Crazy Things
Progressives Believe
These days I live in a
state of almost continual amazement, bedazzled by the things progressives
believe. Earlier this week the New York Times had to print a correction
which is probably the number one all time winner in a long line of their recent
corrections: “Correction: September 8, 2014
An earlier version of a
summary that appeared with this article misstated the former title of Dick Cheney.
He was vice president, not president.”
Seriously, someone was
hired to and does write for the major progressive publication in America who
thought that Dick Cheney had been our president. And what we are led to believe
is a legion of equally bright and sharp-eyed editors seem to have shared this
mistaken belief.
Mark
Landler of that same publication reported on the
president’s brief remarks on ISIL (or ISIS, take your pick) this week,
with this gem: “Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to
surround the United States with partners.”
There
must be a new disease, Progressive Dementia, affecting the Old Gray Lady.
Though they aren’t the only publication to be struck dumb by it
26
days after the September 11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced in
Afghanistan. The campaign to oust the Taliban from power, rid the region of
al-Qaeda, and build a sustainable post-war Afghan government eventually
involved 58 nations, many of them non-NATO members. In Iraq, 45 nations joined the United States in the March,
2003 mission to oust Saddam Hussein from control in Baghdad. By April, Angola
and Ukraine had committed to joining the mission, raising the total number of
coalition countries including the United States to 48.
Traditional
American allies like Canada, France, and Germany objected to the Iraq War and
refused to participate in initial combat operations. The United Nations, too,
declined to sanction the campaign to change the regime in Iraq. This gave birth
to the prevalent myth that the United States engaged in a unilateral operation
in that Mesopotamian nation.
This
is powerful lore, and it is enjoying new life as commentators and politicians
and seek to defend Obama’s strained efforts to justify an indirect response to
what his White House has determined are “terrorist” attacks on the United
States.
So
who are our allies in this latest Obama creation -- a sort of video game
conflict where we have no boots on the ground and yet somehow know where the
enemy is?
After
meetings at last week's NATO Summit, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke
of a newly formed "core coalition." President Barack Obama said
it would take on ISIS. The nations are Australia,
Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Turkey, in addition
to the United States.
Turkey,
a NATO member, is the only nation in that group located close to ISIS, which is
also known as ISIL and calls itself the Islamic State. It has taken over parts
of Iraq and Syria.
Two
short days later Australia, Britain, and Germany aren’t so certain to be forming part of the
war core any more.
Oddly
it appears we are counting mostly on Iran’s help in Syria and Saudi Arabia’s in
Iraq although I had thought they were major enemies of each other and certainly
no reliable allies of ours. Pity the U.S. servicemen and women with the
hokey-pokey commander-in-chief (we put the troops in, then we take
the troops out). I expect our only ground intelligence will have to come
from Moslem Brotherhood members at the core of this administration.
At
the moment Sunnis supported by the Saudis and others are beheading Shiites and
Shiites are beheading Sunnis, a situation David Goldman has likened
to Europe’s Thirty Years’ War, a prelude to what he considers the
death of Islam.
That
is what civilizational decline looks like in real time. The roots of the crisis
were visible four years ago before the so-called Arab Spring beguiled the
foreign policy wonks. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrian farmers already
were living in tent camps around Syrian cities before the Syrian civil war
began in April 2011. Israeli analysts knew this. In March 2011 Paul Rivlin of Tel
Aviv University released a study of the collapse of Syrian agriculture, widely
cited in Arab media but unmentioned in the English language press (except my essay on the topic). Most of what passes for
political science treats peoples and politicians as if they were so many pieces
on a fixed game board. This time the game board is shrinking and the pieces are
falling off.
The
Arab states are failed states, except for the few with enough hydrocarbons to
subsidize every facet of economic life. Egypt lives on a $15 billion annual
subsidy from the Gulf states and, if that persists, will remain stable if not
quite prosperous. Syria is a ruin, along with large parts of Iraq. The lives of
tens of millions of people were fragile before the fighting broke out (30% of
Syrians lived on less than $1.60 a day), and now they are utterly ruined. The
hordes of combatants displace more people, and these join the hordes, in a
snowball effect. That’s what drove the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648, and
that’s what’s driving the war in the Levant.
