Tag: Syria

Best thing written on Syria so far

I hate to say it, but, Larison is right:

This is one of the problems with an attack on Syria that I mentioned yesterday. When the U.S. was declaring its intention to arm the Syrian opposition, it seemed that this could derail any attempt to reduce tensions with Iran. A direct attack on Syria would make it virtually impossible for Rouhani to pursue a more conciliatory course, which in turn makes conflict with Iran more likely in the coming years. Iran might not respond militarily to an attack on its ally, but if hard-liners in Tehran are as blinkered as our own “credibility”-obsessed politicians they very well might feel that they have to respond or risk being perceived as weak. Whether Iran retaliates or not, Rouhani will be in no position to offer concessions, and Iran hawks here will use this to justify their own demands for even more sanctions and more aggressive measures against Iran’s nuclear program.

One of the more curious things about arguments for intervention in Syria is that most of them have focused on Iran’s support for Assad as a reason to enter the war, but they never consider the possibility that Iran could strike against U.S. interests or clients in response. Most Syria hawks think that using force against Assad will prove to Tehran that the U.S. is serious when it makes threats against other governments, but they assume that hard-liners in Tehran will react to an attack on their ally by becoming more accommodating, which is the exact opposite of what they themselves would do if a U.S. ally were attacked. Most Syria hawks have tried selling war in Syria as a way to avoid war with Iran, but with each step towards direct military intervention in Syria war between the U.S. and Iran is becoming more likely.

via How Attacking Syria Makes Conflict with Iran More Likely | The American Conservative.

The only thing I have to add to the above is this here; once the genie is out of the bottle, it is out and there is no putting back in the bottle at all. If the United States and Great Britain attack Syria, then the wheels for there being a World War III will be put into motion in short order; and Israel and Russia will be involved, as well as Iran. Biblical prophecy will begin to be fulfilled in short order.

This why I believe Obama really needs to think this through in a big way; and really ask himself, “Do I really want to be the President that puts the United States in this sort of place?” Also too, Patrick J. Buchanan is absolutely right, there needs to be a debate and Congress, not the President; should be the ones to decide if we should go into another protracted Military conflict.

Because frankly, there are no short wars at all. Period, End of story. Anyone who believe that this would be short battle ought to remember Iraq and how we thought that little foreign policy blunder was going to be a short war.

 

Best thing I’ve read in the New York Post in a long time

I hate to say it, but I happen to like this blunt, frank, assessment of the middle east.  It is the best one that I have seen in a very long time.

Quoting Ralph Peters in The New York Post:

The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.

And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony.

We’re witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That’s what we’re seeing in Syria and Iraq — two names, one struggle — and will find elsewhere tomorrow.

The next country to go: Rescuers working at the site of a car bomb in Kirkuk, Iraq, last week. Violence is rising rapidly across the country.

We can’t stop it, we can’t fix it, and we don’t understand it. But we can stay out of it.

[….]

The Saudi position is always “You and him fight!” As long ago as Desert Storm, Saudis joked about renting the American army and our bumpkin gullibility. (Try to find one US officer who’s worked with the Saudis and doesn’t hate their guts. . .) Now they want Washington to spend our blood and treasure to open the mosques of Damascus to their Wahhabi cult.

[….]

Iraq was carved out for British interests, while Syria was France’s consolation prize. Now Syria’s collapsing in a too-many-factions-to-count civil war. And Iraq’s in the early stages of its own dissolution; even a would-be dictator — another of our one-time “friends,” Nouri al-Maliki — can’t keep the “country” together.

We don’t even know how many new states will emerge from the old order’s wreckage. But the Scramble for the Sand is on, with Iran, Turkey, treacherous Arab oil sheikdoms and terrorists Sunni and Shia alike all determined to dictate the future, no matter the cost in other people’s blood.

We had our chance to extend the peace and keep both Iran and Wahhabi crazies at bay after we defeated Iraq’s insurgencies. But a new American president, elevating politics over strategy, walked away from Baghdad, handing Iraq to Iran. Now it’s too late. If George W. Bush helped trigger the Arab Spring, Barack Obama made this Arab Winter inevitable.

We must not be lured into the current fighting — centered, for now, on Syria — by cries of humanitarian necessity. The local powers could step in to stop the killing. But they won’t. Once again, they want us to pay the bill. (It’s time for the Saudis, especially, to give their own blood.)

We’ve paid enough. Rhetoric and red lines notwithstanding, we need to back off from Syria, if for no other reason than a strategist’s golden rule: If you don’t understand what a fight’s about, stay out.

