Category Archives: Neoconservatism

On The War Path With Samantha Power

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Just War, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

“On The War Path With Samantha Power” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“… By far the more dangerous of the two Obama Amazons is Samantha Power. Susan Rice, in a sense, has been neutralized by scandal; she’s under scrutiny. And if you’re wondering what a U.S. ambassadors at the UN could possibly do by way of taking the country to war, think of John Negroponte. He pushed for the Security Council resolution “that President Bush eventually cited in going to war in Iraq.”

If they play rough, Republicans will lap up the ladies’ foreign-policy antics, starting with the Senior Republican Senator from Arizona. John McCain recently crossed enemy lines to cavort with Syrian rebels, the type of chaps who lunch on enemy lungs. He, Lindsey Graham (another senior Republican Senator), and their colleagues can’t wait to supply the noble savages of the world with rations.

The only time Republicans will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn’t led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage).

In all, white progressives like Power derive an erotic rush from swooping down to save The Unknown Other, whether he likes it or not. The coolest place from which to keep this hot thrill going is the global geopolitical scene.

To expect someone like Power to care about her homies first is a lot like expecting Angelina Jolie to adopt a poor white baby (an Afrikaner living in a shantytown , for example). How unglamorous! There’s no chic value in that. In Jolie’s defense, it’s her money. It’s hers to do with as she pleases. In a public servant, however, Power’s proclivities amount to treason.

Edmund Burke certainly thought so. …”

The complete column is “On The War Path With Samantha Power.” Read it on WND.

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McCain’s Rebels Lunch On … Enemy Lungs

Democracy, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Lebanon, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Senator John McCain is not working with much. He finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets. As IQ ace Steve Sailer once quipped, “To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness.”

McMussolini wants the US to go to war with Syria to support the ragtag rebels, whoever they are. (Here is a useful history of the US-Syria relationship.)

To that end, earlier this week, “US Senator John McCain,” reported Al Jazeerra, “crossed from Turkey into Syria to meet with rebel leaders in the war-torn nation.”

Via Economic Policy Journal:

When John McCain slipped into Syria the other day to meet with Islamist rebels, Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted “best wishes” to his fellow warmonger and claimed “dibs on his office if he doesn’t come back.” Leave it to Sen. Graham, who has been agitatingalong with McCain for the US to send weapons to the rebels, to joke about the untrustworthiness of the very people he wants to arm. But the rebels’ savagery is no joke: we are, after all, talking about people who eat the lungs of their enemies. …
… Here is a man who is the Republican party’s voice when it comes to foreign policy, a role he has appropriated due to his intimacy with those who book the Sunday talk shows, and yet when it comes to America’s relationship with the rest of the world his utter and complete ignorance is appalling.
He told us the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “fairly easy.” He pontificated that the anthrax attacks were delivered by the Iraqis. His preferred policy for Afghanistan: we should “muddle through,” rather than withdraw. When the North Koreans started acting out, he averred we ought to threaten them with “extinction.” And when Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia got into an armed conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, McCain announced “Today, We Are All Georgians” and demanded we go to war with Moscow. He thinks Iran is training Al Qaeda: he also thinks Iraq shares a border with Pakistan.
In short, McCain doesn’t know s%^*t about foreign policy: he has been wrong, wrong, wrong about absolutely everything. So it isn’t merely ironic that he is leading the charge in demanding we intervene in Syria – it’s downright crazy.

What’s as troubling, but doesn’t surprise in the least, is that the Obama administration has also adopted the position that Assad must be removed.

Rule by Alawite minority (with some nominal power sharing), however, is by far the more civilized of the options facing this country. This, unfortunately, is the reality.

Soon you might be supplying McCain’s rebels with rations.

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Hands-Off Syria

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Neoconservatism

It’s not often that I agree with Barack Obama, but his hands-off Syria policy, if it is to be believed, is, I’m sorry to say, the right one. It is unlikely, unfortunately, that the US is uninvolved in some covert operation in Syria. One “international affairs and defense analyst” told RT that “since 2012, if not earlier, weapons have been supplied to the rebels … a covert supply of weapons, of course – through Turkey and with the assistance of Saudi, Qatari and Turkish intelligence services.”

