Category Archives: Iraq

Updated: Will Europe Resist The Voodoo Child’s Magic?

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Iraq, Israel, Regulation, War

I’m still coming to grips with the reality of Europe being more fiscally prudent than the US. An American (who else?) think-tank head has framed the European opposition to Obama’s obscene deficit/bankruptcy/inflationary spending, with reference to “a certain backlash against the American economic model,” hubris I find difficult to parse. Such “vulgar Keynesianism” is not a model; it’s a crime!

I worry that Obama will work his magic on Merkel and the rest and convince them to adopt his voodoo economics. Then there really will be no place to run. A pied piper will have enticed the world over a cliff … (And I have family in Europe.)

Chancellor Angela Merkel, to her great credit, has said “Nein” to stimulus and bailouts. Disparagingly, American diplomats put it down to combined “profound German instinct against debt – and its accompanying inflation – with a widely held sentiment here that the US and Wall Street are to blame for creating the global crisis.”

Can’t argue with the Chancellor, can you?!

Obama departed today for London, in advance of the Group of 20 Summit there. Reports The Christian Science Monitor:

“The White House recently signaled it has all but given up hope that the leaders Obama meets this week will make major commitments along the lines the US would like to see – either in terms of big spending packages for the economy or of additional troops or resources for Afghanistan.”

“Obama is expected to encounter an adoring public but a deep skepticism – even resistance – among heads of state.” …

“How well Mr. Obama can parlay his personal popularity into convincing leadership is a key question hanging over his global coming-out party. With many leaders blaming the United States for planting the seeds of the first global recession since World War II, America’s ability to continue as the world’s unrivaled power, whether in economic or other matters, is likely to be an undercurrent of meetings with the G-20 leaders, NATO, and in bilateral meetings with his counterparts.”

[SNIP]

As to “A War He Can Call His Own”; that’s old. Obama has always wanted to “maintain a meaty presence in Afghanistan, and “may even be conjuring up new monsters and new missions” we don’t know of yet. Europeans don’t like that; Demopublican globalists stateside do.

Update (April 1): Naturally, realize we must that, while Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel must be lauded for not wishing to take their respective countries down the road to ruin Obama has set us upon; the two European leaders are still only half as bad as Obama.

Both are working from the premise that unbridled capitalism, the system that has almost never been tried—the Unknown Ideal in Ayn Rand’s words—is the culprit in the meltdown.

The man who married a bimbo said he aims “to give capitalism a conscience, because capitalism has lost its conscience.” “This is a historic and unique opportunity to build a new world,” he added.

Brother Obama is down with that fallacy. So while Europeans will not heed him in as much as spending goes, they will find common grounds “on tax havens, hedge fund regulation, banking transparency and a worldwide cap on bankers’ pay.”

However crippling to capital markets and to financial freedom these and other draconian measure agreed upon in Europe will be—they do not rival the damage of bankruptcy.

Thanks to The Leader the American people elected, here in the US, we’ll be the beneficiaries of a double dose of poison: international regulation, with its attendant implications for national sovereignty, and bankruptcy.

Joy!

Note: Obama is hip to the fact that “United States was unlikely to return to its role as a ‘voracious consumer market.’” That much is true.

Update III: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Frum

Iraq, Just War, Liberty, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism, War

Neoconservative David Frum writes in Newsweek: “I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect).”

Like, whatever.

“In 2007, 17,430 Iraqis died in violence. In 2008, 6,772 people were killed. The first two months of 2009 saw 449 die, the lowest official toll since the invasion.”

All in all, the documented civilian deaths from violence are: 91,131 – 99,510.

Murder makes David “feel silly.” Kind of like a school girl. I like totally get that, although, I’m not sure Iraqis are feeling as giggly. In fact I know they’re not.

Friday was the anniversary of the March 20th American invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Click “Iraq” to read my archives.)

