By Con George-Kotzabasis

The UN Tower of Babel talks and walks the anti-Israeli bias that has been drenched with for many years and no changed conduct on the part of Israel, other than depriving itself from its indefeasible right to defend itself, will ever change the virulent hate that many of its member nations have for Israel.

For the Netanyahu government to immerse itself in modifying the international law and making it more explicit in fighting terrorism is, as Caroline Glick correctly states, a misguided exercise, as any changes to the covenant will still be short of protecting any future Israeli military actions in its defence and will be condemned as aggression. Further, in the eyes of many people inimical to Israel, including disinterested ones, it will be seen as an admission on the part of the Israeli government that it broke the current international law during its incursion in Gaza. The Israeli government under the present circumstances must desist from changing the law because of the Goldstone report of the UNHRC.

All the great struggles of history have been won by superior will-power wresting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of margins. Winston Churchill

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama’s “knife-throwing” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, as depicted by New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, has put the ‘Vietnam knife’ on the throat of an already scared president. It has been reported that he has been telling Obama that if he goes for victory in Afghanistan, he will become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. While his Vice-President Biden to save him from President Johnson’s fate, recommends to him a cowardly decrease in effort, “the chimera of painless counterterrorism success,” to quote The Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer. What is President Obama going to do standing between a knife and a chicken?

It’s quite clear that due to President Obama’s ambivalence toward the Afghan war he is delaying his response to Gen. McChrystal’s urgent call for a substantial increase in U.S. troops as the only way to defeat the Taliban. And  this delay does not only expose Obama’s indecisiveness but also opens a window to the contours of his thinking of how to handle the war and the rationale he will provide to Americans about the reversal from his previous original position.

 On August 17, the president standing before an assembly of veterans declared that Afghanistan was “a war of necessity,” that is, to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country and turning it into a safe haven for terrorists that could attack the American homeland. What has fundamentally changed on the military ground within the short span of two months that is making the conflict no longer “a war of necessity?” Is it possible for the president to cogently argue that al-Qaeda has been weakened to such an extent since August 17, when by his own declaration on that date had conceded that it was not, or that the Taliban has no strong connections with al-Qaeda, as some of his principle advisers are arguing, and if the Taliban were allowed to take over certain areas of Afghanistan it would not provide a safe haven to terrorists? And once they took over these areas Obama’s strategy would ‘contain’ them and would prevent them from taking over Kabul, which the president would not accede to under any circumstances? By what magic formula would Obama stop the fanatically imbued Taliban who would perceive such a back down by the Americans as a defeat of the latter as well as a lack of resolve to stay the course and defend Kabul from its future incursions? Has he forgotten what happened to the Swat Valley in Pakistan when the PakTaliban made an agreement with the perceived enfeebled government of President Zardari to impose Sharia jurisdiction in the area and once it were ensconced in the Valley it begun making incursions in adjacent areas forcing the Pakistan government to rescind the agreement and to attack the PakTaliban militarily? So what guarantees will Obama have that compacts made by the Taliban will be kept and not be broken when all the evidence shows that all its agreements are temporary until the moment it feels strong enough to attack its enemy and subdue him? And how wise will the president’s new strategy be, as foreshadowed by a series of meetings of his close advisers, that by providing the Taliban with bases in the country and hence strengthening its hold upon these areas either by the willing or forced support of their residents, when the end result will be the absolute strengthening of the Taliban?

In the history of warfare there is no example of a political leader of implementing a strategy that deliberately and fatuously has empowered his resolute and determined enemy with new strength that in a future confrontation with him would make it more difficult to defeat. The iron law of war is to fight an irreconcilable and ruthless enemy whilst he is still weak and deprive him of all opportunities to become stronger. The Ivy Leave lawyer of Harvard, the superlative novice in the intricate affairs of war, is about to ignorantly disregard this iron law and its instructions written “in blood, iron, and sweat,” to quote Winston Churchill. At the great expense of many more American casualties and materiel in the future--if he would be willing to fight his foe and not withdraw with his tail between his legs--than if he continued to fight his enemy as now and defeat him. It’s by such reigning sentimentalism that President Obama will be attempting to decouple the American hegemon from its historic responsibility to defeat the Taliban and save both Afghanistan and Pakistan from the reign of barbarians that would threaten the U.S. homeland and, indeed, the West.

General McChrystal’s Recommendations to President Obama

General McChrystal, with the unflinching support of the victor of the Iraq war, veni, vidi, vici, General Petraeus, is recommending to his Commander-in-Chief an increase of American troops of the order of 40,000 to 60,000 that in his estimate would have a great chance of defeating the Taliban. He stated, “we must show resolve” and warned that “uncertainty disheartens our allies and emboldens our foes...failure to gain initiative and reverse insurgent momentum” within a year “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” Asked whether a limited counterterrorism effort would succeed—Vice-President Biden’s proposal-- he said, “the short answer is: no.” To go any other way than counterinsurgency would lose the war, according to McChrystal. This assessment coming from a general who as commander of Special Forces in Iraq played a pivotal role in defeating the insurgency by spreading terror among the jihadists themselves by killing them and capturing them, and who according to his troops “is a one all general.” For these remarks of General McChrystal in the public domain The National Security Adviser of Obama, General James Jones, upbraided and chided him—what a difference makes “a one all general” from a one for all general--saying that he should convey his thoughts to the President through private channels while the latter is in the process of creating a new strategy for the Afghan war. A ‘new strategy? ’ President Obama on March 27, flanked by his secretaries of defense and state, announced: “Today I’m announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” The new strategy “marks the conclusion of a careful policy review.”

