You really need to check out this Powerline post, and watch the videos they linked here (don’t be impatient, the ad is short) and here.
Entertaining. And educational.
Jun 09 2010
Why Turkey, NATO member, is siding with Iran against Israel
Fareed Sakaria thinks he knows why Turkey is siding against Israel in the Gaza blockade. You guessed it: it’s Bush’s fault.
On the other hand, people who actually understand a bit more about the facts on the ground in Turkey see that the shift in Turkish foreign policy is a matter of demographics, as pointed out by Mark Steyn in Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability
Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.
Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on — the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies — was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war — more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel.
Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe.
Yet it happened. Erdogan said those words to Shimon Peres at Davos last year and then flounced off stage. Day by day what was formerly the Zionist entity’s staunchest pal talks more and more like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.
As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities.
As is often the case, Mark Steyn makes an elegant argument from demographics that the days of a western looking Turkey are probably over. We should have known when Turkey would not allow us to stage troops into Iraq in 2003. But it is now clear that Turkey is rapidly become just another Islamist state, and the demographic forces at work seem likely to continue its motion in that direction.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Fareed Zakaria is ignorant of the demographic changes in Turkey. He surely knows. Your speculations are as good as mine about why he doesn’t find that knowledge worthy of mention in his conjectures about what has led to changes in the Turkish political situation.
Click the link above and read Steyn’s article.
Jun 04 2010
Did it have to turn out like this?
The next time you get a chance to take a shot at a future conqueror, take it. No, lefty nitwits, I’m not talking about taking a shot at the next Republican president-elect. I’m talking about people whose overweening ambition makes them think they have the right to conquer the world. By definition, no US president qualifies, because all have left office, willingly or not, without coercion, and gone home to write their memoirs, if they lived long enough.
No, I’m talking about a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Mao, or…. well, you get the idea. Kaiser Wilhelm, without whom World War I would probably not have occurred as it did, is one such, though that seems not to have been immediately obvious to Annie Oakley… a dead shot if there ever was one. Although after WWI started, she seems to have caught on quickly enough about the Kaiser’s character.
THERMOPYLAEHILLBILLY: Annie Oakley and Kaiser Wilhelm II
Where would we be today if Annie Oakley had just a little more to drink in 1889? Kaiser Wilhelm II was the Reich’s new leader and had a box seat to watch Oakley at the Berlin Charlottenburg Race Course. She was appearing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and had cleaned her Colt 45 the night before. Annie announced that she would shot the ashes off any man or woman’s Havana cigar. Normally her husband Frank Butler come out of the audience and her speech was just for show.She never expected anyone, including Kaiser Wilhelm II to take her up on her offer and here came the Kaiser out of his box seat. Oakley had made her dare, there stood the Kaiser and she couldn’t back down. So as she measured her distance the Kaiser took out a cigar and started puffing. The German police thought it was a joke until the Kaiser took up his position. The Kaiser told the police to get out of the way.
Annie Oakley, American sharp shooter, raised her pistol, aimed and blew the ashes off Kaiser Wilhelm II cigar. Had she missed the woman from Cincinnati may have prevented the First World War 25 years later. When World War I started Annie wrote the Kaiser asking for a second chance. Silence followed……………
What If Diaries » What if Annie Oakley had shot Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1889?
One chilly November afternoon in 1889, a fur-coated crowd assembled in Berlin’s Charlottenburg Race Course to enjoy a performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild Wild West Show, which was touring Europe to great popular acclaim. Among the audience was the Reich’s impetuous young ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had been on the throne for a year. Wilhelm was particularly keen to see the show’s star attraction, Annie Oakley, famed throughout the world for her skills with a Colt. 45.On that day, as usual, Annie announced to the crowd that she would attempt to shoot the ashes from the cigar of some lady or gentleman in the audience. “Who shall volunteer to hold the cigar?” she asked. In fact, she expected no one from the crowd to volunteer; she simply asked for laughs. Her long-suffering husband, Frank Butler, always stepped forward and offered himself as her human Havana-holder.
