Control of Georgia's oil pipeline may be at the heart of this conflict.

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

~WInston Churchill

The Russians are tricky. They have suckered the world into thinking that they are a more peaceful, progressive nation than they were during the Soviet era. We have been duped into believing this over the years, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Now, as Georgia burns, and the world wonders whether a ceasefire will hold or whether Putin’s puppet Medvedev will simply (as the Russians so often do) say one thing and do another…

Neo-Neocon writes:

The fact is that, unless we are willing to back up our rhetoric with military force or the meaningful sanctions to which Europe seems averse, talk is cheap. And if you compare Obama’s statement on the topic with that of McCain, you’ll find that both contain some meaningless cheap talk of the “the Security Council needs to condemn this” variety (at least McCain acknowledges the Russian threat of a veto; Obama does not).

For the rest of the article, read Russia and Georgia, and wars cold and hot: the Kingdom of Earth.

Her prose is really quite excellent, and it was this piece, along with an interview on NPR with Marshall Goldman, author of Petrostate, that made me write yet another piece on the Georgian conflict.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Apologizing for terrorism is completely indefensible. Have people forgotten MLK and Gandhi’s teachings? Have people forgotten the Velvet and Singing Revolutions in Eastern Europe against the Soviet/Russian Empire?

The Soviets murdered millions, deported millions to Siberia, bugged telephones, banned books, outlawed native languages, encouraged Russians to emigrate to occupied nations to dilute the indigenous cultures, assassinated and jailed dissidents — it was the Orwellian horror come true. (Please read, “Lithuanians, Jews, Nazis, the Holocaust, and Collective Guilt,” and “That Other Holocaust, Revisited.”)

But, for example, the Balts (Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians) never turned to terrorism during 50 years of brutal occupation. They organized secret meetings, passed banned books around, held clandestine cultural festivals — held tenaciously onto their culture. In their ultimate act of rejection of Soviet oppression, thousands of people held hands forming a chain across all three Baltic nations. Now that’s beauty. That’s what MLK and Gandhi taught.

Estonia (1.3 million people), Latvia (2.3 million people), and Lithuania (3.6 million), all three with few natural resources, never had a chance of facing off militarily against the might of Russia (141 million) with virtually unlimited natural resources.

The Balts didn’t blow up cafes full of civilians. Same goes for African-Americans led by MLK against the U.S. status quo of the time, or Gandhi against the British Empire, or now the infinitesimally small Tibet against 1.3 billion Chinese.

Turning to terrorism takes a twisted, immoral, despicable consciousness — an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility, and an abrogation of common decency.

Cross-posted at netwmd.com and NeoConstant.

Mark Steyn, several days ago, wrote an excellent piece which is published at his blog.  Go read it.

So what’s Putin’s game? Well, he leads a country with severe structural defects (a collapsed birth rate for everyone except Russia’s Muslims, a depopulating east, disease-ridden menfolk face down in the vodka) but a relatively buoyant economy — or, to be more precise, kleptocracy. In particular, Western Europe is increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. Putin calculates that even a weak Kremlin can make mischief for America.

This question, from Commentary magazine.

But I bet he won’t.  If I saw Abbas I don’t think I could even look at the coward.

Today Israel traded a convicted child-murderer for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

Meryl Yourish writes:

By now it is over. The coffins handed over across the border today contain the two bodies they were supposed to contain. The two grieving families will get the closure of their two year long nightmare.

The decision to go ahead with this exchange, with almost total certainty that we’ll be paying the price of releasing a baby killer for two bodies, was not an easy one. I wouldn’t wish to be one of the people on whose shoulders the decision fell. But it is over and done with.

Indeed it is.  Samir Kuntar is home to a heroes welcome, and two brave Israeli soldiers are home in coffins.  A murderer traded for two brave, dead men.  Long gone are questions as to why they were not released ages ago, when Israel backed away from its offensive on Lebanon.  New questions have risen, however.

The Elder of Ziyon brings up a good point, writing–

Almost absent from all the discussion about the prisoner swap is the fact that Hezbollah murdered two captured soldiers, probably way after they were captured.

Where are the human rights organizations? Where is the outcry of anger at Hezbollah’s flouting of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws? Who in the West is standing up and calling Hezbollah murderers?

It is a stark and brutal reality–Hezbollah has murdered prisoners of war.  They have murdered them in cold blood, while in captivity, and have returned their corpses.  These were soldiers, kidnapped–not even captured in combat–who were summarily executed by a terrorist organization pretending to be an army, pretending to be a political group.

Well this should show them for what they are: terrorists and thugs, murderers, criminals.  The entire organization should be laid to waste, every member tracked down and killed or captured.  If only it were so easy.

Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, spoke today on the prisoner exchange, saying:

“By virtue of this power we decided to return the boys, even with the heavy price of releasing a despicable murderer.  Nobody else will understand what every Israeli understands well: the worry over the fate of every one of our soldiers is the glue which binds us as a society, and it this which allows us to survive in an area which is surrounded by enemies and terror organizations.”

I wonder if Olmert listened to the subsequent speech of Samir Kuntar, the child-killer?  According to YNET, Kuntar returned to cries of joy, where he gave a brief speech:

“I want to congratulate all those who sacrificed for the sake of this new victory. This is the true supplement to the July victory (Second Lebanon War.) I won’t say much now, I will make do with sending well-wishes to the man responsible for the promise that was fulfilled, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and to the heroic fighters of the Islamic resistance (Hizbullah).”

The most chilling words of his speech should also be the least surprising,

He later added, “today I returned from our precious Palestine, but believe me, God willing, I promise my family and my loved ones that we shall be back, I and my friends from the Islamic resistance. I did not return from prison but to return to Palestine.”

It is honestly frightening that a man whose fame was won by smashing in the skull of a little girl whose father he had just killed in front of her would receive such a warm welcome. I can’t imagine a similar heroes welcome in the United States.  In fact, if one of our soldiers had been accused of murdering a little girl and her father, even if we did get him back in a prisoner exchange, we’d have him tried the next day.  Why has the Arab world sacrificed their moral clarity so much so that they could rejoice at the return of a killer?

Sharon Gilad writes of her,

pure, unadulterated, palpable hatred emanating from the surreal images of the Lebanese side of the border, showing the Lebanese people cheering for a despicable, vile murderer as if he were a long lost hero….One has to ask all those devoted Lebanese mothers, what is it about this homicidal maniac that makes him such a celebrity? What honor is there in bashing in the head of an innocent little girl?

What indeed?  And will they cheer him on the next time he has an opportunity to murder a family, so long as it is a family of Jews?

I imagine myself watching as the murderer of my family was set free in exchange for corpses, and I feel a terrible flood of anger, horror, regret–though I never knew these people, though I never spoke with them.

Baruch Keren, brother of Kuntar’s victim, Danny Haran said,

“When I saw our coffins I felt defeated and humiliated. If the soldiers were alive, at least one of them, I would have accepted it differently no doubt. But when you see the coffins you understand how we’ve been toyed with this whole time.

“While we tried our best to be human and let a murderer marry and study, we have created this monster and turned him into their hero. I ask the Lebanese people – is this your hero? A man who bashed the skull of a little girl? This is the murderer you are crowning a hero?”

So what has Israel done?  Have they taken the moral high ground in this exchange?  Will this lead toward some deal to bring back captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit?  According to Olmert and the Egyptians, that deal is closer than ever…but will Shalit be alive?  Certainly this seems less likely than ever.

It seems to me that Israel has given their enemies a weapon, and their enemies plan to use it in every way imaginable.

Further Reading

Meryl Yourish on Abbas sending his congratulations to the family of murderer Samir Kuntar.

The Day in Photos from the LA Times

The Elder of Ziyon on encouraging terrorists

Read about this at EuropeNews and it should be a shocking reminder of just how perverted the justice systems of the West have become.

The picture is an affront to all victims of terrorism and their families. Abu Qatada, Al Qaeda’s ambassador in Europe, strolls along a busy London street fondling his prayer beads.

This is the first photograph of the greying 47-year-old - said to be one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist suspects - since he was released on bail from a high-security prison after the courts ordered that he could not be sent home to Jordan because his human rights would have been breached.

It was taken on July 7, hours after the families and friends of the 52 innocent people killed in the London transport suicide bombings three years ago remembered their loved ones at a memorial service.

The radical cleric was freed three weeks ago when a judge ruled that there were no grounds to detain him after previous attempts to deport him to Jordan, where he was convicted of terror attacks and bomb plots, were defeated in the courts.

So apparently if you’re a terrorist and you can’t be deported that also means you can’t be detained.  Hell, it’s much easier just to let you go so that you can do it again–perhaps your freedom will inspire other would-be terrorists to blow up innocents as well!  What a win-win situation all around…

The fanatical preacher, who was 20 stone but slimmed down on prison food, was pictured on a shopping trip near the £800,000 home he shares with his wife and children.

Exact details of the location where the Qatada family are living on benefits of an estimated £50,000 a year are protected by court orders.