What is the reason for Obama to be elaborating an even newer strategy when his own picked commander on the ground McChrystal is implementing the president’s “comprehensive new strategy” as set up back on March 27? What has radically changed on the ground since this date other than a relative increase of U.S. casualties and difficulties arising from a resolute enemy forcing an irresolute and strategically weak president wriggling out of his original position and commitment that the war was a war of necessity that the U.S. must win?

It’s beyond any doubt that the president is reviewing his strategy not because the military conditions on the ground have changed within such a short span of time but because his mind has been changed by his close advisers not to persist in a war that the latter consider to be unwinnable. But such advise issuing from his political consigliore is contrary to the foremost expert advise on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism of General Petraeus and General McChrystal respectively. The politically minded Obama, however, is more in tangent with his political advisers than with his military commanders and more concerned to protect himself politically in the short term than to defeat an irreconcilable permanent enemy. Hence, by placing his own interests as primal to the vital interests of the country, he will be contriving disingenuous designs and arguments to convince the American people that his new strategy in Afghanistan is wiser than that of his generals. This is why he needs the time to concoct his deceitful strategy and not because there is a paucity of strategic options that prevent him from deciding.

But Obama is fully conscious that to go against his generals in times of war is far from easy. That is why he is delaying his decision as he weighs the pros and cons of rejecting the advise of his generals. But since his decision will be a decision of character, it’s more likely than not that the timorous president will be convinced by the knife-throwing Emanuel than by the judicious advise of McChrystal.          

By Con George-Kotzabasis

WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand. While he acknowledges the importance of victory in Afghanistan that could be delivered by the “proper course’ of McChrystal and the multi-dimensional effects such a victory would have on global jihadists, at the same time he would be willing to pull a “MacArthur” on a ‘politicized’ McChrystal and hence diminish the chances of the U.S. winning the war in Afghanistan. Alas, according to his ‘dismal’ logic, politics should trump military victory.

Moreover he unimaginatively disregards the totally negative political repercussions such an injudicious dismissal would have on Obama himself, in the current political climate in America that as Kervick notes, in an unusually correct insight, to make McChrystal a “martyr” would be a political calamity for Obama. And it would be the greatest of ironies if the ‘dismissed’  Commander-In-Chief by the world by its representative body the International Olympic Committee for sponsoring and promoting Chicago for the summer Olympics, which for a president to be directly involved in its bidding was politically most imprudent, will be dismissing his commander on the ground General McChrystal for his professional and prudent recommendation how to win the war in Afghanistan.  

Posted by WigWag, Oct 02 2009, 9:33AM - Link

"WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand"

Don't be surprised Kotzabasis; I'm afraid that sometimes I think that fool's errands are my specialty.

Cheers!

Posted by kotzabasis, Oct 02 2009, 10:48PM - Link

WigWag

Only a 'fool' who has your strength of character can laugh at himself.

Cheers!

America’s Credibility Problem Persists Despite Obama’s Popularity

By Ben Katcher, Washington Note. September 10, 2009

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 12:53AM - Link

WIGWAG: "As for Paul's comment about American exceptionalism, I have a sneaking suspicion that American exceptionalism is actually rather unexceptional. Haven't all empires or superpowers thought they were exceptional during the period of their ascendancy?"

PAUL: Yes. And some of us have been astonished, reading about, say the Russians under the Tzar in the 18`th and 19`th century, arguing that Moscow was the "Third Rome" (Konstantinopolis being the second) etc, and seeing America expressing similar concepts
in the "enlightened" 20`th and 21`th century. These are irrational historical concepts, just like those surrounding the byzantine emperors and the mystical source of their power (they represented God): or like the common perception of the power of the Ethiopian Emperor, the Lion of Judah, descendant of King Solomo etc. - Haile Selassie - while I
grew up in Africa.

I`ve always wondered why this kind of superstition still has such strong influence on the minds of the elites in the most technologically advanced society with the best universities. It`s an atavism that the progressive commenter WigWag has no problem accepting. I find it astonishing.

WIGWAG: "While their power doesn't suggest moral superiority (which they always think it does) doesn’t their ability to influence world affairs well beyond the ability of most other nations actually make them by definition rather exceptional?"

PAUL: Exceptional in the sense of being among the handful of superpowers in the history of mankind, yes, that`s a fact. But the concept of exceptionalism is at it`s core a moral concept, related to a divine/historic mission that goes far beyond simply being powerful.
To illustrate the irrationality, the lunatic tendency of this perception, an analogy would be if WigWag, Kervick, POA, Kotzabasis or Paul Norheim suddenly realized that they had been appointed to fulfill a very special historical mission on this planet by God.

In the 21. century I regard this as a lunatic concept.

Kotzabasis says

 Paul Norheim

Was it “atavism” when Periclean Athens in its exceptionalism was calling all other people other than Greeks barbarians? You are creating, if not reinventing human nature, fictitious ‘rational’ historical concepts whose only existence is in your wet dreams. Is it “irrational” for anyone who excels in some human attribute, e.g., beauty, intellect, etc., to consider oneself as being exceptional among the mass and to exhibit and display this “exceptionalism” in those areas where one is primus domo? And doesn’t this reaction also apply to human groups and nations?

A miniature illustration of the above is Dan Kervick. Anyone who is not biased against, or envious of, the man, would admit that he excels in constructing beautiful, and grammatically perfect sentences in a beautifully written prose. And one also notices that he is always imbued with the predilection to exhibit this excellence by writing serial comments on the same subject and thus also displaying the nuanced ‘multiversality’ of his thought, although, often, by ‘gearing’ himself on overdrive on the highways of cognition and imagination he moves from the ‘sublime’ to the absurd in his arguments and turns himself into a fool. Do you think Paul, that Kervick does all this out of some “kind of superstition” or “lunatic tendency?”

