The Meaning of al Sadr’s Retreat in Iraq
By Con George-Kotzabasis
The slightly “growing strength” of al- Sadr before the Surge Yes but after the Surge No! It was the military campaign and its political concatenations under Petraeus-Crocker that changed the political configuration of Iraq and weakened al-Sadr’s position, especially after the defeat of the extremist elements in Basra and Sadr City by the Iraqi-American forces. His call to his supporters to stop fighting emanated from his realization that his armed militia was threatened with decimation.
It is al-Sadr that has shifted towards the new political process, almost made in the image of American strategy, and not the other way around. It’s ironic that the neocon skeleton of democracy in Iraq may still be able to put some flesh on itself, while “burning” the flesh of all its liberal critics and traducers for their “sin” of political callowness and malevolence. And Iraq has a great potential to start the ball of democracy rolling to the rest of the Middle East and hence consummating Bush’s doctrine.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Presidential Jesters Give Standing Ovation to Obama Before He Starts
By Con George-Kotzabasis A response to: President Obama’s First Foreign Policy Success –and it’s Only Day One
By Amjad Attalah
Washington Note January 20, 2009
Amjad Attalah must be in a cavorting jocular mood. He ludicrously, for him maybe seriously, claims that the “cease-fire” in Gaza is Obama’s “first foreign policy success.” And the latter was achieved, according to Attalah, not by any specific written communication or request by Obama to the Israelis but merely by the fact that Obama was the president-elect and not anybody else.
For the religious votaries of Obama, like Attalah, this will not be an ordinary presidency but an extraordinarily miraculous one. Just the healing presence of Obama, “He didn’t need to” do anything, the long irreconcilable and implacable conflicts of the world will be resolved beyond “bombing or rocketing.”
It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillian plays. With captions such as: "A demoralized and frantic Israeli state", "a historic shift in our Middle East posture", "to seek an opening and grand bargain with Iran," written by that master virtuoso in vaudevillian politics Dan Kervick himself, all of them a box office success since they will attract as audience hoi polloi who have an inveterate craving to laugh at serious things.
Paul Norheim says
"It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillianplays." (kotzabasis)
Amusing, coming from someone who once praised Dick Cheneyas the Captain Ahab of the global war on terror, and whocertainly was not joking when he, some months ago, had this tosay about Sarah Palin:
"Palin’s selection is a political master stroke on the part of McCain. Moreover this astute move is not merely a brilliantmanoeuvre on the field of American electoral politics, but alsoadumbrates what a great president McCain will make."
HAHAHA, as varanasi would have said if he wasn`t using hispassport right now.
To his credit, kotzabasis`opinions, in contrast to TahoeEditor`s, are based on his own bad instincts, and not merely copied fromthe PR office of the GOP. Errare humanum est. But how can youexpect sound political judgement from someone who doesn`tbelieve in political means, but only in their continuation, i.e.bombs and rockets against evil?
Kotzabasis says
Paul Norheim, what a week reed intellectually you must be in the torrential currents of the river of politics when intentionally and malevolently distort and take out of context the statements of your opponent to make your non-case.
Whatever you might think about Cheney, the gross errors, and indeed, criminal ones, according to you, he was a strong vice-president fully conscious of his responsibilities in the affairs of statecraft in the aftermath of 9/11. I contrasted him with Captain Ahab, as you well know, precisely because of the latter’s strength of character, which you lack, who would “strike the sun if it insulted him”, to quote a great literary critic.
As for Sarah, isn’t it a fact that she rejuvenated the base of the Republican Party and impacted initially a large part of the American electorate and it was only after the dirty campaign of calumny against her and her family by the liberal media that she was besmirched in the eyes of many Americans? McCain lost as a result of the hate many Americans had for Bush-Cheney and by association for the Republican Party which by trumping even the strong emotion of racism brought Obama to the White House. And as we know from Shakespeare, and indeed, Ibsen, your great compatriot, hate is the ultimate wicked human emotion that trumps all others.
And on the contrary, I do believe in the use of “political means” and in diplomacy and cease only to believe in these when they are proven to be completely ineffective, as they have been with the fanatic holy warriors of Islam.
Your errors of judgment have nothing to do with “Errare humanum est”, they rise from your weak character and shallow political nous.
By Con George-Kotzabasis A response to: President Obama’s First Foreign Policy Success –and it’s Only Day One
By Amjad Attalah
Washington Note January 20, 2009
Amjad Attalah must be in a cavorting jocular mood. He ludicrously, for him maybe seriously, claims that the “cease-fire” in Gaza is Obama’s “first foreign policy success.” And the latter was achieved, according to Attalah, not by any specific written communication or request by Obama to the Israelis but merely by the fact that Obama was the president-elect and not anybody else.
For the religious votaries of Obama, like Attalah, this will not be an ordinary presidency but an extraordinarily miraculous one. Just the healing presence of Obama, “He didn’t need to” do anything, the long irreconcilable and implacable conflicts of the world will be resolved beyond “bombing or rocketing.”
It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillian plays. With captions such as: "A demoralized and frantic Israeli state", "a historic shift in our Middle East posture", "to seek an opening and grand bargain with Iran," written by that master virtuoso in vaudevillian politics Dan Kervick himself, all of them a box office success since they will attract as audience hoi polloi who have an inveterate craving to laugh at serious things.