Indeed, the more one reads the more one thinks to oneself…hmmm…the life of a radical Islamist cleric/terrorist doesn’t sound so bad.  Sure, one could find oneself hiding in the Pakistani hills, but then again, if one could only make it to the UK, one could instead lead a life of luxury and relaxation…

Neighbours who came forward soon after Qatada was freed spoke of their outrage over having such a man in the area while British soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The decision to free Qatada has left Britain’s anti-terror laws in tatters and the taxpayer facing a bill of tens of thousands of pounds to keep the preacher under surveillance by the security services.

Truly, nothing is certain but death and taxes, and Abu Qatada is surely the man who will make both those outcomes far more likely for far too many innocent people…

Read the full article here.

I wrote previously on “The Ingrid Betancourt Rescue.” Yet, the more I learn of Betancourt’s ordeal, the more powerful is her story of moral courage.

André Glucksmann, at City Journal, argues for seeing Betancourt’s six years in captivity as a story of personal bravery and the ultimate rejection of slavery and terror:

Public opinion, government officials, ordinary citizens, and her friends and family—all are moved by, and rejoice in, Ingrid Betancourt’s liberation from the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Bravo to the woman who survived and stood fast in her tropical gulag; to her family, who moved heaven and earth to secure her release; to the organizations that fought against forgetfulness; and to the politicians who worked tirelessly to free her. Such joy aside, however, I fear that the thunderous worldwide applause may smother, with flowers and compliments, a troublesome and insistent truth—one that the hostage pondered ceaselessly during her six-year ordeal and has sought to deliver to us since her arrival on the Bogota tarmac. This truth alone gives absolute meaning to her liberation.

From the outset, Betancourt has congratulated the Colombian army and President Álvaro Uribe for the military operation that saved her. She praised not only its impeccable success but also—as she deliberately pointed out—its daring, for any military operation risked going awry for some unforeseen reason and leading to the execution of the hostages, as has sometimes happened in earlier attempts. Unlike her family members—who, she is careful to emphasize, have always so feared losing her that they distrusted and criticized Uribe’s adventurism and militarism—Betancourt congratulates the Colombian president. To be sure, Operation Checkmate could well have ended in bloodshed; but Betancourt had long wished for it, ready to face death if necessary. This had become a matter of principle for her. Better, she said, “a second of freedom,” even deadly freedom, than an eternity of slavery. She had attempted five escapes, and in retribution the guerilla fighters had chained her up by the neck. “I always avoided imagining my wife’s living conditions,” her husband said. “Now I know she lived like a dog.”

Betancourt’s choice, which she has proclaimed loud and clear since her first breaths of free air, is the result of mature reflection: rather the possibility of a bloody outcome than the life of a dog. She does not tell us that anything is better than death; she says rather that freedom is worth any price….

Ingrid Betancourt’s physical, moral, and intellectual courage reminds us of what is fundamentally at stake in a civilization: the refusal of slavery.

Betancourt, who was interviewed on Larry King Live the other night, cannot talk of some of the sheer inhumanity she witnessed while in captivity: “The memories are better left in the jungle,” she said thoughout the broadcast:

Charles Krauthammer writes on the larger implications of the Betancourt story for international politics, “How Hostages, And Nations, Get Liberated” (on the hard power of military force and moral clarity).

~cross-posted at American Power

Our Support Harry’s Place Blogburst has taken off, and looks like it just might be a huge success!  It’s good to see bloggers uniting like this to save a fellow blogger in need….

A weak yet sweetly fitting tribute to fellow Axis of Evil charter member scary scary NoKo Guy and his “6 Scuds and a Dud Day” way back in ‘06 (Great Satan’s BDay to be precise).

Almost 2 years to the day, Iran’s “Payambar e Azam 3″ missile misfire drills featured make believe pics which, alas, fails to impress.

So far, Iran’s Revo Guard Corps English Lang fanboi site has yet to mention anything about it.

Shahab 3 is very much the spiritual grandson of NoKo’s “No Dong” Missile.

In more ways than one!

Harry’s Place, a UK blog dedicated to promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy, is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative, which has been linked to Hamas and the Islamic Brotherhood, both terrorist organizations. The blog reports that Mr. Sawalha, according to the BBC…

“master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”.

In their revelation of the impending lawsuit against them leveled by Mohammed Sawalha, they write:

Mr Sawalha claims that we have “chosen a malevolent interpretation of a meaningless word”. In fact, we did no more than translate a phrase which appeared in an Al Jazeera report of Mr Sawalha’s speech. When Al Jazeera changed that phrase from “Evil Jew” to “Jewish Lobby”, we reported that fact, along with the statement that it had been a typographical error.

Mr Sawalha has been the prime mover in a number of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood associated projects. He is President of the British Muslim Initiative. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque….

…Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas.

It looks like Harry’s Place is going up against some pretty top-notch lawyers on this one, and they’ve got guts, but as the post goes on to say:

If Mr Sawalha persists in attempting to silence us with this desperate legal suit, we will need your help.

We won’t be able to stand up to them alone.

This is why we’ve started this blogburst, to get the word out that we won’t let members of Hamas or any radical terrorist group censor us or any of our fellow bloggers.

If you’d like to add your site to the blogroll, simply email us at admin @ neoconstant . com, and include your site’s URL.

Then copy and paste this (or write your own) entry into one of your posts. Future posts will be emailed to you. Thanks, and don’t forget to head over to Harry’s Place to show your support of their freedom of speech!


________________________________________________________

…and this is the very first minipost.  If any author on this site would like to write really short, thought-provoking tidbits of wisdom, just check the minipost box at the very bottom of the write-post page.

~by Robin Simcox

[TO JOIN THE BLOGBURST CLICK HERE]

Events are currently unfolding in Britain which will almost certainly not penetrate any international newsreels (or any in the UK for that matter), but the importance of which transcends the geographical boundaries of the British Isles. It concerns an organisation known as the British Muslim Initiative (BMI).

The BMI have been accused of being a front group for terrorist organisation Hamas. BMI President Mohammad Sawalha was formerly the head of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), the British wing of the Muslim Brotherhood (of whom Hamas are the Palestinian wing). He has been accused by the BBC in 2006 of being a key political and military strategist for Hamas, and one of BMI’s senior members, Azzam Tamimi, has declared his wish to become a suicide bomber in Palestine.

On 29th June, a rally celebrating Israel’s 60th birthday was held in London’s Trafalgar Square. In response, Sawalha gave an interview in Arabic to the al-Jazeera news channel. This interview was translated by the UK blog Harry’s Place, which describes itself as “an open forum for the democratic, secular, anti-fascist, liberal, anti-totalitarian left”. Their translation of al-Jazeera’s initial transcript showed Sawahla commenting that “We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the evil/noxious Jew in Britain”.

Harry’s Place dutifully reported its findings, which is where the controversy begins.

Al-Jazeera physically changed its report, with the word “?????? ” (translated as a variant of “evil”) replaced with “?????? ” (“lobby”). Harry’s Place then received a letter from BMI saying they had “inexplicably grossly mistranslated [Sawalha’s] reference to the Jewish ‘Lobby’” and that unless an immediate apology was issued, they would pursue the matter legally. An al-Jazeera reporter explained that he had made a mistake in his initial report, and Sawalha had, indeed, referred to the “Jewish Lobby”. Al-Jazeera, then, had made the error; Harry’s Place were simply reporting the translation as it originally appeared.

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~by lisaed

I wonder if the young followers of Barack Obama remember a game show from yesteryear called “To Tell The Truth.“ It was one of my very favorites as a youngster. Hosted at the time by Garry Moore the idea was for a panel of judges often including Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass and my favorite Kitty Carlisle to determine with their questions which of three contestants was the show’s mystery guest. The mystery guest was typically a member of a certain profession or someone who’d done something otherwise notable. More specifically, two of the three contestants were imposters pretending to be say a commercial airline pilot while the third was the genuine pilot. If the imposters with their bluffing were able to fool the judges into believing they were the airline pilot the imposters would win prize money. It is watching Barack Obama all these months on the campaign trail that has me recalling this beloved game show from my childhood. Only in this special presidential edition of “To Tell The Truth” Obama plays all contestants and we the American people are the judges forced to guess which Barack Obama is the true one and which one is just bluffing.

Is he the Barack Obama from the democratic primary the one who limped over the finish line in the race for the democratic nomination by running to the anti-war left of Hillary Clinton? While his resume is quite thin for a Presidential candidate we have evidence from Obama’s voting record in the U.S. Senate that he rates as the most liberal among his peers. So in this his first incarnation we have contestant #1: Barack Obama the liberal candidate for the democratic nomination. This is the Barack Obama who was less than truthful to us earlier this year about his knowledge of the Reverend Wright’s hate filled anti-American rhetoric. This is the Barack Obama who said in his March speech on race he could no sooner disown the Reverend Wright than he could his “white grandmother” but then turned around and denounced Wright anyway by the end of April. This is the Barack Obama who said after disowning his reverend that he would stay at Trinity United Church of Christ his church of choice for over twenty years with the new young pastor Otis Moss but then turned around and walked away from it anyway by the end of May following the controversial Father Pfleger remarks about Hillary Clinton. Did I mention he’s a good bluffer?

