Reasons to Hate Israel #123 and #124.

Published June 22, 2010 Israel Leave a Comment
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I have just read an intriguing and beautifully written post on National Review’s Corner blog by Mike Potemra, entitled “Why Do They Hate Israel?”.  The question seems presumptuous, since the haters have never experienced a shortage of anti-Semitic justifications. But still.

Potemra, about whom I know nothing, raises a thought I have often had.

As he puts it, “Part of the problem, in the United States at least, has to do with elitist contempt for Evangelical Christians”.  I am beginning to believe that much of the global elite’s anti-Americanism stems from just this contempt, which is actually embarrassment with the subject of Christianity.  Evangelicals are the ones consistently bringing up God and morality in public discourse, making us all feel awkward since we have nothing much to say on the subject.  So we treat vocal Christians as embarrassing redneck relatives, changing the subject when they’re listening, and mocking them when they’re not.

I must write more on this soon.  In the meantime, here is the post.

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Why Do They Hate Israel?   [Mike Potemra]

 Mark Steyn recently reminded us of some European polling from a Continue reading ‘Reasons to Hate Israel #123 and #124.’

Iran: Same Old Debate, But the Clock is Ticking

Published June 22, 2010 Iran Leave a Comment
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One might ask what progress has been made on stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program since the Obama administration took over a year and a half ago. In that respect, I recently reviewed a dialogue I had with Mr. Frankie Sturm, Communications Director of the “Truman National Security Project” back in March of 2009.  It turns out that every word written then is still relevant today; the only progress has been in Iran’s weapons program and in the erosion of US diplomatic prestige.  The Doomsday Clock is still inexorably approaching High Noon. (Whatever happened to the Doomsday Clock, BTW?)

Anyway, take a look and see if you don’t agree. 

See “A Dialogue with Mr. Frankie Sturm on Iran” here.

Agnostic about Genocide?

Published June 20, 2010 Iran , Israel 1 Comment
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My friend Doolittle talks of having become a political agnostic, uncomfortable taking sides on many of the most contentious issues of our time. I feel the same – up to a point. I agree that many questions (stimulus, bailouts, immigration, health care, etc.) offer at least two sides with plausible concerns, relevant facts, and about the same level of good- and bad-faith arguments.  To invest in one position, I must do one of two things. I must decide that I know what this is all about and am sufficiently informed, disinterested, and dispassionate to be able to say which position should prevail. Or I must use my affiliations as guides to my positions (“My friends/family/party are for it, so that must be the right position.”) Like Doolittle, I find it increasingly difficult to do either on most issues.

But not on all issues. In the Middle East and around the world today, a struggle of titanic proportions is taking shape. The battles are still small by 20th-century standards. In Afghanistan and Iraq, US troops fight in the field.  Around the globe, security forces try to thwart murderous terrorists before they can strike at civilian targets.  Under multiculturalist banners, unassimilable immigrants demand recognition of Sharia law, accommodation of “honor killings”, and punishment for anti-Islamic speech.

On this issue, I take sides. 

I believe I am disinterested; I do not know a single Israeli citizen, or buy Israel bonds, or invest in Israeli companies.

I believe I am relatively well-informed, though one does have to pick one’s way through a lot of anti-Semitic garbage in most of the media to get to the truth. (One of the best sources is the Middle East Media Research Institute at www.memri.org.)

And I try to be dispassionate. But the spectacle of Israel, a beleaguered island of democracy being hounded by a pack of vicious terrorists and a worldwide elite of self-righteous anti-Semites is enough to get under my skin. Helen Thomas was only the latest example of someone making the mistake of saying out loud in the wrong company what is being increasingly thought by too many others: “The Jews should get out of Palestine!”  Israel was a mistake. The Mideast would be fine and the world peaceful if only those Jews hadn’t persuaded Truman and others to let them return home. (See an earlier post on this here.) You can see the Arab/Iranian rejectionists’ point. After all, they didn’t perpetrate the Holocaust! (Most of them can’t even believe such a thing could happen!)

But, like Henry II, we are all expected to keep it to ourselves when we wonder “who will rid us of this meddlesome democracy?”

And now, Iran openly prepares the ultimate weapon for Holocaust II. As if Hitler had published the Wannsee Plans in the New York Times, Ahmadinejad openly savors the day when he will receive the keys to a one-day genocide weapon.  (I know, “he’s not really in charge, the Imams are, and they’re level-headed fellows, so they’d never do anything crazy, so don’t worry.”)

The world’s response, increasingly led by the US, is to “tsk- tsk” the whole business.  Iran really shouldn’t do that, says Obama. The UN says the world should implement mild sanctions against Iran – up to whatever level Russia and China think compatible with their roles as Iran’s BFF, resulting in the feeblest sanctions ever imposed with a straight face. 