I can tell you that if back in during the heyday of the Bush Administration someone had written something like this about the middle east and Iraq; they would have been ran out of Murdoch’s owned company on a rail!  This shows me, that the chickenhawk right has become a very small minority now and is being replaced by people who simply want common sense in foreign policy on the right.  This is a very positive step in the right direction.

Honestly, this really sounds like something from the American Conservative and, as far as this writer is concerned, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul; and the rest those who said Iraq was a bad idea —- were very much right.

Others: VodkaPundit

UPDATED – It’s official: The Obama Administration is in deep trouble and I am done defending them

My friends, I was very, very wrong and for that, I am terribly sorry. 🙁

I said that I believed that the entire Benghazi, Libya debacle was over-hyped by the Republicans; and I still believe that, to a point.

However, there are many things that have come up since then, which I simply cannot defend.

They are:

  1. The IRS targeting Jewish groups.  – I mean, honestly, what the hell were the IRS and Obama’s people thinking when they let this one happen?
  2. IRS targeting Conservative groups in Washington and Elsewhere. — Did they not know that this would be exposed?
  3. DOJ going after the AP – This is borderline Watergate, so says a watergate player. — Again, what the hell were these people thinking?

My friends, the “Giving the benefit of the doubt” of the President and his Administration by this writer and blogger are over. There is no doubt in my mind that the Obama administration; much like the Administration of George W. Bush, became consumed with a lust for power and abused and exploited the office of President of the United States and the instruments of Governmental office for political purposes.

I leave you with two videos:

Update: Better clip via The American Spectator:

The Democrats have screwed themselves out of ever winning an election; for like oh, maybe the next 2 major election cycles. This is the sad part, Obama and his Administration promised Americans that he would be a clean break from the policies and practices of President George W. Bush and his Administration and sadly, it turns out that Obama and his Administration are just as bad; if not even worse.   As I wrote before, it is sad ending to a Presidency that offered so much to give; but ended up delivering little or nothing at all, in the realm of change.

It is going to be a long, hot, nasty, political summer for America, Americans, Black Liberal Americans and for Washington D.C.. I just hope that cool heads prevail. But, I really do fear the worst in yet to come.

Blogger Round Up #1: (via) Yahoo! News, JustOneMinute, Michelle Malkin, New York Times, Sunlight Foundation Blog, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Right Turn, waysandmeans.house.gov, Hot Air, The Week, The Daily Caller, The Hill, Daily Kos, First Read, The Maddow Blog, PostPartisan, The Fix, White House Dossier, The Other McCain, Betsy’s Page, Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog, Scared Monkeys,msnbc.com, Obsidian Wings, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools, Twitchy, National Review,The Lonely Conservative, Power Line, Conservatives4Palin and CBS DC

Blogger Round Up #2: (via) Yahoo! News, Washington Monthly, BuzzFeed, The Week, Associated Press, Hit & Run,News Desk, Fox News, Open Channel, msnbc.com, emptywheel, Guardian, WorldViews, Patterico’s Pontifications, The Huffington Post, No More Mister Nice Blog, USA Today, The Hill, Weekly Standard, Poynter, The Daily Caller, The Volokh Conspiracy, Erik Wemple, ThinkProgress, Right Wing News, Taylor Marsh, Scared Monkeys, Addicting Info, americanthinker.com, CNN,CANNONFIRE, The BLT, PJ Media, NO QUARTER USA NET, The Moderate Voice, The Hinterland Gazette, NationalJournal.com, Hot Air, Washington Free Beacon, Washington Examiner, Wired,Politico, Weasel Zippers, Gawker, THE DEFINITIVE SOURCE, Hullabaloo, Ed Driscoll, The Verge,The Gateway Pundit, SPJ News, The PJ Tatler, National Review, National Republican …, Philly.com,Mother Jones, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Sister Toldjah, Outside the Beltway, Wonkette, TalkLeft andLawfare, more at Mediagazer »

Update #1: Franklin Graham says they were targeted. Those rat bastards have no shame at all. 😡

 Update #2:  Obama Admin’s IRS targeted reporter who gave hard interview.

Update #3: I am just going to say this and get it off my chest:

IMPEACH THE FUCKER AND GET IT OVER WITH!

Roundup #3: The Gateway Pundit, Sister Toldjah, Weasel Zippers, Washington Free Beacon, Rule of Law, BuzzFeed, ViralRead, Jammie Wearing Fools,The PJ Tatler, VodkaPundit and Hot Air

Senator Claire McCaskill said What?!?!?

