Talleyrand Contra Napoleon

Dear reader

2011-11-28T03:16:00.000-08:00

In the following weeks I'll be closing down this website as I've replaced with another which if you wish you can visit at:http://kotza4.blogspot.com

Thanks a lot for your visits,

Con George-Kotzabasis

Radical Clerics Have Support of Increasing Sections of Muslim Community

2011-11-13T02:20:00.000-08:00

Federal Plan to License Clerics an Absurd Measure Bound to Fail

By Amir Butler The Age—January 9, 2006

A brief response: Con George-Kotzabasis

Amir Butler, of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network, has let the cat out of the bag. He argues in his article, ‘that it would then be an unwelcome and unfortunate intrusion on freedom of religion for the Muslim Advisory Council (set up by the Australian government) to interfere’ with ‘those religious …clerics,’ who ‘continue to enjoy the support of increasing sections of the Muslim community’, and who are selected…on the sectarian tastes of their constituency.’(M.E.) (He is talking here about radical fundamentalist leaders and imams).

He may reproach the intrusions of the Muslim… Council, but he must be, as presumably a moderate Muslim, in full support of the “intrusions” of ASIO, since he is against terrorists, among those radical leaders and imams and in those increasing sectarian sections of the Muslim community, who as followers of the former could be the hotbeds of home-grown terror. The fact however that he is unwilling to do so doesn’t in itself indicate that either “moderate” Muslims are in fear confronting the radicals and their increased number of supporters or are their silent and surreptitious defenders?

Remembrance of Things Past Thought Wrongly

2011-11-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

I’m republishing the following riposte that shows how wrong Liberals have been in regard to the outcome of the war in Iraq.

By Con George-Kotzabasis—a retort to:

State of the Union Address

Arguing with Bush--By Professor Juan Cole

INFORMED COMMENT-- January 1, 2006 www.juancole.com

Professor Cole’s piece is contaminated with incurable negativity. It shows him to be a sturdy contestant for the Bush hate trophy from which so many academics of the Left “rake” their inspiration to make their comments about the grave political issues au courant. He argues that for Bush to state, that the elections in Afghanistan and in Iraq are an achievement of self- government, “is the height of hubris” as such “self-government” is laughable and cannot be constructed under an American military occupation. However, only by distorting the context within which Bush made his statement, can he cogently vindicate his contention against the President. And this is exactly what he is doing. Both in Afghanistan and in Iraq the elections were a massive demonstration of their people of their unquenchable desire for “self-government”, within the context of recently toppled dictatorial regimes. And it’s precisely within such a context that one who is intellectually objective should interpret Bush’s statement.

He claims furthermore, that the invasion of these two countries, especially of Iraq, were not legal. But who defines the legality of the invasion? The UN, which for many years now had lost the plot and resolve to deal effectively with the crises of the world, e.g. Ruwanda, the Congo, and presently Darfur in Sudan, not to mention others, and which was steeped in the corruption that Saddam had set up with the food-for-oil scandal? Or would it be the French, the Russians, and the Germans, who were in cahoots with Saddam, whose ingrained envy as politically miniscule and morally petty rivals of the US hegemon induced them to obstruct all the reasonable defensive actions the latter was forced to take, in the aftermath of 9/11, against the two rogue states that sponsored global terror?

But this chapter of history is not yet closed, and the academics that cannot see anything positive emanating from this “illegal invasion” might eventually have a lot of egg on their face.

While Outside Intervention by Mercenaries in Libya Occurs Obama Plays Fiddle about his Own

2011-10-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

In view of the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and the total decimation of his loyalist forces in his last stronghold Sirte, I'm republishing the following short piece that was written last March that foreshadowed the defeat of the dictator.

The Arab world is no longer the plaything of autocratic rulers who govern it according to their whim and fancy, but is subject to a universal will for freedom.

Talking of illusions and delusions. If the aim of the U.S. is to get rid of Qaddafi, one cannot achieve this MAXIMAL goal "with MINIMAL (M.E.) outside help." President Obama’s strategy for Libya had and continues to have all the features of Pinocchio. .

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A spectre haunts the White House the spectre of political dilettantism. While military intervention by mercenaries is taking place in Libya in support of the tottering regime of Muammar Gaddafi, the Obama administration is hesitating to involve itself directly in the historically momentous events of the country and tip critically the balance in favour of the insurgents. Instead, it is imbued with the predilection of Nero to play the fiddle while Rome is burning, i.e., Gaddafi starting the genocide of his own people. Libya provides not only a unique geopolitical opportunity for the U.S. to act on the side of justice and set a historic paradigm that could lead to the freedom of peoples from the autocracy of exploitative and murderous regimes in the Middle East and beyond, but doing so at the least expense of its own human and material resources.

In circumstances when the Gaddafi regime is too weak and unable to defend itself by its own military forces and is compelled to bring in foreign mercenaries to save itself, the U.S. does not have to invade the country by its own military forces but merely provide the insurgents with “antiaircraft systems so that they can enforce a no-fly zone over their own territory,” as Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to the Bush administration, has suggested. Also, it could insert special operations teams, as it initially did in Afghanistan that defeated the Taliban within five weeks, to give guidance to the rebels and render prompt information to U.S./NATO aircraft to bomb the Gaddafi military installations and forces. And as the destruction of Libyan air-defence radars and missile batteries might be required, this could be accomplished by using missiles launched from submarines and warships. Hence American footprints on the ground would be so tiny they would be hardly visible. And yet it would be the presence of this invisible American ‘phantom’ combined with the threat of using U.S. airpower that could utterly determine the defeat of the Gaddafi loyalists and its international disorganized amateurish bands of mercenaries, and lead, with almost mathematical precision, to the overthrow of the murderous regime.

And as I have said in an article of mine only a few days ago, the remarkable weakness of the regime and its total inability to defend itself by its own armed forces, as a result of widespread defections both from its military and political ranks, and its last resort to employ mercenaries for its survival, makes its ever dwindling supporters highly vulnerable to psychological warfare. A declaration of U.S./NATO of a no-fly zone and a no-use of air-defences accompanied by a clear threat that in the event that these two conditions are violated by the loyalist forces of Gaddafi, then an unexpected decimating destruction would be unleashed upon those forces by the military might of the U.S. and NATO. This in itself could bring the crumbling of the regime. It could be the most sagacious and least costly involvement by the United States in efficacious regime change without firing a shot.

Voila un strategie

Who Are the Real Culprits of the Oslo Massacre?

2011-10-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Enoch Powell’s prophesy in his “Rivers of Blood” speech delivered in Birmingham in 1968, was to occur by the “cunning of history,” if not by its ‘revenge’, forty-three years later in the peaceful and highly cultured country of Norway to the shock of all people who had not taken seriously the premonition of that outstanding conservative British politician. Powell had early on seen that the ‘progressive’ immigration policies that were artificially breathed-in on the political landscape of the UK by a hybrid breed of Labor and Conservative governments, would not take long before they changed into dragons teeth that in turn would spawn homicidal ‘armed camps’ between indigenous and migrant populations of Britain. The first phase of Powell’s dire prediction had already happened when the children of immigrants transformed themselves into Islamic homegrown terrorists, and detonated bombs aboard London Underground trains on 7 July 2005, killing and wounding hundreds of people—and the currently burning of Britain by the offspring of migrants is directly correlated to the same inconceivably foolish and ill-advised immigration policies of the past--as well as one year earlier in the Madrid train bombings by Moroccan Islamic homegrown terrorists. And as we all witnessed, the second phase, the indigenous reaction to those fatal immigration policies, occurred in the cultured polished country of Henrik Ibsen by the murderous action of a ‘Viking Warrior’, Anders Behring Breivik, who took it in his hands, as his long Manifesto makes clear, to close the doors to Muslim immigration in Norway, and to prevent the future domination of Europe by Muslims. These actions were not the actions of a madman, but the actions fed and bred by a mad immigration policy that was implemented over a number of years by so called humanitarian and caring social democratic governments toward Third World countries in Scandinavia, Norway being the first victim of that policy that was to be put in the government made straitjacket.

For inevitably, that bizarrely naïve immigration policies adopted by a number of economically developed European countries, and ‘escorted’ by that beautiful debutante of multiculturalism, would divide the countries politically and severely between left and right, as it is being illustrated presently and pellucidly in many parts of Europe. With such political and cultural polarization in Europe and within the context of the external and internal mortal threat that Islamic barbaric fanaticism poses to Western civilization, as well as the economic crisis of the Euro zone, not to expect that fringes of the extreme right would not be prone to commit atrocities, could only be assumed by those who like ostriches have their heads buried in the sand. The Breivik killings could only shock the historically ignorant and the incorrigibly naïve. And, indeed, it may turn out to be a dress rehearsal for other European countries that are likewise divided on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism and the internal threat of Islamization. The former PM Tony Blair in an interview he gave in his last visit to Australia sees the Oslo atrocities as an extreme reaction to the “Islamization of Europe.” (M.E.) The liberal internationalists who dub those who believe that this threat is real as “Islamophobes,” are fugitives from reality and are totally incapable of composing a narrative of reason on the issue. Were those like Winston Churchill, after the Anschluss of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, who were convinced that the latter posed a real threat to Europe and to the peace of the world, ‘Naziphobes’? And can one likewise disregard the profound cogitations of great thinkers, like the Islamist scholar Bernard Lewis, who forewarns that Europe by the end of the century by the dint of demographics, will be Islamized?

Here lies the cause of the Oslo massacre. And European governments who are becoming conscious and aware that these ill-conceived immigration policies of the past and present are rallying their own people to take direct action against these policies and against congenitally unassimilated Muslims who are lazily teeming the cities of Europe as a result of these doltish policies, must bring the latter to an end. Moreover, many Muslims willingly become ‘secularly’ unemployed-to use the term in its economic meaning-and of the underclass, since their preference is to be welfare dependent. And the safety net of welfare, especially the one that applies to families, is a honeyed incentive for Muslims to have big families, which is in accord with their religion, as the more children they have the bigger the payments of welfare. Hence, ‘working’ and sweating in the conjugal bed is a pleasurable source of ‘windfall’ income.

We see therefore, that the demographic change of Europe, of which a sizeable part of its population is Muslim, is fostered not only by religious factors, i.e., Muslim polygamy, but also by economic factors. i.e. the exploitation and milking of the welfare system by the true believers of Mohammed. This unholy wedlock of religion with economic sleaze provocatively raises the ire of the majority of the indigenous population who as tax payers are footing the bill, and who are terrified that future generations of Europeans would be living under Sharia laws. It’s these factors that agitate Europeans and induce them to support political parties that are committed to put a stop to Muslim immigration, to enact radical reforms to the welfare system that presently is a big tit that feeds Muslim procreation, and to engender the conditions for Muslim integration to European mores by ceasing to subsidize Muslim schools and Mosques. It’s only by hardening the political and social landscape of Europe for Muslims that governments can prevent their citizens from taking extreme measures to reverse the past deeply flawed immigration policies that are responsible for such extreme and atrocious actions as perpetrated in this case by Anders Behring Breivik.

I rest on my oars: your turn now…

Which Record is Worse Market Failure or State Failure?

2011-09-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Those who so lackadaisically, ignorantly, and one-sidedly, like the liberal ‘questions’, dismiss the efficiency and effectiveness of the “free market” that since its origins and rise has increased by leaps and bounds the standard of living of the masses, according to the Indian economist Amartya Sen, should consider the following: if someone objectively and impartially contrasted historically “market failure” with “state failure” the latter would outweigh the former by tons. A recent egregious example of state failure is President Obama’s spending of a trillion dollars to create jobs. Not to mention the historical example of the failure of the Soviet Union, with its inherently command dirigiste policies, which economists of the stature of Ludwig von Mises had predicted all along.

The Presence of U.S. and Western Troops Underpins Survival of Afghans from Blitz of Taliban

2011-09-14T03:35:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis --A short reply to an American Liberal

The better question is, in my opinion, how many Afghans want the U.S. out and how many of them want the Taliban back in? That is where the “real argument’ lies. The fact is that there is a substantial number of Afghans that can only survive by the presence of U.S. and Western troops at this particular political and military juncture of the country.

To consider that this “flexing of its muscles” by the United States is for “empire” and not an ‘aggressive’ pre-emptive attack against an irreconcilable deadly foe is to be stuck in the rut of conventional leftist unimaginative thinking.

The Iraq Surge was not quantitative but qualitative. It was completely a new strategy that used the means of war imaginatively and remorselessly against the insurgents as well as baiting the latter with monetary incentives to switch sides or disarm. In war one has to use all means at one’s disposal creatively to subdue an enemy. In the toppling of the Taliban on November 2001, the CIA saturated the Northern Alliance with caches of money, military equipment, and intelligence that defeated the Taliban within forty days without any American troops fighting on the ground.

Social Engineering is the Devil in the Detail of the Collapse of Wall Street

2011-09-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

I'm republishing this short piece for the readers of this new blog.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is the time for all the intellectual Lilliputians to raise their head. Before our two authors send to the gallows Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek, they ought to be reminded of some facts. The dragon teeth that mauled the only system, i.e., capitalism that brought relative prosperity to the peoples of the world were spawned by government intervention in the first place. Roosevelt’s creation of the publicly funded Fannie Mae, and many years after its twin Freddie Mac, followed by the Community Reinvestment Act, under Jimmy Carter, and which was resurrected by Bill Clinton, were all the offspring of government intervention. They were the putty in the frame of social engineering by which all Americans would have realized their dream, to have and own their own homes.

Clinton's decision in 1999 put pressure on lenders to "widen the pool of home borrowers." New York Times article on September 1999 stated: "In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans...encourage banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good...Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring." (The Australian, October 20, 2008) Latinos and African Americans are the biggest minorities and the more numerous mortgage defaulters in the US housing market. Fannie and Freddie were providing the easy loans and the ...Reinvestment Act were enforcing bankers to render their credit services to all and sundry irrespective of the financial position of the borrowers. (Barack Obama as community organizer was the 'Enforcer' as he was threatening banks with prosecution if they did not take riskier lending practices with non-credit worthy customers.) And the whole saga of the sub-prime loans was resting on these rotten foundations created by Democratic administrations. The profligacy of 'ghetto' loans in astronomical digits was replacing Gekko greed.

Hence Wall Street collapsed through the derivatives market multiplier leveraging founded on the subprime loans by which the moguls of finance made for a while their ephemeral profits. And this collapse released the nightmare that was always embedded in the dream of mass home ownership when it became evident that many ordinary Americans were not only going to lose their homes but also their jobs all by the grace of government intervention and its blessing of easy loans. Easy come easy go.

Your opinion...

Defection of Gaddafi's Foreign Minister Presages the Collapse of the Regime

2011-08-22T03:36:00.000-07:00

The following short piece that was written on April 1, 2011, predicted the present collapse of the Gaddafi regime.

NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril April 01, 2011

By Sean Kay The Washington Note

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Sean Kay’s NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril, is politically inept and has already been overcome by events. As we had predicted, the end result of a decisive military intervention by Western powers would be to bring the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. Now the degringolade of the regime is imminent. This is clearly foreshadowed by the defection of foreign minister Moussa Koussa, a close collaborator of Gaddafi and a former director of Libyan Intelligence to boot, that sets the example for other high officials of the regime to follow.

Who would be a better qualified person than a former director of Intelligence to read correctly the vibes and disposition of the Libyan people toward the regime, and more importantly, the latter’s inability to suppress the bouleversement against it, and hence induce Mr. Koussa, for these reasons, to abandon the doomed sinking ship of Gaddafi?

Posted by Kotzabasis at 3:12 AM 0 comments

President Obama's Angelic Doctrine Disarms Evil Enemies

2011-08-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen

global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

Obama's Lipstick on a Pig Dehumanizes Palin

2011-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

I'm republishing the following reply to professor Paul Krugman for the readers of this new blog.

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

Paul Krugman: Blizzard of Lies New York Times September 11, 2008

Paul Krugman’s accusation of Palin telling a “blizzard of lies” turns out to be a summer breeze of truths. His article is a treatise in intellectual disingenuousness. Palin never said she did not support the bridge in the beginning in a different political context-which would be a lie-but she rejected it when it was found to be a boondoggle project, which was the truth. And what politician, professor Krugman, would refuse a government “handout” or for that matter your ‘boss’ the NYT refuse an advertisement even in the case of being pro-war, when that is the reality of the ‘game’? And when you say her claim to be against “wasteful spending is a fiction” you fabricate your own fiction as the clear implication of your argument is that the funds she received for the bridge she spent on another wasted project which you don’t identify and let it stand as a fairy tale.

And you know very well that it was not an “ordinary metaphor” but a retort of Obama directly aimed at Palin’s metaphor of...pit bull...and therefore related to her (Like mine above, “summer breeze”, which is a retort to yours, “blizzard of lies.), and it was worse than a “sexist smear”, it was a dehumanizing one, if you make an in-depth analysis of Obama’s riposte you might have found it to arise unconsciously from the latter’s early origins as a Muslim for whom “pig” denotes the dehumanization of human beings.

And in your litany of McCain’s campaign of lies you don’t even provide one example of them, with the exception of sex education in kindergarden which might be a lie. So your fictional lies are covered by your own real lies about McCain and Palin. Lastly, what politician would have continuous 80% support among her electorate if she did a huckava of a job? Or do you suppose the Alaskans to be so stupid?

Over to you

Labor Government's Abolition of Nuclear Weapons a Decision in Cuckoo Land

2011-07-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

If the reason for the abolition of nuclear weapons is flawed because the latter are the “poor man’s defense” against the preeminence of the U.S. in conventional weapons of “prompt global strike” by which the U.S. will continue to dominate the world by the threat of their use against its deadly rivals and enemies, such as N. Korea and Iran as Marko Beljak implies, then the other reason is that in the age of millenarian movements the abolition of nuclear weapons is also flawed as rogue states bristling in their apocalyptic beards, like Iran, could produce stealthily nuclear weapons. In such a situation to set up an International Commission for nuclear disarmament, as Prime Minister Rudd proposes to do, is the ultimate stupidity that any one could suggest. And in the aftermath of 9/11, the magnitude of such stupidity takes astronomical dimensions. Just imagine that countries such as America, Britain, France, and especially, Israel, which could be the targets of a nuclear attack by an Islamist state or by proxies of the latter, would even consider their nuclear disarmament in such a dangerous context.

Rudd’s proposal limpidly illustrates that Australia does not have a statesman at the helm of the government but a political dilettante and a populist to boot who is more concerned to ingratiate himself with the celestial wishes of its liberal minded naively pacifist constituency than to deal with the geopolitical realities.

Moreover, what is rather surprising and amusing is to see that Gareth Evans is willing to underwrite such political buffoonery by accepting the chair of the International Commission for nuclear disarmament. It seems that his Tasmanian “Biggles” days are not over.

Also, the “amelioration of security” by diplomatic means and international institutions, such as PALME, in the age of millenarian movements with irrational actors, is also a flawed conception. In such circumstances nuclear or conventional disarmament is a most dangerous illusion. Only a benign superpower or a coalition of states can keep the order of the world by a combination of sticks and carrots. And in our times the United States relatively is the only such benign power.

Voodoo Magic in Australian Attorney-General's Department

2011-07-23T00:57:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Robert McClelland and the denizens of his Department are the direct descendants of Voodoo Magic. In past primitive Africa the Medicine Man would utter a word and evil would disappear. In modern Australia, America, and Europe it appears that most of its politicians believe that by not uttering the word “jihad” or “Islamist terrorist” the evil of terrorism would disappear. The enlightened Attorney-General’s Department by practising Voodoo Magic it might just eradicate Muslim terrorism.

Believers of Mohammed Credulous to Conspiracy Cranks and Dangerous to Western Civilization

2011-07-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The power of religion in indigent societies is more potent and influential upon its believers than political power or military power, especially in Muslim societies where religious and political power are inseparable and is exercised by theocracies. And as the author correctly states the believers of Mohammed are credulous and vulnerable to the most fictional conspiracies and tend to scapegoat others for their own ills and those of their countries. It’s this unshakable belief in the evil of others, in this case of the West in general and of the American Satan in particular, that makes Muslims extremely dangerous to Western civilization.

Delegitimize States that Sponsor Terror

2011-07-03T01:11:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The following paper was written on September 20, 2006, and was sent to President Bush on the same date. The reason why it's republished here in The...Journal, is that the Pentagon has now a secret plan to attack Iran within twenty four hours, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker magazine.

