Archive for the 'Foreign affairs' Category

May 9th 2013
Benghazi Fugazi

Posted under esoterica & Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Uncategorized

In 1997, with the weight of several years of Internet and more primitive mail order activism accusing the Executive Branch of gross criminal behavior, a new scandal was suddenly injected into the conversation: Chinese political contributions—we have laws about that!

In retrospect, the move seems almost comically brilliant.  The scandal expanded to tech transfers from Loral (which Richard Perle cleared up –scroll to the comments from this chap, JohnGalt for my old fans–,for his usual fee of course.)  And without breaking a rhythm, Laurie Mylroie had turned the OKC Bombing into something Saddam done.  Like he done 9/11.

Laurie Mylroie had once worked for the Clinton Administration, and was clearly in the Gore faction—anyone who thinks Gore, had he won, wasn’t going to invade Iraq still doesn’t get it.

 In the aftermath of the Benghazi SNAFU, the old rightwing blogshpere suggested the ambassador was gay, and that might have something to do with his death.  I keep in the back of my mind, that maybe that is the cover-up.

Bonkers Bolton thinks Benghazi will bring Obama down—like China Money brought down Bill Clinton, not, as they said.

The heart of the matter is that the CIA was using Libya to traffic arms to terrorists in Syria and some noise has to be created to obscure this reality.  Back at the time, WND rolled out Family Research Council spook and Waco criminal, General Boykin to say that CIA is not running guns to jihadist terrorists—someone figure out why he could say such things if not one of the actors?

Like the top being down on Kennedy’s car, we’ll never know why the hit was  allowed, but one must continue to shut out the noise.

4 Comments »

May 8th 2013
Our new friend and ally – Al Qaeda!

Posted under Foreign affairs & Terrorism

After 4,000 dead in New York and Washington D.C plus many other successful terrorist attacks across the globe which killed Americans and even more attempts at killing Americans, everyone will happy to know there’s no hard feelings. The hatchet is being buried and the past is being forgotten. If the U.S. does intervene in Syria internal, sectarian war because of whatever silly “red line” the Obama Administration puts on the conflict that has to be crossed first, it will be doing on the side which has so much of our citizen’s blood on their hands they might as well be vampires, Al Qaeda.

But hey, never let it be said the U.S. holds grudges. After all Saddam Hussein was once a friend and so was Joe Stalin. Manuel Noriega, Fidel Casto, you name the leader or cause or country and no doubt the U.S has been either their friend or their enemy at one time or another. “Friends and enemies may change but interests don’t”  is an old diplomatic saying and if applied to Syria, what a friend we’re going to have in Al Qaeda as ally ourselves to bring down the Assad regime. Just think, you paid to clean-up the World Trade Center and not even 15 years later you’ll be paying the organization who made it a mess. Lovely.

Of course the powers that be will never says such things publicly given how politically sensitive it might be. And some naive and the stupid among them may really, truly believe they’re aiding democracy in Syria and making sure any U.S. weaponry go to the “right people”. Yes, well the largest and best armed of the rebel factions in Syria is allied to Al Qaeda and would like nothing better than to use the “Great Satan’s” guns to take over Syria and make it terrorist state just like Osama bin Laden did with Afghanistan, right in the most strategic place in the Middle East.

Actually, come to think of it, the U.S. does hold a grudge when it comes to foreign policy and it’s against Iran. The Hostage Crisis was 35 years ago but apparently to some in D.C. the calendar year hasn’t changed from November 1979. If we can be friends with Al Qaeda and I really don’t see why we can’t with Iran. No matter who runs the county, whether Shah or Mullah, both Iran and the U.S. share similar strategic interests. That we remain enemies after all these years really runs counter to those interests. Unfortunately two bad actors in the region prevent this from happening.

The first of course is Israel. Even they too were once cooperative with the Iranians and share similar interests as a non-Arab state in the Middle East, they are so determined to hold on to their nuclear monopoly in the region they will do anything to prevent the Iranians from doing so, even though owning the bomb had been an Iranian dream since the days of the Shah. 