This time, however, Annie had no sooner made her announcement then Kaiser Wilhelm himself leaped out of the royal box and strutted into the arena. Annie was stunned and horrified but could not retract her dare without losing face. She paced off her usual distance while Wilhelm extracted a cigar from a gold case and lit it with flourish. Several German policeman, suddenly realizing that this was not one of kaiser’s little jokes, tried to preempt the stunt, but were waved off by His All-Highest Majesty. Sweating profusely under her buckskin, and regretful that she had consumed more than her usual amount of whiskey the night before, Annie raised her Colt, took aim, and blew away Wilhem’s ashes.
Had the sharpshooter from Cincinnati creased the kaiser’s head rather than his cigar, one of Europe,s most ambitious and volatile rulers would have been removed from the scene. Germany might not have pursued its policy of aggressive Weltpolitik that culminated in war twenty-five years later.
Annie herself seemed to realize her mistake later on. After World War I began, she wrote to the kaiser asking for a second shot. He did not respond.
Annie Oakley, the Butterfly Effect, and You
In the late 1800s, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was a dazzling display of horsemanship, gunplay and other cowboy skills. One of its acts involved the sharpshooting of the great Annie Oakley. Dubbed “Little Sure Shot,” Oakley had an amazing routine – she would shoot out lit candles, for example, and the corks of wine bottles.For her grand finale, she would shoot out the lit end of a cigarette held in a man’s mouth at a certain distance. For this, she would ask for volunteers from the audience. As no one ever volunteered, she had her husband planted among the spectators. He would “volunteer” and they would complete the dangerous trick together.
Well, during one swing through Europe, Oakley was setting up her finale and she asked for volunteers. To her shock – and the surprise of everyone involved with the show – she got a real volunteer.
The proud young Prince (soon to be Kaiser) Wilhelm bravely stepped down from among the spectators, strode into the ring and stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth.
Reportedly out late the night before enjoying the local beer gardens, the unexpected appearance of this famous volunteer unnerved her. But the show must go on.
She took aim and fired… putting out the cigarette, much to Wilhelm’s amusement.
Thus, she also created one of historians’ favorite “what if” moments. What if her bullet went through the future Kaiser’s left ear? Would World War I have happened? Would the lives of 9 million soldiers and 6.6 million civilians have been spared? Would Hitler have risen from the ashes of defeated Germany? All sorts of questions come to mind…
Many historians think that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, leading to the Soviet Union, would not have occurred without World War I to weaken the Czar (who was made by Lenin and Stalin to seem rather a nice fellow, by comparison). Nazi Germany is difficult to credit as a likely outcome of a Germany that didn’t fight in WWI, because no great German angst would been present about a non-existent Treaty of Versailles, and no not-quite-imperialistic Kaiser would have tolerated Hitler in the feckless way German proto-democracy did. In any case, without the agony of the post-war years, Hitler would have been only another anti-Semite, with no way to get traction with the German public at large.
World War II is hard to imagine without World War I. Germany simply wouldn’t have had the drive to do it, absent the peculiar circumstances of the end of WW I. At most, Japanese imperialism might have been a problem… but strong British Empire, not weakened by WWI, would have been in a clear position to oppose Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere, and probably given the Emperor so much to consider that attacking the USA would have been a very low priority.
So imagine a 20th century without two world wars, without a cold war, indeed, without communism, which would have meant no Korean War, no Vietnam War, etc. Imagine a still-strong British Empire still ruling the waves, shipping around the world the incredible output of American industry.
I know that cultural trends are present in history. But I’m also pretty sure that without specific deeds by specific people, everything would have been different.
All of which occasionally leaves me wondering, in a much more pedestrian way, what deeds or words of everyday folk can sometimes have an effect that is seemingly far disproportionate to their obvious impact?
Jun 02 2010
Is it a failure of Israel, or a failure of liberalism?
This article at Powerlineblog is difficult to summarize. It is a post about an article by Noah Pollak which is reviewing another article by Peter Beinart. I think it’s well worth your time, however, because of the way it explains the disconnect between American liberal Jews, liberals in Israel, American liberalism in general, and the facts on the ground in Israel, which are becoming clearer and clearer to even liberal non-Arab Israelis. This is a quote from the article by Noah Pollack, discussing Beinart’s article and perspective, all of which is being discussed at Powerline at the link above.
