Liberal’s Deficit of a Sense of Reality
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Jane Mayer and the reviewer of her book Andrew Bacevich both of them have an unfathomable deficit of a sense of reality and are oblivious of the lessons of history. Like beatific angels they descend from “a fine cloud of solicitous idealism” to critique and accuse the Bush administration of American-made Gulags. Disregarding and forgetting that the normal and complacent days of America ended on 9/11. On this fateful day America was attacked by an invisible deadly enemy whose only transparency was that he was wearing civilian clothes. In such circumstances the Administration was in the morally unenviable position to apprehend people not on hard legal evidence but on suspicion and to hold them for a long period because of the possible great danger. In the darkness of this war against global terror the enlightened civilized processes of the Geneva Conventions and due process became totally obsolete, not by the nefarious practices of the government but by the dicta of reality and history. On the latter criteria, Mayer and Bacevich are irredeemable failures. To quote the great Austrian writer Robert Musil, “to the mind good and evil... are not sceptical, relative concepts, but terms of function, values that depend on the context (M.E.) they find themselves in.”
Further, desperate to make their case against the Administration they throw the latter into the pool of the politics of fear. They are deliberately not making the nuanced distinction between the words threat and fear. While one can threaten even the fearless it does not follow that the threatened reacts out of fear. He merely reacts to a plausible threat like any reasonable person would in the same circumstances. And this is exactly what Americans are doing in the aftermath of 9/11. To claim as Mayer and Bacevich do that the Bush administration deliberately let loose the winds of fear to batter Americans for their own nefarious ends, whatever the latter happen to be, is on their part legerdemain par excellence.
I rest on my oars: Your turn now.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Kevin Rudd Escalating his Political Dilettantism
By Con George-Kotzabasis
In our times when rogue states bristling in their apocalyptic beards, like Iran, could produce stealthily nuclear weapons, to set up an International Commission for nuclear disarmament, as Prime Minister Rudd proposes to do, is the ultimate stupidity that any one could suggest. And in the aftermath of 9/11, the magnitude of such stupidity takes astronomical dimensions. Just imagine that countries such as America, Britain, France, and especially, Israel, which could be the targets of a nuclear attack by an Islamist state or by proxies of the latter, would even consider their nuclear disarmament.
Rudd’s proposal limpidly illustrates that Australia does not have a statesman at the helm but a political dilettante and a populist to boot who is more concerned to ingratiate himself with the celestial wishes of its liberal minded constituency than to deal with geopolitical realities.
Moreover, what is rather surprising and amusing is to see that Gareth Evans is willing to underwrite such political buffoonery by accepting the chair of the International Commission for nuclear disarmament. It seems that his Tasmanian “Biggles” days are not over.
Over to you
By Con George-Kotzabasis
In our times when rogue states bristling in their apocalyptic beards, like Iran, could produce stealthily nuclear weapons, to set up an International Commission for nuclear disarmament, as Prime Minister Rudd proposes to do, is the ultimate stupidity that any one could suggest. And in the aftermath of 9/11, the magnitude of such stupidity takes astronomical dimensions. Just imagine that countries such as America, Britain, France, and especially, Israel, which could be the targets of a nuclear attack by an Islamist state or by proxies of the latter, would even consider their nuclear disarmament.
Rudd’s proposal limpidly illustrates that Australia does not have a statesman at the helm but a political dilettante and a populist to boot who is more concerned to ingratiate himself with the celestial wishes of its liberal minded constituency than to deal with geopolitical realities.
Moreover, what is rather surprising and amusing is to see that Gareth Evans is willing to underwrite such political buffoonery by accepting the chair of the International Commission for nuclear disarmament. It seems that his Tasmanian “Biggles” days are not over.
Over to you
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Obama’s Plan for Withdrawal Replaces Living Victorious Strategy with Dead Strategy
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Obama is no leader but a pretender! The sentence in the first paragraph of his Op-Ed in the NT on July 14, 2008, says it all. “The phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated,” which he trumpeted before the surge, he continues to consider as being wise in conditions when the surge has been successful in subduing the insurgency and decisively defeating al Qaeda in Iraq (his goal), and the Iraqi government meeting 15 out of the 18 benchmarks set up by Congress.
Further, he fabricates a grand fiction when he states that “nearly every threat we face-has grown.” If this was true one would have expected that America would have been attacked at least once since 9/11. And he distorts the real goal of the surge which was to win the war, and inevitably that would involve some strain in the overall number of U.S. military forces, and not because, the reason why he opposed the surge, it would not ease “the strain on our military.” Did Obama expect to win a war without perforce some strain on the military?
