Planetary Power Politics

2012-02-15T02:09:00.000-08:00

Is the European Central Bank the Shy Bride of Lender of Last Resort?

By Con George-Kotzabasis—December 1, 2011

It goes without saying, that merely a new European treaty, as proposed by Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, no matter how strong its teeth, will not resolve the crisis. But the solving of the crisis might lie in a fecund combination of new rules to be observed strictly, and new bold economic measures, including the ECB as lender of last resort. And Mario Draghi’s hesitation might only be a ruse. His guise of being the shy bride of decisive intervention might only be a pretension, and he may surprisingly shock everybody by sprightly stepping boldly and marrying the groom of lender of last resort. This unexpected nimble move from shyness to boldness will be a powerful incentive to rally the markets behind the Eurozone. And one might not dismiss lightly that “magic” and a Deus ex machina might have a role in this tragic play.

P.S. Since the above was written, Mario Draghi lowered the discount rate of the ECB to 1% and distributed to European banks nearly 500 billion euros to lend to their customers. This is equivalent of using the instrument of lender of last resort by the ECB although doing this by roundabout means and not in a formal manner. And apparently this bold and imaginative initiative of the ECB has stabilized the European markets.

2012-02-03T00:51:00.000-08:00

Reply to John Quiggin's Zombie Economics

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Are you proposing an unbalanced budget as a way out of zombie economics and long term prosperity? To live beyond one’s means is to live in FALSE prosperity that will not last long, as the present situation in Europe shows starkly. Moreover, a false prosperity encourages and incites a stampede of speculative bubbles that with algorithmic precision blow up in a bust. You are confusing austerity as a ‘drug’ and austerity as a ‘poison’. As a drug it cures your insanity to live beyond your means; as a poison it exacerbates the illness of recession by depriving you of the stimulants of a Central Bank that could weaken the virus of recession and cure it gradually, if one uses the funds wisely to reinvigorate the REAL economy and boost entrepreneurial creativity and innovation, as the leader of the Opposition in Greece, Antonis Samaras, last May, proposed in his Zappeio Address.

Hence, your “zombie” austerity turns into a boomerang and hits you with all the force of Newtonian gravity in your confused austerity.

2012-01-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

The Periclean Dimensions of Antonis Samaras as the Future Prime Minister of Greece

By Con George-Kotzabasis—December 10, 2011

We have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring. Pericles

In the present storm-laden dark sky of Greece, a glittering new star has made its appearance which like a beacon of the sky is attempting to navigate the battered ship of Greece into calmer waters and save it from shipwreck. This new star is the leader of the Opposition of the New Democracy Party, Antonis Samaras, who since he has become its leader two years ago, has displayed unprecedented qualities of leadership and economic and political insight and daring, in this critical economic situation that Greece traverses, that only a statesman of Periclean dimensions could exhibit.

The criticism of Samaras from early on as leader of the Opposition of the Papandreou government, which he has depicted as amateurish and inept, has been totally justified. His early warnings that the policies of the socialist government of Papandreou were wrong and the torrent of taxes that the latter rained upon the middle classes would be disastrous for the economy. In October 2009, when Papandreou began his premiership, public debt was 298 billion Euros, 125% of GDP. Today it has reached the whopping amount of 360 billion Euros, 165% of GDP. Gross National Product in 2009 was 238 billion and presently has shrunk to 218 billion. According to OECD estimates it will decrease even more by 6% in the near future and unemployment will increase to 18.55%, affecting tragically younger people.

Further, Samaras predicted that the first EU Memorandum that imposed draconian austerity measures on Greece would neither decrease the budget nor would it put the economy on a track of recovery. As an economist he cogently argued that in conditions of deep recession austerity measures would exacerbate the economic crisis not dampen it. He was severely criticized and reprimanded when the New Democracy Party voted in parliament against the extreme austerity measures. Moreover, he had the moral strength and political insight not to be tempted to fall to the seductive calls of Papandreou to participate in a unity government to deal with the national crisis. Samaras gave as his strong reasons that since the PASOK Government was refusing to change its economic policies, that followed the blueprint formulated in the European Memorandum without attempting to modify it in certain crucial parts that could deter the further weakening of the economy, and which had failed the country, he, and his party, would not take part in a coalition government merely for the purpose of being an “accomplice” to these flagrantly wrong policies.

Samaras made a series of proposals that he encapsulated in his “Restart of Greece” by which the country could avoid the shoals that would cause its economic sinking. Last May in his Zappeio II Proposal the Leader of the Opposition presented a number of policies that could put Greece on the road of economic recovery and its corollary, the ability to pay off its debts. His restart programme would necessitate a “shock treatment” but with positive results. (a) A severe cut in public spending and on pensions, only above the level 700 Euros. (b) A reduction of taxes on household income and businesses and a decrease in VAT in all sectors of the economy particularly in tourism which is pivotal to the Greek economy. (c) The abolition of all means test for the acquisition of a house and on capital repatriation so to inject money in the financial system. (d) The legalization of all buildings constructed without permits-there are more than a million-which will bring substantial increases in state revenue. (e) The state is to pay off all its debts to private individuals thus increasing market liquidity. And banks to commit to the real economy 20% to 30% of the guarantees they receive. This will further increase liquidity in the market and be an incentive to stop capital flight. (f) The state must not make any cuts to the Public Investment Programme with its high multiplier effect that is a powerful instrument to combat recession. (g) The acceleration of denationalization of public owned entities, which the Papandreou government was slow to implement, and the stimulation of the development of property which is the economic engine of the country. All these relief measures will increase state revenue and the Restart programme will balance the budget within just over three years, and start paying off Greece’s debt.

This daring Restart programme is not an abstraction and Samaras is quite aware that to concretize it he has to convince the lenders of Greece, i.e. the EU, of the urgent necessity of making changes to the present economic policies that clearly have failed, if the goals of the Memorandum of 26th of October, to which he is irrevocably committed, are to be achieved. This task of convincing Greece’s European partners of a change in tack has been eased, as High German officials admit now that the initial programme was wrong.

Finally, Samaras warns (not exactly in the following words) that this contagion that is threatening to engulf the European continent is not only economic and political but also social, and could lead to an explosion of European Spring protests that could not be contained and could transform radically the political landscape of the continent by the reappearance of the infernal star of the swastika in the political constellation of Europe.

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But History has shown repeatedly nations at moments of great dangers, produce great and illustrious leaders that saves them at the eleventh hour from destruction and obliteration. From Themistocles to Charles Martel to Winston Churchill, the invasions of barbarians and dictators were defeated by the sagacity, imagination, and moral strength of exceptional leadership. Antonis Samaras from his words and deeds without any doubt belongs to this lineage of leadership. Greece facing the abyss of economic bankruptcy, poverty, and mob rule with the dangers that are historically inherent in such combination, i.e. the resurgence of fascism, has a unique leader in Antonis Samaras that could prevent this stupendous threat from consummating which would consign the country into the doleful state of penury and into the captivity of dictatorial regimes.

2012-01-03T22:12:00.000-08:00

Letter Sent to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

July 13 2004

Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defence
1000 Defence Pentagon

Washington, DC 20301-1000

Dear Mr Secretary,

The enclosed document has been sent by e-mail both to the President and vice-President, as well as to the American Embassy in Australia, in late August 2003. For obvious reasons, it has not been sent to any of the media outlets for publication. Now however, it will be publicised in a book of mine titled, 'Unveiling The War Against Terror' and its subtitle, 'Fight Right War Or Lose The Right To Exist' in the middle of next August in Melbourne.

As you can see, the axiom of my proposal is that the Iraqi people should be the major equity holders in the profits of oil. In my humble opinion, this will engender three strategic outcomes favourable to your position. A. It will confer unassailable legitimacy to the Interim Government in Iraq. B. It will lead to the total isolation of the terrorist insurgents, and hence facilitate their complete defeat, which will have devastating effects on the global terrorists. And C., it will provide a historical paradigm to all the countries, and their peoples, in the Middle East and Africa which are endowed with resources of oil, to imitate the Iraqi Government.

Furthermore, it will implant the democratic ethos among their peoples, as the latter will witness that it was a democratic government in Iraq which has made its people the major owners of its primary wealth.
Hence, with one strategic fell swoop you will augment your chances of achieving your strategic goals in the region, as well as expediting the defeat of global terror.

For sure, there are some risks involved in this paradigm, especially for Saudi Arabia, as it may lead to the destabilization of the current regime there due to the political turmoil it could generate, and the exploitation of the latter by Muslim fundamentalists. But the U.S. government could take the necessary and preventive measures for all kinds of inimical eventualities foreseeable that could emanate from the implementation of this democratic paradigm.

Yours respectfully,

Con George-Kotzabasis

2011-12-19T22:25:00.000-08:00

American Liberals Scared by their Own Made Ghosts

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Scariest stories ever written about contemporary America” is the story that makes some of the political toddlers of America to run and cover themselves under their bed sheets. Sans political wisdom, sans political and historical insight, and hence, sans cognitive and intellectual legitimacy, they attempt to analyse the world shaking event of 9/11 and the Administration’s protagonists’ response to the crescent shaped bolt that appeared over the blue sky of America with their childish fears. And for fear to be effective it must have its bogey ghosts. So we have Cheney, Addington, and Bolton wrapped up with white sheets in the middle of the night scaring the bejeesus out of the liberal intelligentsia with their nefarious schemes of “a massive expansion of presidential power” starting an “illegitimate war,” creating “a system for spying on American citizens...sanctioned torture”, and “pushed official secrecy to unprecedented levels.” The critics of Cheney, Addington, and Bolton never learning the abc and never reaching the omega of statecraft are shocked to see, and it’s beyond their comprehension, that in moments of national crises the expansion and concentration of presidential power is the sine qua non of strong political leadership and a necessary but temporary measure to protect a nation from malicious lethal enemies, both external and internal.

All the above measures that Clemons highlights were instigated by the Vice President solely for the protection of America. It was an unenviable task and it could only be performed by the strong in character. One must not forget that in hard times only the hard men/women prevail. And Cheney, Addington, and Bolton will be panoramic figures in American history for their political and strategic insight, strength of character, and their indefatigable efforts to shield the United States and the West from the fanatical irreconcilable enemies of Islam.

2011-12-02T17:01:00.000-08:00

Radical Leftists are all Millenarian

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Historically and by definition all from the left are millenarians who being terrified with their capitalist nightmares are countervailing them with their millenarian dreams. And if you don’t dream Marxist ‘dialectical’ nightmares but only Kant’s dream of “Eternal Peace,” der Ewige Friede, then that still makes you a millenarian.

All men/women of reason abhor war. But sometimes war is necessary to prevent a greater catastrophe. And it is through war and strife against the enemies of humanity and freedom that mankind can achieve relative stability and peace. “Nothing for nothing,” to quote the economic historian David Landes. I, like him, “prefer truth to goodthink.”

2011-11-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-11-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

In Greece Political Midgets on a High Wire Act

By Con George-Kotzabasis—November 02, 2011-11-02

Political midgets, a la Papandreou, have chosen to take the risk of the high wire act by this proposal of the referendum. Hoping that the people will vote for the lesser of two evils, i.e., accepting the debt deal as formulated in Brussels last week and rejecting default and departure from the euro zone. At a time when strong leadership is a prerequisite for diminishing the crisis that Greece is facing, Papandreou abdicates his own and passes it to the people through this future referendum. It’s as if the polloi had somehow a better knowledge and understanding of the critical dimensions of the economic situation and could provide a better solution to the crisis than the expertise of the economically and politically savvy.

Once again politicians, who are more concerned of holding power than of the future of their own country, are ready to prostrate themselves before and pay homage to the idol of the Demos. Papandreou facing in Parliament a no-confidence vote and the ousting of his government promptly announced a referendum that would decide the future of the country, hoping that this would allay the anger and opposition of the people against the austerity measures, imposed by the EU, and at the same time put an end to the disarray within his own government that itself stems from the revolt of the people. It’s clever politicking to avoid defeat and save for him the prime ministership. But he is doing this at the expense of the future well being of the country, as it would take years for Greece to recover from the shock of a default if the electorate voted for it, which is highly likely. This is no less than the revisiting of the ‘sinful’ genius of his pere who himself was the preeminent progenitor of the economic ills that Greece is presently plagued with. The fils merely continues , like father like son, the ‘sins’ of his sire in a more acute form and projects them into the future.

World Bank president, Robert Zoellick said that “if voters reject the plan, it’s going to be a mess.” Economists claim that the immediate effects of a default would probably be a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in domestic demand and a fall of 5 to 10 percent of domestic product. Evangelos Venizelos, the Finance Minister, and his deputy broke ranks and opposed the referendum, saying it would jeopardize Greek membership in the euro zone. Ilias Nicolakopoulos, professor of political science and close to the governing socialist party, stated that a “referendum would put the country in danger of blowing everything up.” In contrast, Henry Ergas writing in The Australian, on November 3, 2011, “Greek Vote a Banana Republic Moment,” praises Papandreou for having the “balls” to propose the referendum, and compares him to the gutsy warning of Paul Keating’s “Banana Republic.” He says, that “to call a referendum on the austerity program is hardly irrational. But he adds the caveat, “true, it is a gamble, and a risky one.” Nonetheless, “the best hope of what comes next must lie in securing a genuine popular mandate.”

Regrettably, however, Papandreou’s proposal of a referendum does not rise from his “balls” but from his impotence. Unable to lead and convince the country, as a weak leader, to accept the inevitable “scenario, Greece must face a lengthy period of austerity and structural reform,” Papandreou passes this leadership to the impassioned people to decide whether to accept or not this scenario. Professor Ergas’ quote of Sophocles, “truth is always the strongest argument,” though generally accurate, is misplaced in the context of a long corrupt electorate that the fiscal profligacy of past governments accustomed it to indulge in ‘free suntans’ in sunny Greece. In such circumstances, the only truth that this pampered electorate will accept is the continuation of these free suntans at public expense. And that is why they will vote NO to austerity measures and thus turn the referendum into an ogre for the future economy of Greece.

Fortunately the proposed referendum like the balloon it was fizzled out within twenty four hours. Under external and internal pressure Papandreou reneged his proposal and withdrew it. Tonight (November 4, 2011), he places his fate on the lap of the god, parliament, on a confidence vote. Even if he survives by the smallest margin his prime ministership is foreclosed.

I rest on my oars: your turn now

2011-11-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

Abandoning the Field of Battle for Diplomacy is to Admit Defeat

I'm republishing the following for the readers of this blog.

The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War

By Zbigniew Brzezinski Washington Post, March 30, 2008

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

This is old fogy strategic thinking on the part of a former National Security advisor. For any nation that is already fighting its enemy by means of military operations to abandon the latter and open instead the door of negotiations and diplomacy, as Brzezinski proposes, is to admit defeat, as one would have to negotiate now with a more emboldened and confident enemy from a position of weakness. In such conditions of military “surrendering”, especially to a religiously inspired fanatic enemy, it would be utterly foolish to consider and believe that such a nation, in this case America, could achieve any of its initial goals through diplomacy, other than its conditions of “surrender”, is to make a mockery of the art of Talleyrand

And to accuse McCaine that he proposes for Iraq 100 years of war “until victory”, is a blatant and shameful lie and stains indelibly the intellectual integrity of Brzezinski.

2011-10-23T01:45:00.000-07:00

War on Terror not a Crusade but an Existential Necessity

Reply to New York Times Editorial and to Washington Note

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The Times contention is fatuous: That the President and his advisers ‘knew or should have known [the intelligence] to be faulty’. But if this should be so, it should also apply to all the other leaders of the West who also believed this faulty intelligence.

‘Quick points’ are bound to be thoughtless.

Clemons, of The Washington Note, as often he does on this issue, revises the facts to make his own tailor made argument. The war in Iraq did not aim in “removing a bad leader” but in preventing a future coupling of Saddam’s regime with terrorists. The war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11 was not a “crusade” but an existential necessity. And for Clemons to countervail Bush’s “emotional war” with his “emotional peace”, shows him to be strategically and historically irrelevant.

And he still refuses to acknowledge Iraq’s great potential of becoming a Democratic state in the region. It’s a perfect example of personal weakness trumping reality.

2011-10-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Will Greece Default and Leave the Eurozone?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

In any crisis of serious proportions consensus between the major political parties is the sine qua non for its resolution. This certainly applies presently in Greece. But the dimensions of the crisis are so Gulliverian that only a titanic struggle of will and resolution by its politicians, guided by wisdom, will at least diminish the scale of the crisis. Regrettably, however, there is a dearth of politicians in Greece of the status of Gulliver and an abundance of Lilliputians. Therefore, a different consensus is materializing among eminent economists, that Greece perforce will have to traverse a different course than that imposed by the ECB and IMF.

Deepak Lal, a former president of the Mont Pelerine Society and a prominent exponent of the Austrian school of economics, predicts a Greek default and an exit from the Euro. To avoid a Greek debt default that would lead to a Eurozone banking crisis, a stabilization program has been imposed on Greece by the ECB and IMF. But unlike other similar stabilization programs, Lal argues, two vital elements are missing: a large devaluation and a restructuring of the country’s debt. “The former is precluded by the fixed exchange rate of the Euro, the latter by the external holdings of Greek sovereign debt by European banks.” The alternative program therefore is to impose a large internal devaluation instigating a precipitous fall in domestic wages and prices through a massive deflation. It is impossible however to believe that Greek politics will allow the country to follow such a course, especially when Greece is likely to be left with a debt-GDP ratio of 150%. Hence, Deepak Lal predicts that a Greek default and an exit from the Euro is the most likely path that Greece will follow.

2011-09-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

High Court's Decision Triumph of Judicial Activism at the Cost of Australia

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shovelling smoke. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

The High Court’s decision that the Gillard Government’s deportation of asylum seekers to Malaysia is unlawful is a devastating blow to Labour’s immigration policy and a lethal hit on Australian border protection. It’s ostensibly clear that a majority of the honourable justices of the court are not immune to the deadly pestilential virus of legal activism whose source has been a number of admirable but impractical human rights enactments by the United Nations which can only be implemented by the abrogation of the national sovereignty of nations. But in the context of judicial activism the immigration policy of Labour would stand its trial before judges who already had the sentence of death in their pockets. The majority of the justices argued that Malaysia not being a signatory of the UN Convention to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol is not legally obliged to protect refugees and therefore is not a suitable country to deport refugees. Moreover, according to refugee advocate Julian Burnside, QC, the justices reminded the government that “Australia is signatory to a number of human rights conventions” and is legally bound to abide by them. However, “Commonwealth Solicitor–General Stephen Gageler argued that the government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic nor international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.” But while lawyers may ‘shovel smoke’ at each other on this issue, the repercussions of the High Court’s decision on immigration policy and border protection are of a serious nature and may cause great harm to Australia.

Zabiullah Ahmadi, an Afghan who lives in Kuala Lumpur, predicts than “within weeks there will be lots of boats...many people have been waiting to see this decision.” Hence, the High Court’s decision will encourage asylum seekers to risk their lives in unseaworthy boats with the hope of reaching the shores of Australia which to many of them, in the context of this decision, has become the refugees nirvana. Another refugee observer, Abdul Rahma, a leader of the Rohingga Community in Malaysia, said, the “Australia-Malaysia deal has been a useful bulwark to stop the tide of asylum seekers risking their lives travelling to Australia. Now they would return to the boats.” With the great probability therefore of an increase in boat smuggling and the attached physical and psychological risks that asylum seekers will have to take, the judges of the High Court have unwittingly, and must I add, foolishly, become accessories before the fact of this great danger to the lives of refugees on board of unseaworthy vessels. Furthermore, the honourable justices by ‘signing on’ the UN Convention on refugees, they have written off the long term interests of Australia in regard to its immigration policy that is of such paramount importance to its future balanced demographic mix. A mix that will not threaten its Western based values and the harmony of its democratic society as it has on many European countries due to an unwise and completely flawed immigration policy that so acrimoniously and precariously has divided the indigenous population and immigrants, as exemplified by the massacre in Norway and the riots in the cities of Britain.