This also comes via HotAir.com and yes, via Ed Morrissey: (I only link to this one, because like Ed, My jaw went “CLANK!” when I saw this…)

Transcript:

BOB SCHIEFFER, “FACE THE NATION”: Do either of you at this point think there’s a chance that we would have to put U.S. troops in there or that we would want to?

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MISSOURI): I don’t think you want to ever rule it out because I think this is, kind of, as — as Saxby said, this thing has really deteriorated, and it’s not really at a tipping point. So I don’t think you ever want to say absolutely not. Obviously, we don’t want to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Do either of these two ding-a-lings have any idea what kind of troop commitment that would take? I mean, Syria is a huge Country and we would be fighting all sorts of people. (You know, kind of like….um, Iraq?)

Ed Morrissey sums it up:

We might be able to prevent that with a large-scale invasion and an equally large-scale occupation that lasts a decade or more, if we can get enough NATO members to come along with us and sell it to a Congress that has been acting as though Iraq was a huge mistake. That would include having to quell any insurgencies from Jabhat al-Nusra or related groups, along with fighting Hezbollah again. Anyone up for that kind of commitment? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Funny how the same Democrats who were all like, “The War lost and we need to come home!” during Presidency of George W. Bush are the same ones who are now all, “A yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” when it comes to Syria and Obama.  I think that some voices of sanity on the left really need to speak up right about now and tell these people, “Um, Folks? We tried that in Iraq and our butts are still sore and we lost like a bunch of people. Lets not do that, okay?”

This also proves a few things that I always did suspect; that the Anti-War movement, among the beltway Democrats; unlike the real grassroots Progressive anti-war movement —- was nothing more than an Anti-Bush partisan pet cause. Which quickly dried up once Obama was in office.  I am thinking that Bush knew this and this is why he would not cave to their demands, despite the fact that there was no WMD’s.

To be fair, I have always suspected that Libya was a partisan pet cause among the Republicans; which explains why it never gained in traction in Congress at all.  I mean, there were obviously some mistakes made; but the way the Republicans have drummed that story up, and yes, I do mean via Fox News —- makes me think it falls among partisan lines.  True, many Military people and grassroots Conservatives are concerned about it and rightly so. The Republicans simply made it their pet cause and will in 2014 and 2016; you watch. This is until it starts to generate backlash and they quickly drop it; like when they are elected. Again, watch what happens. I know the game, I have been around it long enough.

 

“Stay the hell out of Syria!” Says, HotAir.com?!?!?!??!

I happen to be checking out one of my many blogs that I read on a daily basis here,  and I happen to see the following:

From a strictly strategic point of view, why not let Hezbollah fight al-Qaeda affiliates and let them drain each other of strength?  That has to be a better outcome than victory for Assad or for the Nusrah Front and its AQ allies.  An American intervention that tips the scales towards AQ would be absurd, and yet that seems to be exactly what Republicans and Democrats in Washington want from the Obama administration.

If we are going to intervene, it should be with a heavy footprint that ends the Nusrah Front’s control of wide swaths of Syria.  That will take years, hundreds of thousands of troops, and probably trillions of dollars — but it’s the only way to intervene and keep Islamist terrorists from taking over large parts of Syria like they did in Libya, after a 30,000-foot intervention by Obama and NATO.  If we don’t want to pay that kind of price for intervention, then let’s stay the hell out of Syria in the first place.

Now, who would make such a statement? Lew Rockwell? Ron Paul? Rand Paul? The Editors at The American Conservative? Patrick J. Buchanan?

Why, No.

It was none other than Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com.

For what it is truly worth, Ed has a good point. This whole neocon idea of controlling the entire arab world is absurd and would come back to bite us anyhow. We lost a good deal of American treasure in Iraq and for what? Some bad intelligence that no one could be bothered to verify? As Ed basically said here; lets not make that same mistake twice. We cannot afford it anyhow, and I just happen to believe that America is war-weary anyhow, any sort of military action would a disaster for the Democrats and for America in general.

So, hats off to Ed Morrissey for speaking a truth, that might not be that popular in his own circles. Being a truth-teller in politics, especially in Conservative circles is a really hard thing at times. I am sure that he took it on the chin to speak that truth on that blog. My thoughts are with him, because, as I well know; speaking from the heart and shooting from the hip is not easy sometimes.