They are also determined to stop Hezbollah even though the Shia based group in Lebanon once welcomed the Israelis as liberators in their 1982 invasion against the PLO which had taken over the southern part of the country. The Israelis needlessly made an enemy which now driving them to actually want an Al Qaeda state on its borders rather than Alawite Assad regime which has kept the peace since 1973. Sheer bloody madness.

Then there’s the real enemy of the U.S. and that is Saudi Arabia. Of course the Saudis want U.S. protections for the House the Saud to enjoy their oil wealth and keep their Shia population in eastern Arabia under their thumb and Bahrain as well (which has a Shia majority but is rule by a Sunni monarchy backed by Saudi tanks and the U.S. Fifth Fleet). To get rid of Assad means one less Shia to worry about. Yet this the same Saudi Arabia which finances the spread of their fanatical Sunni Muslim doctrines all over the world which led to bloody terrorism from Africa, to Russia, to the Balkans, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and right here in the U.S only few short weeks ago in Boston. Does anyone forget the 9-11 were Saudi nationals?

It is Saudi Arabia which needs to be dealt with if there is ever going to be an end to the so-called “War on Terrorism”. It is they who need to be stopped or else be threaten with Shia rebellion and Iranian intervention and oil embargoes. Both the U.S. and the world are past the point in the supply of oil to where the Saudis can influence the price. Instead it is they and their allies in the Persian Gulf which be brought to account for the terror and misery they’ve caused with their fanaticism. If we can somehow join with our once sworn enemies then we can also ditch our so-called friends and good start would be right on the Arabian Peninsula instead intervening in modern-day version of the Thirty Years War.

It’s long past time U.S. interests in the regional were finally aligned properly with the Shia instead of the Sunni. It’s long past time to ally ourselves with our real friends and deal with our real enemies.

1 Comment »

April 26th 2013
The Interventionists Aren’t Happy About Ron Paul’s New Foreign Policy Think Tank

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Political Correctness & Rand Paul & Ron Paul

The memo has apparently gone out. Smear Ron Paul’s new think tank.

Jamie (now James?) Kirchick writes this for The Daily Beast. I’m Shocked! Just Shocked! That PC enforcer hack Jamie Kirchick has written another PC smear job about Ron Paul. Who would have guessed it?

Jamie Weinstein writes this at The Daily Caller. What’s up with Jamies being PC thought policers?

Walter Russell Meade says Ron Paul’s Institute will hurt Rand’s chance at becoming President. This is a not so veiled threat. “Shut up with the wrongthink Ron, or your kid gets it!”

The Week piles on, attempting to reinforce the Rand Paul link.

Tom Woods replies here and here.

Woods does what libertarians are wont to do and immediately appeals to libertarian first principles. Appealing to first principles is fine. I appeal to Constitutionalist first principles all the time. But when it comes to this thought policing nonsense, I think the thought policers need to be called out for being the pathetic little weeniefied thought slaves that they are.

Kirchick, Weinstein and Meade, grow a pair of intellectual balls, and quit being rightthink enforcers for the Conventional Wisdom. I do not believe that 9/11 was an inside job, but I don’t go running for the tall grass like some sort of intellectual fraidy cat at the suggestion. This desire to stamp out wrongthink is MUCH more dangerous than the wrongthink itself. Perhaps you should actually engage an argument rather than point and ridicule like some sort of middle school mean girl.

You have to wonder what is going on inside the head of people like Kirchick who seem to relish the role of righthink hit-man. Man up, develop some intellectual testosterone, and HAVE A FREE THOUGHT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE!

5 Comments »

April 19th 2013
Chechnya

Posted under Foreign affairs & Russia & Sovereignty and Secession & Terrorism

I have long said that Russia should just let Chechnya go. They clearly don’t think of themselves as Russians. Is it really worth all the trouble to keep them in? They let Georgia go, for example, when the USSR collapsed. Why not let Chechnya go? I have read that it has to do with their relative statuses before the breakup. Georgia already enjoyed a higher level of autonomy than Chechnya does. So they’re keeping Chechnya on a technicality?

