Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: Israel/Palestine and Iran: Linkage Should be Hard Wired by Obama Team

By Steve Clemons The Washington Note August 07, 2010

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

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

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America hijacked by a Lemon! This will be the historical caption and history’s verdict on President Obama in his foreign policy misadventures of weakness. Who could have thought that the third rate powers of Brazil and Turkey would have the chutzpah and insolence to rudely supplant and supersede U.S. diplomacy on a most grave issue of our times, i.e., the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, by their own diplomacy, if America was not perceived under Obama as being weak and disrespectful? And the West Point speech clearly showed that the President still believes that diplomacy sans ‘rattling the sabres’ remains the pivot of his foreign policy despite the fact that this policy abysmally failed to deliver on his primary goals. That is, enticing the enemies of the U.S. to take the diplomatic road and repossess, by this ‘loving diplomacy’ toward implacable foes, the prestige and respect America had prior to the so called dispossession of these attributes by his Texan predecessor.

President Obama stuck to his geopolitical ignorant denial, due to lack of imagination and political nous, does not realize that a symphony, a ‘concert of peace’ having as players other powers can only succeed and be applauded if it has a Karajan as conductor. It is this role of the indispensable conductor in the realm of geopolitics that America has lost with the ‘sitting’ of Obama in the Oval Office. However, there are dawning auspicious signs that the lemon that Americans elected as president is in the process of being squeezed out. But the danger is that by the end of this process, the United States itself might be squeezed out of its strength as the sole superpower.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

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

By Con George-Kotzabasis

For Whom the Bell Tolls

At the threshold of the Twentieth-first century Western civilization as a cultural political and economic formation encounters an elemental danger emanating from a Muslim brotherhood of religious fanatics, supported openly and covertly by a league of theocratic-rogue states, who use the ultimate means of terror, i.e., suicide bombers clad in civilian raiment against the infidels of the West. This great danger will not be neutered or eliminated by opening a dialogue, as is the naïve wont of the Obama administration, with such vehement implacable irreconcilable enemies of the West and its dominant power America, but can only be settled in the field of battle by the decisive defeat of these religious fanatics.

It’s the ultimate nonsense to believe, as President Obama does, that there could be “mutual interests” between the United States-European Union and these theocratic-rogue states on the basis of which an open door policy of diplomacy would be the most effective instrument to extinguish the present bellicosity between them. The knock on any door diplomacy of the Obama administration has crashed at its first experimental flight. Neither the gentle style of Obama nor his mournful penance speech in Cairo replete with mea culpas of past American actions and ‘sins’, were able to persuade either Iran or Syria or the PLO or the Taliban to take their seats at the diplomatic table. This resounding deafness of the enemies of the U.S.–excluding the PLO– to the ‘reasoning’ calls of the Obama administration to substitute diplomacy for an escalating belligerence between the opposing parties, shows clearly how doltishly unreasonable and futile has been President Obama’s overture to diplomacy toward recalcitrant and irreconcilable enemies. It is quite obvious by now that the burning issues between the belligerents are not going to be resolved on the part of the United States by soft power diplomats bearing olive branches but by hard power diplomats ‘rattling their sabres’. And in case this bellicose diplomacy also fails then the issues will ultimately have to be settled by the United States and its allies by unsheathing the sword.

Setting Up an Anti-Terrorist Foreign Legion

The menace of Islamist terror is moving like a migratory bird across the continents to find suitable safe havens in which to propagate and train its deadly species and from which it can launch its destroying operations against the infidel west. It is for this reason that the war on terror cannot be localized and must be fought on a transnational terrain. And as we have witnessed with the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq, jihadists who survived the lethal attacks of U.S. Special Forces, under the command of General McChrystal, and of the Marines, moved into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen and increased the local ranks of the jihadists in those countries and brought to them the knowledge and deadly methods of how to kill Americans, infidels, and their Muslim collaborators. And the latest news are that jihadists from Afghanistan have moved into Somalia and the lethal attack on a Mosque in Mogadishu few days ago that killed and injured close to a hundred civilians is being attributed to them.

