harmonicminer

Is Obama an American Gorbachev?   And if he is, does that make you feel better?  Pravda certainly seems to love the idea:

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev believes that US President Barack Obama still has the support of the electorate despite opinion polls showing his support slipping. Gorbachev had positive comments and words recently when discussing nuclear disarmament treaty negotiations.

“The election of Obama was not an accident,” Gorbachev said. “It is true however that there has been some slippage in support for him.” While he said that he liked Obama “a great deal,” Gorbachev acknowledged that Obama faces considerable difficulties as he attempts to change his country’s policies.

“US policy is changing, but it’s a difficult process,” he said. Gorbachev feels that the United States had missed “many opportunities” in the past, but chances are better with Obama. “I am very pleased that now Obama has changed course and has gone back to dialogue and the process of nuclear arms control,” said Gorbachev, speaking through an interpreter.

Some have said they see Barack Obama as the US version of Mikhail Gorbachev. When the United States found itself in the midst of a global economic crisis, the administration decided it was time to launch the dialogue and discussion idea for peace in the world spoken about in the campaign. This is what Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to do during his leadership of the Soviet Union. During his trip to Moscow, Obama met with Mikhail Gorbachev.

The United States is suffering from a worst case of “buyer’s remorse” since the fall of Nazi Germany. President Obama under the circumstances can only really work for change in the health care system, which is a life-and-death matter. The sordid rackets so ostentatiously infecting the system boil down vividly to lives ruined and bankrupted, and a system more frightful to deal with than disease itself. Probably the home truth is that health care will end up being rationed one way or another due to the change in the Democratic Congress.

Economically, the US isn’t in a recession it’s in a collapse. Dmitry Orlov outlined the process in his book “Reinventing Collapse” about the parallels between the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the prospects for demise of the US as currently constituted.

Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the Soviet dissolution. In the USA, the outcome this time might not be very appetizing. It would be one of the supreme ironies of history if it turned out that the US was incapable of ending its most self-destructive rackets peacefully and bloodlessly, while Russia made her transition in a peaceful, orderly manner.

Time will tell. Until then, Russia has proven once again she is a reliable, stable and responsible partner in international relations, has tremendous respect in the international community due to the fact that she honours international law and the agreements she signs and provides a remarkable opportunity for investors, showing signs of increasing strength in the fundamentals which underpin the economy.

The main thing to remember about Gorbachev is that he presided over the dissolution of the government he headed, followed by a considerable period of great instability in Russian society, followed by the current more-or-less dictatorship that masquerades as a democracy.

The Age of Obama: Anno Domini 2 You really want to click the link and read the whole thing. It’s Krauthammer in perfect form, with his usual clarity and concision.

In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama’s “virtual world,” America faces the reality of Iran’s intransigence and aggressiveness; China’s headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia’s determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states’ refusal to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind that Israel has already offered under several governments; Syria’s designs on Lebanon; and Hugo Chávez’s designs on the weaker countries in Latin America. President Obama’s foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence and experience, all these accommodations, the weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by some cataclysm.

Perhaps I should have subtitled my address “How do you celebrate the first anniversary of the Second Coming?”–a theological conundrum that has confounded theologians for centuries.

99-year-old Granny isn’t the problem

I learned a new word from this column, which makes it worth the price of admission… which is free.  All worth reading, but here is the money paragraph, basically a reaffirmation of the “emperor’s new clothes” problem:

Question: what do the 9/11 killers, the Shoebomber, the Heathrow plotters, the Pantybomber, the London Tube bombers, the doctors who drove a flaming SUV through the concourse of Glasgow Airport and the would-be killers of Danish cartoonists all have in common? Answer: they’re Muslim. Sometimes they’re Muslims with box cutters, sometimes they’re Muslims with flaming shoes, sometimes they’re Muslims with liquids and gels, sometimes they’re Muslims with fully loaded underwear. But the Muslim bit is a constant. What we used to call a fact. But America’s leaders cannot state that simple fact, and so the TSA is obliged to pretend that all seven billion inhabitants of this planet represent an equal threat.

In a refreshing break from its usual mantra of “terrorism is just a natural response to poverty and oppression,” the AP reports that the airline bomb suspect came from an elite family and the best schools.

As a member of an uppercrust Nigerian family, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received the best schooling, from the elite British International School in West Africa to the vaunted University College London.

But the education he wanted was of a different sort: Nigerian officials say his interest in extremist Islam prompted his father to warn U.S. authorities. As Abdulmutallab was being escorted in handcuffs off the Detroit-bound airliner he attempted to blow up on Christmas Day, he told U.S. officials that he had sought an extremist education at an Islamist hotbed in Yemen.

