Category Archives: Military

UPDATE III: Austerity à la America (US Vs. UK)

Britain, Debt, Economy, Europe, Government, Healthcare, Inflation, Military

In their agreement to fiddle with future spending, our politicians are like bank robbers who’ve planned a string of heists, but then decided, charitably, to spare one bank.

The reckless high rollers in DC are congratulating themselves for agreeing to cut about $38 billion from federal spending this year (Bloomberg.com). This minuscule “cut” claws back some parts of an enormous entitlement program that has not yet kicked in: Obamacare.

“According to the Treasury Department, the federal government spent more than eight times what it brought in in the month of March. Eight times.” (CNN)

And the more money you stuff down the feds’ greedy maw, the more it’ll spend.

“Heads between knees, arms over heads, hold that position. Pray if you’re inclined to. Brace for impact!” That’s John Derbyshire’s advice about the coming economic collapse in the US. (If you’ve escaped the debased dollar, all the better.)

UPDATE I (April 10): “Friday’s 348-70 vote to fund the government through the week”: Only “twenty-eight of the ‘no’ votes were cast by Republicans. Sixteen of those are members of the 87-member freshman class. Also voting no: Tea Party star and possible presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.”

That’s an abysmal showing for Republicans and Tea Partiers. Can someone please send a link with an exact breakdown, plus names?

UPDATE II: Two hundred and eight House Republicans voted “yes.” And that’s not a disgrace?

UPDATE III (April 12): Little mentioned in American media is that the non- Micky-mouse countries in Europe and the English have gotten religion on austerity. In his first 100 days in office, David Cameron had gone further than Thatcher did in cutting government. Yes, yes, that’s nothing very impressive, but it’s more than anything that has been done to tackle the debt in the land of the free and home of the brave. The Merkel (Angela) told “financier- philanthropist” George Soros—also an all-round radical and BHO surrogate—to jump when he tried to muscle her into printing and inflating her country’s currency to Weimar-Republic levels.

If our media made these contrasts, perhaps Americans would begin to think beyond the “rah-rah we’re the best” mantra.

Palin Pants For War

Foreign Policy, Just War, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Sarah Palin, UN, War

The women of the neoconnerie have been instrumental in keeping their fans tuned-out, turned-on, and hot for war. Neocons, in particular, enter a dangerous state of heightened emotional arousal as soon as war is around the corner. Sarah Palin’s war euphoria was on display during “On the Record,” with host Greta Van Susteren, when Palin practically panted for a show of even greater, and certainly grislier, force in Libya. (Here)

“America’s interests” in Libya, Mrs. Palin asserted, lie in either “killing or capturing” Qaddafi. Nothing else will do. If Obama does not order these deeds, “America’s interests” will have been compromised. A non sequitur, if you ask me. Sarah is presuming something not in evidence. If Qaddafi is not murdered, how will this meshuga (here) “seek revenge” here in the USA? Flood our markets with gaudy gowns? Hinder the housing market with his spacious tents?

A good war must also inspire: both Greta and Sarah were agreed. Sarah expressed disappointment that the president didn’t deliver an inspirational war speech. (Transcripts) Following the lead of other countries—“getting in the back of the bus,” as she put it—doesn’t do it for her; doesn’t inspire.

You ask: Can the US not LEAD and INSPIRE the world with its productivity, products; its professionals, and their inventions? Forget about it. Mrs. Palins, like all neocons, conflates the American state—its war making proclivities and powers, in particular—with national greatness.

Like many a criminal, the act of committing crimes (in this case vicariously via the state apparatus) further lowers the war monger’s inhibitions. This base condition accounts for the tolerance for atrocities, and shameless, atavistic call for assassinations and killings.

In her war euphoria, Sarah even forgot that we’re broke, in hock to the tune of $14 trillion and growing. In wondering why Libya, she boasted: “America could intervene with our power and our resources in many other areas.” We can afford to? Really?

