Legendary Stork Brought Unloved Child to White House
By Con George-Kotzabasis
A photo of Obama that tells it all about the latter’s ‘substance.’ Has anyone seen Obama’s photo in The Australian, April 29, 2009, when he was given the cap of the FBI at his visit in its headquarters? His expression is that of a toddler who has been given an ugly toy for a present. This photo will haunt Obama for the rest of his term.
The legendary stork has brought an unloved child in a basket to the American people. Abandoned as a toddler by his father, dumped as a child by his mother on his grandparents, he has been searching for love ever since. And finally he founded it in the initially warm embrace of the foster parenthood of the prattling classes, the politically disgruntled from the previous administration, and all the poor. And being laid in this ‘public’ bed of love and indulging its pleasures to the full Obama will eventually have to pay its high price. As to continue to be the recipient of this love, so existentially necessary for him, his agenda perforce has to be focused in satisfying these three groups simultaneously. That is why his grand social policies of universal health care, education, foreign policy, and climate change, are so important to him. But this is a task for one endowed with superior qualities and Obama has the ordinary qualities of a ‘community organiser’ dressed in ‘ivy clothes leaves.’ And in this inability to accomplish the great change that he promised to the American people the presently smitten with love public for Obama will turn against him and the latter will find himself bitten by the public adder on his path to political failure.
And the first signs of this failure are the dramatic events unfolding in the aftermath of the Iranian election which have turned his foreign policy and new diplomatic outreach to the foes of America and his hopes to placate them into shambles.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Obama’s risen aloft ‘Diplomatic Skirts’ Alluring to Enemies of America
By Con George-Kotzabasis
For Obama to “co-opt” the N. Koreans into a “new dance,” as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note suggests, in which America’s skirts will be risen aloft in the air, like Marilyn Monroe’s, one would need modicum imagination to see what the short build but sharply sighted North Koreans would do to the long legged Americans.
More seriously, the U.S. of course cannot invade or take any military action against N. Korea.
But it can take hard economic sanctions presently and suspend the six-party talks that gives to a rogue state the facade of legitimacy, which it so much desires, and even place a naval embargo on N. Korea and prevent it from exporting its nuclear technology to other rogue states. And thus by “harshly” punishing N. Korea President Obama will avoid the punishment of “a credibility collapse at home,” to quote Clemons.
While Clemons by implication concedes that a credibility collapse will damage the standing of his beloved president, especially when such a collapse will also have international ramifications, he nevertheless weirdly suggests “patience” toward the recalcitrant N. Koreans--that have already in the past violated earlier agreements they had compacted with previous administrations, such as The Agreed Framework, Pyongyang-Washington agreement, under President Clinton --as a “wise” measure, and indeed, as a “tough strategy,” to quote him again. The question that Clemons has to answer however is what kind of “patience” ever prevented a “credibility collapse.” But apparently for Clemons doing nothing or doing something that lacks strategic substance is a “tough strategy.”
The great danger is however that the N. Korean defiance has opened the bottle releasing the ‘meme’ that other rogue states such as Iran will adopt and replicate against the U.S. And one can only second-guess what the Mullahs will do to Obama’s diplomatic skirts.
What will I’ve to do to entice you to comment? I’ve neither skirts nor long legs.
By Con George-Kotzabasis
For Obama to “co-opt” the N. Koreans into a “new dance,” as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note suggests, in which America’s skirts will be risen aloft in the air, like Marilyn Monroe’s, one would need modicum imagination to see what the short build but sharply sighted North Koreans would do to the long legged Americans.
More seriously, the U.S. of course cannot invade or take any military action against N. Korea.
But it can take hard economic sanctions presently and suspend the six-party talks that gives to a rogue state the facade of legitimacy, which it so much desires, and even place a naval embargo on N. Korea and prevent it from exporting its nuclear technology to other rogue states. And thus by “harshly” punishing N. Korea President Obama will avoid the punishment of “a credibility collapse at home,” to quote Clemons.