Iran, as vulnerable to serious sanctions as any nation anywhere (they export all their oil and import all their gasoline, for crying out loud), laughs at the pathetic face-saving gestures of the West. They can afford to laugh as their centrifuges hum around the clock, because they know two basic facts. First, no nation (except Israel) regards Israel’s survival as a priority. And second, no nation (except Israel) will go to war to protect Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran.

Obama may pretend that the US would retaliate against a nuclear attacker of Israel. There was a time when that would have been assumed by any potential aggressor; but no longer. With Obama working the appeasement angle like nobody since you-know-who in the 1930′s, in fact since the Democratic Party dedicated itself to worldwide pacifism in 1972, no sane Israeli (or anti-Israeli) could assume US protection.  That is in fact the reason Israel had to develop its own nuclear deterrent.

Consider this possible scenario: Iran launches a nuclear strike against Israel, wiping out most of the 6 million Jews residing there. Israel responds with a nuclear counter-strike from its remaining assets, taking out every possible Iranian military and economic target (Israeli has never intentionally attacked non-military targets).

What would be the US response? A nuclear retaliatory attack on Iran? Why? Haven’t they suffered enough? A conventional attack on Iran? Why bother?

The likeliest response which Obama’s record and rhetoric suggest:

1) A UN Security Council resolution condemning both parties;

2) Strong sanctions against Iran, until a new government is formed;

3) An aid mission to help find any surviving Jews in the rubble;

4) Creation of a blue-ribbon panel to determine why this “man-made disaster” occurred;

5) Congressional hearings to make sure this does not occur again;

6) The rapid petro-dollar-fueled re-building of Iran, under the 12th Imam or a Persian Weimar Republic;

7) The relocation of “The Zionist Entity” to Poland or somewhere;

8 ) The building of new annexes on every Holocaust museum in the world, adorned with the bold slogan “Never Again, Again”;

9) At some far distant date, a public apology by some future US president.

As I said, I try to remain dispassionate. I really do.

Welcome to Blogland, Mr. Doolittle

Published April 30, 2010 philosophy Leave a Comment

I see that my longtime friend (strictly platonic) Mister Doolittle has finally taken my advice and started his own blog.  He can be found at www.misterdoolittle.wordpress.com. 

His philosophical musings are always perceptive and intersting, if you like things like that.  WARNING:  Sometimes he sounds rather Christian for a philosopher.  But he tells me he’s not actually affiliated, just stumbling around in the dark.

Anyway, like Danton’s head, it’s worth a look.

Paging Dr. Walt and Dr. Mearsheimer

Published March 8, 2010 Iran , Israel Leave a Comment
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I Have a Question, Doctors

A few years ago, two professors wrote a book.  Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (Chicago) published The Israel Lobby in 2007, and it made quite a splash.  Its central thesis was that US foreign policy was directed by Israel and its friends, to the detriment of America’s real interests.  In other words, the Jews are running this country.

 Accusations of anti-Semitism arose, but were deftly parried by the authors and their defenders.  It’s about Israel, they responded; it has nothing to do with Jews!

(This is why I wish that Ben Gurion had given the Zionist entity a different name, like maybe Semitia.  But then the world’s W’s and M’s would have patiently explained that they are not anti-Semites, but anti-Semitians.  If he’d named it Jewland, W and M could explain that their problem is with Jewlandians, not Jews. Oh, well.)

 Here I note that I venture no judgment on the inner prejudices of W and M.  But I do note that if you check their book on Amazon, you will learn that “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine; Beyond Chutzpah; On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism; Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid (by Jimmy Carter); The Holocaust Industry; and The Power of Israel in the United States.”  I know that guilt is not proven by association.  You may draw your own conclusions.

 So, in the dark days of the dreaded neocon likudnik administration of George W. Bush, professors M and W surveyed US mideast policy and made an interesting discovery.  Every action occurred in Israel.  The Muslim states were mere passive observers, reacting to Israeli and US provocations.  The best example was in their look at Iran. 

 “Israel’s perception of the Iranian threat underwent a fundamental change in the early 1990’s, as evidence of Teheran’s nuclear ambitions began to accumulate.  Israeli leaders began warning Washington in 1993 that Iran was a grave threat not only to Israel but to the US as well.  There has been no letup in that alarmist and aggressive rhetoric since then, largely because Iran has continued to move ahead on the nuclear front.”

 “Israel and the lobby are also troubled by Iran’s…refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist.”

 OK.  I could quote this stuff for pages, but you get the idea.  Iran develops nuclear weapons, threatens to destroy Israel, develops missiles that can strike Europe, and the problem is…Israel’s “alarmist and aggressive rhetoric”. 

