Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

In the latest talks between Iranian representatives and the five permanent UN Security Council (SC) members plus Germany last Saturday in Geneva, the chief negotiator of Iran reading from a written text rejected the package that was offered to Iran by Javier Solama, the special envoy of the European Union. Already less than an hour of the talks, Keyvan Imani, a member of the Iranian delegation, casted his doubt over the talks saying, “suspension- there is no chance for that,” in reference to the SC demand that Iran suspends its uranium enrichment. He also downplayed the presence of William Burns in these talks, –which the international media overplayed as being a “bend” in Bush’s diplomacy toward the Iranians in its up till now refusal to participate in any direct talks with the latter—saying that “he is just a member of the delegation.”

Meanwhile, Saeed Jalili, the chief negotiator of Iran, evading the issue of suspension and tongue in cheek indulged himself in literary allusions using a simile to describe diplomacy’s glacial motion as being like a beautiful Persian carpet that moves slowly as it is made and ending with a beautiful result. It’s beyond doubt that the six superpower delegates wouldn’t mind treading and romping on that beautiful Persian carpet, but some of them might be more concerned about the ugly things slowly but surely are clawing on that carpet, such as nuclear weapons, than its ‘aesthetic’ beautiful pattern.

The Iranian delegation also attempted to outsmart their Western and Chinese counterparts in the ‘photogenic stakes.’ They suggested a photo in which Saeed Jalili and Javier Solama will be in front shaking hands and the six superpower delegates standing behind them providing the background. The five Security Council members plus the German one gave this suggestion of the Iranians the short shrift it deserved.

It’s time for America and its allies to realize that they are dealing with an unappeasable, irreconcilable, and duplicitous enemy. Moreover an enemy who unshakably and truly believes that he is implementing the non-negotiable agenda of God. In such situation only a war premised diplomacy threatening Iran’s theocratic and military leadership with obliteration has a chance to create a fissure within the regime, at least among its more moderate elements, ousting the Mullahcracy and replacing it with a regime that would accept the demands of the international community. Only when America places its lethal armaments on the carpet of Iran with the threat that they are going to be used if the latter persists in its intransigency, will the deadlock of conventional diplomacy end. In the event that the theocratic regime continues to walk and talk the path of ‘martyrdom,’ then America and its staunch allies will have no other option but to adopt Cato’s strategy. Delenda est Carthago.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

By Con George-Kotzabasis
The slightly “growing strength” of al- Sadr before the Surge Yes but after the Surge No! It was the military campaign and its political concatenations under Petraeus-Crocker that changed the political configuration of Iraq and weakened al-Sadr’s position, especially after the defeat of the extremist elements in Basra and Sadr City by the Iraqi-American forces. His call to his supporters to stop fighting emanated from his realization that his armed militia was threatened with decimation.

It’s al-Sadr that has shifted towards the new political process, almost made in the image of American strategy, and not the other way around, as some analysts claim. It’s ironic that the neocon skeleton of democracy in Iraq may still be able to put some flesh on itself, while “burning” the flesh of all its liberal critics and traducers for their “sin” of political callowness and malevolence. And Iraq will start the ball of democracy rolling to the rest of the Middle East and hence consummating Bush’s doctrine.

Over to you

By Con George-Kotzabasis

In the annals of history and war no statesman or military leader ever pulled out his troops from a crucial military engagement at the threshold of its military victory. But in a reversal of these annals it will be written that in the twenty-first century the Commander-in- Chief of a great nation pledged to his people to do just that. Barack Obama will go down in history as the uniquely foolish and shameful commander who pulled out his troops from a stupendously critical operation against global terror while his magnificent soldiers were winning this war. Thus not only depriving his soldiers from returning from Iraq with the laurels of triumph on their heads, but, also, depriving America of the crown of victory. Moreover, this Christian convert inadvertently by this inexcusable political lapse and gargantuan error of judgment, will be passing this victory to his father’s religion, to Islam, to the extremists of Iraq and Iran and al Qaeda. This retreat of defeatism from Iraq will surpass the defeat of America in Vietnam in geometrical proportions whose enormous size can only be measured by a series of reflective mirrors. Such a defeat will strike a Jupiterian bolt to the reputation of America and its ability as the dominant power to continue playing a major and vital role in the geopolitics of the world and steering the latter, whenever it’s possible, to the calm waters of the harbor of peace.

If great events in history could be reversed, like a movie reel, and Obama was cast in the leading role as a malignant fairy able to reverse great past events in such a film, then the great Athenian statesman Themistocles would have withdrawn the Greek fleet from the battle of Salamis that defeated the Persian invasion of Greece; Alexander the great would have withdrawn his soldiers from the battle of Issus that defeated the Persian Empire; Hannibal would have withdrawn his soldiers and elephants from the battle of Cannae that defeated the Republic of Rome; Charles Martel would have withdrawn his forces from the battle of Poitiers that defeated the Saracen Muslims in their invasion of Europe; President Lincoln would have ordered, after the battle of Gettysburg, general Ulysses Grant to stop his attrition of Robert Lee’s Confederate army that ended the civil war. In such a script, the savant of Harvard sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office would be writing his ignominious magnum opus to the everlasting humiliating dishonor of America.

But the ascendancy of Obama to the presidency is not only a great moral issue for America but also an immense political issue as it strikes an arrow into the heart of the hegemonic status of America as the supreme paramount power in world affairs, especially at a time when Western civilization is facing an existential challenge from the rise of radical Islam and its fanatical irreconcilable implacable cohorts of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. No challenge of such magnitude and prodigious danger was ever resolved by populist remedies and soaring rhetorical chicanery. The ‘wings’ of diplomacy that Obama chose to attach to his ‘body-politic’ and fly over the turbulent spots of the world with the aim of remedying them, are the wings of Icarus that by flying and coming close to these turbulent spots of the sun will lead to his crash and drowning in his ‘oceanic diplomacy’. But the great tragedy is that this drowning is not merely personal but national, as it will ‘drown’ the power, reputation, and prestige of America as a great nation. Further, it will be a top of the bill gleeful spectacle for all the enemies, begrudgers, and critics of America to see the great eagle plunging and drowning in the waters of its own making.

It’s for all the above reasons that the November election will be a test match whether the hard ball of politics will be pitched by the weak hands of a florid flashy political amateur, by the populist spin-change of Obama, or by the firm hands of the principled experienced politician McCain who embodies Melville’s Captain Ahab’s spirit–which is the spirit of America–that would strike the sun if it insulted him, as McCaine did from his cell in Vietnam.

To be or not to be is the question for Americans who are proud of their nation as the beacon of liberty and the indefatigable resolute protector of the great achievements of Western civilization. Whether America will continue to be at the summit of its benign supremacy that is axial to world order or whether it will be pulled down from this summit by the rash vacuous rhetoric of a wannabe would be president to the peril of the United States and of the West at a time that the latter are threatened by the suicidal holy warriors of Islamofascism is the question.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now