But one must be reminded that the decision of the High Court is a direct outcome of the foolish dismantling by the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the successful “Pacific Solution” of Howard’s government that in fact had stopped the refugee boats coming to the shores of Australia. And the serially incompetent and politically effete Julia Gillard who succeeded him to the Lodge had to pick up this can of worms, i.e., this confused new Labour policy that was kicked by Rudd to his successor with his ousting from the Lodge.

In the context of the decision of the High Court the Gillard government has no alternative other than to change by legislation the immigration laws. And it is good to see that in this task to protect the borders of Australia, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has stated that the Liberal/National Coalition would support such legislation if the Government would consider Nauru as an offshore refugee centre. It is imperative that this offshore solution must not be replaced by the cretinous stupid proposal of the Greens and their sundry ‘paramours’ of human rights lawyers and refugee advocates that asylum seekers should be held in onshore centres such as on Christmas Island. Such a short sighted harebrained proposal would lead to a stampede of smuggler’s boats hitting the shores of Australia and would be an incentive for ruffians of all kinds to continue entering in greater numbers such a lucrative business.

Finally, the High Court’s decision is a portentous illustration of what is in store for nations who injudiciously and facilely sign international conventions without considering the serious and injurious repercussions such covenants could have on national sovereignty. No wise political leadership would be ‘outsourcing’ the sovereignty of one’s nation.

I rest on my oars: yor turn now...

2011-09-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Reply to Diehard Liberal Pacifist who is Against Intervention in Libya

I’m republishing this short piece that was written at the earliest stages of the “Intervention” by NATO and the U.S. in Libya, illustrating how wrong the Liberal-Pacifists were about the outcome of the intervention that led to the collapse of the Gaddafi dictatorship.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Distortion and lack of imagination are not a good way to make your case. On your first point, where in the world has there been even a blip of demonstrable opposition to the Coalition’s intervention in Libya? On your second point, only one bereft of a modicum of imagination cannot see that despite the fact that the “goal of the coalition” is not the “defeat of the dictator,” nonetheless the implementation of the no-fly zone by the Coalition nolens volens enervates the loyalist forces and invigorates the Opposition forces with the great potential to overthrow the dictator. On your third, isn’t a fact that Gaddafi and his military personnel fled the compound which was a command and military control centre just before it was hit by a tomahawk missile? And on your fourth and last point that Obama breached the constitution and should therefore be impeached, is a fiction and should be rejected as such. You deliberately and misleadingly leave out the sentence of the War Powers Act, 1973, which is relevant to the current military engagement of the U.S. in Libya. “The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify (M.E.) Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days…without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war.” Only at the passing of 60 days, and if he did not seek an authorized extension for the military deployment would Obama be in breach of the War Powers Act. It seems therefore to me that your ditty about Obama breaching the constitution and should be impeached, is out of tune with the reality of the situation.

You have said to me before that you are some sort of a musician playing the mandolin. It amuses me therefore to see why you switch your talent from ditties to war and strategy that are beyond the depth of a mandolin player.

Further, you will find out at your cost that the land of Australia is not only the land of the kangaroos but also the land of the boomerang that just struck you.

2011-09-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

Political Romantics on War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Just one example, was it “hate and anger’ that drove the war against the Nazi axis? To place all wars under the rubric of “hate and anger,” and to misinterpret Clausewitz like you do, is doltishly foolish. But in the end for leftists and centre left inclined like Steve Clemons, empirical reality is spurned by pure, noumenal politics. The heart stands in moral judgment over the intellect. Facts do not stand in cognitive judgment over romantic ideas.

2011-08-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

The Intellectual Cheating of Liberals

A short reply to a Liberal –By Con George-Kotzabasis

Clearly your vocation in the ‘market of argument’ is to be a peddler in non sequiturs. Why are you shifting the ground of the argument, is it because your pockets are empty of all coins of counter reasoning on the issue? The question as was initially put by Clemons’s use of the Bolton quote was not whether Israel’s and America’s wars were self-defensive or not but whether there was “moral equivalence” between the deliberate and non-deliberate killing of civilians. Clemons by cheating intellectually, by speciously transforming this argument of moral equivalence into an argument of devaluation of “Muslim and Arab lives” has made himself intellectually and morally persona non grata.

Talleyrand, eloquently and boldly said the following in the face of Napoleon, when the latter deposed the legitimate Ferdinand II and placed his own brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, “Sire, un enfant de famille may gamble away his last farthing—the heritage of his ancestors—the dower of his mother—the portion of his sisters—and yet be courted and admired for his wit—be sought for his talents and distinction—but let him once be detected in cheating at the game, and he is lost—society is forever shut against him.” You likewise, in partaking in this Napoleonesque cheating of Clemons “at the game,” have become your own ‘guest’ as an intellectual and moral pariah.

2011-08-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

The Presence of U.S. and Western Troops Underpins Survival of Afghans from the Blitz of Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis --A short reply to an American Liberal

The better question is, in my opinion, how many Afghans want the U.S. out and how many of them want the Taliban back in? That is where the “real argument’ lies. The fact is that there is a substantial number of Afghans that can only survive by the presence of U.S. and Western troops at this particular political and military juncture of the country.

To consider that this “flexing of its muscles” by the United States is for “empire” and not an ‘aggressive’ pre-emptive attack against an irreconcilable deadly foe is to be stuck in the rut of conventional leftist unimaginative thinking.

The Iraq Surge was not quantitative but qualitative. It was completely a new strategy that used the means of war imaginatively and remorselessly against the insurgents as well as baiting the latter with monetary incentives to switch sides or disarm. In war one has to use all means at one’s disposal creatively to subdue an enemy. In the toppling of the Taliban on November 2001, the CIA saturated the Northern Alliance with caches of money, military equipment, and intelligence that defeated the Taliban within forty days without any American troops fighting on the ground.

2011-07-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Remembrance of Things Past Thought Wrongly

I’m republishing the following riposte that shows how wrong Liberals have been in regard to the outcome of the war in Iraq.

By Con George-Kotzabasis—a retort to:

State of the Union Address

Arguing with Bush--By Professor Juan Cole

INFORMED COMMENT-- January 1, 2006 www.juancole.com

Professor Cole’s piece is contaminated with incurable negativity. It shows him to be a sturdy contestant for the Bush hate trophy from which so many academics of the Left “rake” their inspiration to make their comments about the grave political issues au courant. He argues that for Bush to state, that the elections in Afghanistan and in Iraq are an achievement of self- government, “is the height of hubris” as such “self-government” is laughable and cannot be constructed under an American military occupation. However, only by distorting the context within which Bush made his statement, can he cogently vindicate his contention against the President. And this is exactly what he is doing. Both in Afghanistan and in Iraq the elections were a massive demonstration of their people of their unquenchable desire for “self-government”, within the context of recently toppled dictatorial regimes. And it’s precisely within such a context that one who is intellectually objective should interpret Bush’s statement.

He claims furthermore, that the invasion of these two countries, especially of Iraq, were not legal. But who defines the legality of the invasion? The UN, which for many years now had lost the plot and resolve to deal effectively with the crises of the world, e.g. Ruwanda, the Congo, and presently Darfur in Sudan, not to mention others, and which was steeped in the corruption that Saddam had set up with the food-for-oil scandal? Or would it be the French, the Russians, and the Germans, who were in cahoots with Saddam, whose ingrained envy as politically miniscule and morally petty rivals of the US hegemon induced them to obstruct all the reasonable defensive actions the latter was forced to take, in the aftermath of 9/11, against the two rogue states that sponsored global terror?

But this chapter of history is not yet closed, and the academics that cannot see anything positive emanating from this “illegal invasion” might eventually have a lot of egg on their face.

2011-07-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

Labor Government’s Abolition of Nuclear Weapons a Decision in Cuckooland

By Con George-Kotzabasis

If the reason for the abolition of nuclear weapons is flawed because the latter are the “poor man’s defense” against the preeminence of the U.S. in conventional weapons of “prompt global strike” by which the U.S. will continue to dominate the world by the threat of their use against its deadly rivals and enemies, such as N. Korea and Iran as Marko Beljak implies, then the other reason is that in the age of millenarian movements the abolition of nuclear weapons is also flawed as rogue states bristling in their apocalyptic beards, like Iran, could produce stealthily nuclear weapons. In such a situation 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 in such a dangerous context.

Rudd’s proposal limpidly illustrates that Australia does not have a statesman at the helm of the government but a political dilettante and a populist to boot who is more concerned to ingratiate himself with the celestial wishes of its liberal minded naively pacifist constituency than to deal with the 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.

Also, the “amelioration of security” by diplomatic means and international institutions, such as PALME, in the age of millenarian movements with irrational actors, is also a flawed conception. In such circumstances nuclear or conventional disarmament is a most dangerous illusion. Only a benign superpower or a coalition of states can keep the order of the world by a combination of sticks and carrots. And in our times the United States relatively is the only such benign power.

2011-06-29T05:07:00.000-07:00

Malevolent Mediocrities Incapable of Making a Balanced Assessment of Donald Rumsfeld June 01, 2011

"It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past." Karl von Clausewitz

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s good and encouraging to see someone, like Steve Clemons, (See The Washington Note) from the opposing side, highlighting and commending the pensive and important “Rumsfeld Memo,” that the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, presented on October 16, 2003, to his subordinates for discussion, which through its questions attempted to open new vistas of strategic thinking of how to confront this stealthy and unique enemy.

Donald Rumsfeld, gifted with a strong character, high intelligence, and impeccable political responsibility as a public servant, would ineluctably become a maligned figure before the eyes of all the spineless and thoughtless mediocrities, who with the appearance of the first difficulties of the Iraq war and its errors, would blame him for them, as if any human who was involved in such stupendous undertaking and facing a singularly inimitable enemy, could do so without committing mistakes.

For those who can make a dispassionate and in-depth assessment of the former secretary’s thoughts and actions, as depicted in his book “Known and Unknown,” will give him the credit that is due to him for his prudence and indomitable spirit as an actor in the fog of war.

2011-06-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Art of Politics and War is to Know Thy Enemy

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

The Holocaust Declaration by Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post, April 11, 2008

The art of politics and war is to “know thy enemy”. And once the enemy is revealed to be irreconcilable and unappeasable, in this case Iran, because of his apocalyptic and chiliastic nature as an irrational actor and therefore most dangerous, one has to destroy such an enemy before he becomes stronger. If preemption is not going to fall into a state of desuetude and finish up as a comical term losing all its seriousness, it must be used against the centrifugal regime of Ahmadinejad relentlessly and efficiently. It’s necessary therefore and timely that the Bush administration makes an open and unambiguous threat to Iran that if the latter does not immediately cease its nuclear program the U.S. will be targeting by an unspecified force de frappe the triangular leadership of Iran, i.e., the mullahs, the high officials of the government, and the higher echelons of the army, in a surprise attack. Only such a clear threat against Iran’s leadership may create a shifting of positions among the latter, and, indeed, a “palace revolt” against the Ahmadinejad regime. And if there are signs that this will not happen, then the U.S. will have no other option but to attack Iran.

Charles Krauthammer’s proposal of the “Holocaust Declaration”, I’m afraid is impolitic. As in America and many other countries in the world many of their peoples still breathe the poisonous vapors of anti-Semitism, and hence, the “Declaration” will be seen by many as a Jewish stratagem and therefore politically will not become a rallying point.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

2011-06-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

The Necessity of Knowing the Enemy to Prevent Catastrophe
By Con George-Kotzabasis

In the interminable crises and conflicts that is the natural order of the world it’s necessary to “know thy enemy” in advance if one is to abort timely the birth of these conflicts from arising in all their ugly features. This website is committed to the goal of preventing and resolving impending great dangers. To fulfill this goal, however, depends on our strong desire and willingness to remove our belongings, to paraphrase the Great Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, from the premises of ideology. The latter in its tendentiousness ‘discolors’ the multiple and variable colors of reality, and its sundry nuances, and places it in its ideological dogmatic monochromatic mold. Ideological convictions have no ‘civil rights’ on this website that searches for the truth since unlike omniscient ideology we do not possess truth.

It’s on this objective search and its data that we will be writing our essays and recommendations and will be passing them to the heads of governments that have the wherewithal to nip-in-the-bud the dangers of our epoch. To timely stop the “soundless” hoofing of The Four “Flying”(9/11) Horsemen Of The Apocalypse who with scimitars in their hands ‘loaded’ with weapons of mass destruction, and indeed, soon with nuclear ones, provided with the compliments of President Ahmadinejad.

2011-06-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

Who Has the Right to Declare War?

Reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

Now to Say Never Again
By George Williams

Professor Williams with the typical lawyer’s chicanery and the arrogance of historical and political ignorance argues that Parliamentary approval should be the prerequisite for the declaration of war. To do so however is to deprive the sagacious right of statesmen to make the decision for war and give it instead to the “swirl”, to use Paul Keating’s word describing his colleagues in the Senate, of mediocre politicians.

War being an instrument of last resort is not made by a lightly populist decision, as Williams implies, but by a well –informed resolute and wise leadership that leads its people to war as an absolute necessity when a nation is threatened or attacked by a deadly irreconcilable enemy.

Williams’ proposal is neither intellectually and historically wise, nor does it have the depth, prudence, and firmness of statesmanship. It’s instead the proposal of an unreconstructed political wimp pontificating from his left-leaning academic chair and echoing the constant refrain of the illusionist pacifists of No to War, as if the world was and is a loving circle of holding hands.

2011-05-29T20:32:00.000-07:00

Menagerie of Multiculturalism Can only Give Rise to Internal Conflict

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The writer of this article does not make a distinction between perceived and real threats. And like an alchemist he transforms real threats into perceived ones. The Muslim internal fundamentalist threat is not imaginary but a real one. And as such, it inevitably raises the hackles of hostility of most Australians.

One should give therefore “the good old Aussie finger” to all the shallow cultural and political analysts, like Professor Robert Manne, who are unable to make a serious contribution to the complexities that rise in a society that has a “menagerie” of different cultures in its midst, that ultimately are bound to clash with each other.

2011-05-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

The Way to Hell is Blazed by Nipple-fed Intellectuals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Professor Juan Cole is another bright recruit joining Clemom’s brigade of nipple-fed-intellectuals that will fight the scimitar wielding terrorists (dubbed by Clemons “so called war on terror”, as if 9/11 was a ‘wet dream'.) with olive branches in its hands. Cole has been serially wrong in all his prognostications about the outcome of the war in Iraq and yet for Clemons is one of the “most knowledgeable and thoughtful American observers of the Middle East.”

It’s certain that the way to hell will be blazed by this intellectually flabby set of political and strategic epigones.

2011-05-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

Political Vaudeville Staged by Liberal Impresario

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is political vaudeville at its best. While the Opposition forces are grievously pounded by Gaddafi’s arms and are calling for an active “Western support” to prevent their defeat before the bloodhounds of the regime, Steve Clemons of The Washington Note calls, with extraordinary coolness to those who are willing and prepared with direct action to save the Opposition from destruction, to “shelve emotion-and to think through very carefully what would make on-the-ground difference and not delegitimate (M.E.) the Opposition and what would not.” This is like calling for the legitimacy of the dead once Gaddafi is let free to deal his death blow to the Opposition.

2011-05-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

Defection of Foreign Minister of Libya Makes the Collapse of Regime Inevitable.

NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril April 01, 2011

By Sean Kay The Washington Note

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Sean Kay’s NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril, is politically inept and has already been overcome by events. As we had predicted, the end result of a decisive military intervention by Western powers would be to bring the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. Now the degringolade of the regime is imminent. This is clearly foreshadowed by the defection of foreign minister Moussa Koussa, a close collaborator of Gaddafi and a former director of Libyan Intelligence to boot, that sets the example for other high officials of the regime to follow. Even Turkey, which up till now was hesitant to take a stand in regard to the upheaval, is now calling for Gaddafi to step down.

And who would be a better qualified person than a former director of Intelligence to read correctly the vibes and disposition of the Libyan people toward the regime, and more importantly, the latter’s inability to suppress the bouleversement against it, and hence induce Mr. Koussa, for these reasons, to abandon the doomed sinking ship of Gaddafi?

2011-04-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Technology Despite its Discontents Opens the Door to Prosperity

By Con George-Kotzabasis

You place important questions in your post. Indeed, technology is an important, if not the most important, “driving force” to globalization, and whilst it unites the world on an economic and a scientific level it simultaneously sunders it on a geopolitical level as a result of the different strategic interests of the major players on the global chessboard.

Globalization however is no longer a choice as it has become virtually an elemental force and those who resist it are bound to suffer its inevitable tragic consequences. Also, whilst many governments that are aware of the problems posed by globalization will “work together”, as I adumbrated above, some will not. But those that will cooperate and deliver political stability and economic prosperity will have the majority of the world’s peoples on their side.

I like your opening with caterpillars and butterflies which concisely illustrates the evolutionary development of all things, and in whose development “creativity” plays the primary role.

2011-04-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

Denigrating Public Education-Again

By Ian Keese On Line Opinion

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

One would expect Ian Keese, being part of the elitist Educational Establishment of public education, to applaud it. But in the penultimate paragraph of his article he exposes the frivolity of his argument. He asserts by a fabrication of the facts that “the majority of teachers and administrators in both functions choose lower pay and lower perceived status” (perceived is the operational word) for the sake of their students. He would have us believe that among all the competative professions, teachers and administrators of schools are divinely blessed with that rare value of altruism.

However for those of us who are not fugitives from reality, we are cognisant of the fact that while teachers and administrators in government schools get lower pay because of their real, not perceived, lower educational status (no relation to altruism.), their counterparts in private schools get higher pay because of their higher educational standing.

No person in any profession who is proud of his vocation and his abilities would choose lower pay and lower status because of some sort of altruism toward those whom he serves. His goal is to educate his students not to flash his badge of altruism as a sign of being a good excellent teacher.

2011-04-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

The Resiliency of Military Intervention: When to Apply it and When Not

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Robert Haddick, the managing editor of Small Wars Journal, argues in his piece in the Foreign Policy magazine, March 4, 2011, of the uselessness of a no-fly zone in the Balkans, as an example that could also apply in Libya. But the ineffectiveness of a no-fly zone in Bosnia cannot be used as an argument in the totally different circumstances in Libya. Milosevic was fighting a nationalist war for a greater Serbia and his relatively powerful military forces were involved ardently in this 'great' goal of Serbia. By contrast, Gaddafi is fighting for his own survival with a weakened army, due to defections from its ranks, and compelled to import mercenaries to kill his own people, which in turn increases and exacerbates the divide between the regime and the Libyan people. This is the fundamental difference between Milosevic and Gaddafi. The former was fighting with a united army an ethnic war, whereas the latter is fighting a civil war with a disunited and weak army.

I think the following quote from Charles Maurice Talleyrand depicts, with his customary profound perception in matters of diplomacy, peace, and war, perfectly well the principle of non-intervention:"The principle of non-intervention, very convenient in itself, and very appropriate to a given circumstance, becomes very little better than an absurdity, when regarded as an absolute and when it is desired to apply it under conditions widely different. This principle is a matter of judgment, when to set it aside, and when to apply it."

As to the concerns of Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, that a no-fly zone would entail the destruction of Libya’s air defences and therefore would involve grave risk to U.S. air-combat missions, a cogent answer is given by British Defence Secretary Liam Fox. He remarks, “rather than taking out air defences, you can say that if your air defence radar locks on to any of our aircraft, we regard that as a hostile act and take subsequent action.” What is more surprising, however, is that the public declaration of Secretary Gates about the difficulties of a no-fly zone and the aversion of the U.S. to countenance them, has unwisely given advance notice to Colonel Gaddafi and his armed forces of America’s reluctance to engage militarily in Libya. This in itself has put wind to the sails of Gaddafi loyalists to sally forth against the insurgents. Gates absurdly and utterly flunked Clausewitz’s principle to keep close to one’s chest one’s response to a situation and never reveal it to the enemy. His predecessor, the too much maligned Donald Rumsfeld, would have never done that.

