Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The concept of the “Axis of Evil” had a politically pragmatic Machiavellian sense in the context of religious-riddled America, and not a metaphysical one. Religion can also be used not only as “glue” to societal values that binds people and commands them, as the French philosopher Emile Durkheim suggested, but also as glue to certain critical foreign policies that are vital to the security of a nation. Apropos the Axis of Evil in the context of global terrorism and the rogue states which support it overtly or covertly. Statesmanship does not govern in a vacuum; it has to rally its people, like Churchill did, by certain concepts that appeal to them behind its policies and strategies. Neo-conservatives as pragmatists are amoral, and have no relationship with any kind of Manichaeism, of good and evil.

Interestingly, WigWag’s first comment in The Washington Note, ironically as a past opponent and slightly diminishing opponent presently of the neocons, has loosened all the “demons” of neo-conservatism from their “caves” to come and haunt all liberals in their wishful thinking that Obama was a game-changer. From the “prince of darkness,” Richard Perle, who presciently said in 2002 that “we are all neoconservatives now,” Wolfowitz, Feith, Frum, the Kristols and the Kagans, Cheney and Bolton, have taken the centre stage of American politics by “winning the argument,” according to WigWag, and shattering the unrealistic, idealistic, nursery rhymed policies of the liberals, and especially Obama’s.

And presumably even the White House is presently neo-conservative turf as Obama himself has become their disciple, according to WigWag. But Obama is the bastard offspring of the neocons as he was conceived not by their spiritual virility but by the impotent idealistic policies of his own, which in a profligacy of ‘many nights stands’ on the domestic and international arena proved to be total failures, as the neoconservatives had predicted they would be. The clang sound of the chain of failures in health care, in climate change, in his toothless supine diplomacy in the Middle East, in his hope of changing the view of America’s enemies by practicing American values and asking for penance from those wronged from America’s past ‘sins’, have forced President Obama to semi-adopt the policies of the neocons. Being a ‘pragmatic chameleon’ he had to change his colors purely for his own political survival. Obama is no voluntary convert to neo-conservatism. He is perforce adopting and implementing some of the policies of the neoconservatives because they are the only reasonable policies in town and the only ones that can save his political scalp.

It’s due to the poverty of liberal policies that Obama is ostensibly attempting to become politically a ‘nouveau riche’ from the wealthy and fecund policies of the neo-conservatives.

WigWag responded to the above as follows:

Kotzabasis, I enjoyed this comment and think you made some excellent points; especially when you characterize Obama as the “bastard offspring” of the neoconservatives.

At the risk of sounding wishy-washy, I’m not sure that it’s a question of whether I was once an opponent of the neocons or am slightly less of an opponent now.

I thought the war in Iraq was a mistake for the United States and the West. Whether it was a mistake for Iraq is an open question. Clearly the Kurds are delighted that the United States invaded and eliminated Saddam Hussein; presumably the Shia are too. The Sunni, not so much.

I think it’s hard to argue that the War in Iraq has not left the United States and all of its allies worse off than they were before the invasion…

But opponents of the neoconservatives will be making a serious mistake themselves if they think that the failures in Iraq or other errors in judgment by leading neoconservatives prove that as a philosophy neo-conservatism is wrong.

After all, the serious tactical blunders that the United States made in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia didn’t prove that containment was the wrong strategy to confront the Soviets.

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.

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.

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.

Threats

By Steve Coll The New Yorker January 18, 2010

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

While Americans and international law are violated by the fiendish jihadists and the U.S. is involved in a relentless war with these fanatics, Clemons is concerned with “inhumane detainee operations.” What a memorial of mockery Clemons makes of Americans killed by the jihadists.

Here we have the ‘playwright’ Steve Coll staging on The New Yorker his burlesque play of al-Qaeda and terrorism and receiving the plaudits of Clemons in the form of a standing ovation. Proudly displaying his originality by writing, that because “Al-Qaeda provides no social services [like Hamas] and thus has built no political movement” it has no mass support among Muslims. But Al-Qaeda is and remains a powerful ideological movement and Coll is oblivious of the historical fact that ideology is the sire of politics and the foundation stone of political movements. Think of Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

Furthermore, no radical imam has denounced bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Muslim countries or in Western ones and there are thousands of worshippers who follow those imams who vehemently preach violent death to the infidel West and its Great Satan America, and therefore many Muslims are sub rosa, if not open, supporters of al-Qaeda.

Also the closing of Gitmo for the purpose of improving “America’s image abroad” does not come free and pays a heavy price: U.S. weakness in the eyes of terrorists and thus a centripetal force for recruiting jihadists.

Obama’s “forward defense” is a red herring. He has already adumbrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and his latest stupid ‘forward’ announcement that he is not going to deploy U.S. forces in Yemen, and by implication in Somalia, makes his “forward defense” a fiasco. As this advanced announcement by Obama signals and encourages jihadists from other Muslim countries and from the Muslim Diaspora to move into these two countries without fearing that they will be met by the might of the U.S. military.