To counter and to clip the wings of this migratory deadly bird it is necessary that a conglomeration of worldwide powers, that would include Russia, China, and Japan, should come to an agreement to set up a global anti-terrorist foreign legion that would operate trans-nationally covertly and overtly in all areas where jihadists are trained, nourished, and engaged in fighting. The rationale for setting up such an anti-terrorist international entity is based on a strategy that clearly recognizes that since terror operates in a world without borders and trespasses the sovereignty of nations, the forces that are countering terror must also operate on the same principle. In such conditions to uphold the precept of national sovereignty axiomatically, especially when the particular nation is either unwilling or militarily incapable to prevent the incursion of terrorists in its own territory and stopping them from using it as a safe haven, is to severely disadvantage militarily the nations which are fighting terrorists and to prolong the conflict at the expense of higher civilian and military casualties.

Moreover, since Islamic terror threatens the economic stability of the world and the prosperity of its people, the burden of fighting it should fall on its Atlas’s world shoulders and not solely on the shoulders of the United States. Hence by the logic of the situation it must be a multilateral reaction by all the nations of the world that are under this menacing threat. Further, it will inflict a serious blow to the jihadist propaganda that the United States is anti-Muslim and will irreversibly deprive al-Qaeda and its sundry affiliates of this false claim that has become a roll call for recruiting Muslims into their ranks, since now the whole world will be fighting and killing the holy warriors of Islam and not only America. This in itself will gravely damage the ability of al-Qaeda to attract future terrorists from Muslim countries and the Diaspora to join it as it will discourage young Muslims to become terrorists seen that the whole world is hostile toward Muslim terror and is being mobilized to fight it. Also, the prowess of the foreign legionnaires, along with other state forces of American, British, Australian, and European, will erode the potency of the jihadists to actuate successful operations with the great possibility that such a series of failures in their terrorist actions will implant great doubts among them that they are implementing the wishes of Allah. It is precisely in this, once the terrorist fanatics are ‘bedded’ on the Procrustean bed of measured failures, that the decisive defeat of the jihadists lays. As terrorists lose their faith that Allah is on their side they will be sided-out from the ranks of al-Qaeda, and all radical imams will be emasculated of their spiritual ability to be the incubators of jihadist terror.

Whose Task is to Train and Lead the Foreign Legionnaires?

Like in all difficult tasks, the training and leading the foreign legionnaires must be assigned to the best experts in the field. And beyond any doubt the countries that are deemed to have such experts in the art of Mars are the United States, Russia, Israel, Britain, France, and Australia. It is from these countries that the technical and military leadership of the Foreign Legion should sally forth. But the lower echelons that will form the Legion will come from all over the world excluding only Muslim countries and not delimited to the above named countries. There is a huge reserve of young armed forces veterans and adventurers of all types, as the private security personnel deployed both in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, that will be willing and eager to join such a high powered elite military world-unit whose tasks and high pay for their accomplishment would be enormously attractive to people of picaresque swashbuckling temperament and the world prestige that their successful overt and clandestine operations against formidable enemies will confer upon them.

Moreover, since the formation of the Foreign Legion will be composed of multi-colored personnel it will easily brush off the racist strictures and condemnation of its hostile critics and its Islamic foes that it is a white imperialist venture and attack upon all those who have no Caucasian pigmentation. Also, the ingress of this multi-colored force in countries, where the jihadists are using them as safe havens or are attempting to overthrow their less than stable fledgling governments, as currently happening both in Somalia and Yemen, for the purpose of capturing or eliminating the jihadists, will be seen by the local population more favourably and not as an American or British occupation, as they tended to view it in Iraq and as they presently view it in Afghanistan. If it will still be seen by the locals as a foreign occupation of their land it will come under the colors of a “United Nations” one and not of the “hated” Americans. And once it becomes clear to the local population that the aim of the occupying force is to defeat and expunge the jihadists from their midst, such an “occupation” might be more tolerant and agreeable to the local inhabitants, especially when its necessity will be perceived by them of having no other goal than their security and the restoration to their country of a safe and normal life.

