Category Archives: Military

UPDATE III: Can General (Stanley) McCrock (Chris’s Episode)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

BHO ought to accept General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation. He must. If he doesn’t, the president will be in even more trouble than he already is.

The Telegraph:

The US commander in Afghanistan was ordered to fly back from Kabul for a carpeting after he and his aides were quoted in “Rolling Stone” magazine mocking the president and senior officials. … Although the worst barbs came from the lips of aides, they indicated that the general did not respect Mr Obama. One was quoted as saying Mr Obama appeared “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the military and “didn’t seem very engaged” when he first met Gen McChrystal.

What is it about the American memory? It’s non-existent.

What is it about the Neocons-cum-Republicans? They have no core principles other than to line up behind their man and against Obama. They cheered this McChrystal chap when, in October of 2009, he sojourned to London to lobby for more troops.

At the time I wrote that, “It’s got to be obvious that the general knows nothing about the chain of command. He lacks discipline or a code of conduct. McChrystal’s a lobbyist in fatigues, guarding his fiefdom.”

As is my habit—it hasn’t rubbed off on our valued blogger James Huggins, who carries the torch for GOP fraudsters—I reminded my readers at the time that “Gen. David Petraeus conducted himself similarly. Although he didn’t lobby abroad for his cause, Petraeus assumed a decidedly political role. However, back then, Republicans and their Bush boy were on board with Petraeus’ push for more war.

The difference between Petraeus and McChrystal is that the first was successful in establishing the illusion of a successful surge in Iraq—quite a feat given that the Democrats were not yet in power. So useless is this McChrystal that he has not even been able to win the PR war, and persuade the ruling Obamamaniacs that his war wank is working.

It goes without saying that both O’Reilly and Hannity have already dictated received Republican opinion: BHO must forgive McChrystal and let this loser win their war. (And BHO’s war)

UPDATE I: “I think it’s clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed a poor — showed poor judgment,” the president said in his first comments on the matter, surrounded by members of his Cabinet at the close of their meeting. “But I also want to make sure that I talk to him directly before I make any final decisions.”

UPDATE II (June 23): “The Runaway General: Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

That’s the title of the Rolling Stone article. What would a crappy Stone feature be without the expletives? So raw and real. The cussing is all the “writer’s” repertoire; he’s not even parroting the army men, whom you’d expect to cuss. Clearly a requirement of a job with RS. Imbibe from the masters: “Fuck this; fuck that, be shit-faced, piss-off.”

McChrystal is molding the military into a cross between the “Green Berets” and an “armed Peace Corps”—killing tempered by nation building—with a view to carving out a permanent place for himself over there, and taking his showcase war on the road, when the gig is up.

The guy is as evil as he looks. Not as stupid as McMussolini, who finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets, but a serious underachiever, “ranking 298 out of a class of 855.”

This man McChrystal is a riot of fuck-ups to use Rolling Stone lingo. Hey, this is easy. I think I’ve got it, Enry Iggins.

UPDATE III (June 23): CHRIS HAS AN EPISODE. This is the second momentous time Chris Matthews felt an-Obama induced thrill up his leg. Although Chris spends his days in sexual delirium over BHO, like in a boy who reaches maturity, the thrill manifests only on very special occasions. Emasculated left-liberals don’t often allow themselves to revel in the masculine—it represents oppression. But when an all-round good guy like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, “girlie boys” get giddy.

Obama sacking Stanley: now that was a good day for Chris, who managed to disguise arousal with folderol about the act instantiating the genius of the Constitution; the beauty of our country’s landscape, blah, blah.

Here’s the wreck himself:

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Update II: Comity Confirmed Between Israel & (Old) South Africa

Britain, History, Israel, Military, South-Africa, Trade

The Israel-hating West will begrudge the plucky Jewish State its close relationship with the Old South Africa, but not Barely a Blog and friends. It is common knowledge that Israel worked closely to help South Africa develop a nuclear arsenal. A new book confirms as factual what was previously presumed.

My own book most certainly does not tell “a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel’s estrangement from the left” (OMIGOD), to quote from the Random-House blurb about one Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “revealing the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel’s own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries.”

The South African documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky and published in today’s Guardian, include “top secret” South African minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries as well as direct negotiations in Zurich between Peres and Botha.

The Guardian:

The South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who attended the meetings, drew up a memo laying out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Israeli missiles – but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
Polakow-Suransky said the minutes record that at the meeting in Zurich on 4 June 1975, Botha asked Peres about obtaining Jericho missiles, codenamed Chalet, with nuclear warheads.

“Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available,” the minutes said. The document then records that: “Minister Peres said that the correct payload was available in three sizes”.

The use of a euphemism, the “correct payload”, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue. Armstrong’s memorandum makes clear the South Africans were interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
The use of euphemisms in a document that otherwise speaks openly about conventional weapons systems also points to the discussion of nuclear weapons.
In the end, South Africa did not buy nuclear warheads from Israel and eventually developed its own atom bomb.
The Israeli authorities tried to prevent South Africa’s post-apartheid government from declassifying the documents.

The documents declassified in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa have galvanized the festering “international community” even more against Israel. Whereas to me these secret agreements actually demonstrate how responsible both countries were with their arsenal; perceptions differ among UN functionaries, most of whom are either entirely sympathetic to or of the undeveloped world.

Israel will be made to pay for being friend to the ostracized country, as it pretended to abide international boycotts on South Africa. In an attempt to distance the adored Yitzhak Rabin from the deals, the author even floats the theory that Shimon Peres, who brokered the deal, was his own agent, working alone. Darn, those Israelis!

Thanks to Myles Kantor for sending the story, as it appeared in YNetNews:

According to the Guardian report, the documents indicate that the two sides met on March 31, 1975. Polakow-Suransky [“the American academic who uncovered the documents while researching a book on the military and political relationship between the two countries”] wrote in his book, which was published in the United States this week, “Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal.”
Among those who participated in the meeting was the South African military Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who prepared a memorandum that lists the benefits of acquiring Jericho missiles, but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
The memo, which was classified as “top secret” and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israeli officials, was exposed in the past, but its context was unclear, as it was unknown that it served as a basis for the Israeli offer made on the same day.
In the memo, Armstrong wrote:” In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere.”

The documents published by the Guardian are of interest, although I find the greatest significance in this warm note Peres, who has always been a conservatively minded individual (most members of the Israeli Old Guard were tough and patriotic), pens to minister Eschel Mostert Rhoodie. In it Peres alludes to
the two countries’ shared determination to resist their enemies. He implies too that South Africa and Israel were both refusing to submit to the injustices against them.

This indeed is most revealing about the sympathy Israel harbored for South Africa. Having resided in both countries during those times, I can attest to the feelings of comity between the two countries.

Update I: Glisson is wrong (see Comments). The facts as they have emerged are significant—in as much as they cement what we know about a long-standing, close collaboration. Writes Jane Hunter, publisher of the monthly journal Israeli Foreign Affairs, in April of 1986:

“Essentially, the two nations pledged themselves to each other’s survival and freedom from foreign interference. Over the years this cooperation has taken on a symbiotic quality: from Israel South Africa gets advanced engineering, including military technology unobtainable elsewhere due to sanctions and embargoes; from South Africa Israel receives strategic raw materials and capital for a variety of purposes.”

Another “real event” ignored by our friend is the fact that, by the time this exchange occurred (1970s), Israel had already cobbled the weapons together. This is an infant country compared to the Afrikaner nation, which had settled the tip of the continent and forged an identity two hundred years prior.

Still, I must be one of the few Jews who’s proud of the fact that Israel, in the person of the tough, laconic Yitzhak Shamir (whom paleos are fond of calling a terrorist for fighting those wicked Britons—I bet a hate for the Brits was another Israeli and Afrikaner uniting factor), told the US it would take no part in its attempts to cripple South Africa:

Israel’s foreign minister, told a New York audience that Israel would not institute sanctions against South Africa. Instead, Shamir said, Israel would leave that task to the great powers and continue its “normal” relations with Pretoria.

Update II (May 26): Given Barbara’s prodigious knowledge and general fairness, I await a follow-up on what the Brits, not beloved by the Afrikaner and Israeli old guard, did to the Jews before they gained independence in Israel. Sink a ship with refugees from Nazi Europe? Quarantine them as the Americans did to the Japanese? Remove weapons intended for self-defense against Arab marauders? Have at it.

Update II: Comity Confirmed Between Israel & (Old) South Africa

Britain, History, Israel, Military, South-Africa, Trade

The Israel-hating West will begrudge the plucky Jewish State its close relationship with the Old South Africa, but not Barely a Blog and friends. It is common knowledge that Israel worked closely to help South Africa develop a nuclear arsenal. A new book confirms as factual what was previously presumed.

My own book most certainly does not tell “a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel’s estrangement from the left” (OMIGOD), to quote from the Random-House blurb about one Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “revealing the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel’s own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries.”

The South African documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky and published in today’s Guardian, include “top secret” South African minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries as well as direct negotiations in Zurich between Peres and Botha.