Russia aided secessionist South Ossetia when they thought doing so would tweak the Georgians.  But they won’t allow Chechnya their independence. Sounds hypocritical to me.

Of course, America’s official position on the issue should be neutrality. I’m just sayin’ for me personally… I believe if I were a Russian I would be thinking, “Good riddance! Don’t let the door hit you on the backside on the way out.”

12 Comments »

April 18th 2013
www.RonPaulInstitute.org

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Ron Paul

Ron Paul’s new foreign policy institute now has a website up.

Daniel McCarthy reports on today’s press conference here.

1 Comment »

April 12th 2013
Update on Ron Paul’s New Foreign Policy Institute

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Ron Paul

We discussed this before, but here is an update. Paul will hold a press conference on Wednesday to discuss his new institute. It will be called the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. I complained in the post linked above that I didn’t like the name Peace and Prosperity because I thought it sounded vaguely lefty, but I’m OK with it if it is the ”Ron Paul Institute for…” because having his name attached to it will avoid confusion.

This part is interesting:

Founder and Chairman Dr. Paul has invited the Institute’s board of advisors to speak at the conference, including Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (NC), Rep. John Duncan, Jr. (TN), Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ambassador Faith Whittlesey, and Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.

8 Comments »

April 4th 2013
Non-Interventionism in the Age of Gonzo

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism

Eric Margolis details provocations staged in early March by USG, geared towards eliciting a predictable round of boorish bluster from the North Korean elites.

Back in the 50s, Leviathan would bother with a real piece of theater like Gary Powers in a U2 getting ‘busted’ to prevent a detente between Khrushchev and Eisenhower, a preformance at least worthy of respect.  But whatever is going on, perhaps a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, might well be a new genre of stunts and avant-garde politics.

It could only be one Dennis Rodman, former NBA star and nWo (pro-wrestling) member, famously teaming with Hollywood Hogan against Karl Malone and Diamond Dallas Page—DDP who now runs a yoga company  and rehabs former wrestling stars like Jake Roberts and Scott Hall—who became the slurring ambassador of peace with North Korea, only to be mocked as the clown.

The meeting between Rodman and the North Korean leader was organized by Vice Media as a means to get into the country (TakiMag’s own Gavin McInnes thus offers a tie in to paleodom),  which is working with HBO on some apparent gonzo/politically incorrect documentaries about the worst countries in the world (e.g. Liberia which Amren noticed.)

One might even suggest that the recent redo of Red Dawn, where China insisted the bad guys in the script be changed to, why not North Korea?, might have some factor in the current media cycle–Kim Jong Un likely saw a (selectively edited) Chinese bootleg right?

4 Comments »

February 26th 2013
Rand Paul Votes Against Cloture for Hagel Confirmation but then Votes for Hagel’s Confirmation

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Rand Paul

Would someone like to explain this to me either philosophically or politically?

Rand voted against cloture. 13 Republicans, including uber-hawks McCain and Graham, voted for cloture, ending the debate and moving along the question of Hagel’s confirmation. Rand was not one of them. He voted to continue the debate, essentially continuing to hold up the Hagel confirmation. Then he turned around and voted for confirmation. He was one of only 4 Republicans to vote for confirmation.

I think Rand’s initial vote in support of the filibuster was wrongheaded, but I agree with Daniel McCarthy in the second link above that to vote for cloture the second time after voting against it the first time would have been politically silly. It wouldn’t win back the non-interventionists and would hurt him with the hawks he’s courting. But the same goes with voting for Hagel’s confirmation. Once he had cast his die with the anti-Hagel crowd, what did he think was to be gained by voting for the nomination? The hawks will have their ammo against him, but does he really think that the non-intervantionists will be impressed? Or that moderates will give him credit for being thoughtful? McCarthy seems to be suggesting that in the first link, but I doubt his reaction will be the common one.

