Israel's Terrible Choices

By Alan Caruba

I was eleven years old when Israel declared its independence and sovereignty in 1948 with the blessing of the United Nations. World War Two and the Holocaust were over barely three years and many of Europe’s Jews needed a state of their own to rebuild their lives. Jews from throughout the Middle East were forced to flee nations in which they had lived for centuries. Over time Israel would absorb Russian Jews and others from around the world.

Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon attacked Israel days after its formal establishment. They were defeated. They would attack again in 1967 and 1973. In the course of these wars, the Arabs that had been living in Palestine, as Israel was known due to the post World War One British mandate, fled or were displaced.

They would become the world’s oldest refugee group and the only one to which a UN agency would be solely devoted, absorbing U.S. and other funding to maintain their status as opposed to helping them assimilate into neighboring Arab nations.

The Zionists, mostly secular and mostly socialist Jews from Europe and Russia who had come to Palestine earlier to prepare the path to statehood were rather surprised to find so many Arabs living there. At the time, Palestinians regarded themselves mostly as people living in southern Syria. Others were Bedouin. They were not “Palestinians”, nor had there ever been a Palestinian state.

Debating what the Israelis should do regarding the Palestinians has become a constant topic of U.S. foreign policy as well as that of most nations. It is, however, a debate that can only be decided by the Israelis and Palestinians and it is a cliché to say that one cannot achieve peace with someone who repeatedly says they want to kill you.

I have written about Israel over the years and maintained that it had a historic right to the land. After more than sixty years of ceaseless jihad—happening still—I have come to regard Palestinians as (1) intractably intent on driving out the Jews and (2) and incapable of establishing a state of their own.

Granting the Palestinians statehood when they have been denied the right to vote by their own leaders since 2005 says it all. Israel has been a true democracy since its founding. Neither the Palestinian Authority, nor Hamas, has any intention of permitting true democracy for their own people.

After reading Hirsh Goodman’s new book, “The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival”, it has made me realize the terrible choices Israel faces. The problem that confronted the original settlers of Israel still challenges its existence. Resolving the issue of the Palestinians says Goodman must be recognized IF it is at all possible.

As much as I hated and rejected the term “occupier” as applied to Israel the truth is that it has been an occupier of the West Bank as the result of wars waged against its right to exist, but an occupier nonetheless. That said, the Palestinians have always refused to accept any peace terms offered, as often as not greeting them with terror campaigns directed against Israel.

Hirsh is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security at Tel Aviv University. Between 1986 and 1989 he was the strategic fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Born in South Africa in 1946, his family immigrated to Israel in 1965 where he has lived in Jerusalem. He’s been a journalist and, as such, has had a front row seat on the politics, the wars, the intifadas, and all other aspects of life in Israel.

The Israel he describes is one with a parliamentary government that is divided by far too many political parties, each representing competing views and agendas, and largely dysfunctional except in the unifying threat of an attack. It is a very small nation; its population largely concentrated in its major cities.

In Jerusalem, Jews went from being 74% of the population in 1967 to 64% by the end of 2010. “Today there is virtual parity between 5.7 million Jews and 5.4 million Arabs in Israel and the territories.”

In a decade the Arabs will outnumber the Jews of Israel. Hirsh's data, however, is subject to challenges. (See end note)

It is demography, the study of population increases and declines that poses a greater challenge to the future of Israel than even hostile neighbor states. It is increasingly essential to establish peace with the Palestinian Authority to provide Israel’s Arabs with a nation of their own, though many who are already Israeli citizens will likely choose to remain citizens in the only Middle Eastern nation to offer them freedoms found in no other.

Hamas in Gaza, hostile even to the PA, is a problem that will have to be dealt with later.

Hirsh puts it bluntly. “Can Israel survive? Of course it can. The question is what kind of Israel it will be and what kind of neighbors it might enjoy. How Israel tackles the internal issues of the Hareidim (ultra orthodox) and the Israeli Arabs is important, even critical.”

“But even more important, the nature of Israeli survival depends on whether it remains an occupier or a tyrannical overlord. In continued occupation lies the deepening of internal dissent between the settlers and the rest of Israel, between the Right and the left, those who claim to speak in the name of God and the rest of us. Occupation will lead to the erosion of Israel’s moral fiber.”

And Hirsh knows that “Israel is not totally the master of its own destiny. It cannot make peace by itself. It cannot alone influence, let alone control, what happens in the region.”

What is happening is the widespread movement of Arabs to rid themselves of the dictators that have run nations from the Maghreb nations where Africa meets the Mediterranean, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and others such as Syria’s Assad and even some Gulf nations like Bahrain.

How the Middle East looks after the dust settles is anyone’s guess. If history is any guide, these nations will simply replace old despots with new ones.

So long as the Palestine issue exists it conveniently provides Israel’s neighbors and others the excuse to condemn it. Until the election of President Barack Hussein Obama, the United States had always been a steadfast ally, but he has undermined that long relationship.

Thus Israel, a pariah among nations with far worse records in war, peace and human rights faces some terrible choices. One choice, its right to self defense and to exist as Jewish state is non-negotiable.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

http://www.theettingerreport.com/Demographic-Scare.aspx
Mr. Hirsh's data regarding Israel's demographic makeup is challenged by others with alternative data. -- AC

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The Syrian Horror Show

By Alan Caruba

Name me a country where funeral processions get fired upon and more people die on the way to burying the latest martyrs for peace and freedom? It’s just about any country in the Middle East and on July 19 it was Syria where ten people died in Homs, a place where some fifty have died in the past week protesting the second generation of the Assad dictatorship.

A week earlier an alleged "pro-Assad mob" attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Basher Assad that he as “not indispensable” and that the U.S. has “absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.” So far this has been the position of the U.S. on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and just about everyone else in the Middle East short of Abdullah, the King of Saudi Arabia.

It was not the first time the Damascus embassy had been attacked. In December 2006, al Qaeda was credited with blowing up a car bomb outside as a gang of armed men tried to break in. The attack, though, has all the earmarks of an Iranian operation.

Let’s see, when was the last time a U.S. embassy was attacked? It was 1979 in Tehran when the Iranians took its staff hostage and held them for 444 days. The Iranians were behind the 1983 suicide attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241. These days they all but own Syria as they patiently work their way toward possessing nuclear-tipped missiles with which to threaten the Middle East and everywhere else.

After World War I, Syria was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire and ceded to French colonial control. In 1946, the French granted it independence. It then passed through a series of military coups until Basher’s father, Hafez Assad, took control of Syria.

Upon his death, it passed to his son, Bashar in 2000. In May 2007, Bashar was “elected” to his second term.This is not exactly a definition of a democracy, but neither is any nation in the Middle East and never was.

In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Hafez joined with Egypt and, in the process, lost the Golan Heights, a strategic victory for the Israelis who have shown no intention of returning it or the ancient Israeli provinces of Samaria and Judea, won from Jordan, and now commonly but mistakenly called the West Bank. The Israelis do not “occupy” it. They lived there three thousand years ago.

The Egyptians lost the Gaza at that time, but the Israelis have since ceded it to the Palestinians in the hope they might establish a state, but they have never shown the slightest inclination of establishing one except as a base from which to attack the Israelis.

From 1976 until April 2005, the Syrians had occupied Lebanon which is now a base for Hezbollah, a Palestinian terrorist group that has successfully taken control. They take their orders from Iran.

Syria has been a classic police state. Reportedly, Iran has deployed 10,000 troops to Syria to protect the Assad regime and are in effective control of the nation. Iranian troops have been in Syria since 2008 and, not surprisingly, their northern headquarters have been in Homs, the site of the latest killings.

In February 2009, it was reported that President Obama had decided to send a new U.S. ambassador to Syria and lift sanctions against a nation believed to have aided al Qaeda in Iraq and of secretly building a nuclear reactor. The Israelis, as they had done earlier with a reactor Saddam Hussein was building, bombed it to rubble in 2009.

So far, President Obama’s philosophy of talking nicely to our enemies in the Middle East has not worked and anyone with the slightest knowledge of the history of the region could have told him that.

President Bush’s decision to eliminate Saddam Hussein was based on the fact that Saddam was a constant destabilizing factor, having waged war against Iran for eight years in the 1980s, used poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds, and in 1990 attacked Kuwait to seize its oil fields.