As for Israel’s strafing of Syria, what triggered this Israeli strike? The “crisis in 2006 was triggered by cross-border raids on Israel by Hamas in Gaza and by Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Journalist and Middle East expert Ali Rizk is searching for provocation (as we libertarians ought to):

Has there been any military action, has Israel been attacked by any side, whether it be Hezbollah or Syria? Has Israel been attacked by any side whatsoever? Israel has not been attacked.
So we hear this talk about game-changing weapons. But that doesn’t give the right or justification for such escalation…I have to emphasize, the clear message if anyone had any doubts I think now it has become clear: Israel wants Bashar Assad to fall. That is Israel’s choice. Netanyahu himself has said time and again: “Syria is the linchpin between Iran and Hezbollah.”

BBC News’ Jonathan Marcus thinks he’s found justification. Neoconservatives will concur. “According to US intelligence sources,” he reports, “the target of the first of these latest Israeli attacks [inside Syria] which took place overnight on Thursday was a shipment of ground-to-ground missiles at a warehouse at Damascus airport.”

…these latest air strikes underscore Israel’s equal worry about sophisticated conventional weapons being passed to Hezbollah. This includes sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, or accurate long-range ground-to-ground missiles. Such concerns are longstanding. … The missiles, which had been shipped from Iran, according to the sources, were Fateh-110s – a mobile, highly accurate solid-fuelled missiles with the capability of hitting Israel’s main population centres, like Tel Aviv, from southern Lebanon.
…What’s not clear, American officials admit, is exactly who the missiles were intended for – the Syrian army or Hezbollah. But the airport warehouse is said to have been under the control of personnel from Hezbollah and Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force.

A Beautiful Neoconservative Mind

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Free Markets, Media, Neoconservatism, Republicans

The question, I guess, is rhetorical. Still, why does Frontpage Magazine describe Steve Moore, of the War Street Journal, as “One of the country’s sharpest economic minds,” who can “explains how conservatives can save America from left-wing destruction”? This introductory blurb is on the front page of FPM, today, April 2.

Here’s how I introduced this beautiful neoconservative mind on BAB, starting in 09.30.08:

Stephen Moore authored a book paradoxically titled Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.

Yes, Bush was a bailout bandit”: “Bush’s ownership society, built as it was on quicksand, quickly metamorphosed into the bailout society.”

Bush lobbed his financial WMD first by nationalizing the heavily socialized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another formality. …
Buried in Bush’s blather was a tacit acknowledgment that government’s deep infiltration of the mortgage and homeownership markets encouraged a laissez faire attitude toward lending and borrowing.
“Because [Fannie and Freddie] were chartered by Congress,” confessed Bush, “many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.”
Fannie and Freddie’s “charter” partners Bush exonerated.
Moreover, nowhere did Bush come clean about the continual expansion of credit by the Central and commercial banks. Loose monetary policy has caused interest rates to fall below the natural market rate, and had precipitated an artificial stimulation of economic activity reflected in the colossal malinvestment and misallocation of resources witnessed in the housing market.
The Bush government—and previous administrations—had eliminated the risks of mortgage lending. The subprime fiasco, in a nutshell, was a consequence of extending credit to the un-creditworthy, chief of who were minorities. “The Diversity Recession” is how VDARE.com commentator Steve Sailer has aptly dubbed the mortgage misadventure.
You had the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) colluding with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide taxpayer-subsidized home loans to illegal immigrants, no questions asked.
You had the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the US Fair Housing Act are—all arrows in the quiver of the federal government and the Department of Justice, aimed at forcing banks to throw good money after bad by lending it to those with low credit ranking. Mainly minorities.
Under the guise of remedying (alleged endemic) root-and-branch racism, the State [under Bush] had legislatively removed the risks of mortgage lending, thus precipitating the housing bubble.

Magnificent mind Steve Moore wrote an entire book in praise of Bush’s role in that kind of “ownership.” Will anyone ever make Moore own that?

Being Establishment means never having to say you’re sorry (or atone for your mistakes).