By Con George-Kotzabasis

Some of us were aware from the beginning even before Obama was elected president that he was weak and a coward and said so ab ovo. Many liberals, including Dan Kervick, were from long ago sleeping with the American beauty, Obama, and with the misjudgement that he would make a great president, only to wake up in astonishment long after that they were sleeping with a skeleton rattling his cowardly bones who would bring obloquy to the White House.  

Obama's obeisance to the Russians by withdrawing the installation of missiles in Eastern Europe, and his kow-towing to the Saudi king, were the first signs that he was a weak and timorous president. And the Iranian regime exploited and is exploiting to its full advantage Obama’s weakness in its vigorous and recalcitrant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Threats

 By Steve Coll The New Yorker  January 18, 2010

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

While Americans and international law are violated by the fiendish jihadists and the U.S. is involved in a relentless war with these fanatics, Clemons is concerned with “inhumane detainee operations.” What a memorial of mockery Clemons makes of Americans killed by the jihadists.

Here we have the ‘playwright’ Steve Coll staging on The New Yorker his burlesque play of al-Qaeda and terrorism and receiving the plaudits of Clemons in the form of a standing ovation. Proudly displaying his originality by writing, that because “Al-Qaeda provides no social services [like Hamas] and thus has built no political movement” it has no mass support among Muslims. But Al-Qaeda is and remains a powerful ideological movement and Coll is oblivious of the historical fact that ideology is the sire of politics and the foundation stone of political movements. Think of Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

Furthermore, no radical imam has denounced bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Muslim countries or in Western ones and there are thousands of worshippers who follow those imams who vehemently preach violent death to the infidel West and its Great Satan America, and therefore many Muslims are sub rosa, if not open, supporters of al-Qaeda.

Also the closing of Gitmo for the purpose of improving “America’s image abroad” does not come free and pays a heavy price: U.S. weakness in the eyes of terrorists and thus a centripetal force for recruiting jihadists.

Obama’s “forward defense” is a red herring. He has already adumbrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and his latest stupid ‘forward’ announcement that he is not going to deploy U.S. forces in Yemen, and by implication in Somalia, makes his “forward defense” a fiasco. As this advanced announcement by Obama signals and encourages jihadists from other Muslim countries and from the Muslim Diaspora to move into these two countries without fearing that they will be met by the might of the U.S. military.

Lastly, it’s monumental idiocy for Obama to believe that by ‘recruiting’ American “values and institutions” in the fight against fanaticism, he will defeat the “hateful ideology.” And, indeed, President Obama “has neither overestimated nor underestimated terrorism,” he has nullified it.  For what else means his initial reaction to the Nigerian suicide bomber when he dubbed him as being an “isolated extremist” not connected to a terrorist organization?

     

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Voila, we have a liberal atheist leftist educated American, in the person of Dan Kervick, who ostensibly supports Ahmadinejad and hopes that the obscurantist regime of the mullahs will “work out the right combination of concessions and firmness (killing its protesting young people in their struggle for freedom), reform and continuity to keep the lid” on the young educated masses, whom Kervick inferentially and derisively calls the “Persian pot,” who are presently engaged in a deadly “bouleversement” against the theocracy, all in the name of the ‘fearful’ unknowns revolutions generate. In this assessment of his he reveals his inner deep conservatism and vulgar cynicism of human nature that the latter’s actions would not lead to a better situation for mankind in the future but only to a worst one. Since he clearly infers from his post that the present evil that is embodied in the theocracy, i.e., killing its own people and boding a second holocaust for Jews, could only be replaced by a greater evil by this revolt of the young aspiring educated classes of Iran for freedom.

One can see Kervick, this comical liberal political ‘pantaloonist’, peregrinating in his colourful patched pantaloon on the internet with the slogan “down with all revolutions.”   

A healthy, challenging, and happy new year to all readers of the Owl.