2011-03-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

Israel Distorted by Loewenstein’s and Slezak’s Lens

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:
Gaza distorted by media lens by Antony Lowenstein and Peter Slezak
On Line Opinion January 2, 2009

One could re-write this article under the title “Israel Distorted by Lowenstein’s and Slezak’s Lens”. The lives of 400,000 Israelis that live and work within the range of the Quassam rockets are threatened on a daily basis and their freedom of movement is infringed, which is a cardinal principle of human rights, as they are enforced to live on a daily basis in-and-out of shelters, and Loewenstein and Slezak with a sleight of hand transform this threat and abrogation of freedom of movement into a failure of the media and of politicians to acknowledge the transgressor in this conflict which to them clearly is the 'terrorist government' of Israel.

Guilty to the brim of his cup of consciousness that he does not support Israel in this deadly conflict, Loewenstein—as I don’t know whether Slezak too is a Jew—attempts to cover up his “turncoatedness” to Israel under the slogan of “tough love” and furtively place himself as a true friend of Israel. True friendship however is shown when friends rush along to help someone who is in a critical situation, like Israel is and has been for a long time. Loewenstein has no love for Israel.

2011-03-15T01:55:00.000-07:00

Julia Gillard:The Sunset Prime Minister of Australia

By Con George-Kotzabasis March 08, 2011-03-08

Julia Gillard with dissatisfied ratings of 51% and satisfied with 39% for her performance, as a result of her economically calamitous and electorally imprudent carbon tax, is rapidly becoming the ‘sunset’ Prime Minister of Australia. Also, her continued bungling of her refugee policy, and her fatal embrace of the Green Party and willingness to become the ‘bridesmaid’ of Bob Brown’s same sex marriages, has raised the ire of a major part of Australians against her, and is presently compared in the polls unfavourably even with the ousted Kevin Rudd whom she replaced.

The above leads to the speculation that she herself will be replaced, only one year in her occupancy as Prime Minister, and will be rudely asked by the apparatchiks of the Labour Party to remove her belongings from The Lodge, so the new occupant, either in the person of Greg Combet or Bill Shorten, will move in. Hence, Julia might not after all take the bride of same gender marriages to the anxiously waiting bridegroom, Bob Brown.

2011-03-03T03:22:00.000-08:00

How to Overcome the Difficulties of a No-Fly Zone and How to Defeat Gadhafi

The ineffectiveness of a no-fly zone in Bosnia cannot be used as an argument in the totally different circumstances in Libya. Milocevic was fighting a nationalist war for a greater Serbia and his relatively powerful military forces were involved ardently in this 'great' goal of Serbia. By contrast, Gaddafi is fighting for his own survival with a weakened army, due to defections from its ranks, and compelled to import mercenaries to kill his own people, which in turn increases and exacerbates the divide between the regime and the Libyan people. This is the fundamental difference between Milocevic and Gaddafi. Therefore, I would propose the following strategy.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The design of a strategy of the unexpected by U.S. military strategists might overcome the difficulties of a no-fly zone, as expounded by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and might defeat Muammar Gadhafi.

Given the destabilization of his regime, not only because of the revolt of the Libyan people but also because of the widespread defection of politicians, diplomats, and military personnel to the side of the rebels, this chain of events has increased the magnitude of the vulnerability of his own supporters to the call of major nations and of the UN for the ousting of Gadhafi, and hence could ease, and lead to, the abandonment of the autocrat. To ratchet up the momentum of this vulnerability, military strategists should draw up a plan of vaguely defined unexpected threats that would be inflicted on Gadhafi’s supporters if they continued to defend him. The linchpin of this plan would have two strategic components. The immediate declaration by the U.S. and NATO of both the imposition of a no-fly zone and of no-use of air defences by Libyan forces. In the event that the latter do not abide to these two demands they would draw like fly-stick upon themselves the awesome devastation that will emerge from the military power of the U.S. and NATO. The latter will not have to send one aircraft over, or ground one soldier in, Libya, they will only have to ‘send’ this uncertainty as to the unexpected destruction that would befall on the supporters of Gadhafi.

Airpower therefore can also be used as a psychological weapon, especially in circumstances when the enemy’s military forces are losing trust toward their political leadership and are concerned about their own safety, as presently happens to be the situation in Libya.

Veni vidi vici.

2011-02-23T23:53:00.000-08:00

American Liberal Absolutely Supports Muslims Serving in Obama’s Administration

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to Steve Clemons of The Washington Note See under the title Bing West

Posted by Steve Clemons, Feb 23 2011, 11:07PM - Link

WigWag -- You sound a bit more like Pamela Geller today than you normally do. I know and very much respect Suhail Khan. I hope you take time to read many other things he has written and spoken about and try to keep an open mind to people's full records. I absolutely support Muslims serving in government and while I myself prefer those who are secularly devoted, (M.E.) we have plenty of Christians who in their own way are far more serious (and disconcerting) in their avowed testaments of faith than what you just posted on Khan.

So, I strongly reject your depiction of him -- and yes, I respect Grover Norquist for challenging the bigotry in his own party when it comes to Muslims. I believe that Obama was right that we need to support and embrace in positions of responsibility in our society many more Muslim Americans.

Kotzabasis says,

It is obvious that for Clemons it is not enough to have Muslims as fifth columnists in the great American society, he wants them also to be in government. Clemons has irretrievably lost all sense, if he ever had it, of strategic thinking. Just imagine, Obama having Muslims in his administration while U.S. military forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda and its multiple affiliates on a global scale. It would be like having a sisterhood of feminists fighting another sisterhood of feminists. And what is laughable in his proposition is that he lets his guard down even to his own advice, when he says that he “prefers those who are secularly devoted.”

2011-02-12T04:09:00.000-08:00

Egypt: Which Side Will The Dominoes Fall?

By Con George-Kotzabasis February 08, 2011

Egypt, not unexpectedly for those who have read history and can to a certain extent adumbrate its future course, as one of the offsprings (Tunisia was the first one) of the rudimentary Democratic paradigm that was established in Iraq by the U.S. ‘invasion’, has a great potential of strengthening this paradigm and spreading it to the whole Arab region. The dominoes that started falling in Iraq under a democratic banner backed by the military power of the Coalition forces are now falling all over the Arab territories dominated by authoritarian and autocratic governments. The arc that expands from Tunisia to Iran and contains all other Arab countries has the prospect and promise of becoming the arc of Democracy. But Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty in physics also and equally applies to politics. For one cannot predict, especially in a revolutionary situation, and more so, when it is combined with fledgling and immature political parties that is the present political configuration in Egypt as well as of the rest of the Arab world due to the suppression of political parties by their authoritarian regimes, whether the dominoes will fall on the side of Democracy or on the side of Sharia radical Islam. This is why the outcome of the current turmoil in Egypt is of so paramount geopolitical importance. And that is why the absolute necessity of having a strong arm at the helm that will navigate the presently battered State of Egypt toward the safe port of Democracy is of the utmost importance. Contrariwise, to leave the course of these momentous events in the hands of the spontaneous and totally inexperienced leaders of the uprising against Mubarak is a recipe of irretrievable disaster. For that can bring the great possibility, if not ensure, that the dominoes in the whole Arab region will be loaded to fall on the side of the extremists of Islam. And this is why in turn for the U.S. and its allies in the war against global terror, it is of the uttermost strategic importance to use all their influence and prowess to veer Egypt toward a Democratic outcome.

One is constrained to build with the materials at hand. If the only available materials one has to build a structure in an emergency situation are bricks and mortar he will not seek and search for materials of a stronger fibre, such as steel, by which he could build a more solid structure. Presently in Egypt, the army is the material substance of ‘bricks and mortar’ by which one could build a future Democratic state. It would be extremely foolish therefore to search for a stronger substance that might just be found in civil society or among the protesters of Tahrir Square. That would be politically a wild goose chase at a time when the tectonic plates of the country are moving rapidly toward a structural change in the body politic. The army therefore is the only qualified, disciplined organization that can bring an orderly transitional change on the political landscape of the country. Moreover, the fact that it has the respect of the majority of the Egyptian people and that it has been bred and nourished on secular and nationalist principles, ensures by its politically ‘synthetic nature’ that it will not go against the wishes of the people for freedom and democracy, that it will be a bulwark against the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that it will be prepared to back the change from autocracy to democracy, if need be, with military force and thus steer the country away from entering the waters of anarchy and ‘permanent’ political instability that could push Egypt to fall into the lap of the supporters of Allahu Akbar.

The task of the army or rather its political representatives will be to find the right people endowed with political adeptness, experience, imagination, and foresight from a wide pool of political representation that would also include members of the old regime who will serve not only for their knowledge in the affairs of state but also as the strong link to the chain of the anchor that will prevent any possibility that the new political navigation of the country will go adrift. The former head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman will play a pivotal role in this assembly of political representation which will not exclude members of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is of vital importance however is that this new political process will not be violently discontinued from the old regime. While room will be made to ensconce the new representatives of the people to government positions, this will not happen at the expense of crowding out old government hands. The only person that will definitely be left out will be Hosni Mubarak and some of his conspicuous cronies. And Mubarak himself has already announced that neither he nor his son will be candidates in the presidential elections in September. The call of the Tahrir Square protesters to resign now has by now become an oxymoron by Mubarak’s announcement not to stand as president in the next election. Further, it is fraught with danger as according to the Constitution if he resigns now elections for the presidency must be held after sixty days. That means a pot- pourri of candidates for president will come forward without the people having enough time either to evaluate their competence nor their political bona fide and might elect precipitatingly without critical experience and guidance a ‘dunce’ for president, an Alexander Kerensky in the form of Mohamed Al Baradei, that will open the passage to the Islamic Bolsheviks. To avoid this likely danger I’m proposing the following solution that in my opinion would be acceptable to all parties in this political melee.

The Vice President Omar Suleiman as representative of the armed forces, to immediately set up a committee under his chairmanship that will comprise members of the variable new and old political organizations of the country, whose task will be to appoint the members of a ‘shadow government’ whose function in turn will be to put an end to the protests that could instigate a military coup d’état, to make the relevant amendments to the constitution that will guide the country toward democracy, and to prepare it for the presidential elections in September. The members of this shadow government will be a medley of current holders of government that would include the most competent of all, Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister, who was sacked by Mubarak as a scapegoat, and of the old and new political parties that emerged since the bouleversement against Mubarak. The executive officer of this ‘government in the wings’ will be Vice President Suleiman, who, with the delegated powers given to him by the present no more functional president Mubarak will be the real president during this interim period. Finally, the members of this shadow government will have a tacit agreement that their political parties will support candidates for president in the September elections who were selected by consensus among its members.

The ‘establishment’ of such a shadow government might be the political Archimedean point that would move Egypt out of the crisis and push it toward democracy.

Hic Rhodus hic salta

2011-02-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

Liberal Pendulum Continues to Swing from the Serious to the Comical

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Dan Kervick is the liberal pendulum of a unique antique clock that swings from the serious to the comical. He swings from his serious proposal that Arabs “need to set their sight on multiple and diverse improvements drawn from many separate sources of inspiration” (M.E.), to the comical one , “Or maybe most of them can just go on doing their old world, traditional things(which nadine aptly described as ‘romanticize camel herding’) without lusting after the almighty buck...” This is very similar to his profound insight about Iran’s election when under the rubric of “Rumsfeldian Unknowns,” to quote him, he made the statement in one of his posts to The Washington Note, that there might be “anti-democratic” forces that would aim to “overthrow” the democratic election in Iran that elected Ahmadinejad for a second term as president. And the liberal pendulum continues to swing on.

2011-01-24T22:57:00.000-08:00

North Korean Nuclear Test a Shot Across the Bow of Obama's Diplomacy

In view of the collapse of diplomatic talks in Istanbul last week between Western Powers, China, Russia, and Iran, I'm republishing this short missive that was written almost a year ago.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America’s power continues to be in a state of ‘explosion,’ if used wisely and resolutely against its enemies and not in a state of “implosion” as its critics, such as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note, claim.

The North Korean nuclear test is the “meme” that will destroy President Obama’s new foreign policy based on diplomacy with America’s irreconcilable enemies such as Iran. The doors of diplomacy that Obama is opening to the Mullahcratic regime and its sundry of proxies will close with a bang in the face of the rookie president in foreign affairs as Iran imitates North Korea’s defiance.

2011-01-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

'Shoot' Messenger For Telling Lies About The Truth

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: Don’t Shoot The Messenger For Revealing Uncomfortable Truths

By Julian Assange, The Australian December 08, 2010

Julian Assange opens his article with adulatory terms for the founder of The Australian and his sire, Keith Murdoch, by quoting “young Rupert Murdoch…’in the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win’.” And he seems to be proud to follow the steps of Murdoch even though the latter long ago has grown horns for many liberal media aficionados. He also proudly states that Wikileaks has “coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism,” (M.E.) which he defines as allowing you “to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on”, and thus by this method you can make a judgment about the veracity or falsity of the story. He further claims that he is not one of the crowd of anti-war as he believes that “Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and taxes on the line for these lies.” He is also justifiably concerned that he is being accused by US officials and others of treason “even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen,” and of a Republican bill before the Senate “seeking to have me declared a ‘transnational threat’.”

Under this ominous cloud of threats issuing from high echelons of the US government and politicians it is reasonable that Assange would be deeply worried about his safety and his inviolable right to exercise his freedom of speech. But it is totally unreasonable to have expected to be treated otherwise when he exposed secrets of governments in conditions of war. He seems to have had the courage to put in action his convictions without however having the courage to face the consequences of his action that could be seen even by blind Freddie, to use an Australian colloquialism.

Moreover, his riposte is inane and unimaginative to the State Department’s claim: “You will risk lives! National Security! You’ll endanger troops!” “Then they say there is nothing of importance in what Wikileaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?” But it can be both. Imperil in verity national security and risk lives while at the same time diminishing the importance of the leaks for political reasons so politicians and government officials will not be accountable for their incompetence and their propensity to leak.

Furthermore he conceitedly claims that the seeds of the leaks brought a rich harvest of accomplished goals that lay in the original plan of Wikileaks. He states that in its “four-year publishing history…we have changed governments (M.E.) but not a single person…has been harmed.” But if this is one of the goals achieved it is vague in regard to the kind and quality of the “changed governments.” Does he refer to changes in the internal operations of governments that are more transparent to their publics or does he refer to changes in the political colouring of governments? One can assume from the implication of his proud claim he means a change in the substance of governments for the better by their change of colour. But whichever of the two changes he refers to the empirical evidence clearly shows that on both counts his statement is false. Governments have neither become more open to their publics nor have they become better shepherds to their flock in the last four years. Was the transition from the Bush to the Obama administration a substantial change to a better government? When President Obama has rescinded most of his electoral campaign promises and continues a war in Afghanistan, which according to Assange is based on lies, intensifying the drone attacks in Pakistan against al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives that started under the Bush administration, and commenced new clandestine operations against global jihadist terrorists in Somalia, and Yemen, and when in the short time of two years a majority of Americans have turned against their initially beloved Obama, who was going to change America for the better, as the mid-term elections last November have shown?

But while Wikileaks’s failure in these two areas of transparency and betterment of governments is resounding, and therefore his statement is a manifest lie, Assange partially achieved his anarchistic goal of his doctrine of the “corruption of governments’’ by creating mistrust between the top officials of governments and hence enervating the system of inter-communications and sharing of intelligence between them. As he argued in a paper of his few years ago the only way to put a stop to the corruption of governments was to disrupt their communications and to create distrust among its officials that the content and information of their intelligence and advice passed to their political masters would not be secure from public scrutiny. Thus Wikileaks threw a spanner into the mechanism of governments whose secrecy in some matters of paramount importance are the sine qua non of good governance and global security, especially in our contemporary times when Western civilization is under a menacing permanent attack by fanatical Islam. And one must be reminded that one of the major reasons why the perpetrators of 9/11 were not identified and apprehended in time was this lack of sharing intelligence between Federal agencies, which subsequently the Bush administration corrected by setting up The Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge.

Thus Assange by achieving his anarchistic nefarious goal has placed countries and their peoples that are under attack by Islamist suicide bombers at great risk whose numbers of casualties would astronomically surpass the numbers that Americans killed “in the past few months, “with Australian government connivance,” if such an attack was carried out by means of biological or nuclear weapons. (Talking about Wikileaks not harming a single person.)

As to his coinage of “scientific journalism” it is empty of substance. Science is not hostage to subjective values and does not pick its evidence by means of ideological fantasies. For example, the content of Assange’s argument about the war in Iraq is not based on reality but on fantasy. To accuse Bush of lying about Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and espouse the Leftist slogan “Bush Lied, People Died,” when all the leaders of the major countries, including President Chirac, Chancellor Schroeder, Premier Zhu Rongji of China, and presidents Putin, and Mubarak of Egypt, also believed that the Iraq dictator had WMD, is intellectually dishonourable and the most dishonest accusation against the former president. Were Chirac, Schroeder, Putin, Zhu Rongji, also lying when they were saying that Saddam had in his possession WMD? Indeed, were they involved in a conspiracy with Bush against Saddam Hussein when all four were explicitly against the war? And as Bush says in his book Decision Points, “The charge was illogical. If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country?” That Assange is peddling this utterly false accusation in defiance of the above facts clearly reveals his ideological bias that completely incapacitates him to make an objective assessment of the issue according to his lauded standards of “scientific journalism.” Intellectually disarmed by the lures of ideology he throws his anarchistic bomb on all the principles of science. If he had used his own scientific methodology as to the evidence extant prior to the decision of President Bush to invade Iraq he would have found that the war was not based on lies but on false intelligence. As a thought experiment, had he published in early 2000 the documents of all the major intelligence agencies of the world as to whether or not Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction they would have shown that all believed that he had them. Thus if the public had “read a news story” about Saddam’s WMD and then clicked “to see the original document” it was based on, they would be able to judge as to the truthfulness of the story.

Legally of course, Assange cannot be charged with treason, as such a charge applies to citizens of nations. But Assange by using the global instrument of the internet has by his own choice become a global citizen. The secret documents that he has splashed on the internet do not merely affect or threaten a particular nation but a number of nations that are pivotal to the security of the globe at a time when this security is imperilled by resolute irreconcilable enemies. Assange therefore by revealing this secrecy to the foes of Western civilization nolens volens is conniving with these implacable enemies of the West and hence committing ‘global treason’. The fact, moreover, that he is a messenger of a most dangerous lie, i.e., that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or potentially with Iran, are not quintessentially related to the continuous existential threat that global terror and rogue states pose to Western civilization, rightfully qualifies him to be ‘shot’ for telling lies about the truth.

I rest on my oars: your turn now

2011-01-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Carter: America is Ready for a Gay President

By Steve Clemons

The Washington Note December 14, 2010

A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis

It's typical of an enfeebled president like Carter to find a weak branch to perch on. A gay president will consummate Billy Clinton's "oral sex" in the White House without the necessity of losing his/her memory. It will no longer be sensational news coming from the ‘zip’ of the president; it will be the daily news coming from the Oral, oops, Oval Office.

2010-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Obama Diminished the Trust of his Allies and Increased the Confidence of his Enemies

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Barack Obama has been elected as president of the most powerful nation in the world that since the end of the Second World War has been the bulwark of freedom against its infernal enemies, i.e., the former Soviet Union and its allies. In the twentieth-first century Western civilization is threatened by a new implacable and irreconcilable enemy, fanatical Islam; and the USA is the only nation in the world that can defeat this foe. But president Obama has already failed both tests of “knowing thy enemy,” and as a sagacious strong respectful leader. He has weakened America both before the eyes of its friends and allies and, most dangerously, its enemies.