A portrait emerged Sunday of a serious young man who led a privileged life as the son of a prominent banker, but became estranged from his family as an adult. Devoutly religious, he was nicknamed “The Pope” for his saintly aura and gave few clues in his youth that he would turn radical, friends and family said.

“In all the time I taught him we never had cross words,” said Michael Rimmer, a Briton who taught history at the British International School in Lome, Togo. “Somewhere along the line he must have met some sort of fanatics, and they must have turned his mind.”

At what point will the west, particularly the leftist elites, stop trying to tie terrorism to poverty or “oppression”?  This nonsense arises in part, of course, to find a way to blame the Israelis for defending themselves, and refusing to continue to allow their opponents advantages in land and ability to pre-position forces that nearly led to Israel’s destruction in earlier wars.  The real enemy is a mosque-induced death cult, whatever the economic status of its members.

This 23 yr old wannabe mass murderer had privileges I can only dream about. Something poisoned his mind. That something was radical Islam.

Abdulmutallab is not the only one with such ambitions.  His colleagues in hopeful horror are, like him, “students” from families that are wealthy enough to send them abroad for world-class educations.  The thing they have in common is that they take 7th-century Islam extremely seriously.  They actually believe the words of the “Prophet,” and have chosen to live — and die — in response to that belief.

In the meantime, ever more restrictive airport boarding regulations seem a certainty, and ever more intrusive searches, until we figure out that we have no choice but to identify who is more likely to have evil intent, and give them more scrutiny, because we surely don’t have the resources or the time to give the necessary scrutiny to everyone, including your grandmother in a wheelchair from Peoria, or Trenton, who may choose not to visit you next Christmas due to a distaste for body cavity searches and x-ray glasses (like the ones they used to sell in D.C. Comics, except these will work) in the hands of prurient security types.

The feckless belief that we can solve our security problems by restricting carry-ons and on-board behavior even more than we already have, and by searching everyone even more thoroughly, is yet more “Powerpuff Policy.”

Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out how to make high-explosive dentures and hip/knee replacements.  While Christian “fundamentalists” will be getting only fluoride treatments, young adult male Islamic fanatics will be lining up to have all their teeth pulled and get dental implants made of enamel coated plastique.   I predict an influx of wealthy foreign nationals, of Islamic extraction, into European schools of orthopedic surgery, particularly focusing on lower extremity joint replacements.  Our too-faithful recent oral surgery patients, who will not have flossed much, will enter airplanes with a slight limp.  It’s tough to recover from double knee/double hip transplants, especially when it hurts to eat.

The other passengers will feel sorry for them, briefly.

Eventually, the only people on airplanes will be strip-searched people with no scars, who just endured body cavity searches and had their stomachs pumped.  But they will be very, very safe, wearing their airline-issued flying uniforms.  When they land at their destinations, they will report to the changing room/luggage area, where they’ll get their clothing back, which was sent in a transport plane.   Cost of a ticket from L.A. to Phoenix?  About $1,000.

Coming up next:  explosive hair.

I just watched an episode of the Powerpuff Girls in which the Gangreen Gang, so named because they all seem to have green skin, is placed in the Powerpuff Girls’ kindergarten by Jack Wednesday, Truant Officer, who seems unable to distinguish adolescent troublemakers and arch-criminals from kindergarten-age kids.  I suppose he can’t be blamed, since the teacher seems to accept these obviously too-large and too-mean “kids” into her class with open arms.

As the day proceeds, the Gangreen Gang lives up to its billing by stealing cookies, pouring milk on students, throwing paste in the other kids’ faces, etc.  Each time, the teacher somehow seems not to notice who the real miscreants are, and when the Powerpuff girls try to stop the depredations of the Gangreen Gang, the teacher admonishes them that “there’s no fighting in school” and “you just need to learn to trust strangers.”   The Powerpuff Girls protest that the Gangreen Gang aren’t strangers, they are nearly-super-villains, to no avail.  The teacher says that *she* hasn’t seen the Gangreen Gang do anything especially bad.  Of course, she hasn’t really been paying attention, a fact obvious to any viewer.

This back and forth becomes so extreme that at recess, it’s the Powerpuff Girls who are given a “timeout,” while the Gangreen Gang essentially commit assault in a game of “dodgeball” with overmatched 5 yr olds.  And even then, when the Powerpuff Girls try to tell the teacher what’s happening just outside the schoolroom window, the teacher shushes them and returns to reading her book, right up until one of the balls breaks throught the schoolroom window and nearly decapitates the teacher, who finally notices the near-carnage on the playground.