Paul, it’s obvious from your posts that you are a treasury chest of literary knowledge. But no amount of literary knowledge will save you from the bankruptcy of your political thought. 

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 10:07AM - Link

Kotz,

I`m glad, and a bit surprised, seeing that you share my admiration for Dan Kervicks prose. I think you are confusing excellence with exceptionalism - the latter being an ideology with irrational, superstitious sources.

Frank Gaffney expressed exceptionalism in his discussion with Steve, linked to above:“Those of us who believe that there is something unique, something special, something extraordinary... I dare say exceptional about America, recognise that that it is so in
at least substantial measure because of our constitution. (...)and to impute into that organization (the UN) some higher moral stature and authority than we have as a result of our... I think God given constitution...is... I think a serious mistake.”

----------------------------------
"our... I think God given constitution..." Now, this goes beyond "excellence", this is superstition, this is exceptionalism as an ideology, expressed in it`s purest form. As I commented then:

Gaffney`s statements imply that America is not only on a historic, but also moral, even metaphysical mission, initiated when God gave the constitution to America and the world through the founding fathers. On a fundamental level, the constitution was not the act of the founding fathers, created through their judgement, their analytical and political
skills, their experience, and their studies of different states, laws, and governments through history. The constitution was an act of God."

I regard this as an example of 21. century atavism. However, if Frank Gaffney actually didn`t believe what he said, then perhaps it was just some neocon junk intended for domestic consume, among the superstitious masses.

Kotzabasis says

You are not only a bad political 'thinker' but also a very, very bad logician. The definition of exceptional in the Oxford Dictionary is "unusually good," "outstanding." The definition of excellence in the same dictionary is "extremely good," "outstanding." Are you going also to re-write the Oxford Dictionary as you are attempting to re-write history? I repeat, was Greece in its Golden Age, under the great statesmanship of Pericles, expressing its exceptionalism that was rooted in its brilliant philosophy and in its democratic ethos and culture-among despotisms and satrapies-a form of superstition?

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 9:40PM - Link

"Was it “atavism” when Periclean Athens in its exceptionalism was calling all other people other than Greeks barbarians?"

Do I admire the particular fact that they called all other people "barbars"? No. However, I hesitate to use labels as atavism or superstition on ancient cultures.

Since the Enlightenment was such an important source for the American constitution, and since we now live in the 21. century, I find it more appropriate to use such labels on people like Frank Gaffney.

"During the George W. Bush administration, the term was somewhat abstracted from its historical context. Proponents and opponents alike began using it to describe a phenomenon wherein certain political interests, and Americans subscribing to the political theory of neoconservativism, among others, view the United States as being "above" or an "exception" to the law, specifically the Law of Nations. (This phenomenon might be called a priori exceptionalism or "neoexceptionalism," since it is less concerned with justifying American uniqueness than with asserting its immunity to international law.)"

It doesn`t seem outlandish of me to regard Frank Gaffney as one of those "proponents" supporting this interpretation, does it? And since I talked about Gaffney in the discussion with Steve Clemons that I linked to, that was roughly the definition of exceptionalism that I thought about when I used the word above.

Kotzabasis says

Initially the core of your argument was the “mystique of the superpower” (America) that has been transformed into a “dangerous sense of EXCEPTIONALISM (M.E.) among the American people and its leaders.” Now that you have become conscious of the shallowness and fragility of your inchoate argument you have shifted the point of its reference to certain individuals, like Gaffney, and your terms of “atavism” and “superstition” apply only to them. And further, so you can have another bugbear in support of your revised contention, you quote Wikipedia that refers to exceptionalism not as “American uniqueness than with asserting its IMMUNITY (M.E.) to international law.” No wonder that with the three-tiered reference compass of confusion in your hand you cannot find the cognitive path to your argument.

Nadine is right! In your total inability to argue the core of your case you are crafting “straw men.” In other words, you are becoming intellectually unhinged.

Paul Norheim says

If I wished to change or clarify one thing, it is this: I didn`t say - as you claimed - that "the “mystique of the superpower” (America) that has been TRANSFORMED into a “dangerous sense of EXCEPTIONALISM". I said:

"But also America itself has often been a victim of this mystique. It GENERATES arrogance. It generates hubris. It generates unrealistic expectations, and a dangerous sense of exceptionalism among the American people and its leaders."

If I had written it now, I would have preferred to say that the "mystique" ENHANCES (and not "generates") a dangerous sense of exceptionalism.

---------------------------------------------------------
But I have a suspicion that you are not so interested in clarity as you pretend.

The biggest mystery to me is this: Why are you, Kotzabasis, dedicating 90% of your post to attacking Steve Clemons, Dan Kervick and myself? Why do you invest almost all your energy at TWN attacking, insulting, and ridiculing us in particular? Why do you spend practically all your time here claiming that we are weak, comical, don quijotic,
intellectually and politically bankrupt? Why invest all this time on us, if you really think so? Couldn`t you chose someone more worthy of being your opponents?

Is it so boring to be retired in Australia?

Kotzabasis says

Because all three of you in your political and intellectual weakness and lack of depth are strengthening the dangerous fantasies of soft power and policing methods as an antidote to the dangerous realities emanating from apocalyptic fanaticism that are hovering over the head of Western civilization and threatening it with ‘decapitation’. Of course such an existential threat you and Kervick, if not Clemons, would diagnose as paranoia. But anyone who has studied history, without being a prisoner of it, might come to the conclusion that the art, the vocation of a statesman is to identify promptly an irreconcilable implacable enemy and destroy him before he becomes stronger.