While Clemons by implication concedes that a credibility collapse will damage the standing of his beloved president, especially when such a collapse will also have international ramifications, he nevertheless weirdly suggests “patience” toward the recalcitrant N. Koreans--that have already in the past violated earlier agreements they had compacted with previous administrations, such as The Agreed Framework, Pyongyang-Washington agreement, under President Clinton --as a “wise” measure, and indeed, as a “tough strategy,” to quote him again. The question that Clemons has to answer however is what kind of “patience” ever prevented a “credibility collapse.” But apparently for Clemons doing nothing or doing something that lacks strategic substance is a “tough strategy.”
The great danger is however that the N. Korean defiance has opened the bottle releasing the ‘meme’ that other rogue states such as Iran will adopt and replicate against the U.S. And one can only second-guess what the Mullahs will do to Obama’s diplomatic skirts.
What will I’ve to do to entice you to comment? I’ve neither skirts nor long legs.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Will There Be An "Obama Effect" in Iran??
By Steve Clemons http://thewashingtonnote.com
June 11, 2009
A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis
Steve’s two question marks promptly save him from falling and drowning into the politics of wishful thinking. The hate of the Islamic Republic against America is deeply rooted and no “mesmerizing” speech by Obama will ever change that. Even if a change from Ahmadinejad to Moussavi does occur, which in my opinion is most unlikely, as I believe the silent majority of Iran will deliver victory to Ahmadinejad, the geopolitical power lunge by Iran to become the hegemon of the region and of Islam, hence clashing with the geopolitical interests of the United States, will not be derailed, and therefore its policies will not be modified by one iota. This is why Iran will continue with its nuclear program and its consummation into a nuclear bomb.
And all those wishful thinkers who believe that Obama’s Cairo speech will have an impact will be gaping with an open mouth at a mirage.
By Steve Clemons http://thewashingtonnote.com
June 11, 2009
A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis
Steve’s two question marks promptly save him from falling and drowning into the politics of wishful thinking. The hate of the Islamic Republic against America is deeply rooted and no “mesmerizing” speech by Obama will ever change that. Even if a change from Ahmadinejad to Moussavi does occur, which in my opinion is most unlikely, as I believe the silent majority of Iran will deliver victory to Ahmadinejad, the geopolitical power lunge by Iran to become the hegemon of the region and of Islam, hence clashing with the geopolitical interests of the United States, will not be derailed, and therefore its policies will not be modified by one iota. This is why Iran will continue with its nuclear program and its consummation into a nuclear bomb.
And all those wishful thinkers who believe that Obama’s Cairo speech will have an impact will be gaping with an open mouth at a mirage.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Israel's Development Stems from Cultural and Intellectual Strength of its People
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Israel is no “mercenary of the West in the heart of the Middle East” but an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of barbarians. Besieged on all sides within the short span of 60 years it became culturally, politically, economically, and scientifically the most developed nation of the region and deservedly proud of this great achievement. Moreover as a civilized outpost, Israel is at the forefront of the fight against the holy warriors of Islam, of Hamas and Hezbollah, the proxies of its most dangerous enemy Iran.
The author of the article might be rich in some of his psychological probing but has a very poor understanding of history. Great achievements are not the outcome of “victimhood” but they arise from the cultural, moral, and intellectual strength of a people. And Israel is a testament of that.
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Israel is no “mercenary of the West in the heart of the Middle East” but an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of barbarians. Besieged on all sides within the short span of 60 years it became culturally, politically, economically, and scientifically the most developed nation of the region and deservedly proud of this great achievement. Moreover as a civilized outpost, Israel is at the forefront of the fight against the holy warriors of Islam, of Hamas and Hezbollah, the proxies of its most dangerous enemy Iran.
The author of the article might be rich in some of his psychological probing but has a very poor understanding of history. Great achievements are not the outcome of “victimhood” but they arise from the cultural, moral, and intellectual strength of a people. And Israel is a testament of that.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Hyping the GITMO Boys Threat
By Steve Clemons
http://thewashingtonnote.com/ May 29, 2009
A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s more likely that “in twenty or thirty years from now” the “historic reflections” will be on the boys and girls of such as the Washington Note who delved in the sphere of geopolitics with their infantile ideas, as this post of Steve’s so pellucidly reflects. And the vaudevillian plays staged on Broadway “on the topic” ‘The Naughty Boys and Girls of the Washington Note’ will have as captions ‘Terrorists as suspects but not proven.’ There is no scarcity of Ivy League cast political comedians in Washington DC.
