Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: Nothing Like A Peace Proposal to Out Warmakers (Like The Wicked Witch Of The East)

Feminism, Foreign Policy, Gender, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, War

In Libya, our murderous efforts brought the National Transitional Council to power, under whose rule massacres are a daily occurrence. (147 people dead today. “Inter-tribal clashes” is how the West is finessing the carnage.)

The West’s Libyan learning curve is about to crest in Syria, as the Us and its conniving (far smarter) Saudi pals are considering assistance to the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).

As RT reported, “Damascus has accepted Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to stop bloodshed in the country, a spokesman for the UN envoy to Syria announced… the Syrian government was willing to cooperate with Koffi Annan’s peace plan to ‘remove all excuses’ for possible international intervention.”

On the other hand, “the Syrian opposition refuse to accept any resolution that does not stipulate Assad’s removal, claiming that his acceptance of Annan’s 6-point proposal is merely an attempt to draw out the conflict.”

Meantime, at the “Friends of Syria” summit, which should be more honestly tagged “Friends of Syrian Rebels Summit (Allah bless their bonny heads),” The Hildebeest and her Saudi handlers debated the ultimatums to be presented to the Assad regime before overthrowal.

UPDATE (April 3): “THE WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST,” writes says Michael S. Rozeff, at LRC.COM, “has signaled the policy shift of the U.S. to bring down the current Syrian government by saying ‘We believe Assad must go…’ What is she brewing up to bring this about? This is a now familiar pattern. It was after Obama said the same thing about Gaddafi that the Empire went into high gear to remove him.”

The complete CBS quote of the Hildebeest’s words:

“We believe Assad must go, that the killing must stop. The sooner we get into a process that ends up there, the better.”

Clinton seems to have a major obsession about bringing the sufferers of the world under her “healing” ministrations. Another “War of the Womb.”

Jacqueline Kennedy was so smart; she said women should not be in politics. They are too emotional. (Later on she was forced to retract, as revealed in the audio recordings of Mrs. Kennedy’s historic 1964 conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger, on life with John F. Kennedy. I am currently listening to the tapes—and to her mesmerizing voice—in the car.)

UPDATED: Putin Saves Us From Ourselves

Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Ron Paul, Russia, The West, War

“Putin Saves Us From Ourselves” is my new column (front page on RT, the column was buried at the bottom of WND’s second page, where two-day-old columns go to die, so is unlikely to edify the few who might have been amenable to edification). Here’s an excerpt:

“He vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling on President Bashar Assad to step down. Such a resolution, he argued, would serve as a ruse for the US to do a Libya in Syria.

He made the case that the “Syrian crisis would be better resolved by Syrians themselves,” and that the West should confine itself to brokering a ceasefire in that country, and encouraging dialogue between the feuding factions.

And, “Six months ago,” by the Daily Star’s telling, he “vetoed an earlier draft resolution threatening Damascus with sanctions.”

He is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president elect. And he has done nothing that Ron Paul, president of America’s libertarians, would not have done: work to avert another ill-conceived, idiotic American intervention in a country in which it has no business, advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and oppose economic sanctions, which always and everywhere do more damage than good.

A just course of action is a just course of action irrespective of the actor.

The Sino-Russian alliance has been promoting the idea of an accord, involving “all the Syrians, the government and all opposition groups,” or so the Washington Post framed their side. NATO (nee the US) was champing at the bit to take the battle for Syria away from the Syrians and put it where they believe it belongs: the US military and its proxies.

Now, out of the blue, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pretending that the United States and its Arab and European allies have always supported such a civilized solution in Syria, and were merely waiting on the Russians to get with the peace program. This is the same woman who came close to squatting on Gadhafi’s corpse, in honor of her country’s custom of peeing on its dead enemies.

Yes, one minute the Obama Administration and its UN and Arab-League lickspittles had been itching to oust Assad. The next, the same coalition was dusting Kofi Annan off and dispatching him, as a UN envoy, to mediate a resolution to Syria’s civil war.

What’s going on here? …

The complete column is “Putin Saves Us From Ourselves.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE: So true, Stephen Hayes. This is why I keep at my readers to post their responses to what they read here far and wide; post them to where my columns are featured, at RT (a new audience), and WND (which buried this column on the second page, where 2-day-old columns are posted), on Amazon (where is your Cannibal review, Stephen?), and other forums. Here on BAB, you are preaching to the converted.

Who’s Killing Whose People Again?

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, War

Judging from America’s angels and demons foreign policy production, starring “the prototypical evil dictator who was killing his noble people,” one would never have predicted (NOT) this following development, in Syria, documented by Human Rights Watch:

“Armed opposition groups in Syria are committing atrocities. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.”

Remind me who is killing whose people again?

In a Perverse Way, Afghan Justice Is Less Perverse

Christianity, Crime, Justice, Law, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law

“As a Christian,” reasons Thomas Fleming, in his highly recommended Mail-Online blog, “I can say plainly that Afghans have a truer sense of justice than the catechisms of most Christian churches today. As post-Christian savages without a sense of justice, we were quite wrong to conquer this primitive people.”

“The Afghans do not pretend to see beyond the end of their nose or outside the limits of their settlement. Their simple and wholesome ethic is: You kill my people, I kill you. They are demanding nothing less than the transfer of the killer to Afghan jurisdiction. After a speedy trial and conviction, he will be turned over to the relatives of the victims to kill in whatever way they see fit.”

“Americans may pretend to understand this demand as a temporary outburst of grief and rage, but, when they do not relent, in a few weeks we can expect to hear condemnations of the primitive Afghan understanding of justice. We shall be reminded of the Talibans’ mass executions in sports stadiums. ‘They don’t want justice,’ we shall cry, ‘only vengeance,’ and no one will spend half a minute explaining what the difference is.”

“Here in the enlightened West,

we know that the purpose of a criminal justice system is two-fold: to rehabilitate the criminal and protect the public. It was not always so. The ancients believed that a criminal act–murder, assault, robbery, rape–put the universe out of joint. The purpose of punishment was to put it right again. Killers are killed, robbers robbed, beaters beaten.
It was not always so simple as “an eye for an eye,” and Roman and Christian law made allowances for motives, circumstances, and appropriateness of punishment, but they never forgot the primary purpose of punishment was retribution or, to use a simpler word, vengeance.
Leftist Christians will howl in protest, citing, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” little understanding that the same Lord, according to St. Paul, delegates the power to punish evil to the rulers of the world. Not in vain, Paul declared in an authoritative chapter of Romans, does the ruler hold the sword, nor is it a terror to the good but only to the wicked. It follows that a ruler who casts away the sword on a humanitarian whim is no longer a legitimate ruler. The Church always begged for mercy in specific cases, but never disputed the right and duty of kings and parliaments to execute criminals.
Even Imanuel Kant, who got most things wrong, saw through the lies of all the liberal theories of punishment:
“Judicial punishment can never be used solely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for society, but instead must in all cases be imposed on a person solely on the ground that he has committed a crime….woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it….

MORE.