 Bending over backwards to excuse Iran’s official ideology of “Death To Israel”, W and M write: “Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel ‘to vanish from the pages of time’ (or to be ‘erased from the pages of history’) is often mistranslated as a call for Israel’s physical destruction (i.e., to ‘wipe Israel off the map’).”  How unreasonable of the Jews not to be reassured by such a clarification!

 The Israel Lobby was not merely an indictment, but also a call for a new foreign policy.  As they argue, the US hard-line approach since 1993 (under both Bush and Clinton) “has left the US worse off than if it had pursued a strategy of engagement.”  So, they argue for a new direction. 

 “This alternative approach asserts that while it would be better for the US if Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons, there is good reason to think a nuclear Iran could be contained and deterred…” 

(It is not clear why they think it would be better for the US if they didn’t get nukes, after they spend pages explaining away any Iranian threat.  And it should be noted that, in this scholarly, meticulously-footnoted book, there is no note explaining the “good reason” for believing in deterrence of fanatical 12th-Imam ideologues.)  

 Back to the new foreign policy.  “The best way to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons is to engage it diplomatically and attempt to normalize its relationship with the US.”

 OK.  So we elected Barack Obama.  He disavowed any “special relationship” with Israel.  He reached out to Iran. He apologized for our past misdeeds.  He offered engagement and normalization.

 The question, professors, is this. How is that working out?

God, the Horizon, and Mr. Doolittle

Published December 1, 2009 philosophy Leave a Comment
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My philosophical friend Mr. John Doolittle has reached the stage of life where he takes up the task of making sense of himself and the world, and asking whether it can be done without including God in the ruminations.

 He tells me that he has reached three very tentative conclusions.

 First, he has concluded that morality is not derivable or sustainable without religion, and religion (however useful) is false without God.  I may ask him to explain that to me at some point.

 Second, while random events (such as undirected evolution) may explain much or all of the physical world, they do not explain the human mind, which is more than a super-computer built of nerve ganglia.  Our very contemplation of God suggests that the mind is not fully explained by materialist science; the mind indicates that God exists. It is true that we can imagine things that don’t exist, such as unicorns; but horns and horses do exist.

 Third, God may be like the horizon – the framework against which everything else is placed and comprehended.  The horizon exists, though not as other things exist; it is the reference point-line, the directional, the seen and unseen background before which all else is locatable. Of course in practical terms it is the curved falling away of the earth’s surface, and as such it is tangible and measurable (I have heard that it is about five miles away from a six-foot-tall man at seaside or in Kansas.)  But it also has a strong and intangible reality.

 Doolittle may be on to something here. But, I wonder, what if the earth were flat, unbounded, infinite?  Would there not still be a horizon?  Would it look the same as it presently does? 

 Maybe the relation of such an infinite horizon is to our actual horizon tells us something of our comprehension of God in relation to God’s reality.

 Oh well, that is all “beyond my pay grade”.  I must ask Mr. D to tell me more.

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Comment here.

Iran Threat Must Be Faced

Published November 25, 2009 Iran 2 Comments
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(An old union buddy of mine wrote the following column in his local paper.  He has graciously agreed to let me re-post it here.)

The Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today poses a grave and imminent threat to world peace. A wealthy nation, led by apocalyptic anti-Semitic fanatics committed to the eradication of a neighboring nation, is rapidly developing the weapons that will put that goal within its reach.

The whole world knows it; indeed, Iran barely bothers to deny it.

The Iranian regime is and has always been an avowed and implacable enemy of both Israel and of our own country. Their hatred of us and their desire to destroy Israel are not new. What is new is their development of the weapons needed to accomplish their goal of a Jew-free Middle East.

There can be no mistake; the Iranian regime is preparing for its “Final Solution” to the problem of Israel – nothing less than a Second Holocaust. Their denial of Nazi genocide is a smokescreen to distract attention from their plans to out-murder Hitler. With a weapon that Hitler could only dream of, Iran will have instant genocide – the extermination of 6 million Israeli Jews in a single day – at their fingertips.

Diplomacy and sanctions have been tried and have not worked. China (politely) and Russia (rudely) have made it clear (repeatedly) that they will oppose or sabotage serious sanctions. Sanctions will not work under such circumstances.

The Iranians have played the diplomacy game to the hilt, engaging in endless talks while ceaselessly working on their weapons program. They have adhered to Will Rogers’ cynical definition of diplomacy as “Saying ‘nice doggy’ in a soothing voice while stooping to pick up a rock.” They know that time is on their side; they have learned the North Korean lesson that once they demonstrate that they have nuclear weapons, world pressure will avail nothing against them.

So they will continue to play the game, running out the clock while their centrifuges spin day and night. In this situation, and given the demonstrated nature of the regime, it would be the height of irresponsible folly to set further meaningless timelines. If a last diplomatic offer is made, it must contain a deadline measured in days, not months.