Operation Defensive Shield in 2003, the Hezbollah war, and the Hamas war should have been moments in which liberal Zionists stepped forward to say: Israel took the risks for peace that we demanded. Israel committed itself to a diplomatic process, offered a Palestinian state, and withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza. The terrorists who attack Israel will find no defenders among us. Instead, talk of war crimes filled the airwaves, investigations were demanded, arrest warrants for Israeli officials issued, and now Peter Beinart says that he must question Zionism because civilians were killed in Gaza. Carried away by his own moral indignation, he never asks two fundamental questions: who started the war, and why was it fought from civilian areas?. . . .
Because the history of the peace process repudiates so many of liberalism’s most cherished premises, liberalism is increasingly repudiating Israel, and doing so in a perfectly logical fashion: with people like Beinart now saying that Israel is not in fact an admirable country and that it deserves to be thrown out of the company of liberal nations. In this way, the failure of the liberal vision is transformed from being a verdict on liberalism to being a verdict on Israel. . . .
The distilled pleading of Beinart is merely a series of demands that Israelis refuse to learn from experience: how dare they allow any hostility to Arabs creep into their politics; how dare they vote for Avigdor Lieberman, a populist who plays to the less-than-perfectly liberal Russian immigrants; how dare they lose faith in the peace process and the liberal hopefulness that animated it. Most important: how dare they upset the comfortable ideological existence of American Jews, whose acceptability to their liberal peers depends in no small degree on their willingness to join in pillorying Israel over the failure of the peace process — a failure, alas, that is not Israel’s but liberalism’s.
This is just a sample. Click the link at the top and read the whole thing. Highly recommended.
Apr 14 2010
Giving up our allies, or ganging up on them, too?
Obama is, once again, giving away the store… or at least the markets in Tel Aviv, by trying to make nice with the implacable enemies of supposed allies.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Syria has transferred long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah. There have been rumors about this for a few days, but now U.S. officials, who at first refused to confirm them, are saying that the transfer has occurred.
The Scuds are believed to have a range of more than 435 miles. This means that Hezbollah can now bomb Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Lebanon. During the 2006 war, the rockets Hezbollah rained on Israel had a range of 20 to 60 miles.
I hope you’ll read the entire article at the link above, and ponder the situation a bit.
One can only wonder: exactly how much damage can Obama-style foreign policy do in four years?
If the Carter administration is any guide, a truly immense amount.
Obama remains deeply confused about who are our allies and friends, and who are our adversaries. One hopes he doesn’t stay in office long enough to be educated directly by the course of events, though the next administration is going to have a lot of pieces to pick up.
Apr 07 2010
Hanging on to the Shuttle?
Could moon rocket demise bring space shuttle reprieve?
The demise of NASA’s Constellation moon rockets is bringing faint hopes of a reprieve for the space shuttle.NASA’s decades-old shuttle fleet has been headed for retirement since 2004, and only four more flights are scheduled. Now the White House’s plan to scrap the Constellation programme – a pair of rockets capable of taking astronauts back to the moon – has prompted renewed efforts to keep the shuttles running until new vehicles can replace them.
Two bills have been introduced in the US Congress to keep the shuttle flying while NASA works to develop replacements. The hope is that a modest extension – involving just a couple flights a year – could help retain jobs and maintain access to the International Space Station without relying on foreign launchers.
“If the space shuttle programme is terminated, Russia and China will be the only nations in the world with the capability to launch humans into space,” says Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who introduced the first of the two bills this month. “This is unacceptable.”
An extension to shuttle flights may struggle to win approval. Safety has been a concern, but a bigger hurdle may be money. The cost of a modest programme could exceed $2 billion per year, according to agency officials. “Where that money comes from is the big question,” shuttle programme manager John Shannon told reporters last week.
They seem to be able to find plenty of money in Washington for things that they think actually matter. Does this matter? Only if you think it’s fine for the USA to be dependent on Russia to get people into and out of orbit.
Obama obviously does. Maybe he, too, has looked into Putin’s eyes and seen a man he can work with.
Or maybe Obama just doesn’t think it matters.
Apr 02 2010
Service. Faith. Sacrifice.
We do not deserve people like this, but we should all thank God that they exist, and are willing to serve.
In all humility, we should bow our heads and thank God for them.