The nations of Eastern Europe are rapidly losing their trust toward the US that the latter will protect and defend their interests and security, since Obama’s withdrawal of the missile defence shield from Poland and Czechoslovakia and his concessions to the Russians. And the enemies of America, such as Iran and its multiple terrorist proxies are heartened and have increased their confidence that in Obama they have before them a giant eunuch who is incapable and unwilling to use force, even as a last resort, against them. Since Obama has replaced America’s superpower ‘Jupiterian’ bolt diplomacy with olive branches toward them.

The “dangerous scenarios,” of which you are concerned with, are already in their incubatory stage: a nuclear armed Iran that would start a proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region with all the great dangers that would issue from such proliferation, especially in a region that is replete with the votaries of fanatical Islam. Thus to your question what kind of advice one would give to Obama in such an impending crisis, it would be the most heavily ‘armed advice’ that would fall on his shoulders. But Obama has neither the spine nor the balls to carry such heavy advice on his morally rickety frame, and least of all bring it to fruition as a last resort. Thus any strong advice given to a congenitally weak president would be a barren exercise.

2010-12-21T23:46:00.000-08:00

Building Mosque on Ground Zero an Insult to Majority of Americans

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Everyone can observe, other than the mentally disengaged, how intellectually and politically insecure Clemons is with his original Obama “gets it right” position in regard to the building of the Mosque on Ground Zero when he continues serially to recruit cognitively nondescript people, like Glassman, and even Arab American Muslims, in support of the ‘maiden’ stupid statement of Obama.

In the context when even Muslims behind the project have second thoughts about its location and are considering its withdrawal, as reported in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Clemons’s dogged persistence to find supporters for this ‘crescent’ laden white elephant clearly emphasizes how mentally and politically disengaged Clemons is from reality.

To Clemons, sadly and tragically, 70% of Americans, who oppose the building of the mosque, are a lynching “mob.”

2010-12-12T21:18:00.000-08:00

American Liberal Annoyed by Australian 'Snow Flakes' Falling on his Head

American says,

I have no idea about the substance and accuracy of the report itself. But I'm not sure I understand how the release of this news would be supposed to put a better face on the war. Doesn't the story instead create the impression that the war is a classic imperialist war, with US over in Afghanistan prospecting for mineral riches, when they are supposed to be hunting down terrorist "safe havens"?

Australian says

Kervick like an eager bambino susceptible to all thrilling excitements seen his hobbyhorse “classic imperialism” on the rugged mountains of Afghanistan rushes to ride it for a playful trot.

American says,

Kotzabasis, you didn't read my comment very carefully.

I will elaborate on the point I was making. Since the James Risen story was published, there has been a flurry of comment in response to the story. Much of that comment is skeptical about the timing and purpose of the release of information on which the story is based. The common theme of these sceptical comments is that this release is somehow designed to make the war in Afghanistan look better or more justified.

The problem with this line of sceptical argument is that the Risen report about minerals in Afghanistan, whether accurate or inaccurate, whether overblown or proportional, whether suspiciously timed or not, does nothing at all to make the war look any better. That's because the war is supposed by its defenders to be justified as an essential fight against dangerous jihadist terrorists, Taliban extremists and their enclaves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Any story line that clouds that message actually *undermines* the justifications for the war offered by the administration and its supporters. Surely the people who are telling us that we need to be in Afghanistan to defeat Al Qaeda and to combat the evil oppression of Taliban-style Islamic government do not want us thinking that the war is really driven by greed.

So my implicit point was not that the war actually *is* an imperialist war for booty, but rather that if there is any deliberate timing to the release of this information about the discovery of mineral riches in Afghanistan, then a better explanation for that release is that it is designed to *undermine* support for the war by making it look like the US's interest in fighting it is driven by a desire to exploit and profit from Afghanistan's mineral wealth.

On a separate point, your comments on this blog are about 95% concerned with the other commenters on the blog, and only about 5% concerned with the actual events and issues you claim. I think you should try harder to keep your personal characterizations to yourself and focus on issues.

Australian says,

Only for phantasmagorical ideologues of the Left could the war be anything other, post 9/11, than a war against “dangerous jihadist terrorists.” To imagine now with this ‘serendipitous’ discovery of minerals, if it’s true, that this could “undermine” the “support” and justification of the war could only be imagined by someone with a ‘cloudy’ mind., since only such a mind would come to the conclusion that this was just another “classic imperialist” venture.

The reason why I sometimes refuse to deal with the content of the commentators, including some of your own, is that they are a banal regurgitation of the intellectually and politically bankrupt dogmas of the pathological Left. And this engenders in me a frolicsome mood to deride directly the amateurish violinist who pretends to give a classical performance (Read political analysis) with discordant sounds and intellectually cacophonous notes. Now you know the secret about my playful mood sans ‘French letter’.

American says,

Kotz, you really are an ass. You do more than I ever could, by virtue of your own demeanor, to discredit everything you say. So I will have nothing more to do with you, and will let your disordered personality speak for itself. Feel free to fire at will with the insults.

Australian says,

My dear Kervick, TO EACH HIS OWN. And your raising the white flag against my arguments, in your refusal to engage me, speaks volumes about your character and intellectual weight.

2010-12-03T03:46:00.000-08:00

Strength of Character is Shown in Critical Circumstances and Obama Fails the Test

The following was written just prior to Obama's election as president and is republished here hoping the readers of Planetary...will find it to be of some interest.

Will the American electorate be susceptible to the false idealistic promptings of a confused weak leader?

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to a Bush contrarian

Only the poverty of thought can make a statement such as the “poor republicans...through no fault of their own.” There is no virtue to be found in human beings not making mistakes. No one is infallible, especially in the multi-variable dimensions of war. The virtue lies in swiftly correcting these mistakes. And this is exactly what Bush did when he adopted and implemented the Surge turning a losing war into a potentially victorious one. This was the “major” and crucial policy that “was successfully implemented and carried out” with all the potential geopolitical developments that could flow into the region with the establishment of democracy in Iraq, and hence justifying fully the Bush Doctrine of democratizing the Middle East as a preventive cure for terrorism.

The liberal intelligentsia with their tongue stuck in the bitterness of being totally wrong with their gloomy prognostications about the outcome of the war, cannot and will not concede this ‘reversal of fortune’ for the Bush administration. But history, which has no taste either of bitterness or sweetness, will give the final verdict on Bush. And dare I say it will be a favourable one.

What Obama proposes to do is to deprive America of this tremendous strategic victory over the extremists of Islam by his pledge to pull out US forces from Iraq before the conditions for such a withdrawal are strategically ripe.

If you were an editor even in the most provincial newspaper and spelled out the obvious as news, you would not have held your position as editor for very long. Bigotry, irrational religious beliefs, and ignorance—like poverty—up to the present inflict even the best and most affluent societies. If educated prosperous America has this bane in its midst you can imagine other less educated and prosperous countries in what state they are in this area. To say however, that either McCain or Palin would select to govern for the irrational beliefs and ignorance of such minorities, is to show that one is completely politically naive and no one can take such person seriously.

And do you really believe that Obama has his “feet on the ground,” when he says that once America starts implementing its own values it will turn the present hate of the world for America into love, into a global loving circle of holding hands, including perhaps the fanatical jihadists?

Always bear in mind the great adage of Friedrich Nietzsche that the character of a person is revealed in critical circumstances, followed by my minuscule one that in hard times only the hard men/women prevail. Obama lacks the strength of character to lead a great nation in these most dangerous times. In the vocation of Statecraft according to his populist policies and faith in changing America he remains an infant and is the ultimate ‘mummy’s boy’. As the worst mummy’s boy is the one who had no mother. (His mother abandoned him when he was an infant to be brought up by his grandparents.) That is why he chose Biden for his vice president instead of the most savvy politically Hillary Clinton, because his wife Michelle didn’t want the latter. It’s Michelle that wears the pants, and if he wins, which I doubt, it will be the first ‘matriarchic’ presidency of the United States.

Your opinion

2010-11-23T03:16:00.000-08:00

Et Tu Brute Might Be the Fate of the Obamanesque Caesar

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The November 2 mid-term elections have swiftly brought to the ears of the American Caesar of socialistic policies the ominous warning of the soothsayer, “Beware the Ides of March.” Not only within a short span of time a large part of the electorate have rejected the big government and interventionist policies of the pretender, who was cast as an Olympian President by the liberal prattling crowd of the east and west coasts and who himself ‘hubristicaly’ transformed his “community organiser” status , covered under ivy leaves, into the Olympian gods of Poseidon and Asclepius who would stop the rise of the oceans and heal the planet, but also a sizeable part of his own party and especially some of its leaders who have sat and supped on his ‘political banquets’ and have tasted the bitterness of his failure as president, are presently detaching themselves from his discredited presidency and are considering not to support his nomination as president in 2012. A recent poll has shown that among Democrats 47 per cent believed he should be challenged in his renomination.

As the misguided and unloved policies of Obama, such as the massive restructuring of health-care, cap-and-trade, and his 800 billion-plus stimulus that failed to reduce unemployment, have given rise to the hurricane winds that will continue to threaten the further uprooting and dislodging of many Democrats from their positions of power as well as the loss of the presidency in 2012. Thus under this threat it might be the ‘conspiracy’ of his own colleagues and friends, the Democrats, that may lead to his political assassination and bring to Obama’s lips in his last breathing, the words “et tu Brute.”

2010-11-07T01:11:00.000-07:00

Multiculturalism: How a Pet Idea Became a Dinosaur

The following paper was first written and published in the IPA Review (Institute of Public Affairs) in 1996, Vol. 49/2. It's republished here as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel applied to Multiculturalism the last rites to its demise: According to the Chancellor, Multiculturalism is kaput. "The approach to multiculturalism to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed."

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Once upon a time an amateurish “astrologer” by the name Al Grasby, who happened also to be Minister of Immigration, discovered accidentally, in the Australian firmament of immigration a new star:the Star of Multiculturalism. Al was a man who had a lot of “pets”, “lay” ideas, but this one was going to be a whopper. Within a decade, it would become for wave upon wave of migrants who landed and settled in this country, their lodestar. It would provide guidance and solace for the travails they would endure in the initial stages of settlement, as well as give the celestial energy by which they would cultivate their cultures in their new homeland.

No one had suspected that this discovery of our amateur astrologer was from its beginnings a Fata Morgana and that before the end of the second decade of its chequered existence it would be a falling star. The idea that lay behind the discovery was magnanimous and filled to the brim with the ideals of humanity and the spirit of tolerance. But, like all ideas with such pe(t)digree it was impregnated with the seeds of its own destruction at its conception. This, however, was unbeknown even to its eminent founding fathers, who had spent, with such profligacy, prodigious amounts of corporeal and spiritual energy to give it wings. And it must have been a dolorous and painful experience for them to see that all that their huge efforts had led to was the tragedy of Icarus. But it would not be the first time in history that frivolity in the form of a pet idea would have had such an ending.

It would be stating the obvious to describe Australia as a country whose people are of an exotic provenance. However, to transform a descriptive term into a socio-cultural value, with which migrants would nurture and uphold their cultures in this country for the long duration, as well as transmit them to their progeny, would be an exercise in intellectual alchemy. To have believed that Australia, uniquely, could become a multicultural society was quixotic.

According to its founders, multiculturalism would not only encourage the cultivation and secure the continuation of this rich diversity of cultures, but it would also contribute to the creation of a uniquely tolerant society. In both of these two admirable aims, multiculturalism would be found to be wanting. The achievement of these grandiose aims was based on the premise that Australia somehow was chosen, by some sort of divine predestination, to break itself from the vise of history.

Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, one of the intellectual founders of multiculturalism, who since has abandoned it, asks the historically germane question regarding the concept of “Many Cultures One Australia”, as proposed by the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee for the year 2000:“…can it represent a victory over the divisive atavism which has cursed the human experience for so long?” In other words, was it ever conceptually plausible that multiculturalism, or any of its variations, would exorcise this “curse” of history and function as equal before the cascading force of the culture of modern capitalism?

No lesser figure than Karl Marx, whom some of the protagonists of multiculturalism would be proud to consider as their mentor, predicted that the elemental force of capitalism and its culture would sweep away, on a vast scale, the dead weight of traditions and cultures that riveted their peoples to the obfuscation, ignorance, and bigotry of a hoary past. How could anyone be oblivious of the fact that the Darwinian natural selection process of the biological world also applies, with some modifications, in the cultural world, by means very often, of a ruthless competition of cultures, whose crown of victory ineluctably passes to the head of the stronger culture and to the one that is most suitable to the needs and aspirations of people living in a particular society? How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge of human history, disregard the “sanguine” fact that most wars were, whatever their other causes, at the same time wars of different cultures and religious beliefs? Even when there happened to be wars of the same culture, it was a conflict between different interpretation of beliefs, as the Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics in the seventeenth century illustrated. In view of the above, one must have had the “courage” of ignorance, to have considered and proposed the possibility of a multicultural Australia.

As to its laudatory goals of tolerance between different cultures and their flourishing within the strongly-established mainstream of Anglo-Saxon culture, to what extent are these goals feasible? There is no doubt that Australia has an exemplary record in its tolerance of different cultures. The strong sense of egalitarianism introduced into Australia by the early colonists, an array of judicious governmental and educational policies, and the experience of an expanding tourism in and out of Australia have combined to imbue Australians, despite some pockets of bigoted obscurantism, with a strong sense of respect and acceptance of foreign cultures.

ETHNIC CONFLICTS WITHIN AUSTRALIA

But whilst the host culture can be genial and tolerant, one cannot say the same for the “metic” cultures. The tolerance of cultures, like the characters of persons, are tested and adjudged in critical and difficult circumstances. Conflicts and historical hatreds between Arabs and Jews, between Greeks and Serbo-Macedonians, between Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats, between Turks and Kurds, have been transplanted into this country. The extent to which these conflicts can mobilize these hostile communities against each other and induce them to lobby governments in support of their countries, furnishes a striking example that multiculturalism and its ideals are a mirage.

What is more disturbing, however, is that governments, for electoral reasons, can become hostages to the “blackmailing” demands of certain ethnic communities, who have the advantage of numbers. Hence, governments in Australia can become unofficial allies of certain countries which are embroiled in hostilities, or even in war, through the pressure resident communities can exercise upon them. The reality, therefore, is that leading organizations of ethnic communities, whose countries back home are engaged in hostilities or war, can become surrogate diplomatic corps, negotiating and acting on behalf of the interests of their own countries with Australian governments.

It’s obvious therefore, that a nation under the umbrella of a multicultural society cannot be protected from the thunderbolts cast by the atavistic wrath that some nations have against each other. The idea of a multicultural society, from the day of its inception, was child’s play, building castles in the sand. It was an idea that should be stillborn. But, due to a mushrooming crop of ethnic communities and councils along with their leaders’ adeptness to coax and seduce politicians and governments, who felt that in return for their political favours they would be rewarded with the ethnic vote, it continued to flourish. Thus it was that ethnic community leaders were able to ensconce themselves within the precincts of political power. As a result of governments’ willingness, especially that of Labour, to adopt and implement many of the schemes of the supporters of multiculturalism, a swarm of drones and mediocrities, both from the ethnic and Anglo-Saxon communities, invaded and captured ministerial and departmental positions, which were cast as the incubators from which would rise the policies of multiculturalism.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), in the Prime Minister’s office under the Hawke government, was the hatchery par excellence. Thus came into existence the teeming breed of the “professional ethnic”. To solidify the hold they had upon governments, they needed to have the “august” voices of academia speaking in favour of their multicultural proposals. And for those multiculturalists who entered the universities and upon whom some benign force allotted them professorial chairs, Plato’s proviso for his academia that no person without knowledge of mathematics should enter here, did not apply. It was not surprising, therefore, that nothing profound emerged from those noisy, creaking wobbly chairs. Moreover, few academics– with some exceptions, like the courageous professor Blainey–would dare to “pluck the wings” off this flock of intellectual usurpers. Even today, despite the abandonment of the concept of multiculturalism by such eminent persons as professor Zubrzycki and Justice Gobbo, cackles about multiculturalism still can be heard in, and out of, the rooms of academia.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF MULTICULTURAL

The Gordian knot of multiculturalism was tied by its four principles, as outlined by the Australian Council of Population and Ethnic Affairs: “Essential for a successful multicultural society were social cohesion; respect for cultural identity and awareness of Australian’s cultural diversity; equal opportunity and access for all Australians; and equal responsibility for, commitment to, and participation in Australian Society.” The achievement of each of these principles however, depends on the acceptance of the social, economic, political, and philosophical values of Australian society, i.e. the cultural values of an advanced technological democratic society. But many of the cultures of our ethnically diverse population do not espouse these values. Therefore, if those four basic principles were to be realized, these cultures would have to debunk a great chunk of their own values and adopt the values of Australian society. Ironically, the realization of these four basic principles would not lead to a multicultural society, but to a society of one dominant culture, which fits the requirements of a modern society, with moderate variations, however, in its original cultural milieu. As through a syncretic process, the home grown culture will absorb the best that other cultures have to offer, but like a river with many currents, it will be the mainstream, the stronger current that will determine the meandering course of its direction. It’s certainly correct to believe that the diversity of cultures enriches the experience and enlightens the minds of people. But it’s erroneous to believe that you can build a society or a nation on a medley of cultures.

Al Grasby’s pet idea was destined to have a transitory, but nonetheless, a grotesque existence, for it was written in its star that it would share the fate of the dinosaur.

The article was first written and published in the IPA Review (Institute Of Public Affairs) Vol. 49/2 1996

2010-10-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

Limits of Imagination Transformed into Limits of Power

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons and Ben Katcher are using the ‘shamanistic’ art, the art of a conjurer, to turn the limits of imagination into “the limits of American power.” The “aborted attempt” of the Obama administration to “persuade the Israelis to enact a “settlement freeze”, has nothing to do with US power limits but with lack of imagination and political insight on the part of Obama and the State Department not to foresee the political implausibility of trying to impose such a doltish demand on the Netanyahu government. It’s a dismal failure of policy and not a limit of American power as Clemons and Levy in their conjurers’ role aver.

As for Daniel Levy’s ”asymmetries of power,” WigWag’s post is instructive and unassailable in its historical logic. All defeated nations in wars were due to asymmetries of power.

2010-10-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

The Finger of Obama Forced to “Press the High-Fear-Button”

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Ben Katcher is the court jester of The Washington Note (TWN) followed by a long thread of other TWN jesters, from Norheim to Carrol. While all the late, and belated, actions of Obama emanate from an unabated fear which forces him to “press the high-fear-button,” closing his embassy in Yemen out of fear of a terrorist attack, deploying U.S. Special Forces in the country fearing that the latter would become a training terrorist base that would threaten the Western world, according to the latest statement of his Secretary of State, and the new rules prompted by the fear of the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack that would involve 14 nations undergoing extra screening in airports, Katcher claims, that Obama refuses to “use fear for his personal political advantage,” as if by protecting--even if Obama doesn’t take these harsh measures out of personal belief but out of political expediency-- like Bush, America from the real fear of a terrorist attack, would not also be for Obama’s personal political advantage.

2010-10-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Í'm republishing this article hoping the readers of this blog will find it to be of some interest.

THE FEAR GAME OUR LATEST SENSATION

Ross Gittins - The Age November 16 2005

A reply: Con George-Kotzabasis

Ross Gittins with his piece in The Age has reached the dismal lows of his training as an economist. He digs, typically of his profession, and brings up statistics to make his “game” against the fear of terror. Like as if, the actions of fanatic terror could be gauged and explained by statistics.