In the denouement, when the Powerpuff Girls beg to be allowed to set things right, the teacher insists there is “no fighting at school,” but with a very broad hint to the Girls, she sends them out to play (and finish) a particularly violent game of dodgeball, that leaves the Gangreen Gang on the ropes, and ready to be picked up again by Jack Wednesday, Truant Officer.  We’re supposed to think the teacher is cool because she authorized the Powerpuff Girls to “fight” without really “fighting,” though only after intolerable provocation and injury to the rest of her class.

It is, of course, only a cartoon.  Nothing like this would happen in the real world, right?  But President Obama’s foreign policy seems at least this cartoonish.

He seems not to have read or been briefed on any of the history (old or more recent) of the players, from Iran to Venezuela’s Chavez to North Korea to Russia to China to Islamofascism in all its forms.  He acts like every day is a new day, and maybe today they’ll all play nice with him.  He seems bent on following some misplaced notion of “international law” and honoring the U.N. and its ridiculous “community of nations,” including a “human rights commission” staffed by some of the most abusive governments on the planet.  In this, the U.N. is more cartoonish than the Powerpuff Girls.  It’s as if the script writers had put the Gangreen Gang in charge of the entire school district, with the more lowly gang members in charge of the welcome wagon for new students.

Obama’s inexplicable support for illegal, unconstitutional actions by former President Zelaya of Honduras, his feckless approach to a nuclear-arming Iran, his tried-and-worthless approach to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, all of these make the actions of the Powerpuff Girls’ kindergarten teacher seem positively wise and far-sighted.

At least she knows when it’s time to bend the rules.

In the meantime, Obama gives obeisance to everyone who intends ill towards the USA, including the UN, the IPCC, and every third world dictator he chances to meet.

Hope and change.  Only now, there isn’t much left of the former, and only bad omens for the latter.

Abbas accuses Obama of doing ‘nothing’ for peace in the Middle East

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday accused US President Barack Obama of doing “nothing” to achieve peace in the Middle East. Speaking to Argentinian newspaper Clarin, Abbas said he hoped that Obama would “take a more important role in the future.”

He went on to say that the Palestinian people were awaiting US pressure on Israel, “so that it respects international law and takes up the Road Map,” stressing that the peace process could not be restarted without a halt to settlement construction.

When asked what he was willing to concede for peace, Abbas told Clarin that the Palestinian people had “already made concessions.”

He opined that the current government, with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister and Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, “is not seeking peace,” though he said that 73 percent of Israelis were in favor of peace.

What Abbas wants, of course, is for Obama to be tougher on his (putatively) only friend in the Middle East, Israel, than he is on actual opponents, like Iran, Syria or Hisbullah.

If we needed any reminder of the fact, this illustrates the basic dynamic of all Middle East peace negotiations.  Israel, which has always been the attacked party, must give up land and options that were legitimately earned in acts of national self-defense from Arab aggression, self-defense against incredible odds.  In the meantime, Palestine doesn’t have to give up anything, including the intent to see the end of Israel as a Jewish nation.

Prediction:  Obama will be no more successful than any of his predecessors at convincing Palestinians that their best interests lie in normalizing relations with Israel, with reporting and fighting against the terrorists in their number, and with going about the business of building a functioning economy, without the ridiculous and unachievable destruction of Israel.  Palestinians have exactly the same opportunity now that Israel had 60 years ago, to build something out of nothing in the desert.  Further, they have a potential partner, Israel, which would help, if Palestinians could control their hatred of the Jews.  I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, Obama brings a student council president level of understanding to a negotiation where world class diplomats have tried and failed.  I won’t blame him for failing.  I will blame him if he manages to cripple Israel while he is busy failing to engineer an unlikely peace.

Not very long ago, it was assumed that the US ability to project power with carrier battle groups was sufficient to deter the Chinese from an attempt at military reunification with Taiwan. But while we’ve been busy elsewhere, the the Chinese have been busy, too, according to a recent RAND report.

The new report, in typical RAND style, uses sophisticated modeling to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2010-2015 timeframe, including a preemptive ballistic missile bombardment, a cyber assault on the island’s infrastructure and a Normandy style amphibious landing.

In a 2000 report that looked at a similar scenario, RAND predicted a bloody repulse for the attacking Chinese as Taiwanese and U.S. aircraft savaged the Chinese air fleet and seaborne landing force. However, this time around, RAND sees China establishing air superiority over the strait within hours of the first shots being fired.

How to explain such a reversal? Primarily, it’s due to China’s burgeoning stock of increasingly accurate short range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), around 1,000 of which are deployed opposite Taiwan. Launching a preemptive strike, RAND figures that with 90 to 240 SRBMs, China could: “cut every runway at Taiwan’s half-dozen main fighter bases and destroy essentially all of the aircraft parked on ramps in the open at those installations.” Follow on bombing raids by Chinese aircraft armed with precision bombs would destroy any surviving Taiwanese aircraft parked in hardened shelters.