I have to agree with this on Syria

I hate to say it, but Daniel Larison is right on the money here. We should keep our noses out of that conflict:

Less credible still is the idea that America somehow “owns” the conflict in Syria. That’s not true, and the U.S. shouldn’t be dragged deeper into it because someone claims that it is. If the government begins directly backing armed factions in Syria’s conflict, then Washington will own their actions and be responsible for them. What begins as arms supplies and support will eventually grow into a larger commitment, because by itself supplying weapons likely won’t be enough to achieve anything except more Syrian deaths and a reduced chance of negotiating an end to the fighting. The U.S. already has more than enough commitments overseas, and the last thing it needs now is to be adding a new, difficult, long-term one in Syria.

via America Doesn’t Own the Conflict in Syria | The American Conservative.

Before anyone gives me any grief about it. I know what I have said about The American Conservative in the past. Mainly, it is because of the one of the original owners of the Magazine, and his attitude towards Jews. I mean, it is one thing to dislike the influence of the Jewish right and have a problem with Wilsonian foreign policy. But it is another entirely to say that Israel does not have a right to exist and to accuse Israel of some of the most ridiculous things, most of which comes from propaganda straight out of Palestine. Not only that, but if you side with the people, whose religion says that we got what we deserved on 9/11, then you’re just an asshole in my book. I hate to put it like that, but it is the truth.

Uh-Oh: Turkey is getting involved in the Syrian conflict

This is not good, not matter how you slice it.

Via NYT:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Turkish prime minister announced on Wednesday night that Turkey had fired artillery at targets in Syria, in retaliation for Syrian mortar fire that fell in a Turkish border town and killed five Turkish civilians. It was the first instance of significant fighting across the Turkish-Syrian border since the Syrian uprising began last year, and raised the prospect of greater involvement by the NATO alliance, to which Turkey belongs.

“This atrocious attack was immediately responded to adequately by our armed forces in the border region, in accordance with rules of engagement,” said a written statement from the office of the prime minister, carried by the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency. “Targets were shelled in locations identified by radar.”

“Turkey, in accordance with the rules of engagement and international law, will never leave such provocations by the Syrian regime against our national security unrequited,” the statement added.

NATO said it would convene an urgent meeting on the issue Wednesday. Before firing into Syria, Turkey contacted the United Nations and NATO to protest the killings and express its “deepest concern.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was “outraged” by the mortar attack in Turkey.

There is no two ways of looking at it; whomever wins this election, is really going to have their hands full come the day they start work. I would not want to be in their shoes for no amount of money.

If I were some sort of partisan hack, I would be blaming Obama for this; but I am not. Obama has zero to do with this at all. He did not order these people to go to war with their own Government. Also too, he cannot really takes sides either. So, on this one, he is doing the right thing and letting the UN handle it.

I just have a sinking feeling about it; I mean, Turkey just got finished with its own little problem and now, they have this, plus Iraq is still an issue, plus Iran. It is all a huge mess and I would not want to be in Romney’s or Obama’s shoes either one. Sometimes the World around us, is just one big huge mess. Some would blame Bush and the Iraq war for destabilizing the region. There is some merit to that; but to be quite honest, I believe these uprisings would have happened no what who was in power or what the status was in the region.

Related:

BBC:  Turkey hits targets inside Syria after border deaths

Roundup:

The Agonist, Race 4 2012, The PJ Tatler and Taylor Marsh

Drop in voter registration in Ohio

Despite what has happened locally here and how I feel about it; I must continue on writing and blogging about what I consider to be important.

It seems that in Ohio, there has been a decline in voter registration, especially in Democratic Party strongholds. This is also signaling a national trend. Here is the Story and Video via Fox News Channel:

The Video:

The Story:

“Don’t boo, vote,” President Obama often says in his stump speech whenever crowds boo a Romney plan.

The off-hand call to vote may be by design. It comes amid a precipitous decline in Democratic voter registration in key swing states — nowhere more apparent than in Ohio.

Voter registration in the Buckeye State is down by 490,000 people from four years ago. Of that reduction, 44 percent is in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

“I think what we’re seeing is a lot of spin and hype on the part of the Obama campaign to try to make it appear that they’re going to cruise to victory in Ohio,” Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman Rob Frost said. “It’s not just Cuyahoga County. Nearly 350,000 of those voters are the decrease in the rolls in the three largest counties, Cuyahoga, Hamilton and Franklin.”

Frost points out that those three counties all contain urban centers, where the largest Democrat vote traditionally has been.

Ohio is not alone. An August study by the left-leaning think tank Third Way showed that the Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio. In Florida, Democratic registration is down 4.9 percent, in Iowa down 9.5 percent. And in New Hampshire, it’s down down 19.7 percent.