Strategic Advantages

The formation of the Foreign Legion will bring a cascade of political and strategic advantages to the countries of the world that are fighting the holy warriors of Islam in this stealthy war of terror. In the political arena, by ‘mobilizing’ the world against fanatic terror it will eliminate any misconceptions about the seriousness of the terrorist threat that some people may still have. And by showing the determination of their political leaders to protect their peoples by all savvy means, including that of a force of international condottieri that will be decisive to the defeat of the jihadists on a global scale, it will rally the people behind them. Further, it will lighten the burden of those countries such as the U.S., the UK, and Australia that carry at this moment the major weight of the war–that has provoked an anti-war sentiment in their own countries that serves willy-nilly the interests of the enemy as it has done in the past in Vietnam–by shifting it on more shoulders and hence making it an international serving duty.

In the strategic arena, by being able to operate on a transnational legitimate base without national sovereignty restrictions been placed upon its military movements, it will be able to deploy its lethal forces swiftly in all areas of this borderless war in search and destroy operations and it will deprive the jihadists of safe havens and cripple their tendency to move from countries where they have been defeated– as it happened in Iraq when many of the foreign jihadists who survived the Petraeus Surge moved to Afghanistan and Pakistan–to other countries, such as Somalia, Yemen, and Morocco, to continue their fight against the infidels and the regimes that collaborate with the latter. Moreover, it will have a decisive impact upon the whole psychological structure of terrorism which is pivotal to attracting young Muslims to its cause. Since by making it more difficult, and indeed, preventing, jihadists from entering other Muslim or semi-Muslim countries, such as Nigeria, to foment jihad and by their mere presence in those countries to recruit locals in their ranks, it will turn off the tap of recruitment and hence their ability to launch large successful operations against the non-believers.

Hence the Foreign Legion by chasing the jihadists wherever they are, in the East or the West, and depriving them of their potency to succeed in their actions, will inflict a devastating blow both to the recruiting grounds of terror, i.e., to the Madrasas and Mosques, and in the field of battle, where the issue will be decided. And the paucity of martyrs and their eventual unavailability will make the seventy-two virgins to keep everlastingly their chastity.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

By Con George-Kotzabasis

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

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

By Con George-Kotzabasis

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

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

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

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.”

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

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 4:58AM – Link

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

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

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

You`re distorting my words, Kotz.

I don`t “believe” anything on these matters yet. There are too many if`s and if-not`s here. If it goes to the Security Council and Russia votes for sanctions in the Security Council, I`ll “believe” so.

China delivered some critical statements on their part just hours ago. Time will tell.

My initial point was an attempt to formulate how Obama seemed to see the missile shield issue, the relationship to Russia, the Iran issue, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a connected and complex whole, and that this way of thinking contained a lot of unpredictable factors, probably too many if he has built a strategy on this. Perhaps my guesses are wrong, perhaps they are correct. But I see no particular reason for optimism on Iran and Israel-Palestine in the coming months and years. Is that clear?

If you want to twist and bend this in any direction, go on.

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

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

Paul Norheim says

For ad hominem “thinkers” and strategy geniuses like Kotz, this is an exercise beyond their capabilities, and just another opportunity to bash his opponents for their lack of strength and amour propre in their cul de sac.

But now that WigWag, whom Kotz sympathize with, actually agrees that possible sanctions were behind Obama`s decisions on the missile shield, and also seems to think that the likelihood of Russia getting on board on this might have increased a bit after Medvedev`s statement yesterday, I expect that Kotz will keep silent on this issue.

WigWag says

There is an irony in all of this. Conservatives like Kotzabasis and Nadine are far more suspicious of the Russians than the Israeli Government is. They can speak for themselves about whether my surmise is right or not; but whether it’s a carryover from the Cold War days or something else, conservatives are suspicious any time the United States fails to “stand up” to Russia.

This is no longer true in Israel. Israel sees Russia as an increasingly important partner. A large portion of the Israeli population is Russian and has cultural ties to the “old country.” Russia and Israel have ever increasing commercial relations, especially in military equipment. Israel appreciates the fact that they never have to worry about criticism from the Russians on the human rights front (Russian behavior in Chechnya makes the War in Gaza look like a Girl Scout picnic). And Israel sees good relations with Russia (and China and India) as a counter balance to their overdependence on the United States. Israel also appreciates the fact that Russians don’t care about Palestinian aspirations.