Distinguished former diplomats, like Warren Christopher, Clinton’s Secretary of State, remain at their “postless”, no new messages on diplomacy, posts, and continue to argue on the virtues of old diplomacy. In his piece on the Washington Post, July 28, 2006, he calls for “negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties” in Lebanon, and asserts that a “permanent” and “sustainable” solution to the root causes of the conflict—which is the goal of the Bush administration—“is achievable, if at all, by protracted negotiations.” As an example of such successful diplomacy that occurred under his tenure as Secretary, he refers to the rocket attacks by Hezbollah in April 1996 against Israel and the countering of the latter with Operation Grapes of Wrath, that the Cagliostro like arts of diplomacy successfully stymied this confrontation and ushered a truce between the parties that lasted for ten years. He claims, that only by such broad-minded diplomacy that involves all the players in the region could America stop its “tattered reputation.” But he is completely mindless of the fact that this long Truce was neither permanent nor sustainable, but, merely, a respite for the Hezbollah during which the latter would militarily train and proselytize its militia with its fanatic deadly ideology and arm it with Katyusha rockets for a deadlier future confrontation with its mortal enemy, the Jewish State, as we now see.

To repeat therefore the diplomacy of the past in the present context in the face of these lessons given by this flauntingly failed diplomacy, is not only to repeat the mistakes of the past, but more grievously still, to weaken Israel and its Western allies against greater impending dangers in the future. As the upshot of another long Truce between the belligerents now would only benefit Hezbollah by making it politically, ideologically, and militarily even stronger, and loading this time the tips of its rockets with weapons of mass destruction, including tactical nuclear weapons, thus fulfilling President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic foreboding of wiping Israel off the map. And needless to say, such an outcome would be a tremendous victory for global terror and a serious strategic reversal of the West’s war against it.

Furthermore, it would set in concrete the ambition of Iran to become the dominant power of the region, whose present trailblazing two-pronged strategy to forge an axis between Shi’ites and Sunnis, as the present pact between Iran and Syria illustrates against their arch enemy Israel and to paralyze the EU and the US as a condominium to formulate an ironclad policy that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, are the means by which it will achieve its aim. Since, according to the Ahmadinejad regime, the grand diversion that Lebanon has provided will ease its task to acquire a nuclear arsenal, as the divisions that would be spawned by the Lebanon crisis among the Western countries and within the UN about how to handle the situation on the ground, would be of such a nature that would completely enervate the US and EU condominium from forging a position that would stop Iran from joining the nuclear club.

Hence, the war in Lebanon may initially appear to be a local conflict between Israel and Hezbollah but in reality is a geopolitical conflict between Iran and the Western powers since the former will be using the conflagration of Lebanon as a fulcrum to achieve its strategic goals (a) to acquire nuclear weapons, (b) to emerge as the predominant power in the region, (c) to become the leader of the Muslim world, and (d) to establish in the world the millenarian regime of the twelfth imam Mahdi. As the respected Middle East analyst Amir Taheri wrote in The Australian, on August 7, 06, “to Ahmadinejad to wipe off Israel is the first step toward defeating the ‘infidel’ West”. He furthermore quotes Iran’s state controlled media as saying “that Lebanon would become the graveyard of the Bush plan for a new Middle East”. And Tehran believes, “that a victory by Hezbollah…will strengthen Ahmadinejad’s bid for the leadership of radical Islam”. And Taheri comes to the conclusion “all the talk of a ceasefire, all the diplomatic gesticulation may ultimately mean little in what is an existential conflict”.

Will the “new” diplomacy, as embodied in the unanimously approved resolution by the UN Security Council, in its stylishly dashing French clothes, but worn, by the old decrepit body of diplomatic thinking, bring the long desired, but up till now evanescent, permanent and sustainable solution to the region that so many attempts in the past failed to do? The auguries for such an outcome however, are far from favorable. The Council’s resolution calls for a halt to the fighting and Israel’s withdrawal “in parallel” with the deployment of UN peacekeepers and 15,000 Lebanese troops who will attempt to create a buffer zone in South Lebanon free of the Hezbollah militia. However, the resolution vaguely refers to the disarmament and dismantling of the latter, that is pivotal to a permanent and sustainable peace between Israel and Lebanon and whether such international force and the Lebanese army--which is riddled with Hezbollah sympathizers--even if they had a clear mandate to disarm Hezbollah, would have been able to accomplish this task, given the unambiguous statements of Hezbollah that it will not disarm. Nor does the resolution take a firm and implacable stand in stopping the supply of weapons to Hezbollah by Iran and Syria.

Hence, the dragon teeth of Hezbollah are still planted deep in Lebanon’s soil, presaging an even greater and more dangerous conflagration in the future between the warring parties, especially if Iran stealthily slips into the nuclear club. The UN resolution therefore is merely a soporific. It will provide a couch to Israel and Hezbollah so they can lay down in a temporary state of dormancy until Hezbollah feels strong enough, in its never ending act, to wipe Israel off the map. Thus, the future confrontation will be by far more deadly than the present one, as hundreds of thousands will lose their lives.

America's New Strategic Diplomacy

Surely the American leadership must be aware of this lugubrious scenario that has been staged by this toothless resolution of the Security Council. Unless they have in mind a second stronger swift resolution that will be addressing the complete disarmament and dismantling of Hezbollah and irrevocably stopping Syria and Iran from supplying weapons to its proxy, they will entangle and compromise their up to now clear strategic position in the strategically myopic, unimaginative, fickle, and flabby diplomatic stance of their allies in continental Europe. It will be the ultimate folly, post 9/11, once you have identified your irreconcilable, implacable, and mortal enemy, as the Bush administration has done, to render the enemy and its proxies respites that will strengthen their military capability and make them even more dangerous as well as more difficult to defeat in the future, instead of destroying them at their weakest moment, as no kind of diplomacy ante 9/11, no matter how brilliantly conceived, can achieve the complete destruction of this infernal enemy.

The Bush administration being presumably aware of this fact, i.e., of the complete inadequacy of the old diplomacy, of which so many of its "encoreists", such as Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright, are continuing to give it “standing ovations”, does seem to be willing--despite its tactical errors in Iraq that have given rise to a rampant insurgency making the war more difficult to win and as a result of this making some members of the Administration more circumspect to launch another attack, this time on Iran--to take leave of its circumspection and embrace a more hawkish diplomacy that would be much more successful than the effete and barren diplomacy of the past. Such robust diplomacy will not be draped in the smooth velvety apparels of “old” Europe or in the tattered garments of the United Nations, but will be draped in the bristling carapace of a porcupine. While there will not be a scarcity of carrots in the exercise of this armed diplomacy, the sticks will be deadly in their threatening application against those intransigent nations that continue overtly or covertly to sponsor terrorists and use them as proxies to achieve their geopolitical and millenarian goals. The axis of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah will have the kiss of death planted on its forehead by this no “frills” American diplomacy. But the angel of death in this new diplomacy will be last in the queue. Before the US deploys as a last resort its lethal arsenal against the axis, it will in the incipient stages of this diplomacy call for the de-legitimatization of Iran and Syria as states that sponsor terror. Iran and Syria will become pariah states and will be isolated from the rest of the world. The only avenues that will remain open between the former and the latter will be the economic ones. But the economic transactions between de-legitimate states and the rest of the world will proceed not through individual states but through an intermediary channel, an international consortium whose representatives will be enlisted from the de jure states of the world who will deal with the economic representatives of the outlaw states. Such procedure will place the free world in a powerful negotiating position to impose its own economic regime on the outlaw states.

Needless to say, some nations will not accept, and will not abide, this “outlawing” of Iran and Syria and will continue to have their relations with the latter unchanged. But as long as the major nations of the world hold the line, this recalcitrance of the minor nations will in no way loosen the tightness of the noose around the throats of the outlaws, as the latter will be banned from attending all international forums where the important decisions in the affairs of the world are made.

The chances that the call for the de-legitimatization of states that sponsor terror, as a diplomatic move to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, are quite high that it will rally many nations to support such a call as the best alternative to an American military attack against Iran, particularly, when such an attack would result in a great loss of lives as well as have the potential to throw the world’s economy into the doldrums, as it’s the latter as well as their electoral base that many European nations are mainly concerned with in the advent of an American attack on Iran. The exercise of this new adroit American diplomacy will address therefore both the concerns of the Europeans and the fears of Iran. It will have, on the one hand, enough carrots in its diplomatic basket to feed the Europeans and to entice them to the idea that the outlawing of Iran is the better option for all concerned than a devastating military confrontation with the latter, and on the other, it will have enough sticks to coerce Iran to abandon its goal to acquire nuclear weapons. In the intense pressure of the vice that the Ahmadinejad regime will find itself both as a possibly ostracized de-legitimate state or as a military target of the Americans, the odds are that the regime will succumb to this pressure. In the event that it sticks to its guns, then it will play Russian roulette with its own people, as such a stand will strengthen the internal opposition against the “mullahcratic” regime. And as the majority of Iranians shift behind the Opposition parties this could lead to the fall of the theocratic regime of Ahmadinejad by an army revolt that would act in the name of such strong opposition from the people.

The success of this diplomacy will depend entirely on the Bush administration making it unambiguously clear to its European allies, as well as Russia and China, of its utter determination that in the event the proposal to de-legitimatize states that sponsor terror is not adopted by the major nations of the world, then the US will have no other option but to attack militarily the rogue states that sponsor terror, and Iran will be the first one and more likely than not the only one, as the other ones will follow the example of Libya and cave in. It’s inconceivable to imagine, that the European nations, as well as China, for which the sine qua non for its present stratospheric economic development is the economic stability of the world, will be so dim-witted not to accept the American proposal and risk the chance that the Bush administration will not deliver on its threat.

Hence, this hawkish US diplomacy is far from being a long shot in persuading the major nations of the world to outlaw states that sponsor terror. Moreover, it has the great potential as a dual realizable threat to outlaw Iran or attack it militarily, to coerce the latter to unequivocally abide by the demands of the international community. In the event that the Ahmadinejad regime remains unwilling to discard its obsession to possess nuclear weapons and continues to defy the European Union and the United States in their demand to stop supplying its terrorist proxies, such as Hezbollah, with weapons, then the call will be on “the angel of death”, draped in stars and stripes, to jump the queue and put an end to this apocalyptic threat that stems from the regime of the mullahs.

Hic Rhodus Hic Salta

National Sovereignty Becoming Strategically Onerous

2011-06-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm republishing this short piece in the face of the U.S. navy seals entering and breaching the national sovereignty of Pakistan for the purpose of killing Osama bin Laden.

Turkey Bombs, the U.S. Applauds
By William M. Arkin

Washington Post, columns & blogs, December 18, 2007

A brief response by Con George-Kotzabasis

William Arkin by the title of his column expresses both moral irritation and surprise at the U.S reaction to the “Turkey Bombs”. But he is blind to the fact that sovereignty as an absolute legal norm has been throughout our modern period an absolute illusion. In the Age of Terror, it has been transformed into an illusionary fiction. No nation led by prudent political leaders can allow terrorists who attack it to find a safe haven, support, and replenishment of their armaments across its borders.

The U.S. applaud is consistent and in conformity with an unbroken strategic rule. Once one identifies an indefatigable irreconcilable deadly foe that threatens one’s national interests, one has to pursue and destroy this enemy wherever he happens to be. And for contemporary American strategists in the Pentagon it might have a greater strategic meaning. As the incursion into Iraq by Turkey might be a most welcomed dress rehearsal by the U.S. and a warning to its enemy Iran, that it might be fully staged on Iran’s soil by an American ‘impresario’.

Venus vs Mars

2011-06-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Robert Kagan Protests: Neocons are Not Vampires and Werewolves
By Steven Clemons
Washington Note, May 7, 2008

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

The European neo-realists and liberal internationalists and their American cognates, “dropping the guns” and taking, like grannies, needles in their hands to weave black ties for their confreres the neocons for the purpose of “needling” them, will go down in history as the court jesters in the intellectual realm of the neoconservatives. It’s the latter with a deep sense of history that are aware of the great threat that fanatical Islam poses to civilization and which only a Mars can neutralize.

Clemons supinely reclines exhausted in his Venus boudoir while the civilized world is threatened with burning in the absence of a Mars. And the little energy he still has uses it to weave metaphors mocking the neocons. Indeed, the war against the jihadists will be won by the Metaphor Special Forces.

Your opinion…

'Shoot' Messenger for Telling Lies about Truth

2011-06-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: Don’t Shoot The Messenger For Revealing Uncomfortable Truths

By Julian Assange,The Australian December 08, 2010

Julian Assange opens his article with adulatory terms for the founder of The Australian and his sire, Keith Murdoch, by quoting “young Rupert Murdoch…’in the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win’.” And he seems to be proud to follow the steps of Murdoch even though the latter long ago has grown horns for many liberal media aficionados. He also proudly states that Wikileaks has “coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism,” (M.E.) which he defines as allowing you “to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on”, and thus by this method you can make a judgment about the veracity or falsity of the story. He further claims that he is not one of the crowd of anti-war as he believes that “Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and taxes on the line for these lies.” He is also justifiably concerned that he is being accused by US officials and others of treason “even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen,” and of a Republican bill before the Senate “seeking to have me declared a ‘transnational threat’.”

Under this ominous cloud of threats issuing from high echelons of the US government and politicians it is reasonable that Assange would be deeply worried about his safety and his inviolable right to exercise his freedom of speech. But it is totally unreasonable to have expected to be treated otherwise when he exposed secrets of governments in conditions of war. He seems to have had the courage to put in action his convictions without however having the courage to face the consequences of his action that could be seen even by blind Freddie, to use an Australian colloquialism.

Moreover, his riposte is inane and unimaginative to the State Department’s claim: “You will risk lives! National Security! You’ll endanger troops!” “Then they say there is nothing of importance in what Wikileaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?” But it can be both. Imperil in verity national security and risk lives while at the same time diminishing the importance of the leaks for political reasons so politicians and government officials will not be accountable for their incompetence and their propensity to leak.

Furthermore he conceitedly claims that the seeds of the leaks brought a rich harvest of accomplished goals that lay in the original plan of Wikileaks. He states that in its “four-year publishing history…we have changed governments (M.E.) but not a single person…has been harmed.” But if this is one of the goals achieved it is vague in regard to the kind and quality of the “changed governments.” Does he refer to changes in the internal operations of governments that are more transparent to their publics or does he refer to changes in the political colouring of governments? One can assume from the implication of his proud claim he means a change in the substance of governments for the better by their change of colour. But whichever of the two changes he refers to the empirical evidence clearly shows that on both counts his statement is false. Governments have neither become more open to their publics nor have they become better shepherds to their flock in the last four years. Was the transition from the Bush to the Obama administration a substantial change to a better government? When President Obama has rescinded most of his electoral campaign promises and continues a war in Afghanistan, which according to Assange is based on lies, intensifying the drone attacks in Pakistan against al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives that started under the Bush administration, and commenced new clandestine operations against global jihadist terrorists in Somalia, and Yemen, and when in the short time of two years a majority of Americans have turned against their initially beloved Obama, who was going to change America for the better, as the mid-term elections last November have shown?

But while Wikileaks’s failure in these two areas of transparency and betterment of governments is resounding, and therefore his statement is a manifest lie, Assange partially achieved his anarchistic goal of his doctrine of the “corruption of governments’’ by creating mistrust between the top officials of governments and hence enervating the system of inter-communications and sharing of intelligence between them. As he argued in a paper of his few years ago the only way to put a stop to the corruption of governments was to disrupt their communications and to create distrust among its officials that the content and information of their intelligence and advice passed to their political masters would not be secure from public scrutiny. Thus Wikileaks threw a spanner into the mechanism of governments whose secrecy in some matters of paramount importance are the sine qua non of good governance and global security, especially in our contemporary times when Western civilization is under a menacing permanent attack by fanatical Islam. And one must be reminded that one of the major reasons why the perpetrators of 9/11 were not identified and apprehended in time was this lack of sharing intelligence between Federal agencies, which subsequently the Bush administration corrected by setting up The Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge.

Thus Assange by achieving his anarchistic nefarious goal has placed countries and their peoples that are under attack by Islamist suicide bombers at great risk whose numbers of casualties would astronomically surpass the numbers that Americans killed “in the past few months, “with Australian government connivance,” if such an attack was carried out by means of biological or nuclear weapons. (Talking about Wikileaks not harming a single person.)

As to his coinage of “scientific journalism” it is empty of substance. Science is not hostage to subjective values and does not pick its evidence by means of ideological fantasies. For example, the content of Assange’s argument about the war in Iraq is not based on reality but on fantasy. To accuse Bush of lying about Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and espouse the Leftist slogan “Bush Lied, People Died,” when all the leaders of the major countries, including President Chirac, Chancellor Schroeder, Premier Zhu Rongji of China, and presidents Putin, and Mubarak of Egypt, also believed that the Iraq dictator had WMD, is intellectually dishonourable and the most dishonest accusation against the former president. Were Chirac, Schroeder, Putin, Zhu Rongji, also lying when they were saying that Saddam had in his possession WMD? Indeed, were they involved in a conspiracy with Bush against Saddam Hussein when all four were explicitly against the war? And as Bush says in his book Decision Points, “The charge was illogical. If I wanted to mislead the country into war, why would I pick an allegation that was certain to be disproven publicly shortly after we invaded the country?” That Assange is peddling this utterly false accusation in defiance of the above facts clearly reveals his ideological bias that completely incapacitates him to make an objective assessment of the issue according to his lauded standards of “scientific journalism.” Intellectually disarmed by the lures of ideology he throws his anarchistic bomb on all the principles of science. If he had used his own scientific methodology as to the evidence extant prior to the decision of President Bush to invade Iraq he would have found that the war was not based on lies but on false intelligence. As a thought experiment, had he published in early 2000 the documents of all the major intelligence agencies of the world as to whether or not Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction they would have shown that all believed that he had them. Thus if the public had “read a news story” about Saddam’s WMD and then clicked “to see the original document” it was based on, they would be able to judge as to the truthfulness of the story.

Legally of course, Assange cannot be charged with treason, as such a charge applies to citizens of nations. But Assange by using the global instrument of the internet has by his own choice become a global citizen. The secret documents that he has splashed on the internet do not merely affect or threaten a particular nation but a number of nations that are pivotal to the security of the globe at a time when this security is imperilled by resolute irreconcilable enemies. Assange therefore by revealing this secrecy to the foes of Western civilization nolens volens is conniving with these implacable enemies of the West and hence committing ‘global treason’. The fact, moreover, that he is a messenger of a most dangerous lie, i.e., that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or potentially with Iran, are not quintessentially related to the continuous existential threat that global terror and rogue states pose to Western civilization, rightfully qualifies him to be ‘shot’ for telling lies about the truth.

I rest on my oars: your turn now

Way to Hell is Blazed with Nipple-fed Intellectuals

2011-05-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Professor Juan Cole is another bright recruit joining Clemom’s brigade of nipple-fed-intellectuals that will fight the scimitar wielding terrorists (dubbed by Clemons “so called war on terror”, as if 9/11 was a ‘wet dream'.) with olive branches in its hands. Cole has been serially wrong in all his prognostications about the outcome of the war in Iraq and yet for Clemons is one of the “most knowledgeable and thoughtful American observers of the Middle East.”

It’s certain that the way to hell will be blazed by this intellectually flabby set of political and strategic epigones.

Technology Despite its Discontents Opens the Door to Prosperity

2011-05-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

You place important questions in your post. Indeed, technology is an important, if not the most important, “driving force” to globalization, and whilst it unites the world on an economic and a scientific level it simultaneously sunders it on a geopolitical level as a result of the different strategic interests of the major players on the global chessboard.

Globalization however is no longer a choice as it has become virtually an elemental force and those who resist it are bound to suffer its inevitable tragic consequences. Also, whilst many governments that are aware of the problems posed by globalization will “work together”, as I adumbrated above, some will not. But those that will cooperate and deliver political stability and economic prosperity will have the majority of the world’s peoples on their side.

I like your opening with caterpillars and butterflies which concisely illustrates the evolutionary development of all things, and in whose development “creativity” plays the primary role.

Iraq War: The Unenviable Actions of Responsible Government

2011-05-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I cannot understand how you have deduced from my argument that I considered Saddam to be a “Muslim fanatic” or even alluded to him as being connected with 9/11. What I alluded to was “on the probable conception of the nexus of terrorism with rogue states” that no strategically astute and responsible government could disregard in the face of the atrocious action of 9/11 and more than probable the continuation of such actions in the near future, as exemplified in Madrid, Bali, and London. It was this “developing nexus of terrorism and rogue states,” as is presently illustrated by Iran and its terrorists proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah, that a politically responsible administration was duty-bound to prevent.