Obama
also keeps insisting that ISIS/ISIL is not “Islamic”. Most think this defies
belief, given that the first “I” in either acronym stands for “Islamic”, the
slaughters are being carried out in Islam’s name and are perfectly
consistent with the Koran and the long history of that religion. As are the
demands that non-believers either convert, pay the Jizya tax, or be executed.
Just
One Minute commenter “daddy” sees some upside to this rhetorical legerdemain:
A
nice thing about ISIS/ISIL not being Islamic, is that when we capture their
warriors we shouldn't have to feed them Halal Foods, nor should we have to be
respectful of the Quran and not pee on it or flush it down the toilet, or have
to put on Infidel proof plastic gloves to handle the damn thing.
If
we did have to do all that stuff it'd be a tacit acknowledgement that they are
Islamic, so now that the President has cleared that up for us and we know
ISIS/ISIL is definitely not Islamic, we can dispense with all that.
Good
to know that the future does not belong to th[ose] who slander the Prophet of
Islam by claiming to be Islamic when they ain't.
And
while we are on the subject of Democrat Party theologians and Middle East
culture, how many remember that after Suha Arafat accused Israel of using
poison gas, Hillary Clinton gave her a warm embrace and big kiss? Years later
during a campaign swing she responded to criticism before a Jewish audience
by appealing to her greater understanding of the Middle East: ''Some of
you may or may have not been to the Middle East,'' Mrs. Clinton said, ''but a
kiss is a handshake.”
To
her husband oral sex isn’t sex and to Hillary a kiss to a person who just
uttered a blood libel against Israel is just a handshake, and doubtless the
same audience believed them both. Progressives are funny that way.
In
contrast, when he appeared this week at a Conference of Middle Eastern
Christians sponsored by top Clinton donor Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert
Chagoury (to bring attention to their persecution at the hands of Moslems)
Senator Ted Cruz was booed for defending Israel. Without a teleprompter or
notes he argued “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews then I will not
stand with you,” and walked off the stage.
He
didn’t stick around to kiss any of the other speakers (it’s just like a
handshake in the Middle East, remember). Speakers like Maronite Patriarch
Cardinal Bechara Raï, “who has defended Hezbollah’s right to attack Israel and
has called for a meeting with the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s leader
Hassan Nasrallah.” or “Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius
Aphrem II, who boasted on his official Facebook page last week about his Sept.
5 meeting with a “high level delegation from Hezbollah.” or “Antioch
Church patriarch Gregory III Laham, who has blamed terrorist attacks against
Iraqi Christians on a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam” aimed at making
Muslims look bad. It is actually a conspiracy planned by Zionism and some
Christians with Zionist orientations, and it aims at undermining and giving a
bad image of Islam,” Laham said in 2010, according to the Daily Star.”
I’d
like to think Cruz will be remembered for his courage and honesty: “Those who hate Israel
hate America. Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room
will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish
people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same
people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians,
who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith,
for the same reason.”
But
I wouldn’t be surprised if the New York Times will someday have to issue
a correction along these lines: “We erred when we said Ted Cruz kissed Suha
Arafat after she accused Israel of using poison gas. It was the wife of some
other American political figure.”
These
days I live in a state of almost continual amazement, bedazzled by the things
progressives believe. Earlier this week the New York Times had to print
a correction which is probably the number one all time winner in a long line of
their recent corrections: “Correction: September 8, 2014
An
earlier version of a summary that appeared with this article misstated the
former title of Dick Cheney. He was vice president, not president.”
Seriously,
someone was hired to and does write for the major progressive publication in
America who thought that Dick Cheney had been our president. And what we are
led to believe is a legion of equally bright and sharp-eyed editors seem to
have shared this mistaken belief.
Mark
Landler of that same publication reported on the
president’s brief remarks on ISIL (or ISIS, take your pick) this week,
with this gem: “Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to
surround the United States with partners.”
There
must be a new disease, Progressive Dementia, affecting the Old Gray Lady.