This is actually one of the few examples where people who have the views of Nadine and Kotzabasis disagree with Israel. Israel wants better relations between Russia and the United States for many reasons, not the least of which is that it increases the likelihood that harsh sanctions on Iran will be enacted.

It’s conservatives who get nervous every time they see increased cooperation between Russia and the United States not Israelis.

Kotzabasis says

Norheim

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

WigWag

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

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

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

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

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A spectre is haunting the White House the spectre of Black Magic. America’s long winter of discontent–as an outcome of the so called lying, malevolent, warmongering, and unjust to the poor Bush-Cheney administration–alienation of the civilized world from the Texan presidency of quick-gun-drawing, and the hatred of America’s fanatical and deadly enemies, are going to be ‘fixed’ by a voodoo concoction of policies brewed by the modern African-American ‘medicine man’ dressed in Ivy League ‘leaves’ resident in the White House. The sole superpower whose strength has been and is pivotal to the security and economic development of many countries and which carries like Atlas the stability of the world on its strong shoulders with all the uncertainties, risks, and errors of judgment that such a heavy and multiple burden entails, is in the hands of a sorcerer’s apprentice who is cooking up a saucy condiment of magical nostrums that on the one hand will politically and socially change the United States, and on the other, will derail all the implacable Islamist fanatics from their course of hating the Great Satan. And reform them from their bad ways by demolishing the Guantanamo Walls and rendering to them not the justice that applies to hostis humani generis, to enemies of the human race, but the justice that applies to war prisoners under the Geneva Convention. This is inimitable wishful thinking that rises from the vapours of black magic.

But already President Obama’s hors d’ oeuvres policies both on the domestic and international fronts are ‘poisoning’ the stomachs of many Americans and even some of the strong stomachs of his initial supporters, as one would expect inevitably and unsurprisingly to happen from policies that spring from voodoo magic. Within six months the 61% percent support of Obama among Americans who believed he would bring real change has dropped to 51%, and presently 37% percent strongly disapprove of his presidency, a 22% percent point rise from January, and 31% percent strongly approve of it, a 14% percent point drop from January. (Rasmussen Reports.) And worse still on his health care reform a poll found that 42% percent say that the president’s plan is a bad idea–a 10% percent point jump from a month ago–and only 36% percent say it is a good idea. Moreover, 90% percent of Americans are satisfied with their present health care. These polls have put a hellish scare among his top advisers forcing them, and Obama himself, to have a special meeting to discuss this topic of his steep fall from his initial high peak within such a short time.

Domestic Front: Obama’s Changing America Yes We Can

On the domestic front two of his crucial policies for changing America, i.e., health care and climate change, emanating from his black magic policies, that is, that both of them will pay for themselves at no expense to the tax payer, are rapidly losing their magical appeal. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Senate Finance Committee Bill for his health care reform would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years. And that Obama’s Independent Medicare Advisory Council would trim Medicare costs by perhaps 0.2, a miniscule amount, according to CBO. Further in contrast to Obama’s assertion that the costs of Medicare in the second decade of its implementation would move downward, the CBO found that the “costs would significantly move upward.” It’s obvious that with these dire estimates of the CBO, President Obama will have to settle for mere “health care insurance reform and not in transforming the system of Medicare,” which was his initial goal, to quote Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post. Obama says that any bill he signs on health care will be “revenue-neutral.” But that is the road to insolvency that he himself declares to be unsustainable, as his original argument was that medical costs are destroying the economy. So how can he prevent this destruction if the only bill he will sign will be one that is revenue-neutral?