Certainly it is true that Saddam as a secularist leader might have been an enemy of “Islamic terrorists.” But you seem to be blind to the possibility that he could also consider them to be his allies against his comparative greater enemy, the United States. Saddam had the political insight to perceive fanatic terrorists developing into a weighty force, and by controlling them he could use them against his foes. That is why he gave generous payments to the families of Palestinian ‘martyrs’, trained terrorists in his own country, and provided medical treatment to the future leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, al Zarqawi.

Lastly, one can never possess “indisputable evidence” about the future actions of one’s enemy as such actions can never issue from scientific experiments. One can only surmise such evidence from the malicious past actions of one’s foe and his intention to use ruthlessly all means to defeat his enemies, as Saddam did in the war against Iran and against the Kurds by using mustard gas. When one’s life is at stake, one does not search for imponderable evidence before one acts in self-defence. It is by such clear threats that the unenviable pre-emptive military actions of responsible governments are made.

Julia Gillard:The Sunset Prime Minister of Australia

2011-05-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis March 08, 2011-03-08

Julia Gillard with dissatisfied ratings of 51% and satisfied with 39% for her performance, as a result of her economically calamitous and electorally imprudent carbon tax, is rapidly becoming the ‘sunset’ Prime Minister of Australia. Also, her continued bungling of her refugee policy, and her fatal embrace of the Green Party and willingness to become the ‘bridesmaid’ of Bob Brown’s same sex marriages, has raised the ire of a major part of Australians against her, and is presently compared in the polls unfavourably even with the ousted Kevin Rudd whom she replaced.

The above leads to the speculation that she herself will be replaced, only one year in her occupancy as Prime Minister, and will be rudely asked by the apparatchiks of the Labour Party to remove her belongings from The Lodge, so the new occupant, either in the person of Greg Combet or Bill Shorten, will move in. Hence, Julia might not after all take the bride of same gender marriages to the anxiously waiting bridegroom, Bob Brown.

All The President's Disablers

2011-04-21T04:52:00.000-07:00

I'm republishing this piece for the readers of this blog.

A response by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

All the President’s Enablers by Paul Krugman

The New York Times July 20, 2007

The fundamental principle of power and of any political activity is that these should never be any appearance of weakness. Niccolo Machiavelli

The eminent professor of economics Paul Krugman who ditched his solid professorial chair for the ephemeral glitter and celebrity status that accrues from being a peer pundit of The New York Times, ridicules George Bush, in his latest article, of a misplaced confidence that verges to a “lost touch with reality”. Confident to bring in Osama dead or alive, confident toward the insurgents “to bring it on”, confident that the war will be won, when the latest report of the National Intelligence Estimate is so gloomy about the prospects in Iraq and the war against al Qaeda that would make even the most optimistic of Presidents to have second thoughts about his policy, but not George Bush. Krugman states, “thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident”. Such a stand “doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character” but his stubbornness to prove himself right despite the grim reality.

But Krugman saves his main grapeshot to fire it against the Republican doyen Senator Richard Luger and General Petraeus both of whom he considers to be the “smart sensible” enablers of the President. He argues that while Senator Luger knows, and indeed, acknowledges, that Bush’s policy in Iraq is wrong, he nonetheless is not prepared to take a strong stand against it. And he cleverly in anticipation of the September report of General Petraeus that might be favourable to the situation on the ground as an outcome of the surge, he launches a pre-emptive strike on the credibility of the general by quoting extensively from an article the latter wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, whose assessment about Iraq at the time was overly optimistic if not completely wrong. In the article the general wrote, “that Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously” and “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months”. It’s by such implied non sequiturs that our former professor attempts to discredit General Petraeus. Just because he might have been “wrong” in the past it does not follow that he would be wrong also in the future. And Krugman caps his argument by saying that because of these “enablers” of the President, “Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it”.

But how serious are these strictures of Krugman against the President and his so called enablers? Let us first deal with the optimism of Bush and his confident statements about the war in Iraq and the struggle against al Qaeda. Krugman is lamentably forgetful that when the President committed the U.S. to take the fight to the terrorists he stated clearly and unambiguously that this would be a generational struggle. And in this long war against al Qaeda and its affiliates and those states that support them, he was confident that America would prevail. Hence all the confident statements of Bush were made in the context of a long span and not of a short one as Krugman with unusual cerebral myopia made them to be. His argument therefore against the President’s optimism and confidence, which he ridicules with the pleasure of one “twisting the knife”, is premised on a misperception. Moreover, did Krugman expect that the Commander-In-Chief of the sole superpower not to have expressed his hopefulness and confidence to the American people, when they were attacked so brutally on 9/11, that the U.S. in this long war would prevail? And is it possible that our pundit to be so unread in history and not to have realized that in all critical moments of a nation’s existence it’s of the utmost importance that its leaders rally their people against a mortal threat with statements of hope and confidence, as Winston Churchill did in the Second World War, that the nation would be victorious against its enemies? Would Krugman have the President of the United States adopt the gloom and doom of the so called realists as a strategy against al Qaeda, its numerous franchises, and the rogue states that support them by sinister and covert means?

Indeed, the liberal’s and The New York Times’ “Bush derangement syndrome…has spread” not only “to former loyal Bushies”, to quote Krugman , but to more than two thirds of the American people thanks to this ignominious coterie of all the President’s disablers of the liberal establishment, and its pundits, like Paul Krugman. The paramount duty and responsibility of the media, being the Fourth Estate in the political structure of a democratic society, at a time when a nation faces and confronts a great danger from a remorseless and determined enemy, is to morally mobilize and rally its people behind their government and their armed forces that are engaged in war. In the present defensive pre-emptive war--the latter as a result of the nature of the enemy and his potential to acquire nuclear weapons--that has issued from the aftermath of 9/11 and the cogent convincing concerns of the Bush administration of a possible nexus in the near future between al Qaeda and its sundry affiliates with rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones, and the portentous and abysmal danger this would pose not only to the U.S. but to the world at large, the media has a “sacred” obligation to unite the American people behind its government of whatever political hue. No errors of judgment or mishandling the planning of the war by the Bush administration can excuse the media from abdicating from this historical responsibility.

There is no fogless war and no one can see and perceive and measure correctly all its dimensions. And the frailty of human nature further exacerbates this inability. But no Churchillian confidence in one’s actions and strategic acumen throws the towel because of mistakes. One corrects one’s errors and keeps intact his resolution to defeat the enemy with a new strategy. (And one has to be reminded that the greatest scientific discoveries have been built on a pile of mistakes.) It would be an indelible obloquy to one’s amour propre to even consider that these uncivilized obtuse fanatics, and seventy-two virgin pursuers, could come close to conceiving a strategy that would defeat the know-how and scientific mastery of Western civilization and its epitome the United States of America. Only a lack of resolve of its politicians and its opinion-makers, as a result of their fatal embrace with supine populism, appeasement, and pacifism, could lead to such shameful and historic defeat.

America at this critical juncture of its historical and Herculean task to defeat Islamofascism in a long, far from free of heavy casualties, painstaking arduous war needs a wise, imaginative, and resolute political and military leadership that will overcome all the difficulties and imponderables of war and will strike a decisive lethal blow to this determined suicidal enemy. The new “Surge” strategy of the resolute Bush administration implemented by that “superb commander”, according to his troops, General Petraeus, seems to be accomplishing its objectives. Two prominent and vehement critics of Bush Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution who had accused the President of mishandling the war, after an eight-day visit in Iraq talking to high officials now believe that we are fighting in “a war we just might win”. And Petraeus, like a stronger Atlas, is pushing the rise of the sun of victory in the up till now dark sky of Iraq. Hence, the courageous actions and sacrifices of U.S soldiers in Iraq are not wasted and will be written with adamantine letters in the military annals. At this momentous noteworthy victory all the President’s and the nation’s disablers will be cast into the pit of ignominy by history.

I rest on my oars:your turn now

Not Caution but Decisiveness Will Win the Day

2011-04-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to: Caution Needed with Libya By Steve Clemons

The Washington Note March 18, 2011

To call for caution when one is entering the field of battle, is to show how out of depth one is in matters of war. Now that the U.S. and its European and Arab allies, with the backing of the UN, have decided and are preparing to cross swords with Gaddafi, what is needed is a resolute, clear, swift, and decisive strategy to crash the Gaddafi forces in a series of prompt and sudden attacks. However, before they do that, the U.S. and its allies should make a threatening declaration addressed to the Gaddafi loyalists and mercenaries, that if they refuse to abide to the conditions as set up by the United Nations, then they will be totally destroyed by the arms of the Coalition. As I’ve argued three weeks ago, such a threat has more than a great chance to force the Gaddafi loyalists to abandon the dictator and hence lead to the collapse of the regime without the Coalition forces firing a shot.

My strong belief is, that if the U.S. and its allies ultimately deal a coup de main with their overwhelming power to the Gaddafi loyalists in the event they persist fighting the Opposition forces, they will melt like butter under the heat of the Coalition’s ordnance.

Egypt: Which Side Will the Dominoes Fall?

2011-04-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis February 08, 2011

Swallowing victory in one gulp may choke one.

Egypt, not unexpectedly for those who have read history and can to a certain extent adumbrate its future course, as one of the offsprings (Tunisia was the first one) of the rudimentary Democratic paradigm that was established in Iraq by the U.S. ‘invasion’, has a great potential of strengthening this paradigm and spreading it to the whole Arab region. The dominoes that started falling in Iraq under a democratic banner backed by the military power of the Coalition forces are now falling all over the Arab territories dominated by authoritarian and autocratic governments. The arc that expands from Tunisia to Iran and contains all other Arab countries has the prospect and promise of becoming the arc of Democracy. But Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty in physics also and equally applies to politics. For one cannot predict, especially in a revolutionary situation, and more so, when it is combined with fledgling and immature political parties that is the present political configuration in Egypt as well as of the rest of the Arab world due to the suppression of political parties by their authoritarian regimes, whether the dominoes will fall on the side of Democracy or on the side of Sharia radical Islam. This is why the outcome of the current turmoil in Egypt is of so paramount geopolitical importance. And that is why the absolute necessity of having a strong arm at the helm that will navigate the presently battered State of Egypt toward the safe port of Democracy is of the utmost importance. Contrariwise, to leave the course of these momentous events in the hands of the spontaneous and totally inexperienced leaders of the uprising against Mubarak is a recipe of irretrievable disaster. For that can bring the great possibility, if not ensure, that the dominoes in the whole Arab region will be loaded to fall on the side of the extremists of Islam. And this is why in turn for the U.S. and its allies in the war against global terror, it is of the uttermost strategic importance to use all their influence and prowess to veer Egypt toward a Democratic outcome.

One is constrained to build with the materials at hand. If the only available materials one has to build a structure in an emergency situation are bricks and mortar he will not seek and search for materials of a stronger fibre, such as steel, by which he could build a more solid structure. Presently in Egypt, the army is the material substance of ‘bricks and mortar’ by which one could build a future Democratic state. It would be extremely foolish therefore to search for a stronger substance that might just be found in civil society or among the protesters of Tahrir Square. That would be politically a wild goose chase at a time when the tectonic plates of the country are moving rapidly toward a structural change in the body politic. The army therefore is the only qualified, disciplined organization that can bring an orderly transitional change on the political landscape of the country. Moreover, the fact that it has the respect of the majority of the Egyptian people and that it has been bred and nourished on secular and nationalist principles, ensures by its politically ‘synthetic nature’ that it will not go against the wishes of the people for freedom and democracy, that it will be a bulwark against the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that it will be prepared to back the change from autocracy to democracy, if need be, with military force and thus steer the country away from entering the waters of anarchy and ‘permanent’ political instability that could push Egypt to fall into the lap of the supporters of Allahu Akbar.

The task of the army or rather its political representatives will be to find the right people endowed with political adeptness, experience, imagination, and foresight from a wide pool of political representation that would also include members of the old regime who will serve not only for their knowledge in the affairs of state but also as the strong link to the chain of the anchor that will prevent any possibility that the new political navigation of the country will go adrift. The former head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman will play a pivotal role in this assembly of political representation which will not exclude members of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is of vital importance however is that this new political process will not be violently discontinued from the old regime. While room will be made to ensconce the new representatives of the people to government positions, this will not happen at the expense of crowding out old government hands. The only person that will definitely be left out will be Hosni Mubarak and some of his conspicuous cronies. And Mubarak himself has already announced that neither he nor his son will be candidates in the presidential elections in September. The call of the Tahrir Square protesters to resign now has by now become an oxymoron by Mubarak’s announcement not to stand as president in the next election. Further it is fraught with danger as according to the Constitution if he resigns now elections for the presidency must be held after sixty days. That means a pot- pourri of candidates for president will come forward without the people having enough time either to evaluate their competence nor their political bona fide and might elect precipitatingly without critical experience and guidance a ‘dunce’ for president, an Alexander Kerensky in the form of Mohamed Al Baradei, that will open the passage to the Islamic Bolsheviks. To avoid this likely danger I’m proposing the following solution that in my opinion would be acceptable to all parties in this political melee.

The Vice President Omar Suleiman as representative of the armed forces, to immediately set up a committee under his chairmanship that will comprise members of the variable new and old political organizations of the country, whose task will be to appoint the members of a ‘shadow government’ whose function in turn will be to put an end to the protests that could instigate a military coup d’état , to make the relevant amendments to the constitution that will guide the country toward democracy, and to prepare it for the presidential elections in September. The members of this shadow government will be a medley of current holders of government that would include the most competent of all, Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister, who was sacked by Mubarak as a scapegoat, and of the old and new political parties that emerged since the bouleversement against Mubarak. The executive officer of this 'government in the wings' will be Vice President Suleiman, who, with the delegated powers given to him by the present no more functional president Mubarak will be the real president during this interim period. Finally, the members of this shadow government will have a tacit agreement that their political parties will support candidates for president in the September elections who were selected by consensus among its members.

The ‘establishment’ of such a shadow government might be the political Archimedean point that would move Egypt out of the crisis and push it toward democracy.

Hic Rhodus hic salta

Bombing of Milosevic Should Apply to Gaddafi's Slaughter of his Own People

2011-03-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis March 01, 2011

The United States and its allies must ensure that the revolt of the Libyan people against the autocratic, corrupt, and nepotistic regime of Muammar Gaddafi is not drowned in blood by the latter’s draconian response to it, and is crowned with the establishment of democracy and freedom, thus fulfilling the wishes of the Libyan people. President Obama has the total and unswerving responsibility, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to steer and pilot the vessel of democracy with its Libyan passengers, that is presently going through the dangerous straits of autocracy whose shoals are threatening it with wreckage, into the safety of its democratic moorings, by been actively engaged in this libertarian, and, indeed, strategic goal.

In the critical situation that besets Libya to indulge in ‘nuanced’ considerations as to whether or not the U.S. should engage militarily in the country, is to indulge in political and strategical onanism. The tracasserie, the turmoil in Libya requires the immediate application of the bombing of Milosevic against Gaddafi’s militias and mercenaries by U.S. airpower to prevent Gaddafi and his sons from genociding their own people. Any procrastination of action and political and diplomatic quibbling on the part of the Obama administration as a substitute of providing an expeditious and strategically prudent resolution by U.S. military action in favour of the revolt of the Libyan people against the brutal and nepotistic regime of Gaddafi, will be deemed by history as a dereliction of duty by the United States as the pivotal power of rational world order.

Strength of Character is Shown in Critical Circumstances and Obama Fails the Test

2010-12-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

The following was written just prior to Obama's election as president and is republished here hoping the readers of Exotic...will find it to be of some interest.

Will the American electorate be susceptible to the false idealistic promptings of a confused weak leader?

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to a Bush contrarian

Only the poverty of thought can make a statement such as the “poor republicans...through no fault of their own.” There is no virtue to be found in human beings not making mistakes. No one is infallible, especially in the multi-variable dimensions of war. The virtue lies in swiftly correcting these mistakes. And this is exactly what Bush did when he adopted and implemented the Surge turning a losing war into a potentially victorious one. This was the “major” and crucial policy that “was successfully implemented and carried out” with all the potential geopolitical developments that could flow into the region with the establishment of democracy in Iraq, and hence justifying fully the Bush Doctrine of democratizing the Middle East as a preventive cure for terrorism.

The liberal intelligentsia with their tongue stuck in the bitterness of being totally wrong with their gloomy prognostications about the outcome of the war, cannot and will not concede this ‘reversal of fortune’ for the Bush administration. But history, which has no taste either of bitterness or sweetness, will give the final verdict on Bush. And dare I say it will be a favourable one.

What Obama proposes to do is to deprive America of this tremendous strategic victory over the extremists of Islam by his pledge to pull out US forces from Iraq before the conditions for such a withdrawal are strategically ripe.

If you were an editor even in the most provincial newspaper and spelled out the obvious as news, you would not have held your position as editor for very long. Bigotry, irrational religious beliefs, and ignorance—like poverty—up to the present inflict even the best and most affluent societies. If educated prosperous America has this bane in its midst you can imagine other less educated and prosperous countries in what state they are in this area. To say however, that either McCain or Palin would select to govern for the irrational beliefs and ignorance of such minorities, is to show that one is completely politically naive and no one can take such person seriously.

And do you really believe that Obama has his “feet on the ground,” when he says that once America starts implementing its own values it will turn the present hate of the world for America into love, into a global loving circle of holding hands, including perhaps the fanatical jihadists?

Always bear in mind the great adage of Friedrich Nietzsche that the character of a person is revealed in critical circumstances, followed by my minuscule one that in hard times only the hard men/women prevail. Obama lacks the strength of character to lead a great nation in these most dangerous times. In the vocation of Statecraft according to his populist policies and faith in changing America he remains an infant and is the ultimate ‘mummy’s boy’. As the worst mummy’s boy is the one who had no mother. (His mother abandoned him when he was an infant to be brought up by his grandparents.) That is why he chose Biden for his vice president instead of the most savvy politically Hillary Clinton, because his wife Michelle didn’t want the latter. It’s Michelle that wears the pants, and if he wins, which I doubt, it will be the first ‘matriarchic’ presidency of the United States.

Building Mosque on Ground Zero an Insult to Majority of Americans

2010-12-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Everyone can observe, other than the mentally disengaged, how intellectually and politically insecure Clemons is with his original Obama “gets it right” position in regard to the building of the Mosque on Ground Zero when he continues serially to recruit cognitively nondescript people, like Glassman, and even Arab American Muslims, in support of the ‘maiden’ stupid statement of Obama.

In the context when even Muslims behind the project have second thoughts about its location and are considering its withdrawal, as reported in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Clemons’s dogged persistence to find supporters for this ‘crescent’ laden white elephant clearly emphasizes how mentally and politically disengaged Clemons is from reality.

To Clemons, sadly and tragically, 70% of Americans, who oppose the building of the mosque, are a lynching “mob.”

Multiculturalism: How a Pet Idea Became a Dinosaur

2010-12-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

The following paper was first written and published in the IPA Review (Institute of Public Affairs) in 1996, Vol. 49/2. It's republished here as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel applied to Multiculturalism the last rites to its demise: According to the Chancellor, Multiculturalism is kaput. "The approach to multiculturalism to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed."

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Once upon a time an amateurish “astrologer” by the name Al Grasby, who happened also to be Minister of Immigration, discovered accidentally, in the Australian firmament of immigration a new star:the Star of Multiculturalism. Al was a man who had a lot of “pets”, “lay” ideas, but this one was going to be a whopper. Within a decade, it would become for wave upon wave of migrants who landed and settled in this country, their lodestar. It would provide guidance and solace for the travails they would endure in the initial stages of settlement, as well as give the celestial energy by which they would cultivate their cultures in their new homeland.

No one had suspected that this discovery of our amateur astrologer was from its beginnings a Fata Morgana and that before the end of the second decade of its chequered existence it would be a falling star. The idea that lay behind the discovery was magnanimous and filled to the brim with the ideals of humanity and the spirit of tolerance. But, like all ideas with such pe(t)digree it was impregnated with the seeds of its own destruction at its conception. This, however, was unbeknown even to its eminent founding fathers, who had spent, with such profligacy, prodigious amounts of corporeal and spiritual energy to give it wings. And it must have been a dolorous and painful experience for them to see that all that their huge efforts had led to was the tragedy of Icarus. But it would not be the first time in history that frivolity in the form of a pet idea would have had such an ending.

It would be stating the obvious to describe Australia as a country whose people are of an exotic provenance. However, to transform a descriptive term into a socio-cultural value, with which migrants would nurture and uphold their cultures in this country for the long duration, as well as transmit them to their progeny, would be an exercise in intellectual alchemy. To have believed that Australia, uniquely, could become a multicultural society was quixotic.