By Steve Clemons
http://thewashingtonnote.com/ May 29, 2009
A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s more likely that “in twenty or thirty years from now” the “historic reflections” will be on the boys and girls of such as the Washington Note who delved in the sphere of geopolitics with their infantile ideas, as this post of Steve’s so pellucidly reflects. And the vaudevillian plays staged on Broadway “on the topic” ‘The Naughty Boys and Girls of the Washington Note’ will have as captions ‘Terrorists as suspects but not proven.’ There is no scarcity of Ivy League cast political comedians in Washington DC.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Dangers in Obama's Diplomacy: The Folly of Talking Wise and Acting Wise without Being Wise
By Con George-Kotzabasis
The above title is a paraphrase from William Shakespeare: “The folly of acting love and talking love, without being in love.” Statecraft like ‘romanticized’ love if exercised without wisdom can have the fate of Love’s Labour’s Lost as depicted in the great comedy of Shakespeare. President Obama by churning a wave of diplomatic exuberance, on whose crest Secretary of State Clinton and numerous envoys will be ‘surfing,’ is hoping to bring the irreconcilable and implacable enemies of America to a conciliatory peaceful agreement of “live and let live,” while placating the rest of the world from the 'dreadful' belligerent and war policies of the Bush-Cheney administration by a profligate exhibition of true American values. That is respect for the law and international conventions, seeking the resolution of geopolitical conflicts through international institutions and through consensual consultations with its allies, and living up to the great principles and values as engraved in stone by America’s founding fathers. But in this romanticized attempt in diplomacy he may become a fool of wisdom by playing out his own tragicomedy at the expense of American interests and security as well as of the rest of the civilized world.
The change of venue of the Constitutional lawyer from Harvard to the White House has transformed the attorney-at-law into a revisionist historian if not a fabricator of at least recent American foreign policy. Stephen Sestanovich, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, argued four years ago cogently and brilliantly in his essay American Maximalism, that all the great victories of the USA in geopolitical affairs in the last thirty years under presidents Reagan, Bush senior, and Clinton were accomplished by maximalist hard policies and more often than not in opposition to its European allies. Thus the USA as a ‘soloist’ in the concert of its European allies accomplished the downfall of Soviet Russia under Reagan, the reunification of Germany under Bush senior-- which to many international observers was a “masterpiece of the diplomatic art”--against all the protests of the European powers including the UK, and the defeat of the genocidal Milosevic in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts under Clinton, when the latter decided to intervene militarily beyond the confines of diplomacy which he considered to be futile. In all these three conflicts it was American ‘maximalist’ intransigence, decisiveness, and leadership that won the day. In the case of the fall of the Soviet Empire it was Reagan’s uncompromising and immovable position on the “zero option,” i.e., the elimination of all Soviet intermediate-range missiles that was the major factor. Gorbachev himself in a private conversation with Germany’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher stated that the turning point of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lost battle with NATO over nuclear missiles in Europe. Thus it was ‘Reagan’s zero’ that brought the Soviet colossus down.
This is the danger that is enwrapped in Obama’s bouquet of olive branches that his diplomatic ‘couriers’ are delivering in the bosoms of America’s erstwhile enemies, Iran and Syria. That President Obama will be revising these past proven by history successful maximalist policies of the USA in the false hope that Iran and Syria will reciprocate genuinely, and not ingenuously, with likewise measures of amity toward the U.S., and not reading instead on the leaves of those olive branches American weakness which they will exploit to the utmost in achieving their strategic goals, and in the case of Iran by prolonging the negotiations, will render it the invaluable time to acquire nuclear weapons to the ultimate detriment of America’s geopolitical interests and those of its allies, and the dangers that will arise from a nuclear armed Iran with its apocalyptic aims written on its ‘crescent star.’