He must have been temporarily impaired by a bout of aphasia when he wrote his article. Statistics are good in studying and comparing the normal and ordinary conduct of human or animal behavior, not the abnormal skewed behavior of either of the latter. Millenarian fanatic terror and the fear it produces upon its victims, does not fall under the category of normal behavior. Nor is it a “passing” sensation, as he claims. It’s an everlasting feeling that will not go away until its threat is considerably diminished, if not eradicated.

Moreover, one cannot quantify - as apparently Gittins attempts to do - the extent and volume of the threat by any scientific means, and least of all by statistics. The extent of the danger of global terror can only be measured by students of history who have distilled their knowledge from the sublime pages of Herodotus, the great Edward Gibbon, and Samuel Huntington, not to mention others for the lack of space, and by the power of imagination, attributes that are obviously missing from Gittins. Doesn’t he perceive or realize, that the present terrorist “mole-hill” threat could give birth to a mountain full of “mushrooms”? Doesn’t he perceive the exponential increase in casualties by a possible nuclear attack, once these zealots possessed nuclear weapons, which they would use with glee against the decadent West? Doesn’t he realize, that this is an existential struggle for Western civilization? And finally, does he seriously believe, that the Bush administration went to war, with all the uncertainties wars are replete with, and the great loss of lives and resources, for the purpose of saving a lesser number of American lives than those falling off from a ladder?

In the annals of Australian journalism, Ross Gittins’article will be forever pilloried for its analytical flippancy and intellectual banality.

2010-09-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

Engineers of New Versions of Socialism Never Die

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Some have noticed, that whenever Clemons posts a ‘provocative’ post such as the present one “Grotesque Nationalism” presumably for the purpose of bringing into port the spiritually and cognitively leaking armada of anti-America Americans and anti-free marketeers, who are too scared and cowardly, and spiritually and intellectually too enfeebled, to be motivated to sail into the Schumpeterian heavy seas of “creative destruction,” and makes a bungle of an apparently serious post he stands to be corrected. And as ever with such posts it’s the resourceful, doughty, and politically and historically savvy American Jewess, Nadine, who corrects him, and so many others, like Dan Kervick, who in another post being intellectually disabled to give a serious answer to Nadine’s unassailable facts that Israel is engaged in defensive wars and not in expansive wars as Kervick claims, and whom Nadine accuses of being a “disgrace” to Western civilization. And to this accusation Kervick deploys a queasy defence by saying that for eighteen years he taught the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Leibniz, Hume, and Russel, as if such philosophic pedigree absolves him from his incompetence to answer cogently Nadine’s argument.

Why Clemons is in need to fall back from the total failure of “high octane socialism” to even the weakest low octane version of socialism in the face of a brilliant constellation of economists, such as Amartya Sen of Britain, who cogently argue that it was capitalism, with all its shortcomings that Adam Smith himself noted, in the last hundred years that has substantially decreased relative poverty and has incrementally increased the standard of living of the masses. In any version socialism has proven to be an irreversibly bankrupt policy.

2010-09-14T03:48:00.000-07:00

McChrystal Could not Fight War with Obama's Contradictory Strategy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Drew, you seem to place formality above entelechy, the vital element of war. Throughout history an ethic, no matter how laudable and worthy, in critical circumstances is degraded to a lower status if it is not made totally inutile. Winning the war is the primal goal and that can only be achieved by professionals, not by ‘drone’ like Bidens. You also seem to forget, that it was precisely this unconditional devotion to “conditional civilian control” that lost the war in Vietnam. My position is, so you won’t misunderstand me, certainly a general has to abide the commands of the executive branch, but no general worth his salt who has the ultimate responsibility of deploying his troops to win a war, a responsibility that has been given to him by his Commander-in-Chief, is obliged to execute commands that are contradictory in winning the war without expressing his deep concerns critically about the incongruence of the war plan that was designed by the Executive. One cannot increase the Surge by thirty thousand more troops and at the same time announce a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in two years time. This is the fundamental contradiction of Obama’s doltish strategy in Afghanistan. No one but a modern Tiresias could predict that the war against the Taliban would be won in two years or that the Karzai forces would be able to handle the insurgency by their own steam. Obama set the scene for a strategy that for the next two years American blood and valuable resources would be spend not for the goal of victory, but for the purpose of a withdrawal. This is the quintessence of McChrystal’s criticism of the Obama administration although he did not explicitly express it in these words.

Moreover, McChrystal could no more “undermine the executive branch” that was already undermined by itself. Also your accusation of McChrystal of being incompetent and of losing the respect of his troops by commanding them to patrol without cartridges in their guns, except maybe in some rare circumstances, is incredulous and is closer to phantasy than reality. McChrystal and Petraeus were the sagacious heroic victors of the war in Iraq. That one of the architects of this unprecedented victory, that even the wise Kissinger considered it to be unattainable, would lose the respect of his soldiers is pure phantasy. Further, that a most competent commander of the elite Special Forces, a “killing machine,” would put his soldiers at risk is beyond belief. I am curious to know the evidence from which you deduced this transformation of a deadly ‘seal’, who all his life has been trained for the tasks of the infernal world, into an unarmed Gandhian votary.

2010-09-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

No More Free Suntans in Sunny Greece

By Con George-Kotzabasis

As Drew correctly states none of the classical liberal economists, Smith, Mises, Hayek, and I would add in this brilliant constellation Mill, Bawerk, and Schumpeter, ever argued that the free market was perfect and “market failure” was inconceivable. On the contrary they argued that the three cardinal principles of the free market were imperfect knowledge, uncertainty, and risk. How could any rational and economically literate person accuse the classical liberal economists of contending that the free market were free from market failure, when their whole argument was premised on the above three principles? Moreover, they did argue, that market failure could be cured mainly by the ‘elixir’ of the free market, and not by unqualified and ubiquitous government intervention.

It is the critics of the free market that engendered the ‘straw man’ of the perfect market so they could knock it down easily without any effort of critical thinking, which of course they lacked, and replace it with the socialist planning nostrums or, a la Kervick, with the hybrid panacea of the “mixed economy,” whose avatar was and is modern Europe, and which presently is at the threshold of economic bankruptcy. The sun is still shining in sunny Greece, but there are no more free suntans for its denizens.

2010-08-27T04:15:00.000-07:00

Hamas’ Rockets are No “Peashooters”

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:
Watching Death Day and Night So Close By...
By Steve Clemons Washington Note

All those who continue to approach this tragic conflict, which emanates from an array of past soft failed policies implemented by the U.S., the EU, and their Middle East allies, with olive branches in their hands and a new “credible peace negotiation process” wishfully hoping that once they lay this conflict on their Procrustean bed of peace they will put this conflict to sleep for ever after, are like “certain octogenarians who hurl themselves at women to whom they are no longer capable of doing any serious danger”, to quote Marcel Proust.

Clemons who is an expert fisherman who finds and fishes aggressors from the depths of the ocean has found the aggressor of Gaza being Ehud Barak the Defense Minister of Israel who, according to Clemons, is “itching to manage a war.” So to Clemons the threat to more than half a million Israelis who live and work in the proximate range of Quassam rockets is merely an Israeli ‘itch’.

Another one on TWN, not an octogenarian but in one’s robust youthful prime, sails through the Clashing Rocks of the Bosporus without his dove and the help of Orpheus’s music and without his Medea, unlike Jason, on erroneous routes in search of the Golden Fleece of peace in the Middle East. Dan Kervick, in his well-crafted narrative but badly-crafted strategic thinking, argues that it’s an error to think that by killing few bad actors and destroying their organizations one could resolve the problem, as those who have been killed will be replaced by other “Hamases”.

On this issue, he is unwilling--for understandable reasons who loathes to concede, that despite the heavy price, Iraq has been a tremendous success of the Bush-Cheney administration-- to learn the lessons of the Surge in Iraq and the irrefutable evidence as presented by Bob Woodward in his new book, that it was the clandestine operations of Special Forces that killed al-Qaeda and al-Sadrist operatives in Iraq that has brought the country on the threshold of democracy. Where are the signs that those leaders of the insurgency in Iraq that have been killed are to be replaced by others? Haven’t they who escaped the deadly American grip all run to Afghanistan and Pakistan? Providing the Iraq government and its Western allies are vigilant and are prepared to take severe measures at the first signs of an al-Qaeda or al-Sadrist resurgence in the country there will be no renascence of a new insurgency in Iraq.

As for Kervick’s smart Alec comment that Israel is shooting at Palestinian “pea-shooters”, one can only say that he makes a farce out of a great danger. Hamas acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fazr-3 missiles that could reach nuclear warheads at Dimona. Are these “pea-shooters”?
More seriously, Brzezinski says that the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to rise to a level of strategic, forward-looking maturity to solve this problem and therefore the burden must fall on others such as the US and Europe and their Arab allies. I would agree with this proposition but with one important rider. The burden must be extended beyond its diplomatic purview. They must put troops on the ground. They must place an international garrison of troops in areas of Palestine where recalcitrant elements of Hamas and other terrorist organizations operate and continue to launch their rockets into Israel not as peace-keepers but as peace-enforcers, with the mandate that this international garrison will operate as an occupying power with the use of its military armaments that are related to such a status against Palestinian militants.

This is the hard way to peace and to the establishment of a Palestinian state and not in the misguided search for diplomatic Golden Fleeces of Peace.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

2010-08-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

To Link Israel Palestine Conflict as the Cause of Militant Islam is to Fall Victim to Islamist Propaganda

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: Israel/Palestine and Iran: Linkage Should be Hard Wired by Obama Team
By Steve Clemons The Washington Note August 07, 2010

Clemons’s piece is political metaphysics at its best. “Brilliant leadership,” “strategic leaps,” “visionary re-crafting,” “mystique,” all ripe fruits ready to fall from the tree of abstractness. No definition of their meaning in concrete terms, no concrete description of the characteristics of these “strategic leaps,” which he mentions half a dozen times, and how they are going to be affected. In short, fire crackers thrown over the tumultuous geopolitical terrain of the Middle East and beyond.

Further, to link the Israel/Palestine conflict as pivotal to the issues of the Middle East and of the Arab world, is to link it to Clemons’s simulacra and not to the real cause of Islamist radicalism that will remain fanatically athirst for its eschatological goals even in the aftermath of a resolution of the I/P bellicosity. Clemons’s proposal that this erroneous idea of the “linkage,” that apparently could even resolve the impasse with Iran, “should be hard wired” to the Obama team, makes him a fall guy to Islamist propaganda. And the seriousness of Clemons’s dissertation finishes with the fall of the curtain on a vaudevillian act: Does he seriously believe that if Obama possessed “strategic skills” he would not have them exhibited and used them by now?

2010-08-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

Churchillian Leadership in our Times

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Jeffrey Sachs, the famous American economist who after the collapse of the Soviet Union put the latter on the capitalist track, is of course correct to pin point the non-commissions and omissions of political leadership. But leadership of Churchillian stature does not arise from collectivities such as the UN and the World Bank, but from the ‘soloist’ reflections, sagacity, resolution, and guidance of individual statesmen.

In the present world, and most dangerous, scenario, what is missing is the vocation of politics being in the hands of virtuoso politicians imbued with the Nietzschean ethos of the “will to power” determining the affairs of mankind. And parallel to the latter, is the necessary ‘euthanasia’ of the populist wimpish politicians, such as Barack Obama, and Kevin Rudd.

2010-07-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

All Favor the Common Good the question is how it Comes About

Posted by Dan Kervick, Jul 31 2010, 2:08AM - Link

I'm sorry, Kotzabasis. But your abstemious interpretation of the permissible pursuit of the common good as something that can only be the emergent result of individual action in a laissez faire economy is an anachronistic projection of latter-day libertarian values onto the much more nuanced views of the founders of the United States, many of whom were quite eager to build their new nation through energetic government, and with a far-sighted concern for the public good and national interest.

You seem not to understand the traditions of classical republicanism, civic humanism and the contractarian theories of government that formed the wellspring of American political thought. Governments are instituted to promote positive values and pursue the general welfare, not just to protect individual liberties and establish a system of "thou shalt nots".
Jefferson supported mandatory public education; he authorized the Cumberland rd. John Adams established a system of socialized medicine for seamen...

Nadine says,

BTW, I think you misunderstand kotz (often easy to do). He is not arguing that the government should have no part in building infrastructure. He says that proper government function is to safeguard individual property and liberty and trade. As long as you keep the principle in mind, you can certainly debate about what sort of infrastructure is proper to be left to government. But there should be a due process for that debate; government must be checked from just deciding and grabbing for itself without a check and balance. That's what Madison was worried about, government propensity to take more and more power to itself. The Constitutional framework was intended to be that check; but this has been steadily hollowed out and vitiated by 100 years of progressive legal thinking.

Posted by kotzabasis, Jul 31 2010, 7:43AM - Link

Nadine, thanks for clarifying my position.
Kervick

I am not suggesting the disutility or euthanasia of government as the latter is a necessary and vital institution in the affairs of its people. I am only saying that it is not its business to enact the common good as the latter spontaneously rises from the rational actions of people in their every day working affairs in the context of an unhampered free market, without however being free from some necessary at times regulation. It goes without saying that government must take initiatives both internal and external for the general welfare of the country such as education, building roads and hospitals etc and ensuring that the vital interests of the nation are protected from external or internal enemies. But all these initiatives of government which contribute to the enhancement of the common weal merely consummate the wishes of its constituents, the government does not impose them upon the latter by legislation. In democracies no government can ever succeed in implementing its policies unless these policies have some resonance among its constituents and its opinion makers, the fourth estate.

Only in certain critical circumstances, such as war, statesmen, with that unique Nietzschean combination of intellect, moral clarity, and fortitude, can go against the stream, but by their nature they are accountable neither to men nor God but to History, although, like Winston Churchill, they can still be vulnerable to the vagaries of a volatile electorate.

2010-07-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Carrots 'Debased Currency' in Diplomacy with Iran

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: Remembering Our Goals In Iran

By Andrew Lebovich The Washington Note May 25, 2010

One can trace a masochistic pleasure in Andrew Lebovich. He often has a craving to replace facts with fictional occurrences to his detriment, like in this case “...breakthroughs with hostile countries often occur not as a result of threats or harsh measures alone...” Present then a factual example where this has occurred, as Nadine asks.

Professor Kupchan’s proposal is a ludicrous absurdity. In this moonshine diplomacy with Iran he will be asking the latter to replace its libido dominandi to be the major power of the region and of the Muslim world with carrots, i.e., of “curbing the drug trade ...which flows into Iran” and with a “new security architecture in the Persian Gulf.” Is it conceivable to him that while Iran is risking even the great possibility of being bombed either by Israel or the U.S. in its determined pursuit to acquire nuclear weapons under whose carapace will render it supremacy in the region, it will negate this strategic goal by accepting Kupchan’s carrots?

2010-07-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

Hardline Approach to Israel Will Harm U.S. Strategic Interests

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Those who recommend, like Dan Kervick, a reduction of aid to Israel and an open reference to its nuclear weapons by the U.S., because of an errant and arrant announcement of the Ramat Shlomo construction plans by a subordinate Israeli authority, are political and strategic dilettantes and should abstain from delving with the complex and dangerous issues of the Middle East that are beyond their understanding.

America at this moment is losing blood and valuable resources fighting a determined and dangerous enemy, which indirectly includes Iran, having only one steadfast and unflinching ally in this fight, the state of Israel. It would be unprecedented in the annals of war that a country that was involved in war would chastise its major ally in the hope that such chastisement would appease its implacable enemies. Such recommendation should be rejected tout court for its strategic ignorance and stunning dim-wittedness. As the outcome of such proposition would be to intensify and further increase the demands of the Palestinians against the Israelis, and hence push the negotiations and peace process further away and with the great danger of turning it into a war process between the Palestinians and Israelis. And the second part of the proposition, that the U.S. should bring up the state of Israel’s nuclear weapons, and to do so in the context of the Iranian ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, will injudiciously provide, if it was adopted by the Administration, an additional excuse to the Iranians and enhance the determination of the Mullahcratic regime to acquire its nuclear arsenal. Thus the Obama administration will be totally defeated in two of its major strategic goals, i.e., to clinch a deal with the Palestinians and Israelis, and to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

With such friends as Clemons and Kervick, why would Obama need to have enemies?

2010-07-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

Fanatics are Deaf to the Dictates of Reason

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I don’t know if Tamils were the first suicide bombers prior to the Palestinians—perhaps some other commentator in this thread could disabuse my ignorance-- but my comparison was between Christians and Muslims so your point is completely pointless.

As for American pilots being suicide-bombers in the Battle of Midway, one must really overstretch one’s imagination. You totally disregard the elementary fact that America had never had a self immolating or suicidal cult in its culture, as there is definitively a suicidal cult among Muslim fanatics. So your riposte is intellectually “post less” as it cannot find the address of reason.

Certainly, stating the obvious, Muslims are human, and even the fanatics among them. But the latter, like all fanatics of whatever religion or ideology, are unreasoning humans and therefore are deaf to the dictates of reason. So your appeal to them will be a complete futile and barren exercise by you. Lastly, Thomas Hardy’s poem, by which you thought would strengthen your argument, is totally misplaced as it applies to reasoning combatants

2010-06-30T04:25:00.000-07:00

Romantics on Politics and War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Just one example, was it “hate and anger’ that drove the war against the Nazi axis? To place all wars under the rubric of “hate and anger,” and to misinterpret Clausewitz like you do, is doltishly foolish. But in the end for leftists and centre left inclined like Steve Clemons, empirical reality is spurned by pure, noumenal politics. The heart stands in moral judgment over the intellect. Facts do not stand in cognitive judgment over romantic ideas.

2010-06-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

American Liberal Annoyed by Australian 'Snow Flakes' Falling on his Head

American says,

I have no idea about the substance and accuracy of the report itself. But I'm not sure I understand how the release of this news would be supposed to put a better face on the war. Doesn't the story instead create the impression that the war is a classic imperialist war, with US over in Afghanistan prospecting for mineral riches, when they are supposed to be hunting down terrorist "safe havens"?

Australian says

Kervick like an eager bambino susceptible to all thrilling excitements seen his hobbyhorse “classic imperialism” on the rugged mountains of Afghanistan rushes to ride it for a playful trot.

American says,

Kotzabasis, you didn't read my comment very carefully.
I will elaborate on the point I was making. Since the James Risen story was published, there has been a flurry of comment in response to the story. Much of that comment is skeptical about the timing and purpose of the release of information on which the story is based. The common theme of these sceptical comments is that this release is somehow designed to make the war in Afghanistan look better or more justified.

The problem with this line of sceptical argument is that the Risen report about minerals in Afghanistan, whether accurate or inaccurate, whether overblown or proportional, whether suspiciously timed or not, does nothing at all to make the war look any better. That's because the war is supposed by its defenders to be justified as an essential fight against dangerous jihadist terrorists, Taliban extremists and their enclaves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Any story line that clouds that message actually *undermines* the justifications for the war offered by the administration and its supporters. Surely the people who are telling us that we need to be in Afghanistan to defeat Al Qaeda and to combat the evil oppression of Taliban-style Islamic government do not want us thinking that the war is really driven by greed.
So my implicit point was not that the war actually *is* an imperialist war for booty, but rather that if there is any deliberate timing to the release of this information about the discovery of mineral riches in Afghanistan, then a better explanation for that release is that it is designed to *undermine* support for the war by making it look like the US's interest in fighting it is driven by a desire to exploit and profit from Afghanistan's mineral wealth.

On a separate point, your comments on this blog are about 95% concerned with the other commenters on the blog, and only about 5% concerned with the actual events and issues
you claim. I think you should try harder to keep your personal characterizations to yourself and focus on issues.

Australian says,

Only for phantasmagorical ideologues of the Left could the war be anything other, post 9/11, than a war against “dangerous jihadist terrorists.” To imagine now with this ‘serendipitous’ discovery of minerals, if it’s true, that this could “undermine” the “support” and justification of the war could only be imagined by someone with a ‘cloudy’ mind., since only such a mind would come to the conclusion that this was just another “classic imperialist” venture.