I can’t help wondering why the major media cover so few of these kinds of stories, and why Hollywood makes so few movies about these kinds of heroes.
On second thought, I suppose I don’t have to wonder.
Apr 02 2010
Russia, Canada, global warming, the Arctic, and Big Brother
A Russian view on Climate Change, the Arctic and Russia’s National Security
What does Prime Minister Stephen Harper have in common with the Canadian Minister of Defence? He shares a sinister, hypocritical and belligerent discourse bordering on the lunatic fringe of the international community. Yet Canada’s new-found megalomania is the least of Russia’s worries: How can climate change in the Arctic threaten her national security?
From Canada, Russia has become used to seeing and hearing positions of sheer arrogance, unadulterated insolence and provocative intrusion. Take for example Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s declaration that Canada is “an Arctic Superpower” (what all thirteen of them?) and the idiotic reference by the Canadian Minister of Defence, Peter McKay, about Russian “overflights” outside Canadian airspace. How can you “overfly” outside?
What these statements hide is Canada´s nervousness at the fact that international law backs up Russia’s claim to a hefty slice of the Arctic and that international law will favour Russia in delineating the new Arctic boundaries. Inside Russia’s continental shelf lie huge deposits of gold, diamonds, nickel, cobalt and copper.
The immense importance of the Arctic to the Russian economy can be seen by the fact that 22 per cent of Russia’s exports and 20 per cent of her GDP come from products obtained from inside the Arctic Circle, where around 90 per cent of Russia’s hydrocarbon reserves lie. Canada, on the other hand, derives less than one per cent of its GDP from products which come from this region.
………………..
Given that the permafrost covers 66 per cent of Russian territory, a dramatic change in climatic conditions could threaten all engineering structures in this region, considers Averyanov.
Besides this, Yuri Averyanov considers that interstate conflict is a real possibility due to the new policies of allies of the USA in the Arctic in expanding exploration and research operations. Indeed, the possibility is referred to in the Russia National Security Strategy, adopted in Spring 2009 and mentioning the use of armed force and conflict over hydrocarbon resources.
In the event of a showdown between Russia and Canada, it is obvious that Russia would win. Yet Canada is becoming more and more arrogant, feeling its back covered perhaps by Big Brother to the south. Maybe it is time for Canada to stick its nose into its own affairs and forget adventures which might bring it dire consequences.
How about that? The Russians, of all people, referring to the USA as “Big Brother.” Anyway, since “hockey stick” global warming is looking less and less likely (not that it ever looked very likely), the Russians should relax. And in the worst case, both Canada and Russia will be so busy fending off rabid polar bears that they won’t have time to worry about anything else.
It is a uniquely Russian weirdness to think they own more of the arctic than Canada. Just to get the picture:
It looks to me like Greenland has a better claim than Russia. Or maybe if Russia gets too uppity, the fine folk at Ward Hunt Island will mount a punitive expedition, using the massive Canadian navy.
Mar 30 2010
Rewarding illegal behavior with citizenship
An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship
A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.
To end the practice of “birthright citizenship,” all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment’s first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.
……………………….
Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to those whose presence here is “not only without the government’s consent but in violation of its law.”
George Will’s piece, linked above, gives a nice history of the 14th Amendment, and explains clearly why it should not be interpreted to mean that all babies of illegal aliens are automatically US citizens. But somehow, I don’t think Congress is likely to act on this anytime soon, since the Democrats want to turn as many illegals as possible into voters… for them. That’s why they are loathe to enforce our borders, they are for same day registration/voting and “motor voter” laws, and are only too happy to accept the support of illegal alien activist organizations.
I’m sure the Democrats mourn the passing of ACORN, which was famous for finding ways for illegals to vote, not to mention evade taxes and other laws.
So we won’t see a Congressional reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment anytime soon. But read all of Will’s piece. It’s essential information for the next time someone tries to convince you that it makes any kind of sense Constitutionally for anchor babies to be automatic US citizens.