Con George-Kotzabasis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s impossible to conceive that after the series of rebuffs by Iran to Obama’s diplomatic overture that the White House would “endorse’ this “highest-level American visit to Tehran,” in the person of John Kerry, with a new “message.” In the context of this Iranian rebuff the U.S. persistence to continue its attempt to engage in diplomacy by sending its high plenipotentiary John Kerry to the Mullah-Land will be sending just one “message” to the Mullahcracy, the perception of the furthering decrepitude and weakening of the Obama administration. Within such perception it’s beyond comprehension that anyone could believe that the Iranian regime, even in the context of “comprehensive negotiations,” would abandon its strategic goal to acquire nuclear weapons. And such potential endorsement of John Kerry to visit Tehran shows quite clearly, that President Obama is surrounded by a coterie of unimaginative and inept advisors. The latter are making a laughing stock and a misalignment of Metternichian diplomacy.   

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The New America Foundation (NAF) poll is most doubtful, if not a wishful concoction, that President Obama has not significantly reduced Israeli support for his Middle East policy with the fateful diplomatic error he made with his insistence and demand that Israel cease all settlements. An overwhelming majority of Israelis rejected this demand of Obama as being not only against Israel’s interests, but also, for its political naivety, as shown by a poll of the prestigious Jerusalem Post last August. That such a significant majority of Israelis against Obama can now be transformed in such a short time by the NAF poll into a 41% favourable for Obama goes against the grain of elementary logic and places a great question mark about the credibility and objectivity of the NAF survey. Moreover, the perception among a huge majority of Israelis that Obama is pro-Palestinian, according to the same poll of the Jerusalem Post, makes the NAF poll a “bull’s trail”.

 

The above post elicited the following comments in The Washington Note.

 

Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Dec 11 2009, 9:43PM - Link

Kotz, considering that Steve provides a link to the poll itself, and its methodology, it might help your argument if you actually gave us chapter and verse about why you think the NAF poll is skewed.

And I find it hard to believe that you are too stupid to see how this works in Netanyahu's favor. Not only does it demonstrate that the Israeli's appreciate a cowardly and subservient American President, it also telegraphs to Obama that if he continues with the same kind of toothless horseshit  the Israelis will abstain from using his middle name when feeding our worthless sack of shit Fourth Estate the script for the next edition of....

"Israel, (the good guys), necessarily exterminate more Palestinians, (the evil doers), while continuing the ethnic fumigation of Jerusalem."

 

Posted by JohnH, Dec 11 2009, 10:59PM - Link

Yes, nice poll numbers are moot if you don't have the spine to use them to promote American interests...

It's charming that Kotz thinks that stopping the settlements is the problem. For Kotz' information, most of the rest of the world thinks that constructing the settlements is the problem, and that Obama had it exactly right--before his spine turned to mush.

 

Posted by nadine, Dec 12 2009, 12:26AM - Link

"According to the New American Foundation Poll, President Obama has a 41% favorable / 37% unfavorable rating among Israelis. His unfavorable rating is only four points higher than the unfavorable rating for George W. Bush, who is routinely characterized as very popular among Israelis."

ROFL. Here is the question they asked:

"Q.20 Now, I'd like to rate your feelings toward some people, with one hundred meaning a VERY
WARM, FAVORABLE feeling; zero meaning a VERY COLD, UNFAVORABLE feeling; and fifty
meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from zero to one hundred, the higher the
number the more favorable your feelings are toward that person or organization. If you have no opinion or
never heard of that person, please say so."

It was purely on Obama's personal popularity. It had nothing to do with his policies at all, and nothing to do with his Mideast policies. It had nothing to do with his job approval either. Totally misleading. His personal popularity is higher than his job approval in the US too.

The rest of the poll is packed full of push-poll questions about good things that will arrive after an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. I'd love to see Scott Rasmussen analyze these questions.

 

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 12 2009, 11:37AM - Link

Looking over all of the numbers in the poll that pertain to Obama, we get this picture: On the whole, Israelis think Obama is honest and trustworthy, don’t think he is particularly naïve, think he will improve America’s standing in the world, and think his election is “good for the problems facing the world”.

