Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis
Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen
global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a ‘neighing’ argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos–with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes…have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine…finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery.

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, an intellectual coup d’état by the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptively is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well that columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away …we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Israel is no “mercenary of the West in the heart of the Middle East” but an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of barbarians. Besieged on all sides within the short span of 60 years it became culturally, politically, economically, and scientifically the most developed nation of the region and deservedly proud of this great achievement. Moreover as a civilized outpost, Israel is at the forefront of the fight against the holy warriors of Islam, of Hamas and Hezbollah, the proxies of its most dangerous enemy Iran.

The author of the article might be rich in some of his psychological probing but has a very poor understanding of history. Great achievements are not the outcome of “victimhood” but they arise from the cultural, moral, and intellectual strength of a people. And Israel is a testament of that.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The above title is a paraphrase from William Shakespeare: “The folly of acting love and talking love, without being in love.” Statecraft like ‘romanticized’ love if exercised without wisdom can have the fate of Love’s Labour’s Lost as depicted in the great comedy of Shakespeare. President Obama by churning a wave of diplomatic exuberance, on whose crest Secretary of State Clinton and numerous envoys will be ‘surfing,’ is hoping to bring the irreconcilable and implacable enemies of America to a conciliatory peaceful agreement of “live and let live,” while placating the rest of the world from the ‘dreadful’ belligerent and war policies of the Bush-Cheney administration by a profligate exhibition of true American values. That is respect for the law and international conventions, seeking the resolution of geopolitical conflicts through international institutions and through consensual consultations with its allies, and living up to the great principles and values as engraved in stone by America’s founding fathers. But in this romanticized attempt in diplomacy he may become a fool of wisdom by playing out his own tragicomedy at the expense of American interests and security as well as of the rest of the civilized world.

The change of venue of the Constitutional lawyer from Harvard to the White House has transformed the attorney-at-law into a revisionist historian if not a fabricator of at least recent American foreign policy. Stephen Sestanovich, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, argued four years ago cogently and brilliantly in his essay American Maximalism, that all the great victories of the USA in geopolitical affairs in the last thirty years under presidents Reagan, Bush senior, and Clinton were accomplished by maximalist hard policies and more often than not in opposition to its European allies. Thus the USA as a ‘soloist’ in the concert of its European allies accomplished the downfall of Soviet Russia under Reagan, the reunification of Germany under Bush senior– which to many international observers was a “masterpiece of the diplomatic art”–against all the protests of the European powers including the UK, and the defeat of the genocidal Milosevic in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts under Clinton, when the latter decided to intervene militarily beyond the confines of diplomacy which he considered to be futile. In all these three conflicts it was American ‘maximalist’ intransigence, decisiveness, and leadership that won the day. In the case of the fall of the Soviet Empire it was Reagan’s uncompromising and immovable position on the “zero option,” i.e., the elimination of all Soviet intermediate-range missiles that was the major factor. Gorbachev himself in a private conversation with Germany’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher stated that the turning point of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lost battle with NATO over nuclear missiles in Europe. Thus it was ‘Reagan’s zero’ that brought the Soviet colossus down.

This is the danger that is enwrapped in Obama’s bouquet of olive branches that his diplomatic ‘couriers’ are delivering in the bosoms of America’s erstwhile enemies, Iran and Syria. That President Obama will be revising these past proven by history successful maximalist policies of the USA in the false hope that Iran and Syria will reciprocate genuinely, and not ingenuously, with likewise measures of amity toward the U.S., and not reading instead on the leaves of those olive branches American weakness which they will exploit to the utmost in achieving their strategic goals, and in the case of Iran by prolonging the negotiations, will render it the invaluable time to acquire nuclear weapons to the ultimate detriment of America’s geopolitical interests and those of its allies, and the dangers that will arise from a nuclear armed Iran with its apocalyptic aims written on its ‘crescent star.’

It’s impossible to believe that this wishful thinking of President Obama that by opening the door of diplomacy to Iran and its sundry terrorist proxies he could reach a peaceful agreement with them, as well as persuade the Ayatollah regime to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, has not yet being drowned in the flood of recent evidence. The Swat valley agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban that presumably would have led to peace in that region, did not last more than a month. Instead of the Taliban laying down their arms as was stipulated by the agreement, it deployed its forces in an incursion of other areas abutting the Swat valley since its leadership had regarded that the Pakistani government was forced into the agreement as a result of weakness. Also, the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip of Israeli forces in 2004 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was regarded by Hamas as a clear sign of weakness on the part of Israel instigating it to continue fuelling the second Intifada that started in 2000 and firing ten thousand rockets into Israel.

