Australian Academic Accuses US and Aussie Forces of Committing War Crimes in Fallujah
By Con George-Kotzabasis
The Australian academic Chris Doran in his article on Online Opinion on August 3, 2008, accuses and condemns the Coalition forces in their attack on Fallujah on November 2004 of breaching the Geneva Conventions and of committing war crimes. But in his passionate condemnation he disregards the fact that wars are not fought by holding the sword in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. An ineradicable law of war is that its prolongation increases its brutality in 'geometrical' proportions and hence its casualties in civilians and the military.
The action in Fallujah had the strategic goal to shorten the war. Fallujah was a hornet's nest of foreign and local jihadists who were not only manufacturing the lethal car bombs but also sending their suicidal fanatic warriors in other cities of Iraq. The collateral civilian casualties, not in the huge overblown fictional figures presented by the writer of the article, were inevitable in a war that the enemy uses civilians, and, indeed, members of his own family and relatives as a shield. And the question arises who is the real moral culprit and war criminal in such a case. It's obvious however, that Doran in the heat of his pacifist hate of all wars, whether justified or not, has no propensity to even deal with this question, least of all answer it.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Strength of Character is Shown in Critical Circumstances and Obama Fails the Test
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 for 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
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 for 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
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Who Are the Hidden Culprits of the Economic Crisis?
By Con George-Kotzabasis
A retort to: Bush Will Address The Nation
By Steve Clemons The Washington Note September 29, 2008
My dear Steve, I’m saying this with great regret that your ‘amok’ propensity and desire to blame the Bush administration “for the reckless stewardship of America’s economic and security portfolios” for the purpose of justifying yourself of your flippant and irresponsible position on the issues of the war and the economy, is blatantly biased and dishonourable.
In your eagerness to make your case you totally disregard that the roots of the economic crisis lie in Democratic administrations and their caravanserai of Democratic activists, among whom Barak Obama was one who, as Tahoe Editor says correctly, was “suing banks for not taking riskier & riskier loans.” Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (The most ‘populist’ of names), and The Community Reinvestment Act, that are the cornerstone of the economic crisis, were the offspring of Democratic administrations. It was “the Clinton administration’s resurrection of Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which appears to have been the major single factor ( My emphasis) in the origins of American high-risk sub-prime loans.” Under Clinton “banks were required to provide loans on an affirmative action basis to poor inner-suburban ghettoes” irrespective of the latter’s insecure financial position. And it was the Republican senator Phil Gramm who denounced Clinton’s program as “a vast extortion scheme.”
Indeed, the US Senate finance committee in 2005, after the warning of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan of an imminent financial collapse if Fannie Mae’s activities were not reined in, proposed a bill that would increase scrutiny of Fannie Mae’s accountancy mechanisms. The bill however was opposed by the Democrats, while Obama kept his silence, and was lost.
I’m sure if you had taken the above facts into consideration you would not have condemned so gratuitously the Bush administration for the current economic crisis. Once again it was ‘peanut’ politicians and the ignorant crowd of good intentions that has cast America into the present hell.
As I’ve said four days ago in a post of mine on The Atlantic. com , if the corporate greed of Wall Street and the insouciant complacency and unimaginative stand of regulators have brought the American economy to the brink, it will be obscurantist democratic populism and its weak politicians, as it has been exemplified by the vote in Congress yesterday, that will push the economy over the abyss.
Once again the economically ignorant populace and politicians in their wrath and outrage to punish Wall Street, are raising the psychologist’s demon of “altruistic punishment” by which ironically they will be punishing themselves and most of all America.
Your opinion...
-->
Steve Clemons September 30th, 2008 7:58 pm
Kotz — thanks for your note, as always. I will try to respond in greater detail later - but I think that you know given our several dramatic (and fun) exchanges that while our views are different and that we probably strongly disagree, I’m surprised that you would call me dishonest and dishonorable. I think that the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is responsible for banks giving loans that were not credit-worthy is flawed. But I will refrain from calling this view dishonorable or dishonest. I just feel that it is flat out wrong.
Look forward to further exchanges on this and other things soon. I’m off to give a talk about the economic crisis and the reckless stewardship of the Bush administration (or parts of it - as Larry Lindsay, Bob Zoellick, Paul O’Neill and others were all quite capable).