The current U.S. policy is to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Expecting the Middle East to act in any civilized fashion or thinking it can be taken over and reformed by sheer military force is clearly a fool’s dream.

Afghanistan has resisted control since the days of Alexander the Great. The Ottoman Empire, run by the Turks from the 1300s until the early 1920s did a fairly good job of maintaining the peace until it collapsed of its own dead weight

As nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan did little other than accept various dictators, the prospect of expecting anything but turmoil is utterly futile. What the West wants is access to and through the Suez Canal, along with the oil of the Middle East. The template of Western influence disappeared with both World War One and Two.

Just because those in the Middle East have the outward appearance of modernity, it is an illusion. This is a region of the world dominated by a warrior cult called Islam. As such it will remain an enemy of the West and of each other. It is a huge horror show.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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An Inaugural Fail

By Alan Caruba

We are all now so accustomed to Barack Obama’s delivery of a speech and have heard so many Tele-Prompter recitations that his habit of raising his chin, of gazing off into some future only he perceives, and his now-annoying way of breaking a sentence into small chunks that render it a monotony is taken for granted.

After all the campaign speeches he delivered in 2008, the carefully-staged events, by January 20, 2009 the nation was ready to hear what the then-new President, the 44th, had to say. With the exception of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech and one or both of Lincoln’s, few such speeches are long remembered.

President Obama’s was no exception and, as he begins his campaign to be reelected, it seemed to me a good time to revisit it.

Believe it or not, he began by saying “I stand here today humbled by the task before us…” and I daresay there are few who would apply the word ‘humble’ to Barack Hussein Obama, then or now.

Here was a man who had already written two memoirs about a life without any of the touchstones of achievement we normally look for. He had never run a business or met a payroll. As a legislator, he was either absent or voted for liberal programs without fail.

He had leaped swiftly from being an obscure Illinois state legislator to being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. By February 10, 2007 he announced he was a candidate for President.

By November 2008 he was elected. It is a cliché to note that virtually the whole of the nation’s mainstream media did everything in its power to secure that outcome.

As he continued with his inaugural speech, Obama acknowledged that “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”, but we would learn in the months that followed that Obama would never put a name to it, never identify it as an Islamic terrorism network and, following the Fort Hood shooting, it would take weeks before the words “Islamic extremism” were even applied to it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the inaugural speech was its rather mundane enumeration of the huge economic problems that faced the nation at the time. “We will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.”

Based on his words, that speech was a huge fail. Based on the actions taken or not taken by his administration, jobs by the millions disappeared. The housing market is one of foreclosures from coast to coast. Consumer spending and consumer confidence remains stagnant.

We were, said Obama, to ask “not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…where the answer is no, programs will end.” Instead, his administration embarked on huge spending programs dubbed “stimulus” that vastly increased the national debt and, by common agreement, achieved little or nothing to get the economy moving.

As this is written, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to agree to any spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The waste continues as various elements of the government pour millions into obscenely stupid programs and grants. The government continues to grow larger.

Rather than concentrate on the economic problems of the nation by cutting taxes and eliminating regulations, the Obama administration literally forced a 2,000-page piece of legislation dubbed Obamacare on Americans who largely opposed it. It is currently wending its way through the courts as 26 states have joined in rejecting it.

Obama’s inaugural outreach now seems infantile and naïve. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” Both were and are scarce, but Obama has ensured that the U.S. remains dependent on imported Middle East oil by thwarting every effort to explore and extract our domestic reserves.

His Libyan military adventure just adds to his list of failures, save one. Based on his predecessor’s groundwork, Osama bin Laden was delivered to justice.

Guantanamo remains open for business and 9/11’s terrorists will not be granted the protection of constitutional rights that belong solely to Americans.

In sum, present and future historians will conclude that Obama’s inaugural speech on January 20, 2009 was just so much blather and significantly devoid of any substance. That’s a pretty good description of the 44th President of the United States.

It is also a very good reason to ensure that Barack Hussein Obama does not get to deliver another inaugural speech in 2013.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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No Short Term Middle East Solutions

By Alan Caruba

A problem with which American administrations have grappled since the days of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency has been Arabs and the Middle East. The Marine anthem mentions “the shores of Tripoli” because, in 1801, Jefferson sent them to there to put down the Barbary pirates.

One of the best books on this subject is “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” by Michael B. Oren who, with exquisite irony, is currently serving as the Israeli ambassador to the United States, the nation of his birth.

Regarding the Middle East, if you have had the feeling that the Obama administration has been spectacularly inept as it takes its turn at bat, you’re right. Barely six months into his first year, on June 4, 2009, the newly-minted President gave a speech in Cairo.

“I’ve come to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Obama’s impressions, aspirations, or re-write of history, past and present, clashes with the reality of current and past events. He has, in fact, adopted virtually all of his much maligned predecessor’s policies in the Middle East and took a bow for authorizing the long awaited assassination of Osama bin Laden.

As this is being written, the White House is debating the levels of military withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases the public is alternatively told that the leaders of those two nations either want the U.S. to leave or to stay. Where the truth falls no one seems to know.

It is very instructive to read what is being published in the newspapers that serve readers in the Middle East. Suffice to say that neither the President, nor his policies, is well regarded. One can read daily translations of articles from their press, as well as Asia and Europe at an interesting site, .http://watchingamerica.com/News.

I would argue that no amount of “hands on” involvement with the events unfolding from the Maghreb nations of northern Africa to those that form the heart of the Middle East will significantly alter the outcome of events occurring there.

In addition to the uprisings to throw off the shackles of despotism from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt to Syria, Bahrain to Yemen, the common denominator for these and other Arab nations is their well-deserved sense of having been the victims of various regimes. They are all likely to be united in their fear of the rise of Iran, a Persian nation, and one that will soon achieve nuclear parity with Pakistan, India and, yes, Israel.

The world has lived with “the bomb” since the end of World War Two in August 1945. Nuclear weapons have not been used since, but Iran is the wild card. It will not yield to international sanctions. Its cabal of ayatollahs will not be overthrown from within. It must either suffer a massive attack on its nuclear and military facilities or it will fill the skies over Israel and other nations with mushroom clouds.

The leaders of Western nations seem unaware that, immediately upon the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., Islam split into two factions, Sunnis and Shiites, who have been in conflict with one another ever since.

The history of Islam consists of waging war on everyone else as well either for the purpose of conversion, looting, or the collection of taxes laid on non-Muslims. This history has been broken by rare, short periods of tolerance, but Muslims, convinced that their Koran is the absolute word of Allah, have been indifferent to the values of the West and the advances of modernization that have usually been imposed on them through colonialism.

Islam has been around nearly 1,400 years and gives no evidence of reforming itself away from the Arab culture in which it took seed and away from the brutal punishments that pass for justice. It was and is a savage “religion” bent on global domination.

Even when Muslims find hospitality in non-Muslim nations like those of Europe they immediately set upon an effort to impose Sharia law, usually through intimidation, on the indigenous population. In the Middle East, hands and heads are still cut off, rape victims are stoned, and a charge of blasphemy or apostasy can get you killed.

As this is being written, Christians and the few Jews still residing in the Middle East and the Maghreb are fleeing for their lives as their churches are being burnt to the ground and their lives are at risk.

One would think that, after U.S. involvement—invasions—of Afghanistan and Iraq, we would have figured out that Islamic nations are impervious to any concept of Western style democracy. Islam’s claims to be a religion are framed within a political system run by theocrats.

Elections have managed to put Hamas in charge in Gaza and Hezbollah in charge of Lebanon. The ayatollahs grabbed power in Iran and turned that nation into a prison. The mobs in the streets of Syria are trying to overthrow the Assad dynasty, warring against an Alawaite minority tribe ruling as Baathists. Yemen is a basketcase and Somalia is even worse.

The ignorance of these facts has cost Americans billions, if not trillions, with our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has led President Obama to intercede in Libya for no good reason. It is a desert under which oil exists. Beyond that, it hardly matters which dictator is in charge. Gadhafi’s dabbling in terrorism cost him more than it was worth.

So long as Obama is President, the U.S. will pursue unrealistic and often stunningly stupid policies and actions as regards Islam and Muslim nations.