According to its founders, multiculturalism would not only encourage the cultivation and secure the continuation of this rich diversity of cultures, but it would also contribute to the creation of a uniquely tolerant society. In both of these two admirable aims, multiculturalism would be found to be wanting. The achievement of these grandiose aims was based on the premise that Australia somehow was chosen, by some sort of divine predestination, to break itself from the vise of history.

Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, one of the intellectual founders of multiculturalism, who since has abandoned it, asks the historically germane question regarding the concept of “Many Cultures One Australia”, as proposed by the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee for the year 2000:“…can it represent a victory over the divisive atavism which has cursed the human experience for so long?” In other words, was it ever conceptually plausible that multiculturalism, or any of its variations, would exorcise this “curse” of history and function as equal before the cascading force of the culture of modern capitalism?

No lesser figure than Karl Marx, whom some of the protagonists of multiculturalism would be proud to consider as their mentor, predicted that the elemental force of capitalism and its culture would sweep away, on a vast scale, the dead weight of traditions and cultures that riveted their peoples to the obfuscation, ignorance, and bigotry of a hoary past. How could anyone be oblivious of the fact that the Darwinian natural selection process of the biological world also applies, with some modifications, in the cultural world, by means very often, of a ruthless competition of cultures, whose crown of victory ineluctably passes to the head of the stronger culture and to the one that is most suitable to the needs and aspirations of people living in a particular society? How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge of human history, disregard the “sanguine” fact that most wars were, whatever their other causes, at the same time wars of different cultures and religious beliefs? Even when there happened to be wars of the same culture, it was a conflict between different interpretation of beliefs, as the Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics in the seventeenth century illustrated. In view of the above, one must have had the “courage” of ignorance, to have considered and proposed the possibility of a multicultural Australia.

As to its laudatory goals of tolerance between different cultures and their flourishing within the strongly-established mainstream of Anglo-Saxon culture, to what extent are these goals feasible? There is no doubt that Australia has an exemplary record in its tolerance of different cultures. The strong sense of egalitarianism introduced into Australia by the early colonists, an array of judicious governmental and educational policies, and the experience of an expanding tourism in and out of Australia have combined to imbue Australians, despite some pockets of bigoted obscurantism, with a strong sense of respect and acceptance of foreign cultures.

ETHNIC CONFLICTS WITHIN AUSTRALIA

But whilst the host culture can be genial and tolerant, one cannot say the same for the “metic” cultures. The tolerance of cultures, like the characters of persons, are tested and adjudged in critical and difficult circumstances. Conflicts and historical hatreds between Arabs and Jews, between Greeks and Serbo-Macedonians, between Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats, between Turks and Kurds, have been transplanted into this country. The extent to which these conflicts can mobilize these hostile communities against each other and induce them to lobby governments in support of their countries, furnishes a striking example that multiculturalism and its ideals are a mirage.

What is more disturbing, however, is that governments, for electoral reasons, can become hostages to the “blackmailing” demands of certain ethnic communities, who have the advantage of numbers. Hence, governments in Australia can become unofficial allies of certain countries which are embroiled in hostilities, or even in war, through the pressure resident communities can exercise upon them. The reality, therefore, is that leading organizations of ethnic communities, whose countries back home are engaged in hostilities or war, can become surrogate diplomatic corps, negotiating and acting on behalf of the interests of their own countries with Australian governments.

It’s obvious therefore, that a nation under the umbrella of a multicultural society cannot be protected from the thunderbolts cast by the atavistic wrath that some nations have against each other. The idea of a multicultural society, from the day of its inception, was child’s play, building castles in the sand. It was an idea that should be stillborn. But, due to a mushrooming crop of ethnic communities and councils along with their leaders’ adeptness to coax and seduce politicians and governments, who felt that in return for their political favours they would be rewarded with the ethnic vote, it continued to flourish. Thus it was that ethnic community leaders were able to ensconce themselves within the precincts of political power. As a result of governments’ willingness, especially that of Labour, to adopt and implement many of the schemes of the supporters of multiculturalism, a swarm of drones and mediocrities, both from the ethnic and Anglo-Saxon communities, invaded and captured ministerial and departmental positions, which were cast as the incubators from which would rise the policies of multiculturalism.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), in the Prime Minister’s office under the Hawke government, was the hatchery par excellence. Thus came into existence the teeming breed of the “professional ethnic”. To solidify the hold they had upon governments, they needed to have the “august” voices of academia speaking in favour of their multicultural proposals. And for those multiculturalists who entered the universities and upon whom some benign force allotted them professorial chairs, Plato’s proviso for his academia that no person without knowledge of mathematics should enter here, did not apply. It was not surprising, therefore, that nothing profound emerged from those noisy, creaking wobbly chairs. Moreover, few academics– with some exceptions, like the courageous professor Blainey–would dare to “pluck the wings” off this flock of intellectual usurpers. Even today, despite the abandonment of the concept of multiculturalism by such eminent persons as professor Zubrzycki and Justice Gobbo, cackles about multiculturalism still can be heard in, and out of, the rooms of academia.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF MULTICULTURALISM

The Gordian knot of multiculturalism was tied by its four principles, as outlined by the Australian Council of Population and Ethnic Affairs: “Essential for a successful multicultural society were social cohesion; respect for cultural identity and awareness of Australian’s cultural diversity; equal opportunity and access for all Australians; and equal responsibility for, commitment to, and participation in Australian Society.” The achievement of each of these principles however, depends on the acceptance of the social, economic, political, and philosophical values of Australian society, i.e. the cultural values of an advanced technological democratic society. But many of the cultures of our ethnically diverse population do not espouse these values. Therefore, if those four basic principles were to be realized, these cultures would have to debunk a great chunk of their own values and adopt the values of Australian society. Ironically, the realization of these four basic principles would not lead to a multicultural society, but to a society of one dominant culture, which fits the requirements of a modern society, with moderate variations, however, in its original cultural milieu. As through a syncretic process, the home grown culture will absorb the best that other cultures have to offer, but like a river with many currents, it will be the mainstream, the stronger current that will determine the meandering course of its direction. It’s certainly correct to believe that the diversity of cultures enriches the experience and enlightens the minds of people. But it’s erroneous to believe that you can build a society or a nation on a medley of cultures.

Al Grasby’s pet idea was destined to have a transitory, but nonetheless, a grotesque existence, for it was written in its star that it would share the fate of the dinosaur.

Et tu Brute Might Be the Fate of the Obamanesque Caesar

2010-11-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The November 2 mid-term elections have swiftly brought to the ears of the American Caesar of socialistic policies the ominous warning of the soothsayer, “Beware the Ides of March.” Not only within a short span of time a large part of the electorate have rejected the big government and interventionist policies of the pretender, who was cast as an Olympian President by the liberal prattling crowd of the east and west coasts and who himself ‘hubristicaly’ transformed his “community organiser” status , covered under ivy leaves, into the Olympian gods of Poseidon and Asclepius who would stop the rise of the oceans and heal the planet, but also a sizeable part of his own party and especially some of its leaders who have sat and supped on his ‘political banquets’ and have tasted the bitterness of his failure as president, are presently detaching themselves from his discredited presidency and are considering not to support his nomination as president in 2012. A recent poll has shown that 47 per cent of Democrats believed he should be challenged in his renomination.

As the misguided and unloved policies of Obama, such as the massive restructuring of health-care, cap-and-trade, and his 800 billion-plus stimulus that failed to reduce unemployment, have given rise to the hurricane winds that will continue to threaten the further uprooting and dislodging of many Democrats from their positions of power as well as the loss of the presidency in 2012. Thus under this threat it might be the ‘conspiracy’ of his own colleagues and friends, the Democrats, that may lead to his political assassination and bring to Obama’s lips in his last breathing, the words “et tu Brute.”

Taliban Might Just Be Defeated by US and its Allies

2010-11-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

By Con GeorgeKotzabasis

For those who can think out of the mould there are signs that the Americans might just win the war in Afghanistan. The fact that a large part of the Taliban are prepared and are negotiating with the Karzai government, with the apparent consensus of General Petraeus, is indicative that the Taliban are undergoing unsustainable loses in their confrontation with the allied forces. Moreover, that these negotiations are taking place with the full knowledge by the Taliban of Obama’s commitment to start withdrawing all American fighting forces from Afghanistan by July 2011 shows clearly that the Taliban are debilitated militarily and are therefore forced to enter negotiations with their enemy from a position of weakness. Otherwise if their strength was still intact why shouldn’t they wait the US withdrawal and hence their chance to topple the Karzai regime?

Discussion with Critics of Iraq War

2010-10-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

This discussion occurred on November 2007. It is republished here for one reason only: To show how wrong all the liberal critics of the war were about its outcome.

Kotzabasis says...

How clever of professor Paul Krugman, the glittering commentator of The New York Times, to use his “Four legs good, two legs bad” drill to open a hole to the old debate about the levity of the decision of the Iraq war encapsulated in his “They attacked us, and we are going to strike back.” After failing in all his prognostications about the unwinnable war and showering for years with mockery and disparagement the proponents and supporters of the war, now that the war is being won and Iraq makes its first strides toward democracy –with its corollary that history might after all crown the neocons with the laurels of victory-all he finds to fill the holes of his rotationally fallacious argument is to revive the old squib of the non-connection of Saddam with Osama and hence the conspiratorial origin of the war.

Although there was ample evidence, as provided by the NIE report, of such connection between the intelligent services of Saddam and agents of Osama, the Bush administration after the 9/11 attack was more concerned that this rudimentary connection might take in the near future a gargantuan form that would gravely threaten the strategic interests of the US and indeed, its own land and its people. No astute and responsible government could disregard such a potential threat and not take the defensive-offensive measures to negate it. It was in such a context that the decision to go to war was taken. As well as on the further reason that it’s always more prudent to defeat an irreconcilable and implacable enemy while he is still weak, which is an irreversible canon of war.

Lafaytte says...

Saddam disliked Osama, see here, a minor fact that seems to escape you.

Saddam could not abide Osama's Saudi Salafist tendencies which for the larger part of Sunni Muslims outside of Saudi Arabia, was far too fundamental. Which is why, when Osama proffered troops in the war (1980-88) against their supposed common enemy (the Iranian Shiites), Saddam refused. And he was not such a fool as to partner with the man responsible for 9/11 later on.

Of course, such subtleties are beyond people who view the world only through the prism of Judeo-Christian religious history. In fact, these subtleties are at the very heart of the modern Muslim world.

But, subtlety is not the forte of this lead-headed administration, which is why Uncle Sam finds himself in very deep sneakers in the Middle East, embroiled in a war he cannot win and only loose with grace.

Kotzabasis says...

Of course Saddam was a secular leader. And indeed, he might have “disliked” and not “trusted’ fanatics. But the game of power politics, which Saddam played as a virtuoso in the Arab world, is not propelled by likes and dislikes. And talking of subtleties, Saddam could see the ascendancy of Osama’s fanatics in the Muslim world and wanted to have contact with them not because of a predilection of amity toward them but because he wanted to control them and use them for his own geopolitical goals. It’s this subtlety that escapes you. And it would be wise for someone who lives in a glass house not to throw stones at others, such as "this lead-headed administration", as it's obvious that subtlety is not your forte either.

Lafaytte says...

Once again you are showing your ignorance of Muslim mentality and its subtlety. You wouldn't be the Ultimate Crusader perchance?

You justified the invasion of Iraq based upon a false argument – an improbable relationship between Hussein and bin Laden. We've been through this huckstering nonsense before. Why, on earth, bring it up again?

War in Iraq is indeed good for American business. I do hope you've invested your son in it.

"Saddam could see the ascendancy of Osama’s fanatics in the Muslim world and wanted to have contact with them not because of a predilection of amity toward them but because he wanted to control them and USE them for his own geopolitical goals."

What is this you're submission for a James Bond film?

It's hallucinatory nonsense. Saddam simply wanted to maintain Sunni control over a country that was largely populated by Shiites (who outnumber the Sunnis by 3 to 1).

And it would be wise for someone who lives in a glass house not to throw stones at others ... as it's obvious that subtlety is not your forte either.

Yeah, right. I live in a glass house. Now you are actually getting funny. In fact hilarious.

Bruce Wilder says...

Kotzabasis: "I'm using the metrics of incontrovertible reality: Reduction of violence, the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, the defeat and disarming of the Mahdi militia, and the first strides of Iraq toward democracy . . . "

I think you are confusing the Right-wing Noise Machine's continuing kabuki play version of the Iraq War with a reality, with which you are too little acquainted.

"Reduction in violence", I guess, is the new peace, like pink is the new black -- hopefully a short-lived fashion. You have scarcely any idea what the Mahdi Militia is, let alone why the U.S. should be the least bit interested in its vicissitudes.

Al Qaeda in Iraq?? "Defeating" Al Qaeda in Iraq is like defeating swatting a swarm of specially imported may flies with a $3 trillion sledge hammer, which we financed by borrowing from China -- not the kind of pointless, extravagant and unnecessary victory any sane person would celebrate.

Kotzabasis says...

Bruce-Starting from the end of your post, victory over a mortal foe is priceless and only the historically fatuous would not celebrate. The “Mahdi Militia” being the major combative militia against the coalition forces and you say that “the US should be the least bit interested in its vicissitudes.” In what kind of strategic cuckoo land are you domiciled?

But two words of your post provide the key to the secrets of your heart, “hopefully” and “unnecessary.”
By ‘discolouring’ the “reduction of violence” by your intellectually invented colours or rather by ‘defining’ it, “like pink is the new black—hopefully a short-lived fashion,” you show pellucidly that your hope lies in a future increase of violence against the Iraqi people and the coalition forces, so you can justify your original misplaced antiwar stand and gratify as well your fervent anti-Bush emotions. And your unnecessary victory over a deadly irreconcilable enemy reveals your historical blindness and ignorance as well as your bereftness of foresight.

Lastly, ironically by your own ‘unborrowed’ sledge hammer you knock yourself off your pedestal of “institutional ethical injunctions” as an outcome of your ‘secret’ wish to see the US defeated in this war, which as a nation is the foundation of your institutional moral existence, according to your own philosophical standards. This is intellectual, spiritual, and ethical suicide at its best.

Libya's "Deradicalization" of Political Islam

2010-10-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons ’ visit to Libya seems like a prostrating satrap visiting his king to render his obsequious homage to him. To say that “Libya figured out a way to seriously confront the reality of political Islam,” without really knowing much about its program of “de-radicalization,” as Clemons himself admits, while the U.S. has no “real strategy’ against it and has “its head in the sand” on the issue, is to violently disfigure one’s intellectual credibility. Political Islam from long ago has been continuously transforming itself into militant Islam which America is fighting with an unambiguous and real strategy and with its head high, at least under the previous administration, while Clemons wants to fight it with its tail between its legs.

Preemptive Attack both on the External and Internal Enemy

2010-10-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The 'unanimous rejection and repudiation of terrorism... and commitment to work within the laws of Australia', by the Muslim leaders who attended the Meeting on 23 of August in Canberra, must now be used by the Howard government as a "jump-start", to a "summit" of hard, but not foolhardy, action, that would effectively protect Australia from those fundamentalist Muslims and their followers in our midst, who pose an ominous and a grave threat to the security of our country.

Notwithstanding the support of the six principles, drafted at the Meeting, by the Muslim leaders, the government must not "manure" and water any illusions that these leaders will be able to do anything 'effective' against those fundamentalist imams and deflect them from continuing to push their radical-fanatic agenda among their followers, albeit this time, cautiously and stealthily, so they can avoid from being seized by the arm of the law. Fanaticism has the spots of the leopard on its back. And as one cannot change the spots of the latter, it would be the "summit" of folly to believe that the Muslim "summiteers", by exercising reason and persuasion, could change the nature of fanaticism embodied in these imams. This much was conceded by the Prime Minister himself, who in his riposte to the journalists as to why he had not invited radical Muslims to the Meeting, said that it would be impossible to change the views of fanatics by persuasion. And the evidence is overwhelming that no amount of reasonable arguments can persuade these fanatics to change their views, as despite the flood of concrete evidence to the contrary, they still believe that Osama bin Laden was not behind the attack on 9/11. Even some moderate Muslims believe that bin Laden was not the culprit. And, like the fanatics, they believe in all kinds of Americano-Jewish "twin" conspiracies, such as for example, that the Jews had foreknowledge of the attack, and that was the reason why they had not turned up for work on the day of the attack on the twin towers.

It is on this principle alone, 'once a fanatic always a fanatic', that the government must now enact the no "legal niceties" foolproof no loopholes legislation that would prevent, effectively, fundamentalist imams and teachers in Islamic schools, from teaching their doctrine of hate against America and Western nations, and from propagating - by craftier and more devious means, instead of doing this openly and with tongue in cheek as they have done in the past - a holy war against those nations and their peoples, who are fighting global terror in Afghanistan and in Iraq. (And it is precisely for this reason-the fighting of global terror- that countries engaged in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have become targets of terrorists. And not as second rate and rationally shallow commentators, a la Kerry O'Brien and Tony Jones of the ABC, to mention only the most prominent ones in this country, who assert that these countries, and Australia in our case, have become terrorist targets because of their alliance with the U.S. and because of being co-occupiers with the latter in Iraq. These countries and America would not have been in Iraq, if the latter had not been an integral part of global terror, and especially now, when it has become the front-line of global terror. It is the ultimate contradiction on the one hand to agree, as most of these pundits do, that the countries of the free world have no other alternative but to fight global terror, which is a war sans borders and unlocalised, and then to refuse to fight it in the crucible of terror that Iraq has now morphed into.)

The government must realize, that only by legislating a "Sword of Damocles" over the heads of these dangerous fanatics that would deport them to the countries of their origin --if not jail them in this country for treason, if they happen to be Australian citizens--even by stripping them of their Australian citizenship, in the case that they are officially Australians. This can be done by retrospective legislation, in order to carry out their deportation, if they blatantly violated or violate the pledge they have made to their Australian citizenship. Thus, will it be able to protect Australia, to the highest degree possible, from home-grown terrorism.

In the enactment of this legislation protecting Australia, the Howard government must be consistent with the logical position of its foreign policy, as expounded by the Prime Minister himself. He made it crystal-clear, that if a country's terrorists in our region threatened the security of Australia by weapons of mass destruction, and the government of such a country was unwilling or impotent to prevent such an attack, then Australia would be forced to launch a pre-emptive raid to stop such an attack upon Australia. The Prime Minister cannot do less in regards to the internal enemy that also poses an imminent and lethal threat to the security of our country. The anti-terrorist legislation therefore, that the government is preparing to take, must also comprise the pre-emptive wherewithal, that would abort an attack on our country by home-grown terrorists. If the Prime Minister is willing and prepared to take the greater risk of invading and violating the borders of a sovereign nation to protect Australia, why then cannot he take the lesser risk, of uprooting and "destroying" the enemy within, which is the inalienable sovereign right of Australia, as it would be equally the right of any other nation in the same situation, to protect its people from an enemy attack?

Australia is at war! It has committed its brave soldiers, its sons and daughters, to fight a treacherous fanatical enemy in Afghanistan and in Iraq who is engaged in global terror, and whose goal is no less than the establishment of a block of Islamo-fascist states in the region, that would ultimately threaten the existence of Western civilization. It would be the acme of folly, of historic dimensions, that while Australia is engaged with its allies in such an existential war, that its government would allow a more than possibly operational fifth column of treacherous fanatics in the meantime, to stab Australia in the back. Such a folly, if it were to happen, would be registered in the annals of history as unforgivable and as inexcusable. It would irremediably demean all the sacrifices that our soldiers had made in fighting this war, and it would put an inerasable stain of moral feebleness and political incompetence, upon the up- to- now admirable leadership of the government on the war on global terror.

The Prime Minister, being fully aware of the real stakes of this war against global terror, who, with historical insight, moral fortitude, and political acumen, decided to commit Australian troops to fight it, must not now be squeamish about the necessary force of the legislative measures that must be commensurate to the great threat that is posed by home-grown terrorism. The political leadership of the free world is now at the crossroads of leading from the front or leading from behind. If, as some leaders of the West, such as Chirac, Schroeder, and Beazley - not to leave out our own crop - have decided to lead from behind, pushed by the stream of populism, these leaders will be everlastingly condemned by history, for their intellectual dishonesty, and political opportunism. Those leaders, such as Bush, Blair and Howard, who have decided to lead from the front, against the stream of populism, will be for ever and ever renowned by future ages for their indomitable spirit, that saved Western civilization from these terrorist barbarians.

ECRASEZ L'INFAME DE TERORRISME

All Favor the Common Good the Question is how it Comes About

2010-09-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dan Kervick, Jul 31 2010, 2:08AM - Link

I'm sorry, Kotzabasis. But your abstemious interpretation of the permissible pursuit of the common good as something that can only be the emergent result of individual action in a laissez faire economy is an anachronistic projection of latter-day libertarian values onto the much more nuanced views of the founders of the United States, many of whom were quite eager to build their new nation through energetic government, and with a far-sighted concern for the public good and national interest.