But most don’t think he supports Israel or shares their values. So there is some significant number of Israelis who think Obama is good for America and the world, but bad for Israel, and thus admit to a divergence between Israeli interests and non-Israeli interests.

And then there’s this stunner: 39% of Israelis believe Barack Obama is a Muslim! And as I read the supporting numbers, over half of Sephardic Jews think he is a Muslim.

Obama might be able to help himself in Israeli if he could just figure out how to bring that number down to 25% by convincing some of these folks that he is actually a Christian. Maybe he should send them Christmas cards.

As others have mentioned, the key results are hard to interpret because they don’t show a breakdown into Arab and non-Arab Israelis. That data appears to be on the supporting “Crosstabs” PDF. There is a section for questions 20 to 29 that breaks the responses down by respondent identification.

As expected, Obama is more popular among Israeli Arabs than Jews. For some reason, Obama is very unpopular with Israel’s young people. I wonder if that has something to do with demographics. The Jewish birth rate in the colonies is higher, as I understand it, than the birth rate in the rest of Israel.

 

Kotzabasis says,

JohnH

It’s true of course that the political “tyroism” of ‘the world thinks that constructing the settlements is the problem.’ But the cardinal question is not what the world thought about the freeze of the settlements but what Israelis felt about it. And with Obama’s diplomatic faux pas on a total freeze he missed the wood for the trees as to the feelings of an overwhelming number of Israelis.

Kervick’s post is brimming, as usually, with contradictions. While 39% percent of Jews and over half of Sephardic Jews believe that Obama is a Muslim, nonetheless Kervick deduces from the poll that ‘on the whole Israelis think that Obama is honest and trustworthy,’ and that he is ‘good for the problems facing the world.’ That Israelis could make such a positive assessment about a “Muslim” president is beyond belief. Kervick takes a flight in the face of glaring contradiction.

What is interesting and revealing at the same time however, is that Clemons cleverly abstains from making a direct positive assessment of the NAF poll and uses a mouthpiece, Congressman Robert Wexler, to evaluate and wax lyrical about the poll. Is it because Clemons is concerned that he would compromise his political nous by directly accepting the dubious results of a dodgy poll?

 

JohnH says,

As Kotz notes, "the cardinal question is not what the world thought about the freeze of the settlements but what Israelis felt about it." And what makes Israel great is that it can lead the US around by its nose...

If the US wants to be respected as a leader in the world, it will have to solve its Israel problem.

 

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 13 2009, 12:02AM - Link

"Kervick’s post is brimming, as usually, with contradictions. While 39% percent of Jews and over half of Sephardic Jews believe that Obama is a Muslim, nonetheless Kervick deduces from the poll that ‘on the whole Israelis think that Obama is honest and trustworthy,’ and that he is ‘good for the problems facing the world.’"

Kotzabasis, rather than allowing you to go further in making a fool of yourself, I will instead suggest you follow the link Steve provided, and read the results for poll questions 30, 39 and 42. Take note of the numbers under the "Very Well" and "Well" columns - which are summed up in the "Total Well" column. After you have absorbed those results, you will see that I didn't "deduce" anything about majority opinion in Israel, but simply read it straight off the poll results.

Posted by kotzabasis, Dec 13 2009, 4:14AM - Link

Kervick

Well, well, you might not be a fool but you certainly are sans political insight. That you ‘simply read it straight off the poll results’ without seeing the flaunting contradiction or commenting upon it if you had seen it, that is, while stunningly, according to you, a majority of Sephardic Jews think that Obama ‘is a Muslim,’ yet according to questions 30, 39, and 42 a majority of Jews consider him favourably. The fact that you missed this glaring contradiction of the poll and didn’t sniff its “bull’s trail”, i.e., the cozenage of the poll, makes you a political simpleton.

 

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 13 2009, 10:10AM - Link

Kotzabasis, you're just trying to cover your embarrassment now with more ad hominem sneering and ad hoc arguments.

The statistic about Sephardic Jews is also to be found in the results in the Crosstabs page. It's not just "according to me". What you seem to be suggesting is that the poll must be faulty in some way because these results are a "glaring contradiction". The fact that you see them as contradictory reflects only your own bigoted preconceptions, not any incoherence in the poll results.