But please — you know much better than to take these debates into territory about personal honor…
best, steve clemons
Con George September 30th, 2008 8:47 pm
My dear Steve–you completely misunderstood me. I was not referring to your “personal honor” which you must know from my posts on your blog how much I admire. I considered your condemnation of the Bush administration for the ills of the American economy not to be “dishonest” but intelectually dishonorable precisely because of your intellectual stature and because you disregarded the facts related to the Community Reinvestment Act. I believe that if you had taken these facts in consideration you would have made a more balanced critique of the Bush administration precisely because of the impartiality and generosity of your nature, thus keeping intact yourself your intellectual honor.
My best wishes as always
Kotz
By Con George-Kotzabasis
A retort to: Bush Will Address The Nation
By Steve Clemons The Washington Note September 29, 2008
My dear Steve, I’m saying this with great regret that your ‘amok’ propensity and desire to blame the Bush administration “for the reckless stewardship of America’s economic and security portfolios” for the purpose of justifying yourself of your flippant and irresponsible position on the issues of the war and the economy, is blatantly biased and dishonourable.
In your eagerness to make your case you totally disregard that the roots of the economic crisis lie in Democratic administrations and their caravanserai of Democratic activists, among whom Barak Obama was one who, as Tahoe Editor says correctly, was “suing banks for not taking riskier & riskier loans.” Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (The most ‘populist’ of names), and The Community Reinvestment Act, that are the cornerstone of the economic crisis, were the offspring of Democratic administrations. It was “the Clinton administration’s resurrection of Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which appears to have been the major single factor ( My emphasis) in the origins of American high-risk sub-prime loans.” Under Clinton “banks were required to provide loans on an affirmative action basis to poor inner-suburban ghettoes” irrespective of the latter’s insecure financial position. And it was the Republican senator Phil Gramm who denounced Clinton’s program as “a vast extortion scheme.”
Indeed, the US Senate finance committee in 2005, after the warning of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan of an imminent financial collapse if Fannie Mae’s activities were not reined in, proposed a bill that would increase scrutiny of Fannie Mae’s accountancy mechanisms. The bill however was opposed by the Democrats, while Obama kept his silence, and was lost.
I’m sure if you had taken the above facts into consideration you would not have condemned so gratuitously the Bush administration for the current economic crisis. Once again it was ‘peanut’ politicians and the ignorant crowd of good intentions that has cast America into the present hell.
As I’ve said four days ago in a post of mine on The Atlantic. com , if the corporate greed of Wall Street and the insouciant complacency and unimaginative stand of regulators have brought the American economy to the brink, it will be obscurantist democratic populism and its weak politicians, as it has been exemplified by the vote in Congress yesterday, that will push the economy over the abyss.
Once again the economically ignorant populace and politicians in their wrath and outrage to punish Wall Street, are raising the psychologist’s demon of “altruistic punishment” by which ironically they will be punishing themselves and most of all America.
Your opinion...
-->
Steve Clemons September 30th, 2008 7:58 pm
Kotz — thanks for your note, as always. I will try to respond in greater detail later - but I think that you know given our several dramatic (and fun) exchanges that while our views are different and that we probably strongly disagree, I’m surprised that you would call me dishonest and dishonorable. I think that the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is responsible for banks giving loans that were not credit-worthy is flawed. But I will refrain from calling this view dishonorable or dishonest. I just feel that it is flat out wrong.
Look forward to further exchanges on this and other things soon. I’m off to give a talk about the economic crisis and the reckless stewardship of the Bush administration (or parts of it - as Larry Lindsay, Bob Zoellick, Paul O’Neill and others were all quite capable).
But please — you know much better than to take these debates into territory about personal honor…
best, steve clemons
Con George September 30th, 2008 8:47 pm
My dear Steve–you completely misunderstood me. I was not referring to your “personal honor” which you must know from my posts on your blog how much I admire. I considered your condemnation of the Bush administration for the ills of the American economy not to be “dishonest” but intelectually dishonorable precisely because of your intellectual stature and because you disregarded the facts related to the Community Reinvestment Act. I believe that if you had taken these facts in consideration you would have made a more balanced critique of the Bush administration precisely because of the impartiality and generosity of your nature, thus keeping intact yourself your intellectual honor.