The reason why I sometimes refuse to deal with the content of the commentators, including some of your own, is that they are a banal regurgitation of the intellectually and politically bankrupt dogmas of the pathological Left. And this engenders in me a frolicsome mood to deride directly the amateurish violinist who pretends to give a classical performance (Read political analysis) with discordant sounds and intellectually cacophonous notes. Now you know the secret about my playful mood sans ‘French letter’.

American says,

Kotz, you really are an ass. You do more than I ever could, by virtue of your own demeanor, to discredit everything you say. So I will have nothing more to do with you, and will let your disordered personality speak for itself. Feel free to fire at will with the insults.

Australian says,

My Dear Kervick, TO EACH HIS OWN. And your raising the white flag against my arguments, in your refusal to engage me, speaks volumes about your character and intellectual weight.

2010-06-09T04:36:00.000-07:00

Imperative Principle of Warfare

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Any truce between Hamas-Hezbollah and Israel serves one purpose only, its use for rearming the terrorist organizations and engaging Israel in the future from a stronger position. The vocation of a good strategist is to identify an irreconcilable deadly enemy that cannot be placated and relentlessly destroy him before he becomes stronger. The Israelis despite all their cleverness are as yet apparently unaware of this imperative principle of warfare.

2010-05-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

Transform Hamas into Moderate Organization
Mockery of Serious Thinking

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to:

Hamas vs. the Fundamentalists

By Amjad Atallah TheWashington Note,
August 17, 2009

Atallah in a post to the Washington Note, on January 20, 2009, displayed his inimitable originality as a political thinker when he claimed that the “cease-fire” in Gaza was Obama’s “first foreign policy success.” On August 17, 2009, from among the ashes of his by now burnt out originality he rises like a phoenix to claim that Hamas is showing the first symptoms of a unique metastasis from a virulent fanatic radical organization to a moderate one. The demiurge of this beatific poetically transcendental transformation from the ugly reality of Hamas as an irreconcilable terrorist organization is Hamas itself. By fighting the extremist pro-Al Qaeda Salafist group of Jund Ansar Allah and killing its leader Abdul Latif Musa, on August 14, 2009, Hamas is blazing a new course of political moderation that according to Atallah would be foolish for the US under Obama not to take advantage of that could change the whole configuration of the Palestine Israel conflict.

Thus the offspring of the Islamist fanatical coupling of Ahmed Yassin and Sayyid Qutb, the founder and the spiritual leader of Hamas respectively who both have their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, like a poisonous snake is shedding its skin and metamorphosing itself into an amiable friendly python.

Atallah is either unaware of the historical fact or deliberately hides it so he can make his case, that throughout history all widespread and toxic fanatical movements had variable degrees of fanaticism among their members and often created within the general movement their own groups that fought each other to the death. The virulence of fanatical Islam in our times and the internecine and fratricidal warfare that goes and will go within it illustrates in a pellucid manner the above historic fact.

In this context, the attempt of Atallah to transform Hamas into a moderate organization that President Obama could deal with diplomatically and persuade its leadership to stop permanently its deadly attacks on Israel and accept the two-state solution by recognizing Israel is a mockery of serious thinking.

2010-05-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

Reply to Two ‘Strategists’ of the Washington Note on the
Resolution of the Palestinian Israel Conflict

By Con George-Kotzabasis

My dear Steve,

You seem to be afflicted with an incurable cancerous growth in your continued rambling ‘cogitations’ of equating “the recklessness, immaturity and sheer stupidity of leadership on of all sides.” To perceive a political equivalence between a fanatic religiously motivated Palestinian leadership and a rational secular Israeli leadership is to cancel your own intelligence.

Dan Kervick’s rationale is ‘perfect’ from his side of the coin until he flips it on the other side and destroys his argument by his own suggestions. On the one hand he advocates a “strong prescriptive diplomacy from the OUTSIDE, along with clear and credible promises of sanctions and incentives,” (M.E.) and on the other, “the US could do more to support and publicize international investigations into war crimes stemming from the Gaza conflict, whichever side is accused of committing those crimes.” That is, while he is putting either Palestinians or Israelis against the wall and 'shooting them for war crimes', he still believes, after his provocative and ‘incendiary’ suggestion, that the “international community” will be able to force the two parties to the negotiating table that will “result in a durable peace.”

It’s obvious that Kervick is an impresario in vaudevillian strategic scenarios. And of course he will not reply to this post and address and bridge this huge gap in his argument as he lacks the moral and intellectual fortitude to do so.

P.S. In the first paragraph the quote is from Jim Lobe, but Steve himself is a strong believer in this political equivalence between the two parties as he argued recently in his posts.

Dan Kervick says,

Kotzabasis,

My view is that the imposition of an international final disposition plan will require mobilizing governments and their peoples to be prepared to impose firm sanctions on one or both sides, if either side fails to abide by the mandated terms of the plan.

This is challenging since the Arab world is full of apologists for Palestinian terrorism and gangsterism, and the American and European side is full of apologists for Israeli ethnic cleansing, brutality and collective punishment. But pressing the international legal case against violators on both sides will diminish their reputations. It will be harder for American supporters of Israel and Arab supporters of the Palestinians to cry "foul" over sanctions if some Israeli and Palestinian soldiers and leaders are on trial before international tribunals for their crimes.

If the global public case is more effectively built that these are *two* outlaw enterprises, that will give foreign governments the political cover they need to take a harder line and threaten sanctions. The case is actually quite easy to make. We just need the Israelis' and Palestinians' many global allies to stop running so much interference for them.

You should re-read my proposal, because I explicitly rejected an approach based on "getting the parties to the negotiating table". My view is that we are at the point where the international community needs to mandate a solution, and then impose it on the parties with carrots and sticks. There is no longer anything to negotiate. We all know the shape of the solution, and this long-running gang war is a dangerous and costly threat to peace and stability.

I am not sure what you are talking about when you shout about shooting people for their war crimes. I assume you are speaking figuratively. I am only contemplating jail sentences and the threat of jail sentences. The important thing is to start putting people on trial.

Kotzabasis says,

I was wrong in regard to his moral fortitude but not wrong in regard to his intellectual argument.

2010-05-10T18:59:00.000-07:00

Obama is Responsible for his Failures not his Advisors

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons risen from his tub, after a nightmarish nap about the happenings of the White House, lit Diogenes lamp and stepped out in the full daylight searching desperately for the man, the “true” Obama, who would perform the “strategic leaps” and forswear the “incrementalist policy paths” of failure, when already under the brightness of the sun Obama has been shown to be a political novitiate sans political acumen, sans imagination, and a weak and timorous character to boot. To expect such a person, as Clemons does, to take bold steps and make strategic leaps, is to remarkably indulge in an exercise of Fata Morgana. The trouble for Obama does not lie in the method he is using to implement his policies, i.e., incrementalist or leaping, but in the wrongness of these policies in themselves. Already he has made some “strategic leaps” with his open door diplomacy toward Iran only to fall and break the backbone of this ‘olive branch’ diplomacy in the abyss of mullahcratic intransigence, as well as in his “strategic” attempt to change the ‘narrative’ of global terror by so called ‘smart policies’, ‘soft power’, and apologies to the aggrieved that would change the views and conduct of the fanatical enemies of America toward it. It is the combination of crafting wrong fallacious policies in domestic and foreign affairs primarily and the “knife throwing” ethos of Chicago politics, as embodied in Rahm Emanuel that is sinking the Obama presidency and not the strong grip his four advisors, namely, Axelrod, Emanuel, Jarret, and Gilps, have upon Obama. It is in his personal ‘portfolio’ that the problem is couched. His egregious lack of CEO skills, as another commentator above suggests, his lack of experience and character which are completely out of sync with the position of a chief executive with the stupendous demands in insight, imagination, decisiveness, and fortitude that Obama does not possess that make him a ditto Carteresque effete president and therefore politically dispensable.

Hence the problem cannot be resolved, as Clemons erroneously believes, by replacing some of his advisors but only by replacing Obama himself from the presidency by the end of the three long years ahead. But the liberals loath to admit where the solution lies as they will have to ‘lock’ themselves for their intellectual offense of electing Obama in a ‘sing-sing’ in a resounding choir of mea culpas. As I’ve said a year ago, more than half of America elected as president a lemon as a result of their pathological hate for The Bush-Cheney administration and by association the GPO. Now they are reaping the winds of that fateful sickly stupid decision. The lemon is in the process of being squeezed out, but the danger lies that by the end of this process America might be squeezed out of its own strength.

2010-05-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

Senator Schumer’s Correctness in Criticizing Obama’s Doltish and Inconsistent Diplomacy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Would Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey, and by implication Steve Clemons, expect Robert Gibbs to say that Barack Obama agrees “with what Senator Schumer said? It is astonishing to see Clemons diverting the issue of the total freeze of settlements, which Schumer correctly criticized as a grave error on the part of Obama contra Israel, to what Schumer’s stand was to Jesse Helms and to John Bolton “few years ago.”

Clemons is entitled to his opinions but he is not entitled to his facts. The facts are that the foolish imposition of the total freeze of settlements on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration’s lack of foresight that it would be politically unrealizable for Israel and that it would evolve and become for the Palestinians, as it did, a rigid condition for their participation with any talks with Israel, was the major factor that derailed Obama’s engine of diplomacy from its track that would bring the two belligerents to the negotiating table. It was precisely this quintessentially wrong and injudicious policy of Obama that Senator Schumer rightly criticized as being the reason of the administration’s abysmal failure in the Middle East. Another fact is that Obama’s diplomacy is inconsistent, rewarding his enemies and penalizing his friends. While he claims that his diplomacy is indiscriminate and is based on soft and smart power coming on doves’ feet and extends his hand in a velvet glove to the enemies of America, he carries a bludgeon in his hand in his relations with his strongest and most loyal ally, in this case Israel.

Throughout history there has never been a case when a nation engaged in war with implacable enemies would chastise and alienate its most steadfast and reliable ally for the purpose to placate its enemies. Obama will go down in history as the only leader who not only doltishly and doggedly opened the door of diplomacy to an enemy such as Iran which has been training in its own country members of the Taliban and supplying them with weapons--as well as its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah--to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, but who was also willing to sacrifice the vital interests of his most staunch ally against Islamist terror, Israel, on the altar of this spineless, strategically unprincipled, and totally fallible diplomacy.

The above emitted the two following responses:

Posted by Dan Kervick, Apr 27 2010, 6:54AM - Link

Kotzabasis, WigWag seemed to be wondering a few days ago why those posts in which you make a serious, debatable point are ignored. But can there be any doubt why people habitually turn you off, when so many of your posts consist in cowardly, third-person personal characterizations of other contributors, lamely shouted out to no one in particular?

Posted by WigWag, Apr 27 2010, 9:45AM - Link

Actually why the interesting point Kotz made is never debated is rather plain. His point was an astute one, but as I am sure Kotz would be the first to admit, it was hardly an original one. Kotz was making precisely the same point Schumer was; that by offering to conduct their negotiations for them, the Obama Administration provides an incentive for the Palestinians not to negotiate at all. Kotz, Schumer and many other sage observers have also made the point that by making demands on Israel that Obama knew, or should have known, that it wouldn't comply with, it was Obama himself who was making his stated goal of getting negotiations started much more difficult.

Steve Clemons in his diatribe against Schumer never responded to this point and Dan Kervick hasn't either. Neither has any other serious commentator as far as I can tell.

It seems to me that the lack of response to the Schumer/Kotz allegation is evidence of the fact that the point is irrefutable.

If it's not, someone should give it a try.

2010-04-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

Moonshine Political Romantics Runaway from Sunny Reality

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Because all three of you in your political and intellectual weakness and lack of depth are strengthening the dangerous fantasies of soft power as an antidote to the dangerous realities emanating from apocalyptic fanaticism that are hovering over the head of Western civilization and threatening it with ‘decapitation’. Of course such an existential threat you and Kervick, if not Clemons, would diagnose it as paranoia. But anyone who has studied history, without being a prisoner of it, might come to the conclusion that the art, the vocation of a statesman is to identify promptly an irreconcilable implacable enemy and destroy him before he becomes stronger.

Already the soft power fantasy as embodied in the new foreign policy of Obama is irreversibly failing. In the diplomatic overture to Iran, in resolving the Middle East conflict, and in clinching a concord cordial with Russia, of which Obama was so confident that he would have the support of the latter on the issue of Iran. Now we have Putin and his Foreign Minister Lavrov declaring that they would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would impose new sanctions on Iran.

Clemons, Kervick, and you, with your characteristic geopolitical and strategic myopia and romanticism could not foresee the failure of this new foreign policy of Obama based on ‘loving- holding hands’ and soft power that is unravelling now before everyone’s eyes.

2010-04-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

Will Petraeus Accept Running as Obama's Vice-President?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

No intelligent eminent American would accept running as VP, least of all General Petraeus, with a by now politically bankrupt president as Obama, whose political stocks will be totally dwindled by 2012.

Steve Clemons speculation that Petraeus would accept such an offer by Obama if it was made stands in blatant contradiction to his own thinking. Only a few days ago he was flagging his much discussed post “...Sinking Obama Presidency” and presently he wants to place Petraeus on this sinking Titanic and the highly intelligent Petraeus would assent to take a ‘voyage’ that would lead to his own drowning. There is no “maybe” about such an event happening as Clemons muses and such a possibility would indeed be “crazy.”

Clemons has to make up his mind whether the Obama Presidency is sinking or floating.

2010-04-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

The Value of Human Action Stems from its Goal

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Yes Nadine, Norheim is pretentiously “morally pure” as any person of inveterate weakness would be. You have noticed of course that whenever he finds himself deplete of cogent arguments he resorts to smart ‘Alecry’, as above. And you must have noticed that Kervick too, the disciple of David Hume is not immune from this intellectually debilitating disease, as his above laconic comment reveals. And his hypocrisy in his “quick question” is astounding, as if his own cascading passionate defence and suggestions of where America’s real interests lie could be supplanted by “...no other life.”

Passion and intellect are vital forces of human action and envelope one’s life. And their value depends on the aims and goals one expends them on. Nadine expends them passionately by defending the justified concerns of Israel of being deluged and destroyed by fanatical Islam and in protecting an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of resurgent barbarity from the malevolence of the prattling and historically ignorant classes that for a long time now attempt to turn the defender against aggression, Israel, into the aggressor. Norheim and Kervick, likewise, are passionately expending these vital forces for their own aims and goals. The difference being between Nadine and Norheim-Kervick that while the former is fighting injustice and malignity the latter are fighting for their manmade phantoms and for the cause of black magic. As their Archimedean point for ‘shifting the world’ is no other than the voodoo politics of a bygone ‘progressive’ demi-monde socialist era.

The above piece emitted the following responses

Posted by Paul Norheim, Mar 26 2010, 1:59PM - Link

Kotzabasis' intellectual mission at the Washington Note seems to be to weaken Dan K., Steve C. and myself. I think he's been working on this for a couple of years now. Steve creates a new post, the commenters argue about the topic, and in comes Kotz saying that we are weak and delusional.

By claiming that we are weak, not strong, Kotz somehow expects that we get weaker than we were before he made his claim. And by repeating this claim, by typing it again and again from somewhere in Australia, and posting it on a thread read thousands of miles from his home, he hopes that we slowly get weaker and weaker. Voodoo!

Although I can't speak on behalf of Dan and Steve, I would like to inform Kotzabasis and TWN's readers that it actually works. I have no idea how (there must be some black magic going on here), but immediately after reading Kotz's last post, I felt weaker! And I also felt Kotz's increased strength. Weird!

Repeat your claim once a week, Kotz, and I'll be completely paralyzed around June or July. And you yourself will gain an enormous intellectual strength and willpower; before Christmas, you'll become a veritable intellectual Superman in your fight against Islamo-fascism and the delusional left.

Voodoo!
Go for it, Kotz!

Posted by Dan Kervick, Mar 26 2010, 4:49PM - Link

Paul, it turns out that one only needs to change two proper names in a famous poem by William Blake to capture Kotzabasis's sentiment fairly clearly:______
Mock on, mock on, Kervick, Norheim:Mock on, mock on: ‘tis all in vain!You throw the sand against the wind,And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a Gem,Reflected in the beam divine;Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
The Atoms of DemocritusAnd the Newton’s Particles of LightAre sands upon the Red Sea shore,Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

Kotzabasis says,

Kervick

It would be insolent to argue against the great poet William Blake. But you forget that the wind is 'contrarian' and can blow Aeolus like the other way and “blind” the mocked eye. That is why you cannot see “Israel’s tents” shinning “so bright.”

2010-03-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

Nipple-fed Liberals Hate and Lambast General Petraeus

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s the “leg-breaking soldiers in fatigues,” to quote Dan Kervick who denigrates them, that are indefatigably and with great sacrifices defending liberal values and the democratic and entrepreneurial mores of Western societies from the mortal danger that rises from the barbaric atavism of fanatical Islam. But it is not surprising that the ideologues of the serially bankrupt left, like Kervick, would lambast great Americans, like General Petraeus, with their vitriolic sarcasm.

It’s obvious that Kervick as a hubristic member of the gang of General “Betraeus” is divinely apportioning from his Olympian abode his moral legless strictures upon great successful Americans who stand on, and leap with, strong legs. And it’s clear that Kervick with his intellectually and morally rickety feet cannot stand and ‘fight’ on the superb motto of Virgil, “Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito”. But what other could one expect from nipple-fed liberals?

The above emitted the following comments on The Washington Note

Posted by Dan Kervick, Mar 07 2010, 6:44AM – Link

“…defending liberal values and the democratic and entrepreneurial mores of Western societies from the mortal danger that rises from the barbaric atavism of fanatical Islam.”

Mortal danger … right. You might as well say that the English language faces a mortal danger from Portuguese. Your sense of proportion and connection with the real world are seriously impaired.

From my own seat here in America, I don’t see many fanatical Muslims about. What I do see is a danger to liberal values rising from the diseased fears of the neurotically terrified. My concern is not with David Petraeus, who is just doing a job the civilian government gave to him, but with the poisonous weakness of the cowardly right, who seem ready to hand over their most valuable possessions to soldiers like Petraeus, if the latter promise to protect the relatively insignificant hides of the former.

Posted by kotzabasis, Mar 07 2010, 5:23PM – Link

Kervick

The reason that you don’t see the great danger “to liberal values,” and indeed to civilization as we know it, issuing from the few “fanatical Muslims” that you see is due to your lack of imagination. This is an asymmetrical conflict or war in the context of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear ones and one doesn’t have to see a myriad of fanatical Muslims to perceive the mortal danger to these values.

And do you consider within this context, that the professionals of HUMINT(Human Intelligence), not amateurs and dilettantes like you, who warn that in the near future there is a high probability that these few fanatical Muslims will be armed with WMD and nuclear ones are disconnected from the “real world” and “are seriously impaired” by “the diseased fears of the neurotically terrified,” to quote you? Who in this case is “seriously impaired” in one’s sense of reality? And in your continued inveterate sickly sarcasm you degrade and make a vaudevillian mockery of this stupendous danger by turning it into a protection of the “hides” of the rich.

2010-03-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

What is the Message of Massachusset's Call?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The Massachusetts result showed pellucidly that the American electorate-whites in large numbers-has turned into a shoal of piranhas threatening to tear the flesh of Obama and the Democrats. What it craves for is economic and political stability, the preservation of conservative values, not the ostensibly unstable progressive left-wing policies of a picaresque president. In this context, any implementation of progressive economic policies by the Obama administration will solely employ the gravediggers that will dig its grave.