The questions I have are two:

1) Will the USA do what needs to be done to protect Taiwan, including making it very clear to the Chinese that the USA is militarily commited to Taiwan’s independence?

2) Will the USA let the Chinese know that in the event of an invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese, the Chinese can simply kiss the US market goodbye, and no, we won’t be paying back any of our loans?  You don’t pay back the money you owe to the neighborhood bully in the next block.

This is going to be the premier test case of whether engagement and economic relationship with a potential foe trump the simple desire for power. That’s been the assumption of US foreign policy for awhile, now. Thomas P. M. Barnett thinks so.

I hope he’s right.  But I think it will aid the Chinese in reaching the proper conclusion if we build two more carrier battle groups and park them in the Taiwan Strait, and sell the Taiwan government some seriously powerful weapons.

Call it peace through superior firepower.

One of our very best reporters, Michael Totten, reports that Culture War Replaces Missile War

Hezbollah launched thousands of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee south toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. South Lebanon was punished much more thoroughly than Northern Israel, but the Palestinians in Gaza nevertheless took Hezbollah’s Baghdad Bob–style boasts of “divine victory” seriously. Hamas ramped up its own rocket war until fed-up Israelis gave Gaza the South Lebanon treatment this past December and January.

Hamas is a bit slower to learn than was Hezbollah, but seven long months after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, the rockets out of Gaza have finally stopped. Israelis will no longer put up with indiscriminate attacks on their houses and schools. Many Palestinians in Gaza have likewise had their fill of Hamas’s self-destructive campaign of “resistance.”

The New York Times reports that Hamas has decided to wage a “culture war” instead of a rocket war because, as one leader put it, “the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.”

Movies, plays, art exhibitions, and poems are Hamas’s new weapons. Hamas supporters, though, aren’t the only Palestinians in Gaza using art as a weapon. Said al-Bettar skewers Hamas every night at Gaza City’s Shawa cultural center in his popular play The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Job. “We were the victims of a big lie,” he says about the doctrine of armed “resistance.”

The Israeli intelligence official I spoke to deserves some credit for predicting the replacement of terrorist war with missile war. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had already fired rockets at Israel, but they hadn’t fired many, and neither the recent Gaza war nor the Second Lebanon War had yet started.

Since then a pattern has emerged that should be obvious to anybody with eyes to see, whether they’re an intelligence official or not. After Israeli soldiers withdraw from occupied territory, Israeli civilians are shot at with rockets from inside that territory. Another pattern has just been made clear. After Israelis shoot back, the rockets stop flying.

It has been years since Hezbollah has dared to fire rockets at Israel or start anything else on the border. Hamas no longer dares to fire rockets at Israel either.

Israelis remain under pressure to withdraw from the West Bank. They almost certainly will withdraw from most of the West Bank eventually. Few, though, are in the mood to do so right now since they were shot at from Gaza and Lebanon after they withdrew from those places. They see the pattern even if others don’t.

It’s possible, of course, that West Bank Palestinians will never fire a significant number of rockets, if any, at Israel. They seem more sensible in general than Gazans. Hamas leaders in Gaza also talk to Hamas leaders in Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron. I think it’s safe to say that the West Bank isn’t hearing any “divine victory” nonsense from Gaza right now.

Then again, Gazans proved themselves incapable of learning from Hezbollah’s mistakes. And the New York Times says Hamas wants to acquire longer-range missiles. So who knows?

This much, though, is all but certain: if a rocket war erupts between Israel and the West Bank, Israelis will respond as they did in Gaza and Lebanon. The jury is still out on whether the Arab world has learned the recent relevant lessons, but there shouldn’t be any doubt that Israelis have. Rocket war doesn’t work, but the military solution to rocket war does.

This phrase, “The jury is still out on whether the Arab world has learned the recent relevant lessons,” is the core of the matter. Islamic warriors have always had the notion that somehow they were blessed by Allah and absolutely guaranteed to win at some point, as long as they just didn’t give up.  Islamic military teaching allows for “peace treaties,” of a sort, but makes it clear that, when fighting the infidel, they are to be used only to rest, rearm, and get ready to go at it again.

For my part, I am glad that Hamas is making bad plays instead of bombs, if indeed that is the case.  But what I know is that Islamic war fighters have a LONG memory.  They take the long view.  They are willing to wait a generation or more for the right time to strike.

