Category Archives: War Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

“There’s Nothing We Can Do About It”

23 Comments

This seems to be an own-goal by Gates yesterday. It makes us sound weak, when in fact it isn’t true. There are a number of things we could do about it — the administration just thinks that doing those things are worse choices than doing nothing. As the most obvious example, we could simply bomb and destroy the launch site. We could do this today, or tomorrow, or any day up to the launch. This would absolutely guarantee that North Korea doesn’t do the missile testsatellite launch.

Would it be a good idea? I think so. The regime is in violation of so many UN resolutions, bi- and multi-lateral agreements, etc., that it would be a minor consequence for its criminal behavior over the past decades.

But I can’t imagine this administration, of all administrations, wanting to stir up that hornet’s nest. They’re too busy indulging themselves in the delusion that the reason the rest of the world is unhappy with us is George Bush. And of course, even those countries who were secretly happy to see it, including China, would still be pleased to make political hay over it, churn up international outrage, etc. So it’s probably off the table. But we should say that, instead of implying that we’re impotent.

And just how is it that the NORKs get away with overflight of Japan on a launch? While they are geographically disadvantaged, and can’t get to orbit eastward without doing so, Israel doesn’t use that excuse. If they did, they wouldn’t take the trouble to launch retrograde to avoid overflight of their (hostile) neighbors. North Korea should just have to settle for either hiring someone else to launch, or lease a launch site somewhere else, as any other simililarly-situated nation (e.g., Switzerland) would have to.

Perhaps we might persuade Japan to do something about it, with offers to back them diplomatically. They’re more justified than we are. If they have to shoot down the missile, there’s still a chance that it would come down on their territory. Destroying it on the ground would eliminate this problem. An ounce of prevention, etc…

[Update a few minutes later]

Charles Johnson makes another point that I should have:

This is really a stunning statement. Why didn’t Gates say something like, “We’re not prepared to discuss any plans we may have for dealing with the North Korean missile launch”? To tell them outright that we’re not going to do anything at all is unbelievably stupid. What the hell is going on here?

Was this an explicit decision on the part of the Obama administration, or did he wing it? Either way, confidence is not inspired.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

More On The Oliphant Libel

3 Comments

From Barry Rubin (yes, he’s one of them):

On the left is a huge figure. On the right is a small figure. The implication that need not be spoken here is that the big figure—the powerful side—must be wrong. Oliphant like many or most Western intellectuals, academics, and policymakers, still doesn’t understand the concept of asymmetric warfare. In this, a weaker side wages war on a stronger side using techniques it thinks can make it win. What are these techniques? Terrorism, indifference to the sacrifice of its people, indifference to material losses, refusal to compromise, extending the war for ever. This is precisely the technique of Hamas: let’s continue attacking Israel in order to provoke it to hit us, let’s target Israeli civilians, let’s seek a total victory based on genocide, let’s use our own civilians as human shields, and with such methods we will win. One way we will win is to demonize those who defend themselves, to put them in positions where they have a choice between surrender and looking bad. This cartoon is a victory for Hamas. But it is also a victory for all those who would fight the West and other democracies (India, for example) using these methods. Remember September 11?

Read the whole thing. This isn’t just a war against Israel. It is a war against civilization.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Thanks, Pat Oliphant

6 Comments

Roger Simon:

Oliphant – whose work I usually find humdrum in the extreme – has done us a favor. Deliberately or not, he has dropped the oldest of phony Leftist pretenses – that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. The poor, diminutive woman and child of Gaza in his cartoon are being eaten alive by a rapacious Jewish star, not by the flag of Israel. It is the religion or ethnic group (you decide), not the state – Jews, not Israelis – performing this supposedly horrific act.

Well, thank you, Oliphant, you racial primitive you. You let the cat out of the bag we always knew was in there. And you did it in the pages of the Washington Post.

It was always a pretty thin excuse.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Ron Radosh:

in his new cartoon, Oliphant echoes the kind of propaganda once favored by the Nazis in their racist paper Der Strumer, edited by one of Hitler’s top journalists, Julius Streicher. What Oliphant does is show a headless Nazi-like soldier- an Israeli- goose-stepping Nazi fashion with his sword ready for action. He is ready to inflict a weaponized Star of David on a mother and child in Gaza. The right side of the religious symbol of Judaism is depicted as a shark coming at the hapless victims.

If you think the comparison to the cartoons in Streicher’s rag is going too far, take a look at this cartoon. Or this one: the Jewish “monster” with his claw-like hands trying to take over the world. One might wonder if Oliphant consulted this Nazi archive for inspiration.

He probably didn’t have to. They have modern equivalents in Middle East media.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

I Feel Much Safer Now

1 Comment

The new administration is disarming the pilots.

The Bush administration was pathetic on this issue, too, but not this bad.

Anyway, stupid bureaucrats are stupid bureaucrats, whatever party is in power.

[Noon update]

Maybe not:

…this sounds to me like either the Times just whiffed this one massively oooooor the White House did want to do something like that and the trial balloon got shot down very fast by a core constituency.

Let’s hope.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Making Orwell Proud

32 Comments

Some examples from VDH:

Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer “enemy combatants” there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is “fundamentally sound” is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.

Not to mention what a disaster that it would be to make health insurance benefits taxable, which was one of the many mendacious ways by which they slithered into the White House, except that now, maybe it’s not such a bad idea:

Now that Mr. Obama has begun the health debate, several advisers say that while he will not propose changing the tax-free status of employee health benefits, neither will he oppose it if Congress does so.

Let me translate: “Yes, I don’t want to take responsibility for it, because even my lapdogs in the media might find that too much hypocrisy to stomach after all my demagoguery on the issue last fall, but I’ll sign the bill when it gets to my desk, so go for it.”

Well, actually, I’m not sure that it would make Orwell proud. More likely sad at his own prescience.