In view of this incontrovertible and unassailable evidence of the conduct of the Islamist extremists that few serious and acute observers had already predicted the formers’ reaction, i.e., that any negotiations initiated by Western powers or the U.S. with the Islamists would be considered to be by the latter a clear indication of prostrating debilitation on the part of the infidel West. Thus to the Islamists any overture of diplomacy that was set in motion by Western powers would be used merely as a gambit in their irreversible goal to subdue their enemies. Dar al-Islam would employ duplicity and taqqiya throughout any future negotiations in its attempt to defeat Dar al-Harb, the infidels.

Obama’s ark of diplomacy, unlike Noah’s ark, will not survive the flood of deception, guile, and lies that Iran will bring onto the negotiating table. He will find out that his Muslim opponents are masters in dissembling as they have been educated to it by their long proud tradition that will cover any shame, any dishonourable action, as they cover their women with burqas, which could mar their individual or tribal pride.

President Obama’s advocacy of a new foreign policy based on diplomacy will evaporate at the first touch with reality. His seductive universalist campaign to ‘change’ America in the eyes of the world by reappropriating the high moral ground that was presumably lost by Bush, and showing respect to Muslims by pouring oil in the turbulent poisonous pond of the holy warriors of Islam, will end up as a tragic idyll. But the stupendous danger is that in this foolish voyage of diplomacy he will bring the shipwreck of America as a great power. The Shakespearean farce will change under Obama’s directorship into a great American tragedy. And America and the free world will pay a heavy price at the ‘box office’ of geopolitics to see President Obama’s play of “talking wise and acting wise without being wise.”

I rest on my oars:Your turn now

Con George-Kotzabasis says

Somali piracy needs speedy, decisive, and relentless action by the U.S. and its European allies. To wait for the ability of Somalis “to police their own territory” and Somali leaders “to take action against pirates,” to quote Secretary Clinton, involved in the only highly profitable enterprise in a poor country, is to fly in the face of reality. In the event that Somali leaders were willing to do so, their military capacity to achieve this would take years to consummate.

Further, an increase of U.S., European, and Asian vessels and a better coordination between them is totally inadequate to police such a huge “expanse of ocean” as Secretary Clinton herself remarks. To pursue such a policy as Secretary Clinton delineates in her speech is to pursue a chimera. What the U.S. and its allies must do is to attack by relentless means, i.e., by air and commando raids the Somali towns from which piracy stems, and at the same time placing the requisite armaments on merchant ships that will protect them from any approaching pirate vessels. No amount of “carrots” will dissuade the pirates to desist and stop them, repeat, from such lucrative business in such impoverished country. Only their decisive military defeat will persuade them to do so.

Dan Kervick says

I agree in part with C-G Kotzabasis’s assessment. We certainly can’t wait for the restoration of the ability (and inclination) of Somalis to police their own territory and to take action against pirates. Somalia is the most failed and dysfunctional of failed states. I also agree that the linchpin of the problem is that piracy in that part of the world is extremely lucrative. The piracy won’t end until piracy is made an ill bargain for the pirates.

But, given that assessment, I have a different view on the best means for addressing the problem, and the chances of success of a coordinated international response.

Yes, the area to be policed is very large. But this isn’t a matter of just sailing around hoping to encounter pirate ships, or hoping to be in the right place at the right time. I assume we have the ability to identify and track most of the ships belonging to these pirates, to share the needed information (though not the sources and methods) with merchant vessels, and to direct force where it is needed in a timely way, especially if we have a larger multinational force of ships in the area. I am also assuming that some of the tagging and tracking means available are clandestine, and are unlikely to be discussed in public.

I also suspect that the economic and other hurdles that need to be cleared so that merchant ships can better defend themselves can be cleared quickly with vigorous, multinational government involvement.
I am somewhat shocked that Kotzabasis would recommend air raids on the home towns of the Somali pirates. No honorable man would defend the intentional killing of the women and children of one’s adversaries as a means of deterring those adversaries. I thought C-G was more chivalrous than that.

Maybe it’s an old-fashioned American outlook based on too many cowboy movies, but I was brought up to believe there were certain acceptable and unacceptable ways of handling these kinds of problems with banditry. Arming and funding more people to ride shotgun on the stagecoach is certainly called for. And sending out posses to track and engage the bandits, and either apprehend or kill them, is also appropriate and in bounds. But sending people to shoot up the towns and encampments where the bandits’ families are located? Not OK.

Kotzabasis says

Dan Kervick,thanks for your intellectually amicable and positive response to my post. I’m however surprised that you so facilely assume that these raids will intentionally be killing women and children. The latter will be killed only if the pirates adopt the tactics of the terrorists and use women and children as human shields. So if there is no intentional killing my ‘honor’ and ‘chivalry’ are not besmirched.