Already the soft power fantasy as embodied in the new foreign policy of Obama is irreversibly failing. In the diplomatic overture to Iran, in resolving the Middle East conflict, and in clinching a concord cordial with Russia, of which Obama was so confident that he would have the support of the latter on the issue of Iran. Now we have Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov declaring that they would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would impose new sanctions on Iran.

Clemons, Kervick, and you, with your characteristic geopolitical and strategic myopia and romanticism could not foresee the failure of this new foreign policy of Obama based on ‘loving- holding hands’ and soft power that is unravelling now before everyone’s eyes.

Paul Wolfowitz, Foreign Policy August 24, 2009

Failing to Note the difference When the US Power Tank is Full or Near Empty

Steve Clemons Foreign Policy August 27, 2009

 A reply by Con George –Kotzabasis

Don Quixote with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels was attacking windmills with his lance. Don Clemons not with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels, Dan Kervick—but in critical moments you can count that real pals will show up—is attacking the impregnable cogitative fortress of Wolfowitz with a toy tank whilst Sancho Kervick is riding his intellectual hard working donkey at galloping speed to refill Clemons “near empty” tank so they can demolish the modestly crafted and cogent realistic argument of their bete noire Wolfowitz. It’s in the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that the ‘slayers’ of the Wolf are made.

The realist Clemons, Oops, the “hybrid realist,” refuses, even at this late stage, to acknowledge that it was this far from near empty tank that defeated the insurgency in Iraq and that under the strong, resilient, and imaginative leadership of General Petraeus won the war in Mesopotamia. And by defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq America became stronger not weaker as Clemons argues in his piece. But it will become weaker if as a result of the staggering foolishness of Obama in withdrawing US forces from the urban areas of Iraq prematurely that has led to a resurgence of bombings, which if they continue to increase could reverse the relative security of Iraq post-surge and its great potential to build democracy in the country and become a lodestar for the whole region, as both generals Petraeus and Odierno had warned the Obama administration. And for such a dire outcome the total responsibility will fall upon the “hybrid realists” or “policy realists” that according to Clemons rule the roost in Washington, and of course ultimately upon President Obama.

For a realist, of whatever ‘variability’, to argue in the aftermath of 9/11 that the war in Iraq was a Wilsonian idealistic intervention to impose American values and democracy on the country shows how out of his depth Clemons is from any kind of realism. Wolfowitz clearly states that the purpose of the war in Iraq was not to “impose” democracy by force but to “remove a threat to national and international security.” And as he says one can criticize the rights and wrongs of the war without diverting from, and changing, its purpose. Moreover on the issue of Quaddafi’s decision to give up his WMD programs Clemons contradicts his pivotal contention that America’s intervention in Iraq weakened its geopolitical power. For if that was the case and the perception why should Quaddafi need the “assurances” of a weakened America that “he could remain in power” as a trade-off for giving up his nuclear program, as Clemons states? Once again Wolfowitz is right on this point. Quaddafi relinquished his WMD programs because of ‘feared American will,” to quote Wolfowitz, because of America’s projection of power, of ‘can do’ might that spectacularly defeated both the Taliban and the elite forces of Saddam within few weeks and refuted all the prognostications of many pundits and so called realists who contended that the US could not defeat Saddam and would suffer the same fate as the Soviets in Afghanistan.  It was also this display of US will and power that induced Iran to a ‘silent’ cooperation with the United States in the suppression of the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Dan Kervick also is out of his depth in realpolitik with his moralizing piece. He states that “we should forbear from intervening because of odious (M.E.) behaviour to us.” States don’t intervene in the internal affairs of other states because of their odious conduct, that is, on moral grounds, but only when their explicit intentions and actions threaten the vital interests of another state. And both the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was not due to odious behaviour but to the potential and real threat these two rogue states posed to the US and the West in general.

Moreover, international laws in themselves and checks and balances cannot be the balm for the internal and external conflicts of nations, as Kervick argues, in an anarchic world without some dominant power backing these laws and checks and balances with an implicit force and its explicit use when necessary. And in our era this invidious burden and responsibility ineluctably falls on the shoulders of the United States. “Liberty and civil peace” do not fall like manna from the sky and protected by nebulous gods. They emanate from great benign states that are not squeamish to use force whenever this is necessary for their protection. Voila Amerique.           

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A spectre is haunting the White House the spectre of Black Magic. America’s long winter of discontent--as an outcome of the so called lying, malevolent, warmongering, and unjust to the poor Bush-Cheney administration--alienation of the civilized world from the Texan presidency of quick-gun-drawing, and the hatred of America’s fanatical and deadly enemies, are going to be ‘fixed’ by a voodoo concoction of policies brewed by the modern African-American ‘medicine man’ dressed in Ivy League ‘leaves’ resident in the White House. The sole superpower whose strength has been and is pivotal to the security and economic development of many countries and which carries like Atlas the stability of the world on its strong shoulders with all the uncertainties, risks, and errors of judgment that such a heavy and multiple burden entails, is in the hands of a sorcerer’s apprentice who is cooking up a saucy condiment of magical nostrums that on the one hand will politically and socially change the United States, and on the other, will derail all the implacable Islamist fanatics from their course of hating the Great Satan. And reform them from their bad ways by demolishing the Guantanamo Walls and rendering to them not the justice that applies to hostis humani generis, to enemies of the human race, but the justice that applies to war prisoners under the Geneva Convention. This is inimitable wishful thinking that rises from the vapours of black magic.