The Guardian:

The South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who attended the meetings, drew up a memo laying out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Israeli missiles – but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
Polakow-Suransky said the minutes record that at the meeting in Zurich on 4 June 1975, Botha asked Peres about obtaining Jericho missiles, codenamed Chalet, with nuclear warheads.

“Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available,” the minutes said. The document then records that: “Minister Peres said that the correct payload was available in three sizes”.

The use of a euphemism, the “correct payload”, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue. Armstrong’s memorandum makes clear the South Africans were interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
The use of euphemisms in a document that otherwise speaks openly about conventional weapons systems also points to the discussion of nuclear weapons.
In the end, South Africa did not buy nuclear warheads from Israel and eventually developed its own atom bomb.
The Israeli authorities tried to prevent South Africa’s post-apartheid government from declassifying the documents.

The documents declassified in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa have galvanized the festering “international community” even more against Israel. Whereas to me these secret agreements actually demonstrate how responsible both countries were with their arsenal; perceptions differ among UN functionaries, most of whom are either entirely sympathetic to or of the undeveloped world.

Israel will be made to pay for being friend to the ostracized country, as it pretended to abide international boycotts on South Africa. In an attempt to distance the adored Yitzhak Rabin from the deals, the author even floats the theory that Shimon Peres, who brokered the deal, was his own agent, working alone. Darn, those Israelis!

Thanks to Myles Kantor for sending the story, as it appeared in YNetNews:

According to the Guardian report, the documents indicate that the two sides met on March 31, 1975. Polakow-Suransky [“the American academic who uncovered the documents while researching a book on the military and political relationship between the two countries”] wrote in his book, which was published in the United States this week, “Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal.”
Among those who participated in the meeting was the South African military Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who prepared a memorandum that lists the benefits of acquiring Jericho missiles, but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
The memo, which was classified as “top secret” and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israeli officials, was exposed in the past, but its context was unclear, as it was unknown that it served as a basis for the Israeli offer made on the same day.
In the memo, Armstrong wrote:” In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere.”

The documents published by the Guardian are of interest, although I find the greatest significance in this warm note Peres, who has always been a conservatively minded individual (most members of the Israeli Old Guard were tough and patriotic), pens to minister Eschel Mostert Rhoodie. In it Peres alludes to
the two countries’ shared determination to resist their enemies. He implies too that South Africa and Israel were both refusing to submit to the injustices against them.

This indeed is most revealing about the sympathy Israel harbored for South Africa. Having resided in both countries during those times, I can attest to the feelings of comity between the two countries.

Update I: Glisson is wrong (see Comments). The facts as they have emerged are significant—in as much as they cement what we know about a long-standing, close collaboration. Writes Jane Hunter, publisher of the monthly journal Israeli Foreign Affairs, in April of 1986:

“Essentially, the two nations pledged themselves to each other’s survival and freedom from foreign interference. Over the years this cooperation has taken on a symbiotic quality: from Israel South Africa gets advanced engineering, including military technology unobtainable elsewhere due to sanctions and embargoes; from South Africa Israel receives strategic raw materials and capital for a variety of purposes.”

Another “real event” ignored by our friend is the fact that, by the time this exchange occurred (1970s), Israel had already cobbled the weapons together. This is an infant country compared to the Afrikaner nation, which had settled the tip of the continent and forged an identity two hundred years prior.

Still, I must be one of the few Jews who’s proud of the fact that Israel, in the person of the tough, laconic Yitzhak Shamir (whom paleos are fond of calling a terrorist for fighting those wicked Britons—I bet a hate for the Brits was another Israeli and Afrikaner uniting factor), told the US it would take no part in its attempts to cripple South Africa:

Israel’s foreign minister, told a New York audience that Israel would not institute sanctions against South Africa. Instead, Shamir said, Israel would leave that task to the great powers and continue its “normal” relations with Pretoria.

Update II (May 26): Given Barbara’s prodigious knowledge and general fairness, I await a follow-up on what the Brits, not beloved by the Afrikaner and Israeli old guard, did to the Jews before they gained independence in Israel. Sink a ship with refugees from Nazi Europe? Quarantine them as the Americans did to the Japanese? Remove weapons intended for self-defense against Arab marauders? Have at it.

Update IV: ‘Elena Kagan As Scholar’ (‘Racist!’)

Affirmative Action, Bush, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Race, The Courts

Eugene Volokh thoroughly and soberly assesses the scholarly record of BHO’s SCOTUS nominee, Elena Kagan, and concludes:

“Kagan, it seems to me, is a successful scholar whose interests have extended beyond scholarship, to government service and to educational institution-building. As a result, she hasn’t written as much as she would have had she only been interested in scholarship (though I suspect that her time in the Clinton Administration helped her produce her administrative law articles). But that reflects the breadth of her interests, and not any intellectual limitations.