“It’s understandable that enthusiasm is going to wane a little bit from that historic moment (in 2008),” says Michelle Diggles, the study co-author and senior policy adviser for Third Way. “You can only elect the first African-American president of this country once.

Of course, there are other reasons why people are just not happy anymore with the Democrats:

One Democratic Party consultant told Fox News that independents in Ohio may be leaning Democratic – an effect that may be tied to the bailout of Chrysler and GM. One of eight people in Ohio work in businesses directly tied to the auto industry. The state has been carpeted with Obama ads that point to his bailout of the industry and it’s managed bankruptcy.

I do not mean to toot my own horn; but in this case, I must. I predicted that stuff like this would happen on my old blog. When the bailouts happened, and when the healthcare bill was pushed through. The truth is Independents are simply running away from Obama. Another thing too that this report did not cover; is that some Democrats are simply not happy with the Obama Administration. This is for a number for reasons: The continuation of Bush’s polices on the war on terror and the war is one. The failure to close the prisons in Gitmo is another. The continuing of the war in Afghanistan is another. Also too, Ohio is also a union State and when Obama’s chief of staff at the time, said “F*** the big three!”, many in Ohio heard about that too. This all makes for a unpopular President.

Also too; the economy in Ohio, here in Michigan; and nationally, just plain sucks. There are many small businesses in Ohio, many of whom are faithful Democrats; and they are just looking at their bottom lines and are looking at this President and wondering, “What on earth are they doing to us?” To be fair, it is not all of Obama’s fault. The Federal Reserve with it’s QE1, QE2 and now QE3 is not helping the situation at all. When the fed prints more money, inflation happens, which drives the prices of everything up and this, in turn, hurts businesses. Which, in turn, hurts the economy. Bill Clinton learned this lesson early on, and made adjustments. Jimmy Carter and this President, did not. For that, they are paying a price at the polls.

I should also mention that this current foreign policy debacle in Libya, and Egypt and the rest of the Arab World is also weighing heavy on the minds of people as well. As it was in 1979, with the Iran hostage crisis. Now, Iran is being a problem again. Which is very ironic.

History has such a strange way of repeating itself.

Videos: Liberal rag Mother Jones delivers another nothing-burger on Mitt Romney, this time, on Israel and the middle east

Here we go again, a follow-up to the earlier nothing-burger that the liberals seem to believe will destroy Mitt Romney. Here comes another nothing-burger.

Via liberal rag Mother Jones:

On the Middle East Conflict:

Quote:

I’m torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I’ve had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that? Some might say, well, let’s let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions. And I don’t have a map here to look at the geography, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It’s—what the border would be? Maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank…The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point, or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel of course would have to say, “That can’t happen. We’ve got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank.” Well, that means that—who? The Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria, and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, “Uh, no way! We’re an independent country. You can’t, you know, guard our border with other Arab nations.” And now how about the airport? How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we gonna allow military aircraft to come in and weaponry to come in? And if not, who’s going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are gonna say, “We’re not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what can land in our airport.” These are problems—these are very hard to solve, all right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, “There’s just no way.” And so what you do is you say, “You move things along the best way you can.” You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently. On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won’t mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there’s a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, “Really?” And, you know, his answer was, “Yes, I think there’s some prospect.” And I didn’t delve into it.

He is speaking the truth here. The Palestinians do NOT want a two-State solution. They want Israel pushed into the sea. They have said this a thousand times. Besides that, that land is Israel’s land, it says that in the Bible and that should be the end of the discussion; as for as this writer is concerned.

On Iraq and Nukes:

Quote:

If I were Iran, if I were Iran—a crazed fanatic, I’d say let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we’ll just say, “Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we’re going to let off a dirty bomb.” I mean this is where we have—where America could be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don’t have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

This is a classic foreign policy position that President himself also supports. In the case of Iran, it is totally warranted.

The president’s foreign policy, in my opinion, is formed in part by a perception he has that his magnetism, and his charm, and his persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chávez and Ahmadinejad, and that they’ll find that we’re such wonderful people that they’ll go on with us, and they’ll stop doing bad things. And it’s an extraordinarily naive perception.

Again, this is true; the recent events have proven that many times over.

Once again, Mother Jones has proven itself incapable of bringing any sort of “real” dirt out on Governor Romney. The only thing that they have; is the Governor speaking honestly about President Obama, his foreign policy and Israel. Now it seems that Mother Jones is now focusing on the private life of the person that hosted the fundraiser. This very thing, ought to show you what it is, that we are dealing with here.

It is called desperation.