And there’s this:  “Gazans proved themselves incapable of learning from Hezbollah’s mistakes.”  In Islamic understanding, proof of whether Allah was with you in war is simple, and has nothing whatsoever to do with some kind of Augustinian-style concept of just war.  The proof is if you win.  If you don’t win, Allah was not with you.  Simple.  So Gazans could not learn from Hezbollah’s mistakes for a simple reason: they assumed that Allah was not with Hezbollah (Iranian proxies) but would be with the Gazans.  Think of Sunnis figuring that, of course, Allah would not bless the efforts of those misguided Shiites.

So the Gazans had to find out for themselves, the hard way, that Allah wasn’t blessing their war either.  Not this year, at least.

But two things to remember:

1)  Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas have given up forever.   Their entire world view simply does not make room for permanent peace and adjustment to new conditions.  Jihad is forever.  It’s just delayed, sometimes.  Jihad interrupted.

2)  Iran and other Islamic powers, by virtue of their continued existence, will learn nothing from the defeat of any OTHER Islamic power.  I’m not talking about “secular” Islamic states, which use Islam to mollify a believing populace, but are themselves essentially cynical in their pursuit of power, such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, or even Syria.  Syria and Libya can both be seen to have pulled back from the brink of what they perceived as their own possible destruction.  And even Syria is still trying to make trouble occasionally….  but carefully, carefully.  The big problems are Iran, and possibly Pakistan (if the extremists succeed in a takeover…  Pakistan is a really hard one to figure out), as well as Saudi Arabia (which funds more terrorism-at-a-distance than anyone, directly and indirectly).

Do you get from this that the immediate threat is Iran?  If you do, you’re probably right.  And the point:  Iran’s ruling mullahs will learn nothing from the defeat of any other Islamic entity.

The longer term threat, even if we deal successfully with Iran (or Israel does it for us) has to be Pakistan, or, worse yet, an alliance of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  An axis like that, controlled by Wahabist fundamentalists, would have money and LOTS of nukes.  That means that we MUST win in Afghanistan, defined as removing the pressure on Pakistan from Islamic extremists.  If Pakistan stays controlled by cynical, relatively secular powers, we win.  If Pakistan is taken over by a wave of Islamic extremism (as opposed to the expanding middle class now growing in the cities), we’ll have a huge problem, in the form of as many as 70 nuclear weapons in the hands of whackos with direct terrorist ties.

So stabilizing Afghanistan is our goal, and will be our contribution to Pakistani stability.

Given that Obama has abdicated any responsibility to deal with iran, we’d better hope that Israel does, and soon.  There are, of course, people who disagree.  (Being anti-Israel creates strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?)  I find it likely, however, that Israel’s intelligence estimates on the real state of the Iranian nuclear bomb program are better than anyone else’s.  And they have a stake in the accuracy of those estimates that is shared by no one else.

Thousands of uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab

With three days left in spring cleaning season, a US army lab that works on the world’s deadliest pathogens has turned up uncatalogued vials of Ebola, anthrax, plague and other pathogens – 9220 of them to be precise.

The laboratory is the same one where anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins worked before he committed suicide last year. The US government suspects Ivins was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, and studies showed that the anthrax used in the attack was “directly related” to the batch stored at the lab.

The discovery of the uncatalogued vials raises questions about whether anyone would notice if some of the lab’s pathogens went missing.

“A small number would be a concern; 9200 … at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that’s deeply worrisome. Unacceptable,” Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post.

If you see some guys in white lab coats selling vials of “special fragrance” at the swap meet, I suggest you find someplace else to shop.  I’m not sure if this is scarier than missing Russian suitcase nukes, but it’s at least competitive on the scare-o-meter.  Does anybody think that the anthrax-spreading misanthrope is the only geek with a big brain and a tiny moral center? 

There are days when I wonder if the human race is just too stupid to live.  Then I’ll buck up a bit, and start feeling less pessimistic.  But not long after that, I’ll hear a bunch of people, who should know better, waxing rhapsodic about the wonderfulness of government mananged healthcare for the future.  It reminds me, as if I needed reminding, that the innumerate and the illiterate have no defenses against technocrats, their natural predators.

If the missing Russian nukes, the Iranian nukes, the North Korean nukes, or the pathogenic terrorists don’t get us, then it’ll be the nanotech that does it, when the first self-replicating machine (originally designed to “eat waste at toxic waste-dumps”) turns the entire Earth into a gigantic orbiting pile of staples — covered, incidentally, with Ebola spores.

I’m sure they’ll be very useful to someone (the staples, that is).  I expect that the Intragalactic Council on Emerging Technology (ICE-T) will have a LOT of reports to fill out.

Gates: More missile defense spending possible

Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn’t ruling out spending more on missile defense than what he’s asked for in next year’s budget if North Korea or other nations increase threats against the United States.