By way of one small example, in April Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development. Alikhan was born in Damascus, Syria. I am sure you feel safer now knowing that.

Are there nice Muslims? Sure. Are there “moderate” Muslims? Possibly, but they are outnumbered by the millions who are not. Oil money and various illegal enterprises support terrorism. Even Americans contribute because the Obama administration will not permit exploration or drilling for an estimated 150 billion barrels of our own domestic oil.

And you still wonder why President Obama actually bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia? Or that George W. Bush ignored the fact that all but one of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were Saudis? No President wants a repeat of the 1973 Saudi oil boycott.

Nothing good can come out of the current turmoil affecting most Arab Muslim nations. The U.S. would be wise to maintain its military power, but the fact is our Navy is being reduced, our Air Force is flying aging aircraft, and the combat divisions of our Army and Marines are worn out from repeated tours in the Middle East.

Obama is as clueless as Woodrow Wilson who thought he could bring “peace in our time” and only managed to help set in motion the run-up to World War Two. He has put America at risk in so many ways I am losing count.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Obama's Global Incompetence

By Alan Caruba

All Presidents have had to deal with events around the world that seemed to call for a military response, but it was President Eisenhower who laid down the doctrine to avoid what he called “brushfire wars”, outbreaks such as we have seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and, in particular, Libya.

Eisenhower had directed the defeat of Germany in World War Two as the Supreme Allied Commander before being urged to run for president. He would serve two terms and was doubtless the right man at the right time in the nascent years of the Cold War.

President Obama seems to lack any kind of a doctrine or plan to deal with a Middle East where many are fed up with its dictators, combined with the realization of how far behind the rest of the world the region is.

It is an irony of history that, after Eisenhower squelched the British, French and Israeli plans to retake the Suez Canal following Nasser’s nationalization in 1956, in rather rapid succession, Nasser died, was replaced by Sadat who was assassinated, and a 28-year-old Mubarack then ruled Egypt until the Maghreb and Middle East exploded with turmoil this year.

Why did Obama feel compelled to say anything? Earlier he was reluctant to support the Iranians protesting the ayatollahs in Tehran, but he rushed to the Tele-Prompter to tell, not ask, Egyptian President Mubarak to step aside.

Curently, the Egyptian decision to open its borders with Gaza and Hamas bodes ill for Israel, but just about everything in the Middle East right now fits that description. And, of course, Obama took the opportunity to launch a verbal attack on our only real ally in the region with an overt mention of “1967 borders”.

The payback was a joint session of Congress in which Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a speech to which both Democrats and Republicans repeatedly gave standing ovations. It made Obama look lame, but just about everything does these days.

Will there be a surge of democracy in Egypt? No. The military will find a way to retain power, most likely coalescing behind a new president/dictator. After that, large numbers of the Muslim Brotherhood will be jailed and killed until they crawl back into their holes.

In Libya, Obama could have simply let the resistance succeed or fail. There was no compelling reason to demand Gadhafi step aside and the embrace of “humanitarian concerns” rings hollow given events in Syria. So far the only thing that Libya has demonstrated is that NATO is ill prepared to wage a war.

Reports have it that Obama and the Russians have decided Gadhafi must go, but Assad of Syria can stay despite the fact that he is currently killing that nation’s people by the score.

Obama has returned from a European tour in which he exhorted them to give the emerging Arab states billions in aid to facilitate democracy, but Obama does not seem to grasp the fact that the only state in the Middle East that is a real democracy is Israel. The rest are controlled by dominant tribal groups in one fashion or another. They always have been and they always will be.

It has apparently escaped Obama’s notice that neither the U.S., nor any of the European nations have any money to throw at a bunch of unhappy Arabs. The Saudis have lots of money, but they are too concerned about the threat that Iran poses and too smart to get involved in the shifting sands of Middle Eastern power struggles.

The U.S. has a little problem called “a debt ceiling” to resolve so it can continue to borrow money just to pay interest on the money it already has borrowed.

Unlike Eisenhower, Obama is the wrong man at the wrong time. He is poorly advised by a pack of anti-Semites and lacks any experience, military or otherwise, to make decisions about the Middle East. His knowledge of that region’s history appears to come from brief quotes off the back of a cereal box.

In over two years in office, Obama has become a massive embarrassment to America whenever he goes abroad, whether it is to prattle about global warming in Copenhagen or to insult the Queen of England.

The result is a serious deterioration of confidence that America can be relied upon to support allies. In Eastern Europe, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary are creating a regional framework for their mutual defense, fearing that neither NATO, nor the European Union, will be of much use to them if Russia gets frisky.

And you might recall that Obama denied Poland (and Europe) a missile shield, thus sending a signal to Russia that he actually trusted them. Nobody, but nobody, trusts the Russians. And it should be noted that Iran has missles that can hit Europe.

All of this invites trouble in a dangerous world because, more and more, nobody trusts America so long as Obama is in the Oval Office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Middle East Mess

By Alan Caruba

Anyone such as myself who lived through the long years of the Vietnam quagmire knows that the United States is repeating the same errors in the Middle East that we did with that nation. We seem incapable of recognizing a civil war when we see one and incapable of not inserting ourselves in the midst of it.

I speak specifically of Libya and the inchoate decisions and measures taken by the Obama administration. To suggest that the present White House and State Department have a Middle East “policy” is to vastly overstate and misunderstand their ignorance of that region of the world and the forces at work within it.

The United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan since 2001, shortly after 9/11. What should have been a short sortie to inflict punishment on the al Qaeda and the Taliban has turned into a classic “quagmire”. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 reflects this as well.

Like many, I thought that the application of U.S. military intervention would somehow drag the Middle East into the 21st century, but clearly the region remains subject to the seventh century religion of Islam and its schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. Islam, plus a tribalism that reaches back millennia, renders the Middle East intractable to the West’s efforts.

Billions have been squandered in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the real enemy, Iran, has been allowed to go unscathed in its pursuit of regional hegemony and its pursuit of nuclear parity with its “neighbors”, Pakistan, India, and Russia.

As this is written, Saudi Arabia has concluded that the United States will take no action to stop the Iranian nuclear program and is seeking to pull together a Gulf State coalition to end the expansionist ambitions of the Iranian ayatollahs. The Saudis have also consulted with Israel.

Forty years seems to be the limit that Middle Eastern populations will tolerate the various despots that have controlled Islamic nations. In Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria those in charge have found themselves under siege and, in some cases, removed.

In two cases, Libya and Egypt, the Obama administration has openly sided with the rebels. At the same time, it has incomprehensibly offered a weak defense of Syria’s dictator, Bashar el-Assad, Iran’s strongest ally in the region. Sensing a shift in power, even Egypt’s new ruling body has reached out to Iran to thaw decades of antipathy.

The only consistent Middle Eastern policy of the Obama administration has been its hostility to Israel, the region’s only democracy and America’s traditional ally since its founding just over sixty years ago. For all the caterwauling about the Palestinians, they have long since been abandoned by the Arab nations and are now well within the Iranian orbit of influence and support.

The Palestinians could have had a separate state decades ago but have always pursued an all-or-nothing policy aimed at the destruction of Israel. It is widely believed that they will initiate a new war as Iran’s proxies, from Lebanon in the north and Gaza in the south.

The Palestinians, in fact, have a sovereign nation. It is called Jordan which lost the West Bank, part of ancient Israel, to modern Israel after attacking it in 1947-48 and 1967.

Iraq has made it clear to the United States that it wants to see American troops withdrawn as agreed by the end of the year. Its Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki recently ordered an attack on Camp Ashraf, home to 3,500 Iranian dissidents for the past twenty-six years. That should tell even the casual observer that Iraq is now in the Iranian orbit. This is true as well of Lebanon, first occupied by Syria for decades and now in the grip of the Palestinian Hezbollah.

As to the Iranian people, the Obama administration made it clear they have been abandoned after protests against Mamoud Ahmadinejad’s stolen election last year received no support whatever by a U.S.

America has severely weakened itself since 9/11 with ill-advised military excursions that, like the Vietnam debacle, have proven costly in treasure and lives sacrificed in an area that is resentful of our unwanted incursions, coupled with our addled “nation building” schemes.