2010-03-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

Liberals Favour Show Trial for Mastermind of 9/11

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“The administration has long” wrongly “argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in civilian court.” Clemons of course would be loathe to admit that Obama’s administration might have realized its great mistake politically and strategically to prosecute Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court and is ready now to be corrected for its stupendous error by “the dark side,” to quote Clemons, methods of former vice-president Cheney and chief of staff of the Bush administration David Addington, which politically and strategically were always on the correct side.

Liberals who tend to support a civilian prosecution for the mastermind of 9/11 are fugitives from reality and are impresarios of a burlesque show trial, since members of the administration like Press Secretary Gibbs and Attorney General Holder already publicly declared him to be guilty. And as Nadine hints to the critics of military tribunals, among who is Clemons himself, and who are in favour of a show trial for Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, the way to hellishly bankrupt arguments is paved with good intentions.

2010-02-27T18:05:00.000-08:00

Political Frolics of American Liberals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Maureen Dowd is merely an ‘avatar’ of many other top commentators such as Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, of The New York Times, etc. who claimed that President Bush told lies about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

No lies “about Iraq’s involvement with Al-Qaeda.” Saddam was aware of the increasing influence and appeal of Al-Qaeda in the Arab world. It takes little imagination to see that for this political reason alone he had an interest as the most powerful leader of Arab Sunnis to have al-Qaeda on his side, and for the purpose of controlling it. That is why his Intelligence agents had contacts with representatives of bin-Laden from early on during the short domicile of the latter in Sudan and providing his jihadists with training in Iraq.

As for serious argument you shoot yourself on the foot. The Bush administration did not tell “lies about WMDs”. It presented partly its case for war to the American people on false intelligence information. And as you well know, all the other Intelligence Services of the West, including that of France and Germany, believed that Saddam had WMDs. So if Bush was telling lies, so were doing President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder. To transform false information into lies as you do, and so many others from the Liberal intelligentsia continue to do, is to do so at the expense of one’s intellectual integrity.

And to compare “home accidents” with the ceaseless deliberate killing by the jihadists of innocent civilians, reveals how much out of your depth you are.
As for your support of the political frolicking of Spain under Prime Minister Zapatero as a serious way to fight global terror, shows your own credentials as political ‘frolicker’ par excellence.

2010-02-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

Liberal Hearts Beat for Guantanamo Detainees

By Con George-Kotzabasis

One can always count on Steve Clemons of The Washington Note and his consort nipple-fed intellectuals to misplace their soft heart to the side of the detainees at the expense of the innocent killed by these irremediable religious fanatics. This is the main reason that despite Clemons’ great and fervent desire to be a policy architect in geopolitical affairs within the corridors of power will always be frustrated by the dictum of political necessity that moves without the beats of one’s ‘humanitarian’ heart. Misplaced humanitarians have always the disposition to sacrifice life on the altar of their sanctimonious divinely unchanged norms.

But in the end for leftists and centre left inclined like Clemons, empirical reality is spurned by pure, noumenal politics. The heart stands in moral judgment over the intellect. Facts do not stand in cognitive judgment over romantic ideas.

2010-02-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Misjudgement of Liberals about Obama

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Some of us were aware from the beginning even before Obama was elected president that he was weak and a coward and said so ab ovo. Many liberals, including Dan Kervick, were from long ago sleeping with the American beauty, Obama, and with the misjudgement that he would make a great president, only to wake up in astonishment long after that they were sleeping with a skeleton rattling his cowardly bones who would bring obloquy to the White House.

Obama’s obeisance to the Russians by withdrawing the installation of missiles from Eastern Europe, and his kow-towing to the Saudi king, were the first signs that he was a weak and timorous president. And the Iranian regime exploited and is exploiting to its full advantage Obama’s weakness in its vigorous and recalcitrant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

2010-01-30T03:32:00.000-08:00

Gentle Folk Attempting to Analyse the Realm of Geopolitics

By Con George-Kotzabasis

You are one of those admirable genteel souls who attempt to cogitate and philosophize and be judgmental about the morality of realpolitik but who are completely ignorant and oblivious of the fact that the contemporary practitioners of geopolitics, as all their predecessors, are the direct descendants of the ‘feudal knights’—omnipresent throughout human history—”who made literal mincemeat of their enemies, leaving the clergy to handle the morals”, to quote the great Austrian writer, Robert Musil.

One would have expected you to at least be consistent with the logic of your own argument. If you are going to blame the U.S. of “propping up local despots”, who at most repressed their own peoples, and which perforce had to do during its deadly contest with the Soviet Union—it is a luxury to believe that one can chose one’s allies in critical situations-- you have to praise the U.S. for having defeated the foremost dictatorships of our times, Nazism and Communism, not to mention Imperial Japan, which threatened to repress the freedom of mankind. Why have you ‘slipped’ from this consistency and irresponsibly imply that the perception of many people of the U.S. as the “Great Satan” could be justified?

As to your facts which some of them are imprecise, such as giving land to “interlopers” i.e., the Israelis, and the ones that are correct, you draw the wrong conclusions from them as a result of lack of imagination? The establishment of the Jewish State was the result of the “Balfour Declaration” re-affirmed by the Mandate of the League of Nations and was not the offspring of imperialist interests, if this is what your loaded word “interlopers” implies. And the upheavals of 1917 in Russia what did they bring in their wake? The rise of the most brutal millenarian movement, Communism. And the upheavals of the Middle East, what do they presage? The rise of another more brutal millenarian movement, Islamofascism. This is what the West must prevent at all costs, if it has learnt the lessons of history. And to achieve this one has to do it tragically in the mien, the spirit, and in the full armour of the ‘feudal knights’.

2010-01-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

Terrorism Continues to be Top Risk

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The reason that they are not in the list might be not because they are not a “top risk” but because terrorism is immeasurable. One must bear in mind that there are issues and events that can be estimated by the calculus of reason and others that cannot. Al-Qaeda and international terrorism fall in the latter category. There are no statistics for natural disasters, plagues, and deadly viruses of which one can make an estimate when, where, and to what degree they will break out, since they are said to be ‘acts of God’. Islamic terrorism is the ‘act of God’ par excellence since its practitioners reverently believe that they are executing the orders of Allah.

No calculus of reason will ever measure the degree of fanaticism, its crescendo, and its virus like spread in the Muslim communities inhabiting the world. And the great danger of terrorism lies, unlike natural disasters which are intermittent, in the fact that it’s a continuous threat without knowing in advance where and when it will break out. But despite this hand of invisibility that perpetrates these murderous actions of terror, it can be defeated by intelligent and decisive action. Eroding and continuously diminishing the ability of terrorists to be successful in their operations might put the mouse of doubt into their hearts nibbling at their belief that they are the instruments of Allah and thus gradually force them to abandon their eschatological cause.

2010-01-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

The Finger of Obama Forced to “Press the High-Fear-Button”

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Ben Katcher is the court jester of The Washington Note (TWN) followed by a long thread of other TWN jesters, from Norheim to Carrol. While all the late, and belated, actions of Obama emanate from an unabated fear which forces him to “press the high-fear-button,” closing his embassy in Yemen out of fear of a terrorist attack, deploying U.S. Special Forces in the country fearing that the latter would become a training terrorist base that would threaten the Western world, according to the latest statement of his Secretary of State, and the new rules prompted by the fear of the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack that would involve 14 nations undergoing extra screening in airports, Katcher claims, that Obama refuses to “use fear for his personal political advantage,” as if by protecting--even if Obama doesn’t take these harsh measures out of personal belief but out of political expediency-- like Bush, America from the real fear of a terrorist attack, would not also be for Obama’s personal political advantage.

2010-01-01T00:09:00.000-08:00

A healthy, challenging, and happy new year to all the readers of Planetary Power Politics.

2009-12-29T00:05:00.000-08:00

Iranian Upheaval Turns American Liberal into a Counterrevolutionary

Con George-Kotzabasis

Voila, we have a liberal atheist leftist educated American, in the person of Dan Kervick, who ostensibly supports Ahmadinejad and hopes that the obscurantist regime of the mullahs will “work out the right combination of concessions and firmness (killing its protesting young people in their struggle for freedom), reform and continuity to keep the lid” on the young educated masses, whom Kervick inferentially and derisively calls the “Persian pot,” who are presently engaged in a deadly “bouleversement” against the theocracy, all in the name of the ‘fearful’ unknowns revolutions generate. In this assessment of his he reveals his inner deep conservatism and vulgar cynicism of human nature that the latter’s actions would not lead to a better situation for mankind in the future but only to a worst one. Since he clearly infers from his post that the present evil that is embodied in the theocracy, i.e., killing its own people and boding a second holocaust for Jews, could only be replaced by a greater evil by this revolt of the young aspiring educated classes of Iran for freedom.

One can see Kervick, this comical liberal political ‘pantaloonist’, peregrinating in his colourful patched pantaloon on the internet with the slogan “down with all revolutions.”

2009-12-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

American Liberal Considers Obama’s Intervention in Copenhagen an “Impressive” Achievement

By Con George-Kotzabasis

What a mockery of prowess Clemons makes when he measures its depth with Obama’s “work-the-situation,” i.e., procedural matters, and “basket ball” games. Obama has irretrievably failed in all his major foreign policies; in the Middle East, as Clemons himself hints, in his diplomatic overture to Iran, and now in his Copenhagen Climate Accord sans substance and which is no more than a political statement with no bindings. Yet Clemons considers it to be an “impressive” achievement by Obama. Clemons with his “hybrid” realism, to use his term, which like all hybrids is barren, and with his inexorable wishful thinking politics has yet to realize that Obama is one of the most weak and ineffectual presidents and a crashing failure in the sphere of foreign policy if not totally in domestic policy.

And in regards to Copenhagen, Clemons should bear in mind that an alternative to nothing is worse than nothing. Or better still take heed of King Lear that “nothing comes out of nothing.”

2009-12-10T22:24:00.000-08:00

Afghanistan: How to Mobilize the Tribal Chiefs against the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

There is a great possibility of replicating the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords. Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break.”

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008. The link below will take you to it.
http://kotzas12.xanga.com

2009-11-25T16:01:00.000-08:00

Limits of Imagination Transformed into Limits of Power

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons and Ben Katcher are using the ‘shamanistic’ art, the art of a conjurer, to turn the limits of imagination into “the limits of American power.” The “aborted attempt” of the Obama administration to “persuade the Israelis to enact a “settlement freeze”, has nothing to do with US power limits but with lack of imagination and political insight on the part of Obama and the State Department not to foresee the political implausibility of trying to impose such a doltish demand on the Netanyahu government. It’s a dismal failure of policy and not a limit of American power as Clemons and Levy in their conjurers’ role aver.

As for Daniel Levy’s ”asymmetries of power,” WigWag’s post is instructive and unassailable in its historical logic. All defeated nations in wars were due to asymmetries of power.

2009-11-13T03:22:00.000-08:00

Moral Equivalence between Christian and Muslim Fanatics

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathisers (M.E.) with the doctrine in other lands constitute one united threat which must be met by force”. Edmund Burke, (Writing on the French revolution, and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.)

In a battle between flaming (M.E.) fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win? Irshad Manji Muslim writer

The above two quotes apply to all the naive simpletons of this thread who search in vain for moderate Muslims in a religion that is irreversibly replete with hate against all infidels. And the comparison of moral equivalence they attempt to make between Christian and Islamist fanatics shows their prodigious ignorance of history and that they are fugitives from reality. Christianity never threatened another civilization with fanatical suicide-bombers. It's Islam that does so in an era of nuclear weapons and WMD. It's this lethality which distinguishes Muslim fanatics from Christian fanatics and the great dangers that the former carry and hide around their midriffs which are incomparable.

The hackneyed terms of 'Islamophobes'and 'Muslim haters’ that the Islam sympathisers use to discredit their opponents is a defence reaction on their part for their inveterate doltishness and inanity which bars them from the course of reason.

2009-11-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Frolicksome Realists Attack Wolfowitz

We’re All Realists Now Paul Wolfowitz, Foreign Policy August 24, 2009

Failing to Note the difference When the US Power Tank is Full or Near Empty Steve Clemons Foreign Policy August 27, 2009

A reply by Con George –Kotzabasis

Don Quixote with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels was attacking windmills with his lance. Don Clemons not with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels, Dan Kervick—but in critical moments you can count that real pals will show up—is attacking the impregnable cogitative fortress of Wolfowitz with a toy tank whilst Sancho Kervick is riding his intellectual hard working donkey at galloping speed to refill Clemons “near empty” tank so they can demolish the modestly crafted and cogent realistic argument of their bete noire Wolfowitz. It’s in the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that the ‘slayers’ of the Wolf are made.

The realist Clemons, oops, the “hybrid realist,” to quote him, refuses, even at this late stage, to acknowledge that it was this far from near empty tank that defeated the insurgency in Iraq and that under the strong, resilient, and imaginative leadership of General Petraeus won the war in Mesopotamia. And by defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq America became stronger not weaker as Clemons argues in his piece. But it will become weaker if as a result of the staggering foolishness of Obama in withdrawing US forces from the urban areas of Iraq prematurely that has led to a resurgence of bombings, which if they continue to increase could reverse the relative security of Iraq post-surge and its great potential to build democracy in the country and become a lodestar for the whole region, as both generals Petraeus and Odierno had warned the Obama administration. And for such a dire outcome the total responsibility will fall upon the “hybrid realists” or “policy realists” that according to Clemons rule the roost in Washington, and of course ultimately upon President Obama.

For a realist, of whatever ‘variability’, to argue in the aftermath of 9/11 that the war in Iraq was a Wilsonian idealistic intervention to impose American values and democracy on the country shows how out of his depth Clemons is from any kind of realism. Wolfowitz clearly states that the purpose of the war in Iraq was not to “impose” democracy by force but to “remove a threat to national and international security.” And as he says one can criticize the rights and wrongs of the war without diverting from, and changing, its purpose. Moreover on the issue of Quaddafi’s decision to give up his WMD programs Clemons contradicts his pivotal contention that America’s intervention in Iraq weakened its geopolitical power. For if that was the case and the perception why should Quaddafi need the “assurances” of a weakened America that “he could remain in power” as a trade-off for giving up his nuclear program, as Clemons states? Once again Wolfowitz is right on this point. Quaddafi relinquished his WMD programs because of ‘feared American will,” to quote Wolfowitz, because of America’s projection of power, of ‘can do’ might that spectacularly defeated both the Taliban and the elite forces of Saddam within few weeks and refuted all the prognostications of many pundits and so called realists who contended that the US could not defeat Saddam and would suffer the same fate as the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was also this display of US will and power that induced Iran to a ‘silent’ cooperation with the United States in the suppression of the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Dan Kervick also is out of his depth in realpolitik with his moralizing piece. He states that “we should forbear from intervening because of odious (M.E.) behaviour to us.” States don’t intervene in the internal affairs of other states because of their odious conduct, that is, on moral grounds, but only when their explicit intentions and actions threaten the vital interests of another state. And both the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was not due to odious behaviour but to the potential and real threat these two rogue states posed to the US and the West in general. Moreover, international laws in themselves and checks and balances cannot be the balm for the internal and external conflicts of nations, as Kervick argues, in an anarchic world without some dominant power backing these laws and checks and balances with an implicit force and its explicit use when necessary. And in our era this invidious burden and responsibility ineluctably falls on the shoulders of the United States. “Liberty and civil peace” do not fall like manna from the sky and protected by nebulous gods. They emanate from great benign states that are not squeamish to use force whenever this is necessary for their protection. Voila Amerique

2009-10-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

Appease! Appease! Is the Clamour of American Liberals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is a question that I was to put to Clemons from another thread but at the time I was under the surgeon’s knife. Since my question, however, is not completely unrelated to the present thread, I’m posing it here.

The question is related to Clemons ‘sweet’ emotional rapprochement to the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, in the face of the ‘bitter’ realities of the Middle East. Is the West including that outpost of Western civilization, Israel, and especially the U.S., currently engaged in a mortal fight with a hard core fanatical Islam which includes its terrorist satrapies Hamas and Hezbollah or not? If the answer to the question by the “hybrid” realist Clemons, to use his term, is in the affirmative, then the latter is the grand appeaser toward fanatical militant Islam. If he answers it in the negative, with all the expected equivocations that he is capable of, then he is afflicted by an incurable virus of political necrophilia.

But in my humble opinion, Clemons will go down in the chronicles of American history, if he ever makes its footnotes, as the mini American Chamberlain in contrast to Churchillian mettle and sagacity. Appease! Appease! Is the clamour of the liberals and the prophets.

2009-10-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

Putin's Russia to Weaken U.S. not Strengthen it and Will not Support Sanctions against Iran

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 4:58AM -

Link Nadine, you are wasting your valuable time retorting to the political banalities of Norheim and his kindred spirits inundating The Washington Note.

Dmitry Medvedev's “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable,” is the noose that the clever chess playing Russians are putting around the naive neck of the draught playing Obama. The operative words are “in some cases,” which the Russians alone will define and no one else. The political toddlers a la Norheim, enchanted under their inspirational wishful thinking, believe that the Russians will define these words positively in favour of sanctions, and like the stunted toddlers that they will always be they will be looking forward to Santa Klaus, Putin, on New Year’s Day to deliver to them their wishful ‘playful’ present.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 24 2009, 5:33AM - Link

You`re distorting my words, Kotz. I don`t "believe" anything on these matters yet. There are too many if`s and if-not`s here. If it goes to the Security Council and Russia votes for sanctions in the Security Council, I`ll "believe" so. China delivered some critical statements on their part just hours ago. Time will tell. My initial point was an attempt to formulate how Obama seemed to see the missile shield issue, the relationship to Russia, the Iran issue, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a connected and complex whole, and that this way of thinking contained a lot of unpredictable factors, probably too many if he has built a strategy on this. Perhaps my guesses are wrong, perhaps they are correct. But I see no particular reason for optimism on Iran and Israel-Palestine in the coming months and years. Is that clear? If you want to twist and bend this in any direction, go on.

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 6:38AM - Link

Are you now repudiating all of your posts above your last one? "Russian Leader Opens Door to Tougher Iran Sanctions" and then you paste THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in all its positives on the issue with which you obviously agree. Then you follow this in your penultimate post with, "it now looks more like America is getting, than that it's not getting something." And only belatedly, after my own post, and after letting your guard down, you place your "if's and if-not's."

Paul Norheim says

For ad hominem "thinkers" and strategy geniuses like Kotz, this is an exercise beyond their capabilities, and just another opportunity to bash his opponents for their lack of strength and amour propre in their cul de sac. But now that WigWag, whom Kotz sympathize with, actually agrees that possible sanctions were behind Obama`s decisions on the missile shield, and also seems to think that the likelihood of Russia getting on board on this might have increased a bit after Medvedev`s statement yesterday, I expect that Kotz will keep silent on this issue.

WigWag says

There is an irony in all of this. Conservatives like Kotzabasis and Nadine are far more suspicious of the Russians than the Israeli Government is. They can speak for themselves about whether my surmise is right or not; but whether it's a carryover from the Cold War days or something else, conservatives are suspicious any time the United States fails to "stand up" to Russia. This is no longer true in Israel. Israel sees Russia as an increasingly important partner. A large portion of the Israeli population is Russian and has cultural ties to the "old country." Russia and Israel have ever increasing commercial relations, especially in military equipment. Israel appreciates the fact that they never have to worry about criticism from the Russians on the human rights front (Russian behavior in Chechnya makes the War in Gaza look like a Girl Scout picnic). And Israel sees good relations with Russia (and China and India) as a counter balance to their overdependence on the United States. Israel also appreciates the fact that Russians don't care about Palestinian aspirations.

This is actually one of the few examples where people who have the views of Nadine and Kotzabasis disagree with Israel. Israel wants better relations between Russia and the United States for many reasons, not the least of which is that it increases the likelihood that harsh sanctions on Iran will be enacted. It’s conservatives who get nervous every time they see increased cooperation between Russia and the United States not Israelis.