For the 30 years since the Iranian Revolution, Israel has been our staunchest ally and Iran our most implacable enemy. That ally now stands threatened with extinction from that enemy. We cannot hesitate to act.

The failure of the previous and current U.S. administrations to deal with this threat have left very few options on the table. In the face of continued Iranian intransigence, some form of military action, such as surgical air strikes to disrupt the Iranian weapons program, may be the only course remaining. If Israel is ready to act in its own defense, we should offer them our full support and assistance.

Military action must be a last resort; its cost is high and its success uncertain. But the cost of continued failure to act is clear and will be terrible. “Learning to live with a nuclear Iran,” as some “realists” propose, is in reality learning to live with genocide.

Seven decades ago, an aggressive and fanatical dictator threatened both the peace of Europe and the Jews of Europe. The powers that could have stopped him chose instead to try to appease him. Appeasement did not work then and it will not work now.

For more information on the Iran threat, I recommend:

Middle East Media Research Institute, at www.memri.org, and United Against Nuclear Iran at www.uani.com.

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OK, This Is Just Funny

Published October 27, 2009 Obama Leave a Comment
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OK, this is just plain funny.  “Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire“, on YouTube from Onion News Network.

Sad that it is so funny.  But still funny.  I don’t care who you are.

 

Russia, China Doom US Appeasement

Published October 14, 2009 Israel 1 Comment
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Today’s news:  Russian leaders Vladimir Putin rejects sanctions against Iran, even as China indicates willingness to consider more sanctions.

Tomorrow’s headline:  China rejects Iran sanctions, even as Russia softens its position.

The Day after Tomorrow’s headine: China tags out, Russia tags into Iran-defense match.

Several things become clearer every day.

First, Iran is playing its diplomatic stalling game with masterful finesse.  They have been at the table for years with the Europeans, and now with us. Feeble sanctions are enacted, and then flouted by various nations.  And in the background, the steady hum of thousands of gas centrifuges, both in Qom and Natanz, creating the stuff of Iran’s dream: the Jew-liquidating Final Solution: the Mullah Of All Bombs.

Second, Russia and China are not displeased with Iran’s challenge to the West, and will not impede it in any way.  But, to avoid burning all bridges to the West, Russia and China will continue to play tag-team in threatening to veto any UN Security Council action, swapping the good-cop/bad-cop roles from time to time.  They know that the present US administration will not consider military pressure on Iran without a UN mandate.  Russia and China are Iran’s insurance policy against any possible UN action.  With their backing, Iran fears no sanctions, and has zero incentive to negotiate in good faith.

As our president receives worldwide acclaim (or at least Norway-wide) for his policy of appeasing Iran’s “legitimate concerns” in endless “good-faith” negotiations, my mind again wanders back seventy-some years, to the last comparable exercise in appeasement of dictators.

I have written about Obama’s appeasement as Chamberlain revisited, here, here, and here.  I have quoted Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Neville Chamberlain himself.  Now I bring a new voice to bear:  John F. Kennedy.

As a Harvard student in 1940, in part to distance himself from his father’s by-then-discredited views, JFK published a book, Why England Slept, analyzing England’s 1930’s appeasement policy and its roots in pacifism and isolationism.  In discussing the British government’s wild under-estimation of the Nazi threat, he writes:

“Baldwin [Chamberlain’s predecessor as PM] should be condemned for his blindness and his unwillingness to face unpleasant facts, but I do not believe that he and his entire cabinet knowingly betrayed the country.  They all made the mistake of misjudging Germany’s potentialities and the Nazi psychology.”

There is every reason to believe that the same mistakes are being made today by our president.  “Unwillingness to face unpleasant facts” is a matter of pride with him.

[Flashback: Bullwinkle: “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”  Rocky: “That trick never works.”  Bullwinkle: “This time for sure.” Bullwinkle (after trick fails): “I gotta get a new hat.”]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s voice speaks to us from the past, and today’s Democratic Party, believing that history began in 2000, or 1972 at the earliest, is incapable of understanding the words.

Obama Deserves the Prize

Published October 11, 2009 philosophy Leave a Comment
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President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and people are amazed.  They should not be; in fact, Obama has earned the prize.

In the blink of an eye he has moved the world’s only superpower firmly into the appeasement camp. This has been the Western left’s greatest foreign policy goal for the past eight years, and Obama has delivered on it.

Without creating much of a stir, he has notified our enemies that they need not fear us, and our allies that they cannot count on us.

Meanwhile, Iran arms itself for the coming annihilation of 6 million Jews, and the world prepares itself by stigmatizing Israel and legitimizing anti-Semitism.