This brings us to contestant #2: Barack Obama the general election candidate. Since locking the democratic nomination on June 3rd, Barack Obama has poof like magic transformed himself from the anti-war liberal of the democratic primary to the running as fast as he can to the center candidate of the general election. In just four short weeks we have seen this new Barack Obama change his mind about public financing. We’ve seen him embrace Antonin Scalia opinions on the death penalty for child rapists and the DC gun ban—changing his own previously held position that deemed that law “constitutional.” We’ve seen Obama thumb his nose at his base changing his mind about FISA and we’ve seen him pledge to expand our President’s faith based initiative. I wonder why Obama didn’t mention such intention during the primary? Obama seizes every opportunity to talk about his faith and I have to wonder is it because he really wants to talk to us about his love for Christ or is it rather that he really really wants us to know he’s not a muslim. And as an aside I wonder how inclined Hillary supporters are going to be to rally round this new general election version of Barack Obama. But I digress. Perhaps most shockingly of all this past Thursday we saw democratic nominee Barack Obama change his position on the war. Giving two press conferences that same day on the subject (the second no doubt for the purpose of damage control) Barack Obama sought to straddle both sides of the Iraq war issue beginning with this:

“I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

Making reference in this first press conference to “training” and the Iraqi soldiers “standing up” Barack Obama was regurgitating the same pro-war Commander in Chief language that we’ve heard from President Bush ad infinitum since he won his second term in 2004. Obama’s words here were also reminiscent of his former foreign policy advisor Samantha “Hillary-as -Monster” Power’s wink wink comments made to the BBC last March about the junior senator’s 16-month plan to end the war in Iraq being a “best case scenario.” And then in his second press conference just a few hours later that same day, Obama backpedaled away from his flip flop I mean “refined policy” re-embracing both his pledged timetable for withdrawal and stronger anti-war rhetoric with this:

“Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war - responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months’ time.”

So we the judges in this presidential version of “To Tell The Truth” are left to wonder just where does Obama stand on the Iraq war particularly now when it has become evident to the American people that the surge has worked not just reducing the level of violence but to also placing this young democracy on the road to some form of political stability. We must wonder is Obama’s Iraq war policy the more nuanced position in press conference #1 (i.e., the new general election Obama) or is it the more cut and dry 16-month plan for troop withdrawal designed to placate anti-war voters from press conference #2 (i.e., the old democratic primary Obama)?

It has become quite clear over these first four weeks of the general election campaign that Barack Obama is an opportunist - a man with no obvious core convictions of his own who will say or do anything to win the White House. Indeed in these past few weeks Obama has given new meaning to the word “CHANGE” as in the only change we can believe in is that he will change his positions like the changing wind. He has also completely undercut his own strategy to paint John McCain as “Bush Third Term” by closely aligning himself in the general election with our President re: faith based initiatives, FISA, and a new found willingness to listen to our commanders in Iraq. And so I find myself wondering if this new Bush light version of Barack Obama could have beaten Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination. And I also find myself remembering how that game show “To Tell The Truth” ended each and every episode and I ask the presumptive democratic nominee for President: “Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?”

Yes, Americans love their game shows and their reality shows but I hope they will expect more than just good political theatre from the next President of the United States. My guess is that a President Obama would revert to the liberal primary version of himself particularly with a strengthened democratic majority in congress. But given the different versions of the democratic nominee we have met on the campaign trail we simply cannot know which is the real Barack Obama. And so I find myself remembering another game show from yesteryear hosted at the time by Bob Barker that I hope not to play in 2009 with a President Barack Obama in the White House and that game show was called : “Truth or Consequences.“

By Julian Krasta

The intellectual communities all over the world are waiting in an agony of suspense as to whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. The suspense is rooted in the hope for granite security and the prospect for lasting peace, which could altogether vanish if, in January 2009, the wrong man raises his hand and takes the oath.

Senator McCain is uncomplicated with respect to the leadership and defense of our country. His fearless patriotism was formed and hardened by an irrefutable fact: The American People’s collective resolve coupled with the actions of our awesome military, in their harshest terms, are proof to our enemies – of the past, present and, yes, future – that we play in a bigger and badder league than they could ever dream.

By stark contrast, Obama requires a daily diet of total compliance and idolization. His word salads are a gross national product of cants and fantasies, and is devoted to injecting chaos into the jellied minds of the crowds of people (here and in countries such as Syria) that play into his fantasies. He has successfully accomplished this because his is a cocktail personality, meaning: He senses other people’s vulnerabilities, he reads their personalities, and performs accordingly. It is the classic sign of a sociopath.