There is a massive realignment occurring as the result of the popular uprisings against despots across the North African Maghreb and the heart of Middle Eastern nations, several of which were the artificial creations of Western interests. Resentments against the tyrannies of former despots will likely give way to new despots, not democratic reform.

There is no end to the resentment against America and the West.

Lacking any kind of cohesive policy toward Arab nations except for the oil they provide, the only sensible policy America should pursue would be to drill for our own extensive oil reserves to prevent a severe shock to our economy and security. So long as Obama is President, this will not happen.

There is no perceivable policy in place to stand against Iran and has not been since the Carter administration abandoned the Pahlavi regime in 1979. The fall of Tunisia’s Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Mubarack, Syria’s Assad, and the resistance to Gadhafi, along with unrest in Yemen and Bahrain will be seen, in retrospect, as inevitable.

What remains is a Maghreb and Middle East in a volatile struggle to determine whether it returns to an Islamism reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire or an enlightened embrace of Western values.

There is little reason to hope for a good outcome.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Harm a President Can Do

By Alan Caruba

The announcement that Barack Hussein Obama will run for reelection was greeted with little fanfare and less surprise. In order to raise money, he needed to make it official and he was quick to join Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with a dubious history of histrionics, at a Harlem event.

Even with the data available, two years into his first term, it is difficult to grasp how much harm he has done to the nation as its elected leader.

Despite the fact that, until November 2010, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, he was so busy during his second year that he could not find time to present Congress with a budget. The government shutdown is pure political theatre and should be avoided. If it comes, it will be the result of a political calculation that the President can benefit from it.

Obamacare, the hallmark of his political legacy, is opposed by 26 U.S. States and has been declared unconstitutional in a federal court. The House has voted to repeal it. Hardly a week goes by without finding billions in new costs buried within its pages, all of which expand the size of government beyond imagination.

In two years, the nation has accumulated debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as its entire prior history since the day George Washington took office. In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the national debt was $10.627 trillion. Today it is $14.052 trillion and rising.

The leadership that the world has long looked to America to provide has dissipated. The nations of the West, in particular the European socialist nations, have also spent themselves into penury. Portugal is the latest to cry out for help. Greece, Ireland, Spain, all once among the great powers, have drained their coffers with cradle-to-grave assurances that the government would always pick up the tab.

After two years in which every regulatory obstacle, including an illegal “moratorium” on deep water drilling for oil was imposed, the price of West Texas crude oil went from $38.74 a barrel to $99.02. Other commodities, soybeans, sugar, and corn have all seen similar increases. The price of corn has more than doubled in just twelve months.

America has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. It has long been a giant agricultural economy, but all this potential wealth is being throttled by men and women in the Obama administration who think Americans must be forced to change their driving and eating habits. In a consumer-driven economy, they want Americans to consume less.

When President Obama was sworn in, there were 2,600,000 long-term unemployed. Today there are 9,193,000 Americans in that category. People living in poverty in America have, in just two year’s time, gone from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000. This occurred during a time when massive “bailouts” were undertaken by the government. They are now widely regarded as failures.

The greatest automotive manufacturer in the world, General Motors, is for all intents and purposes owned by the government. Auto union jobs had to be saved even if taxpayers had to have their taxes diverted for that purpose. Having brought the company to ruin with outrageous work, wage, health, and pension demands, they were still to be rewarded by the Obama administration. The heads of public service unions, among the largest in the nations, have enjoyed an open-door policy at the White House.

Having been elected by campaigning against the war in Iraq, President Obama expanded the number of troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop presence in Iraq was being reduced, the President suddenly engaged the nation militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress.

With one glaring exception, no cohesive foreign policy regarding the Middle East exists. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, an ally of the United States, surrounded on all sides by enemies and threatened daily by Iran, has been abandoned.

Egypt’s Mubarack was publicly abandoned, but Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s stolen election evoked no response when people took to the streets in Tehran to protest it. Col. Gadhafi remains in control of Libya. Syria’s dictator was called “a reformer.”

Domestically, the President calls for windmills to produce energy when they remain one of the least practical means, sustained solely by government subsidies and mandates. The factory in which he made the call belongs to a Spanish company. His call for solar energy is equally fatuous. High speed rail is yet another foolish initiative.

The last two years have been testimony to the harm a President can do to a nation and yet, despite the obvious harm being imposed on millions of Americans, the President continues to enjoy the support of people for whom the growth of the government, the increase in spending, and the nation’s loss of leadership in the world is not understood and will not be until it is too late to reverse the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → The Harm a President Can Do

Welcome to the Middle East. We're All Crazy Here.

By Alan Caruba

A recent Fox News channel report concerned a student from Vermont’s Middlebury College who was studying international relations overseas in Cairo when that city came unglued. He was given the opportunity to go to Damascus, Syria to continue his studies and he jumped at it. Bad move. While there some kind of protest broke out and the secret police scooped him up and threw him in jail for two weeks.

It took an American embassy intervention to get him out despite the fact he had shown Syrian authorities his passport and his student identification papers. He was not physically mistreated, but other prisoners were. He learned that “they can arrest you for any reason or no reason.”

Signs at airports and seaports should say, “Welcome to the Middle East. We’re All Crazy Here.”

President Obama’s “kinetic military action”, swiftly passed off to NATO (which is another way of spelling USA), and currently a mess waiting for someone to kill Muammar Gadhafi (how’s that for a plan?) has simply confirmed what everyone suspected. So far as the Middle East is concerned, he has no foreign policy.

Why are we in _______ (fill in the blank) is the question people keep asking every time some ghastly new piece of news is reported. The place is wall-to-wall lunatics. When not blowing each other to hell during religious pilgrimages, funerals, and other gala events, they are killing medical missionaries, United Nations diplomats, and others who think they can be helped. They can’t.

The so-called Palestinians have had over sixty years to find some small measure of peace with the Israelis, but have rejected every single effort. Lately, Hamas has (a) murdered an Israeli family, (b) set off a bomb in Jerusalem, (c) and gone back to firing rockets into Israel. What is wrong with this picture? Everything!

In a splendid reversal of logic, the Jews are blamed for everything in the Middle East (and everywhere else for that matter), but Christians there are being systematically driven from their homes or attacked. What most Western Christians have not grasped is that they are the new Jews, next in line for the same abuse.

Let your fingers do the walking over a map of northern Africa and the Middle East, and you will barely find a nation that is not in some kind of turmoil. Tunisia is in the process of sorting out power sharing now that their former dictator is gone. Libya’s problems would be resolved if Col Gadhafi would accept Uganda’s generous offer to take him in.

Egypt’s power brokers are deciding just how Islamic it will be. Home to some stunningly beautiful women, wrapping them in burkas would be everyone’s loss and make it difficult for Miss Egypt to compete in the next Miss Universe contest.

Turkey, which used to have a secular government and thought of itself as part of Europe is now veering into the We’re Crazy Muslims School of Governance. Syria is seeing signs of internal opposition to a regime that is now in its second generation and famed for “The Hafez al-Assad Guide to Suppressing Everyone in Syria.” Jordan is trying to cope with its own large Palestinian population that is making noises about its royal family.

Iraq, whom the U.S. freed from Saddam Hussein, is some kind of limbo trying to figure out how to be Iran’s neighbor without being Iran’s lunch. Bahrain just decided it would much rather be Saudi Arabia’s butt-boy than Iran’s. The Saudis have announced that they will be building a new facility in Bahrain where their navy can park in the event of any unpleasantness in the Persian Gulf.

Pakistan can barely pass for being a nation. It’s more like a large, albeit mountainous military base; one that has nuclear weapons. Pakistan is most famous for floods and earthquakes. Nothing good comes out of Pakistan, including the Taliban. And then there is Afghanistan and its Stone Age people who have outlasted every invader since Alexander of Macedonia and not improved one bit.

The United Arab Emirates and Qatar, two small Gulf States, are lying low, but Yemen, sharing a long border with Saudi Arabia has a ton of internal conflict. Oman seems okay, but you never know.

Perhaps the “good news” is that every nation in the region is terrified of the truly crazy Iranians who have been announcing since 1979 that, as soon as they get nuclear weapons, they are going to destroy Israel and after that, well, just about everyone else.