My best wishes as always
Kotz
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Lamentations of Leftist Liberals on the Turn Around of the War
By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s hardly surprising, that people like Sameer Lalwani, Juan Cole, and so many others from the liberal unimaginative intelligentsia who have been so abysmally wrong about their prognostications of the war in Iraq, now that the war is being won are petulant and sulky and manufacture shoddy and specious arguments by invoking the indisputable evidence of the sufferings of the war such as civilians killed and refugees, to trump the real triumph of the war after the surge and the new political configuration that is dawning in Iraq auguring a bright future for all Iraqis, that could serve, moreover, as a possible model for the whole Middle East. One would have expected after the dismal military situation that U.S. troops were facing in Iraq before the surge that every American would be proud of what their forces accomplished post-surge under the capable and savant leadership of General Petraeus.
Lalwani attempts to overturn this great event with what: With the art of a conjurer. He turns the retreat of al Sadr’s militia facing decimation by American-Iraqi forces into consolidation of his forces; the attack on Iraqi recruits killing thirty-three of them by a suicide bomber is considered to be to him a show of the continued VIGOR of the insurgency; and the tragic misery and agony of the refugees is a proof to him that the war has accomplished nothing.
Lalwani, Cole, and the aureole liberal intelligentsia, have suffered their intellectual Waterloo in the argument about the war. A Waterloo in whose battle, unlike Napoleon, they were neither by disposition, mettle, and strategic sagacity ever qualified to be in.
Your opinion...
By Con George-Kotzabasis
It’s hardly surprising, that people like Sameer Lalwani, Juan Cole, and so many others from the liberal unimaginative intelligentsia who have been so abysmally wrong about their prognostications of the war in Iraq, now that the war is being won are petulant and sulky and manufacture shoddy and specious arguments by invoking the indisputable evidence of the sufferings of the war such as civilians killed and refugees, to trump the real triumph of the war after the surge and the new political configuration that is dawning in Iraq auguring a bright future for all Iraqis, that could serve, moreover, as a possible model for the whole Middle East. One would have expected after the dismal military situation that U.S. troops were facing in Iraq before the surge that every American would be proud of what their forces accomplished post-surge under the capable and savant leadership of General Petraeus.
Lalwani attempts to overturn this great event with what: With the art of a conjurer. He turns the retreat of al Sadr’s militia facing decimation by American-Iraqi forces into consolidation of his forces; the attack on Iraqi recruits killing thirty-three of them by a suicide bomber is considered to be to him a show of the continued VIGOR of the insurgency; and the tragic misery and agony of the refugees is a proof to him that the war has accomplished nothing.
Lalwani, Cole, and the aureole liberal intelligentsia, have suffered their intellectual Waterloo in the argument about the war. A Waterloo in whose battle, unlike Napoleon, they were neither by disposition, mettle, and strategic sagacity ever qualified to be in.
Your opinion...
Monday, October 06, 2008
Obama Flicks his Flower on the Tomb of the Fallen
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Has anyone seen at the Memorial Service of 9/11 when both Barack Obama and John McCain were approaching the tomb to render their respect to those who had lost their lives how each of them placed their flower on the tomb Obama by flicking it throwing it and McCain reverentially laying it on the tomb? This action in itself shows the difference in the gravitas of character between the two candidates and the degree of loyalty each has for America.
The indifferent nonchalant attitude of Obama toward the fallen alone should cost him the election.If one cannot show real empathy for the dead he has ever lost it for the living. Obama’s so called empathy for the poor and disadvantaged has the gravity of a flick.
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Has anyone seen at the Memorial Service of 9/11 when both Barack Obama and John McCain were approaching the tomb to render their respect to those who had lost their lives how each of them placed their flower on the tomb Obama by flicking it throwing it and McCain reverentially laying it on the tomb? This action in itself shows the difference in the gravitas of character between the two candidates and the degree of loyalty each has for America.