C Bowen suggested in the post below that Rand got to have his cake and eat it too, but I don’t see it that way. It seems to me that he just managed to piss off everybody to no good effect. Either come out in support of Hagel and vote that way all along. You tick off the hawks but make the non-interventionists happy. Or come out against Hagel and vote that way all along. You tick of the non-interventionists but make the hawks happy. As is, he has made no one happy, and I doubt he gets much credit for being “thoughtful.”

This feels to me like he planned to vote for Hagel’s confirmation all along but the cloture issue came up and he handled that separately. I would really like to know what he was thinking.

4 Comments »

February 24th 2013
Ron Paul to form a Foreign Policy Institute

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Ron Paul

This is good news. There are very few institutional voices for non-interventionism. There are voices for neoconservatism. There are voices for internationalist realism. There are voices for liberal internationalism. But non-interventionism has very few voices outside general libertarian outfits.

Rumor has it that it is going to be called the Peace and Prosperity Institute. If so, this is an unfortunate choice of names. It sounds lefty. We need to convince conservatives that non-interventionism is the authentic expression of conservatism, not contribute to their bias that it is leftist.

23 Comments »

February 15th 2013
Rand Paul Supports Hagel Filibuster: The Sell Out is Complete

Posted under Election 2016 & Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Rand Paul

OK Rand apologists, spin this.

Earlier today Scott McConnell reported that Rand Paul opposed the Hagel nomination and even supported a filibuster.

But now Rand is doubling down in support of Cruz, in favor of a filibuster of Hagel on grounds that are both bogus and demagogic. (Hagel of course has answered the financial disclosure questions required for any nominee for Secretary of Defense, and in today’s Washington these are by no means perfunctory.)

So let’s be clear. If Rand Paul persists on going demagogic on Hagel, he will have established beyond any serious doubt that regardless of who his father is, he is Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin’s boy. It saddens me to conclude that because I like to be optimistic. But it’s a truth that must be faced.

A lot of non-interventionists were looking to the Hagel vote as a litmus test of where Rand is eventually going to settle out on foreign policy. Needless to say, he failed.

Jim Antle has a run down on the reaction of some Paul supporters here. They are not happy campers.

For the record, I’m not crazy about Hagel. Hagel is a less bellicose globalist than the hyper-bellicose globalist neocons, but he’s no non-interventionist, a distinction his non-interventionist supporters have failed to adequately make, IMO.

19 Comments »

February 8th 2013
More Rand Paul Foreign Policy Speech Reaction

Posted under Election 2016 & Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Rand Paul & Republican Party

The Weekly Standard, via the Kagan Brothers, is not impressed. I’m sure that shocks you.

FrontPageMag is not impressed either. Again a shocker.

It is no surprise that the interventionist fanatics aren’t fond of Paul the Lesser’s speech, but I actually think they are not being very strategically wise here. The interventionist jihadists are so eager to stamp out even the slightest dissent that they don’t seem to realize that Rand has given away the store. If I was a hard core interventionist I would be dancing an obnoxious victory dance right now because I would know that we just made the best hope of the other side very publicly repudiate his father and genuflect to our side. Publicly I would be saying, “Way to come around to our side Rand.” Privately I would be thinking, “We made you blink.”

Update: Justin Raimondo isn’t impressed either, although obviously for other reasons.

The Daily Beast recognizes the speech for what it was, Rand’s way of saying “I’m not my Dad.”

1 Comment »

February 6th 2013
Rand Paul Foreign Policy Speech Reactions

Posted under Election 2016 & Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Rand Paul & Ron Paul

Rand Paul gave a speech on foreign policy today at the Heritage Foundation. He is clearly trying to split the difference. He isn’t going to please the neocon faithful. He isn’t going to please the hard-core non-interventionists. Can he please GOP primary voters? That remains to be seen. I”ll have more to say later, but I’m not impressed.

Here is Jim Antle’s article on the speech. Note the tweets from Justin Raimondo he cites. Justin is clearly not impressed.

Reason says Rand is clearly trying to distance himself from his father on foreign policy.

Neocon hawk Jennifer Rubin didn’t like it.

Update: Philip Giraldi is not impressed.

This is pre-speech, but Matt Welch at Reason is impressed.