Why anyone would want to worship in a radioactive al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is anyone’s guess.

So, if you’re planning your next vacation or you’re a university student trying to figure out where to study, I suggest you think Disneyland for the family and, for great food on a student’s stipend, Italy.

Remember, “Welcome to the Middle East. We’re All Crazy Here.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Welcome to the Middle East. We're All Crazy Here.

War for No Particular Reason

By Alan Caruba

Thanks to the Obama administration, we have now entered upon a new phase of foreign policy. It is war for no particular reason.

Why are we doing anything in Libya? We’re not messing around in any of those other places that involve governments shooting at their own people. Obama famously did not want to “meddle” when the Iranians filled the streets of Tehran in 2009, protesting a stolen election by Mamoud Imanutjob and Ayatollah Comeandgetme.

Americans are connoisseurs of invasions. We know a good one when we see it and are not easily fooled by those who say, “We’re dropping thousands of pounds of ordnance and launching numerous missiles, but we are not in a war. It’s a kinetic military action.” Yeah, right.

Telling Americans that their nation—without so much as a phone call to Congress—has launched a military action over (but not IN) Libya and that NATO is really running the operation, (with a Canadian general taking orders from two American generals) suggests that the White House thinks we are really STUPID.

We know what an invasion looks like. Bush41 had a great one in Kuwait and Bush43 had an even better one in Iraq. It may not have been D-Day, but it was good enough for a generation born too late to remember Normandy Beach. When it comes to invading countries, we are the gold standard.

Conservatives wonder why the liberals screamed bloody murder when Bush43 invaded Iraq after getting all kinds of UN resolutions and authorization from Congress, but are curiously silent when Obama begins bombing the hell out of Tripoli “for humanitarian reasons.” Of course, in fairness, liberals never want to invade any place. That’s why you don’t find many liberals in the Marines and other branches of service.

How do you tell a good despot from a bad one? Let me explain. There are the pro-U.S. ones who cooperate with us and there are all the others. As some statesman once said, nations have interests, not friends.

It is necessary to understand that those generating an Islamic revolution have no love for the monarchs and the former colonels and generals who run Muslim nations. Their ideal is something like Iran. The initial goal of al Qaeda, for example, was (and is) to overthrow the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. They, in turn, told bin Laden to get out and stay out.

The present unrest in Muslim nations is the result of the convergance of al Qaeda and Iranian agendas to exercise control over those nations. But first, they intend to destroy everyone, Jew, gentile, and Arab alike, in Israel. According to Islamic lore, they can’t really take over the world until this is accomplished.

Americans have been slow to grasp that the Iranians have been preparing since 1979 to sweep across the region and the world to ensure that Islam (Shiite version only) is the only religion with the power to dictate to all others. There is zero room for tolerance in Islam, a “religion” that separates the world into dar al Islam and dar al Harb (the world of war!)

As a non-war the Libyan operation is especially disappointing since the so-called rebels at this early point have less cohesion than a Hell’s Angels chapter. This has not deterred talk of “arming” them. However, the latest word out of Libya is that the “rebels” made a couple of million by selling thousands of mustard and nerve gas shells they found in military facilities around Benghazi to the Palestinian terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah. Let those creeps arm themselves.

How was it that a President who spent weeks agonizing over what to do in Afghanistan took only a few days to decide that the U.S. should start lobbing missiles into Gadhafi’s Libyan compound?

One obvious answer is that the man is just a moron. The other is that he lacks any serious opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike, and for now is being allowed to get away with it.

The U.S. Navy and Marines showed up in Tripoli in 1801 to deal out some hurt and a message to the Barbary pirates harassing our merchant ships. President Thomas Jefferson concluded that killing the pirates was cheaper than paying them the bribes they demanded. He was right.

The rebellion against Gadhafi appears to have a contingent of jihadists that include al Qaeda’s professional mujahideen that migrate from war zone to war zone, but the bottom line appears to be that folks throughout the Middle East are just fed up with the current crop of despots. Forty years in control seems to be the cut-off point whether it was Egypt’s Mubarack, Libya’s Gadhafi, or the former Tunisian tough guy, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

This Libyan non-war reeks of having been a political decision. It is surely not a military one. Odds are that Obama is not paying attention to what his generals are telling him and it’s for damn sure he doesn’t care what the U.S. Constitution has to say on the subject.

No one knows how this kinetic farce will play out, but since Obama is channeling Jimmy Carter, there is a strong likelihood the U.S. is going to end up looking bad and events in the Middle East will just get worse.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → War for No Particular Reason

Protests, Riots, and Insurrections

By Alan Caruba

I’ve been thinking a lot about protests, riots and insurrections lately because they seem to be happening all over the Middle East and even in London.

In London, an estimated half million Brits turned out in the streets to protest government cuts in services, paying little heed to (a) how heavily they are taxed for them and (b) how they have all but bankrupted the nation. Though the protest was at times raucous thanks to local anarchists, it should be noted that the local constabulary did not shoot anyone.

Contrast that with the streets of Yemen, Syria and even little Bahrain where protests have generated a number of deaths as the main means of “crowd control.” This is also the way protests in Iran have been dealt with, along with imprisonment, torture, and all the other arts of despotism.

In Libya, an insurrection against four decades of despotic rule by Col, Gadhafi has dragged in the U.S., the U.N., NATO, and, briefly, the Arab League into the dispute. Given that Gadhafi had made it clear he intended to kill as many Libyans as necessary to retain his grip on the nation, there was no way this could be ignored.

By contrast, when a huge crowd gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo the military did not roll out the tanks. After a few futile efforts to disperse the protesters, President Mubarak was eased out of the office he had held since 1981 and sent packing. All things considered it was a bloodless coup. The Egyptians just held an election to decide some changes to their constitution.

Other contrasts come to mind, most notably, the 1989 massacre that took place at night in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square when protesters, mostly young Chinese, gathered to seek more freedom, more justice, and more democracy. It did not happen. While outwardly prosperous, China remains the classic Communist state.

One of the biggest gatherings in the U.S. capitol involved an estimated million people who came out in March 2010 to protest against the passage of Obamacare. It was an extraordinary turnout and one that the mainstream media tried to depict as unruly and impolite, but it was nothing less than astonishing that so many people could gather in one place without any disruptive behavior. David Axelrod, an advisor to Obama at the time, gave the White House response. “They’re wrong.”

When Obamacare was passed, the Tea Party that had organized the protest just grew like Jack’s beanstalk and, by November 2010, lots of Democrats who had voted for it found themselves cast out of the House, along with some in the Senate. Americans know how to protest, how to organize, and how to vote out liberals.

The differences between American, British, and Middle Eastern protests are quite evident. In the former two, you show up, speeches are given, and everyone goes home. In the latter, you show up and the regime in charge is likely to shoot you.

In America it was the Boston massacre that literally kicked off the Revolution against England in general and the king in particular. British troops, feeling threatened, fired on a relatively small group of protesters and, as they say, the rest is history.

The history of what is occurring in the Middle East is playing out in its cities and, while the region is not famous for democratic reform, the U.S. intervention in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein may well be seen in retrospect as the trigger for all the insurrections occurring throughout the region. Before the Marines and infantry showed up, you could only vote for Saddam.

The trigger incident in Tunisia occurred when a street merchant, harassed by the local police, set himself on fire, but it really doesn’t matter what the trigger is because it is the far larger resentment of the populations in the nations of the Middle East that has finally been ignited.

The other largely unreported factor is the deep schism between Shias and Sunnis. It expresses itself in different ways in different nations. Sunnis are the majority or control the affairs of most nations except Iran.

The old regimes are being challenged. If you are a monarch the last thing you want to see are other monarchs being dethroned. If you are a despot, you can be replaced.

What will come of it? Is it good or bad for the United States and the West? Will the Muslim Brotherhood and/or al Qaeda take advantage and somehow secure power?

Questions, questions, questions!