Obama’s op-ed is redolent with hypocrisy and cant to justify his pro-surge position, and to transpose this position in the new situation of a victorious war in Iraq as continuing to be politically and strategically viable is laughable. It is no less than the attempt of someone to resuscitate a dead carcass which unceremoniously is fit for burial and to give it a ‘second life’ in the overwhelming liveliness of victory.
Obama’s plan for withdrawal rides on the ignorant and obtuse brain-wave of populism that is against the war justified to an extent by the initial mistakes of its strategists in the conduct of the war. But now that these mistakes have been addressed and corrected by the new strategy of the surge which is defeating the insurgency, for Obama to stick to his populist promise to pull out U.S. troops from Iraq in sixteen months in this new situation, is to lead from the tail and not from the front the American people.
And in American history Obama will be everlastingly cursed for being the only Commander-in-Chief who ignominiously and doltishly withdrew his magnificent brave soldiers from a war at the threshold of its victory. Can you imagine President Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg ordering General Ulysses Grant to withdraw his troops from the field of battle and stop pursuing the army of Robert Lee whose ultimate defeat, at astronomical cost of men and materiel on both sides, led to the end of the civil war? Obama is making a mockery of the great tradition of wise, intrepid American presidents. He was wrong in his prediction that the surge would fail, wrong in his assessment that Iraq is not presently the frontline of global terror and al Qaeda, and wrong in his strategy to pull out U.S. troops from a war that the latter are winning. On this score alone, he does not deserve to be the Commander-in-Chief of a Great Nation.
Over to you
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Obama is no leader but a pretender! The sentence in the first paragraph of his Op-Ed in the NT on July 14, 2008, says it all. “The phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated,” which he trumpeted before the surge, he continues to consider as being wise in conditions when the surge has been successful in subduing the insurgency and decisively defeating al Qaeda in Iraq (his goal), and the Iraqi government meeting 15 out of the 18 benchmarks set up by Congress.
Further, he fabricates a grand fiction when he states that “nearly every threat we face-has grown.” If this was true one would have expected that America would have been attacked at least once since 9/11. And he distorts the real goal of the surge which was to win the war, and inevitably that would involve some strain in the overall number of U.S. military forces, and not because, the reason why he opposed the surge, it would not ease “the strain on our military.” Did Obama expect to win a war without perforce some strain on the military?
Obama’s op-ed is redolent with hypocrisy and cant to justify his pro-surge position, and to transpose this position in the new situation of a victorious war in Iraq as continuing to be politically and strategically viable is laughable. It is no less than the attempt of someone to resuscitate a dead carcass which unceremoniously is fit for burial and to give it a ‘second life’ in the overwhelming liveliness of victory.
Obama’s plan for withdrawal rides on the ignorant and obtuse brain-wave of populism that is against the war justified to an extent by the initial mistakes of its strategists in the conduct of the war. But now that these mistakes have been addressed and corrected by the new strategy of the surge which is defeating the insurgency, for Obama to stick to his populist promise to pull out U.S. troops from Iraq in sixteen months in this new situation, is to lead from the tail and not from the front the American people.
And in American history Obama will be everlastingly cursed for being the only Commander-in-Chief who ignominiously and doltishly withdrew his magnificent brave soldiers from a war at the threshold of its victory. Can you imagine President Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg ordering General Ulysses Grant to withdraw his troops from the field of battle and stop pursuing the army of Robert Lee whose ultimate defeat, at astronomical cost of men and materiel on both sides, led to the end of the civil war? Obama is making a mockery of the great tradition of wise, intrepid American presidents. He was wrong in his prediction that the surge would fail, wrong in his assessment that Iraq is not presently the frontline of global terror and al Qaeda, and wrong in his strategy to pull out U.S. troops from a war that the latter are winning. On this score alone, he does not deserve to be the Commander-in-Chief of a Great Nation.