Liberals argue that Senator McCain might be too old, too hotheaded, and too off the mark (and some frustrated Republicans and core conservatives chime in with the fear that he is too liberal-minded). In some respects they are all correct – in some respects. There are even those who poke fun at his banal tone. Again, some of their levity is not entirely unjustified. My view of the Senator, which is shared by many, many other conservative advocates, is quite the opposite. To quote an old saying: “Still water runs deep.”

Moreover, John McCain has served our country faithfully as a Navy fighter pilot (a stone-cold truth not even (Ret.) Gen. Wesley Clark can deny or devalue (notwithstanding Clark’s cheap shots to discredit McCain’s leadership qualifications)). He endured horrible physical pain during his imprisonment in Viet Nam. Primarily, he is lock, stock and barrel more transparent than the Democrats’ candidate claims to be because, good, bad or indifferent, Senator McCain has no hidden agendas. Neither does he feign being anything other that what we see.

Barack has an impressive record of political ineptitude: He and his party strive to expand policies such as welfare (to ensure dependence on the government dole by those below the poverty line in order to fortify their votes). Obama opposes privatizing Social Security, which is supported by Senator McCain – a proposition that would be advantageous to taxpayers in that we would be able to invest and manage our benefits.

Obama opposes school vouchers (one means to the end of our children being short-changed in their education). He used the words “ugly and racist” to depict opponents of the 2007 comprehensive illegal immigration bill, yet it is commonplace (and widely accepted by his supporters and conveniently overlooked by the media) when he repeatedly brings into the fray the fact he is black. This comes from the chosen one of the party that went up against the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution (respectively: abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly-freed slaves, guaranteeing the right to vote for blacks – Thank you, Larry Elder).

Senator McCain has always been a proponent of nuclear power, and he is calling for no less than 45 nuclear power plants to be built by the year 2030. Barack has said that this might be worth investigating – until he decides to cast his vote in opposition.

Obama possesses a superego and is fully one-dimentional. He has (with the wholesale aid of the liberal mainstream media) caused his supporters, as well as al Qaida and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, to believe that there’s a wizard behind his curtain when, in fact, there is only a brick wall.

Islamist jihadists are determined to dominate this planet, by whatever force necessary, and become our supreme rulers. From the standpoint of their blood-lust adventurism, the very future of the freedoms of the human race has become the issue.

John McCain understands this. Without equivocation, but in peremptory tones, he has said plainly that he is as equally determined to use whatever force is necessary to prevent terrorists from gaining the upper hand and, as President, would not imprudently withdraw our troops from the hot zones.

Obama, on the other hand, is hedonistic with his [politically motivated] litany of “I will end the war” and begin bringing our troops home if he becomes president. This move comes under the heading “Miscalculation and Maladroitness.” It would be as foolish as an impatient homeowner ordering the tent removed from his house before the poisoning process can fully and effectively destroy a vermin infestation “…because the tent is an eyesore.”

This smacks of arrogance and audacity. His myopic presumptions equate to reckless endangerment: gambling with our lives here at home as well as the country we call home to satisfy his aspirations – that is (using another analogy), no less irresponsible as when a parent or guardian leaves a baby or a pet locked in a hot car to go shopping.

Moreover, Obama’s ambition has blinded him to the fact that withdrawing our troops, reducing military spending, and suspending or cancelling defense programs would not only weaken the security of our homeland it would sharply increase domestic unemployment in all related sectors of private, public, and government businesses.

Furthermore, if we lose the strength in numbers of trained military personnel now – or a year or two from now – and our country is attacked again, three to four months would need to pass before capable replacement ground, sea, and air combat troops could be expected to reach required potency and supplant those who had been killed and injured. In that time, we could go beyond the crisis level and face unmitigated disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.

Our enemies could exploit this perceived weakness. They might attack, possibly with lethal chemical weapons, and destroy (but not be limited to) municipal and military communications centers and installations, commercial and military airfield complexes, fire, police and energy stations, water and food supplies, roads and railways, all personnel therein, and every civilian within specific radii of those areas.

John McCain is aware of the foregoing, because he is a long-horn, scarred, intemperate and veteran bull. Faith should be invested in him, in that he would exercise every power vested in him as President to go the distance and cut out the fanatic canker that threatens humanity and prevent such attacks.

Obama is a neophyte. His daydreaming has left him deficient of legislative and leadership experience. With neither to his credit, he wouldn’t be able to stop an asthma attack.

It would therefore come as no surprise to the GOP, conservatives or rational Democrats if, as president, he one day swings open the White House doors, flashes a smile at the beast looming above him (whose entrée into our land he helped engineer), and says:

“What a nice horsey – of course I’ll sign for it.”