Lastly, it’s monumental idiocy for Obama to believe that by ‘recruiting’ American “values and institutions” in the fight against fanaticism, he will defeat the “hateful ideology.” And, indeed, President Obama “has neither overestimated nor underestimated terrorism,” he has nullified it. For what else means his initial reaction to the Nigerian suicide bomber when he dubbed him as being an “isolated extremist” not connected to a terrorist organization?

By 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 religious 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 progressive political ‘pantaloonist’, peregrinating in his colourful patched pantaloon on the internet with the slogan “down with all revolutions.”

A healthy, challenging, and happy new year to all readers of Nemesis.

Con George-Kotzabasis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s impossible to conceive that after the series of rebuffs by Iran to Obama’s diplomatic overture that the White House would “endorse’ this “highest-level American visit to Tehran,” in the person of John Kerry, with a new “message.” In the context of this Iranian rebuff the U.S. persistence to continue its attempt to engage in diplomacy by sending its high plenipotentiary John Kerry to the Mullah-Land will be sending just one “message” to the Mullahcracy, the perception of the furthering decrepitude and weakening of the Obama administration. Within such perception it’s beyond comprehension that anyone could believe that the Iranian regime, even in the context of “comprehensive negotiations,” would abandon its strategic goal to acquire nuclear weapons. And such potential endorsement of John Kerry to visit Tehran shows quite clearly, that President Obama is surrounded by a coterie of unimaginative and inept advisors. The latter are making a laughing stock and a misalignment of Metternichian diplomacy.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The New America Foundation (NAF) poll is most doubtful, if not a wishful concoction, that President Obama has not significantly reduced Israeli support for his Middle East policy with the fateful diplomatic error he made with his insistence and demand that Israel cease all settlements. An overwhelming majority of Israelis rejected this demand of Obama as being not only against Israel’s interests, but also, for its political naivety, as shown by a poll of the prestigious Jerusalem Post last August. That such a significant majority of Israelis against Obama can now be transformed in such a short time by the NAF poll into a 41% favourable for Obama goes against the grain of elementary logic and places a great question mark about the credibility and objectivity of the NAF survey. Moreover, the perception among a huge majority of Israelis that Obama is pro-Palestinian, according to the same poll of the Jerusalem Post, makes the NAF poll a “bull’s trail”.

The above post elicited the following comments in The Washington Note.

Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Dec 11 2009, 9:43PM – Link

Kotz, considering that Steve provides a link to the poll itself, and its methodology, it might help your argument if you actually gave us chapter and verse about why you think the NAF poll is skewed.

And I find it hard to believe that you are too stupid to see how this works in Netanyahu’s favor. Not only does it demonstrate that the Israeli’s appreciate a cowardly and subservient American President, it also telegraphs to Obama that if he continues with the same kind of toothless horseshit the Israelis will abstain from using his middle name when feeding our worthless sack of shit Fourth Estate the script for the next edition of….

“Israel, (the good guys), necessarily exterminate more Palestinians, (the evil doers), while continuing the ethnic fumigation of Jerusalem.”

Posted by JohnH, Dec 11 2009, 10:59PM – Link

Yes, nice poll numbers are moot if you don’t have the spine to use them to promote American interests…

It’s charming that Kotz thinks that stopping the settlements is the problem. For Kotz’ information, most of the rest of the world thinks that constructing the settlements is the problem, and that Obama had it exactly right–before his spine turned to mush.

Posted by nadine, Dec 12 2009, 12:26AM – Link

“According to the New American Foundation Poll, President Obama has a 41% favorable / 37% unfavorable rating among Israelis. His unfavorable rating is only four points higher than the unfavorable rating for George W. Bush, who is routinely characterized as very popular among Israelis.”

ROFL. Here is the question they asked:
“Q.20 Now, I’d like to rate your feelings toward some people, with one hundred meaning a VERY
WARM, FAVORABLE feeling; zero meaning a VERY COLD, UNFAVORABLE feeling; and fifty
meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from zero to one hundred, the higher the
number the more favorable your feelings are toward that person or organization. If you have no opinion or
never heard of that person, please say so.”

It was purely on Obama’s personal popularity. It had nothing to do with his policies at all, and nothing to do with his Mideast policies. It had nothing to do with his job approval either. Totally misleading. His personal popularity is higher than his job approval in the US too.
The rest of the poll is packed full of push-poll questions about good things that will arrive after an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. I’d love to see Scott Rasmussen analyze these questions.

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 12 2009, 11:37AM – Link

Looking over all of the numbers in the poll that pertain to Obama, we get this picture: On the whole, Israelis think Obama is honest and trustworthy, don’t think he is particularly naïve, think he will improve America’s standing in the world, and think his election is “good for the problems facing the world”.

But most don’t think he supports Israel or shares their values. So there is some significant number of Israelis who think Obama is good for America and the world, but bad for Israel, and thus admit to a divergence between Israeli interests and non-Israeli interests.
And then there’s this stunner: 39% of Israelis believe Barack Obama is a Muslim! And as I read the supporting numbers, over half of Sephardic Jews think he is a Muslim.

Obama might be able to help himself in Israeli if he could just figure out how to bring that number down to 25% by convincing some of these folks that he is actually a Christian. Maybe he should send them Christmas cards.