It’s impossible to believe that this wishful thinking of President Obama that by opening the door of diplomacy to Iran and its sundry terrorist proxies he could reach a peaceful agreement with them, as well as persuade the Ayatollah regime to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, has not yet being drowned in the flood of recent evidence. The Swat valley agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban that presumably would have led to peace in that region, did not last more than a month. Instead of the Taliban laying down their arms as was stipulated by the agreement, it deployed its forces in an incursion of other areas abutting the Swat valley since its leadership had regarded that the Pakistani government was forced into the agreement as a result of weakness. Also, the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip of Israeli forces in 2004 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was regarded by Hamas as a clear sign of weakness on the part of Israel instigating it to continue fuelling the second Intifada that started in 2000 and firing ten thousand rockets into Israel. In view of this incontrovertible and unassailable evidence of the conduct of the Islamist extremists that few serious and acute observers had already predicted the formers’ reaction, i.e., that any negotiations initiated by Western powers or the U.S. with the Islamists would be considered to be by the latter a clear indication of prostrating debilitation on the part of the infidel West. Thus to the Islamists any overture of diplomacy that was set in motion by Western powers would be used merely as a gambit in their irreversible goal to subdue their enemies. Dar al-Islam would employ duplicity and taqqiya throughout any future negotiations in its attempt to defeat Dar al-Harb, the infidels.
Obama’s ark of diplomacy, unlike Noah’s ark, will not survive the flood of deception, guile, and lies that Iran will bring onto the negotiating table. He will find out that his Muslim opponents are masters in dissembling as they have been educated to it by their long proud tradition that will cover any shame, any dishonourable action, as they cover their women with burqas, which could mar their individual or tribal pride. President Obama’s advocacy of a new foreign policy based on diplomacy will evaporate at the first touch with reality. His seductive universalist campaign to ‘change’ America in the eyes of the world by reappropriating the high moral ground that was presumably lost by Bush, and showing respect to Muslims by pouring oil in the turbulent poisonous pond of the holy warriors of Islam, will end up as a tragic idyll. But the stupendous danger is that in this foolish voyage of diplomacy he will bring the shipwreck of America as a great power. The Shakespearean farce will modify under Obama’s directorship into a great American tragedy. And America and the free world will pay a heavy price at the ‘box office’ of geopolitics to see President Obama’s play of “talking wise and acting wise without being wise.”
I rest on my oars:Your turn now
By Con George-Kotzabasis
The above title is a paraphrase from William Shakespeare: “The folly of acting love and talking love, without being in love.” Statecraft like ‘romanticized’ love if exercised without wisdom can have the fate of Love’s Labour’s Lost as depicted in the great comedy of Shakespeare. President Obama by churning a wave of diplomatic exuberance, on whose crest Secretary of State Clinton and numerous envoys will be ‘surfing,’ is hoping to bring the irreconcilable and implacable enemies of America to a conciliatory peaceful agreement of “live and let live,” while placating the rest of the world from the 'dreadful' belligerent and war policies of the Bush-Cheney administration by a profligate exhibition of true American values. That is respect for the law and international conventions, seeking the resolution of geopolitical conflicts through international institutions and through consensual consultations with its allies, and living up to the great principles and values as engraved in stone by America’s founding fathers. But in this romanticized attempt in diplomacy he may become a fool of wisdom by playing out his own tragicomedy at the expense of American interests and security as well as of the rest of the civilized world.