The political chicanery of the lawyer from Harvard is astounding, but politically necessary for him, to reassure the deep concerns of the electorate that his health care plan will not raise taxes to the stratosphere. It’s by such disingenuousness that President Obama attempts to deceive and dupe the public that he will not sneak his hand into the pockets of Americans to finance his health care package that will benefit mainly a minority of Americans. And even among Democrats there is an awareness of the high costs of his scheme that is metastasizing into opposition. Fifty-two “Blue Dog Democrats” not only are barking at it but might even start biting it. And the Town Halls of America are becoming a groundswell of rebellion against his health scheme whose ferocity and clamour, if it will not be appeased by the amendments that Obama will be forced to make to his legislation will seriously threaten his re-election for a second term. Obama in his desperation to save his plan brought the mantra of “prevention” that presumably would substantially reduce medical treatment costs. In the New Hampshire town hall meeting on August 11, he shouted triumphantly to his audience that prevention “saves lives. It also saves money.” But the truth is that overall preventive care increases medical costs. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote that “added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.” Nonetheless, the Harvard professor desperately resorts to the practices of black magic to salvage his Obamacare.

On climate change his special envoy Todd Stern has indicated that the US was ready to act without India or China saying that “in our view you can become an economic winner by acting,” alluding to the vast investments American entrepreneurs were readying to make in alternative sources of energy and the prodigious benefits issuing from such investment to the US economy, especially in the area of employment. Hence, the multilateralist Obama in foreign affairs will be a unilateralist in climate change. His administration will lead the way in the fight against climate change irrespective what other nations are prepared to do, such as China, India, and the other developed and developing countries. But it’s more probable than not that his cap-and-trade system will be a boondoggle scheme constructed at an enormous cost to the American economy. Cutting carbon emissions to 17% percent by 2020 and to 83% percent by 2050 would be highly costly. A 15% percent reduction of CO2 would increase the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. And what are the benefits issuing from the cap and trade scheme? It would lower global CO2 by 4% percent whose impact upon global warming would be virtually infinitesimal.

Moreover, the new sources of energy are still to be identified by the scrutiny and the rigor of science. Will they be a compound of solar energy, wind, and nuclear power, and with the exception of the latter, will they work? It’s obvious that President Obama’s cap-and-trade system is adorned with all the uncertainties of fortune. Obama is entering a Las Vegas casino to try his luck by playing a profligate crap game with other peoples’ money. But there are some Democrats, fearful of the lashing they could get at the coming election that are not willing to participate in this throwing of the dice. “Ten Democrats from states that produce coal…said they could not support a bill that did not protect American industries from exports from countries that did not impose similar restraints on emissions.” (New York Times, August 10, 2009.) And the President’s aids facing this opposition not only from their own Democratic ranks but also from a majority of the public are trying to find an easy sell talking about “energy security” and “green jobs” abandoning their earlier position of being prepared to push for tough measures needed to cap emissions. So Obama’s unrealistic and ‘fantasmagoric’ claim to lead on climate change will be no more than a hissing balloon that he will be taking to the Copenhagen meeting in December.

On race relations President Obama imprudently interceded in favour of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, and lambasted the white policeman, James Crowley, who arrested the professor for ‘burglary’ by saying that “the police had acted stupidly” thus making the matter worse by inflaming the race issue as it was a white policeman who arrested the black professor. Immediately after his faux pas he admitted that he was not aware of all the facts and tried to apologise both to sergeant Crowley and to the police union that promptly supported the latter. To ‘fix’ his blunder Obama invited both the professor and the policeman to the White House for a beer to cool the racial tensions that the President’s own comments had incited. The media jocularly dubbed it as the “Beer Summit Diplomacy” between the President and the two disputants, and made fun of Obama in his failed diplomacy to reconcile the two parties, and one might add while he was confident that with his new diplomacy he would reconcile the imams of Tehran, as the “two gentlemen agree to disagree,” to quote sergeant Crowley. It does not augur well for President Obama as his stupid slip will awake the race issue at the next election that had been dormant in the last one, making it electorally completely unpalatable to Obama, as on this issue alone he could lose the election and as the hate that trumped the race issue at the last election against the Republicans is fizzling out.

