Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: Hagel Raises Neocon Hackles (‘Axis Of Error’ Enraged)

Foreign Policy, Israel, Middle East, Neoconservatism

Neoconservatives are having grand mal seizures and that’s a good thing. “President Obama on Monday nominated former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary,” reports the Washington Post.

Obama called Hagel “the leader that our troops deserve” and a “champion of our troops and our veterans and our military families.” He said Hagel, a former Army sergeant, would be the first person of enlisted rank and the first Vietnam War veteran to head the Defense Department.
“Maybe most importantly, Chuck knows that war is not an abstraction, Obama said.

CNN recounts that Hagel’s:

fierce opposition to the Iraq War went far toward creating the schism that now exists between him and the Republican establishment.
“The damage this war has done to our country will play out for years to come,” he wrote in his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter.”
“While it is easy for nations to blunder into war, they never blunder into peace,” he added.
His opposition to the 2009 surge in Afghanistan put him at odds with the president who nominated him.

This is all good, although Hagel’s promise to “advance global freedom, decency and humanity’ in the effort to ‘build a better world for all mankind'” smacks of neocon Manifest Destiny. Defend US borders and no more.

As to the hackles Hagel has raised among Israel devotees. “Nothing Hagel has said about Israel,” ventures Richard Cohen at the WaPo, “is not said in the Israeli press on a daily basis. Trust me: By the Wall Street Journal’s standards, Israeli media would be deeply anti-Semitic.”

(Cohen points out that Chuck Hagel “earned his wariness of war the hard way — two Purple Hearts in Vietnam.” Cohen is wrong to frame war wariness as a privilege that needs to be earned.)

UPDATE (Jan. 8): Lindsey Graham, a member of the unholy trinity of neoconservative law makers—the “three amigos; the three blind mice; aka the ‘axis of error’”—“was on CNN’s ‘STATE OF THE UNION’ yesterday calling this an ‘in your face’ nomination and basically saying that this is going to be a very controversial pick for President Obama.”

Walk Like An Egyptian

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Government, Liberty, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Republicans, The State

“This just in: The Secret Service backed by the District of Columbia Police Department is battling thousands of protesters outside President Barack Obama’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ‘palace,’ prompting the socialist ‘leader to leave the building. Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Obama’s November … decree that expanded his powers. ‘The people want the downfall of the regime,’ the demonstrators chant. ‘Our marches are against tyranny and the constitutional … decree, and we won’t retract our position until our demands are met.'”

The excerpt was from “Walk Like an Egyptian,” the current column. Read more about “the competing realities presented” by an apoplectic press with “a stars-and-stripes bias,” and my hope that Americans act more like Egyptians.

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UPDATED: Sarin On Syria? (Boobus Americanus Rides Again)

Iraq, Just War, Media, Middle East, War, WMD

A sudden flood of assertions by our media asses that President Bashar Assad is about to poison “his people” with the Sarin nerve agent sounds as credible as Colin Powell’s WMD multimedia presentation to the UN, to justify the invasion of Iraq.

You are wont to read, for example, that “A senior U.S. official told Fox News” that Syrian forces were loading bombs with “components of sarin gas.”

No names, no specifics.

Sarin on Syria is probably the Obama Administration’s casus belli for a ground invasion.

DEBKAfile’s anonymous military sources, via RT, report that, “The USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating US preparation for a potential ground intervention. …[The] Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAD] system and … the AEGIS system, which counters missiles that can reach outside the atmosphere,” are allegedly “aboard the USS Eisenhower.”

UPDATE (Dec. 7): When a ruse to get Americans to go along with war works, use it again, and again, and again. WMD got the US “safely” into Iraq. “Safely,” because, aside from a marginalized few (this one, for example), Boobus Americanus asked very few questions, and still cares not a whit about the legitimacy of maiming and killing hundreds of thousands Iraqis and Americans, and bankrupting our country.

The “blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids” may be set to ride again.

“There are no confirmed reports that Damascus is preparing to use chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian conflict,” confirms the UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

And a reminder for members of the booboisie: Endless are the reasons to dismantle the U.N., but stalling one of the US’s wars of aggressive is not one of them. (Read “U.S.: GLOBAL GOVERNOR?” before joining the thread on Facebook.)

UPDATED: Iran, Susan Rice And The Tit-For-Tat Gangs

Democrats, Iran, Middle East, Republicans, Trade, UN

The Stupid Party and its followers have been maligning “United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice for an investment portfolio that “includes investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in several energy companies known for doing business with Iran, according to financial disclosure forms.”

The Evil Party and its devotees have responded by pointing “to ]John] McCain’s financial disclosures, which reveal $1,000 to $15,000 in the JP Morgan International Value Fund. What’s the second-biggest holding in that fund? Why, Royal Dutch Shell, of course. McCain has another $1,000 to $15,000 stake in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Equity Fund, which invests in China’s CNOOC, which has contracts to ‘develop some of Iran’s biggest oil and gas fields.'”

Two observations: The arguments the Democratic and Republican factions advance exist on a continuum of cretinism. There is no qualitative difference between them. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that Iranians should be crippled economically, when the truth is that Iran should be bartered with, not boycotted. Trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to Iran’s belligerence. The more economically intertwined countries become, the less likely they are to go to war.

The second and secondary point is that the woman (Susan Rice) probably has no idea how all her money is invested. Most people do not examine each and every investment fund they have in their portfolio.

UPDATED (Dec. 2): Rice may, however, be accused of hypocrisy and worse for enforcing sanctions, yet investing in Iran.