But already President Obama’s hors d’ oeuvres policies both on the domestic and international fronts are ‘poisoning’ the stomachs of many Americans and even some of the strong stomachs of his initial supporters, as one would expect inevitably and unsurprisingly to happen from policies that spring from voodoo magic. Within six months the 61% percent support of Obama among Americans who believed he would bring real change has dropped to 51%, and presently 37% percent strongly disapprove of his presidency, a 22% percent point rise from January, and 31% percent strongly approve of it, a 14% percent point drop from January. (Rasmussen Reports.) And worse still on his health care reform a poll found that 42% percent say that the president’s plan is a bad idea--a 10% percent point jump from a month ago--and only 36% percent say it is a good idea. Moreover, 90% percent of Americans are satisfied with their present health care. These polls have put a hellish scare among his top advisers forcing them, and Obama himself, to have a special meeting to discuss this topic of his steep fall from his initial high peak within such a short time.

Domestic Front: Obama’s Changing America Yes We Can

On the domestic front two of his crucial policies for changing America, i.e., health care and climate change, emanating from his black magic policies, that is, that both of them will pay for themselves at no expense to the tax payer, are rapidly losing their magical appeal. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Senate Finance Committee Bill for his health care reform would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years. And that Obama’s Independent Medicare Advisory Council would trim Medicare costs by perhaps 0.2, a miniscule amount, according to CBO. Further in contrast to Obama’s assertion that the costs of Medicare in the second decade of its implementation would move downward, the CBO found that the “costs would significantly move upward.” It’s obvious that with these dire estimates of the CBO, President Obama will have to settle for mere “health care insurance reform and not in transforming the system of Medicare,” which was his initial goal, to quote Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post. Obama says that any bill he signs on health care will be “revenue-neutral.” But that is the road to insolvency that he himself declares to be unsustainable, as his original argument was that medical costs are destroying the economy. So how can he prevent this destruction if the only bill he will sign will be one that is revenue-neutral?

The political chicanery of the lawyer from Harvard is astounding, but politically necessary for him, to reassure the deep concerns of the electorate that his health care plan will not raise taxes to the stratosphere. It’s by such disingenuousness that President Obama attempts to deceive and dupe the public that he will not sneak his hand into the pockets of Americans to finance his health care package that will benefit mainly a minority of Americans. And even among Democrats there is an awareness of the high costs of his scheme that is metastasizing into opposition. Fifty-two “Blue Dog Democrats” not only are barking at it but might even start biting it. And the Town Halls of America are becoming a groundswell of rebellion against his health scheme whose ferocity and clamour, if it will not be appeased by the amendments that Obama will be forced to make to his legislation will seriously threaten his re-election for a second term. Obama in his desperation to save his plan brought the mantra of “prevention” that presumably would substantially reduce medical treatment costs. In the New Hampshire town hall meeting on August 11, he shouted triumphantly to his audience that prevention “saves lives. It also saves money.” But the truth is that overall preventive care increases medical costs. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote that “added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.” Nonetheless, the Harvard professor desperately resorts to the practices of black magic to salvage his Obamacare.

On climate change his special envoy Todd Stern has indicated that the US was ready to act without India or China saying that “in our view you can become an economic winner by acting,” alluding to the vast investments American entrepreneurs were readying to make in alternative sources of energy and the prodigious benefits issuing from such investment to the US economy, especially in the area of employment. Hence, the multilateralist Obama in foreign affairs will be a unilateralist in climate change. His administration will lead the way in the fight against climate change irrespective what other nations are prepared to do, such as China, India, and the other developed and developing countries. But it’s more probable than not that his cap-and-trade system will be a boondoggle scheme constructed at an enormous cost to the American economy. Cutting carbon emissions to 17% percent by 2020 and to 83% percent by 2050 would be highly costly. A 15% percent reduction of CO2 would increase the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. And what are the benefits issuing from the cap and trade scheme? It would lower global CO2 by 4% percent whose impact upon global warming would be virtually infinitesimal.

Moreover, the new sources of energy are still to be identified by the scrutiny and the rigor of science. Will they be a compound of solar energy, wind, and nuclear power, and with the exception of the latter, will they work? It’s obvious that President Obama’s cap-and-trade system is adorned with all the uncertainties of fortune. Obama is entering a Las Vegas casino to try his luck by playing a profligate crap game with other peoples’ money. But there are some Democrats, fearful of the lashing they could get at the coming election that are not willing to participate in this throwing of the dice. “Ten Democrats from states that produce coal...said they could not support a bill that did not protect American industries from exports from countries that did not impose similar restraints on emissions.” (New York Times, August 10, 2009.) And the President’s aids facing this opposition not only from their own Democratic ranks but also from a majority of the public are trying to find an easy sell talking about “energy security” and “green jobs” abandoning their earlier position of being prepared to push for tough measures needed to cap emissions. So Obama’s unrealistic and ‘fantasmagoric’ claim to lead on climate change will be no more than a hissing balloon that he will be taking to the Copenhagen meeting in December.