You seem not to understand the traditions of classical republicanism, civic humanism and the contractarian theories of government that formed the wellspring of American political thought. Governments are instituted to promote positive values and pursue the general welfare, not just to protect individual liberties and establish a system of "thou shalt nots".

Jefferson supported mandatory public education; he authorized the Cumberland rd. John Adams established a system of socialized medicine for seamen...

Nadine says,

BTW, I think you misunderstand kotz (often easy to do). He is not arguing that the government should have no part in building infrastructure. He says that proper government function is to safeguard individual property and liberty and trade. As long as you keep the principle in mind, you can certainly debate about what sort of infrastructure is proper to be left to government. But there should be a due process for that debate; government must be checked from just deciding and grabbing for itself without a check and balance. That's what Madison was worried about, government propensity to take more and more power to itself. The Constitutional framework was intended to be that check; but this has been steadily hollowed out and vitiated by 100 years of progressive legal thinking.

Posted by kotzabasis, Jul 31 2010, 7:43AM - Link

Nadine, thanks for clarifying my position.

Kervick

I am not suggesting the disutility or euthanasia of government as the latter is a necessary and vital institution in the affairs of its people. I am only saying that it is not its business to enact the common good as the latter spontaneously rises from the rational actions of people in their every day working affairs in the context of an unhampered free market, without however being free from some necessary at times regulation. It goes without saying that government must take initiatives both internal and external for the general welfare of the country such as education, building roads and hospitals etc and ensuring that the vital interests of the nation are protected from external or internal enemies. But all these initiatives of government which contribute to the enhancement of the common weal merely consummate the wishes of its constituents, the government does not impose them upon the latter by legislation. In democracies no government can ever succeed in implementing its policies unless these policies have some resonance among its constituents and its opinion makers, the fourth estate.

Only in certain critical circumstances, such as war, statesmen, with that unique Nietzschean combination of intellect, moral clarity, and fortitude, can go against the stream, but by their nature they are accountable neither to men nor God but to History, although, like Winston Churchill, they can still be vulnerable to the vagaries of a volatile electorate.

Street Walking Honourable Profession for Haters of Israel

2010-09-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A humorous short reply to: Disturbing: Israeli Youth Help Raze Entire Bedouin Village

The Washington Note July 31, 2010

As I’ve said before, Clemons on the issue of Israel has become an agent provocateur in his ‘day-light’ job. But not being fully gratified with this occupation he has found a new one, a moon-lighting job as a political street walker, willing to be ‘sheathed’ by the first ‘flashing’ sword of any random passer-by at any price, as long as it is at the expense of Israel.

And it is interesting to see all the ‘red light’ professionals with their Arab clientele in this thread, coming out in support of Clemons up to the ‘hilt of the sheath'.

Shuttling Between Palestine and Israel without Kissinger a Wasted Effort

2010-09-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama’s envoy in the Middle East George Mitchell has been given the hapless task of setting a process of a peace deal between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel through a shuttling diplomacy that succeeded in the past only when the levers of such diplomacy were in the hands of the master diplomat Henry Kissinger. The Obama administration having a dearth of first class diplomats, is replacing the Gulliverian diplomats of the past with Lilliputians to handle the foreign policy of the sole superpower in these most dangerous times. Neither Hillary Clinton, least of all George Mitchell, can orbit the ‘solar diplomacy’ of either Dean Acheson (“Present at the Creation”) or of Henry Kissinger, (The Mao breaker) and in their attempt to imitate these grand masters and their achievements in the vocation of Talleyrand, they will have the fate of burned out falling stars. The Secretary of State in her role as Venus in the romantic ‘loving diplomacy’ of President Obama has failed to attract and ‘bed’ any lovers in the President’s boudoir. Neither the Iranians nor the Palestinians, who as ‘lovers’, scorn the earthly aphrodisiacs of the Western boudoir and eye in contrast lecherously the celestial one with its seventy-two virgins, had a predilection to be smitten by the exotic diplomatic charms of Obama. Iran in countenancing the U.S. diplomatic overture launched its own and in a clever manoeuvre reached an agreement with Brazil and Turkey with the aim if not to cut the ground under Obama’s feet for a new set of UN sanctions to at least make their content so weak and ineffective as to have no consequence upon its determination and ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Arab League and Egyptian pressure dropped its insistence on a general freeze of Jewish building and settlements and agreed to participate not in direct talks with Israel but in a shuttling diplomacy brokered by the United States, after the latter in turn pressured Israel to make concessions by temporarily halting new building in Jerusalem.

In relation to the “proximity talks” announced by the U.S. Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister said: “We ask for real peace in which we work on the basis of Israeli interests of mutuality, on a solution regarding return (of Palestinians refugees), on recognizing the state of Israel as Jewish and holding negotiations without preconditions.” The PA’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said: “The Palestinians, with the support of the Arab League monitoring committee, are likely to agree to renew the negotiations even if Israel quietly undertakes to stop construction in the settlements and East Jerusalem and doesn’t make a public declaration about it.” Politically, Prime Minister Netanyahu might not survive if he announced even a temporary stop to Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. But the same goes if this halt became visible and known through the media by the Israeli public. Mr. Netanyahu could only survive the ire of the Israeli public only if he would have a chance to extract from the PA greater benefits, such as ironclad security for its people from Palestinian attacks and recognition of the state of Israel, for the political costs issuing from the halting of settlements in East Jerusalem.

But since the announcement of the proximity talks for few months now there has been deafening silence on that front. And it is clear that the shuttle has broken before it even started. As for meaningful direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis that the Obama administration in its continued bout of wishful thinking was hoping, remains a mirage. And the latest deadly clash on the Lebanon Israel border and the sabre-rattling of Hezbollah, and the rockets launched against Israel from an area controlled by Hamas, do not bode well that any direct talks will take place anytime soon.

President Obama’s strategic locomotive of The Middle East that would bring the two parties to the negotiating table and would announce its peaceful process on all its stops to the Arab world, has been mockingly derailed by the inexperienced and untrained Obama himself sitting at the driver’s seat.

Churchillian Leadership in our Times

2010-08-31T03:15:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Jeffrey Sachs, the famous American economist who after the collapse of the Soviet Union put the latter on the capitalist track, is of course correct to pin point the non-commissions and omissions of political leadership. But leadership of Churchillian stature does not arise from collectivities such as the UN and the World Bank, but from the ‘soloist’ reflections, sagacity, resolution, and guidance of individual statesmen. In the present world, and most dangerous, scenario, what is missing is the vocation of politics being in the hands of virtuoso politicians with the Nietzschean ethos of the “will to power” determining the affairs of mankind. And parallel to the latter, is the necessary ‘euthanasia’ of the populist wimpish politicians, such as Barack Obama, and Kevin Rudd.

American Liberals Espouse the Building of Mosque on Ground Zero

2010-08-22T01:27:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Short reply to: Bravo: Fareed Zakaria’s Ethical Stand on Mosque
By Steve Clemons The Washington Note August 06, 2010

Clemons, and his senseless and insensitive cohorts on this thread, may well “salute” Zakaria for “this exceptional leadership.” But he can only do so by the devaluation of all values. To put the sensitivities of ‘moderate’ Muslims who can still blame America for 9/11, like the imam behind the building of the Mosque, whose religion for hundreds of years has profoundly failed to produce anything of value in the social, economic, political, and scientific sphere of man and whose sole contemporary staple product is terror, above the sensitivities of the victim’s relatives and of a fully justifiable aggrieved America emanating from the barbarous and atrocious attack of 9/11 that was bred and nourished within the confines of Muslim religion and culture, is to devalue all morality and human decency, not to emphasize the political bankruptcy of those who espouse such “exceptional leadership.”

Will General Petraeus Accept Running as Obama's Vice-President?

2010-08-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

No intelligent eminent American would accept running as VP, least of all General Petraeus, with a by now politically bankrupt president as Obama, whose political stocks will be totally dwindled by 2012. Steve Clemons speculation that Petraeus would accept such an offer by Obama if it was made stands in blatant contradiction to his own thinking. Only a few days ago he was flagging his much discussed post “...Sinking Obama Presidency” and presently he wants to place Petraeus on this sinking Titanic and the highly intelligent Petraeus would assent to take a ‘voyage’ that would lead to his own drowning.

There is no “maybe” about such an event happening as Clemons muses and such a possibility would indeed be “crazy.” Clemons has to make up his mind whether the Obama Presidency is sinking or floating.

Former Secretary of State Equates Politics of Hamas and Israel

2010-08-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: ...on Israel-Palestine Conflict by Steve Clemons
Washington Note June 21, 2009

“Absolutists on both sides need to be overcome” which Steve obviously agrees with this statement of former Secretary of State James A. Baker. This statement however ravages the truth by its direct reference of a ‘political equivalence’ between Hamas and the Netanyahu government. No Israeli government ever governed on behalf of the minority absolutist interests of the religious fanatics of Israel unlike Hamas which governs Gaza in the interests of its millenarian goals. It’s like saying that Republican governments, such as the former Bush administration, governed on behalf of the narrow interests of the religious right and not for the general interests of the United States.

If this is the quality of strategic thinking that the four eminent persons of Carter, Baker, Scowcroft, and Brzezinski, are offering to the Obama administration for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict then such advice will be a repeat performance of past failures as it rises from the lowest ebbs of their strategic ‘cogitations.’

And Steve will be found to be completely wrong if he thinks that the new turbulent situation in Iran might ‘force’ the Khatami-Ahmadinejad regime to change its policy toward its Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist surrogates. Steve in his misplaced realism does not realize that Iran will never abandon its pawns as long as it engages in its power-play in the region whose goal is domination.

No More Free Suntans in Sunny Greece

2010-07-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

As Drew correctly states none of the classical liberal economists, Smith, Mises, Hayek, and I would add in this brilliant constellation Mill, Bawerk, and Schumpeter, ever argued that the free market was perfect and “market failure” was inconceivable. On the contrary they argued that the three cardinal principles of the free market were imperfect knowledge, uncertainty, and risk. How could any rational and economically literate person accuse the classical liberal economists of contending that the free market were free from market failure, when their whole argument was premised on the above three principles? Moreover, they did argue, that market failure could be cured mainly by the ‘elixir’ of the free market, and not by unqualified and ubiquitous government intervention.

It is the critics of the free market that engendered the ‘straw man’ of the perfect market so they could knock it down easily without any effort of critical thinking, which of course they lacked, and replace it with the socialist planning nostrums or, a la Kervick, with the hybrid panacea of the “mixed economy,” whose avatar was and is modern Europe, and which presently is at the threshold of economic bankruptcy. The sun is still shining in sunny Greece, but there are no more free suntans for its denizens.

Australia Protects itself from Home-Grown Terror

2010-07-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

The following paper was written on September 2005. It's republished here hoping the readers of this blog will find it to be of some interest.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The anti-terror laws proposed by the Howard government, have brought in their wake the civil libertarians' nightmares - that these laws will destroy civil liberties, freedom of speech and assembly, and eventually and irreparably erode the values of our democratic state. The nightmarish shadow of ASIO and its spooks will forebodingly spread and pervade all parts of our society, and no institution or person will be safe from the horrid intrusions of its ghostly agents. Hence, according to the libertarians' 'apparitional' thinking, the offspring of these laws will be a police state.

But how real are these ugly images -read as concerns of the civil libertarians -beyond the tarot cards of their predictions, and what is the probability that they could change the democratic fabric of our society so drastically resulting in people losing their civil liberties? It's in the adversarial response of the critics to these proposed anti-terror laws, that the answer to the above question lies.

The point d'appui upon which the critics of these laws rest their case is fear. But a one-sided fear - the fear that these laws will deprive us of our freedoms - that totally disregards the other greater fear posed by the terrorists, which will deprive us of our lives. Thus, the libertarians' protection of freedom is the protection of the freedom of the dead.

Let us however be more gentle with their claims, and attempt to examine them historically and rationally as they stand. They claim that the anti-terror laws will be implemented in an unfettered and shadowy way - without oversight or legal scrutiny by parliament or any other relevant authority - by ASIO and other security agencies against suspect terrorists and without the latter having recourse to the normal judicial processes that are part and parcel of a just state. They also claim, that these laws "can be used to deal with a range of issues beyond terrorism" and hence open the backdoor to a police state. Furthermore, they are unprecedented in their sweep, such as "preventative detention of suspects"... stripping them of their citizenship and deporting them, "legal powers akin to wartime than peacetime". John North, the President of the Law Council says that "these laws may bring us in danger of capitulating to terrorists, because they would have achieved their objective". Maybe we should capitulate to weakness and not pass these laws and hence get bombed, which is the ultimate objective of the terrorists. This seems to be less of a danger to Mr. North. And they assert that there is no certainty that these laws will be effective in preventing a terrorist attack in Australia.

(The quotes above are from Cameron Stewart, The Australian, 17 September 2005.)

This is no more than an ardent attempt by the civil libertarians to demolish the rationale and effectiveness of these laws by employing, as above, subterfuge, legal and philosophical abstractions and scarecrows to make their case. They are unwilling to use concrete historical evidence to make their argument (maybe because such evidence would have been detrimental to their claims) or reason, since the premise of their position is founded on the emotion of fear.

IN TIMES OF WAR LAWS MUST CHANGE

All democratic nations in times of war in the past had to pass legislation that enforced censorship and the detention of suspects propagating and promoting seditious action. And the laws issuing from such legislation had to be applied rigorously against any suspects who could organise themselves into a fifth column within a country at war. But the historically conclusive evidence is that in democratic societies as soon as the war ended, these laws ceased to apply and once again society returned to its former normal state. Undoubtedly, during the application of these laws, mistakes and indeed, abuses were made and some individuals apprehended or incarcerated were entirely innocent. But the scale of the operation and application of these injunctions were so great that it would have been impossible to execute them without making in some cases mistakes and errors of judgment. No human action on any gigantic scale, as for example in war, can ever be error-free. To expect that one could achieve one's goals on such a wide range without human fallibility playing an acting role, both in the mental and moral spheres, is to expect a play about the 'Fall of Man' without any human actors, but only angelic ones, in it.

The human condition is a state of irremediable imperfection. But despite this grim fact, the evolution of human nature has not stopped at its amoebic stage. In the irreversible Darwinian process of the survival of the fittest, the human species had to continuously develop new and more perfect means for its survival. Although these means were far from perfect in a divine sense, they were good enough for its earthly existence. The anti-terrorist laws are in this category of 'good enough'.

Australia, being at war, has no other option but to take these less than perfect hard measures that have a high probability of protecting its citizens from a home-grown terrorist attack. However, the premise upon which any wise legislation or enactment of laws rest, is that these laws must be commensurate to the threat (s) that emanates from illegal action. For example, if there is a spate of housebreaking, parliament has to legislate the appropriate, but not too-harsh laws that could deter this criminal activity from occurring - by jailing the culprits for a short time. If on the other hand, like New York few years ago, when a spate of robberies and murders were occurring which posed a greater threat to the residents of a city than housebreaking, the government would have to pass harsher laws, if it seriously wanted to prevent these 'deadly muggings' from happening, such as those with the 'zero tolerance' passed by the former mayor of New York, Guiliani. Furthermore, because of haphazardness and uncertainty, which is the shadow of all human action, one can never be sure that any laws passed will be completely effective in deterring people from engaging in illegal activities. Nonetheless, despite this ineradicable element of chance that is implanted in all laws, no government can eschew or excuse itself from the responsibility of taking the appropriate punitive measures that have a high probability of being successful against criminal conduct. (A clear example of this were the zero tolerance laws that were enforced in New York. At the time there was a volcanic eruption of protests from civil libertarians that these laws were inhumane, unjust, and ignoble, and that they would be totally ineffective as a deterrent to crime. Their success however, in substantially diminishing crime within a short time, proved its critics to be totally wrong.)

This indeterminacy and unpredictability of all human laws, unlike the physical laws of gravity, in regards to their success against lawbreakers, is moreover augmented, to the highest degree when a government has to legislate laws against a 'consortium' of religious fanatics whose mode of operation has the speed and randomness of quicksilver and whose goal is the destruction of civilised society by the barbaric and ruthless use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones, against it. The legislators of these laws that could forestall such lethal terrorist attacks must be aware that all such attacks in the eyes of these fanatics are 'pushed' by the breath of Allah. Hence, the most impossible action(s) fantastically imagined, in the context of such apocalyptic fanaticism, becomes an alarming reality. Muslim fanatic terrorism, has no rational concrete political or social goals, despite its propagandistic pronouncements to the contrary, which are merely a fig-leaf of their real intentions, but only the eschatological goal of destroying decadent Western civilisation. In such circumstances, laws that could be effective against criminal activity would be totally ineffective against zealots who are guided solely by the laws of God. Hence, one of the most fundamental elements of law, the deterring factor, is completely useless against these fanatics. And this is the reason why the government has to legislate a new generation of laws that would have a chance to be effective against "god's outlaws".

In the passing of such legislation however, one has to make a distinction between hardcore terrorists and would-be terrorists. The latter have not reached the point of no return of the fanatics. And either because of fear of what would happen to themselves or to their families, they could be constrained by laws, from entering the gates of hell of active terrorism. This is why the anti-terror laws must be composed of both a 'safe-haven' and a 'purgatory': a safe-haven for those Muslim fundamentalists that can be promptly rehabilitated, and a purgatory for those inveterate and pathological fanatics, whose 'rehabilitation' can only be accomplished, if ever, inside the gates of Infinite Paradise.

To the raw suspect recruits of would-be terrorists, the applied laws must have provisions that they are not going to be treated too harshly, thus leaving them an opening, a safe-haven, to rescue themselves from the relentless squeeze of the vice of the law that would apply to the hardcore fanatics, either as suspects of being active terrorists or as suspects who propagate and incite terrorism - as some of the fundamentalist imams and teachers in Islamic schools do among their followers. To these imams and mentors who actively or by intent engage in seditious activities and the incitement of a holy war against ourselves and our allies, who are also waging war on global terror, the purgatory of deportation, detention, and imprisonment should remorselessly apply. This is where the deterring factor of the law lies against these votaries of fanaticism -in the concrete rigorous harsh application of the laws against them and not in their abstract state as a threat.

This clear distinction of how to deal with the hardcore fanatics in contrast to their greenhorn recruits, has the great potential to sever the association of the latter from the former, and hence 'dry' the pool from which the fundamentalist mentors of a holy war against the West get their recruits. And by deporting and 'clinking' their perfidious activities the government will effectively disable them from continuing to be the incubators of terror in this country.

The government must not be constrained by any 'legal-niceties' or illusions in the enactment of the anti-terror laws. The latter must correspond to the great threat that external and home-grown terrorism pose to the country. And the curtain has fallen on all discussions, deliberations, and debates about the causes and ideological roots of terrorism. When someone is ready to stab you to death, you don't restrain his action by parleying with him about the causes that made him an assassin. This is the time for action. The government must take no heed of the animadversions and subterfuges of the civil libertarians. All their assertions are no more than a marivaudage, a sophisticated banter, about this grave and deadly serious issue. In its enactment of these anti-terror laws, it must be solely governed by its historical duty to ordain this imperative legislation to protect Australia.

I rest on my oars. Your turn now

Reply to Two American 'Strategists' on the Resolution of the Palestinian Israel Conflict

2010-07-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

My dear Steve,

You seem to be afflicted with an incurable cancerous growth in your continued rambling ‘cogitations’ of equating “the recklessness, immaturity and sheer stupidity of leadership on of all sides.” To perceive a political equivalence between a fanatic religiously motivated Palestinian leadership, like Hamas, and a rational secular Israeli leadership is to cancel your own intelligence.

Dan Kervick’s rationale is ‘perfect’ from his side of the coin until he flips it on the other side and destroys his argument by his own suggestions. On the one hand he advocates a “strong prescriptive diplomacy from the outside, along with clear and credible promises of sanctions and incentives,” (M.E.) and on the other, “the US could do more to support and publicize international investigations into war crimes stemming from the Gaza conflict, whichever side is accused of committing those crimes.” That is, while he is putting either Palestinians or Israelis against the wall and shooting them for war crimes, he still believes, after his provocative and ‘incendiary’ suggestion, that the “international community” will be able to force the two parties to the negotiating table that will “result in a durable peace.”

It’s obvious that Kervick is an impresario in vaudevillian strategic scenarios. And of course he will not reply to this post and address and bridge this huge gap in his argument as he lacks the moral and intellectual fortitude to do so.

