Is Russia reverting to the Soviet Union?
Category Archives: War Commentary
The Libyan Missiles
What, if anything is really missing? If we dodged a bullet here (so to speak) I hope that it raises awareness of this issue for the future.
The Middle East
Walter Russell Mead just got back, and has a report, apparently the first of more than one:
President Obama fell into a trap when he made a settlement freeze a precondition for talks. Secretly, both Israelis and Palestinian leaders are, I think, delighted that the US is now so tangled up in this demand that it has lost most of its influence over negotiations. The Palestinians are happier than the Israelis; it looks to world opinion as if it is Israeli intransigence on the settlement issue that is the chief obstacle to peace. But the Israeli government — while angry at Obama for making them look even worse than usual to much of the world — is also relieved that the settlement demand is so unpopular in Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu pays no domestic political price for rejecting it.
This is what happens when one puts a naif in the White House because he gives pretty speeches, and has a nice crease in his pants.
[Update a while later]
Lest anyone think from the excerpt that I provided that it is all about bashing the current president and not bother to read it, I’ll add this as well:
Each of the last three US presidents made poor decisions that have made this tangle worse. President Clinton had good intentions and many accomplishments to his credit, but his final, foolhardy rush to peace in the closing months and days of his administration was perhaps the worst decision made by any US president on this issue since the controversy began. His goal should have been to shore up a faltering peace process rather than pushing it to a premature climax. The failure of his peacemaking effort was predictable and expensive, and the absence of a legitimate peace process has been a serious problem in the region ever since.
President George W. Bush inherited a bad situation and made it worse. On the one hand, he inflamed Arab and world opinion by a confrontational approach on a range of issues and serial failures in both the development and presentation of policy alienated friends and antagonized enemies. His record was not entirely bleak; he managed to nudge the Israelis back toward some kind of negotiating posture and his strengthening of Palestinian institutions and the promotion of a strong West Bank economic miracle helped to reduce tension. Nevertheless, the US agenda was in worse shape when he left office than when he first took the oath.
President Obama added his own contribution to the record of failed US initiatives. While I personally agree with him that an extendable settlement freeze would greatly simplify the task of getting a good peace negotiation going, in the real world to make that demand was to lose all initiative on the issue — and to miss the opportunity to get the Israelis to make less dramatic but quite useful concessions in its place. He has allowed Prime Minister Netanyahu to outmaneuver him diplomatically and in US politics more than once. The US president’s optimistic speeches about building bridges to the Muslim world fell hollow and flat after he linked that effort to progress on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute which his own errors placed out of reach.
Really, read the whole analysis. It’s long, but worth it.
Pakistan
…is the enemy. So is Iran. And Syria.
It’s darned hard to win a war when you pretend you’re not at war.
Ahmadinejad’s Apocalyptic Address
Somehow, just walking out on him seems insufficient. He wants death and destruction.
Israel And The “Palestinians”
But Other Than That, It’s Great
Rick Perry: the president’s Middle-East policy is naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous. It’s not like that distinguishes it from any of his other policies. And Marty Peretz says that Obama’s Middle East is in tatters.
Who could have guessed such a thing could happen when you put an ill-educated leftist academic with no real-world experience into the Oval Office?
[Update a few minutes later]
The Peretz piece really is a must-read:
I wish there would be a Palestinian state, not because there is actually a real Palestinian people. I’m not persuaded of that. And, of course, I don’t think that there is a Nigerian people which is why, when younger, I was an active supporter of Biafra, the would-be Ibo state, squashed by an indifferent world in behalf of the territorial integrity of, yes, Nigeria which is breaking apart before our eyes, in part because of the machinations of Muslim extremism. The world will some day have to come to grips with the fact that most governments are not really representative of their peoples. The whole notion of a country’s UN membership being a certificate of legitimacy is morally corrupt. UN membership is an admission ticket to the expensive blandishments of New York.
So I want a Palestine because I want Israelis not to have to burden themselves with an internal population that has neither the coherence of a nation nor a tradition of democratic norms. President Obama is enamored of the current Palestinian narrative, as false as it is self-pitying. This is a simple narrative and an over-simple projection into the future. It assumes that a 1949 map of the cease-fire lines—yes, of course, with appropriate but tiny land exchanges—will assure the peace. I do not think it assures anything except that Israel would be deflected from the art and science of building an ever freer society, a chore—if you’ll forgive me—it has shown some talents in doing. I do not know Obama’s head. Maybe nobody does. But his fervent and fervid clamoring for a simple Israeli route to an independent Palestine misled no people so much as the Palestinians. When he retreated from his formulae, which the PA assumed he could impose on Israel, they were already on an independence high. His somber entreaties could not bring them back to any semblance of reality.
This conundrum of a non-negotiated state for the Palestinians appeals to the ardent déclarateurs. It ignores the fact that free and responsible politics has never been a habit in the Arab world. Read me right: never. There is nothing in Palestinian history to have made the Arabs of Palestine an exception to this stubborn commonplace now being played out again in virtually every country in the region. A commitment is never a commitment. A border is never a border. A peace is never long-lasting. Turkey has now added its serious mischief to the scenario. Erdogan himself will now unravel Cairo’s peace with Jerusalem, as Erdogan has already locked the PA into phantom international politics.
And the president probably doesn’t even comprehend the implications.
The Arab Disease
Thoughts and some history on an obvious problem that too many want to ignore:
In the last decade, the world has learned what Israelis have known for a long time; Arabs and their governments tend to favor self-destructive policies. Western nations have generally ignored this madness, or excused each instance as a momentary lapse in good judgment. But this bad behavior has spawned Islamic terrorism, and sustains it. Many Arabs believe what al Qaeda preaches, that the world should be ruled by an Islamic religious dictatorship, and that this must be achieved by any means necessary (including force, against non-Moslems, and Moslems who don’t agree.) This sort of thinking has been popular with Islamic conservatives since Islam first appeared in the sixth century. Since then, it has periodically flared up into major outbreaks of religious inspired violence. But that’s not the only problem. Arabs, in particular, sustain these outbursts with their fondness for paranoid fantasies and an exaggerated sense of persecution and entitlement. For example, most Arabs believe that the September 11, 2001 attacks were not carried out by Arabs, but were a CIA scam, to provide an excuse for the West to make war on Islam. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. U.S. troops in Iraq were amazed at the number of fantastical beliefs that were accepted as reality there. Then there is the corruption and intense hatreds. It’s a very volatile and unpredictable part of the world, and always has been.
Many of the people may be wonderful individuals, but it’s a sick, sick culture. As one commenter notes, it’s lunacy to think that if there were no Israel, there would be peace in the Middle East.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Peace with Israel is not sacred…and can be changed.”
So how’s that “Arab Spring” working out again?
What’s Going On With Turkey?
Claire Berlinski isn’t giving it away any more.
The Coming Ugliness In Egypt
…is it the end game? This will be a horrific human catastrophe, the result of decades of malgovernment. If the generals abandon their peace treaty and pick a fight with Israel, it should take the opportunity to expand its territory and buy more border security.