A French Lesson

Published October 8, 2009 Obama Leave a Comment
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File this under “Never Thought I’d See the Day…”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has publicly rebuked Obama’s airy internationalism in the face of the Iranian threat.  The US media seems to have missed the story.  It happened on September 25, and Breitbart has it.

Sarkozy Mocks Obama At UN Security Council

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.” 

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite… Continue reading ‘A French Lesson’

The Next Holocaust

Published October 8, 2009 Israel , McCain Leave a Comment
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I have just finished reading an interesting and disturbingly timely book. Why We Watched: Europe, America, and the Holocaust, by Theodore S. Hamerow, a hstory professor at the University of Wisconsin, chronicles and analyzes a story too rarely told:  why the USA and Western European democracies exerted so little effort to prevent Hitler’s genocide of the Jews of Europe.

Hamerow gives full credit to the supreme efforts made by the allies in the war to defeat Hitlerism – once the allies belatedly recognized that their appeasement and isolationism would not avert the danger of further territorial aggression.

But he focuses on the numerous instances when the US and Britain failed to take available steps to assist Hitler’s victims.  The public silence about the death camps.  The repeated failure to offer wholesale welcome to refugees, for instance.  And, above all, the refusal to divert even limited military resources to disrupting the railroad networks supplying the death camps.

In the final analysis, there were three reasons why the West only watched the Holocaust.  Continue reading ‘The Next Holocaust’

Obama’s Isolationism Unveiled

Published September 22, 2009 philosophy 3 Comments
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OUTREACH TO ENEMIES, PUSHBACK TO ALLIES

Health Care Reform and the recession have kept America’s attention firmly riveted on the new administration’s domestic direction.   But something much bigger is happening in the world, and it is going largely unnoticed.

The sole superpower is withdrawing from world affairs.

It is quickly becoming clear that President Obama’s foreign policy has a simple but astonishing goal: to rid us of both enemies and allies. Continue reading ‘Obama’s Isolationism Unveiled’

NEA and The Party: The NCLB Saga

Published September 9, 2009 NEA 5 Comments
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You probably read the story: “NEA Slams Obama’s School Reform Plan”.  This is a type of story that occurs predictably after every election:  “Supporters unhappy with something ‘their’ president proposes”. 

 Groups such as unions, that fight for their members’ interests, must inevitably find themselves opposing actions they think are detrimental.  That’s the advocacy business.

 And everyone knows NEA is such a group, right?

 The question is anything but rhetorical.  Consider the ongoing saga of NCLB, the “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001. Continue reading ‘NEA and The Party: The NCLB Saga’

“Iran Will Never Negotiate…”

Published September 8, 2009 Iran , Obama Leave a Comment
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I was planning to write about something positive and uplifting for a change. Maybe Obama’s speech to schoolkids.   

Instead, I am forced to turn back to the ugliest story developing anywhere in our world. The newly re-installed (through a clumsy whitewash of an election) president of Iran is back in the news, on the eve of a US-set September deadline for serious progress on stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program. To encourage progress on the issue, our President Obama has been tactfully and diplomatically silent about the stolen election, the arrest, beatings, and murder of Iranian democrats, the threats against Israel’s very existence, and the other human rights atrocities that are Ahmadinejad’s daily bread.  We remain silent in order to avoid giving Mr. A reason to turn against us.  

And how is that working so far, you ask? Continue reading ‘“Iran Will Never Negotiate…”’

Israel Sees Secret Holocaust Plans

Published August 27, 2009 Israel 2 Comments
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On an official visit to Germany, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu received an unusual gift.  This gift was a set of plans for the Nazi Holocaust.  (It was not an “official gift”, but rather one from a private citizen, a newspaper publisher.  The official gift was an iPod loaded with the speeches of Angela Merkel.)

The documents, “which include architects’ drawings of rooms including one marked ‘Gaskammer’, or gas chamber…”, gave Netanyahu a welcome opportunity to remind the world that the next round of the Holocaust is being prepared right now in Teheran.  Continue reading ‘Israel Sees Secret Holocaust Plans’

Fouad Ajami explains Obama

Published August 24, 2009 Obama 1 Comment
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Fouad Ajami, writing in the Wall Street Journal, gives a breathtaking summary of the Obama presidency so far.  His overview: “a political economy of redistribution and a foreign policy of American penance.”

He compares Obama with Reagan; in both elections, Americans were losing faith in their country.  Reagan embodied and re-asserted that faith, while Obama promised to fix America and make it worthy of our faith.

This is an excellent analysis.  Read it.  Now!

Rene Girard, scapegoats, and the next Holocaust

Published August 15, 2009 religion 2 Comments
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One of the most original thinkers of our time, Rene Girard, has an excellent article in First Things (one of the most important publications of our time), entitled “On War andApocalypse“.