And no one knows the answer.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Protests, Riots, and Insurrections

Teeny, Tiny Wars

By Alan Caruba

On the same day that the U.S. had blown up a building on Gadaffi’s compound in Tripoli, the news out of Iraq was as follows:

Baghdad (3/21/2011) – Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki considered on Monday Iraq as one of the most stable countries in the region. Addressing a gathering attending the third agricultural week in Baghdad, the premier said, “Iraq became one of the most stable countries in the region after a period of violence and divisions.” He urged ministers to speed up solving all problems and improving services to Iraqis. Demonstrations sweep a number of Arab countries, mainly Libya, Syria and Yemen, calling for toppling regimes and achieving political reforms.

THANK YOU, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

How ironic is it that a war that many Americans now regard as a mistake is, from the Iraqi point of view, one that has led to an era of stability?

Military observers and historians regard wars differently than civilians. The terms they use are “high intensity” and “low intensity.” As Sean Linnane, editor of the Stormbringer blog notes, “In the eight years of Iraq, we lost just as many people as we lost in a single day at Normandy. By the same standards, Vietnam was a low-intensity conflict. We lost just under fifty thousand over ten years, whereas we lost that many in three years in Korea and in three days at Gettysburg.”

Linnane explains how the technology of modern war has changed the way it must be understood. “An infantryman with a shoulder-fired weapon negates a 55-ton tank.” Such weaponry allowed Stone Age mujahideen in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union.

“While at the same time,” Linnane correctly points out, “the amplifying effect of the modern media allow tiny symbolic conflicts to gain great meaning.”

I am beginning to think that any action or no action that President Obama took would have satisfied anyone because we Americans feel it is our constitutional right to criticize the President and it is!

Obama has been getting a crash course in foreign affairs for two years. Before taking office, he was your average intellectual airhead, full of theories and Marxist dialectics, and having no clue what the job required. By contrast, George W. Bush had grown up around the office his whole life and, if you recall, his father had actually been President.

Surrounded by political advisers, generals from the Pentagon, so-called national security people, State Department folks from Foggy Bottom, and other interested, partisan parties, Obama has had to learn how to become “the decider” like Bush43. For Obama who has basically voted “present” in public life, that has neither been easy nor welcome.

What Obama discovered was that, if he just did what Bush had done for the eight previous years, it would probably be the wisest course of action. So Guantanamo is still open for business and Obama even increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The withdrawal schedule for Iraq was already in place when he arrived in the Oval Office, so he cannot take credit for that.

There’s a really good reason for pulling our troops out of both Afghanistan and Iraq and, if possible, sooner rather than later. A lot of them have been rotated in and out of both locations so many times they are just bone tired and thoroughly disgusted with the people for whom they have been trying to provide a shot at freedom, democracy, or whatever passes for life without some dictator or Islamic fanatic trying to kill them.

In a very real way, both Bush’s set in motion the Middle East tumult by demonstrating that dictators can, indeed, be overthrown. The Arab street may say it hates America, but it looks to it to come swooping in to defend and save them.

For many years to come, the whole of the Muslim countries stretching across northern Africa and the Middle East are going to be a working definition of bedlam. To name a few, in addition to the recent demands for less repression in Egypt and Tunisia, plus the present unpleasantness in Libya, the following nations are seeing similar popular discontent—Bahrain, Yemen, the Sudan, and Somalia.

In trouble to a greater or lesser degree, there’s Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, and the hate-filled denizens of the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Poor Lebanon has labored under the fist of Syria and now Hezbollah.

By comparison, Israel is an island of peace as is Qatar, and, dare we say it, IRAQ!

All of which means a succession of teeny, tiny wars over the years ahead, some of which the U.S. will choose to engage to a larger or small extent. We will not let any ill befall Saudi Arabia because it has a lot of O-I-L. Other oil states will likewise get varying levels of protection. Gadaffi was denied this because of his history of crimes against the U.S.

Americans will, as they always have, hate having to engage in any of these predictable conflicts, but we shall, even if it means that this president and future ones will have to do a two-step around the Constitution and War Powers Act. The dirty secret in Washington, D.C. is that no Congress since World War Two (1941) has actually declared war because they are essentially political cowards who don’t want the blame if anything goes wrong as in Vietnam.

If the U.S. wasn’t totally broke and totally unwilling to cut taxes and spending, we might actually be able to afford some greater effort to help keep the world safe, but for now, we shall have to stick to Tomahawk missiles and other such devices to inform our enemies that we want them dead.

Did I mention that Iraq is stable? No war going on there? A democratic regime in power? I can hear George W. Bush laughing all the way from Houston.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Teeny, Tiny Wars

Libya, a Jolly Short War

By Alan Caruba

There’s nothing like a war to either make or break a President. There’s a reason the writers of the Constitution also made the President the Commander-in-Chief because war needs a centralized authority to direct the military. A goodly number of the nation’s presidents were former leaders in war, starting with General George Washington, progressing forward to General Ike Eisenhower.

Few nations have the record of its people being extraordinarily resistant to engaging in combat unless provoked than America. Woodrow Wilson was elected with the slogan “He kept us out of the war” and then, after the Germans had the bad judgment to sink the ocean liner Lusitania, America sent “Black Jack” Pershing to put a finish to World War One.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, having made a thorough botch of the Great Depression, was propelled into war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Until then, Americans wanted nothing to do with another “European war” or the one being waged in Asia. FDR had the good luck to be guided by Gen. George C. Marshall.

Time and time again, U.S. Presidents have had to engage in war and almost always under circumstances that involved a large part of the population being opposed to it. There is something about “modern” wars that means we end up staying on far too long after we’ve dropped the bombs, let lose the artillery, and sent in the Marines and infantry.

Like the Romans of old, Americans do not like protracted wars and, worse, they tend to weaken a nation or an empire. The irony for the Romans is that, as often as not, they were invited by the host nation to keep the peace. Indeed, that’s how the term “Pax Romana” came about. And just as often the locals got tired of the Romans and revolted against them.

It is common knowledge that it’s easy to get into a war, but hard to end one. We are in Afghanistan, not because we started a war with Osama bin Laden, but because he had declared war against the U.S. in 1996, tried to blow up the Twin Towers in 1993, and then waited until 2001 to do it again. George Bush’s response was to bomb the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and, initially, to drive the Taliban out of there.

Then, on the theory that democracy could be exported to Iraq and because Saddam Hussein was going to make trouble so long as he drew breath, Bush junior decided to invade, perhaps having drawn the lesson from Bush senior’s decision to leave Saddam in power after the first Gulf War, one he later regretted.

In Afghanistan, “mission creep” set in and Bush stayed on. Now President Obama has stayed on. The United States of America has been an occupying force in Afghanistan longer than the former Soviet Union. That does not suggest a good outcome to me because one of the taunts of the Pashtun tribal members is “You have the watches, but we have the time.”

So let it be said, Obama has probably made the one and only really good decision of his presidency. He has made it clear that no American troops will be among the “boots on the ground” when it comes to ridding Libya of Gaddafi. At a time when the U.S. military is in Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit with timetables to leave, we can quite literally ill afford a third war in the Middle East.

If we have to defend the Saudi oil fields—which we may have to do—the Saudis can afford to pick up the bill and had better be handed one. Meanwhile, their military are busy helping put down protests in nearby Bahrain. The prospect that there will be all manner of protests throughout the Arab region of the world is now guaranteed.

The one in Egypt ended remarkably well with a bare minimum of dead Egyptians. The Tunisian overthrow of its dictator went swiftly and smoothly. Dare I remind the reader that both nations were led by men who were U.S. allies? Things are a tad shaky for another longtime ally, King Abdullah of Jordan, who has the evil Syrians as neighbors and a huge Palestinian population.

Flying well under the radar of U.S. media, on March 15, Israeli commandos intercepted a ship from the Turkish port of Mercin that was headed to Egypt’s Alexandria, loaded with weapons for Hamas in the Gaza. The ship had initially departed from Syria en route to a stop at a Turkish port. Turkey used to be an ally of Israel. (See YouTube IDF video) Formerly Egypt would never have allowed Hamas to get weapons. Also under-reported were the estimated fifty rockets fired into Israel from Gaza on March 19. The Israelis responded with a quick, lethal air strike.

You don’t have to be a CIA analyst to conclude the weapons were all made in Iran or at least transferred from there initially. Or that Israel will face another war at some point. If they nuke targets in Iran, it should be over fairly quickly, but they will still be facing Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

Like the Romans, the U.S. needs to extricate itself as much as possible from the Middle East unless its vital interests are threatened there. By which I mean, unless we have to defend Iraq’s, Saudi Arabia’s, Bahrain’s, Kuwait’s, and the United Arab Emirates’ oil fields. Defending the region’s only Western democracy, Israel, is also a good idea.