I remember, as a child, watching old Western’s in which a prisoner exchange would go down on some dusty, old-West street.  The bad guys would line up on one side of the road, hands on their pistols, faces grim.  On the other side, the good guys, slightly outnumbered, heroic, desparate, would untie the really, really bad guy’s wrists and push him out on to the street.

The bad guys would release the captive hero.  A tumbleweed would roll into view, bouncing recklessly past the good guys, who would glance nervously, their trigger-fingers itchy, their eyes narrowed.

Inevitably something would go wrong.  The good guy would get half way before being shot, or a rookie cowboy on the good guys side would get nervous and accidently fire his pistol.  Even when the prisoner swap went well, the moral of the story was always this: the badguy will still be a badguy, and will live to fight another day, kill again, but the goodguy will too.  The moral was that shades of grey exist in this world, and while you don’t want to see the badguy set free, because you know deep down that he’ll come back worse than ever, you also want to see the goodguy safe and sound.  You want to be reassured that it wasn’t all for nothing.  It’s a tough question–one of the few real morality issues that one encountered in old Westerns.

So, to extend what was bound to be an extended metaphor further, I now take you to the modern Wild West, which just so happens to be Israel.  The Israeli government has signed a prisoner swap deal with Hizbullah, exchanging several prisoners for two Israeli soldiers who may or may not be alive.

Dead men on both sides will be exchanged if the two IDF men, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, are indeed dead. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Members of the IDF Rabbinate were exhuming the bodies of approximately 200 Hizbullah men killed in fighting with Israel from their graves in a cemetery near Safed.

What makes this deal really appalling to me, and to many in Israel and around the world, is the release of Sami Kuntar–this without the release of Israeli Gilad Shalit.

CNN writes:

Kuntar was convicted over a 1979 attack in which he shot and killed an Israeli man in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then smashed her head against a rock with his rifle butt, tossing her body into the sea.

Another daughter, 2, was accidentally smothered by her mother, who tried to keep her quiet as they hid from the attackers.

In fact, the whole capture of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser is said to have been a tactic used by Hizbullah, who apparently were expecting the half-assed Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to secure Sami Kuntar’s release.   I personally am not against prisoner swaps, or the trading of bodies as it may be–but releasing a man who dashed a four-year-old girl’s head in after killing her father in front of her…?  The man deserves worse than death, and certainly worse than freedom and a heroes welcome by Hizbullah.

Al-Jazeera has reported on the exchange with an article titled “Israel to Exhume Bodies of Martyrs Ahead of Swap” which basically gives you the Arab perspective on this exchange.  They write:

The exchange is to occur on three phases, the first of which will include the release of Lebanese detainee Samir Kintar and three others, according to the Ma’an report.

The second phase, Ma’an reported, will begin six days later and the third a few days after that. The news agency further reported that one of the Palestinian bodies slated to be returned under the second phase of the deal would be that of Dalal Mughrabi, a female resistance fighter launched a heroic operation in 1978 killing 36 Israelis. The report does not detail at which stage Hezbollah will release the two Israeli soldiers.

Interesting, this completely different take on the matter.  One man’s terrorist is another man’s resistance fighter, I suppose.  Of course, I call any man (or woman) who kills innocent people a terrorist, whether or not they happen to also be resistance fighers, or whether they buy into the destructive, poisonous notion of martyrdom–instant-heaven, as easy as instant macaroni and cheese, all it takes is one suicidal mission and you’re there, dark-eyed virgins and all.

Al-Jazeera calls Mughabri “a female resistance fighter launched a heroic operation in 1978 killing 36 Israelis.”

Let’s learn a little bit about the “heroic operation” of Ms. Mughabri….

On March 11, 1978, Mughrabi led a band of eleven terrorists who took boats from Lebanon and landed north of Tel Aviv. Upon landing, they met an American photographer, Gail Rubin. Their intended target was Tel Aviv so they asked her where they were. Once she told them, they murdered her.

They then hijacked a bus filled with families going on an outing, seemingly with the intent to take it to Tel Aviv.

An IDF unit chased the bus and finally forced it to stop, and then the shootout began. Mughrabi and her gang started shooting passengers point-blank and then they firebombed the bus itself, trapping the passengers. At least 35 were killed, including 13 children, in what became known as the Coastal Road Massacre.

But I still see no problem with returning her corpse.  Sami Kuntar, however, is another matter.  I don’t believe Israel should hand him over alive.  I think murderers should be treated as such, and Kuntar should rot in an Israeli prison until the day he dies.