It is possible that many of these Sephardic Jews only distantly follow American politics. They know that the US president's father is of Kenyan origin, and that they are both named "Barack Obama", so assume, not knowing much else about his personal history and religious conversion, that he is a Muslim. It is also possible, as I think Nadine suggested, that these Sephardic Jews' attitudes simply reflect their own traditions, in which a person's religious identity isn't something one can choose, but is a result of parentage. Just as they believe that what makes them Jews is that their mothers were Jewish, they believe that the fact that Obama's father was a Muslim makes him a Muslim.

 

Kotzabasis says,

Kervick

You are a very bad reader. The phrase ‘according to me’ follows the word ‘stunningly’ and applies to it, which in your first post you typed as ‘stunner,’ and did not apply to the results in the Crosstabs page.

Just answer one question and you will see clearly by your own answer that the ‘contradiction’ is free from any bigoted preconceptions. Can you imagine that a majority of Sephardic Jews that assume correctly or wrongly-in this case of course wrongly-that Obama is a Muslim would also consider him favourably, when the whole Muslim world is deadly against them? By being overly logical in your second paragraph you continue to miss this glaring contradiction in its bellicose context of Muslims and Jews. This contradiction in itself speaks volumes about the cognitive status of the poll which you parroted sans critical scrutiny.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Knowledge is more poiesis (creative imaginative thinking) than mimesis. Friedrich Nietzsche

Since the beginning of the Renaissance that emerged from the entrepreneurial, adventurous, and calculating spirit of the burgher and mercantile classes of the city-states of Southern and Northern Europe, all the great scientific discoveries and achievements sprang from an unprecedented uniquely fertile soil that was ploughed by the mental and indomitable spirit of an intellectual elite endowed with the cultural values of their unsurpassably rich Judeo-Greco-Roman heritage. Copernicus’ heliocentric system, Galileo’s “E pur si muove,” and Kepler’s elliptical orbits of the planets, were the invaluable harvest from that scientifically fecund soil. It was the bullish age of originality that no obscurantist cassock could possibly prevent from running toward its highest peaks; and the laws of Nature could not be suspended for the benefit of the Church, to paraphrase the sublime Edward Gibbon. It was this creative originality and fearless spirit of a few that since that time brought to the many throughout these centuries to our own, knowledge and enlightenment followed by a cascade of political freedoms and economic prosperity to the denizens of Western civilization. But while creative originality is the Cinderella of the scientific world no Cinderella is without her ugly sister, and in its case its ugly sibling is imitation.

In our contemporary times of the twenty-first century, all the scientific discoveries and innovations originating in the cradle of entrepreneurial capitalism in their imitating form are at the disposal of, and adopted and used by, a caste of Islamist fanatics whose sole and irreversible goal is the destruction of the West and its Great Satan America. Armed with the earthly scientific gadgets of Silicon Valley, and becoming ever more proficient in their use, the holy warriors of Mohammed are pursuing and implementing their heavenly agenda: The destruction of the infidel West and its replacement with the new Caliphate. And there is no paucity of recruits for this grand goal of the religious fanatics. In an incomparably  demographic outburst of growth the young teeming generation of Muslims under thirty, unable to find useful employment of their increasing social and technical talents in their poverty stricken countries whose natural wealth is sapped by their klepto-oligarchies, are full of envy and hate of their cognate young counterparts in the West who climb the ladder of their professional success to ever higher and higher heights, and who are profusely and meritoriously rewarded that opens to them the doors to an exuberant emulative consumption of goods and services that are beyond the reach of the Arab masses. For aeons Muslims having being educated and nourished by an incomparably proud culture and sanctimoniously blindly believing in a religion that is primus sans pares which vouchsafes only to its believers their entry to paradise, whilst the votaries of all other religions are to be cast into hell fire, have a propensity to see their regressive political, economic, and social status as an outcome of the political and economic dominance of the West, especially of the United States, which hampers and prevents their own development and growth. Hence for the leaders of fanatical Islam it’s not difficult within such a context to persuade vexed, acrimonious, and enraged young Arabs that all their ills issue from the rapacious exploitation of Western capitalism. By making a scapegoat of the infidel west they provide the motif to the disgruntled young Muslims to become terror-fodder for al-Qaeda and its sundry affiliates.

