Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis A response to: President Obama’s First Foreign Policy Success –and it’s Only Day One By Amjad Attalah

Washington NoteJanuary 20, 2009

Amjad Attalah must be in a cavorting jocular mood. He ludicrously, for him maybe seriously, claims that the “cease-fire” in Gaza is Obama’s “first foreign policy success.” And the latter was achieved, according to Attalah, not by any specific written communication or request by Obama to the Israelis but merely by the fact that Obama was the president-elect and not anybody else.

For the religious votaries of Obama, like Attalah, this will not be an ordinary presidency but an extraordinarily miraculous one. Just the healing presence of Obama, “He didn’t need to” do anything, the long irreconcilable and implacable conflicts of the world will be resolved beyond “bombing or rocketing.”

It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillian plays. With captions such as: “A demoralized and frantic Israeli state”, “a historic shift in our Middle East posture”, “to seek an opening and grand bargain with Iran,” written by that master virtuoso in vaudevillian politics Dan Kervick himself, all of them a box office success since they will attract as audience hoi polloi who have an inveterate craving to laugh at serious things.

Paul Norheim says

“It is apparent the TWN is becoming a stage for vaudevillian
plays.” (kotzabasis)

Amusing, coming from someone who once praised Dick Cheney
as the Captain Ahab of the global war on terror, and who
certainly was not joking when he, some months ago, had this to
say about Sarah Palin:

“Palin’s selection is a political master stroke on the part of
McCain. Moreover this astute move is not merely a brilliant
manoeuvre on the field of American electoral politics, but also
adumbrates what a great president McCain will make.”
HAHAHA, as varanasi would have said if he wasn`t using his
passport right now.

To his credit, kotzabasis`opinions, in contrast to TahoeEditor`s,
are based on his own bad instincts, and not merely copied from
the PR office of the GOP. Errare humanum est. But how can you
expect sound political judgement from someone who doesn`t
believe in political means, but only in their continuation, i.e.
bombs and rockets against evil?

Kotzabasis says

Paul Norheim, what a week reed intellectually you must be in the torrential currents of the river of politics when intentionally and malevolently distort and take out of context the statements of your opponent to make your non-case.

Whatever you might think about Cheney, the gross errors, and indeed, criminal ones, according to you, he was a strong vice-president fully conscious of his responsibilities in the affairs of statecraft in the aftermath of 9/11. I contrasted him with Captain Ahab, as you well know, precisely because of the latter’s strength of character, which you lack, who would “strike the sun if it insulted him”, to quote a great literary critic.

As for Sarah, isn’t it a fact that she rejuvenated the base of the Republican Party and impacted initially a large part of the American electorate and it was only after the dirty campaign of calumny against her and her family by the liberal media that she was besmirched in the eyes of many Americans? McCain lost as a result of the hate many Americans had for Bush-Cheney and by association for the Republican Party which by trumping even the strong emotion of racism brought Obama to the White House. And as we know from Shakespeare, and indeed, Ibsen, your great compatriot, hate is the ultimate wicked human emotion that trumps all others.

And on the contrary, I do believe in the use of “political means” and in diplomacy and cease only to believe in these when they are proven to be completely ineffective, as they have been with the fanatic holy warriors of Islam.

Your errors of judgment have nothing to do with “Errare humanum est”, they rise from your weak character and shallow political nous.

By Con George-Kotzabasis a reply to:

Ventilating Those Hyperventilating about an IRAN BOMB

By Steve Clemons The Washington Note January 10, 2009

My dear Steve,

It’s hardly surprising that Wonkerr. com would have published such a ‘WONKER’ analysis about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme under the title of “Deep Iran Thought.” However, it’s more surprising that you Steve should consider Paul Kerr to be “on target” with such a piece of naivety and political infantilism. It seems that you have contacted a virus of multiple political default lines, without being conscious of this that would seriously impair your status as a serious political analyst.

Iran is no Japan but the avant-garde of an Islamist extremist movement whose ultimate goal is to be its leader and whose acquisition of a nuclear ‘carapace’, in spite of European, and especially American opposition, would definitively place the crown of leadership on the Ayatollah’s head.

Secondly, Paul Kerr’s contention, that “there is scant evidence that they want one at all costs” is infantile and needs to be put in its cradle and rocked to sleep. The threat of a looming American attack, and especially of an Israeli one, has been real for at least two years now and in view of this Kerr can still cogently claim that Iran does not want to acquire a nuclear arsenal “at all costs?” The logic of such situation would have required that if Iran was not willing to bear these costs it would have renounced the desire to acquire them and would have produced tangible evidence that it is not in the process of developing nuclear weapons. Only such a response by Iran would have made it transparent that it does not want to acquire these weapons “at all costs.”

It seems to me that whenever you stop playing with toy soldiers or toy dolls, according to your preferences, you start playing with words and invent, out of a feverish imagination, scenarios that could only exist in one’s dreams. Your distinction of a “nuclear weapons option” with a “nuclear weapons in hand” is as far from reality, in the case of Iran, as a dream is where one finds himself flying in the sky from a waking state where one finds himself crawling on all fours.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

By Con George-Kotzabasis
A response to: Egyptian complicity exposes deep fear of Iran By Antoun Issa

On Line opinion January 07, 2009

It’s good to see that the enemies of freedom and of the values of Western civilization in our midst can write uncensored under the freedom of expression and expose themselves for what they are.

It’s a well known adage that it’s in critical situations, such as presently in Gaza, that one reveals his true beliefs. And Antoun Issa is a perfect example of this. In his reverential support of Hamas-Hezbollah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria and in his identification of the West’s “devil”, he exposes himself to be just another fanatic of the Diaspora of the Muslim Brotherhood. In two paragraphs following each other in his article he states and condemns the perfidy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to make “a deal with the devil”, without however naming the latter, which obviously is America. This is the pre-eminent slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda, i.e., the Great Satan America, under which they recruit the holy warriors of Mohammed. Antoun by adopting this slogan and characterizing America as the “devil” shows himself to be, if not a holy warrior in the flesh, definitively a holy warrior in the spirit.

Moreover, he exposes the fallacy of so many in the West who insist that if only their governments relinquished their ‘Islamophobia’ and supported the moderate Muslims, the latter would have taken up the cudgels against the extremists. Antoun makes it quite clear that the “Arab street” is in full support of Hamas-Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. And is this surprising, when their radical imams are preaching and indoctrinating for years now their ‘open-mouthed’ credulous flock the great evils that afflict the West and especially America? The only Muslims that reasonably can be classified as moderates are the ones who don’t pray five times a day and don’t believe that all infidels will go to hell. And one can count these with one’s fingers.