Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: The Warbots, The FLOTUS & Other Terrifying Things

Barack Obama, Christianity, Islam, Jihad, Media, Middle East, Military, Republicans, Terrorism, War

The first lady’s share of this week’s WND column, “The Warbots, The FLOTUS & Other Terrifying Things,” comes under the heading “PIMP MY FLOTUS”:

“A world away from her husband’s dirty little war was the first lady’s ostentatious sojourn to Spain. I must say that the Marie Antoinette metaphor for Michelle did not do it for me. Despite the motorcades and the session with the Spanish monarchs at their Marivent Palace – the mental imagine that I got was made in America; it came from reality TV or MTV. Shades of the shows ‘Pimp my Ride’ and ‘Cribs’ came to mind. Coloring my imagination was a vivid, prior mental image of the ‘sedate’ soiree the first lady held for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, down to the disco ball and the half-nude, pelvis-grinding Beyonce. (Bibi Netanyahu was confined to the cellar.)

Still sillier were demands our patrician pundits made (at least one of whom has touted one-time porn star Kim Kardashian as a role model because she does not imbibe) for Mrs. Obama’s dollars to be spent stateside, so as to boost the American economy. Michelle Obama’s income comes from taxpayers. The first family doesn’t produce anything; it only consumes American wealth. Somewhere in the U.S., productive activities have already been suspended to fund the POTUS, the FLOTUS and their lavish lives. It matters not where the first family spends the loot. …

Read “The Warbots, The FLOTUS & Other Terrifying Things.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material and reviews. Get your copy (or copies) now!

UPDATED: “BRING THEM HOME. BRING THEM HOME, NOW.” So says Vox Day, who perfectly captures the emotions evincied by women and children in this touching footage of “Troops Surprising Loved Ones”:

“There are few words sufficient to express the joy that one sees in the faces of the children and women in this video. But underlying that joy, one can also see an occasional glimpse of the stark terror of loss in which they have been living for months, if not years.”

UPDATED: Portrait Of An Occupied Country (& Kids)

America, Just War, Middle East, Military, Nationhood, Republicans, War, Welfare

If my daughter was being looked over or even chatted up by frustrated foreign soldiers out on patrol, I would be worried. The image of this stunning, fragile, Afghan girl, dwarfed by the obviously “attentive” military men, conjures the fate of Abeer Qasim Hamza. (At least in the mind of this mother.)

Naturally, Republican deadheads like Laura Ingraham and James Hirsen railed against Brian De Palma’s depiction, in “Redacted,” of the girl’s rapists and killers.

“‘Redacted’: De Palma Tells The Truth”” serves as a reminder of the hazards to Their Children of Our Occupation:

“… A mop of hair, a delicate face and big black eyes: The only image we have of her is the one plastered on her Iraqi ID card. It was taken when she was a two-year-old tot. She lived with her mother, father and three siblings in the village of Yusufiyah near Mahmoudiyah.
Unfortunately for them, their farmhouse was situated near an American traffic checkpoint. The neighbors later said soldiers would watch the girl go about her chores, and gesture lewdly. The culprits, led by ringleader Pfc. Steven Dale Green—a school drop-out with a police record; recruitment standards are being lowered to fill quotas—would stage mock raids on the family’s home during which Green fondled Abeer.
Finally, Green, accompanied by Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spc. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, hatched a scheme to rape Abeer. In they went, shooting and killing Abeer’s parents and sibling, and then gang-raping her. When they were through with Abeer, they summarily executed her with a shot to the head.”…

In “Portrait Of An Occupied Country,” Al Jazeera intelligently analyzes how NATO (read the US) is rapidly replacing and usurping local Afghan societal structures.

UPDATE: Remember little, innocent Abeer and her family, who died a horrible death at the hands of American soldiers. May the family rest in peace; may the murderers be put to death for their crimes.

War Party Inc. Rages At WikiLeaks

Foreign Policy, Glenn Beck, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, War

Here’s how you know the Republicans are the enemies of liberty and justice. Not a word have their megaphones among the media said about “the deaths of tens of thousands,” often at the hands of our forces, revealed in the release, by WikiLeak, “of over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.”

FoxNews focuses on the obscure Iran-extremism connection. Fox would never jeopardize an occupation.

The Washington Times took the side of the administration by choosing to belabor its warnings about the potential harm the truth could do “to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military, and those that are working to keep us safe” (namely the networks of criminals, terrorists, and warlords we are nurturing in that blighted part of the world).

Similarly—and predictably—The War Street Journal zeroed in on the administration’s hunt for a culprit, “Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking [the] classified information”— “thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks.

I had to switch Glenn off; his sermons sans information are fit for packaging in a cheap, motivational DVD box set. But no, I heard nothing from him either that would indicate that he favored pulling back the curtain to show the facts of this war.