He reviews his theory of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating, and then offers some related reflections on modern Islamism.  It is most thought-provoking, as RG often is.  And this is clearer than much of his writing (he is, after all, a Frenchman.)  Continue reading ‘Rene Girard, scapegoats, and the next Holocaust’

Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009

Published August 7, 2009 philosophy Leave a Comment
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by Mister Moleman’s philosophical friend John Doolittle

One of the greatest of modern thinkers passed away last month.  Leszek Kolakowski was rightly known for his searing critique of Communism, embodied in his magisterial 1978 survey, the 3-volume Main Currents of Marxism.  The 20th century had crushed his every favorable illusion about Communism (as it did for virtually every other Pole).  He exposed the ugly philosophical reality of Marxism as thoroughly as Alexander Solzhenitsyn exposed its hideous physical reality.  With Main Currents and Gulag Archipelago on a bookshelf, and only The Black Book of Communism between them, no library really needs another volume on the subject. Continue reading ‘Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009′

NEA, Past and Present

Published July 10, 2009 NEA 2 Comments
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Mike Antonucci, my cyber-friend and the watchdog of America’s largest union, has asked if I have any thoughts on the recent NEA RA.  Mike, you should be careful what you ask for.

 This NEA Convention seems to have generated little real news.  The ongoing organizational schizophrenia that has driven NEA for the past two decades continues to fade into the background. Continue reading ‘NEA, Past and Present’

Progress on the Pirate Front

Published May 18, 2009 piracy Leave a Comment
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Here is the latest on the EU “War” On Piracy. Continue reading ‘Progress on the Pirate Front’

Mr. A hears Mr. O’s Message of Hope

Published May 6, 2009 Iran Leave a Comment
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So how is the Obama administratrion’s Iran “charm offfensive” working out?  We have some more proof that  Iran now regards us in a new, hopeful light.

Yesterday, AFP (France) reported Ahmadinejad saying “The US needs us and wants to develop relations.  Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favor.  We are on the road to victory.”

And Israel? “The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes.” 

So Iran is on the road to victory over whom?   The story doesn’t say.

Sounds like O’s message of hope and optimism is resonating in Teheran. 

And Israel?  Well, what can you expect from a bunch of destructive microbes?

US to Israel: “You’re on Your Own”

Published May 1, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments

It is reported by Eric Trager on Contentions that Defense Secretary Gates, obviously speaking at the president’s direction, has announced that the US has no military ability to destroy the fast-developing Iranian nuclear program.  All we would do would be “send it further underground.” Continue reading ‘US to Israel: “You’re on Your Own”’

A Simple Question

Published April 27, 2009 Democratic Party 2 Comments
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Why do Democrats (the McGovernite New Democratic Party, that is) so regularly beat up on our allies (see Hillary Clinton here getting tough with Israel), while turning on all their considerable charm towards the regimes that despise us the most (Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro)? Continue reading ‘A Simple Question’

Just Wild About Harry

Published April 27, 2009 Truman Leave a Comment
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A while ago I did some research and found striking descriptions of 1930′s Appeasement by one of its architects and one of its opponents (Chamberlain and Attlee).  Continue reading ‘Just Wild About Harry’

The Obama Doctrine?

Published April 20, 2009 Democratic Party , Obama Leave a Comment
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Peter Wehner at Contentions, the Commentary blog, has an excellent short posting about the Obama Doctrine:

“At a new conference yesterday, President Obama took a shot at defining the Obama Doctrine. Here’s my effort at defining it: The Obama Doctrine means criticizing past presidents, Democratic and Republican; apologizing for past American sins, real and imagined, to both allies and enemies of the United States, on domestic and, preferably, foreign soil — in the hope that doing so allows Obama to speak with greater moral force and clarity. The overriding goal of the Obama Doctrine is to make the person it is named after look good, rather than, and if necessary at the expense of, the nation he was elected to represent.“

He omitted only to mention the tendency to show toughness by pressuring our allies, and to show understanding by going easy on our enemies.   To repeat myself only slightly:

President Obama’s recent forays into the wider world have been positively Chamberlainesque (although there is no evidence that Chamberlain ever actually bowed to Hitler.) His humble apologies for our sins, his delicate refusal to criticize Iran’s warmongering or Saudi Arabia’s persecution of women or China’s dictatorship, his pious moral equivalence of Israel and Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah. And now the bi-lingual embrace of “mi amigo” Chavez.

Obama’s entire pre-presidential experience and body of work can be summed up as “effective self-promotion.” If he continues to think that the solutions to every problem is “More Obama,” then we are all in for a very rough time.