Update I (March 21): A reply to Fanusi’s comment. If you’ve read my archives, you also know that I’m persona non grata among the chattering class–the idiot elites who monopolize discourse in this country, despite having a 100% error rate. Therefore a debate between myself and Hitchens will never happen.

Were the gormless gladiators of (so-called) conservative cable to stage a debate, it would be between a popular bimbo and his highness Hitchens (a very intelligent man, in my opinion, and a fabulous writer). That’s the level of debate they cultivate–and are comfortable with. (Besides, I’m a writer, not a circus animal à la Coulter. I’m quite happy to be left alone—and out of the nation’s TV vomitorium.)

As to Fanusi’s “argument”: By “Baghdad being home to men like Abu Nidal and Mr. Yasin” I presume he means that there were terrorists living in Iraq, ergo, we were justified in invading a country that did us no harm and posed no threat to America.

What about all the “Islamikazis” who call America home? What about the 9/11 mass murderers who relied for their plans on Condi and Bush’s sneering indifference to their Constitutional duties?

I’m afraid that the logic of Fanusi’s “argument” must lead us to invade Germany or The Netherlands as well. The latter probably have less of a handle on Islamic subversives than Saddam had; his interests were inimical to the goals of the jihadis. But neoconservatives haven’t yet grasped that simple fact, because, like, “dem Arabs are all the same.” Or as I put it, “McCain can’t tell Shiite from Shinola.”

We are incapable of defending our own borders against Mexican narco-terrorism. No need to look for monsters to destroy beyond our abysmally porous borders.

Update II: For those who’re interested, here are articles from the Frum Forum:

“Neocon Deluxe, David Frum, Damns Rush”

“SON OF UNCLE SAM”

“FRUM’S FLIMFLAM”

To be fair to Frum: I find him to be a fine writer. His first book was certainly very good–that was before he took to neoconing.

I never read Kristol and Brooks. It doesn’t get duller than those two. Ditto Krauthammer and Will, although the latter can write and the former has written one or two good pieces about the eco-idiots.

When Coulter is good she is very very good, but that’s twice a year, when she tackles the law or the gangreens. For the rest, she is actually a colossal bore: “liberals that; liberals this; Bush brilliant; B. Hussein Obama a bastard.” Insufferable stuff.

The last of her good pieces was “Olbermann’s plastic ivy,” about which I blogged.

But we’re straying.

Myron captures the soul and strategy of Frum: 1) America has changed. 2) In the New America, certain principles are obsolete. 3) If it wants to lead the principles-bereft America, the Party must adapt to this reality.

I don’t want to wade into the Republican fetus fixation. I’ll say only this: As a libertarian who owns her own body, I have no problem with reversing “Roe v. Wade.” Such a reversal will do no more than remove the issue from federal jurisdiction and discontinue that source of funding.

A woman has the right to pay for an abortion; she does not have the right to compel those who find her choice repugnant to pay for it. So, I have no idea what Frum is talking about when he says he is pro-choice (his wife is a “conservative” feminist). Leave it to localities to fund or not to fund.

Update III: I owe David Frum an apology. Mr.
Frum writes:

The sentence you quoted from my Newsweek article reads:

“I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton.”

By truncating the sentence in the way you did, you turn its meaning upside down.

If you cannot make a polemical point without deceit, you should reconsider the validity of your polemical point.

David Frum

[SNIP]

Mr. Frum is correct. I made a mistake.

To accuse me, however, of an intention to deceive because I made an honest, if hasty, mistake is wrong.

Supporting an impeachment over a lie about a sexual peccadillo is certainly silly, but failing to expiate for the role one played in an unjust war is way worse than silly.

Public expiation is owed for the war. It was not forthcoming. The sentence that followed mention of the invasion of Iraq seemed so frivolous, that, yes, I saw red, and misread.

For that I, once again, apologize.

Mr. Frum, however, has yet to apologize for a transgression far graver than my minor mistake: providing “intellectual” justification for that war.