Paul Norheim says
"It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillianplays." (kotzabasis)
Amusing, coming from someone who once praised Dick Cheneyas the Captain Ahab of the global war on terror, and whocertainly was not joking when he, some months ago, had this tosay about Sarah Palin:
"Palin’s selection is a political master stroke on the part of McCain. Moreover this astute move is not merely a brilliantmanoeuvre on the field of American electoral politics, but alsoadumbrates what a great president McCain will make."
HAHAHA, as varanasi would have said if he wasn`t using hispassport right now.
To his credit, kotzabasis`opinions, in contrast to TahoeEditor`s, are based on his own bad instincts, and not merely copied fromthe PR office of the GOP. Errare humanum est. But how can youexpect sound political judgement from someone who doesn`tbelieve in political means, but only in their continuation, i.e.bombs and rockets against evil?
Kotzabasis says
Paul Norheim, what a week reed intellectually you must be in the torrential currents of the river of politics when intentionally and malevolently distort and take out of context the statements of your opponent to make your non-case.
Whatever you might think about Cheney, the gross errors, and indeed, criminal ones, according to you, he was a strong vice-president fully conscious of his responsibilities in the affairs of statecraft in the aftermath of 9/11. I contrasted him with Captain Ahab, as you well know, precisely because of the latter’s strength of character, which you lack, who would “strike the sun if it insulted him”, to quote a great literary critic.
As for Sarah, isn’t it a fact that she rejuvenated the base of the Republican Party and impacted initially a large part of the American electorate and it was only after the dirty campaign of calumny against her and her family by the liberal media that she was besmirched in the eyes of many Americans? McCain lost as a result of the hate many Americans had for Bush-Cheney and by association for the Republican Party which by trumping even the strong emotion of racism brought Obama to the White House. And as we know from Shakespeare, and indeed, Ibsen, your great compatriot, hate is the ultimate wicked human emotion that trumps all others.
And on the contrary, I do believe in the use of “political means” and in diplomacy and cease only to believe in these when they are proven to be completely ineffective, as they have been with the fanatic holy warriors of Islam.
Your errors of judgment have nothing to do with “Errare humanum est”, they rise from your weak character and shallow political nous.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Positive Turnaround of Iraq is a Negative to Liberals
By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s mind “doodling” to see people with apparently political nous and historical imagination to make Iraq into a negative in this argument. A lost cause prior to the Surge that was “miraculously” turned into victory is considered to be a negative?
The strength of a nation, as of a person, lies not in being immune from making mistakes but in promptly correcting these mistakes and replacing them with correct policies. And this is exactly what the Bush administration did with the new strategy of the Surge in Iraq. What kind of alchemy, what intellectual legerdemain could turn this positive fact into a negative one?
By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s mind “doodling” to see people with apparently political nous and historical imagination to make Iraq into a negative in this argument. A lost cause prior to the Surge that was “miraculously” turned into victory is considered to be a negative?
The strength of a nation, as of a person, lies not in being immune from making mistakes but in promptly correcting these mistakes and replacing them with correct policies. And this is exactly what the Bush administration did with the new strategy of the Surge in Iraq. What kind of alchemy, what intellectual legerdemain could turn this positive fact into a negative one?
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Liberal Wish: Miraculous Obama
Brings Second Coming of Camelot
By Con George-Kotzabasis
So after all the ‘Hotspur’ searing critique of the liberal intelligentsia and its adulators of the Bush-Cheney nefarious deeds in foreign affairs and the hurricane-like damage done to the political and cultural landscape of the United States, Americans now will not judge Obama according to his politics in repairing this great damage—as what else one can deduce from “One may like Obama’s politics or not”—but from a “purely cultural point,” to quote Kervick, i.e., by the miraculous powers of Obama to bring the Second Coming of Camelot. And this miracle alone, according to Kervick, will prevent rednecks like Palin from having a chance to enter the White House.
Kervick, with his past fear of Palin, whose speech in the Republican Convention rattled him so much that forced him to write half a dozen posts in one thread of The Washington Note after her speech, and in his inveterate hate of her, is oblivious of the obvious fact that if President Obama fails to deliver on his political promises of change and the ‘Renaissance’ of America, then his Camelot will be a wet dream, if not an angel flying in the sky.
Brings Second Coming of Camelot
By Con George-Kotzabasis
So after all the ‘Hotspur’ searing critique of the liberal intelligentsia and its adulators of the Bush-Cheney nefarious deeds in foreign affairs and the hurricane-like damage done to the political and cultural landscape of the United States, Americans now will not judge Obama according to his politics in repairing this great damage—as what else one can deduce from “One may like Obama’s politics or not”—but from a “purely cultural point,” to quote Kervick, i.e., by the miraculous powers of Obama to bring the Second Coming of Camelot. And this miracle alone, according to Kervick, will prevent rednecks like Palin from having a chance to enter the White House.
Kervick, with his past fear of Palin, whose speech in the Republican Convention rattled him so much that forced him to write half a dozen posts in one thread of The Washington Note after her speech, and in his inveterate hate of her, is oblivious of the obvious fact that if President Obama fails to deliver on his political promises of change and the ‘Renaissance’ of America, then his Camelot will be a wet dream, if not an angel flying in the sky.
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