Pirates given stern lecture, then released

Published April 20, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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OK, here is a priceless news story from the West’s War On Piracy. Continue reading ‘Pirates given stern lecture, then released’

Ahmadinejad and Munich Nostalgia

Published April 11, 2009 Iran Leave a Comment
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Whenever the subject is Iran, I find my thoughts drifting back to the 1930’s, and I realize I am becoming a Munich bore.  But I can’t help it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad (I started to write Herr Ahmadinejad, but I am really trying to lay off on the sarcasm) was interviewed in Der Spiegel [here] yesterday by a German reporter who pulled refreshingly few punches. 

What first grabbed my interest was Mr. A on the subject of the rights of the Palestinians.

Ahmadinejad: We are defending more than the basic rights of oppressed Palestinians. Our proposal for resolving the Middle East conflict is that the Palestinians should be allowed to decide their own future in a free referendum. Do you think it right that some European countries and the United States support the occupying regime and the unnatural Zionist state, but condemn Iran, merely because we are defending the rights of the Palestinian people?

I flashed back to Churchill’s magnificent speech in Commons opposing Chamberlain’s Munich agreement.  (It will be a most hopeful sign when this great oration is once again studied in both civics and literature classes.)

Continue reading ‘Ahmadinejad and Munich Nostalgia’

Appeasement, Old and New

Published April 9, 2009 Iran , Obama Leave a Comment
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It is common for pundits to quote Churchill about the policy of appeasement and its inevitable failure to cope with aggressive dictators.  But this unfairly allows the policy’s opponents to define it, and gives rise to the feeling (by modern-day appeasers) that the term is an ugly epithet which no one of good will really deserves. 

 

But in fact it was Chamberlain himself who called his policy “appeasement”.  And under that very name it was extremely popular, as witness the cheering crowds greeting his return from Munich, and his 369-150 vote of support in Commons.

 

So how did Chamberlain define appeasement?  One of his best summations was the following, from his speech in defense of the Munich agreement, where Czechoslovakia was sold out in exchange for Hitler’s promises of peaceful behavior.

  Continue reading ‘Appeasement, Old and New’

A Dialogue With Mr. Frankie Sturm on Iran

Published March 1, 2009 Iran 6 Comments
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by Mr. Hans Moleman

(Mr. Moleman began this dialogue by critiquing Mr. Sturms’s original paper, in a post entitled “A Perfect Sturm of Appeasement”.  Mr. Sturm responded, sparking a dialogue that is still going, and for which Mr. M is grateful.  There are now 7 responses back and forth.)

The Truman National Security Project is a worthy effort by a group of “Truman Democrats” to craft a foreign policy that more consistent with the Truman postwar principles than with the pacifist policy of every Democratic candidate since George McGovern.

 Unfortunately, their latest paper “Iran: Putting the Threat in Perspective” by Frankie Sturm  suggests that the “Truman Democrats” are still stuck in the dead-end of a thoughtless (or cynical) anti-neo-conservatism. 

Continue reading ‘A Dialogue With Mr. Frankie Sturm on Iran’

Obama’s NEA-Style Summit

Published February 26, 2009 Obama Leave a Comment
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I have just read the description of President Obama’s Financial Responsibility Summit (if I got the name right).  It was disturbingly familiar.

It was an NEA conference writ large (or at least upscale). Continue reading ‘Obama’s NEA-Style Summit’

Gaza Is Not San Marino!

Published February 19, 2009 Uncategorized 7 Comments
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On a late drive home the other night I found myself listening to the “BBC World Report” on an NPR station. (Don’t look at me like that – it was a remote area and that was the only station I could get.)

There was a story about a delegation of British MP’s visiting Gaza to inspect the humanitarian crisis. The MPs were already on record as condemning Israel for the crisis and the war, so their comments were unsurprising. They called on Israel to relieve the suffering it had caused by closing off the Israeli-Gaza border crossings.

Continue reading ‘Gaza Is Not San Marino!’

Will “Truman’s Mistake” Be Corrected?

Published February 6, 2009 Democratic Party , Iran , Obama , Truman 1 Comment
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I recently read some history of the creation of the modern state of Israel.  I was struck by the crucial role played by President Harry Truman.  Put simply, if not for him, Israel would not now exist.  Harry Truman, not the Truman administration or the United States.  Truman.  Democrat Harry Truman.

 

And if not for the creation of Israel, the desert wind could blow from North Africa to southwest Asia unimpeded by anything as tawdry as a voting booth.

 

Truman’s decision to support the UN partition plan that put Israel on the map was fought by many of the wise men in his State Department and the rest of the foreign policy establishment.  They thought it was a big mistake.

  Continue reading ‘Will “Truman’s Mistake” Be Corrected?’