Foreign Policy: Obama’s Big Test

President Obama’s big test, however, will be with the implacable deadly enemies of America. In the domain of foreign affairs will be shown whether he is a president riding his horse to victory or whether he will be a president crying like King Richard III, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (W. Shakespeare.) And the first omens do not augur well. In his ‘great’ speeches both in Prague and in Cairo, wrapped up in an embellished rhetoric delivered by his indispensable ventriloquist, the teleprompter, Obama made a confession of mea culpas of past American actions as if by such confession and expiation America’s irreconcilable and hateful enemies would forgive the ‘sins’ of the ‘Great Satan’. His overture to a new diplomacy laden with olive branches and empty of sticks hoping that by replacing the so called ‘belligerent’ policies of the former Bush-Cheney administration that to its critics, including Obama, increased and made more menacing the enemies of the US, that this will decrease hostility toward America and entice its inveterate foes to bring and resolve their grievances on the table of negotiations, is a dangerous wishful thinking that will seriously discredit and erode America’s prestige as a superpower, and its consequence will be to enfeeble its ability to play a decisive pivotal role in the security and stability of the world.

For a statesman of a great power which is the “un-wobbly pivot” around whose axis the political and economic stability of the world turns, it’s axiomatic that one must identify and be aware of one’s potentially deadly enemies at their ‘budding’ stage and deal with them decisively and promptly before they become stronger. This axiom applies especially when a great leader makes the judgment that this burgeoning enemy is fanatically irreconcilable and cannot be appeased by any reasonable offers. History is full of tragedies that have issued from the inability of political leaders to foresee the dangers that would arise from unappeasable enemies determined to achieve their goals. A recent example of lack of foresight and imagination by European leaders was the occupation of Rhineland by the Nazis. In March 1936, Hitler sent few battalions on motor cycles and occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland and tore the Locarno Pact to pieces. Neither the French nor the British governments reacted to Germany’s aggression which if they had done so, according to some eminent historians, like the German Golo Mann, would have forced Hitler to withdraw his battalions with the possibility of even ousting him as Chancellor. Winston Churchill alone advocated military action against the Rhineland occupation through cooperation by the British and the French. But the acquiescence of the last two countries to the violation of the Locarno Pact whetted Hitler’s appetite for more egregious territorial encroachments. After this initial success of Hitler we all know the great tragedy that befell on mankind.

President Obama belongs to this ilk of political leaders that are comfortable sitting in the armchairs of the ‘Chamberlain Appeasing Club.’ He believes like ‘“peace in our times” Chamberlain’, that America’s mortal enemies can turn out to be good fellows if one treats them with dignity, respect, and comity and eschews the use of the instruments of force against them. He is also of the opinion that the UN, that ‘Tower of Babel’ of dissent and disunity on so many political and military crises that afflict the globe, is an effective vehicle that can bring peace and security in nations that are ravaged by the military brutality of despotic regimes, and indeed, can be the fulcrum with the right leadership in its ranks to place the political stability of the world on a solid foundation.

Susan Rice, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, outlined Obama’s diplomatic priorities in her talk at New York University on August 13, 2009, in these terms. The US views the UN as essential to tackle global security threats. “There is no substitute for the legitimacy of the UN can impart on its potential to mobilize the widest possible coalitions…the world body is essential to our efforts to galvanize concerted actions that make Americans safer and more secure.” In this peroration of praise for the UN, Ambassador Rice did not mention one word about the great threat emanating from extremist militant fanatical Islam, and by what methods the UN would “galvanize concerted actions” against this great menace that threatens Western civilization. Moreover, what is amusing and at the same time of great concern due to the seriousness of the matter is that Ambassador Rice had the intellectual chutzpah before an intelligent audience to replace the real documented weakness of the UN in a multiple number of crises over a long period of time with the mythical strength of the UN. And still of greater concern is that according to the “diplomatic priorities” of President Obama the latter might have a propensity and would be willing to ‘outsource’ the security of the United States, the sole superpower, to the United Nations.