And once this ostensibly technically educated young along with those educated in the religious madrassas join the ranks of the jihadists they are trained to imitate all the military techniques and gadgets, i.e., computers and cell phones, and more ominously the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including nuclear ones all originating from the cognitive fathomless streams and brain power of the ‘Silicons’ of the West. It’s this imitative adoption by the jihadists of the instruments of war that have been invented by western science that makes the holy warriors of Islam, who are hostis humani generis, most dangerous to civilized peoples, especially when these instruments are fanatically used by suicide bombers in pursuit of the seventy-two virgins. In the past asymmetrical power in conventional warfare was the ineluctable warranty that the weaker enemy would be subdued by the stronger. In our contemporary times this indubitable cannon that protected the strong and ensured their victory over a weak foe is reversed. Asymmetrical power used furtively, resolutely, and unconscionably can subdue a stronger power. The Islamist terrorists acting furtively and dressed in civilian clothes have become almost an invincible force. In the near future with the great potential of terrorists acquiring WMD and nuclear ones supplied by rogue states and attacking the metropolises of the West in a form of an encircling and in-depth concerted strategy,  they can paralyse and defeat even a superpower. No serious objective thinking can avoid from coming to this dire conclusion.

 

The Presidency of Idealistic Premises

This is why it’s of paramount importance that the leaders of the West and especially of the United States must deal with, and confront, this ominous and incendiary threat unequivocally with all the diplomatic and military means in their disposal and deploy them remorselessly and relentlessly against such implacable and irreconcilable enemy. As in the art of war a sagacious strategist once he recognizes and discerns an intransigent foe he destroys him while he is still weak and does not allow him to become stronger.

Moreover in the case of fanatical Islam the West and the U.S. will be facing in the near future a ‘bacteriological’ enemy of epidemiological proportions if it does not defeat decisively the avant-garde of terror, i.e., al-Qaeda and its various fanatical offshoots, such as al-Sabaab of Somalia, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and the AFPAK Taliban. For if the Obama administration injudiciously decides to wrap-up its military engagement with the Taliban in Afghanistan this will be seen by radical Islam as a definitive defeat of the United States whose corollary will be a monstrously huge increase in Islamist fanaticism and a massive rallying point of its votaries to continue remorselessly their fight against the infidel West and its Great Satan America. It’s in this pool of Islamist success in the field of battle that fanaticism will be nourished and spread like unchecked deleterious bacteria and its host, in the form of suicide bombers, will ultimately threaten the existence of Western civilization.

That is why the United States that is involved in a relentless implacable war with fanatical Islam cannot quit the field of battle until all quite is in the jihadist front of war, until the holy warriors of Islam are defeated decisively. The question however is whether the Obama presidency of idealistic premises, in its attempt to placate and appease its irreconcilable foes by the ‘miraculous’ prowess of diplomacy—which demonstrably both in the Middle East and with Iran has been a total failure-- is qualified to deliver this victory in the field of battle.  The omens rather are that President Obama has neither the sagacity, nor mettle and resolution, or inclination, to win this war against the jihadists.

Being an effete ‘Carteresque’ president, he is more prone to settle for an “endgame” of the war in Afghanistan than winning it by increasing the number of troops by forty thousand as requested by his general on the ground Stanley Chrystal. One can presage therefore without letting one’s guard down that President Obama in his coming decision on Afghanistan will reject General McChrystal’s core recommendation by falsely declaiming that the U.S. cannot deploy its sons and daughters and treasury in foreign wars with no end in sight that are not essential and tangential to America’s long term interests. But this will be tragically the legacy of the weak President Obama: By enfeebling American power against irreconcilable enemies he will be putting America’s vital interests at the greatest of risks.  