The change of venue of the Constitutional lawyer from Harvard to the White House has transformed the attorney-at-law into a revisionist historian if not a fabricator of at least recent American foreign policy. Stephen Sestanovich, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, argued four years ago cogently and brilliantly in his essay American Maximalism, that all the great victories of the USA in geopolitical affairs in the last thirty years under presidents Reagan, Bush senior, and Clinton were accomplished by maximalist hard policies and more often than not in opposition to its European allies. Thus the USA as a ‘soloist’ in the concert of its European allies accomplished the downfall of Soviet Russia under Reagan, the reunification of Germany under Bush senior-- which to many international observers was a “masterpiece of the diplomatic art”--against all the protests of the European powers including the UK, and the defeat of the genocidal Milosevic in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts under Clinton, when the latter decided to intervene militarily beyond the confines of diplomacy which he considered to be futile. In all these three conflicts it was American ‘maximalist’ intransigence, decisiveness, and leadership that won the day. In the case of the fall of the Soviet Empire it was Reagan’s uncompromising and immovable position on the “zero option,” i.e., the elimination of all Soviet intermediate-range missiles that was the major factor. Gorbachev himself in a private conversation with Germany’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher stated that the turning point of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lost battle with NATO over nuclear missiles in Europe. Thus it was ‘Reagan’s zero’ that brought the Soviet colossus down.
This is the danger that is enwrapped in Obama’s bouquet of olive branches that his diplomatic ‘couriers’ are delivering in the bosoms of America’s erstwhile enemies, Iran and Syria. That President Obama will be revising these past proven by history successful maximalist policies of the USA in the false hope that Iran and Syria will reciprocate genuinely, and not ingenuously, with likewise measures of amity toward the U.S., and not reading instead on the leaves of those olive branches American weakness which they will exploit to the utmost in achieving their strategic goals, and in the case of Iran by prolonging the negotiations, will render it the invaluable time to acquire nuclear weapons to the ultimate detriment of America’s geopolitical interests and those of its allies, and the dangers that will arise from a nuclear armed Iran with its apocalyptic aims written on its ‘crescent star.’
It’s impossible to believe that this wishful thinking of President Obama that by opening the door of diplomacy to Iran and its sundry terrorist proxies he could reach a peaceful agreement with them, as well as persuade the Ayatollah regime to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, has not yet being drowned in the flood of recent evidence. The Swat valley agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban that presumably would have led to peace in that region, did not last more than a month. Instead of the Taliban laying down their arms as was stipulated by the agreement, it deployed its forces in an incursion of other areas abutting the Swat valley since its leadership had regarded that the Pakistani government was forced into the agreement as a result of weakness. Also, the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip of Israeli forces in 2004 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was regarded by Hamas as a clear sign of weakness on the part of Israel instigating it to continue fuelling the second Intifada that started in 2000 and firing ten thousand rockets into Israel. In view of this incontrovertible and unassailable evidence of the conduct of the Islamist extremists that few serious and acute observers had already predicted the formers’ reaction, i.e., that any negotiations initiated by Western powers or the U.S. with the Islamists would be considered to be by the latter a clear indication of prostrating debilitation on the part of the infidel West. Thus to the Islamists any overture of diplomacy that was set in motion by Western powers would be used merely as a gambit in their irreversible goal to subdue their enemies. Dar al-Islam would employ duplicity and taqqiya throughout any future negotiations in its attempt to defeat Dar al-Harb, the infidels.
Obama’s ark of diplomacy, unlike Noah’s ark, will not survive the flood of deception, guile, and lies that Iran will bring onto the negotiating table. He will find out that his Muslim opponents are masters in dissembling as they have been educated to it by their long proud tradition that will cover any shame, any dishonourable action, as they cover their women with burqas, which could mar their individual or tribal pride. President Obama’s advocacy of a new foreign policy based on diplomacy will evaporate at the first touch with reality. His seductive universalist campaign to ‘change’ America in the eyes of the world by reappropriating the high moral ground that was presumably lost by Bush, and showing respect to Muslims by pouring oil in the turbulent poisonous pond of the holy warriors of Islam, will end up as a tragic idyll. But the stupendous danger is that in this foolish voyage of diplomacy he will bring the shipwreck of America as a great power. The Shakespearean farce will modify under Obama’s directorship into a great American tragedy. And America and the free world will pay a heavy price at the ‘box office’ of geopolitics to see President Obama’s play of “talking wise and acting wise without being wise.”
I rest on my oars:Your turn now
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Anti-Terrorist Laws to Protect Australians Baneful to Soft Intellectuals
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.
Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.
Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.
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