By the way, I have a feeling that Obama’s casus belli, embedded in the following excerpt from his speech, will turn out to be a lot like WMD in Iraq:

In the face of the world’s condemnation, Gaddafi chose to escalate his attacks, launching a military campaign against the Libyan people. Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. The water for hundreds of thousands of people in Misratah was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques destroyed, and apartment buildings reduced to rubble. Military jets and helicopter gunships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assault from the air.
Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean.

UPDATED: ‘The Three Sisters’ War’ (US Hubris)

Africa, Barack Obama, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Gender, Middle East, Military, Old Right, UN, War

Estrogen driven paternalism: That’s the impetus behind Obama’s offensive in Libya. Patrick J. Buchanan sums it up:

“Why are we in Libya? Why are U.S. pilots bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who have done nothing to us?

These soldiers are simply doing their sworn duty to protect their country from attack and defend the only government they have known from what they are told is an insurgency backed by al-Qaida and supported by Western powers after their country’s oil.

Why did Obama launch this unconstitutional war?

Moral, humanitarian and ideological reasons.

Though Robert Gates and the Pentagon had thrown ice water on the idea of intervening in a third war in the Islamic world – in a sandbox on the northern coast of Africa – Obama somersaulted and ordered the attack, for three reasons.

The Arab League gave him permission to impose a no-fly zone. He feared that Moammar Gadhafi would do to Benghazi what Scipio Africanus did to Carthage. And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America’s failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur.

This is the three sisters’ war.

But why was it America’s moral duty to stop the Tutsi slaughter of Hutus in Burundi in 1972 or the Hutu counter-slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Why was that not the duty of their closest African neighbors, Zaire (Congo), Uganda and Tanzania?

These African countries have been independent for a half-century. When are they going to man up?

The slaughter in Darfur is the work of an Arab League member, Sudan. Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab nation, is just down the Nile. Why didn’t the Egyptian army march to Khartoum, a la Kitchener, throw that miserable regime out, and stop the genocide?

Why doesn’t Egypt, whose 450,000-man army has gotten billions from us, roll into Tobruk and Benghazi and protect those Arabs from being killed by fellow Arabs? Why is this America’s responsibility?”

Read “How killing Libyans became a moral imperative.”

UPDATE (March 27): USA=GOD.

Myron Robert Pauli on my Facebook page: “Another great column from Diana West on the strategic hooey of the War in Libya (a no fly zone imposed on Israel by the US-NATO-UN-Arab-League could occur one day) http://jewishworldreview.com/0311/west.php3

My reply: M., all the obligatory stuff about it “never being a bad notion to rid the planet of Gaddafi”: as if there aren’t a few fellows here in the US one could easily live without.

The idea that the US decides who the world can do without and who can remain boggles my mind. Still, after years in this country.

I love West, but, as far as I know, Diana supported the Iraq adventure, at first.

Subsidizing “Freedom” for the Arab Street

America, Democracy, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Government, Islam, Middle East, Military

“We are not part of the picture” [in Libya], Ehud Barack told Greta van Susteren, who recounted to him the familiar war-for-Israel-and-oil accusations circulating in some Arab quarters vis-a-vis the offensive in Libya. This, even as the US commits itself to furthering the whims of the seething Arab Street—whoever it comprises, wherever it is, and whatever it wants. American warriors, in arms and in armchairs, seem to believe that repeating the word “rebel” enough times will transform the shady ragtag factions we are fighting for as a princess’s kiss transforms a toad.

Ehud Barack, Israel’s Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister (bio information), has politely applauded NATO and the US for rescuing the Libyans, but he also expresses a conscious thought about the feel-good operation, the kind of thought that will never be floated stateside:

“It’s up to the Arab people to struggle for their rights; to change regime or impose corrections and new procedures in their internal political life.”

My sentiments exactly:

If indeed we’re subsidizing “freedom” for [the Libyans] and are fighting their battles—then we’ve also increased their impotence and diminished their initiative. Subsidize individuals because you believe they are helpless—and you’ll get more learned helplessness.

Besides, what are these people? Wards of the American state? Whatever happened to fighting your own revolutions?