The following paper was written on June, 2003, and published in my book Unveiling The War Against Terror, on May, 2004. It's republished here hoping that the readers of  Owl... will find it to be of some interest.                    
             
By Con George-Kotzabasis 

Once upon a time, the curiosity, intrepidity, and adventurous spirit of the descendants of a cosmopolitan civilization of Judeo-Greco-Roman origins, discovered a new continent that would grow in time, on the "downside" of Eden, economically, politically, culturally, and morally, into the most beautiful and fairest of her sex. But like all creatures who are made 'in the prodigality of nature', she would ineluctably attract, and be victim to, the jealousy, envy, and hate of the  "ugly" world. Thus, the American Cinderella, at the peak and bloom of her economic, political, military, and cultural power, would draw upon herself the wrath and jealousy of her ugly sisters. This is in short the story, of the vicissitudes and the fate of the American Cinderella in a hostile, enviable, and unequal world.        

It is a stupendous fallacy, and tendentious to believe, that America is hated for its so - called economically exploitative policies, and its arrogant foreign policy, both of which, according to its critics, obstruct and prevent nascent nations from also basking under the sun of economic prosperity and political freedom. On the contrary, the main cause for this resentment against America by these nations, as well as by those with pretensions of global power, such as Russia, France, and Germany, which no longer perch on the top branch of the tree of political power, is the overwhelming and unassailable power that America exercises in the economic, political, military, cultural, and scientific spheres, over the rest of the world.

 It is for this reason therefore wrong to premise, that only by changing these so called reprehensible and objectionable policies toward the less privileged nations and turbulent spots of the world, will America be able to stop the waves of hate from crashing against its shores. That ostensibly the emollient to hatred lies in benign actions. Such analysis of the situation, however, is monstrously superficial and deeply faulted. The hatred against America has its roots in the curse of envy. As America's conspicuous eminence in the above named spheres, like Veblen's conspicuous consumption, gives rise to envy among all peoples and nations, who cannot at this stage emulate it.

There is nothing unique or unprecedented throughout all history, that strong civilizations have always distended and expanded their dominance by battering old and opening new frontiers. All dominant powers exercised and demonstrated this dominance in vigorous and often violent ways.  Not only in their unquenchable desire to conquer new lands, but also, when they had to defend their vital interests and their domain from the threatening incursions and forays of potential deadly enemies. And just as often this violent action, or resort to arms by these powers, was unilateral and preemptive. The Greek historian Thucydides, in his depiction of the dialogue between the Athenians and the Melians, gives a tour de force instruction about the reality of political and military power, i.e., the weak must submit and pay tribute to the strong, because if the weak were in the same position as the strong, they would have also done the same thing.       

It is the softening of the brain, and not of the heart, that will not concede and accept this reality of power. Moreover, no civilization or nation which possesses such power but is squeamish in using it, will   be able to prevail against its competitors or enemies and eventually, like a lion who is no longer capable to roar, will lose this power and  will cease to be preeminent among nations. And there is no example in history, that a civilization or nation that possessed such power, voluntarily abdicated it. It could only lose it in a clash with a stronger civilization or nation than itself.  

In the present historical juncture with the rise of fundamentalist Islam and its terrorist death squads which threaten the stability, if not the viability, of the nations of Western civilization, especially of America, which is the embodiment, the "cosmopolis" of this civilization, the latter as a strong nation, inevitably has to take up the cudgels and defend itself and the world from this deadly menace. No nation or civilization, imbued with a modicum of amour propre and pride for its achievements, would allow itself to succumb, without fighting back with all its vigor and might, to a dangerous thrust of a horde of barbarians. And one must be reminded, that only America, among all other nations, has the technological wherewithal, the military power, and will, to confront and defeat terrorism and its state sponsors on a global scale. Furthermore, the defeat of global terrorism is pivotal on a war on two fronts. Whose critics, among which are Simon Crean and Kevin Rudd of the Labor Opposition, so simplistically and lamentably fail to see or acknowledge. One cannot decisively defeat terrorism without simultaneously fighting and defeating its state sponsors. Both, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam in Iraq, had this strategic aim. Which regrettably, was not spelled out lucidly and publicly, either by the Pentagon or the White House. And the destruction of the regimes of the Taliban and of Saddam, were, also, part of a quintessential process of 'creative destruction', to use the immortal phrase of the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, for the countries' future economic and political development.                                                                                     