As others have mentioned, the key results are hard to interpret because they don’t show a breakdown into Arab and non-Arab Israelis. That data appears to be on the supporting “Crosstabs” PDF. There is a section for questions 20 to 29 that breaks the responses down by respondent identification.

As expected, Obama is more popular among Israeli Arabs than Jews. For some reason, Obama is very unpopular with Israel’s young people. I wonder if that has something to do with demographics. The Jewish birth rate in the colonies is higher, as I understand it, than the birth rate in the rest of Israel.

Kotzabasis says,

JohnH

It’s true of course that the political “tyroism” of ‘the world thinks that constructing the settlements is the problem.’ But the cardinal question is not what the world thought about the freeze of the settlements but what Israelis felt about it. And with Obama’s diplomatic faux pas on a total freeze he missed the wood for the trees as to the feelings of an overwhelming number of Israelis.

Kervick’s post is brimming, as usually, with contradictions. While 39% percent of Jews and over half of Sephardic Jews believe that Obama is a Muslim, nonetheless Kervick deduces from the poll that ‘on the whole Israelis think that Obama is honest and trustworthy,’ and that he is ‘good for the problems facing the world.’ That Israelis could make such a positive assessment about a “Muslim” president is beyond belief. Kervick takes a flight in the face of glaring contradiction.

What is interesting and revealing at the same time however, is that Clemons cleverly abstains from making a direct positive assessment of the NAF poll and uses a mouthpiece, Congressman Robert Wexler, to evaluate and wax lyrical about the poll. Is it because Clemons is concerned that he would compromise his political nous by directly accepting the dubious results of a dodgy poll?

JohnH says,

As Kotz notes, “the cardinal question is not what the world thought about the freeze of the settlements but what Israelis felt about it.” And what makes Israel great is that it can lead the US around by its nose…
If the US wants to be respected as a leader in the world, it will have to solve its Israel problem.

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 13 2009, 12:02AM – Link

“Kervick’s post is brimming, as usually, with contradictions. While 39% percent of Jews and over half of Sephardic Jews believe that Obama is a Muslim, nonetheless Kervick deduces from the poll that ‘on the whole Israelis think that Obama is honest and trustworthy,’ and that he is ‘good for the problems facing the world.’”

Kotzabasis, rather than allowing you to go further in making a fool of yourself, I will instead suggest you follow the link Steve provided, and read the results for poll questions 30, 39 and 42. Take note of the numbers under the “Very Well” and “Well” columns – which are summed up in the “Total Well” column. After you have absorbed those results, you will see that I didn’t “deduce” anything about majority opinion in Israel, but simply read it straight off the poll results.

Posted by kotzabasis, Dec 13 2009, 4:14AM – Link

Kervick

Well, well, you might not be a fool but you certainly are sans political insight. That you ‘simply read it straight off the poll results’ without seeing the flaunting contradiction or commenting upon it if you had seen it, that is, while stunningly, according to you, a majority of Sephardic Jews think that Obama ‘is a Muslim,’ yet according to questions 30, 39, and 42 a majority of Jews consider him favourably. The fact that you missed this glaring contradiction of the poll and didn’t sniff its “bull’s trail”, i.e., the cozenage of the poll, makes you a political simpleton.

Posted by Dan Kervick, Dec 13 2009, 10:10AM – Link

Kotzabasis, you’re just trying to cover your embarrassment now with more ad hominem sneering and ad hoc arguments.

The statistic about Sephardic Jews is also to be found in the results in the Crosstabs page. It’s not just “according to me”. What you seem to be suggesting is that the poll must be faulty in some way because these results are a “glaring contradiction”. The fact that you see them as contradictory reflects only your own bigoted preconceptions, not any incoherence in the poll results.

It is possible that many of these Sephardic Jews only distantly follow American politics. They know that the US president’s father is of Kenyan origin, and that they are both named “Barack Obama”, so assume, not knowing much else about his personal history and religious conversion, that he is a Muslim. It is also possible, as I think Nadine suggested, that these Sephardic Jews’ attitudes simply reflect their own traditions, in which a person’s religious identity isn’t something one can choose, but is a result of parentage. Just as they believe that what makes them Jews is that their mothers were Jewish, they believe that the fact that Obama’s father was a Muslim makes him a Muslim.

Kotzabasis says,

Kervick

You are a very bad reader. The phrase ‘according to me’ follows the word ‘stunningly’ and applies to it, which in your first post you typed as ‘stunner,’ and did not apply to the results in the Crosstabs page.

Just answer one question and you will see clearly by your own answer that the ‘contradiction’ is free from any bigoted preconceptions. Can you imagine that a majority of Sephardic Jews that assume correctly or wrongly-in this case of course wrongly-that Obama is a Muslim would also consider him favourably, when the whole Muslim world is deadly against them? By being overly logical in your second paragraph you continue to miss this glaring contradiction in its bellicose context of Muslims and Jews. This contradiction in itself speaks volumes about the cognitive status of the poll which you parroted sans critical scrutiny.