Gates said the missile tests by North Korea over the past week appear to have attracted more support on Capitol Hill for missile interceptors.

Translation:
If the neighborhood continues to deteriorate, I might consider buying a higher caliber, more accurate gun, and then practice using it more, but I’m going to wait for a few more murders and muggings in the neighborhood first.

What does he mean, IF “North Korea or other nations increase threats”?  What do Obama and Gates need?  An announcement of a launch date on Honolulu?  Or San Francisco?

N.Korea nuclear test sparks global condemnation (Read the whole thing for a flavor of the various national responses, all predictably outraged, of course.)

North Korea’s nuclear test explosion has been met by a wave of condemnation from countries around the world, with several leaders calling for sanctions.

I’m sure that the dreams of “the great leader” are filled with great fear of “sanctions” and UN Security Council resolutions.  Iran is watching, of course, and cannot fail to learn that no one (except, just possibly, Israel) will do anything to stop its acquisition of “the bomb.”

Lions, tigers and the UN Security Council, oh my.

Those who advise continued “negotiations” and advocating “pressure from China and Russia” to make North Korea behave had better deal with this:  Japan could have a deliverable nuclear weapon in a matter of months if it thought it needed to do so as a deterrent.  It has excellent missiles, a very sophisticated nuclear power technology, pleny of enrichable fuel, and brilliant scientists and technicians.  South Korea and Taiwan may not be far behind.    Do we really want all of North Korea’s threatened neighbors to ramp up their own nuclear programs, because we haven’t the will to do anything about North Korea’s?

China is playing a dangerous game.  It COULD end North Korea’s program fairly quickly, if it so chose.  But it is using North Korea as a negotiating tool against the US, and specifically Obama, who has displayed none of the strength of will that would convince China that it must end North Korea’s program.  China exports much of North Korea’s food.  China surely has explicit knowledge of exactly where North Korea’s program is situated, and could possibly even sabotage it without direct military action.  China could put an end to this, but continues to use it to weaken the US hand in the area, specifically the USA’s ability to project protection for its democratic allies, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.  It is in China’s interest to display a weak USA to China’s regional neighbors, a USA that is powerless to seriously affect even a pipsqueak, disfunctional power like North Korea.

The underlying message from China to its neighbors:  “The USA won’t protect you; it just talks big.  Your only real choice is to throw in with us.  We’re not such bad guys.  Really.”

Obama COULD make it plain to China that either China takes care of the problem, or he will.  Obama COULD use the economic levers he has on China to pressure it.  He probably won’t.   If he’s true to form for the Left (no reason to think otherwise right now) he’ll keep kicking the can down the road, hoping something will change.  It won’t…  except maybe for the worse.

In the meantime, he continues to reduce funding for USA and allied missile defense.  I’m sure that makes Japan and our other allies in the region feel safe.

President Obama has made it clear that he has no intent of taking any serious action to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and that if Israel does take such action, he will blame Israel, not Iran. Caroline Glick reports. (much more at the link, all worth reading)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with US President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday was a baptism of fire for the new premier. What emerged from the meeting is that Obama’s priorities regarding Iran, Israel and the Arab world are diametrically opposed to Israel’s priorities.

During his ad hoc press conference with Netanyahu, Obama made clear that he will not lift a finger to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And acting as Obama’s surrogate, for the past two weeks CIA Director Leon Panetta has made clear that Obama expects Israel to also sit on its thumbs as Iran develops the means to destroy it.

It’s becoming apparent that Obama is bluffing on a busted flush. He has no hole cards (at least that he’s willing to use), and he has no plans to do anything serious to deter or prevent either North Korea or Iran from becoming full-fledged nuclear threats complete with delivery systems. At the same time, he is reducing our commitment to missile defense, and weakening our military commitment to proven technologies that could defend us and our allies.

Iran will not bomb Jerusalem, which it considers to be a “holy city,” but Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc., are obvious targets.  And with its surrogates Hamas and Hizbullah, Iran has ways of getting the bombs into Israel without being the obvious launch site….  just enough to maintain “implausible deniability,” which would not prevent an Israeli response, futile though that response would be to save Israel.  About three or four bombs, and in essence there is no nation of Israel, at least none that could resist the following onslaught of conventional forces rolling in from its neighbors.

The other nations in the Middle East, mostly Sunni, are not in favor of a nuclear armed Iran, but they have even fewer options to do anything about it than Israel.  If Israel does attack Iran to delay its acquisition of nuclear arms, the muslim nations around it will cry publicly, and cheer privately.  They know that Israel presents no danger to them, while Iran clearly does, especially a nuclear Iran.

