy foray, a fulcrum of their candidate’s presidential platform. The Christians of Iraq are numbered; they’ve been eliminated or expunged thanks to Bush’s faith-based intervention.

Geraldo Rivera, the neoliberal (or Neolithic) Fox fabulist, was dancing in the streets in celebration of Kosovo’s independence. What was he celebrating? In whose honor were Bush and his bastardized conservatives prancing about? Was this an ode to Clinton’s folly for partaking in an assault on a Christian country—Serbia—which, as Patrick J. Buchanan reminds us, was “an ally in two world wars, and [had] never attacked us”?

Where is Ron Paul when you need him?

Hillary Blabbers About Bhutto

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Islam

“Hillary Clinton is demanding answers about the death of Benazir Bhutto.” She is also demanding that the fracas in Pakistan be internationalized—call in the UN, says she. And above all, put pressure on the already impotent President Pervez Musharraf to usher in democracy. Or hold “free and fair elections,” as she puts it. As though Musharraf alone is what stands between the people of Pakistan—who apparently yearn to breathe free—and democratic institutions and the rule of law.

The harridan Hillary differs very little from Bush: she announced her belief that America is obligated to shore-up civil society in Pakistan and address the “root causes” of the restive, ever-seething Muslim Street in that country. (To quote Clinton: “I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with healthcare and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.”) Can you say Nation Building?!

This is a meddler with paws stickier than Bush’s.

Above all, in her reaction to Bhutto’s assassination, Hillary has demonstrated that she is a deeply silly woman, having learned nothing from the adventure in Iraq. Forcing democracy down Iraqi gullets—now that worked out really well, didn’t? How about in the Palestinian Authority? At our insistence, democratic elections were held in the PA, and voila! The freedom loving Palestinians voted for Hamas, which the US then promptly boycotted. Egypt anybody? Think the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely gain a majority if American idiots got the better of a recalcitrant Mubarak and forced him to democratize.

Be careful what you wish for in Pakistan, Hillary! They say about 50 percent of Pakistanis support the al Qaeda Islamist elements and the resurgent Taliban.

As for Bhutto whom the liberal media has hurried to canonize: No doubt, her death is tragic. But you have to admit that she was utterly reckless, bobbing up and down from sun roofs in unarmored, unprotected, rickety vehicles. Musharraf ought to have kept her under house arrest for her own good.

Nor was Bhutto such a saint; her niece certainly disputes her sainted status. Nor was she much of a “democrat”—for what it’s worth in that part of the world—during her time in office. Had she come to share power with Musharraf, she’d have supported an ongoing American presence in Pakistan. That might have also raised some of her countrymen’s hackles.

Huckabee’s Hardcore On Israel

Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

I’ve been extremely critical of Huckabee. See “Ron Paul’s Electability” and “Huck’s For Huck—Paul’s For America.”

But I think I’ve just come across the only policy position Huckabee has professed that I rather like. Dr. Daniel Pipes disagrees:

“[T]rue connoisseurs of the Republican candidate for president are still wrapping their arms around this foreign policy insight delivered in a September interview:

‘If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it needs to be on land that doesn’t threaten the existence or security of Israel. There is a lot of available real estate around the world that would not be a direct threat to Israel’s security.’

James D. Besser, who conducted this interview, added that ‘Huckabee declined to offer suggestions about where that [real estate] might be.’ Uganda or Birobidjan, perhaps? (December 24, 2007)

Here Huckabee sounds just like the Likud Party once sounded. That may not be very pragmatic, considering that the Right in Israel perished a shot time ago, but why is it a bad thing?

Huckabee is certainly in line here with evangelical thinking—and my own. Come to think of it, I think I’ve just stumbled on the first Huckabee-held policy position that I like: quit pushing for statehood for these radical people.