Kotzabasis says

Norheim, of course Obama’s naive decision “on the missile shield” was to entice the Russians to come “on board” on sanctions. I predicted he would do this four months ago. But WigWag is not inflicted by the illusion, like you are that the Russians will come along on sanctions. And as he correctly states, they will not do so unless they are offered much more such as “NATO expansion, support for Georgia and Ukraine, Kosovo and Bosnia/Republica Srpska.” Hence they will be putting a bigger noose around the neck of Obama’s diplomacy and will be pulling it so hard that there will be no flesh left on his neck, i.e., American power and prestige, other than the protruding bones of an anorexic superpower that would force America’s close allies to have second thoughts about the former's reliability and resolution under President Obama. And the question then arises whether the Obama administration would go the whole hog, i.e., sacrifice all its allies on the altar of getting the by now out of the equation Russians, according to WigWag’s logic, since he believes that “harsh sanctions by the United States and Europe would still sting” without the Russians being on board.

WigWag, I’m surprised that you seem to see the conservative ‘brand’ of politics only in its old form of rigidity and not see the ‘new brand’ whose strength lies in its fluidity. It’s far from being the rather very simplistic case of failing to “stand up” to Russia. Analytically that is a very hacked and shallow conclusion. And you extrapolate an avalanche of wrong deductions from a possible American agreement with Russia on sanctions, which I think is a will-o’-the-wisp, while you irretrievably contradict your own argument. Russia is not in the game of strengthening America but of weakening it. And they see in Obama in his elemental personal debility and idealistic respect all diplomacy, a perfect opportunity to achieve their great goal. It’s this that is of great concern to ‘fluid’ conservative realists and not because they carry some incurable virus from the “Cold War days.” It’s seen the Russian ‘Emperor’ with glee on his face dragging America’s benign power into the amphitheatre to be tangled in the net of the gladiator and slaughtered to the applause of the ignorant and ignoble crowd of anti-Americanism., that is the modern equivalent of panem et circenses.

And aren’t you contradicting your own argument when you say that “Russian acquiescence to harsh sanctions will be a real plus” (but at what a price) when you earlier stated that sanctions imposed by the US and Europe “will turn out to be more politically devastating” and at the same time taking the Russians out of the equation and hence making their “acquiescence” totally obsolete and thus saving the US from a politically and diplomatically ‘spending spree’ in ‘Russian malls’? In view of this why even the stolid administration of Obama would not prioritize the interest of its strong allies in Eastern and Southern Europe next to an obsolete Russian “acquiescence?"

You also totally disregard Iran’s libido dominandi for the region and for the Islamic world that can be achieved more effectively in the carapace of nuclear weapons. To say as you do, “but for the peace process, [Between Palestinians and Israelis] sanctions or military action against Iran would be far less likely,” is to be blind before the real aims of the theocratic regime and to assume that Western leadership will continue to be languidly supine before such a great threat.

Lastly, it goes without saying that the smart Israelis would of course welcome a Russian agreement on sanctions even with the high probability that they will ultimately fail. But would they be happy to see this at the expense of a weakened America, especially against Iran as a staunch supporter of its terrorist ‘satrapies’ of Hamas and Hezbollah? And only one who has ‘rolling stones’ in his head would not see the great reasoning that lies in Israel’s good relationship with Russia. And how a brownie bird like you could have come to the conclusion that either Nadine or me disagree with Israel on this issue? I guess this could have only risen up from an errant nocturnal lucubration of yours.

2009-10-03T05:01:00.000-07:00

Liberal is asking for Dismissal of ‘Politicized’ General McChrystal

By Con George-Kotzabasis

WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand. While he acknowledges the importance of victory in Afghanistan that could be delivered by the “proper course’ of McChrystal and the multi-dimensional effects such a victory would have on global jihadists, at the same time he would be willing to pull a “MacArthur” on a ‘politicized’ McChrystal and hence diminish the chances of the U.S. winning the war in Afghanistan. Alas, according to his ‘dismal’ logic, politics should trump military victory.

Moreover he unimaginatively disregards the totally negative political repercussions such an injudicious dismissal would have on Obama himself, in the current political climate in America that as Kervick notes, in an unusually correct insight, to make McChrystal a “martyr” would be a political calamity for Obama. And it would be the greatest of ironies if the ‘dismissed’ Commander-In-Chief by the world by its representative body the International Olympic Committee for sponsoring and promoting Chicago for the summer Olympics, which for a president to be directly involved in its bidding was politically most imprudent, will be dismissing his commander on the ground General McChrystal for his professional and prudent recommendation how to win the war in Afghanistan.

Posted by WigWag, Oct 02 2009, 9:33AM - Link

"WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand"
Don't be surprised Kotzabasis; I'm afraid that sometimes I think that fool's errands are my specialty.

Cheers!

Posted by kotzabasis, Oct 02 2009, 10:48PM - Link

WigWag
Only a 'fool' who has your strength of character can laugh at himself.

Cheers!

2009-09-27T05:34:00.000-07:00

Moonshine Political Romantics Run Away from Sunny Reality

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Because all three of you in your political and intellectual weakness and lack of depth are strengthening the dangerous fantasies of soft power as an antidote to the dangerous realities emanating from apocalyptic fanaticism that are hovering over the head of Western civilization and threatening it with ‘decapitation’. Of course such an existential threat you and Kervick, if not Clemons, would diagnose it as paranoia. But anyone who has studied history, without being a prisoner of it, might come to the conclusion that the art, the vocation of a statesman is to identify promptly an irreconcilable implacable enemy and destroy him before he becomes stronger.

Already the soft power fantasy as embodied in the new foreign policy of Obama is irreversibly failing. In the diplomatic overture to Iran, in resolving the Middle East conflict, and in clinching a concord cordial with Russia, of which Obama was so confident that he would have the support of the latter on the issue of Iran. Now we have Putin and his Foreign Minister Lavrov declaring that they would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would impose new sanctions on Iran.

Clemons, Kervick, and you, with your characteristic geopolitical and strategic myopia and romanticism could not foresee the failure of this new foreign policy of Obama based on ‘loving- holding hands’ and soft power that is unravelling now before everyone’s eyes.

2009-09-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan Critical to U.S. Strategy to Defeat 'Blindfolded' Fanaticism

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short response to: Afghanistan Exposing Huge Limits on American Power
By Steve Clemons Washington Note September 09, 2009

Clemons, from his political labyrinth as the modern Theseus but without his Ariadne with any hope of escape, sends desperate signals about America’s “limits” in Afghanistan and the dire repercussions these will have on American power and prestige. From the boundless darkness of his labyrinthine domicile he is bound to be pessimistic of any prospect that the US could defeat the Taliban. It’s the same kind of pessimism that he also had for years about the war in Iraq, which he had also pontificated as being unwinnable--and he has as yet to acknowledge that the US under General Petraeus had defeated the insurgency in Iraq.

Only Clemons, in his strategic myopia, could make the statement, “One really can’t tell what our overall goal is at this point.” Really, the Taliban which was a host to al-Qaeda and which would continue to be so in the event it took over once again Afghanistan, and moreover threaten the Talibanization of Pakistan, as a result of the US abandoning its strategic goal of defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in one stroke and hence inflicting a devastating blow of global dimensions to the holy warriors of Islam. Nor can he envisage that any withdrawal from Afghanistan would be perceived as a defeat of America by Islamists and would embolden their threats against, in their eyes, a weak America. And the consummation of these threats would be of a greater magnitude of destruction than that of 9/11. Afghanistan therefore is pivotal to America’s strategy to defeat borderless Islamist fanaticism on a world scale.

The United States is not in a ‘labyrinthine’ situation wasting and reaching the limits of its military power in Afghanistan from which it needs to escape. Its task is, like in Iraq, to persevere in the defeat of the Taliban and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary and a training ground for the recruits of al-Qaeda from which it could launch its ‘apocalyptic’ attacks against the Great Satan America and on the infidels of the West. In this task a combination of American intelligence, military professionalism and might, and strategic nous and determination, has a better than an even chance in defeating ‘blindfolded’ fanaticism.

2009-09-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

Prattling Guru Detaches from Iranian Turmoil

The Iranian Election is Their Issue, Not Ours By Steve Clemons The Washington Note June 16, 2009

A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis

For a political animal like Steve his Pontius Pilate stand that the Iranian election is “not our business” is astonishingly amusing. But I suppose saying this with a grin on his face in his TV interview is because he has no answer to the argument that Bush’s hard policies might have influenced the educated classes of Iran in their revolt against Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, as Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary of George Bush stated.

Even if Ahmadinejad won the election fairly, the fact remains that now as a result of the election the extant split prior to the election between the modernist forces and the antediluvian ones is exacerbated. What is imponderable, and lingers in the province of Nostradamus, is whether this fissure of Iran’s society between these two forces will bring an internal ‘modernist’ change or an open dictatorship of the Mullahs and the military, as their only way to survive from this tsunami of dissent against them.

As for Dan Kervick, another luminary of The Washington Note, in his desire to present himself as an imaginative thinker he foolishly delves in ‘Rumsfeldian unknowns,’ which excellently illustrate the vaudevillian streak in him. His comment that there might be “anti-democratic” forces that would aim to “overturn” the democratic election is a laughable fiction. The forces that want to “overturn the result of the election” are doing so because of the perception that Ahmadinejad stole the election, not because they could be “anti-democratic.”

2009-09-01T04:41:00.000-07:00

Cat Among Pigeons in The Washington Note

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s good and encouraging in seeing a politically realist downy bird from the right like Jim Pinkerton, former senior staffer of the Bush I administration, invited as a guest by Steve Clemons to perch on the intellectually dry branches of The Washington Note. But Clemons must be in a mischievous frolicsome mood, as he deliberately places a cat among the pigeons of the TWN.

2009-08-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

Mosque-Made Terrorism

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Short reply to: Not in the name of our Islam By Orhan Cicek ON LINE opinion August 07, 2009

Who is going to educate the educator? The author of the article, Orhan Cicek, engages in a litany of the good aspects of the Muslim religion but abhors identifying its bad aspects from which Muslim terrorism stems. All religions, including Christianity, are a mixture of the good and the bad based on fantasies and “dark forces.” That is why the reign of reason cannot find its throne in religion. All the great achievements of our contemporary Western civilization emanate from the fact that they were achieved against religion or by reforming religion. Muslims cannot liberate themselves from the “dark forces” of their own religion and achieve their own greatness without at least having their own religious reformation. But is such reformation possible when the Koran has been dictated by Allah Himself and given to His prophet Mohammad? Who among Muslims will dare to ‘edit’ the words of God?

Presently the deafening evidence is that jihadism and terror are incubated in the religious institutions and Madrasas of Islam and one can only “preserve’ one’s “objectivity” by realizing that this is Mosque-made terrorism. The Australian newspaper reports today that all of the five accused of terrorism were regularly praying at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the ‘moderate’ Mufti of Australia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam, who replaced the radical ‘meat exposed’ Hilaly, presides. And the other incontrovertible fact is, unlike the claim of the author that “the problem of terror and crime...is an issue that the mainstream Muslim society strongly opposes,” that all the moderate streams of Muslim society are dry of any demonstrable opposition to acts of terrorism and seem to be merely the banks within which the terrorist stream moves along.

2009-08-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Islamists Cannot be Pacified by Olive Branches but only by Fire of War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

2009-08-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

Replacing Radical Hilaly with 'Moderate' Naji as Mufti of Australia a Farce

I'm republishing this article written on June 2007 and published originally on my blog Nemesis as a result of a report of the Australian on August 7, 2009 that all five of the arrested would-be terrorists were regular prayers at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the Mufti of Australasia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam presides.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

"The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathizers with the doctrine in other lands ( e.a) constitute one united threat which must be met by force". Edmund Burke, writing on the French revolution and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win. Irshad Manji, Muslim writer

As we have predicted in the past, the stepping down of radical Hilaly as Mufti of Australia and his replacement by another imam who would be just as radical but who would attempt to cover the sinews of his spiritual radicalism under the garments of moderation, has just happened. The selection by the Australian Council of Imams of the elderly and scholarly Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam of the Preston Mosque to replace Hilaly as Mufti of Australasia, is no less than an attempt by the politically minded advisers of the Australian Council of Imams to cozen and dupe the Australian public that they were substituting a moderate cleric in the person of Sheikh Naji for the radical Hilaly.

But let us see whether our prejudgment of the new Mufti is too hasty and facile by looking at the past conduct and statements of Sheikh Naji. Six years now since the twin towers bombing and all the objective evidence who was behind the attack, the Sheikh still refuses to acknowledge that Osama bin Laden was behind it. His reply is that he has heard people saying that al Qaeda were the perpetrator but he himself has not seeing the evidence. Now the Sheikh is reputed to be a scholarly and intelligent man and one would expect of him to use the latter two qualities in search of the truth. If six years after the event, he still cannot make up his intelligent mind, despite the resounding evidence that is also verified by the statements of bin Laden himself that al Qaeda was the deadly agent, as to the real perpetrator of that dastardly action, then people must come to the conclusion not that the Sheikh does not have the truth in his hands but that he hides it. And the reason why he hides it is that he does not want to alienate himself both from other imams, who also believe that bin Laden was not behind the attack, and of the wider Muslim community which also believes likewise, after hearing their clerics for so long repudiating that the attack was engendered by al Qaeda.

Hence the important question is not what Sheikh Naji truly believes about 9/11 but what he truly represents. That a great number of Muslims, after being indoctrinated for so many years by their radical imams about the evils of the West and the Great Satan America have been also radicalized, and it’s exactly this fundamentalist stratum that the Sheikh represents. That there is a majority of fledgling radical Muslims in our midst has been lucidly illustrated by the recently religiously arrogant statements of the head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, Kamal Mousselmani, as reported in the Australian, on June 23-24, 2007. He said, his entire of 30,000 Shi’ites in Australia were avid [my emphasis] supporters of Hezbollah (Party of God) and haters of Israel, considered Hezbollah to be a “resistance group” not a terrorist organization. He continued, “Shia in Australia considers Israel a terrorist organization and also view those who support Israel in the same light”. And with the superciliousness of a fanatic who speaks in the name of God, he said to the reporters attending his press conference, “put those words down, we are not afraid to say that”.

Certainly there is a minority of moderate Muslims within their community but who would dare to swim against the stream of such torrential river of radicalism? This is why the expectation by some civil libertarians and politicians that moderate Muslims can oust the radicals from their position of power and influence, is completely unrealistic at least in the short term. And in “the long term we will all be dead”, to quote John Maynard Keynes.

Furthermore, Sheikh Naji’s record speaks for itself. He officially supported the application for residency of Abdul Nacer Benbrica, who presently awaits trial for alleged terrorist actions in Australia. Asked by a reporter if moderate Muslims should take a stronger stand against extremists, he ducked the question and answered that the media misrepresented the facts about Muslims. What he would say to those Muslims who wanted to go overseas and participate in jihad, he replied, “I don’t know what (the) circumstances outside (Australia) would be”. He also called for the removal of Hezbollah’s military arm from Australia’s proscribed list of terrorist organizations. And in a lame attempt to shift jihad in favor of Australia, not realizing that he was throwing a boomerang in the air, he said that Australian Muslims would participate in a jihad to “protect Australia from its enemies”. (m.e.) Presently Australia is fighting its enemies, extremist Muslims, in Iraq and Afghanistan; is the Sheikh going to send his holy warriors to these theatres of war as an outcome of his pledge to protect Australia? Lastly, asked in his press conference after his election as Mufti about the war in Iraq, he was promptly muzzled by his minders to articulate his views on the issue, pleading his ill-health (he had suffered a stroke), and was quickly whisked away from the tough-fisted questions of some reporters, his advisors replying that he will answer these questions another time.

Hence, the Australian Council of Imams being too clever by half, not only have they picked a seemingly moderate imam to replace Hilaly, so he can pass muster in the eyes of the general community, but a frail one to boot. So whenever Sheikh Naji faced difficult questions of the media his minders would plead his ill-health, thus shielding him from giving an impromptu answer that could compromise his position as a moderate imam, and, also, exposing all those who elected him Mufti as being also avid representatives of the radicalism of their flock since they happen to be its sires.

The general public must not allow itself to be duped by this latest farce of the Muslim clerisy that they are willing and preparing to walk hand-in-hand with the Australian maiden, on the path of moderation, mutual respect, and peace, when their sermons are replete to the brim with the seeds of war against the infidels, the Jews, and the Great Satan, America.

2009-07-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

Former Secretary of State Equates Politics of Hamas and Israel

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: ...on Israel-Palestine Conflict by Steve Clemons
Washington Note June 21, 2009

“Absolutists on both sides need to be overcome” which Steve obviously agrees with this statement of former Secretary of State James A. Baker. This statement however ravages the truth by its direct reference of a ‘political equivalence’ between Hamas and the Netanyahu government. No Israeli government ever governed on behalf of the minority absolutist interests of the religious fanatics of Israel unlike Hamas which governs Gaza in the interests of its millenarian goals. It’s like saying that Republican governments, such as the former Bush administration, governed on behalf of the narrow interests of the religious right and not for the general interests of the United States.

If this is the quality of strategic thinking that the four eminent persons of Carter, Baker, Scowcroft, and Brzezinski, are offering to the Obama administration for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict then such advice will be a repeat performance of past failures as it rises from the lowest ebbs of their strategic ‘cogitations.’

And Steve will be found to be completely wrong if he thinks that the new turbulent situation in Iran might ‘force’ the Khatami-Ahmadinejad regime to change its policy toward its Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist surrogates. Steve in his misplaced realism does not realize that Iran will never abandon its pawns as long as it engages in its power-play in the region.

2009-07-19T04:02:00.000-07:00

REPLY TO AMERICAN PESSIMIST ABOUT THE GAINS OF THE SURGE

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Andrew Lebovich continues pessimistically to ruminate on his doubts about the surge and on General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan. He states, “The strategic outcome of the surge cannot be determined now” as it depends on the establishment of a democratic Iraq “after our occupation...has ended.” And if the gains of the surge are so fragile and can be lost with a resurgence of al Qaeda how can one say that “Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan is proven,” as is stated by McCain? He is also concerned about the “Sons of Iraq and other local militias’ being integrated “into the Iraqi security forces” and some of the corrupt practices of the Iraqi government.

Starting in reverse of his concerns, it’s decal like clear that he has not learned anything from the mistakes of the Bush administration when in toto disbanded the Iraq army instead of integrating it in the new army of the Interim government that would have forestalled the future insurgency. The Maliki government is integrating the Sons of Iraq and other militias and hence effectively disarming them instead of letting them hibernate until a possible next round of violence. Lebovich also is oblivious of the fact that corruption affects all governments that have not as yet found their point of stability and their members have a strong proclivity to get as much as they can from an assumed short term in office. However, with the stabilization of the government, as it seems to be happening now in Iraq, corruption can no longer be a stable staple feeding the mouths of corrupt officials.

As to the gains emanating from the surge, Lebovich apparently is unaware that one may have a perfect investment plan that will give one immense gains but if one “misinvests” or squanders these gains in boondoggle projects one is bound to lose them. This however does not impugn or diminish in any way the perfection of the original investment plan. And Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy falls in this category. The danger lies in squandering these gains, as McCain correctly says, before they reach their stated goal, i.e., a democratic Iraq.

Lastly, Lebovich does not perceive that even the most successful of counterinsurgency strategies can only be effective in a different geopolitical milieu if they make the necessary improvisations and modalities in the new context of their implementation. And this elementary principle applies in Afghanistan.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now...

2009-07-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

Obama's Angelic Doctrine Defeats America's Enemies

By Con George-Kotzabasis
Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen
global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a 'neighing' argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos--with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes...have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine...finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery.

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, the intellectual coup d’état by the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptively is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well that columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away ...we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

2009-06-28T01:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-12T23:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

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.