We are on the cusp of a moral decision, nationally, not very different from the run-up to the Holocaust.   Obama will have to do more than talk and threaten.  He must act, decisively, and soon.  If he does not, Israel cannot be blamed for doing what it must simply to survive.

I hope and pray that, even if he does not care about Israel directly, Obama will recognize the enormous support Israel has in the USA, and realize what a political disaster it will be for him if Israel is destroyed on his watch.

I was puzzled this morning while listening to the radio news.  That moral beacon for our time, Janet Napolitano, was issuing a statement concerning the recent outbreak of the new swine flu strain.  What puzzled me is why the Department of Homeland Security would be issuing statements concerning disease outbreaks.  Don’t we have a Federal Department of Health & Human Services, and under it’s auspices the Centers for Disease Control?  Call me silly but if there is going to be a government statement about a disease outbreak wouldn’t it come from the CDC?  Without doing any checking the whole thing seemed a bit strange to me.

So I decided to visit the Department of Homeland Security website and try to find an explanation.  This led me to a link called “National Strategy for Homeland Security”.  All well and good.  I find that there is overlap between CDC and Homeland Security, which I suppose makes sense in case of a biological or chemical attack (though I don’t think that is the case with swine flu).  What I found was more than an explanation about disease.  What I found was rather chilling, in fact.  At the bottom of the document was this statement:

In this spirit, it is important to acknowledge that this Strategic Plan is a living document and will be revised as needed to guide a dynamic Department and its ever-changing requirements.

I think I know what the government means when they call something a “living document”.  It means the government can interpret it to be anything they want it to be, anytime they want. (Similar applications have been used by members of the judiciary to find things in the Constitution that don’t exist.)

This certainly explains Napolitano’s statement about the swine flu.  It also explains her statement about “Right-Wing Extremists”. But I must admit I get a chill when I see the Department of Homeland Security also has a hand in immigration (wait.. don’t we have a Department of Immigration & Naturalization?).  Given this administrations propensity toward centralized governmental control, (read as “tyranny”)  is it unreasonable to think the Department of Homeland Security might simply declare amnesty for all illegal aliens claiming it would make it safer and easier to reduce potential illegal activity by members of the immigrant community?  That would certainly avoid those pesky votes required to pass amnesty legislation.  And I get a bigger chill when I read about these 70 new data collection centers known as Fusion Centers going up in every state, (do we have terrorist cells in every state?).  It is, after all,  just one small step to go from collecting data on potential terrorists to collecting data on dissenters, (or right-wing extremists – see my previous post).

Couple this with Obama’s almost entirely ignored campaign comment about a “civilian national security force” and I begin to understand a little more about how people become conspiracy theorists.

I admit I may still be suffering from a lingering case of post-election frustration.  Or do I see the framework of an Orwellian Big Brother system in the making that rivals anything the Soviet Union ever had?

Someone please tell me I’m paranoid and delusional!  (You don’t have to tell me I’m an extremist – Napolitano already took care of that!)

Another brilliant column from Mark Steyn.  Read it all.

According to an Earth Day survey, one third of schoolchildren between the ages of six and eleven think the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. That’s great news, isn’t it? Not for the earth, I mean, but for “environmental awareness.” Congratulations to Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and the eco-propagandists of the public-education system in doing such a terrific job of traumatizing America’s moppets. Traditionally, most of the folks you see wandering the streets proclaiming the end of the world is nigh tend to be getting up there in years. It’s quite something to have persuaded millions of first-graders that their best days are behind them.

I rarely quote an entire post by someone else, but this is so clearly argued that I have nothing to add. The major media’s failure to provide this kind of analysis is another reason it deserves to go extinct.  From Caroline Glick

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world’s policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama’s presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history – both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US’s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America’s missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as he leaves them to Moscow’s tender mercies; humiliating Iraq’s leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world’s aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama’s supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn’t be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN’s former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, “America’s… superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy.”

The pro-Obama US and European media are so pleased with America’s abdication of power that they took the rare step of applauding Obama at his press conference in London. Indeed, the media’s enthusiasm for Obama appeared to grow with each presidential statement of contrition for America’s past uses of force, each savage attack he leveled against his predecessor George W. Bush, each swipe he took at Israel, and each statement of gratitude for the blessings of Islam he uttered.

But while the media couldn’t get enough of the new US leader, America’s most stable allies worldwide began a desperate search for a reset button that would cause the administration to take back its abandonment of America’s role as the protector of the free world.

Tokyo was distraught by the administration’s reaction to North Korea’s three-stage ballistic missile test. Japan recognized the betrayal inherent in Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s announcement ahead of Pyongyang’s newest provocation that the US would only shoot the missile down if it targeted US territory. In one sentence, uttered not in secret consultations, but declared to the world on CNN, Gates abrogated America’s strategic commitment to Japan’s defense.