Moreover, if you are prepared to put ‘stagecoach shotguns’ and send “out posses to track and engage the bandits” then you have to go the whole hog. You cannot exterminate the scourge of piracy by half measures or by chivalric ones.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Apr 16 2009, 7:54PM – Link

A comment to the exchange between Kotzabasis and Dan
Kervick.
Kotzabasis says:

“I’m however surprised that you so facilely assume that these
raids will intentionally be killing women and children. The
latter will be killed only if the pirates adopt the tactics of the
terrorists and use women and children as human shields.”.

Of course no single innocent human being will be killed
intentionally by the Americans (that would be bad PR). But if you
attack by “relentless means, i.e., by air and commando raids the
Somali towns from which piracy stems”, much more innocent
civilians are likely to die than those killed by pirates.

This is an excellent illustration of a certain paradox, namely
between those “irregular” elements who target non-combatants
(or, in direct terrorist operations: civilians), and a regular army
targeting the enemy in ways that inevitably kill a lot of civilians,
not because they are targets, but because the regular army
decides to target the enemy by means that often, and inevitably,
kill more civilians than the irregular elements (pirates/terrorists)
do.

When you look at the tactics and outcome of some recent
events (like the Israeli attack in Gaza, and the Sri Lanka`n army
against the Tamil Tigers), it is indeed very difficult to
distinguish between “terrorists (who) use women and children
as human shields”, and states who send their armies to kill
indiscriminately. If you look at statistics regarding the
percentage of civilians killed in wars during the last hundred
years, you would come to the conclusion that the respect for
civilian lives seem to have diminished drastically – regardless of
terrorists, guerillas, or pirates. The regular armies and the
politicians behind them have their significant share in this
development.

There is no point in mentioning Dresden, Hiroshima, and
Nagasaki to prove that: Iraq is a fresh example.
How many innocent civilians did Saddam Hussein kill? And how
many innocent civilians did Clinton and Bush kill –
unintentionally?

To me it`s always been difficult to distinguish between terrorist
methods and Kotzabasis`”relentless means”. For poor, innocent
women and children, hit unintentionally, I would imagine that
this distinction would make no sense.

Posted by Dan Kervick, Apr 16 2009, 9:49PM – Link

Kotzabasis,
I may have misinterpreted you. There are some people who have recently advocated the *intentional* targeting of the pirates’ towns and kin in order to teach the pirates a lesson. You instead seem to be advocating going after the pirates themselves, and regard whatever happens to the communities around them as collateral damage brought on by the pirates decision to live among other people.

I appreciate that when you talk about “exterminating the scourge of piracy”, you are only logically implying that it is the scourge that must be exterminated, not the people. I hope that’s all you mean. Because as for the people themselves, I think experience with banditry shows that it is by no means necessary to exterminate all the bandits – even if such a thing were possible – in order the deter them from banditry. It is only necessary to change the cost-benefit analysis with which they operate. When it becomes to hard to profit from banditry, and too risky, the banditry ends.

This isn’t a half-measure. It is just a question on of re-asserting the rule of law without inflicting more death and pain on our fellow human beings than is necessary.

Unlike the case with some terrorists perhaps, the pirates do not hide continually among civilian populations plotting their crimes. They frequently float around in boats on the open ocean. Thus, if they are to be targeted for attack, there is no excuse for not targeting them when they are out there on the high seas, away from innocent people. If one can kill or apprehend some transgressor in a way that doesn’t risk the lives of innocents, then one should do so. It is not relevant whether we can pin the “fault” for the innocent deaths on the wrongdoer. What is relevant is that we avoid causing absolutely unnecessary deaths, whom ever is to be assigned the ultimate fault for those deaths.

Let’s not build these bandits up into something more than they are. What is needed now is stepped-up global policing of international shipping lanes, and that calls for increased levels of economic, manpower and intelligence commitment. The pirates are not an army, and civilization isn’t crumbling. We just need to invest more resources than we have previously.

Posted by kotzabasis, Apr 17 2009, 1:18AM – Link

Dan Kervick
Of course you don’t have “to exterminate all the bandits,” and your “cost-benefit analysis” is a perfect measure that would end such banditry. But to reach that measure that would deter the pirates from practicing their deadly enterprise one cannot do it by “half-measures.” It would be a half-measure to draw the gun and not shoot at your enemy. However, your “rule of law” is not a half-measure but no measure at all. These are lawless people that no law will ever restrain their actions.

I’m afraid you are too well- intentioned and too replete with humane genes that disqualify you from being a pragmatic strategist in deadly conflicts. No war has ever being fought clinically without the spilling of innocent blood. The price of freedom and the continuation of a civilized society at times is quite high. Nothing of great value is costless. The question always is whether people have the sagacity, the will, and mettle to pay the price.