Torturing The ‘Torture’ Issue (I)

Bush, Crime, Democrats, Iraq, War, WMD

Ever wonder why the Democrats and their media lapdogs never shut-up about the issue of torture, when Bush’s decision to wage an unjust, illegal war ought to be the focus of their Ire? The matter of torture is, after all, subsumed within the broader category of an unjust war. Moreover, one can make the case for torture in desperate, dire situations. (I’m not making the case, I’m saying that one can attempt to justify incidents of torture: you were not thinking clearly, you were desperate to avert another disaster, you wanted to save hostages; you worried you’d be blamed if you didn’t extract crucial information.) But how on earth do you justify lugging an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that is no danger to you and has not threatened you? You don’t, you can’t.

Democrats are nearly as culpable as Republicans on the matter of the war on Iraq. So they stick with their limited, safe mandate of torture. MSNBC’s Maddow and Olbermann, and their constitutional scholar, are thus careful to skirt the need to prosecute Bush and his bandits for invading Iraq. Instead, they stick to waterboarding.

CNN confirms that “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has called for a commission on torture allegations”:

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman called Wednesday for the establishment of a nonpartisan “commission of inquiry” to investigate allegations of wrongdoing against former Bush administration officials in their prosecution of the war on terrorism.

Nothing “did more to damage America’s place in the world than the revelation that our great nation stretched the law and the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel treatment,” Sen. Patrick Leahy said at the start of a committee hearing.

American “detention policies and practices from Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] and Abu Ghraib [Iraq] have seriously eroded fundamental American principles of the rule of law,” he added.

Leahy, D-Vermont, called for the “truth commission” to have a “targeted mandate” focusing on issues of national security and executive power. He said it should look specifically at allegations of “questionable interrogation techniques,” “extraordinary rendition” and the “executive override of laws.”

He added that the commission should have the power to issue subpoenas and offer immunity to witnesses “in order to get to the whole truth.”

Leahy refused to rule out of the possibility of prosecutions for perjury committed during the commission’s hearings.

Torturing The 'Torture' Issue

Bush, Crime, Democrats, Iraq, War, WMD

Ever wonder why the Democrats and their media lapdogs never shut-up about the issue of torture, when Bush’s decision to wage an unjust, illegal war ought to be the focus of their Ire? The matter of torture is, after all, subsumed within the broader category of an unjust war. Moreover, one can make the case for torture in desperate, dire situations. (I’m not making the case, I’m saying that one can attempt to justify incidents of torture: you were not thinking clearly, you were desperate to avert another disaster, you wanted to save hostages; you worried you’d be blamed if you didn’t extract crucial information.) But how on earth do you justify lugging an army across the ocean to occupy a third-world country that is no danger to you and has not threatened you? You don’t, you can’t.

Democrats are nearly as culpable as Republicans on the matter of the war on Iraq. So they stick with their limited, safe mandate of torture. MSNBC’s Maddow and Olbermann, and their constitutional scholar, are thus careful to skirt the need to prosecute Bush and his bandits for invading Iraq. Instead, they stick to waterboarding.

CNN confirms that “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has called for a commission on torture allegations”:

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman called Wednesday for the establishment of a nonpartisan “commission of inquiry” to investigate allegations of wrongdoing against former Bush administration officials in their prosecution of the war on terrorism.

Nothing “did more to damage America’s place in the world than the revelation that our great nation stretched the law and the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel treatment,” Sen. Patrick Leahy said at the start of a committee hearing.

American “detention policies and practices from Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] and Abu Ghraib [Iraq] have seriously eroded fundamental American principles of the rule of law,” he added.

Leahy, D-Vermont, called for the “truth commission” to have a “targeted mandate” focusing on issues of national security and executive power. He said it should look specifically at allegations of “questionable interrogation techniques,” “extraordinary rendition” and the “executive override of laws.”

He added that the commission should have the power to issue subpoenas and offer immunity to witnesses “in order to get to the whole truth.”

Leahy refused to rule out of the possibility of prosecutions for perjury committed during the commission’s hearings.