On race relations President Obama imprudently interceded in favour of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, and lambasted the white policeman, James Crowley, who arrested the professor for ‘burglary’ by saying that “the police had acted stupidly” thus making the matter worse by inflaming the race issue as it was a white policeman who arrested the black professor. Immediately after his faux pas he admitted that he was not aware of all the facts and tried to apologise both to sergeant Crowley and to the police union that promptly supported the latter. To ‘fix’ his blunder Obama invited both the professor and the policeman to the White House for a beer to cool the racial tensions that the President’s own comments had incited. The media jocularly dubbed it as the “Beer Summit Diplomacy” between the President and the two disputants, and made fun of Obama in his failed diplomacy to reconcile the two parties, and one might add while he was confident that with his new diplomacy he would reconcile the imams of Tehran, as the “two gentlemen agree to disagree,” to quote sergeant Crowley. It does not augur well for President Obama as his stupid slip will awake the race issue at the next election that had been dormant in the last one, making it electorally completely unpalatable to Obama, as on this issue alone he could lose the election and as the hate that trumped the race issue at the last election against the Republicans is fizzling out.

Foreign Policy: Obama’s Big Test

President Obama’s big test, however, will be with the implacable deadly enemies of America. In the domain of foreign affairs will be shown whether he is a president riding his horse to victory or whether he will be a president crying like King Richard III, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (W. Shakespeare.) And the first omens do not augur well. In his ‘great’ speeches both in Prague and in Cairo, wrapped up in an embellished rhetoric delivered by his indispensable  ventriloquist, the  teleprompter, Obama made a confession of mea culpas of past American actions as if by such confession and expiation America’s  irreconcilable and hateful enemies would forgive the ‘sins’ of the ‘Great Satan'. His overture to a new diplomacy laden with olive branches and empty of sticks hoping that by replacing the so called ‘belligerent’ policies of the former Bush-Cheney administration that to its critics, including Obama, increased and made more menacing the enemies of the US, that this will decrease hostility toward America and entice its inveterate foes to bring and resolve their grievances on the table of negotiations, is a dangerous wishful thinking  that will seriously discredit and erode America’s prestige as a superpower, and its consequence will be to enfeeble its ability to play a decisive pivotal role in the security and stability of the world.

For a statesman of a great power which is the “un-wobbly pivot” around whose axis the political and economic stability of the world turns, it’s axiomatic that one must identify and be aware of one’s potentially deadly enemies at their ‘budding’ stage and deal with them decisively and promptly before they become stronger. This axiom applies especially when a great leader makes the judgment that this burgeoning enemy is fanatically irreconcilable and cannot be appeased by any reasonable offers. History is full of tragedies that have issued from the inability of political leaders to foresee the dangers that would arise from unappeasable enemies determined to achieve their goals. A recent example of lack of foresight and imagination by European leaders was the occupation of Rhineland by the Nazis. In March 1936, Hitler sent few battalions on motor cycles and occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland and tore the Locarno Pact to pieces. Neither the French nor the British governments reacted to Germany’s aggression which if they had done so, according to some eminent historians, like the German Golo Mann, would have forced Hitler to withdraw his battalions with the possibility of even ousting him as Chancellor. Winston Churchill alone advocated military action against the Rhineland occupation through cooperation by the British and the French. But the acquiescence of the last two countries to the violation of the Locarno Pact whetted Hitler’s appetite for more egregious territorial encroachments. After this initial success of Hitler we all know the great tragedy that befell on mankind.

President Obama belongs to this ilk of political leaders that are comfortable sitting in the armchairs of the ‘Chamberlain Appeasing Club'. He believes like ‘“peace in our times” Chamberlain', that America's mortal enemies can turn out to be good fellows if one treats them with dignity, respect, and comity and eschews the use of the instruments of force against them. He is also of the opinion that the UN, that ‘Tower of Babel’ of dissent and disunity on so many political and military crises that afflict the globe, is an effective vehicle that can bring peace and security in nations that are ravaged by the military brutality of despotic regimes, and indeed, can be the fulcrum with the right leadership in its ranks to place the political stability of the world on a solid foundation.

Susan Rice, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, outlined Obama’s diplomatic priorities in her talk at New York University on August 13, 2009, in these terms. The US views the UN as essential to tackle global security threats. “There is no substitute for the legitimacy of the UN can impart on its potential to mobilize the widest possible coalitions...the world body is essential to our efforts to galvanize concerted actions that make Americans safer and more secure.” In this peroration of praise for the UN, Ambassador Rice did not mention one word about the great threat emanating from extremist militant fanatical Islam, and by what methods the UN would “galvanize concerted actions” against this great menace that threatens Western civilization. Moreover, what is amusing and at the same time of great concern due to the seriousness of the matter is that Ambassador Rice had the intellectual chutzpah before an intelligent audience to replace the real documented weakness of the UN in a multiple number of crises over a long period of time with the mythical strength of the UN. And still of greater concern is that according to the “diplomatic priorities” of President Obama the latter might have a propensity and would be willing to ‘outsource’ the security of the United States, the sole superpower, to the United Nations.

Obama of course is neither a proponent of individual or collective suicide or euthanasia, and there are no “death panels” in his health care scheme, as some of his critics like Sarah Palin have claimed, although the latter to her credit subsequently has watered down this accusation against Obama. But the vaguely seen outline of a skeleton that has all the characteristics of a ‘death panel’ is rising in his foreign policy. His willingness to outsource the security and the vital interests of the US to the collective weakness and fecklessness of the UN and to a disarmed diplomacy will have no other consequence other than the geopolitical suicide or euthanasia of America as a superpower. Moreover, Obama’s foreign policy stands in blatant contradiction to his policy of climate change. While his stand to the hypothetical danger that human emissions are endangering the planet is unilateral i.e. he is prepared to act alone irrespective what other countries are doing, to the real danger emanating from fanatical Islam against America, his stand is multilateral, i.e., he is unwilling to act alone in defence of the security and vital interests of the United States. This contradiction in itself exposes Obama as being not a politician of principles leading from the front and dragging the masses behind him but a populist homespun opportunist following the volatile whims of a confused public and hence leading from behind. Aware that most Americans, because of their confusion, are more willing to fight the hypothetical danger of climate pollution paid mainly at the expense and sacrifices of future generations and being unwilling to fight the real danger of Islamist terror at their own expense by the present sacrifices they will have to make in a defensive war, President Obama has no political qualms in adopting this confused position of Americans about the two dangers and  build on it his strategy in regard to these dangers.