In fascistic fashion, other NEOCONSERVATIVES called for the arrest of the founder of WikiLeaks. “Julian Assange, once described as the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel of cyberspace, is uncompromising in his scrutiny of big business and big government.”

Kudos to Rachel Maddow’s program which told it like it is, with no regard for Obamby’s feelings.

“The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.”

“THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ BEGINS TO EMERGE FROM THE SHADOWS,” writes war correspondent Eric Margolis.

And that’s a good thing.

UPDATE III: Then There Were Three (Sane Paleos)

Classical Liberalism, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, Middle East, Paleoconservatism

Serbian historian Srdja Trifkovic is one of the finest writers on Islam. Because he tells the truth about Islam, he also tells the truth about Israel. The latter follows from the former. Sane Serbs, Nebojsa Malic is another, have clashed with Islam’s emissaries and view Israel has having been “serbed.” The rest of the paleos are in contradiction: They acknowledge Islam’s aims but refuse to see its workings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I highlighted their inconsistencies in “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.” Trifkovic’s “Israel, the West, and the Rest” continues a tradition of three:

“… our primary interests in the Middle East … are not to defend human rights, or to promote democracy, or to build a Palestinian state, or to treat Israel as an existential American ally … Secondary and peripheral [interests] must remain subordinate to the primary interests when policy outcomes come into conflict. Should we promote ‘democracy’ even if its beneficiaries are Osama and Ahmadinejad? Should we seek ‘justice’ for the Palestinians — however defined — at the cost of risking the disappearance of the state of Israel? No, heck no!

Even if an evenhanded and generous agreement were to be offered to the Arabs — including the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, an equitable sharing of natural resources, and a generous compensation package that would resolve the refugee problem — it would be unworkable in the long term — the notion of Israel’s legitimacy is simply unacceptable to traditional Islam…”

UPDATE I (June 16) : To Derek: “Israel” does not have to mimic paleos to deserve a defense against those intent on extinguishing it. However, it so happens that Israelis have “Sued NATO For 1999 Air Strikes On Serbia.” Read my post about this valiant, well-directed, self-interested effort.

We know that Israel was streaks ahead, as far as paleo political philosophy goes, in terms of its relationship not only with Serbia but with the old South Africa. Read about the latter comity.

Put it this way: Israel did not attempt to destroy these nations; the USA did.

Where does that leave paleo incongruity?!

UPDATE II (June 17): The idea, hinted at in the Comments Section, that this column privileges Israel over the US for “tribal” reasons is insulting—at least to those familiar with my positions. As I wrote to Myron the other day, when he asked that I apply the Israel test to an American issue: “I’m an American commentator, first.” I’m also the quintessential individualist. I’ve never belonged or worked for any group/tribe/church.

Why does this writer fight for the Afrikaner, Gringo Malo? Tribal affiliation? What bunk. If I knew what was good for me, I would indeed conform to Malo’s insulting caricature—the book deals would role in. I’d be rewarded for becoming what in Russel Kirk’s estimation the American mind craves: the banal and the mundane.

If anything, paleos work against their “tribe” when they agitate for the Palestinians. An Israeli did not assassinate an American senator; a Palestinian did. Muslim terrorists extolling the Palestinian cause killed 3000 Americans on 9/11. Yet it is Israelis that paleos warn us against.

And don’t dare mention the vast sums of money that go to that nest of vipers known as the Palestinian Authority. We only speak of the Jewish ponces who take from the US.

Equating my mere recognition of the justness of Israel’s existence and its struggle and what it has accomplished with tribal affiliation—this is plain pathetic, all the more so considering I have not ever recommended a foreign policy that does anything other than stay out of Israel’s affairs.

UPDATE IV: THEN THERE WERE FOUR. Thanks, Daniel, for alerting us to Derb’s brilliant piece, “Taking Israel’s Side”:

“Each of us has a mental map of the world colored by partiality, some of it reasonable, some merely emotional. If we are patriotic, we will feel more warmly towards a nation that trades fairly with us, cooperates to some degree in international projects we undertake, and shares some commonality of history, culture, or values with us. Contrariwise, of course, if you believe, as a liberal once told me he actually did believe, that your country is the most evil that ever existed, you will feel affinity with foreign nations whose leaders share that view. …

It remains the case that any fair-minded person must be an Israel sympathizer. A hundred years ago there were Jews and Arabs living in that part of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman collapse both peoples had a right to set up their own ethnostates. It has been the furiously intransigent Arab denial of this fact, not anything Israelis have done, that has been the root cause of all subsequent troubles. It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.”

[SNIP]

The last very good point was one I made in LIAR, LIAR, ABAYA ON FIRE (2002), quoting Lorne Gunter:

“Cycle of violence” suggests a sequence of events that has no beginning or end. Do the media ever pause to pose the no-brainer the Edmonton Journal’s Lorne Gunter poses? “If Palestinians stopped their attacks today, tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks. But if Israel stopped unilaterally, would you trust the Palestinians to follow?”