The indifferent nonchalant attitude of Obama toward the fallen alone should cost him the election.If one cannot show real empathy for the dead he has ever lost it for the living. Obama’s so called empathy for the poor and disadvantaged has the gravity of a flick.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Obama Plays his Victory Fiddle While America is Burning
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Barack Obama in another crucial test of leadership–the others were his withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his diplomatic parlay with Iran—has irretrievably failed. In his response to John McCain’s proposal to suspend their campaign and postpone their debate that is to take place next Saturday and concentrate all their efforts in persuading Congress to pass immediately and urgently, in a modified form, the financial measures of Paulson-Bernanke– measures that were elaborated by the experts in the field and not by primitive “tzu-tzu” practitioners nor by populist nostrums–that would have a better chance than none in saving America from descending into depression, that they should not postpone their debate and by having it they would allow the American people to have their say on the financial package, shows Obama to be abjectly and callously irresponsible to the “main street” people whom he presumably professes to represent and protect, all in the name of a stampede of voters rushing toward him on the heels of the debate that would facilitate him to capture the White House.
In his delirious manic run to catch the fleeing damsel of the ‘oval shape’, he is completely careless and unconcerned that this unprecedented financial crisis since the 1930’s depression that threatens many millions of Americans of losing their jobs and their houses, and, indeed, their life-savings, as there is a high probability if the Paulson-Bernanke measures are not passed promptly and expeditiously by Congress might engender a stampede, a run on the banks by ordinary Americans that would bring the collapse of the whole American economy.
Thus Obama’s sinister aim to have his debate for the purpose of bringing a stampede of votes to his side might turn out to be a stampede on the banks. And while he gives his glorious victory speech to Americans the latter will ingloriously be losing their savings. Hence, his ‘victory’ will rest on a pile of ashes, on the ashes of ordinary Americans’ life savings.
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Barack Obama in another crucial test of leadership–the others were his withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his diplomatic parlay with Iran—has irretrievably failed. In his response to John McCain’s proposal to suspend their campaign and postpone their debate that is to take place next Saturday and concentrate all their efforts in persuading Congress to pass immediately and urgently, in a modified form, the financial measures of Paulson-Bernanke– measures that were elaborated by the experts in the field and not by primitive “tzu-tzu” practitioners nor by populist nostrums–that would have a better chance than none in saving America from descending into depression, that they should not postpone their debate and by having it they would allow the American people to have their say on the financial package, shows Obama to be abjectly and callously irresponsible to the “main street” people whom he presumably professes to represent and protect, all in the name of a stampede of voters rushing toward him on the heels of the debate that would facilitate him to capture the White House.
In his delirious manic run to catch the fleeing damsel of the ‘oval shape’, he is completely careless and unconcerned that this unprecedented financial crisis since the 1930’s depression that threatens many millions of Americans of losing their jobs and their houses, and, indeed, their life-savings, as there is a high probability if the Paulson-Bernanke measures are not passed promptly and expeditiously by Congress might engender a stampede, a run on the banks by ordinary Americans that would bring the collapse of the whole American economy.
Thus Obama’s sinister aim to have his debate for the purpose of bringing a stampede of votes to his side might turn out to be a stampede on the banks. And while he gives his glorious victory speech to Americans the latter will ingloriously be losing their savings. Hence, his ‘victory’ will rest on a pile of ashes, on the ashes of ordinary Americans’ life savings.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Will the Hate for Republicans Ravish Reason?
A short reply to Professor Paul Krugman and columnist of the NYT
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Well, well professor Krugman, if you take the personalities of Obama and McCain out of the equation what are you replacing them with other than hate? The hate Democrats have toward Bush-Cheney and the Republicans and by association McCain? So, if this is "a race between a Democrat and a Republican and a race that the Democrats will easily win,” to quote you, it will indeed be a sublime race, a contest between hate and reason.
Reason being on the side of those who believe that politically and strategically it would the ultimate inanity to elect a mercurial flashy populist who has his head in the clouds and is a leadership pretender to boot as president of the United States--the paramount protector of the achievements of Western civilization--when America is encountering deadly implacable enemies.
Over to you
A short reply to Professor Paul Krugman and columnist of the NYT
By Con George-Kotzabasis
Well, well professor Krugman, if you take the personalities of Obama and McCain out of the equation what are you replacing them with other than hate? The hate Democrats have toward Bush-Cheney and the Republicans and by association McCain? So, if this is "a race between a Democrat and a Republican and a race that the Democrats will easily win,” to quote you, it will indeed be a sublime race, a contest between hate and reason.
Reason being on the side of those who believe that politically and strategically it would the ultimate inanity to elect a mercurial flashy populist who has his head in the clouds and is a leadership pretender to boot as president of the United States--the paramount protector of the achievements of Western civilization--when America is encountering deadly implacable enemies.
Over to you
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