For the same reason that President Obama elected to let the British and French take the lead in Libya, we have ample firepower from the skies and from offshore naval forces to do much of the damage that may be required in what is likely to be a jolly good, but limited military operation in Libya and likely future conflicts.

There isn’t a single military figure among any of the potential candidates in the next election. What we need in the years immediately ahead may well be a President Petraeus.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Libya, a Jolly Short War

Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack

By Alan Caruba

As the Middle East begets one insurrection after another against the oppression that has been endemic to the region for centuries and as Japan faces the worst nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl, the President of America and Commander-in-Chief is Absent Without a Leave (AWOL).

Barack Hussein Obama is the first President of the United States who received a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up. It is a mark of how debased this once prestigious international prize has become. He should give it up.

In the past, the Peace Prize went to Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for negotiating an end to a Russian-Japanese conflict and to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Its value began to fall off the cliff when it was given to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Obama in 2009. In between, it was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

It is an ancient axiom that power is lost when power is not exercised. Osama bin Laden seriously misread the U.S. when he referred to it as “a weak horse”, an Arab way of saying it could be attacked with impunity. George W. Bush responded by bombing the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and then by invading Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden has been in hiding ever since and his top lieutenants keep getting whacked.

Obama’s approach to foreign affairs has been to misunderstand and denigrate the role of America in a dangerous world. Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal calls it “The Collapse of Internationalism” because the failure to lead has demonstrated the uselessness of the United Nations, its Security Council, NATO, the European Union, and the Arab League when it comes to facing down a psychopathic despot like Libya’s Quadaffi and, of course, the same was true regarding Saddam Hussein.

This is how big wars occur.

Recent history bears out the failure to take action against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, against Adolf Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland, to anticipate the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and now the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

This is what happens when an administration’s policy makers are all “intellectuals” who have spun out hypothetical views of the world that have no relationship to history or present realities.

This is what happens when, despite our present financial woes, the most powerful nation on Earth has reduced its naval and air power, and asks its military to engage in nation-building while fighting our enemies. What is needed are entirely separate, highly trained units devoted to that task.

This is what happens when “foreign policy” involves wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on the United Nations and billions more in so-called “foreign aid” to nations that do not like us, nor support us in times of crisis and need.

Libya, said Henninger, “was a test case, and what we have seen is that a world in which the U.S. doesn’t unmistakably lead is a world that spins its wheel, and eventually the wheels start to come off.”

The U.S. is not, as Obama believes, just one more nation among others or that it is not the single most exceptional experiment in democracy and freedom.

Just as Americans must organize to resist and survive Barack Hussein Obama over the next two years, having come to realize how utterly incompetent he is, other nations are wondering what will occur without the leadership the U.S. has always provided in the past, including two world wars, several smaller ones, and the containment of the former Soviet menace.

The presidency is much more than frequent trips to the golf course, predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament, and an ill-timed visit to Rio. It is a dangerous place filled with people like Quadaffi and others of his ilk.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Give the Peace Prize Back, Barack

The Mysterious Middle East

By Alan Caruba

I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East and that includes the people who live there as well as those who have ruled them despotically for decades, if not centuries.

The bad news about the Middle East is that all this rioting, insurrection, et cetera, has very little to do with “freedom” and everything to do with its peoples wanting Sharia law and mullah control. In that area of the world that is what Islam preaches and what Muslims want. When you have to pray five times a day, there's not a lot of time left over for an objective understanding of the world.

Muammar al-Gadhafi is doing what one would expect him to do. He’s trying to stay alive and to keep his hold on the oil riches of Libya. To accomplish this, he will kill as many Libyans as necessary. We tend to forget that despots in Syria and Iraq, the late masseurs Hafez al Assad and Saddam Hussein, slaughtered thousands of their own people to gain and retain power. One can only guess at the death toll in Iran.

Egypt gave the impression of being a not too horrible place to live, so long as you lived in America or somewhere else. The military essentially owned Egypt and everyone else there resents it. What do we want in Egypt? Stability. Therefore we want the military to stay in power since most of its officers were trained by U.S. military and we give them over a billion a year not to attack Israel. Again. And get whipped. Again.

Only at this point there is no stability in Egypt and typically everyone at the bargaining table wants a piece of whatever wealth there is to be had. The Muslim Brotherhood wants a return to the seventh century as soon as possible.

The real action will be in Saudi Arabia where the wealth really exists and has been carefully tended by the “royal” family of Saud. They have worked closely with America because, oddly enough, we are the only major power they trust. We need their oil. If it takes every carrier, destroyer and cruiser we have in that part of the world, plus a lot of Marines, Army, and Air Force, you can bet we will ensure they stay in power and in the oil business.

The other Gulf States are strategic U.S. assets. We park our Navy in Bahrain. We do a lot of business in Abu Dubai. We want the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to keep pumping oil and sending it to us. They want to avoid being taken over by Iran.

Nobody, but nobody knows how Iran will end up. A lot depends on whether a whole generation of young Iranians can stage a successful revolution, drag the ayatollahs into the streets, and hang them from telephone poles. So long as the nut jobs remain in power they will get nuclear weapons and force everyone to bomb the crap out of them.

Not mentioned at this point is Pakistan, a failed state beset by the Taliban with whom it has tried to maintain good relations despite the threat they present. Pakistan remains insanely afraid India will sneak in one night and reclaim their territory. It has nuclear weapons that the U.S. and all other nations want to ensure do not become the property of either al Qaeda or Iran. Islam is killing Pakistan.

There are three wild cards at this point, Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen. The first two have large Palestinian populations. Lebanon is now controlled by Iran and Syria via Hezbollah. Jordan’s fallback position is the Bedouin tribes that support its king, but there is increased clamoring in the streets because that’s what Palestinians do.Yemen like other Arab states is in turmoil and only military analysts pay it much attention. Then there is Somalia, pretty much "Apache country" because no one who goes there comes back alive.

Lastly, there’s Afghanistan, a nation that has been unsuccessfully invaded by great powers who never learn one of the first lessons of history, never invade Afghanistan.

If you harbor the illusion that the White House, Department of State or the Pentagon has the slightest idea what is happening in the Middle East or what will happen in the Middle East, you are mistaken. And they are currently led by the most pro-Islam President in the history of the nation.

No one knows. Everyone wishes they did.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → The Mysterious Middle East

Why Obama Will Be Defeated in 2012

By Alan Caruba

To this observer, the likelihood of Barack Obama being reelected in 2012 is so remote that I can safely predict it will not happen. Of course, as is commonly said, two weeks, let alone two years, is a long time in politics and all manner of events could intervene, but if one follows the trends in place, he will be a one term president.

Recall that Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were one term presidents for differing reasons. Despite a genuine victory when U.S. led forces drove Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait, Bush 41 was savagely attacked by a hostile press throughout the campaign and his term in office. The former WWII hero was called a “wimp” and, when he did accede to raising taxes, he sealed his own fate. As to Carter, he was seen by all to have been a monumental failure.

Almost weekly the incompetence and sheer arrogance of President Obama has been manifest since he took the oath of office. I recall an interview in which he expressed the opinion that he might well be a one term president and I thought that odd at the time.

In retrospect, it seems to me now that he always knew that his radical socialist agenda would likely ensure his defeat for a second term. Obama was and is the "Manchurian candidate", put into the Oval Office to achieve as quickly as possible the completion of a Socialist/Communist agenda.

To put it another way, the destruction of the capitalist economic system that has been the foundation of America’s great wealth and power has always been the goal of the Left. To achieve this, Obama installed 32 “czars” in the White House, most of whom were not vetted by Congress, nor are answerable to it. They promulgate policies and regulations while by-passing congressional oversight. It's one thing to have advisors and quite another to have co-conspirators.

One has to reach back to the Clinton years to recall how soundly rebuffed “Hillarycare” was as the initial attempt to take over the health care industry in America. One needs to recall how Hillary Clinton fought through the primaries until her only opponent was Barack Obama and how, after he had secured the Democratic Party nomination, the plum assignment of Secretary of State was given to her; two peas from the same Alinsky pod.

