Category Archives: Russia

The Plan For Iran

In the days and weeks ahead, the political Demopublican machine will fog up the Iran matter to such a degree that seeing the forest from the trees will become impossible for the average war-starved American (a default position, it would seem).

For the purpose of formulating a principled position, here’s something of what you need to consider: With all its posturing, Iran is preparing a time table for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Iranians will want to pretend they are calling the shots, so to speak. Saving face is a very crucial component of the culture, in case American multiculturalists have not figured that out yet.

The IAEA did a good job in Iraq; when they reported in 2002 that Iraq had been cleansed from WMD, they were 100 percent correct, although “Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush never stopped gabbling about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear-weapons program, chemical and biological blights, Scuds and squadrons of unmanned aerial vehicles streaking U.S. skies, and traveling laboratories teeming with twisted scientists.”
(And some members of the fantasy-based community still believe “the weapons” are in Bashar al-Assad’s basement.)

So long as its inspectors are fully engaged with Iran, the Iranian crisis will remain a manufactured one, drummed up by interested parties: Iranian exiles and the usual American armchair warriors.

Recall, as the US was ramping-up for war against Iraq, Hans Blix, Chief United Nations weapons inspector, and Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei were crisscrossing Iraq, scouring the place for WMD. The two had turned Iraq into a CSI-like crime scene:

“From November 2002 to January 2003, Blix conducted approximately 300 inspections of more than 230 different sites in Iraq. Of these, more than 20 had hitherto not been inspected. (He set up field offices in Mosul and Basra, places he could never hope to access today.) Despite this empirical exercise, the fantasy-based community asserted that ‘All the Western intelligence services – the UN itself – stated with certainty that this thug had and was hiding WMD?'”

Please read my account at the time of Blix’s efforts in “INK STAINS AND BLOOD STAINS” and “What WMD.”

Dislike for these operatives doesn’t change that what they reported comported with reality, perfectly.

Israel, unlike America, acts in its self-interest. So it is natural that Israelis would, overall, encourage the world to help diminish their own plight vis-a-vis Iran. However, a man I really like, the hard rightist Avigdor Lieberman (foreign minister) is “being criticized for aligning his policies with those of Moscow.” That’s telling. And what is the position of Moscow? Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies “that although [the] Iranian’s missile exercise was worrying, restraint was needed. An official communiqué urged ‘Western powers to restrain themselves.”

That seems reasonable at this point.

Another Brownie Point For Barack

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Iran, Neoconservatism, Russia

In “Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants,” I awarded Obama his first brownie point for resisting the neoconning of the election upheaval in Iran. He now gets another brownie point for not emulating Bush and his neocon coterie in stepping on the Russian Bear’s claws and placing a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, over in Russia’s back yard.

In the business of fomenting friction, “America’s Russian experts say the move can only contribute to a warmer dialogue between Moscow and Washington, they say no one should expect any reciprocal concessions from the Kremlin on issues of key concern to the US, such as Iran.”

One doesn’t adopt and execute a reasonable foreign policy in order to please; a good strategy is aimed at America’s national interests. The Empire has got to cut back and return to defending the homeland. But while dropping the missile shield may be seen as one tiny step in the right direction, I have no doubt that the administration will “compensate” for this small anti-imperial concession by beefing up other fronts.

To repeat—and all in all—making nice with “Old Europe”—which is how the stupid, reckless Bush administration dismissed Europe (including its correct objection to the Iraqi invasion)—is a good thing. Sure, neoconservative war harpies get hot for over heated rhetoric against any and all. They’ll just have to get their kicks playing video war games. As will they have to get through their thick skulls that this country is no longer a super power.

It’s neither sexy nor smart to smite the world when you’re … broke and bankrupt.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Barack Obama, Economy, EU, Healthcare, Iran, Neoconservatism, Politics, Regulation, Russia, Socialism

A girl has to have some fun: In my new WND.COM column, “And Now For Something Completely Different,” I invite you to laugh along about the EO (The European Onion), “A-Jad,” Geithner (the gift that keeps giving), and Obama who “never runs out of things to say, only things worth saying”:

“Although Obama has appointed more czars in six months than Russia’s Romanov Dynasty had occasion to anoint over three centuries, he is still missing a Vegetable Czar. If he acts quickly, Barack might be able to recruit a cheap VC with experience from The European Onion (formerly the EU).

The EO has been regulating fresh produce for quite some time. Duly, the Brussels Sprouts that run the Continent had barred “curly cucumbers, crooked carrots and mottled mushrooms – any odd-looking fruit and vegetables” — from Europe’s markets and supermarkets

But things are about to change. As the BBC News reported in a burst of good cheer, “July 1 marks the return to our shelves of the curved cucumber and the knobbly carrot.” Indeed, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has finally disavowed the rules that were introduced to ensure common standards among EU vegetables, “but are regarded by critics as examples of Euro-madness.”

Said the Patron Saint of ‘wonky’ vegetables…”

The complete column is “And Now For Something Completely Different.”

Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.

Oy Vey Uyghur!

China, Foreign Policy, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Palestinian Authority, Russia, Terrorism

“Oy vey, or just oy,” writes Wikipedia, is a [Yiddish] exclamation of dismay or exasperation meaning ‘woe.” Woe indeed. The Uyghurs, as far as I know, are to China as the Chechens are to Russia: fractious Muslims, with mayhem on their minds, a state-of-being also described as a quest for “self-determinism,” when used by left-liberals vis-à-vis the acting-out Palestinians, Uyghurs and Chechens do.

Yet, for the life of me, I cannot locate on Wikipedia a reference to the Muslim faith of the estimable Uyghurs, now rioting in China’s Xinjiang region.

Wikipedia does note, without elaborating, that China sympathized with the US after 9/11, but leaves hanging the reaction of the Uyghurs. Did they dance in the streets as their Palestinian coreligionists did?

Ever consistent (NOT), expect neocons to weigh-in on the side of Uyghur independence (forgetting that they just bemoaned the release from Gitmo of a couple of Uyghurs), as liberals like Obama, on a Disney-like tour to Russia, imperiously counter with calls for Georgian and Chechen independence. Idiots all.