Over to you
Monday, July 07, 2008
NO TRUCKLOAD OF CARROTS WILL PERSUADE IRAN UNLESS IT'S ACCOMPANIED WITH A TRUCKLOAD OF MISSILES
By Con George-Kotzabasis
A response to:
Talking to Iran is our Best Option
By Ivo Daalder and Phillip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, and advisers to Barack Obama
Washington Post, June 29, 2008
We cannot tolerate the survival of a political system which has both the increasing capacity and the inexorable desire to destroy us. We have no other option but to adopt the strategy of Cato. (Delenda est Carthago)
Raymond Aron
Ivo Daalder and Phillip Gordon, the two savants of the Brookings Institution, have a brief to advise Barack Obama to start “talking to Iran without preconditions”, but they should not allowed to do so at the grief of America’s national interests and the security of the civilized world. The rationale of such advocacy is based in “rescuing a failed policy” of not talking to Iran for 7 ½ years that has made the latter, according to our two analysts, stronger and therefore more intransigent toward American and European demands encapsulated in the precondition that Iran suspends its nuclear enrichment program before any commencement of negotiations between the opposing parties. Further they claim that such diplomatic overture by the U.S. would enable the latter to “test that proposition” of the Iranians, that they “seek only the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the right to nuclear technology”.
It’s almost beyond belief that Daalder and Gordon would be proud to present themselves as the enfants terribles on the stage of diplomacy and in the art of Talleyrand, as their suggestion to “test” this dissembling proposition of Iran behind which is attempting to build its nuclear arsenal, is terribly infantile and politically doltish. It’s like a law officer testing a professional thief whether he has stolen the goods of a house by asking him to show him the master key that has opened the door of the house.
As for their claim that for the last 7 ½ years there have not been any talks with Iran is completely in opposition to the facts. The Europeans, and many of them enunciating and voicing the proposals of their American “ventriloquist”, have been speaking with the Iranians openly as well as sotto voce for a number of years. And have put their own, and indirectly American, proposals before them to no avail. Indeed, Daalder and Gordon concede this by saying that “all of them… [The Europeans] repeatedly presented Iran with a list of benefits Iran would receive if it suspended enrichment”. The latest truckload of carrots were transported to Tehran by Javier Solama, European Foreign Policy Chief few weeks ago only to be turned over and rejected by Iran’s unappeasable Mullahcracy. And this rejection was sealed when Gholam Hossein Elham, a spokesman of the government said that Iran would not comply with Security Council resolutions requiring it to stop enriching uranium.
It’s incomprehensible that Daalder and Gordon do not realize that Iran is undeviating in its goal and determination to acquire nuclear weapons as the latter is the sine qua non of Iran’s leadership of the Muslim people and the implementation of the religious doctrine of the Ninth Mahdi, i.e., the creation of a new world order under the Holy Crescent of Islam. This theological doctrinal lunge for power by Iran cannot be stopped by the humdrum conventional instruments of diplomacy, as the two analysts suggest, but only by diplomacy in the carapace of a bristling hedgehog. And such diplomacy can only be effective by setting certain preconditions at the outset before talks can begin. In the event that such preconditions are unacceptable by the Iranian regime, as presently is the case, then the latter must unambiguously understand that since all roads to diplomacy are closed a bridge too close to war is only open.
Further, Daalder and Gordon seem to be ill-equipped for the art of diplomacy since apparently aren’t aware of some of its cardinal principles. Once one has made strongly clear to his opponent one’s position that the diplomatic avenue can only be opened on meeting certain preconditions to back down from this initial stand is to irretrievably weaken one’s position in the diplomatic stakes as one would give the perception to his adversary that one enters the negotiations with cap in hand. The military analyst Francois Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies comments drily that “dropping a unanimous Security Council condition (stop enriching uranium) would simply be interpreted by Iran and American allies as unconditional surrender”. (M.E.)
Do the two advisers to Barack Obama consider that by such “surrender” in the diplomatic field the U.S. would have a chance to achieve by talks the latter’s primary goal, i.e., to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal? Moreover, such advocacy for diplomacy rests on the assumption that the present Iranian leadership under Ahmadinejad is a rational actor, and its participation in such negotiations would be well-grounded in its hope to resolve the problems confronting the two parties in a reasonable manner. Such assumption however is contrary to all the evidence as the long-bearded Mullahcracy of Iran continues to load its inter-state relations and actions with the afflatus of millenarianism. This is illustrated both by its annihilation stand against Israel and its apocalyptic confrontation with the West and the Great Satan America. In such a situation for anyone to advocate the wiles of conventional diplomacy as our "best option" that would accomplish a benign turning point in the relations between the American-European condominium and Iran is to have one’s head in the clouds.