On top of the financial crisis that too conveniently began as the 2008 campaigns were coming to an end was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—that was taken off the shelf and, this time, forced through a Democrat controlled Congress, often with bribes, often with a lot of brutal political arm twisting. And the response, even before it became law a year ago was the sudden rise of the Tea Party movement.

The next response came in the 2010 elections that returned political power in the House to Republicans and narrowed the Democrat majority in the Senate. And that is why Barack Obama will be defeated in 2012.

Another factor that will contribute to his defeat has been his support for the gangster tactics of public service unions in Wisconsin and the runaway members of its legislature. Opposition to the public sector unions has been on the rise in the nation as more voters became aware of how they have bankrupted virtually every State with salaries, pensions and healthcare plans that exceed those of taxpayers who are expected to pay for them.

Then there are the events in the Middle East and Obama’s uncertain response to them. The immediate impact will be a rise in the cost of gasoline at the pump and that is something that everyone can grasp. Add to that Obama’s attack on the nation’s energy industries, coal, oil, and natural gas, and you have the perfect storm for a president whose popularity is dropping.

In the past two years during which upwards of twenty million Americans lost their jobs, the unseemly and frequent vacations by the President or by his wife have not been well received by those less fortunate and, it should be said, less ostentatious. Dictating what Americans should eat while dining on spare ribs reminded many of the First Lady’s caloric hypocrisy.

Mostly, though, it has been the accumulation of lies about virtually all aspects of his political agenda that now comprises a record that will be mined by whoever is chosen to run against him in 2012.

There are still, however, two more years to go and Barack Hussein Obama and his “czars” can do a lot of damage if not thoroughly reined in by Republicans in Congress. Americans have little choice other than to survive Obama at this point in time. And we will.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Why Obama Will Be Defeated in 2012

Watching the Democratic Party Implode

By Alan Caruba

It’s déjà vu for me as I think back to the last two years of Jimmy Carter as his “progressive” program of “sacrifice” and his impotence in the face of the Iranian hostage taking of U.S. diplomats left him looking weak and overwhelmed by events.

George W. Bush did not appear to be anything more than a garden variety Republican President until September 11, 2001. It transformed his presidency from peace to war and Bush had the right instincts for war, but wars in the post-WWII era all seem to stall and stalemate.

No one was in much of a mood to listen to George W. in the final years of his second term. The voters served up a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2006. If this reminds you of the November 2010 elections that transferred power to the Republicans, you’re right

The leviathan of independent voters has moved restlessly back and forth between Democrats and Republicans looking for either party to address the nation’s problems.

While the House changed hands in 2010, the margin in the Senate fell sufficiently for the Republican Minority Leader to have some clout there. Harry Reid has begun to bend to the new reality.

Most effected, however, is President Obama. Politics, events in far-off places, and unpopular domestic decisions have gelled into a general public discontent.

Symbolically in recent weeks Robert Gibbs, his original press secretary, left and was replaced by Jay Carney. While Gibbs was facile, Carney is uncertain, hesitant, and weak at the podium. Then came news that the new social secretary at the White House was an openly gay man, a high profile job historically held by a woman. Two surprising and I predict bad choices.

People talk about turning points in history and I would suggest that, so far as the White House is concerned, those new faces will be regarded in retrospect as a turning point.

The timing was especially bad for the White House as the Democratic Party was once again revealed to be the hostage of the union movement and what people saw on their television screens was ugly and thuggish. Cowardly Democrat Wisconsin senators ran away.

In times when millions of Americans are out of work, union members left their jobs to descend on the state house in Madison, Wisconsin and to hold rallies in Trenton, New Jersey demanding they retain their privileged status. It looked bad. It smelt bad.

Beyond our shores events mercilessly erupted as nations in the Middle East and Africa were caught up in a contagion of anger against a rogue’s gallery of despots and monarchs. The White House issued statements that literally conflicted, one with the other, on a day to day basis. If there was a coherent foreign policy it was barely detectable.

Unprepared, incompetent, the façade surrounding the Obama presidency continued to crumble.

It is an implosion. It is the failure of “progressive” ideas that have not changed and have not worked for a century dating back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt.

It revealed the contempt this President and the Democrats have for the Constitution; ballooning the government with schemes like Obamacare to grow an already too large government larger and more intrusive.

Every new piece of legislation added more people to the government payrolls while ordinary Americans watched the cost of everything rise. So-called stimulus plans did little more than retain government workers or put a bandage on Medicaid behind the façade of short-term construction projects.

We are living in ugly times and Obama’s lies are falling on deaf ears.

The Democrats can no longer convince people that acres of wind farms or solar panels can even begin to provide the electricity the nation needs.

The Democrats cannot make a case for $40,000 electric cars when the nation’s entire transportation structure is based on gasoline and diesel.

The Democrats can no longer justify refusing to let American companies drill for American oil, particularly when it always cheaper than imported oil.

The Democrats forced legislation on voters who showed up, a million strong, in Washington to demonstrate their opposition.

The Democrats ran away from state legislatures rather than debate and vote.

The Democrats favor the unions over the vast majority of non-union workers.

The Democrats will not defend the sanctity of marriage or of life.

Throw the bums out.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Watching the Democratic Party Implode

Wheat, the Stuff of Revolutions

By Alan Caruba

In a recent column, Lawrence Kudlow, an economist and popular radio host, opined that “the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices (may have) triggered the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt—or the greater Arab world for that matter.”

When barely two percent of America’s population is engaged in agriculture, growing the crops we eat or that is fed to livestock, it is perhaps understandable that the other 98% has no clue how all that food shows up in their supermarkets and restaurants.

Methinks that the turmoil we are witnessing in Middle Eastern nations derives more from the rumblings in empty bellies than in any real concern for human rights.

Historically, food is the stuff of revolutions. It was the origin of the French revolution that toppled the monarchy and, as we watch the Middle East and the Maghreb nations of northern Africa, it was food that was the match that set off the present popular demonstrations against dictatorships of varying description.

The monthly edition of Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, always features a look at the status of the “wide world of wheat.” It is particularly instructive this month.

“There’s a reason governments make every effort to keep food affordable. Just ask the deposed president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A popular uprising in the mostly desert country of 10 million was sparked by the self-immolation of a man who was arrested for selling vegetables without a license as well as rising prices, particularly bread.” Ben Ali was sent packing after decades of tight-fisted control.

The price of food along with his thirty years of control toppled Egypt’s Mubarack. As Kudlow noted, the mainstream media are so focused on the turmoil in the streets that it is “overlooking the impact of rising inflation, driven mainly by record food prices.” Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer but “Egyptian inflation is now over 10 percent while some experts estimate that Egyptian food inflation has risen as much as 20 percent.”

Much of the world’s inflationary woes come right back to actions being taken here in the United States. “Commodities are priced in dollars, and the Federal Reserve has been overproducing dollars for more than two years." As the value of the dollar declines, it drives up the cost of everything everywhere. The rise in food costs said Kudlow is “a global phenomenon. It is a monetary phenomenon as much as anything.”

“In dollar terms,” noted Kudlow, “ the price of wheat has soared 114 percent over the past year. Corn has surged 88 percent. These are incredible numbers.” There is a reason for the increase in corn prices and it is the United States’ idiotic and insane mandate that ethanol, made from corn, be added to every gallon of gasoline. There is no justifiable reason for ethanol.

A look around the world also shows how Mother Nature is playing her role in the availability—or lack of it—of wheat. Do not fall for the “climate change” blather that hides the global warming fraud. Droughts and deluges alike are a normal part of the Earth’s weather and quite beyond the control of dictators or democracies.

In Russia, drought cut the 2010 wheat production of wheat by a third. Its government declared a moratorium on exports until the 2011 harvest. By contrast, China has had seven years of rising wheat harvests, but Chinese agricultural experts worry that grain production is increasingly concentrated in the water-scarce northern region of the nation.

So, while people around the world watch the Middle Eastern turmoil in the streets, it is factors such as the declining value of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. ethanol policies, and Mother Nature that are driving revolution.

A government that cannot affordably feed its people, it will not last for long.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Wheat, the Stuff of Revolutions