India, for its part, is concerned by Obama’s repeated assertions that its refusal to transfer control over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces to Pakistan inspires Pakistani terror against India. It is equally distressed at the Obama administration’s refusal to make ending Pakistan’s support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In general, Indian officials have expressed deep concern over the Obama administration’s apparent lack of regard for India as an ally and a significant strategic counterweight to China.

Then there is Iraq. During his brief visit to Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, Obama didn’t even pretend that he would ensure that Iraqi democracy and freedom are secured before US forces are withdrawn next year. The most supportive statement he could muster came during his conversation with Turkish students in Istanbul earlier in the day. There he said, “I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence.”

Hearing Obama’s statements, and watching him and his advisers make daily declarations of friendship to Iran’s mullahs, Iraqi leaders are considering their options for surviving the rapidly approaching storm.

Then there is Europe. Although Obama received enthusiastic applause from his audience in Prague when he announced his intention to destroy the US’s nuclear arsenal, drastically scale back its missile defense programs and forge a new alliance with Russia, his words were anything but music to the ears of the leaders of former Soviet satellites threatened by Russia. The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments were quick to recognize that Obama’s strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.

It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the day Obama returned to Washington, Georgia’s Moscow-sponsored opposition announced its plan to launch massive protests in Tblisi to force the ouster of pro-Western, anti-Russian Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

And as for Russia, like Iran, which responded to Obama’s latest ode to the mullahs by opening a nuclear fuel plant and announcing it has 7,000 advanced centrifuges in operation, so Moscow reacted to Obama’s fig leaf with a machine gun, announcing its refusal to support sanctions against North Korea and repeating its false claim that Iran’s nuclear program is nonaggressive.

Finally there is Israel. If Obama’s assertions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, his declarations of support for the so-called Saudi “peace plan,” which requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for “peace” with the Arab world, and his continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to “engage” his administration weren’t enough to show Israel that Obama is sacrificing the US’s alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran, on Tuesday Vice President Joseph Biden made this policy explicit.

When Biden told CNN that Israel would be “ill-advised” to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, he made clear that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence.

AMERICA’S BETRAYAL of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment.

For the most part, America’s scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions.

Japan today cannot face North Korea – which acts as a Chinese proxy – on its own without risking a confrontation with China.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow’s grip alone.

This week’s Arab League conference at Doha demonstrated to Iraq’s leaders that their Arab brethren are incapable and unwilling to confront Iran.

And the Obama administration’s intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US’s missile defense programs – including those in which Israel participates – and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal – make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran.

THE RISKS that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America’s threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India.

With Israel’s technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries’ capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs.

The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation. In addition, of course, expanded economic ties between and among these states can aid each of them in the struggle to stay afloat during the current global economic crisis.

Although far from risk free, these opportunities are realistic because they are founded on stable, shared interests. This is the case despite the fact that none of these potential alliances will likely amount to increased support for Israel in international forums. Dependent as they are on Arab oil, these potential allies cannot be expected to vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. But this should not concern Jerusalem.

The only thing that should concern Jerusalem today is how to weaken Iran both directly by attacking its nuclear installations, and indirectly by weakening its international partners in Moscow, Pyongyang, Islamabad and beyond in the absence of US support. If Japan is able to contain North Korea and so limit Pyongyang’s freedom to proliferate its nuclear weapons and missiles to Iran and Syria and beyond, Israel is better off. So, too, Israel is better off if Russia is contained by democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe. These nations in turn are better off if Iran is contained and prevented from threatening them both directly and indirectly through its strategic partners in North Korea, Syria and Russia, and its terror affiliates in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the past 16 years, successive Israeli governments have wrongly believed that politics trump strategic interests. The notion that informed Israel’s decision-makers – not unlike the notion that now informs the Obama administration – was that Israel’s strategic interests would be secured as a consequence of its efforts to appease its enemies by weakening itself. Appreciative of Israel’s sacrifices for peace, the nations of the world – and particularly the US, the Arabs and Europe – would come to Israel’s defense in its hour of need. Now that the hour of need has arrived, Israel’s political strategy for securing itself has been exposed as a complete fiasco.

The good news is that no doubt sooner rather than later, Obama’s similarly disastrous bid to denude the US of its military power under the naive assumption that it will be able to use its new stature as a morally pure strategic weakling to win its enemies over to its side will fail spectacularly and America’s foreign policy will revert to strategic rationality.

But to survive the current period of American strategic madness, Israel and the US’s other unwanted allies must build alliances with one another – covertly if need be – to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama’s emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America’s eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies – if not for America itself.