 

22 Comments »

January 30th 2013
More than just a game

Posted under Election 2012 & Foreign affairs & Rand Paul & Ron Paul

Jack Hunter’s latest Southern Avenger article was critical of those who weren’t exactly enamored of Rand Paul’s recent statement concerning Israel and U.S. protection thereof if said nation was ever attacked.

Jack was critical of libertarians who tend to focus in one area of disagreement of the 20 areas of agreement. Well, if was just one thing I would agree. It is not I can assure you. It is multiple “things” that go all the way back to the campaign and beyond.

Continue Reading »

20 Comments »

January 29th 2013
Some Alternate Opinions on Mali

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Ron Paul

Here are a couple of articles on Mali. I’m not picking on Patroon, I just wanted to counterbalance his post below.

Here are Ron Paul’s thoughts. He wants to know why there has been no Congressional approval for our actions in Mali.

There is a reason why the framers of our Constitution placed the authority to declare war strictly with the Legislative Branch of government. They knew well that kings were all too willing to go to war without the consent of those who would do the killing and dying — and funding. By placing that authority in Congress, the people’s branch of government, they intended to blunt the executive branch’s enthusiasm toward overseas adventurism. The consequences of this steady erosion of our system toward the unitary executive are dire.

Here is Philip Giraldi’s take. He seems to generally concur with Patroon’s take on the causes and potential implications of the rebel war in Mali, but he reaches a different conclusion about  the wisdom of intervention.

It is an all too typical situation wrapped in Washington’s ignorance that is just waiting to become the next crisis. The White House knows almost nothing about the militants in Mali and even less about what happened in Algeria. General Carter Ham, who heads the Army’s Stuttgart-based Africa Command, admits that it is difficult to get reliable intelligence about what he perhaps conveniently refers to as the terrorist “safe haven” in Mali. The New York Times notes that Washington has only an “impressionistic understanding” of the militants involved. The perceived wisdom mandating the suppression of insurgencies everywhere coupled with the belief that all militancies tend to metastasize creates a U.S. interest in Africa that might not be credible. The fall of Timbuktu to extremists who have a local agenda does not actually threaten the United States and the ability of such groups to strike the U.S. is nil, so one might well plausibly decide that Washington has no real interest in Mali at all. Based on the performance of the Malian Army, one would also have to conclude that Africa Command is possibly not worth the time, money, and effort that is being committed to it in support of an agenda that continues to be somewhat opaque.

3 Comments »

January 23rd 2013
Why France (or someone) has to intervene in Mali

Posted under Christianity & Europe & Foreign affairs & Religion

“It’s dirty job but someone has to do it” as the old saying goes describes exactly why France finds itself in position its does having to intervene military in Mali. France’s actions hopefully put an end to the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” stupidity that exists on the American Right. I don’t see a lot U.S. troops on the ground in Mali nor will we. Drones have pretty much replaced actual soldiers at this point in the GWOT. At least France has real soldiers on the ground ready to fight.

Of course, the first important reason for France’s intervention in Mali is cleaning up the mess it help to create when it insisted they other NATO nations intervene in the Libyan Revolution. Having been defeated, Col. Kadahfy’s Tuareg mercenaries simply grabbed what heavy weapons they could from the Libyan army arsenal and went back to Mali and Niger and Algeria and the other countries these nomads roam through and starting causing trouble. The revolt by Tuaregs to carve off northern Mali into an automous state of Azawad and the political upheaval it caused in Mali was the first blowback caused by the Libyan intervention. The second was Islamic terrorists groups using the chaos as it’s angle to take control of northern Mali and push aside the Tuaregs, who only wanted self-government not seeing their women flogged in public for wearing the wrong clothes.

The second important reason has to do with collective security in response to aggression. It’s no secret France moved as quickly and surprisingly as it did because a red line was crossed in their minds which left them no choice. When the Salafist forces moved with 250 miles of the Malian capital of Bamako, then French knew they had to get involved. Had they not done so, it is conceivable the terrorists could have drive their pick-up trucks all the way Bamako and taken over. There would have been nothing to stop them considering the putrid state of Mali’s military, which is nothing more than a police army which is better at abusing its own citizens than fighting the enemy. And if the such armed Salfists groups took over, it would be the first time that such a trans-national terrorist group had seized control of another country right from the native people’s grasp (the Taliban were Pashtun tribalists allied with Al Qaeda).

