Category Archives: War Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

On The Stupidity Of The TSA

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I’m with Jeffrey Goldberg:

It is a source of continual astonishment to me that pilots — many of whom, it should be pointed out, are military veterans who possess security clearances — are not allowed to carry onboard their airplanes pocket knives and bottles of shampoo, but then they’re allowed to fly enormous, fuel-laden, missile-like objects over American cities.

The TSA is one more bit of idiocy on which George Bush was such a huge disappointment. This is another of those policies that the new crop of Republicans should renounce, and fix.

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, War Commentary, Weird

First It’s Cartoons

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And now this:

Prominent Muslim religious heads have expressed anger and dismay on the information of a US dog being named ‘Khan.’ Maulana Syed Athar Ali said that it is a known fact that Muslims detest pigs and dogs.

“To name a dog a Muslim name by US security agencies is to deliberately incite the Muslim community. We would be meeting soon and devise a strategy to protest and seek apology from the US,” said Maulana Athar Ali.

Yes, of course. It was a deliberate act of provocation. And just how angry are they? This angry.

Hey, it’s a religion of peace. Or so they say.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Enemy Has A Strategy

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Do we?

Of course, the White House strategy seems to consist of apologizing to them, and pretending that they aren’t enemies, but just Facebook Friends we haven’t met yet. “Enemy” is a term reserved for American citizens who don’t agree that we should become a bankrupt European social democracy as soon as possible.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Amateur Hour at the State Department.” Thoughts from Claire Berlinski:

I recently interviewed Turkey’s former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled — like many in Turkey — by the soft-headedness of the Obama administration’s diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama’s speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game,” he said. “He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.”

It’s not merely the ideological color of the Obama administration’s diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I’ve lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey’s “No” vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I’ll be writing about this elsewhere, and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity — and obviously there was — in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear-fuel-swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program, for God’s sake? It’s inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.

When the State Department spokesman sends a completely inappropriate birthday message to to Ahmadinejad via Twitter, it is, likewise, a symptom of utter amateurism. Apologists for this incident have suggested to me that this wasn’t such a big deal; it was sarcastic, they say, and it wasn’t a diplomatic note or official communiqué. I am guessing that had that Tweet said, “Tomorrow we bomb Iran into rubble,” the same people would have thought it quite a big deal indeed.

Unfortunately, regardless of what happens today, it’s not a problem we can solve for another two years. And it won’t be solved by replacing the president with the current Secretary of State, though that would be a modest improvement.