P.S. In the first paragraph the quote is from Jim Lobe, but Steve himself is a strong believer in this political equivalence between the two parties as he argued recently in his posts.

Dan Kervick says,

Kotzabasis,

My view is that the imposition of an international final disposition plan will require mobilizing governments and their peoples to be prepared to impose firm sanctions on one or both sides, if either side fails to abide by the mandated terms of the plan.

This is challenging since the Arab world is full of apologists for Palestinian terrorism and gangsterism, and the American and European side is full of apologists for Israeli ethnic cleansing, brutality and collective punishment. But pressing the international legal case against violators on both sides will diminish their reputations. It will be harder for American supporters of Israel and Arab supporters of the Palestinians to cry "foul" over sanctions if some Israeli and Palestinian soldiers and leaders are on trial before international tribunals for their crimes.

If the global public case is more effectively built that these are *two* outlaw enterprises, that will give foreign governments the political cover they need to take a harder line and threaten sanctions. The case is actually quite easy to make. We just need the Israelis' and Palestinians' many global allies to stop running so much interference for them.

You should re-read my proposal, because I explicitly rejected an approach based on "getting the parties to the negotiating table". My view is that we are at the point where the international community needs to mandate a solution, and then impose it on the parties with carrots and sticks. There is no longer anything to negotiate. We all know the shape of the solution, and this long-running gang war is a dangerous and costly threat to peace and stability.

I am not sure what you are talking about when you shout about shooting people for their war crimes. I assume you are speaking figuratively. I am only contemplating jail sentences and the threat of jail sentences. The important thing is to start putting people on trial.

Kotzabasis says,

I was wrong about Kervick’s moral fortitude but I don’t think I was wrong about his intellectual argument.

America Hijacked by a Lemon

2010-06-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America hijacked by a Lemon! This will be the historical caption and history’s verdict on President Obama in his foreign policy misadventures of weakness. Who could have thought that the third rate powers of Brazil and Turkey would have the chutzpah and insolence to rudely supplant and supersede U.S. diplomacy on a most grave issue of our times, i.e., the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, by their own diplomacy, if America was not perceived under Obama as being weak and disrespectful? And the West Point speech clearly showed that the President still believes that diplomacy sans ‘rattling the sabres’ remains the pivot of his foreign policy despite the fact that this policy abysmally failed to deliver on his primary goals. That is, enticing the enemies of the U.S. to take the diplomatic road and repossess, by this ‘loving diplomacy’ toward implacable foes, the prestige and respect America had prior to the so called dispossession of these attributes by his Texan predecessor.

President Obama stuck to his geopolitical ignorant denial, due to lack of imagination and political nous, does not realize that a symphony, a ‘concert of peace’ having as players other powers can only succeed and be applauded if it has a Karajan as conductor. It is this role of the indispensable conductor in the realm of geopolitics that America has lost with the ‘sitting’ of Obama in the Oval Office. However, there are dawning auspicious signs that the lemon that Americans elected as president is in the process of being squeezed out. But the danger is that by the end of this process, the United States itself might be squeezed out of its strength as the sole superpower.

DANGER OF IMITATION DEFEATING CREATION

2010-06-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Knowledge is more poiesis (creative imaginative thinking) than mimesis. Friedrich Nietzsche

Since the beginning of the Renaissance that emerged from the entrepreneurial, adventurous, and calculating spirit of the burgher and mercantile classes of the city-states of Southern and Northern Europe, all the great scientific discoveries and achievements sprang from an unprecedented uniquely fertile soil that was ploughed by the mental and indomitable spirit of an intellectual elite endowed with the cultural values of their unsurpassably rich Judeo-Greco-Roman heritage. Copernicus’ heliocentric system, Galileo’s “E pur si muove,” and Kepler’s elliptical orbits of the planets, were the invaluable harvest from that scientifically fecund soil. It was the bullish age of originality that no obscurantist cassock could possibly prevent from running toward its highest peaks; and the laws of Nature could not be suspended for the benefit of the Church, to paraphrase the sublime Edward Gibbon. It was this creative originality and fearless spirit of a few that since that time brought to the many throughout these centuries to our own, knowledge and enlightenment followed by a cascade of political freedoms and economic prosperity to the denizens of Western civilization. But while creative originality is the Cinderella of the scientific world no Cinderella is without her ugly sister, and in its case its ugly sibling is imitation.

In our contemporary times of the twenty-first century, all the scientific discoveries and innovations originating in the cradle of entrepreneurial capitalism in their imitating form are at the disposal of, and adopted and used by, a caste of Islamist fanatics whose sole and irreversible goal is the destruction of the West and its Great Satan America. Armed with the earthly scientific gadgets of Silicon Valley, and becoming ever more proficient in their use, the holy warriors of Mohammed are pursuing and implementing their heavenly agenda: The destruction of the infidel West and its replacement with the new Caliphate. And there is no paucity of recruits for this grand goal of the religious fanatics. In an incomparably demographic outburst of growth the young teeming generation of Muslims under thirty, unable to find useful employment of their increasing social and technical talents in their poverty stricken countries whose natural wealth is sapped by their klepto-oligarchies, are full of envy and hate of their cognate young counterparts in the West who climb the ladder of their professional success to ever higher and higher heights, and who are profusely and meritoriously rewarded that opens to them the doors to an exuberant emulative consumption of goods and services that are beyond the reach of the Arab masses. For aeons Muslims having being educated and nourished by an incomparably proud culture and sanctimoniously blindly believing in a religion that is primus sans pares which vouchsafes only to its believers their entry to paradise, whilst the votaries of all other religions are to be cast into hell fire, have a propensity to see their regressive political, economic, and social status as an outcome of the political and economic dominance of the West, especially of the United States, which hampers and prevents their own development and growth. Hence for the leaders of fanatical Islam it’s not difficult within such a context to persuade vexed, acrimonious, and enraged young Arabs that all their ills issue from the rapacious exploitation of Western capitalism. By making a scapegoat of the infidel west they provide the motif to the disgruntled young Muslims to become terror-fodder for al-Qaeda and its sundry affiliates.

And once this ostensibly technically educated young along with those educated in the religious madrassas join the ranks of the jihadists, they are trained to imitate all the military techniques and gadgets, i.e., computers and cell phones, and more ominously the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including nuclear ones, all originating from the cognitive fathomless streams and brain power of the ‘Silicons’ of the West. It’s this imitative adoption by the jihadists of the instruments of war that have been invented by western science that makes the holy warriors of Islam, who are hostis humani generis, most dangerous to civilized peoples, especially when these instruments are fanatically used by suicide bombers in pursuit of the seventy-two virgins. In the past asymmetrical power in conventional warfare was the ineluctable warranty that the weaker enemy would be subdued by the stronger. In our contemporary times this indubitable cannon that protected the strong and ensured their victory over a weak foe is reversed. Asymmetrical power used furtively, resolutely, and unconscionably can subdue a stronger power. The Islamist terrorists acting furtively and dressed in civilian clothes have become almost an invincible force. In the near future with the great potential of terrorists acquiring WMD and nuclear ones supplied by rogue states and attacking the metropolises of the West in a form of an encircling and in-depth concerted strategy, they can paralyse and defeat even a superpower. No serious objective thinking can avoid from coming to this dire conclusion.

The Presidency of Idealistic Premises

This is why it’s of paramount importance that the leaders of the West and especially of the United States must deal with, and confront, this ominous and incendiary threat unequivocally with all the diplomatic and military means in their disposal and deploy them remorselessly and relentlessly against such implacable and irreconcilable enemy. As in the art of war a sagacious strategist once he recognizes and discerns an intransigent foe he destroys him while he is still weak and does not allow him to become stronger.

Moreover in the case of fanatical Islam the West and the U.S. will be facing in the near future a ‘bacteriological’ enemy of epidemiological proportions if it does not defeat decisively the avant-garde of terror, i.e., al-Qaeda and its various fanatical offshoots, such as al-Sabaab of Somalia, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and the AFPAK Taliban. For if the Obama administration injudiciously decides to wrap-up its military engagement with the Taliban in Afghanistan this will be seen by radical Islam as a definitive defeat of the United States whose corollary will be a monstrously huge increase in Islamist fanaticism and a massive rallying point of its votaries to continue remorselessly their fight against the infidel West and its Great Satan America. It’s in this pool of Islamist success in the field of battle that fanaticism will be nourished and spread like unchecked deleterious bacteria and its host, in the form of suicide bombers, will ultimately threaten the existence of Western civilization.

That is why the United States that is involved in a relentless implacable war with fanatical Islam cannot quit the field of battle until all quite is in the jihadist front of war, until the holy warriors of Islam are defeated decisively. The question however is whether the Obama presidency of idealistic premises, in its attempt to placate and appease its irreconcilable foes by the ‘miraculous’ prowess of diplomacy—which demonstrably both in the Middle East and with Iran has been a total failure-- is qualified to deliver this victory in the field of battle. The omens rather are that President Obama has neither the sagacity, nor mettle and resolution, or inclination, to win this war against the jihadists. Being an effete ‘Carteresque’ president, he is more prone to settle for an “endgame” of the war in Afghanistan than winning it by increasing the number of troops by forty thousand as requested by his general on the ground Stanley Chrystal. One can presage therefore without letting one’s guard down that President Obama in his coming decision on Afghanistan will reject General McChrystal’s core recommendation by falsely declaiming that the U.S. cannot deploy its sons and daughters and treasury in foreign wars with no end in sight that are not essential and tangential to America’s long term interests. But this will be tragically the legacy of the weak President Obama: By enfeebling American power against irreconcilable enemies he will be putting America’s vital interests at the greatest of risks.

Obama's West Point Speech Regurgitation of Failed Foreign Policy

2010-06-11T01:57:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America hijacked by a Lemon! This will be the historical caption and history’s verdict on President Obama in his foreign policy misadventures of weakness. Who could have thought that the third rate powers of Brazil and Turkey would have the chutzpah and insolence to rudely supplant and supersede U.S. diplomacy on a most grave issue of our times, i.e., the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, by their own diplomacy, if America was not perceived under Obama as being weak and disrespectful? And the West Point speech clearly showed that the President still believes that diplomacy sans ‘rattling the sabres’ remains the pivot of his foreign policy despite the fact that this policy abysmally failed to deliver on his primary goals. That is, enticing the enemies of the U.S. to take the diplomatic road and repossess, by this ‘loving diplomacy’ toward implacable foes, the prestige and respect America had prior to the so called dispossession of these attributes by his Texan predecessor.

President Obama stuck to his geopolitical ignorant denial, due to lack of imagination and political nous, does not realize that a symphony, a ‘concert of peace’ having as players other powers can only succeed and be applauded if it has a Karajan as conductor. It is this role of the indispensable conductor in the realm of geopolitics that America has lost with the ‘sitting’ of Obama in the Oval Office. However, there are dawning auspicious signs that the lemon that Americans elected as president is in the process of being squeezed out. But the danger is that by the end of this process, the United States itself might be squeezed out of its strength as the sole superpower.

Liberals Favour Show Trial for Mastermind of 9/11

2010-04-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“The administration has long” wrongly “argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in civilian court.” Clemons of course would be loathe to admit that Obama’s administration might have realized its great mistake politically and strategically to prosecute Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court and is ready now to be corrected for its stupendous error by “the dark side,” to quote Clemons, methods of former vice-president Cheney and chief of staff of the Bush administration David Addington, which politically and strategically were always on the correct side.

Liberals who tend to support a civilian prosecution for the mastermind of 9/11 are fugitives from reality and are impresarios of a burlesque show trial, since members of the administration like Press Secretary Gibbs and Attorney General Holder already publicly declared him to be guilty. And as Nadine hints to the critics of military tribunals, among who is Clemons himself, and who are in favour of a show trial for Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, the way to hellishly bankrupt arguments is paved with good intentions.

Mosque Made Terrorism

2010-03-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Short reply to: Not in the name of our Islam By Orhan Cicek

Who is going to educate the educator? The author of the article, Orhan Cicek, engages in a litany of the good aspects of the Muslim religion but abhors identifying its bad aspects from which Muslim terrorism stems. All religions, including Christianity, are a mixture of the good and the bad based on fantasies and “dark forces.” That is why the reign of reason cannot find its throne in religion. All the great achievements of our contemporary Western civilization emanate from the fact that they were achieved against religion or by reforming religion. Muslims cannot liberate themselves from the “dark forces” of their own religion and achieve their own greatness without at least having their own religious reformation. But is such reformation possible when the Koran has been dictated by Allah Himself and given to His prophet Mohammad? Who among Muslims will dare to ‘edit’ the words of God?

Presently the deafening evidence is that jihadism and terror are incubated in the religious institutions and Madrasas of Islam and one can only “preserve’ one’s “objectivity” by realizing that this is Mosque-made terrorism. The Australian newspaper reports today that all of the five accused of terrorism were regularly praying at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the ‘moderate’ Mufti of Australia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam, who replaced the radical ‘meat exposed’ Hilaly, presides. And the other incontrovertible fact is, unlike the claim of the author that “the problem of terror and crime…is an issue that the mainstream Muslim society strongly opposes,” that all the moderate streams of Muslim society are dry of any demonstrable opposition to acts of terrorism and seem to be merely the banks within which the terrorist stream moves along.

Misjudgment of Liberals about Obama

2010-03-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Some of us were aware from the beginning even before Obama was elected president that he was weak and a coward and said so ab ovo. Many liberals, including Dan Kervick, were from long ago sleeping with the American beauty, Obama, and with the misjudgement that he would make a great president, only to wake up in astonishment long after that they were sleeping with a skeleton rattling his cowardly bones who would bring obloquy to the White House.

Obama’s obeisance to the Russians by withdrawing the installation of missiles from Eastern Europe, and his kow-towing to the Saudi king, were the first signs that he was a weak and timorous president. And the Iranian regime exploited and is exploiting to its full advantage Obama’s weakness in its vigorous and recalcitrant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Islamists Cannot be Pacified by Olive Branches but only by Fire of War

2010-01-10T17:30:00.000-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

2010-01-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

A healthy, challenging, and happy new year to all readers of this blog.

Americal Liberal Considers Obama's Intervention in Copenhagen an "Impressive" Achievement

2009-12-29T03:28:00.000-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

What a mockery of prowess Clemons makes when he measures its depth with Obama’s “work-the-situation,” i.e., procedural matters, and “basket ball” games. Obama has irremediably failed in all his major foreign policies; in the Middle East, as Clemons himself hints, in his diplomatic overture to Iran, and now in his Copenhagen Climate Accord sans substance and which is no more than a political statement with no bindings. Yet Clemons considers it to be an “impressive” achievement by Obama. Clemons with his “hybrid” realism, to use his term, which like all hybrids is barren, and with his inexorable wishful thinking politics has yet to realize that Obama is one of the most weak and ineffectual presidents and a crashing failure in the sphere of foreign policy if not totally in domestic policy.

And in regards to Copenhagen, Clemons should bear in mind that an alternative to nothing is worse than nothing. Or better still take heed of King Lear that “nothing comes out of nothing.”

Limits of Imagination Transformed into Limits of Power

2009-12-11T16:50:00.001-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons and Ben Katcher are using the ‘shamanistic’ art, the art of a conjurer, to turn the limits of imagination into “the limits of American power.” The “aborted attempt” of the Obama administration to “persuade the Israelis to enact a “settlement freeze”, has nothing to do with US power limits but with lack of imagination and political insight on the part of Obama and the State Department not to foresee the political implausibility of trying to impose such a doltish demand on the Netanyahu government. It’s a dismal failure of policy and not a limit of American power as Clemons and Levy in their conjurers’ role aver.

As for Daniel Levy’s ”asymmetries of power,” WigWag’s post is instructive and unassailable in its historical logic. All defeated nations in wars were due to asymmetries of power.

Periclean Athens and American Exceptionalism

2009-11-19T17:27:00.000-08:00

A discussion between a Norwegian and an Australian

America’s Credibility Problem Persists Despite Obama’s Popularity

By Ben Katcher, Washington Note. September 10, 2009

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 12:53AM - Link

WIGWAG: "As for Paul's comment about American exceptionalism, I have a sneaking suspicion that American exceptionalism is actually rather unexceptional. Haven't all empires or superpowers thought they were exceptional during the period of their ascendancy?"

PAUL: Yes. And some of us have been astonished, reading about, say the Russians under the Tzar in the 18`th and 19`th century, arguing that Moscow was the "Third Rome" (Konstantinopolis being the second) etc, and seeing America expressing similar concepts in the "enlightened" 20`th and 21`th century. These are irrational historical concepts, just like those surrounding the byzantine emperors and the mystical source of their power (they represented God): or like the common perception of the power of the Ethiopian Emperor, the Lion of Judah, descendant of King Solomo etc. - Haile Selassie - while I grew up in Africa.

I`ve always wondered why this kind of superstition still has such strong influence on the minds of the elites in the most technologically advanced society with the best universities. It`s an atavism that the progressive commenter WigWag has no problem accepting. I find it astonishing.

WIGWAG: "While their power doesn't suggest moral superiority (which they always think it does) doesn’t their ability to influence world affairs well beyond the ability of most other nations actually make them by definition rather exceptional?"

PAUL: Exceptional in the sense of being among the handful of superpowers in the history of mankind, yes, that`s a fact. But the concept of exceptionalism is at it`s core a moral concept, related to a divine/historic mission that goes far beyond simply being powerful. To illustrate the irrationality, the lunatic tendency of this perception, an analogy would be if WigWag, Kervick, POA, Kotzabasis or Paul Norheim suddenly realized that they had been appointed to fulfill a very special historical mission on this planet by God.
In the 21. century I regard this as a lunatic concept.

Kotzabasis says

Paul Norheim

Was it “atavism” when Periclean Athens in its exceptionalism was calling all other people other than Greeks barbarians? You are creating, if not reinventing human nature, fictitious ‘rational’ historical concepts whose only existence is in your wet dreams. Is it “irrational” for anyone who excels in some human attribute, e.g., beauty, intellect, etc., to consider oneself as being exceptional among the mass and to exhibit and display this “exceptionalism” in those areas where one is primus domo? And doesn’t this reaction also apply to human groups and nations?

A miniature illustration of the above is Dan Kervick. Anyone who is not biased against, or envious of, the man, would admit that he excels in constructing beautiful, and grammatically perfect sentences in a beautifully written prose. And one also notices that he is always imbued with the predilection to exhibit this excellence by writing serial comments on the same subject and thus also displaying the nuanced ‘multiversality’ of his thought, although, often, by ‘gearing’ himself on overdrive on the highways of cognition and imagination he moves from the ‘sublime’ to the absurd in his arguments and turns himself into a fool. Do you think Paul, that Kervick does all this out of some “kind of superstition” or “lunatic tendency?”

Paul, it’s obvious from your posts that you are a treasury chest of literary knowledge. But no amount of literary knowledge will save you from the bankruptcy of your political thought.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 10:07AM - Link

Kotz,

I`m glad, and a bit surprised, seeing that you share my admiration for Dan Kervicks prose. I think you are confusing excellence with exceptionalism - the latter being an ideology with irrational, superstitious sources.

Frank Gaffney expressed exceptionalism in his discussion with Steve, linked to above:“Those of us who believe that there is something unique, something special, something extraordinary... I dare say exceptional about America, recognise that that it is so in at least substantial measure because of our constitution. (...)and to impute into that organization (the UN) some higher moral stature and authority than we have as a result of our... I think God given constitution...is... I think a serious mistake.”
----------------------------------"our... I think God given constitution..." Now, this goes beyond "excellence", this is superstition, this is exceptionalism as an ideology, expressed in it`s purest form. As I commented then: Gaffney`s statements imply that America is not only on a historic, but also moral, even metaphysical mission, initiated when God gave the constitution to America and the world through the founding fathers. On a fundamental level, the constitution was not the act of the founding fathers, created through their judgement, their analytical and political skills, their experience, and their studies of different states, laws, and governments through history. The constitution was an act of God."

I regard this as an example of 21. century atavism. However, if Frank Gaffney actually didn`t believe what he said, then perhaps it was just some neocon junk intended for domestic consume, among the superstitious masses.

Kotzabasis says

You are not only a bad political 'thinker' but also a very, very bad logician. The definition of exceptional in the Oxford Dictionary is "unusually good," "outstanding." The definition of excellence in the same dictionary is "extremely good," "outstanding." Are you going also to re-write the Oxford Dictionary as you are attempting to re-write history? I repeat, was Greece in its Golden Age, under the great statesmanship of Pericles, expressing its exceptionalism that was rooted in its brilliant philosophy and in its democratic ethos and culture-among despotisms and satrapies-a form of superstition?

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 11 2009, 9:40PM - Link

"Was it “atavism” when Periclean Athens in its exceptionalism was calling all other people other than Greeks barbarians?"