Mali may well be a nowheresville to rest of the world but in this case it happens to be a central nowhere which touches everywhere. A Salafist takeover of Mali would have put them right in direct contact with the vicious killers of the Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria and providing an even more direct threat to that nation,which is the most important in all of West Africa, and to Christian populations the further south you go in Nigeria and states like Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Chad, Benin, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cameroon, Gabon, Togo and the Central African Republic.  It would destabilize the entire region which is filled with artificial  states left over from colonial times whose in some cases governments hang by a thread. If Mali fell to such well-armed terrorists, then the same could happen to these states as well. Continue Reading »

27 Comments »

November 16th 2012
Things Said or Done Long Years Ago

Posted under Foreign affairs & NeoCons

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Yeats, William Butler. “Vacillation“.

This must surely be how David Frum (author of 2003 “Unpatriotic Conservatives” article tarring paleocon war critics) and the rest of the Neocons feel after their repeated foreign policy bungles (Oops, no WMD?).

Cost:
Iraqi Refugees Admitted into USA: 64,174
Iraqi Refugees Total: Millions
Total Americans Wounded in Iraq: 33184
Total American Deaths in Iraq: 4488
Iraqi Deaths Due to US Invasion: 1455590
Money Spent on Iraq War: Over 808 Billion

Achievement: Replace secular Sunni leader and former US-ally who poses no threat to the US with, one of the most corrupt states in the world. Transparency International ranks its corruption at #175 out of 183 countries. Shia Muslims in Iraq are now dominant: Iran is also Shia Muslim.
Continue Reading »

7 Comments »

October 24th 2012
Classic Form, Mr. Auster

Posted under Foreign affairs & Terrorism

Larry Auster is a serious thinker on the Right (on-line anyway), with one little fetish, which I suppose anyone is entitled too.

Writing on Benghazigate, Mr. Auster suggests the important article from Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Barry Rubin for understanding the situation, and concludes his post with this paragraph from Rubin’s article which outlines 101 Blowback, which note, Mr. Auster does not characterize as anti-American:

…As the Libyan government’s patron, Americans will become the target of revolutionary Islamists who blame the United States for their rulers and understandably believe that attacking America is a necessary part of overthrowing them. That, of course, is why the U.S. ambassador was murdered.

 

 

 

 

8 Comments »

October 23rd 2012
And the Winner of Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate is … Ron Paul

Posted under Election 2012 & Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Mitt Romney & Ron Paul

Because both the candidates are interventionist clowns. Although it is telling that Romney toned down the usual chest thumping rhetoric that he normally feeds to his “conservative” audiences. I think Romney and his advisers know that that crap doesn’t sell to undecided voters. This is every so slightly hopeful.

Post your thoughts on the debate below.

24 Comments »

October 9th 2012
Reaction to Romney’s Foreign Policy Speech

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism & Iran & Iraq & Mitt Romney

I’ll have more to say on Romney’s big foreign policy speech, but I want to post some reaction before it gets stale.

Daniel Larison

Daniel McCarthy

Reid Smith

Gene Healy (Cato)

Smith’s reaction is particularly interesting because he is posting at the American Spectator.

3 Comments »

September 20th 2012
Why Do We Have All These Embassies Anyway?

Posted under Foreign affairs & Interventionism

This is a Facebook post from Kevin Gutzman. It’s a good question.

When James Madison was president, the USA had embassies in a handful of foreign countries. During the Cold War, it put them in basically every country in furtherance of a worldwide anti-Communist campaign. Today, it still has embassies virtually everywhere.
 
Why?
 

There are two major forces in human history: boredom and inertia. This is a manifestation of the latter. The country can’t afford all of these embassies, and they don’t do any good.

8 Comments »

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