The war against terrorism however, is not solely the responsibility of America. Because apparently it seems the latter is the main target of the terrorists. It is just as well the responsibility of all the free nations of the world. To replicate the American isolationism of the 1930s, during which the ominous dark clouds of Nazism hovered all over Europe, as the Labor Opposition has done by its statements that Australia should concentrate its forces in the region, when the terrorists have only one region in their deadly sight, i.e., the free world, is to 'have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing', to quote Talleyrand. Labor's stand on this grave issue is totally out of joint. While it is in full agreement that Australia must fight global terrorism, it is calling at the same time that its armed forces should stay within the bounds of the region. Apparently, political senility is the disease that is decrepitating the Opposition on this vital issue. Thus by definition, making it completely unqualified to govern the country in these critical times.

As for the calophonous, cheerful cries, of the not so intelligent cosmopolitan liberal intelligentsia, to make love not war, they unimaginatively forget that only because America has fought and is fighting necessary wars, that it is by the "grace of America", that the peace-loving of the world can indulge in their predilection for the gratifications and pleasures of the boudoir. Moreover, they conveniently forget, that it was "peccant" America that saved the world from the twin miasma of Nazism and Communism, which threatened to intern and engulf the world in its monstrous death camps and gulag archipelagos.

America as the sole super-power has the moral, political, and historical responsibility to defend the institutions and mores of Western civilization from this mortal threat posed by Muslim fanaticism. As the American political commentator Robert Kagan has brilliantly argued, in the 'anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable', Immanuel Kant's   'Perpetual Peace', can only be achieved by America decisively and relentlessly exercising its mighty power against these deadly foes of life, peace, and freedom. And whilst in such exercise, it is wise to have allies from both old and new Europe, to win this war not only in the battlefield, but, also, in the interlocutory of diplomacy, at the same time, America must not allow itself to be trapped in the power plays and procrastinations of its fickle allies, as are played out in the security council of the United Nations. To quote another political theorist Michael Glennon, 'states pursue security by pursuing power. Legalistic institutions that manage that pursuit maladroitly are ultimately swept away '. (Foreign Affairs May/June 2003.)

The security of the free world which is presently threatened by the baneful and atrocious attacks of al Qaeda and its affiliate bodies spread all over the globe, can only be accomplished by America using its military power preemptively and unilaterally, if that is necessary, against these mortal foes.  America, as the embodiment and protector of Western civilization and freedom, has no other alternative but to respond to this challenge of terrorism with all its might. The ghastly specter of fanatic terrorism will not be exorcised by saintly incantations nor by sprinkling with oil its stormy waters. And as no great nation can escape its own destiny, America has no choice but to exercise its military power against this reign of terror, with the wisdom that applies in a Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is a question that I was to put to Clemons from another thread but at the time I was under the surgeon’s knife. Since my question, however, is not completely unrelated to the present thread, I’m posing it here.

The question is related to Clemons ‘sweet’ emotional rapprochement to the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, in the face of the ‘bitter’ realities of the Middle East. Is the West including that outpost of Western civilization, Israel, and especially the U.S., currently engaged in a mortal fight with a hard core fanatical Islam which includes its terrorist satrapies Hamas and Hezbollah or not? If the answer to the question by the “hybrid” realist Clemons, to use his term, is in the affirmative, then the latter is the grand appeaser toward fanatical militant Islam. If he answers it in the negative, with all the expected equivocations that he is capable of, then he is afflicted by an incurable virus of political necrophilia.

But in my humble opinion, Clemons will go down in the chronicles of American history, if he ever makes its footnotes, as the mini American Chamberlain in contrast to Churchillian mettle and sagacity. Appease! Appease! Is the clamour of Clemons and the prophets.