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.”

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.”

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

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.

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.

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

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.