Do I admire the particular fact that they called all other people "barbars"? No. However, I hesitate to use labels as atavism or superstition on ancient cultures.
Since the Enlightenment was such an important source for the American constitution, and since we now live in the 21. century, I find it more appropriate to use such labels on people like Frank Gaffney.

"During the George W. Bush administration, the term was somewhat abstracted from its historical context. Proponents and opponents alike began using it to describe a phenomenon wherein certain political interests, and Americans subscribing to the political theory of neoconservativism, among others, view the United States as being "above" or an "exception" to the law, specifically the Law of Nations. (This phenomenon might be called a priori exceptionalism or "neoexceptionalism," since it is less concerned with justifying American uniqueness than with asserting its immunity to international law.)"

It doesn`t seem outlandish of me to regard Frank Gaffney as one of those "proponents" supporting this interpretation, does it? And since I talked about Gaffney in the discussion with Steve Clemons that I linked to, that was roughly the definition of exceptionalism that I thought about when I used the word above.

Kotzabasis says

Initially the core of your argument was the “mystique of the superpower” (America) that has been transformed into a “dangerous sense of EXCEPTIONALISM (M.E.) among the American people and its leaders.” Now that you have become conscious of the shallowness and fragility of your inchoate argument you have shifted the point of its reference to certain individuals, like Gaffney, and your terms of “atavism” and “superstition” apply only to them. And further, so you can have another bugbear in support of your revised contention, you quote Wikipedia that refers to exceptionalism not as “American uniqueness than with asserting its IMMUNITY (M.E.) to international law.” No wonder that with the three-tiered reference compass of confusion in your hand you cannot find the cognitive path to your argument.

Nadine is right! In your total inability to argue the core of your case you are crafting “straw men.” In other words, you are becoming intellectually unhinged.

Paul Norheim says

If I wished to change or clarify one thing, it is this: I didn`t say - as you claimed - that "the “mystique of the superpower” (America) that has been TRANSFORMED into a “dangerous sense of EXCEPTIONALISM". I said:

"But also America itself has often been a victim of this mystique. It GENERATES arrogance. It generates hubris. It generates unrealistic expectations, and a dangerous sense of exceptionalism among the American people and its leaders."

If I had written it now, I would have preferred to say that the "mystique" ENHANCES (and not "generates") a dangerous sense of exceptionalism.
---------------------------------------------------------But I have a suspicion that you are not so interested in clarity as you pretend.

The biggest mystery to me is this: Why are you, Kotzabasis, dedicating 90% of your post to attacking Steve Clemons, Dan Kervick and myself? Why do you invest almost all your energy at TWN attacking, insulting, and ridiculing us in particular? Why do you spend practically all your time here claiming that we are weak, comical, don quijotic, intellectually and politically bankrupt? Why invest all this time on us, if you really think so? Couldn`t you chose someone more worthy of being your opponents?
Is it so boring to be retired in Australia?

Kotzabasis says

Because all three of you in your political and intellectual weakness and lack of depth are strengthening the dangerous fantasies of soft power and policing methods as an antidote to the dangerous realities emanating from apocalyptic fanaticism that are hovering over the head of Western civilization and threatening it with ‘decapitation’. Of course such an existential threat you and Kervick, if not Clemons, would diagnose as paranoia. But anyone who has studied history, without being a prisoner of it, might come to the conclusion that the art, the vocation of a statesman is to identify promptly an irreconcilable implacable enemy and destroy him before he becomes stronger.

Already the soft power fantasy as embodied in the new foreign policy of Obama is irreversibly failing. In the diplomatic overture to Iran, in resolving the Middle East conflict, and in clinching a concord cordial with Russia, of which Obama was so confident that he would have the support of the latter on the issue of Iran. Now we have Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov declaring that they would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would impose new sanctions on Iran.
Clemons, Kervick, and you, with your characteristic geopolitical and strategic myopia and romanticism could not foresee the failure of this new foreign policy of Obama based on ‘loving- holding hands’ and soft power that is unravelling now before everyone’s eyes.

Putin's Russia is to Weaken U.S. and Will not Support Sanctions against Iran

2009-11-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 4:58AM - Link

Nadine, you are wasting your valuable time retorting to the political banalities of Norheim and his kindred spirits inundating The Washington Note.

Dmitry Medvedev's “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable,” is the noose that the clever chess playing Russians are putting around the naive neck of the draught playing Obama. The operative words are “in some cases,” which the Russians alone will define and no one else. The political toddlers a la Norheim, enchanted under their inspirational wishful thinking, believe that the Russians will define these words positively in favour of sanctions, and like the stunted toddlers that they will always be they will be looking forward to Santa Klaus, Putin, on New Year’s Day to deliver to them their wishful ‘playful’ present.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 24 2009, 5:33AM - Link

You`re distorting my words, Kotz. I don`t "believe" anything on these matters yet. There are too many if`s and if-not`s here. If it goes to the Security Council and Russia votes for sanctions in the Security Council, I`ll "believe" so. China delivered some critical statements on their part just hours ago. Time will tell.

My initial point was an attempt to formulate how Obama seemed to see the missile shield issue, the relationship to Russia, the Iran issue, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a connected and complex whole, and that this way of thinking contained a lot of unpredictable factors, probably too many if he has built a strategy on this. Perhaps my guesses are wrong, perhaps they are correct. But I see no particular reason for optimism on Iran and Israel-Palestine in the coming months and years. Is that clear? If you want to twist and bend this in any direction, go on.

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 6:38AM - Link

Are you now repudiating all of your posts above your last one? "Russian Leader Opens Door to Tougher Iran Sanctions" and then you paste THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in all its positives on the issue with which you obviously agree. Then you follow this in your penultimate post with, "it now looks more like America is getting, than that it's not getting something." And only belatedly, after my own post, and after letting your guard down, you place your "if's and if-not's."

Paul Norheim says

For ad hominem "thinkers" and strategy geniuses like Kotz, this is an exercise beyond their capabilities, and just another opportunity to bash his opponents for their lack of strength and amour propre in their cul de sac. But now that WigWag, whom Kotz sympathize with, actually agrees that possible sanctions were behind Obama`s decisions on the missile shield, and also seems to think that the likelihood of Russia getting on board on this might have increased a bit after Medvedev`s statement yesterday, I expect that Kotz will keep silent on this issue.

WigWag says

There is an irony in all of this. Conservatives like Kotzabasis and Nadine are far more suspicious of the Russians than the Israeli Government is. They can speak for themselves about whether my surmise is right or not; but whether it's a carryover from the Cold War days or something else, conservatives are suspicious any time the United States fails to "stand up" to Russia. This is no longer true in Israel. Israel sees Russia as an increasingly important partner. A large portion of the Israeli population is Russian and has cultural ties to the "old country." Russia and Israel have ever increasing commercial relations, especially in military equipment. Israel appreciates the fact that they never have to worry about criticism from the Russians on the human rights front (Russian behavior in Chechnya makes the War in Gaza look like a Girl Scout picnic). And Israel sees good relations with Russia (and China and India) as a counter balance to their overdependence on the United States. Israel also appreciates the fact that Russians don't care about Palestinian aspirations.

This is actually one of the few examples where people who have the views of Nadine and Kotzabasis disagree with Israel. Israel wants better relations between Russia and the United States for many reasons, not the least of which is that it increases the likelihood that harsh sanctions on Iran will be enacted. It’s conservatives who get nervous every time they see increased cooperation between Russia and the United States not Israelis.

Kotzabasis says

Norheim Of course Obama’s naive decision “on the missile shield” was to entice the Russians to come “on board” on sanctions. I predicted he would do this four months ago. But WigWag is not inflicted by the illusion, like you are that the Russians will come along on sanctions. And as he correctly states, they will not do so unless they are offered much more such as “NATO expansion, support for Georgia and Ukraine, Kosovo and Bosnia/Republica Srpska.” Hence they will be putting a bigger noose around the neck of Obama’s diplomacy and will be pulling it so hard that there will be no flesh left on his neck, i.e., American power and prestige, other than the protruding bones of an anorexic superpower that would force America’s close allies to have second thoughts about the former's reliability and resolution under President Obama. And the question then arises whether the Obama administration would go the whole hog, i.e., sacrifice all its allies on the altar of getting the by now out of the equation Russians, according to WigWag’s logic, since he believes that “harsh sanctions by the United States and Europe would still sting” without the Russians being on board.

WigWag I’m surprised that you seem to see the conservative ‘brand’ of politics only in its old form of rigidity and not see the ‘new brand’ whose strength lies in its fluidity. It’s far from being the rather very simplistic case of failing to “stand up” to Russia. Analytically that is a very hacked and shallow conclusion. And you extrapolate an avalanche of wrong deductions from a possible American agreement with Russia on sanctions, which I think is a will-o’-the-wisp, while you irretrievably contradict your own argument. Russia is not in the game of strengthening America but of weakening it. And they see in Obama in his elemental personal debility and idealistic respect all diplomacy, a perfect opportunity to achieve their great goal. It’s this that is of great concern to ‘fluid’ conservative realists and not because they carry some incurable virus from the “Cold War days.” It’s seen the Russian ‘Emperor’ with glee on his face dragging America’s benign power into the amphitheatre to be tangled in the net of the gladiator and slaughtered to the applause of the ignorant and ignoble crowd of anti-Americanism., that is the modern equivalent of panem et circenses.

And aren’t you contradicting your own argument when you say that “Russian acquiescence to harsh sanctions will be a real plus” (but at what a price) when you earlier stated that sanctions imposed by the US and Europe “will turn out to be more politically devastating” and at the same time taking the Russians out of the equation and hence making their “acquiescence” totally obsolete and thus saving the US from a politically and diplomatically ‘spending spree’ in ‘Russian malls’? In view of this why even the stolid administration of Obama would not prioritize the interest of its strong allies in Eastern and Southern Europe next to an obsolete Russian “acquiescence?"

You also totally disregard Iran’s libido dominandi for the region and for the Islamic world that can be achieved more effectively in the carapace of nuclear weapons. To say as you do, “but for the peace process, [Between Palestinians and Israelis] sanctions or military action against Iran would be far less likely,” is to be blind before the real aims of the theocratic regime and to assume that Western leadership will continue to be languidly supine before such a great threat.

Lastly, it goes without saying that the smart Israelis would of course welcome a Russian agreement on sanctions even with the high probability that they will ultimately fail. But would they be happy to see this at the expense of a weakened America, especially against Iran as a staunch supporter of its terrorist ‘satrapies’ of Hamas and Hezbollah? And only one who has ‘rolling stones’ in his head would not see the great reasoning that lies in Israel’s good relationship with Russia. And how a brownie bird like you could have come to the conclusion that either Nadine or me disagree with Israel on this issue? I guess this could have only risen up from an errant nocturnal lucubration of yours.

American Uses Peloponnesian War to Prove Unwinnable War in Afghanistan

2009-10-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I fail to see how my “syntax and phraseology” relates to your argument and your need to criticize it. But indeed I’m “touchy”, with your attempt to present yourself as a serious thinker on the complex issues of war and of history.

The incongruity of your argument to the quote from Thucydides is diaphanous, to use a Greek word, since you appear to be an aficionado of Greek words with your use of an AGONIST of the (mind?). At the end of your article you obviously compare the Athenian plague with the “general economic crisis” that has made America “a bankrupt nation” and then you ask President Obama how in such circumstances one can win the war in Afghanistan.

The Athenian plague occurred in the second year of the war yet the Athenians despite the dire consequences of the plague continued to fight the war for at least another fourteen years which by the 16th year they “had gained the upper hand”, and as you state, “they had a great golden opportunity to end the war there and then.” And then you correctly say that what brought ruin to Athens was their invasion of Sicily. Ergo, you admit yourself that it was a strategic error that brought Athens down and not because it continued to fight the Lacaedemonians during the plague (In the present case under a general economic crisis), which anyway it had brought Athens close to victory, according to your contention.

It’s all these contradictions of your argument to the quote from Thucydides that are bespattered at your agonist’s feet. America can still win in Afghanistan once it corrects its errors, as it did in Iraq, and providing it does not lose its will and determination.

Frolicksome Realists Attack Wolfowitz

2009-10-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

We’re All Realists Now
Paul Wolfowitz, Foreign Policy August 24, 2009

Failing to Note the difference When the US Power Tank is Full or Near Empty
Steve Clemons Foreign Policy August 27, 2009

A reply by Con George –Kotzabasis

Don Quixote with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels was attacking windmills with his lance. Don Clemons not with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels, Dan Kervick—but in critical moments you can count that real pals will show up—is attacking the impregnable cogitative fortress of Wolfowitz with a toy tank whilst Sancho Kervick is riding his intellectual hard working donkey at galloping speed to refill Clemons “near empty” tank so they can demolish the modestly crafted and cogent realistic argument of their bete noire Wolfowitz. It’s in the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that the ‘slayers’ of the Wolf are made.

The realist Clemons, oops, the “hybrid realist,” refuses, even at this late stage, to acknowledge that it was this far from near empty tank that defeated the insurgency in Iraq and that under the strong, resilient, and imaginative leadership of General Petraeus won the war in Mesopotamia. And by defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq America became stronger not weaker as Clemons argues in his piece. But it will become weaker if as a result of the staggering foolishness of Obama in withdrawing US forces from the urban areas of Iraq prematurely that has led to a resurgence of bombings, which if they continue to increase could reverse the relative security of Iraq post-surge and its great potential to build democracy in the country and become a lodestar for the whole region, as both generals Petraeus and Odierno had warned the Obama administration. And for such a dire outcome the total responsibility will fall upon the “hybrid realists” or “policy realists” that according to Clemons rule the roost in Washington, and of course ultimately upon President Obama.

For a realist, of whatever ‘variability’, to argue in the aftermath of 9/11 that the war in Iraq was a Wilsonian idealistic intervention to impose American values and democracy on the country shows how out of his depth Clemons is from any kind of realism. Wolfowitz clearly states that the purpose of the war in Iraq was not to “impose” democracy by force but to “remove a threat to national and international security.” And as he says one can criticize the rights and wrongs of the war without diverting from, and changing, its purpose. Moreover on the issue of Quaddafi’s decision to give up his WMD programs Clemons contradicts his pivotal contention that America’s intervention in Iraq weakened its geopolitical power. For if that was the case and the perception why should Quaddafi need the “assurances” of a weakened America that “he could remain in power” as a trade-off for giving up his nuclear program, as Clemons states? Once again Wolfowitz is right on this point. Quaddafi relinquished his WMD programs because of ‘feared American will,” to quote Wolfowitz, because of America’s projection of power, of ‘can do’ might that spectacularly defeated both the Taliban and the elite forces of Saddam within few weeks and refuted all the prognostications of many pundits and so called realists who contended that the US could not defeat Saddam and would suffer the same fate as the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was also this display of US will and power that induced Iran to a ‘silent’ cooperation with the United States in the suppression of the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Dan Kervick also is out of his depth in realpolitik with his moralizing piece. He states that “we should forbear from intervening because of odious (M.E.) behaviour to us.” States don’t intervene in the internal affairs of other states because of their odious conduct, that is, on moral grounds, but only when their explicit intentions and actions threaten the vital interests of another state. And both the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was not due to odious behaviour but to the potential and real threat these two rogue states posed to the US and the West in general. Moreover, international laws in themselves and checks and balances cannot be the balm for the internal and external conflicts of nations, as Kervick argues, in an anarchic world without some dominant power backing these laws and checks and balances with an implicit force and its explicit use when necessary. And in our era this invidious burden and responsibility ineluctably falls on the shoulders of the United States. “Liberty and civil peace” do not fall like manna from the sky and protected by nebulous gods. They emanate from great benign states that are not squeamish to use force whenever this is necessary for their protection. Voila Amerique

Sentimentalist Wailing of Australian Barrister on Preemptive War

2009-09-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Adherence to the international rule of law,” to quote Daniel Tynan who studied international law, when one has fanatic enemies who are continuously in blatant breach of these laws and are determined to destroy them? What kind of sentimentalism is Daniel Tynan a votary of?

Obama’s conspicuous silence and quibbling about “pre-emptive self-defence,” as his above quote shows ( He stated when asked about Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war that “we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other people and other countries.”), might be the result that he too believes , or at least his closest military advisers, but it’s impolitic for him to admit it, that Bush’s doctrine is the most pragmatic one against the kind of enemy one is encountering.

Afghanistan Critical to U.S. Strategy to Defeat 'Blindfolded' Fanaticism

2009-09-13T04:23:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short response to: Afghanistan Exposing Huge Limits on American Power

By Steve Clemons Washington Note September 09, 2009

Clemons, from his political labyrinth as the modern Theseus but without his Ariadne with any hope of escape, sends desperate signals about America’s “limits” in Afghanistan and the dire repercussions these will have on American power and prestige. From the boundless darkness of his labyrinthine domicile he is bound to be pessimistic of any prospect that the US could defeat the Taliban. It’s the same kind of pessimism that he also had for years about the war in Iraq, which he had also pontificated as being unwinnable--and he has as yet to acknowledge that the US under General Petraeus had defeated the insurgency in Iraq.

Only Clemons, in his strategic myopia, could make the statement, “One really can’t tell what our overall goal is at this point.” Really, the Taliban which was a host to al-Qaeda and which would continue to be so in the event it took over once again Afghanistan, and moreover threaten the Talibanization of Pakistan, as a result of the US abandoning its strategic goal of defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in one stroke and hence inflicting a devastating blow of global dimensions to the holy warriors of Islam. Nor can he envisage that any withdrawal from Afghanistan would be perceived as a defeat of America by Islamists and would embolden their threats against, in their eyes, a weak America. And the consummation of these threats would be of a greater magnitude of destruction than that of 9/11. Afghanistan therefore is pivotal to America’s strategy to defeat borderless Islamist fanaticism on a world scale.

The United States is not in a ‘labyrinthine’ situation wasting and reaching the limits of its military power in Afghanistan from which it needs to escape. Its task is, like in Iraq, to persevere in the defeat of the Taliban and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary and a training ground for the recruits of al-Qaeda from which it could launch its ‘apocalyptic’ attacks against the Great Satan America and on the infidels of the West. In this task a combination of American intelligence, military professionalism and might, and strategic nous and determination, has a better than an even chance in defeating ‘blindfolded’ fanaticism.

Prattling Guru Becomes 'Isolationist' and Detaches from Turmoil in Iran

2009-09-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

The Iranian Election is Their Issue, Not Ours

By Steve Clemons
The Washington Note June 16, 2009

A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis

For a political animal like Steve his Pontius Pilate stand that the Iranian election is “not our business” is astonishingly amusing. But I suppose saying this with a grin on his face in his TV interview is because he has no answer to the argument that Bush’s hard policies might have influenced the educated classes of Iran in their revolt against Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, as Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary of George Bush stated.

Even if Ahmadinejad won the election fairly, the fact remains that now as a result of the election the extant split prior to the election between the modernist forces and the antediluvian ones is exacerbated. What is imponderable, and lingers in the province of Nostradamus, is whether this fissure of Iran’s society between these two forces will bring an internal ‘modernist’ change or an open dictatorship of the Mullahs and the military, as their only way to survive from this tsunami of dissent against them.

As for Dan Kervick, another luminary of The Washington Note, in his desire to present himself as an imaginative thinker he foolishly delves in ‘Rumsfeldian unknowns,’ which excellently illustrate the vaudevillian streak in him. His comment that there might be “anti-democratic” forces that would aim to “overturn” the democratic election is a laughable fiction. The forces that want to “overturn the result of the election” are doing so because of the perception that Ahmadinejad stole the election, not because they could be “anti-democratic.”

Reply to American Pessimist about Gains of Surge

2009-08-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Andrew Lebovich continues pessimistically to ruminate on his doubts about the surge and on General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan. He states, “The strategic outcome of the surge cannot be determined now” as it depends on the establishment of a democratic Iraq “after our occupation...has ended.” And if the gains of the surge are so fragile and can be lost with a resurgence of al Qaeda how can one say that “Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan is proven,” as is stated by McCain? He is also concerned about the “Sons of Iraq and other local militias’ being integrated “into the Iraqi security forces” and some of the corrupt practices of the Iraqi government.

Starting in reverse of his concerns, it’s decal like clear that he has not learned anything from the mistakes of the Bush administration when in toto disbanded the Iraq army instead of integrating it in the new army of the Interim government that would have forestalled the future insurgency. The Maliki government is integrating the Sons of Iraq and other militias and hence effectively disarming them instead of letting them hibernate until a possible next round of violence. Lebovich also is oblivious of the fact that corruption affects all governments that have not as yet found their point of stability and their members have a strong proclivity to get as much as they can from an assumed short term in office. However, with the stabilization of the government, as it seems to be happening now in Iraq, corruption can no longer be a stable staple feeding the mouths of corrupt officials.