… On then to my own evaluation of the First Amendment articles: I think they’re excellent. I disagree with them in significant ways (this article, for instance, reaches results that differ quite a bit from those suggested by Kagan’s Private Speech, Public Purpose article, see, e.g., PDF pp. 8–9). But I like them a lot.

The articles attack difficult and important problems (Private Speech, Public Purpose, for instance, tries to come up with a broad theory to explain much of free speech law). They seriously but calmly criticize the arguments on both sides, and give both sides credit where credit is due. For instance, I particularly liked Kagan’s treatment of both the Scalia R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul majority and the Stevens concurrence, in her Changing Faces of First Amendment Neutrality article.

As importantly, the articles go behind glib generalizations and formalistic distinctions and deal with the actual reality on the ground, such as the actual likely effects of speech restrictions, and of First Amendment doctrine. …

Kagan’s First Amendment work suggests a general acceptance of current free speech law, and an attempt to better understand it and make it more internally consistent rather than to radically change it. I can’t tell for sure whether this flows from a judgment about what’s more useful scholarship, from a largely precedent-respecting temperament, or from agreement with the underlying free speech caselaw. But my guess is that it at least in part reflects a general comfort with the current precedents, and a lack of desire to shift them much.

…On so-called ‘hate speech’ and pornography, the two First Amendment topics on which Kagan has most explicitly written, I likewise see little interest in moving the law much”

[SNIP]

Read the complete post.

“The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend,” writes Stephen Bainbridge, “but she’s probably acceptable”: “I don’t know very much about Elena Kagan other than that a couple of Harvard folks for whom I have a lot of respect think highly of her. When I look at some of the lefties who are opposing her and their reasons for doing so, however, I’m tempted to conclude that she’s the most acceptable–from my perspective–candidate Obama is likely to put forward for the SCOTUS. You can tell a lot about a person from who their enemies are.”

Yes, Old Olby doesn’t much like Kagan.

Update (May 11): The issue of Kagan’s scholarship, although narrow, is relevant as it goes to her intellect. I am pretty sure that if Volokh is impressed—if not necessarily in agreement—with some of her journal papers, that she is intellectually well-equipped. This is more than we can say about SotoSetAsides Mayor.

Kagan’s statism is, on the other hand, guaranteed too. I believe this is a prerequisite for a SCOTUS nomination.

Update II: I’m sorry that Kagan, “as dean of Harvard Law School, … aggressively restricted the U.S. military’s ability to recruit some of the brightest law students in the country” only “because Dean Kagan opposed President Clinton’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”

She should have kicked the military bloodsuckers off campus as a matter of principle.

The lawful reach of army recruiters notwithstanding, I’d want to keep those body snatchers away from gullible university kids. The excellent series—it’s non-political but patriotic—“Army Wives” depicts the ugliness of recruitment. Granted, in “Army Wives,” the job of picking up vulnerable poor kids, pumping them up, and shipping them off to serve as cannon fodder in our wars is depicted as a noble one.

Update III (May 12): She’s a racist; the good kind—which is that she is more likely to privilege merit than skin color. And how do we know that she probably sins by trending toward meritocratic hiring? From the fact that as Dean and solicitor for BHO, she has hired few “blacks and browns,” as her detractors refer to themselves.

So that our hopelessly Republicanized and Palinized readers know, the hue and cry over Kagan’s “racism” is coming from the Stupid Party:

“31 of Kagan’s 32 Hires at Harvard Were White,” write the screeches at “RedState.com.” These people have few principles, but worse; they’re bereft of brains.

Besides which, if you are going to be a stickler for quotas, Kagan is probably in the color-coded clear, since her hiring practices no doubt comport, at the very least, with the proportional representation in the general population of the groups she has affronted.

“Wingnuts Furious About …. Kagan Not Hiring Enough Black People/Women,” notes Wonkette. It doesn’t take much—one feeble-minded fem—to recognize Republican frailties.

I quite like that she’s failing the wise Latina test.

Update IV (May 13): What I observed tongue-in-cheek about Bush and the left actually applies to all the actors in the farce of our politics:

“Left-liberals … believe a judicial activist is someone who reverses precedent. George Bush thinks a judicial activist is someone who disobeys the President.”

Bush, BHO and their respective political gangs and judicial picks don’t go by the Constitution; they go by judicial precedent. That’s the thing that is revered. To reverse precedent is considered a heretical.