[note: Sami Kuntar is also known as Samir Quntar or Samir al-Quntar]

While electile dysfunction devours huge bits of American attention - certain regimes and their fanboys pay attention too. For years it was widely understood in the ME that Great Satan didn’t act out militarily in an election year - or even the year before an election year. The Lame Duck syndrome.

Only since 911 though - it hasn’t been so clear cut. Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed the general manager of Al -Arabiya television points out the Arab street has fell for the old Great Satan is safe as milk election year jazz before.

“Saddam Hussein was excluding the possibility of such a war, relying on the
views of Arab television analysts. They told him not to worry about the threats
and the massing of fleets. They assured him that anti-war demonstrations, public
opinion surveys, and the approaching end of the President’s first term would
prevent war. How wrong they were! “

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One of the hallmarks of netroots politics is for radical partisans to announce their movement represents the mainstream of the mass electorate.

By continually arguing that “progressives” control the “political center,” hardline leftists can disguise their extremist agenda as reflecting the political preferences of a majority of Americans.

I’ve noted regularly the left’s tendency to claim the mainstream, but there’s some recent radical outrage over the media’s declaration that Barack Obama - after wrapping up his nomination - has moved to the political middle. There are differences, naturally, among lefty bloggers as to Obama’s correct location on the spectrum, but what’s not at issue is that for many Obama has violated the progressive creed, which the leftists see as the majoritarian core of the American political universe.

The least compelling argument of this sort comes from Matt Stoller, who simply denounces Barack Obama’s move to the center as a corrupt bargain - a political sellout to the corporate power elite of the Washington establishment. After highlighting the media coverage of Obama’s moderation, Stoller attacks the lobbying practices of Tom Daschle, the former Senate minority leader, who’s mentioned in the Washington Post’s article, “In Campaign, One Man’s Pragmatism Is Another’s Flip-Flopping“: (more…)

“Imagine there’s no countries/it isn’t hard to do/nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too/imagine all the people/living life in peace.”
- John Lennon, Imagine

With the American Democratic Party’s formal consummation of its dalliance with the Fresh Prince of Thin Air, we had anticipated at least some airing of the lamentations of regret typically following such ill-advised intercourse. Hearing little to none, we are compelled to re-examine the cultural circumstances which make it possible for a farce such as this to come to pass.

Though much discussed, the Obama ascendancy still baffles: the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy has turned the keys over to a very junior Senator whose scant voting record is the furthest left of any in the Senate. Really? It has been called “the audacity of hope.” We call it merely, audacity; that strain of defiant, reckless, irresponsible audacity one expects from a sixteen year old, not from a national institution that – at one time anyway – was of significant weight and consequence.

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There is little doubt that the notion most Americans have in their heads of neoconservatism has been at least temporarily skewed due to the perceived failures in Iraq. Regardless of the fact that things are actually improving on the ground finally, the bad taste left in many proverbial mouths when uttering the term “neocon” is more than apparent.

Of course, the fact is what the vast majority of people associate with neoconservatism is, in fact, a complete misconception of what it actually means to be a neoconservative. Even Kristol’s article may be only one aspect, one perspective on what it means to be a neocon. Indeed, a whole new generation of neoconservative thinkers is sprouting up, both here in the US and overseas.  Why?  Irving Kristol says it well,

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CNN today reported that high-level Hamas officials are stating that an imminent cease-fire with Israel is in the works, and could happen within three days.

Now, I’m torn on this.  First of all, we all know that Hamas can use open-roads, and a cease-fire, simply to rearm and regroup forces.  Then again, any move toward peace is a welcom one–if it really is a move toward peace.

Maybe if things with Syria were going better, this news might, just might, be a little more welcome, hopeful, promising.  Olmert, however, has been weakened by scandal, and it seems unlikely that anything done under his ministership will have any lasting value.

Egyptian sources have confirmed that the peace deal is to go into effect Thursday. (more…)

By Ryan P. Christiano

In an address before The House of Commons, on the 1^st of March 1848, Lord Palmerston declared: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. Which theory or theories of International Relations motivated the Iraq War, and more narrowly, inspired President Bush? The President’s State of The Union Address; four short months after the attacks of September 11^th, declared that a new ‘Axis of Evil’ exists in the world after 9/11. In the 2003 State of The Union Address, the President declared that America and her allies were the only things that stand between a world of peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm; and that Iraq now threatened the world with chaos and constant alarm.

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The floodgates of the media and blogosphere are about to erupt with a torrent of articles examining exactly why Sen. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic Party’s nomination to Sen. Barack Obama when a year ago her coronation appeared to be the more likely outcome. All sorts of angles will be covered and there can be little doubt that a variety of things contributed to her narrow defeat. (more…)