I rest on my oars: Your turn now
By Con George-Kotzabasis
A response to:
Talking to Iran is our Best Option
By Ivo Daalder and Phillip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, and advisers to Barack Obama
Washington Post, June 29, 2008
We cannot tolerate the survival of a political system which has both the increasing capacity and the inexorable desire to destroy us. We have no other option but to adopt the strategy of Cato. (Delenda est Carthago)
Raymond Aron
Ivo Daalder and Phillip Gordon, the two savants of the Brookings Institution, have a brief to advise Barack Obama to start “talking to Iran without preconditions”, but they should not allowed to do so at the grief of America’s national interests and the security of the civilized world. The rationale of such advocacy is based in “rescuing a failed policy” of not talking to Iran for 7 ½ years that has made the latter, according to our two analysts, stronger and therefore more intransigent toward American and European demands encapsulated in the precondition that Iran suspends its nuclear enrichment program before any commencement of negotiations between the opposing parties. Further they claim that such diplomatic overture by the U.S. would enable the latter to “test that proposition” of the Iranians, that they “seek only the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the right to nuclear technology”.
It’s almost beyond belief that Daalder and Gordon would be proud to present themselves as the enfants terribles on the stage of diplomacy and in the art of Talleyrand, as their suggestion to “test” this dissembling proposition of Iran behind which is attempting to build its nuclear arsenal, is terribly infantile and politically doltish. It’s like a law officer testing a professional thief whether he has stolen the goods of a house by asking him to show him the master key that has opened the door of the house.
As for their claim that for the last 7 ½ years there have not been any talks with Iran is completely in opposition to the facts. The Europeans, and many of them enunciating and voicing the proposals of their American “ventriloquist”, have been speaking with the Iranians openly as well as sotto voce for a number of years. And have put their own, and indirectly American, proposals before them to no avail. Indeed, Daalder and Gordon concede this by saying that “all of them… [The Europeans] repeatedly presented Iran with a list of benefits Iran would receive if it suspended enrichment”. The latest truckload of carrots were transported to Tehran by Javier Solama, European Foreign Policy Chief few weeks ago only to be turned over and rejected by Iran’s unappeasable Mullahcracy. And this rejection was sealed when Gholam Hossein Elham, a spokesman of the government said that Iran would not comply with Security Council resolutions requiring it to stop enriching uranium.
It’s incomprehensible that Daalder and Gordon do not realize that Iran is undeviating in its goal and determination to acquire nuclear weapons as the latter is the sine qua non of Iran’s leadership of the Muslim people and the implementation of the religious doctrine of the Ninth Mahdi, i.e., the creation of a new world order under the Holy Crescent of Islam. This theological doctrinal lunge for power by Iran cannot be stopped by the humdrum conventional instruments of diplomacy, as the two analysts suggest, but only by diplomacy in the carapace of a bristling hedgehog. And such diplomacy can only be effective by setting certain preconditions at the outset before talks can begin. In the event that such preconditions are unacceptable by the Iranian regime, as presently is the case, then the latter must unambiguously understand that since all roads to diplomacy are closed a bridge too close to war is only open.
Further, Daalder and Gordon seem to be ill-equipped for the art of diplomacy since apparently aren’t aware of some of its cardinal principles. Once one has made strongly clear to his opponent one’s position that the diplomatic avenue can only be opened on meeting certain preconditions to back down from this initial stand is to irretrievably weaken one’s position in the diplomatic stakes as one would give the perception to his adversary that one enters the negotiations with cap in hand. The military analyst Francois Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies comments drily that “dropping a unanimous Security Council condition (stop enriching uranium) would simply be interpreted by Iran and American allies as unconditional surrender”. (M.E.)
Do the two advisers to Barack Obama consider that by such “surrender” in the diplomatic field the U.S. would have a chance to achieve by talks the latter’s primary goal, i.e., to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal? Moreover, such advocacy for diplomacy rests on the assumption that the present Iranian leadership under Ahmadinejad is a rational actor, and its participation in such negotiations would be well-grounded in its hope to resolve the problems confronting the two parties in a reasonable manner. Such assumption however is contrary to all the evidence as the long-bearded Mullahcracy of Iran continues to load its inter-state relations and actions with the afflatus of millenarianism. This is illustrated both by its annihilation stand against Israel and its apocalyptic confrontation with the West and the Great Satan America. In such a situation for anyone to advocate the wiles of conventional diplomacy as our "best option" that would accomplish a benign turning point in the relations between the American-European condominium and Iran is to have one’s head in the clouds.
I rest on my oars: Your turn now
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