Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: Republicans Desperately Need To … Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy (Entrenched, Un-Rothbardian Meta-Perspective)

Democrats, Elections, Just War, libertarianism, Liberty, Middle East, Military, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, War

Democrats and Republicans are warring over who won last night’s vice presidential debate. Democrats say Joe Biden; Republicans Paul Ryan.

While I agree with Daniel Pipes’ impressions of Biden’s repulsive demeanor (excerpted below); to the impartial observer, the outcome was clear. This time around, Ryan took the place Barack Obama occupied last week: loser.

Or, rather, relative loser (BHO was an absolute loser).

Ryan, of course, was never as bad a loser as Obama, as he is far more intelligent, studious, and quicker on his feet than the president. But overall—and during most of the bickering—Ryan lost.

Here’s Pipes on “Joe Biden’s smirk”:

Actually it was not just the smirk – it was also the false hilarity, the 82 interruptions of Ryan, the finger pointing, the preening arrogance, and the talking down to the audience – that overshadowed all else in the debate. Not until the last fifteen minutes did Biden talk like a normal human being, and then he became quite effective. Before then, however, his ugly demeanor overwhelmed his words, leaving a powerfully unpleasant impression. In contrast, Ryan spoke earnestly and respectfully, even while getting in a couple of sharp elbow jabs.

Dr. Pipes and I diverge over the nature of the principles mentioned, but Pipes correctly points to the absence of any in the debate, writing that, “With only a few exceptions, both candidates (as was also the case in the presidential debate) stayed aloof from principles, preferring to make the case as to who is the more competent manager. … those endless numbers and the disagreements over small facts meant the discussion verged on the tedious.”

Particularly painful (to longtime observers vested in an Old-Right, non-interventionist foreign policy) was Ryan’s deer-in-the-headlights look under Biden’s relentless barrage of,

“You gonna go to war (Iran)? You’d rather Americans be going in doing the job instead of the [Afghan] trainees? You wanna send our soldiers to the border with Pakistan; let the Afghans step-up. We’re leaving! Let them step-up. The last thing America needs is to get in another ground war in the Middle East …”

I’ll say this much: Poor Paul Ryan knows his Afghan mountain passes.

His boss’s behind Biden saved.

The debate dovetailed with “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy,” this week’s column, now on RT. It pointed out that “in fact, there is little daylight between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, as far as foreign policy goes.”

UPDATED (Oct 14): ENTRENCHED, UN-ROTHBARDIAN META-PERSPECTIVE. In reply to the Facebook thread, and Myron Pauli’s entrenched meta-perspective.

Myron, you mean you would not wish to hear and see Republicans commit to not launching wars and leaving all foreign bases? What kind of libertarianism is THAT!? Not Murray Rothbard’s. He was a tireless political junky, never one to sit on the fence lazily and feign disinterested piety. Alas, we have this debate every week, Myron. It’s not a debate. You adopt the same meta-perspective on politics; I cut and paste a characterization of your response, and it is this: “… We libertarians must not comment on policy, for it compromises our precious libertarian purity. We must not apply the mind to the issues of the day to enlighten our readers and bring them closer to liberty, for no enlightenment other than the immediate and absolute application and acceptance of the non-aggression axiom can be entertained.

Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Middle East, Political Philosophy, Republicans, War

The quote is from the current column, “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy,” now on WND:

“‘He’s the first Nobel Peace Prize winner with a kill list.’ Excerpted from a PBS documentary, “The Choice 2012,” that is a pithy and apt adage to describe President Barack Obama’s warrior credentials.

Mitt Romney has promised that ‘there would be no daylight between the United States and Israel,’ when in fact there is little of the same between he and Obama, as far as foreign policy goes. If anything, the fact that Obama has resisted Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls to invade Iran plays in the president’s favor.

The sum of rival Romney’s foreign policy is this: Anything Obama can do, I can do deadlier.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough points out the same.

Against the wishes of war-weary Americans, Romney has vowed to arm the Syrian rebels. But Obama, discreetly, is already doing in that country what he did “for” Libya: Level it and invite into it an evil even greater than The Dictator he helped oust. …

… From behind familiar parapets, the neoconservatives at the Washington Post are egging Mitt Romney on to heights of depravity which Obama, in their book, has failed to obtain. …

This president is perceived in the Middle East as hawk. Yet the WaPo would like to see him replaced by a vulture militarist.

… Having turned the political flip-flop into an art form, Romney should try to elevate it in the cause of a principle. …”

The complete column, now on WND, is “Desperately Seeking A Flip-Flop On Foreign Policy.” Read it.

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Talking Turkey

Foreign Policy, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, The West

Ever wonder what’s up between Turkey and Syria? Mainstream media is unlikely to talk turkey about the developing conflict between the two countries on their shared border.

Robert Fisk of The Independent fills in the blanks:

…Bashar al-Assad is a despot, his regime is awful … BUT. When it comes to international law, to moral compromise, to sheer hypocrisy, the Western powers take the biscuit. La Clinton raves on about Syrian depravity when Syrian shells slaughter a Turkish woman and her four children – which they did – but gives succour to the gunmen who torture and kill and suicide-bomb the regime’s supporters inside Syria.
…And another story that isn’t being told. Syrian shells exploding in Turkey are largely landing in the province of Hatay (Akçakale is further east), but what is not being reported is that until 1939, Hatay was part of Syria – and that Syria still claims this coastal province as Syrian territory. The real story – since it involves Europe and Hitler – should be told. For hundreds of years, this territory was Syrian. Alexandretta (now Iskenderun) was the finest port in Syria. But as the power of Nazi Germany grew in the 1930s, the French, who then held the League of Nations mandate for Syria, decided to hand the whole place over to the Turks – in the hope that Turkey would join the Allied side against Hitler.
A fraudulent referendum was held and the mass of Arabs in the province – tens of thousands of them Alawites, who form the backbone of Assad’s regime today – fled south, along with an almost equal number of Armenians who had survived the 1915 Turkish genocide. Today, the children and grandchildren of those Armenians tacitly support the Assad regime.

MORE.

UPDATED: Benghazigate And The True Tools of Deception

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Media, Middle East

Intimately familiar with the way information flows in and from the White House, Pat Buchanan relates that the day after the Benghazi attack, the intelligence community would have known this was terrorism. Yet 2 days after that, Jay Carney was talking a spontaneous attack. Who was it, asks Buchanan, who briefed Carney, and told him to go out and lie? In the White house Buchanan worked in it would have been the chief of staff and the NSC (National Security Council) adviser.

Next, 4 days on, out Susan Rice was trotted , she too a (willing) tool (in more than one ways) of deception. The FBI never went in to investigate the scene of the attack because Benghazi is an “utterly unsafe” city, although fifteen days following the attack, Rice promised the FBI was in there. That never happened, says Buchanan.

There is nothing new or particular galling, on the political scale of ethic, about what Buchanan has outlined.

The bigger scandal in all this is the “cover up of the cover up.” And the real tools (of deception) are the media Mafia, focusing as they are on poor Mitt Romney’s assorted hiccups, so as to cover for their Godfather Obama.

UPDATE (10/2): The consulate in Benghazi was, of course, a typical US government operation. There was full-on access to anyone who wanted it after the attack as before it. Arwa Damon of CNN tells of a scene unsecured after the attack, locals coming and going, rummaging through the compound and taking mementos (paid for by US taxpayers). Would that this manifest hostility to American presence in Libya deterred future diplomats from “duty,” but it won’t. What the fiasco in Benghazi means is not that America will divest from democratizing the word, but, rather, that the American taxpayer will fork out for fortresses, for Green Zones everywhere.