As to the gains emanating from the surge, Lebovich apparently is unaware that one may have a perfect investment plan that will give one immense gains but if one “misinvests” or squanders these gains in boondoggle projects one is bound to lose them. This however does not impugn or diminish in any way the perfection of the original investment plan. And Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy falls in this category. The danger lies in squandering these gains, as McCain correctly says, before they reach their stated goal, i.e., a democratic Iraq.

Lastly, Lebovich does not perceive that even the most successful of counterinsurgency strategies can only be effective in a different geopolitical milieu if they make the necessary improvisations and modalities in the new context of their implementation. And this elementary principle applies in Afghanistan.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now...

Attack on Iran: Two Strategic Strikes One Waiting in the Wings

2009-07-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

By John Pilger

On Line Opinion

The historical fact is, which Pilger deliberately brushes over so he can make his intellectually disingenuous and moral argument, that the fear at the time was that the Germans might get the bomb first not that “Russia was our enemy,” quoting misleadingly General Groves, who was in charge of the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt had an amicable relationship with Stalin and believed their two countries after the war could reach a modus vivendi and indeed, cooperation. Moreover, the head of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer, and some of its other scientists, was a financial supporter, if not a clandestine member, like his brother, of the Communist Party of the USA, and hardly would have taken the directorship of the project if the bomb was to be used “to browbeat the Russians,” as Pilger claims.

The intelligent errors of the CIA and all of its European counterparts in their estimates that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, Pilger cleverly transforms them into lies, appealing to the conventional wisdom of the hoi polloi, so he can do his own disinformation in regards to Iran’s covert planning to acquire nuclear weapons, by dubbing it also as a lie, manufactured by the “discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition, the MEK”, according to him, so he can give credibility to his own lies.

For what strategic reason would the US and its ally Israel attack Iran, whilst the former is involved at the moment in two long wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, other than the great threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to the region and to the strategic interests of the one and to the existence of the other? Whom the US would have “to browbeat” by letting loose from their silos their nuclear missiles against Iran, other than the latter?

In my opinion, if Iran is going to be attacked either by the US or Israel or both the strategic planning of the attack would be made up with two strikes. The first one would be to attack Iran with a devastating “rain” of conventional weapons that would target not only its nuclear plants but also its civilian, military, and religious leadership with the aim of decimating them. If however, its triangular leadership miraculously escapes its destruction and retaliates either against the naval and land forces of the US or Israel or any of the other Gulf States, then such retaliatory action by Iran would call a second strike executed either by Israel or the US with nuclear weapons. And it’s in this dual strike, if it becomes evident to the Iranian leadership of American or Israeli determination and resolve to use their powerful armaments against Iran, that a real possibility exists of a palace revolt among its leadership that would oust the radicals and replace them with moderates who would be prone to accept the international community’s demand that Iran ceases the enrichment of uranium.

Over to you

Genteel Folk Analyzing Geopolitics

2009-07-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

You are one of those admirable genteel souls who attempt to cogitate and philosophize and be judgmental about the morality of realpolitik but who are completely ignorant and oblivious of the fact that the contemporary practitioners of geopolitics, as all their predecessors, are the direct descendants of the ‘feudal knights’—omnipresent throughout human history—”who made literal mincemeat of their enemies, leaving the clergy to handle the morals”, to quote the great Austrian writer, Robert Musil.

One would have expected you to at least be consistent with the logic of your own argument. If you are going to blame the U.S. of “propping up local despots”, who at most repressed their own peoples, and which perforce had to do during its deadly contest with the Soviet Union—it is a luxury to believe that one can chose one’s allies in critical situations-- you have to praise the U.S. for having defeated the foremost dictatorships of our times, Nazism and Communism, not to mention Imperial Japan, which threatened to repress the freedom of mankind. Why have you ‘slipped’ from this consistency and irresponsibly imply that the perception of many people of the U.S. as the “Great Satan” could be justified?

As to your facts which some of them are imprecise, such as giving land to “interlopers” i.e., the Israelis, and the ones that are correct, you draw the wrong conclusions from them as a result of lack of imagination? The establishment of the Jewish State was the result of the “Balfour Declaration” re-affirmed by the Mandate of the League of Nations and was not the offspring of imperialist interests, if this is what your loaded word “interlopers” implies. And the upheavals of 1917 in Russia what did they bring in their wake? The rise of the most brutal millenarian movement, Communism. And the upheavals of the Middle East, what do they presage? The rise of another more brutal millenarian movement, Islamofascism. This is what the West must prevent at all costs, if it has learnt the lessons of history. And to achieve this one has to do it tragically in the mien, the spirit, and in the full armour of the ‘feudal knights’.

Dangers in Obama's Diplomacy: The Folly of Talking and Acting Wise without Being Wise

2009-07-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

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

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

This is the danger that is enwrapped in Obama’s bouquet of olive branches that his diplomatic ‘couriers’ are delivering in the bosoms of America’s erstwhile enemies, Iran and Syria. That President Obama will be revising these past proven by history successful maximalist policies of the USA in the false hope that Iran and Syria will reciprocate genuinely, and not ingenuously, with likewise measures of amity toward the U.S., and not reading instead on the leaves of those olive branches American weakness which they will exploit to the utmost in achieving their strategic goals, and in the case of Iran by prolonging the negotiations, will render it the invaluable time to acquire nuclear weapons to the ultimate detriment of America’s geopolitical interests and those of its allies, and the dangers that will arise from a nuclear armed Iran with its apocalyptic aims written on its ‘crescent star.’ It’s impossible to believe that this wishful thinking of President Obama that by opening the door of diplomacy to Iran and its sundry terrorist proxies he could reach a peaceful agreement with them, as well as persuade the Ayatollah regime to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, has not yet being drowned in the flood of recent evidence.

The Swat valley agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban that presumably would have led to peace in that region, did not last more than a month. Instead of the Taliban laying down their arms as was stipulated by the agreement, it deployed its forces in an incursion of other areas abutting the Swat valley since its leadership had regarded that the Pakistani government was forced into the agreement as a result of weakness. Also, the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip of Israeli forces in 2004 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was regarded by Hamas as a clear sign of weakness on the part of Israel instigating it to continue fuelling the second Intifada that started in 2000 and firing ten thousand rockets into Israel. In view of this incontrovertible and unassailable evidence of the conduct of the Islamist extremists that few serious and acute observers had already predicted the formers’ reaction, i.e., that any negotiations initiated by Western powers or the U.S. with the Islamists would be considered to be by the latter a clear indication of prostrating debilitation on the part of the infidel West. Thus to the Islamists any overture of diplomacy that was set in motion by Western powers would be used merely as a gambit in their irreversible goal to subdue their enemies. Dar al-Islam would employ duplicity and taqqiya throughout any future negotiations in its attempt to defeat Dar al-Harb, the infidels.

Obama’s ark of diplomacy, unlike Noah’s ark, will not survive the flood of deception, guile, and lies that Iran will bring onto the negotiating table. He will find out that his Muslim opponents are masters in dissembling as they have been educated to it by their long proud tradition that will cover any shame, any dishonourable action, as they cover their women with burqas, which could mar their individual or tribal pride. President Obama’s advocacy of a new foreign policy based on diplomacy will evaporate at the first touch with reality. His seductive universalist campaign to ‘change’ America in the eyes of the world by reappropriating the high moral ground that was presumably lost by Bush, and showing respect to Muslims by pouring oil in the turbulent poisonous pond of the holy warriors of Islam, will end up as a tragic idyll. But the stupendous danger is that in this foolish voyage of diplomacy he will bring the shipwreck of America as a great power. The Shakespearean farce will modify under Obama’s directorship into a great American tragedy. And America and the free world will pay a heavy price at the ‘box office’ of geopolitics to see President Obama’s play of “talking and acting wise without being wise.”

I rest on my oars:Your turn now

Anti-terrorist Laws Deplorable to Australian Academics

2009-06-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.

Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.

What to Do to Defeat the Taliban

2009-06-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to: The Limits of Replicating the "Anbar Awakening"
Published on the Washington Note, June 04, 2009

There is a great possibility of replicating the strategy of the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s Awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords.

Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break” in Afghanistan, as some liberals in America place their hope for the ending of the conflict on the casting of the dice.

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008. The link below will take you to it.

http://kotzas12.xanga.com/

Liberal's Wrath against Israel's Four Point Recommendation about a Dialogue with Iran

2009-06-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:
Israel is Crossing the Line

By Steve Clemons
Washington Note, March 2, 2009

Clemons is behaving like a woman who has lost her virginity (In his case political virginity.) at an old age. The reasonable requests (As presented by Clemons in four points.) of Israel, in regard to a dialogue with Iran, that is besieged by fanatical terrorists and is threatened by the stated objective of a rogue state with annihilation, are to Clemons “red lines and instructions (M.E) of Israel to the U.S. .”

While Israel makes it quite clear that it does not oppose a dialogue between the U.S. and Iran it recommends to its American ally, (a) it should be preceded with foreshadowing harsher sanctions against Iran, (b) the formulation of harsher action by Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain if the talks fail, (c) a time limit must be set for the talks to prevent buying time to complete its nuclear development, and (d) timing is critical and the U.S. should consider whether it makes sense to begin talks before Iran’s presidential election in June. Needless to say all of the four points are close to the heart of the U.S. State Department and to all the diplomatic Chancelleries of Europe.

It would be interesting to know if Clemons happened to be a head of a state in the same circumstances that Israel is in, and who had lost his political virginity long ago, in what other points other than the above he would present his case to Secretary Clinton as conditions of a dialogue with Iran.

Moreover, he is blatantly inconsistent with his own position when he was vehemently criticizing the Bush administration for not listening to its allies in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. Now with the Obama administration in place and apparently ready to implement Clemons policy of listening to America’s allies, only one nation must lose the right of being listened too by the U.S., Israel; as the latter’s reasonable concerns about an impending dialogue with Iran are presented by Clemons as an “instruction manual” and therefore should be out rightly rejected by the U.S..
What kind of political buffoonery is this when Clemons says that the U.S. “should listen to Israel’s views” but only for the purpose of out rightly rejecting them and before evaluating them by weighing them on the scales of reason?

It’s fascinating to view all the political stallions of The Washington Note, including of course the politically sinewy mare amongst them, that they cannot see, due to their inveterate bias against Israel, that all the four points are tangential not only to US interests and goals but also to European ones as both of them are aiming to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And the Israeli four points, as presented by Clemons in his post, embody exactly these aims of the Western world. If a Martian visited perchance The Washington Note and glanced at the volcanic wrath of its posters against Israel’s recommendations that are multilaterally accepted by Western powers he would not understand what all the fuss was about.

Will There Be An "Obama Effect" in Iran??

2009-06-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

By Steve Clemons http://thewashingtonnote.com/

June 11, 2009

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve’s two question marks promptly save him from falling and drowning into the politics of wishful thinking. The hate of the Islamic Republic against America is deeply rooted and no “mesmerizing” speech by Obama will ever change that. Even if a change from Ahmadinejad to Moussavi does occur, which in my opinion is most unlikely, as I believe the silent majority of Iran will deliver victory to Ahmadinejad, the geopolitical power lunge by Iran to become the hegemon of the region and of Islam, hence clashing with the geopolitical interests of the United States, will not be derailed, and therefore its policies will not be modified by one iota. This is why Iran will continue with its nuclear program and its consummation into a nuclear bomb.

And all those wishful thinkers who believe that Obama’s Cairo speech will have an impact will be gaping with an open mouth at a mirage.

Mustafa Has no Qualms of Being both Muslim and Western but Don't Serve him Pork

2009-06-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

Racism for the Mainstream

By Mustafa Quadri On Line Opinion, May 9, 2008

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Mustafa destroys his own argument that there is a “pseudo-intellectual industry” that vilifies Islam of being violent, led by the American Daniel Pipes, by his own major premise. If Islam is peaceful, as he insinuates, then the greatest vilifiers of Islam, second to none, are Muslims themselves. The jihadist-terrorists and their mentors, like al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who influence millions of Muslims, being universal murderers incontestably hold the scepter of vilification of Islam in their own hands.

But here is the zinger. Mustafa asserts that “despite there being no consensus on what it means to be Western or Muslim…many Muslims, including myself, have no qualms about being Muslim and Western”. Indeed, Mustafa may not have any “intellectual qualms” about committing this intellectual “felony” for which another poster in this forum put the handcuffs on him. But if he was served pork what would he be, more Muslim or less Western or vice versa? And whatever the choice, whether to eat it or not, he would knock off his own proposition. Mustafa, like so many other educated Muslims, Waleed Ali is another one, make an intellectual mockery of their own education and of themselves.

Poor Mustafa! With the flood of reasoning issuing from most of the posts above he is drowning in the sweet waters of reason. But I guess it’s better to take leave of this world with a sweet taste than with the “bitter taste” of being both a Muslim and a westerner which is the “bitterest” oxymoron.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

The Obsessed Denial of Liberals of Success of the Surge

2009-06-01T00:12:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

All the Sancho Panzas of The Washington Note riding on their donkeys and their Don Quixote, Clemons himself, riding his ‘dishevelled’ steed, are attacking windmills in their intellectually ungracious mean-spirited witless futile attempt to discredit the Surge and deny the great success it was in bringing a reversal of fortune in an almost lost war as a result of the initial strategic mistakes of American strategists, which I identified in a paper of mine back in August 2003.

The Surge being a strategic victory for the U.S. not only militarily and politically in Iraq, especially if democracy is consolidated in the country as it seems to be happening with the provincial elections just held, but by blazing its winning footprints on the soil of Iraq is showing the way, and heralding, how the rest of the jihadists, in this borderless war against them, can be defeated.

Bob Woodward in his book Bush At War depicts with a cascade of clear irrefutable evidence that the sharp instrument that cut the umbilical cord of the insurgents with some of the Iraqi populace was the deployment of Special Forces that ratcheted up “the heavy-handed counterinsurgency methods” by killing or capturing their higher echelons and spreading fear among the ranks of the insurgents. Coupled with these hard measures was the soft embedment and quartering of U.S. troops in the neighbourhoods of Baghdad and other towns where the insurgents were previously residing and dominating. It was these two tactics and the ‘revolt’ of both Sunnis and Shi’tes against al Qaeda and the Sadrist militias respectively that stopped the sectarian killings and ushered greater security in Iraq. To say, like Clemons does, that “bribery of local leaders” and a less “heavy-handed’” approach were more significant in subduing the insurgency indicates that he has not read Woodward’s book, or if he has, he deliberately refuses to acknowledge the factors that led to the defeat of the insurgency as an outcome of his ungracious and partisan lapse to give credit where credit is due, to Bush’s determination to implement the Surge.

And all the other cackling of the excited and ‘emotional’ geese “how many of my descendants you’ve killed”, to quote Dan Kervick in his wrath against the ‘warmongers’-- a disciple of the two philosophers mentioned below-- will not save the Rome of their intellectual infantilism and political dilettantism, even under the great names of Bertrand Russel and David Hume.

Israel's Development Stems from Cultural and Intellectual Strengths of its People

2009-05-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

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

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

Iran: Know thy Enemy

2009-05-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama with his latest commitment to the war in Afghanistan seems to be harking to the realists of his political and diplomatic advisors, such as Richard Holbrooke, and is readying himself to debunk the bunk of his leftist supporters of ending America’s military involvement in the hot spots of the world and adopting and continuing the bellicose policy of the former Bush administration against the terrorist extremists. In his announcement of his ‘new’ policy in Afghanistan he very closely repeated Bush’s words that as President he would not allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorists that the latter would use once again to attack the American homeland. Hence he clearly coupled the war in Afghanistan with America’s security and therefore made it very difficult for the anti-war movement to continue influencing the silent majority, as it did against the Bush administration, toward a pacifist position since such a position would be senseless and stupid to anyone whose life was under a direct threat. Obama therefore placed himself in a politically strong position that even an increase of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan could not erode since this is the price that America will have to pay for its security. One therefore can say “hats off to Obama,” to quote Robert Kagan from his piece in the Washington Post, for his new strategy in Afghanistan.

What is most worrying however is in verity the president’s new policy in regard to Iran. In his keen propensity to detach himself from the ‘fisticuffs’ policy of his predecessor which he considered to be wrong and politically infertile, Obama, as he had promised during the presidential campaign, is opening the door of diplomacy to the ‘Mullahcratic’ regime hoping that the latter will be susceptible to the diplomatic blandishments and calls of reason that the U.S.A. and Iran could ‘live and let live’ with each other if they had the will and wisdom to change the belligerent attitudes of the past toward each other. This is a laudable aim but the question is whether it will resonate with the Theocratic regime in Tehran. President Obama in his direct address to the Iranian people, in their new year’s day, went out of his way to praise the Islamic Republic and the cultural achievements of its people. But what is in a name when one could praise in the same terms the united republics of the USSR, the republic of Mao’s China, the republic of Cambodia under Pol Pot, and a sundry of ‘genocidal’ republics in Africa with the only difference being that the scale of atrocities are not as high in Iran as they have been with the above blood-lusted republics. But who knows, with a future nuclear armed Iran the latter could surpass them all on the scale of wickedness.

It’s this great danger that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Western nations and to the U.S. that the latter as the supreme power in the world must prevent. And the ambition of Tehran to acquire a nuclear armoury is un-ambiguous and unyielding. Only few days ago President Ahmadinejad in his address to the Iranian people proudly proclaimed that Iran would not cease its nuclear programme as its achievement is the deserved status of a great nation. It’s obvious that Ahmadinejad took his lines directly from the speech of Obama who praised so exuberantly the Islamic Republic and its cultural achievements. But in the hope of the President that by paying homage and offering peace to the Tehran regime it would de-couple the latter from its religious fanatic nucleus and its great hate toward America, Obama shows himself to be irretrievably naive and abysmally ignorant of the duplicitous enemy he is facing.

The foremost intelligence apparatus in the Middle East the Israeli one had its chief Major General Amos Yadlin saying early this month, ...”Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, saying that “the jihadists interpret compromise as weakness.”(M.E.) He cited the withdrawal from Gaza four years ago which many had thought at the time it would debilitate the conflict, instead it encouraged it. And this is exactly how the Iranian leadership sees Obama’s ‘open door’ diplomacy, as a screeching sound of American weakness, as in its eyes the relative isolation of the U.S. among its allies, Russia and China and its inability to persuade the latter to take harder sanctions against them limpidly demonstrates this weakness. And this enfeeblement of the U.S. is further exemplified in Iran’s view by the North Korean defiance in its rocket launching, which, only few months ago in the last days of the Bush administration, was participating in direct talks with U.S envoys in regard to its nuclear programme--that that stalwart and hawk-eyed in foreign affairs John Bolton had predicted with characteristic insight that the talks would come to nothing. If miniscule N. Korea could so brazenly defy the U.S., in spite of the commitments it made during the negotiations, what the great Islamic Republic of Iran would do in future negotiations with the Americans?

President Obama and his close advisers are incapable of realising that an enemy who sees the United States as being politically compelled to negotiate from a weak position cannot be forced by diplomatic means to accept the demand of the Americans and their allies that Iran must cease the development of its nuclear programme. Hence Obama’s administration is setting up its tent of diplomacy in a barren desert where the Iranian diplomatic camels will come empty of any reciprocal ‘gifts’ to the peaceful and morally generous gestures of the Obama administration. It’s inconceivable to imagine, that if not Obama, that some of his close and more astute consigliori are unable to anticipate the futility and dangers of diplomacy with a foe who considers himself to be negotiating from a position of strength. The only result that can come out from such negotiations with the Iranians is for the Americans to come out as losers from this parley or walk out of the talks with the tail in-between their legs in a scornfully embarrassed state.

This will be the fate of President Obama’s diplomatic overture with the Iranian theocratic regime as an outcome of his total inability to “know thy enemy,” a prerequisite, according to the great Chinese strategist and sage Sun Zi, in defeating one’s mortal enemy. But the final judgment on President Obama--the constitutional lawyer and former community organizer, a rookie in the art of statecraft and who in his Prague address beyond proclaiming, with humility soaked in weakness, America’s decline, indulged himself also to make some trite ‘brandy(ed)’ derisive comments about the two great statesmen Churchill and Roosevelt who defeated the Axis powers--who as a result of the pathological hate—which neutralized even the ingrained racism that many Americans have toward blacks--that a great part of the electorate had toward Bush-Cheney and by association the Republicans, was swept by this bitter wind into the Oval Office, will be rendered by a Shakespearean Sovereign, King Lear:“Nothing comes out of nothing.”