President Obama’s strategy therefore on both issues is a strategy of confusion and hence its fate will be a strategy of dismal failure. On climate change whose solution depends on the collective efforts of both developed and developing countries, assuming the danger CO2 is real, Obama is prepared to act alone. On Islamist terror, which without any doubt threatens the immediate vital interests and security of the United States, Obama is prone to shift the responsibility of protecting the security of the US to the mythical competence of the United Nations to rally a strong coalition of nations that would protect and secure the safety of America. In the annals of human history this is unprecedented. No great power ever abdicated its historical responsibility to protect its vital interests and security and shifted this responsibility to a potpourri of feckless allies. In confronting great dangers a pre-eminent power rallies its allies and takes the lead against its enemies and never loses or passes the initiative to others in its own defence.

Furthermore, his present foreign policy and the advent of his new diplomacy are afflicted with a ‘split personality’. While he is unshakably committed to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and prevent the latter, as he has stated many times, from becoming a safe haven for global jihadists who would attack the United States, this commitment strangely collapses when it comes to other countries, such as Somalia and Sudan, from becoming safe havens for terrorists that would pose the same threat to America. And is unwilling to deploy US forces and destroy these fledgling beehives of terror before they become stronger, on the dogmatic principle that the US is not willing to act alone, and, presumably, this principle applies even in the case when the security of the US in verity is threatened.

Obama’s new diplomacy too, by which he hopes to bring rogue states like Iran and its terrorist proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah into the fold of reason, is inconsistent and incongruous with his stand on Afghanistan. While the critics of the Bush administration, including Obama, had argued that the war in Iraq had rallied into the ranks of terror a greater number of recruits and had made it stronger and provoked the ire of many Muslims against America for slaughtering their brothers and thus prevented the US from exercising its diplomacy with its potential to reach some accommodation with its foes, somehow, the same argument does not bear in Afghanistan where America and the infidels of the West are also ‘slaughtering’ Muslims. How in the case of Iraq US diplomacy became impotent and in the case of Afghanistan is finding its potency, is a conundrum that only practitioners of black magic are qualified of finding the answer.

It’s by such cure-all panaceas of black magic that President Obama will be changing America and the geopolitical orbit of the world. But already Obama’s nostrums are foundering on the rocks of reality. His ‘dignified’ diplomacy, with which he hoped to appease America’s foes, after the illegitimate election of Ahmadinejad and the rebellion of Iranians against it, is in a state of a long ‘vacation', if not in tatters. In the wine flask of his health care scheme he will be pouring so much water that will become tasteless to most Americans. As we have said nine months ago Obama does not have the political acumen and mettle to lead a great nation such as America. He will go down in history as the ‘freshman’ president whose green horns failed to bring the ‘greening’ of America and least of all the diplomatic 'olive branching' of the enemies of America. And I dare say that he will be a one term president if he survives, as the mounting resentment of an increasing number of Americans against his policies could tragically sire and give birth to a second ugly Oswald.

August 13, 2009

Melbourne

I'm republishing this article written on June 2007 and published originally on my blog Nemesis as a result of a report of the Australian today that all five of the arrested would-be terrorists were regular prayers at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the Mufti of Australasia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam presides.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

"The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathizers with the doctrine in other lands ( e.a) constitute one united threat which must be met by force". Edmund Burke, writing on the French revolution and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win. Irshad Manji Muslim writer

As we have predicted in the past, the stepping down of radical Hilaly as Mufti of Australia and his replacement by another imam who would be just as radical but who would attempt to cover the sinews of his spiritual radicalism under the garments of moderation, has just happened. The selection by the Australian Council of Imams of the elderly and scholarly Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam of the Preston Mosque to replace Hilaly as Mufti of Australasia, is no less than an attempt by the politically minded advisers of the Australian Council of Imams to cozen and dupe the Australian public that they were substituting a moderate cleric in the person of Sheikh Naji for the radical Hilaly.

But let us see whether our prejudgment of the new Mufti is too hasty and facile by looking at the past conduct and statements of Sheikh Naji. Six years now since the twin towers bombing and all the objective evidence who was behind the attack, the Sheikh still refuses to acknowledge that Osama bin Laden was behind it. His reply is that he has heard people saying that al Qaeda were the perpetrator but he himself has not seeing the evidence. Now the Sheikh is reputed to be a scholarly and intelligent man and one would expect of him to use the latter two qualities in search of the truth. If six years after the event, he still cannot make up his intelligent mind, despite the resounding evidence that is also verified by the statements of bin Laden himself that al Qaeda was the deadly agent, as to the real perpetrator of that dastardly action, then people must come to the conclusion not that the Sheikh does not have the truth in his hands but that he hides it. And the reason why he hides it is that he does not want to alienate himself both from other imams, who also believe that bin Laden was not behind the attack, and of the wider Muslim community which also believes likewise, after hearing their clerics for so long repudiating that the attack was engendered by al Qaeda.