Obama of course is neither a proponent of individual or collective suicide or euthanasia, and there are no “death panels” in his health care scheme, as some of his critics like Sarah Palin have claimed, although the latter to her credit subsequently has watered down this accusation against Obama. But the vaguely seen outline of a skeleton that has all the characteristics of a ‘death panel’ is rising in his foreign policy. His willingness to outsource the security and the vital interests of the US to the collective weakness and fecklessness of the UN and to a disarmed diplomacy will have no other consequence other than the geopolitical suicide or euthanasia of America as a superpower. Moreover, Obama’s foreign policy stands in blatant contradiction to his policy of climate change. While his stand to the hypothetical danger that human emissions are endangering the planet is unilateral i.e. he is prepared to act alone irrespective what other countries are doing, to the real danger emanating from fanatical Islam against America, his stand is multilateral, i.e., he is unwilling to act alone in defence of the security and vital interests of the United States. This contradiction in itself exposes Obama as being not a politician of principles leading from the front and dragging the masses behind him but a populist homespun opportunist following the volatile whims of a confused public and hence leading from behind. Aware that most Americans, because of their confusion, are more willing to fight the hypothetical danger of climate pollution paid mainly at the expense and sacrifices of future generations and being unwilling to fight the real danger of Islamist terror at their own expense by the present sacrifices they will have to make in a defensive war, President Obama has no political qualms in adopting this confused position of Americans about the two dangers and build on it his strategy in regard to these dangers.

President Obama’s strategy therefore on both issues is a strategy of confusion and hence its fate will be a strategy of dismal failure. On climate change whose solution depends on the collective efforts of both developed and developing countries, assuming the danger CO2 is real, Obama is prepared to act alone. On Islamist terror, which without any doubt threatens the immediate vital interests and security of the United States, Obama is prone to shift the responsibility of protecting the security of the US to the mythical competence of the United Nations to rally a strong coalition of nations that would protect and secure the safety of America. In the annals of human history this is unprecedented. No great power ever abdicated its historical responsibility to protect its vital interests and security and shifted this responsibility to a potpourri of feckless allies. In confronting great dangers a pre-eminent power rallies its allies and takes the lead against its enemies and never loses or passes the initiative to others in its own defence.

Furthermore, his present foreign policy and the advent of his new diplomacy are afflicted with a ‘split personality’. While he is unshakably committed to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and prevent the latter, as he has stated many times, from becoming a safe haven for global jihadists who would attack the United States, this commitment strangely collapses when it comes to other countries, such as Somalia and Sudan, from becoming safe havens for terrorists that would pose the same threat to America. And is unwilling to deploy US forces and destroy these fledgling beehives of terror before they become stronger, on the dogmatic principle that the US is not willing to act alone, and, presumably, this principle applies even in the case when the security of the US in verity is threatened.

Obama’s new diplomacy too, by which he hopes to bring rogue states like Iran and its terrorist proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah into the fold of reason, is inconsistent and incongruous with his stand on Afghanistan. While the critics of the Bush administration, including Obama, had argued that the war in Iraq had rallied into the ranks of terror a greater number of recruits and had made it stronger and provoked the ire of many Muslims against America for slaughtering their brothers and thus prevented the US from exercising its diplomacy with its potential to reach some accommodation with its foes, somehow, the same argument does not bear in Afghanistan where America and the infidels of the West are also ‘slaughtering’ Muslims. How in the case of Iraq US diplomacy became impotent and in the case of Afghanistan is finding its potency, is a conundrum that only practitioners of black magic are qualified of finding the answer.

It’s by such cure-all panaceas of black magic that President Obama will be changing America and the geopolitical orbit of the world. But already Obama’s nostrums are foundering on the rocks of reality. His ‘dignified’ diplomacy, with which he hoped to appease America’s foes, after the illegitimate election of Ahmadinejad and the rebellion of Iranians against it, is in a state of a long ‘vacation’, if not in tatters. In the wine flask of his health care scheme he will be pouring so much water that will become tasteless to most Americans.

As we have said nine months ago Obama does not have the political acumen and mettle to lead a great nation such as America. He will go down in history as the ‘freshman’ president whose green horns failed to bring the ‘greening’ of America and least of all the diplomatic ‘olive branching’ of the enemies of America. And I dare say that he will be a one term president if he survives, as the mounting resentment of an increasing number of Americans against his policies could tragically sire and give birth to a second ugly Oswald.

August 13, 2009
Melbourne