W, Hail and Farewell

Published January 18, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

George W. Bush is about to become officially only a memory. (Though in all likelihood he will become the kind of obsessing memory that Nixon immediately became for liberals.) 

His tale is of course complicated. Many knocks against him are legitimate.  So what can you say to his credit?

Simply this.  George W. Bush fought hard against the enemies of his country, and never let popularity or politics distract him from doing so.

That accomplishment will be put in perspective by the subsequest performance of his successors.  Let us pray that it comes to be seen as a matter of course.

Dear Wikipedia: About those Democrats…

Published January 9, 2009 Democratic Party , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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“The Democratic Party is… the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world.

“The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792.”

–Wikipedia

 

 

Dear Wikipedia:

 

The above-quoted information is incorrect.  You have apparently confused the currently-existing Democratic Party with its predecessor, the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ.  That party was driven out of existence by the new Democratic Party founded by George McGovern in 1972.

  Continue reading ‘Dear Wikipedia: About those Democrats…’

Conservatism, the Enlightenments, and Religion

Published January 6, 2009 religion 1 Comment
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by Mister M’s friend John Doolittle

 

The Enlightenment of the 18th Century was the birth of the movement to articulate a rational basis for society and the freedom of the individual. 

 

The French Enlightenment (Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Robespierre)  was directed against the church, seeing religion as mankind’s primary oppressor.  And it took a strongly ideological form from the start, being largely ungrounded in experience of local institutions that actually grew a sense of individual freedom.

 

The British Enlightenment (Locke, Hume, Smith, Burke) saw its task as the creation of a theoretical framework for the balancing of individual freedom and community interests.  Based on common sense and actual experience of freedom, Continue reading ‘Conservatism, the Enlightenments, and Religion’

Happy Anniversary, Dear Chrysler…

Published January 6, 2009 Unions , auto bailout Leave a Comment
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Plus Ca Change, Plus C’est La Meme Detroit

 

On this day in history, 29 years ago, President Jimmy Carter signed a bailout bill that saved Chrysler Corporation from bankruptcy with $1.2 billion in federal loans.  It was one of his last official acts, and one of his most popular.

 

Now, Chrysler is back.   So, what, I hear you say.  If a company can go 29 years between bailouts, that’s not too bad, is it?

  Continue reading ‘Happy Anniversary, Dear Chrysler…’

Will the Auto Bailout Doom Card Check?

Published December 16, 2008 Obama , Unions , auto bailout Leave a Comment
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The two issues don’t appear to be directly related, but it could be that an auto bailout may jeopardize passage of the insultingly-mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act”, better known as Card Check – the proposal to eliminate secret ballot elections for union certification.

First, the auto bailout talks have generated a lot of highly plausible “the-unions-killed-the-auto-industry” talk.  That kind of stuff doesn’t help when you are arguing that America needs more unions.  The UAW’s tendency to walk out whenever the talk turns to concessions just emphasizes the point.

Second, if Obama gives the unions anything like what they want in Detroit, he may find himself off the hook for any further union payoffs.  He could say “I saved the country’s best union contracts from Republican rape – and you still want more from me?”

If that is the case, we might still see passage of an EFCA that makes needed procedural changes to speed up union elections and expedite prosecution of unfair labor practices.  That would be a good thing, but not what the unions are expecting.  They want card check and contract arbitration.  But they may yet be disappointed.

Saga of an Earlier Labor Bill

Published November 25, 2008 Unions Leave a Comment
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The union card-check bill, AKA the insultingly-mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA), looks ready to slide through Congress without a hitch.  But, as both history and many clever sayings remind us, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over and the fat lady sings and the chicks hatch. (add your favorite cliché in the Comments section.)

 

Back in 1974, the Democrats strengthened their control of Congress with a big win in the wake of Watergate.  They picked up 49 seats to cement a huge 292-143 majority (makes Ms. Pelosi’s 235 votes look small).  Democratic constituency groups wanted things.

  Continue reading ‘Saga of an Earlier Labor Bill’

Who Is Killing The Unions?

Published November 24, 2008 Unions Leave a Comment
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Unionism in the private sector is not just down; it’s almost out.  Membership has been falling steadily for half a century and is now circling the drain, with membership at 7.5% of the workforce.  In 1953 it was 36%.

 

This disastrous decline has been partly masked by the simultaneous growth of unions in the public sector.  While private unions sank, public ones climbed from near-zero in the 1950’s to around 36%, where it has held steady since 1980.  Decline has also been disguised by the growing political power of the union movement, as its electoral organizing skills have improved even as membership organizing has languished.

 

Why the decline?  Why have private sector workers stopped joining unions?

 

The unions have a ready answer:  it’s too hard to organize because employers cheat.  They scare and intimidate and fire workers who try to organize.

  Continue reading ‘Who Is Killing The Unions?’

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