Mar 27 2010
The whitewash in the media continues, #3
Hope springs eternal, I suppose. The major media continues to hope that the public has the memory of gerbil… or maybe a lobster. I suspect, however, that the Democrats may discover that the voting public has the claws of a lobster come this November. Nevertheless, when you ordain a president based on hope, I suppose no one should be surprised if you evaluate his efforts from the standpoint of hope. But hope is about all you have, despite your opinion that after Two big wins, a presidency <is> transformed for Obama:
Two big wins for Barack Obama at home and abroad — a historic health care bill and a new arms treaty with Russia — have injected sudden momentum into a presidency that had been looking beleaguered.
Well, yes, the health bill was historic, in the sense of a politically suicidal Congress ramming something through that 70% of the public really didn’t want, with naked bribery that would be illegal if a anyone else did it.
“What a week here,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on his twitter feed, as Obama concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday.
What a week indeed. As far as can be determined at this time, the cuts to which Russia agreed are in the area of strategic weapons only. That means that battlefield and tactical nukes aren’t affected… and Russia has a great preponderance of those. It is those weapons that are a bigger threat to Europe, former Soviet satellites, and the Middle East, since they are all Russia has to counter its relative weakness in conventional weapons, compared to its Cold War heyday (though Putin is building up again, and fast, to try to recover the conventional strength that Yeltsin squandered, from their point of view). Russia has plainly signaled its intent to use its possession of the main oil pipe into Europe (in the Georgia invasion) to control the Euro-powers. Russia wants to regain its superpower status. Putin is not a peace maker, unless it temporarily serves his larger purpose, which is expansion and power.
Biggest concern: will Russia use this to get the USA to make cuts that matter, while Russia simply decommissions aging technology that may not be working too well anyway? Second biggest concern: how much of that aging nuclear technology and fissile material will be safely decommissioned into secure storage, and how much will mysteriously evaporate into the ether, maybe showing up on the black market?
It is risible that Putin and Medvedev would agree to ANYTHING that they didn’t believe strengthened them and weakened the USA in relative terms. The US media (and, I fear, the US State Department) don’t seem to grasp the distinction between a piece of paper and actual peace. North Korea has agreed to all kinds of things, and the media have hailed the negotiations that produced the agreements, and then had abrupt memory loss when North Korea reneged, leading to calls in the media for more negotiations. Review the definition of insanity. The Soviet Union, we now know (based partly on KGB files opened to the public after the collapse of the old regime), bent most arms agreements we ever made with them, when they could. Putin regrets the passing of that brutal state, and is doing his best to emulate its power-grasping tendencies.
Putin has been busy rehabilitating Stalin in the minds of the Russian public. Does anyone actually think that Putin/Medvedev are signing agreements either out of fear of US nuclear preemption (about as likely as the US nuking Mexico), or out of altruism and the desire for international amity (maybe they should get Nobel Prizes)? If you are one who harbors either belief, I have a nice property with an in-ground swimming pool in Siberia that I’d love to sell you. The pool isn’t heated…. but with global warming heating up Siberia, all you really have to worry about is rampaging polar bears looking for an ice floe to surf on.
No doubt Obama supporters will claim that the new agreement has strong verification protocols built in. Maybe. But Russia is a big, big country. Obama has been busy cutting our space program, our military and our intelligence agencies. Exactly what resources will he use to verify that Russia isn’t holding out the same way the Soviets did? Those agreements had “verification” built in, too.
In six days, two of the biggest projects of Obama’s presidency came to fruition after months of painstaking work, transforming the image of an administration that had swung hard but failed to connect on big agenda items.
He has STILL failed to connect on the government takeover of health-care. Don’t confuse holding hostages with hitting home-runs.
In any case, the public really hasn’t evinced much concern about Russian nukes lately, though doubtless the media will try to pump this “achievement” up into something deserving of the prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize. I suppose my problem with this is simple: Obama has not built up any trust in his ability to tell our friends from our enemies. He is captive of the moral equivalence view that American objectives are no worthier than Russian ones. At bottom, he does not believe in American exceptionalism, so he cannot defend American interests with a whole heart. After all, we’re no better than anyone else.
By Friday, Obama could savor the spectacle of the pundits he frequently decries, switching from a “this presidency is over” mantra, to hailing him as a conquering domestic president and a global statesmen.
Yeah, and come next November he could be savoring that lobster we talked about. The claws, that is. Now, that would be a change worth hoping for.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