Paul Norheim
This is a ‘straitjacket’ detachment from reality Paul. An “excellent illustration” that totally destroys your fabricated “paradox” is Iraq that by indisputable statistics shows that more civilians were killed by “irregular elements” i.e., by terrorists, than by the regular army of the U.S. and its allies. And to infer, sarcastically, that Americans don’t kill intentionally because that would give them “bad PR,” is to denigrate shamefully U.S. armed personnel who have been trained not to kill civilians, unlike the terrorists who are trained to kill them deliberately. .

Posted by Dan Kervick, Apr 17 2009, 7:37AM – Link

“These are lawless people that no law will ever restrain their actions.”
You seem to be confusing enforcement of the rule of law with respect for the law, Kotzabasis. Obviously, these pirates have no motivation to obey the law simply because it is the law. They are not law-abiding people.

For such people, reassertion of the rule of law always requires the imposition of harsh, credible penalties. Some percentage might be deterred by the mere credible threat of these penalties. But others will only be prevented from violating the rules of the road on the high seas by the actual infliction of the penalties.

I didn’t say that we should draw the gun and not use it. I said that in this case it seems likely that whatever force needs to be applied can be applied away from land, and away from innocent people. Yes, sometimes innocent people are killed in justifiable actions. But we shouldn’t recklessly endanger innocent lives just to prove our “will” or “mettle”, not when we can bring the required force to bear without endangering those innocents.

While the pirates aren’t motivated by respect for international rules, they are, as you have pointed out, motivated by profit. As it becomes less and less likely for the pirates that they will profit from attempted acts of piracy, and more and more likely that they will lose their lives or liberty, their banditry will be brought to an end.

Posted by kotzabasis, Apr 17 2009, 9:45AM – Link

Dan Kervick
Lawless people are not concerned with what MIGHT HAPPEN to them if they break the law, but, as you correctly say, by the “actual infliction of the harsh penalties’ imposed upon them, and I would add in this case wherever they are, on sea or land. It would be strategically foolish and inutile to confine one’s tactical operations solely on the “high seas” as well as reveal one’s tactics to one’s enemy.

Just a thought experiment. If one had credible intelligence of a high concentration of pirates on land that by hitting them one would have inflicted upon them a devastating blow from which they could never recover, it would be utterly doltish not to use such an opportunity that would shorten the war and overall casualties just because it could entail that some innocent people would be killed.

I used the “draw of the gun” figuratively, not that you said it, in response to your “stagecoach” post, that if you draw it you have to shoot your deadly foe wherever he is, even in a ‘crowded street.’
War has too many imponderables to compute them beforehand with algorithmic precision. McNamara’s “fog of war” is the constant condition. That is why people, and even professional soldiers, avoid it justifiably like the plague. But once one has decided to ‘unsheathe the sword’ then like the “feudal knights one has to make “literal mincemeat of one’s enemies, leaving the clergy to handle the morals,” to quote the great Austrian writer Robert Musil.

Posted by Dan Kervick, Apr 17 2009, 10:25AM – Link

“Just a thought experiment. If one had credible intelligence of a high concentration of pirates on land that by hitting them one would have inflicted upon them a devastating blow from which they could never recover, it would be utterly doltish not to use such an opportunity that would shorten the war and overall casualties just because it could entail that some innocent people would be killed.”

This sort of scenario paints an unrealistic picture of the pirates as some kind of “pirate army” that is best countered by attrition of their numbers until they surrender. I don’t think it works that way. The pirates are fishermen, who have taken to using their fishing trawlers to mount pirate attacks. Piracy in the Gulf of Aden has become a lucrative profession, and people will continue to pursue that profession as long as it remains lucrative. There is no fixed supply of pirates, just as there is no fixed supply of investment bankers. There is no pirate army to defeat.

We can’t bomb all the fishermen in Somalia, nor would that make sense. There is simply no need for this kind of overkill. The pirates attacked a US-flagged ship earlier this month, and that mistake resulted in an extended nuisance, the rescue of the captain, a week of media pants-wetting, three dead pirates and one captured pirate. This outcome is going to have a deterrent effect, and the pirates were dealt with out on the water. With stepped up resources and commitment, we can turn this piracy business into a non-viable enterprise.

Posted by kotzabasis, Apr 18 2009, 12:22AM – Link

It was a thought experiment and you missed its point.
You are digressing into ‘softer areas’ from your previous posts and I’ve nothing to add. Piracy now has become to you an ‘economic’ issue and merely an “extended nuisance” and an entertaining vaudevillian play, “media-pants wetting.”

Join the debate