Hence the important question is not what Sheikh Naji truly believes about 9/11 but what he truly represents. That a great number of Muslims, after being indoctrinated for so many years by their radical imams about the evils of the West and the Great Satan America have been also radicalized, and it’s exactly this fundamentalist stratum that the Sheikh represents. That there is a majority of fledgling radical Muslims in our midst has been lucidly illustrated by the recently religiously arrogant statements of the head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, Kamal Mousselmani, as reported in the Australian, on June 23-24, 2007. He said, his entire of 30,000 Shi’ites in Australia were avid [my emphasis] supporters of Hezbollah (Party of God) and haters of Israel, considered Hezbollah to be a “resistance group” not a terrorist organization. He continued, “Shia in Australia considers Israel a terrorist organization and also view those who support Israel in the same light”. And with the superciliousness of a fanatic who speaks in the name of God, he said to the reporters attending his press conference, “put those words down, we are not afraid to say that”.

Certainly there is a minority of moderate Muslims within their community but who would dare to swim against the stream of such torrential river of radicalism? This is why the expectation by some civil libertarians and politicians that moderate Muslims can oust the radicals from their position of power and influence, is completely unrealistic at least in the short term. And in “the long term we will all be dead”, to quote John Maynard Keynes.

Furthermore, Sheikh Naji’s record speaks for itself. He officially supported the application for residency of Abdul Nacer Benbrica, who presently awaits trial for alleged terrorist actions in Australia. Asked by a reporter if moderate Muslims should take a stronger stand against extremists, he ducked the question and answered that the media misrepresented the facts about Muslims. What he would say to those Muslims who wanted to go overseas and participate in jihad, he replied, “I don’t know what (the) circumstances outside (Australia) would be”. He also called for the removal of Hezbollah’s military arm from Australia’s proscribed list of terrorist organizations. And in a lame attempt to shift jihad in favor of Australia, not realizing that he was throwing a boomerang in the air, he said that Australian Muslims would participate in a jihad to “protect Australia from its enemies”. (m.e.) Presently Australia is fighting its enemies, extremist Muslims, in Iraq and Afghanistan; is the Sheikh going to send his holy warriors to these theatres of war as an outcome of his pledge to protect Australia? Lastly, asked in his press conference after his election as Mufti about the war in Iraq, he was promptly muzzled by his minders to articulate his views on the issue, pleading his ill-health (he had suffered a stroke), and was quickly whisked away from the tough-fisted questions of some reporters, his advisors replying that he will answer these questions another time.

Hence, the Australian Council of Imams being too clever by half, not only have they picked a seemingly moderate imam to replace Hilaly, so he can pass muster in the eyes of the general community, but a frail one to boot. So whenever Sheikh Naji faced difficult questions of the media his minders would plead his ill-health, thus shielding him from giving an impromptu answer that could compromise his position as a moderate imam, and, also, exposing all those who elected him Mufti as being also avid representatives of the radicalism of their flock since they happen to be its sires.

The general public must not allow itself to be duped by this latest farce of the Muslim clerisy that they are willing and preparing to walk hand-in-hand with the Australian maiden, on the path of moderation, mutual respect, and peace, when their sermons are replete to the brim with the seeds of war against the infidels, the Jews, and the Great Satan, America.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

When we are presented with a pessimistic vision we are encouraged to be optimistic pessimists. As I’ve argued for a long time the war in Afghanistan can be won--as David Miliband too, the UK Secretary of Foreign Affairs, an aficionado of Steve Clemons, argues in a piece on the Australian--and democracy can be established in the country, even in countries such as Somalia and Yemen.

The ‘cultural obstructionists’ to democracy, like Rory Stewart, who use the intellectually barren and useless concept of “cultural differences” as the irrevocable impediment to the establishment of democracy in countries who have lived for ages under authoritarian and despotic regimes, are imaginatively and cognitively blind to the historical fact that the opening and clarity of telecommunications between all countries of the world has broken the barrier between cultures and indeed has thrown all ‘Noachian’ cultures into the deluge of technological modernity. And all the people of the backward world are craving to ride this “third wave” of political and economic development through the heuristic device of democracy.

Can any of the cultural obstructionists to democracy seriously contend that people who have been nurtured on the staples of backward cultures, whose chief characteristic is poverty, cannot make a distinction between the latter and affluence, an affluence that is depicted every day before their eyes on the screens of TV and computers which by a glaring contrast is the chief characteristic of Western modernity? That is, they would not be attracted and willing to grow the tree of economic prosperity by planting the roots of democracy in their own countries because for years they have been conditioned to live in a culture of poverty?

Alas, it’s by such poverty of thought that the propagators of cultural differentiation as the unbridgeable gap to democracy are building their intellectual reputation.    

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: ...on Israel-Palestine Conflict by Steve Clemons

Washington Note June 21, 2009

 “Absolutists on both sides need to be overcome” which Steve obviously agrees with this statement of former Secretary of State James A. Baker. This statement however ravages the truth by its direct reference of a ‘political equivalence’ between Hamas and the Netanyahu government. No Israeli government ever governed on behalf of the minority absolutist interests of the religious fanatics of Israel unlike Hamas which governs Gaza in the interests of its millenarian goals. It’s like saying that Republican governments, such as the former Bush administration, governed on behalf of the narrow interests of the religious right and not for the general interests of the United States.

If this is the quality of strategic thinking that the four eminent persons of Carter, Baker, Scowcroft, and Brzezinski, are offering to the Obama administration for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict then such advice will be a repeat performance of past failures as it rises from the lowest ebbs of their strategic ‘cogitations.’

And Steve will be found to be completely wrong if he thinks that the new turbulent situation in Iran might ‘force’ the Khatami-Ahmadinejad regime to change its policy toward its Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist surrogates. Steve in his misplaced realism does not realize that Iran will never abandon its pawns as long as it engages in its power-play in the region.