Though they aren’t the only publication to be struck dumb by it
26
days after the September 11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced in
Afghanistan. The campaign to oust the Taliban from power, rid the region of
al-Qaeda, and build a sustainable post-war Afghan government eventually
involved 58 nations, many of them non-NATO members. In Iraq, 45 nations joined the United States in the March,
2003 mission to oust Saddam Hussein from control in Baghdad. By April, Angola
and Ukraine had committed to joining the mission, raising the total number of
coalition countries including the United States to 48.
Traditional
American allies like Canada, France, and Germany objected to the Iraq War and
refused to participate in initial combat operations. The United Nations, too,
declined to sanction the campaign to change the regime in Iraq. This gave birth
to the prevalent myth that the United States engaged in a unilateral operation
in that Mesopotamian nation.
This
is powerful lore, and it is enjoying new life as commentators and politicians
and seek to defend Obama’s strained efforts to justify an indirect response to
what his White House has determined are “terrorist” attacks on the United
States.
So
who are our allies in this latest Obama creation -- a sort of
video game conflict where we have no boots on the ground and yet somehow
know where the enemy is?
After
meetings at last week's NATO Summit, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke
of a newly formed "core coalition." President Barack Obama said
it would take on ISIS. The nations are Australia,
Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Turkey, in
addition to the United States.
Turkey,
a NATO member, is the only nation in that group located close to ISIS, which is
also known as ISIL and calls itself the Islamic State. It has taken over parts
of Iraq and Syria.
Two
short days later Australia, Britain, and Germany aren’t so certain to be forming part of the
war core any more.
By
September 11 Turkey made clear it would not allow its
airbases to be used to fight ISIS.
Oddly it appears we are
counting mostly on Iran’s help in Syria and Saudi Arabia’s in Iraq although I
had thought they were major enemies of each other and certainly no reliable
allies of ours. Pity the U.S. servicemen and women with the hokey-pokey
commander-in-chief (we put the troops in, then we take the troops out). I
expect our only ground intelligence will have to come from Moslem Brotherhood
members at the core of this administration.
At
the moment Sunnis supported by the Saudis and others are beheading Shiites and
Shiites are beheading Sunnis, a situation David Goldman has likened
to Europe’s Thirty Years’ War, a prelude to what he considers the
death of Islam.
That
is what civilizational decline looks like in real time. The roots of the crisis
were visible four years ago before the so-called Arab Spring beguiled the
foreign policy wonks. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrian farmers already
were living in tent camps around Syrian cities before the Syrian civil war
began in April 2011. Israeli analysts knew this. In March 2011 Paul Rivlin of
Tel Aviv University released a study of the collapse of Syrian agriculture,
widely cited in Arab media but unmentioned in the English language press
(except my essay on the topic). Most of what passes for
political science treats peoples and politicians as if they were so many pieces
on a fixed game board. This time the game board is shrinking and the pieces are
falling off.
The
Arab states are failed states, except for the few with enough hydrocarbons to
subsidize every facet of economic life. Egypt lives on a $15 billion annual
subsidy from the Gulf states and, if that persists, will remain stable if not
quite prosperous. Syria is a ruin, along with large parts of Iraq. The lives of
tens of millions of people were fragile before the fighting broke out (30% of
Syrians lived on less than $1.60 a day), and now they are utterly ruined. The
hordes of combatants displace more people, and these join the hordes, in a
snowball effect. That’s what drove the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648, and
that’s what’s driving the war in the Levant.
Obama
also keeps insisting that ISIS/ISIL is not “Islamic”. Most think this defies
belief, given that the first “I” in either acronym stands for “Islamic”, the
slaughters are being carried out in Islam’s name and are perfectly
consistent with the Koran and the long history of that religion. As are the
demands that non-believers either convert, pay the Jizya tax, or be executed.
Just
One Minute commenter “daddy” sees some upside to this rhetorical legerdemain:
A
nice thing about ISIS/ISIL not being Islamic, is that when we capture their
warriors we shouldn't have to feed them Halal Foods, nor should we have to be
respectful of the Quran and not pee on it or flush it down the toilet, or have
to put on Infidel proof plastic gloves to handle the damn thing.
If
we did have to do all that stuff it'd be a tacit acknowledgement that they are
Islamic, so now that the President has cleared that up for us and we know
ISIS/ISIL is definitely not Islamic, we can dispense with all that.
Good
to know that the future does not belong to th[ose] who slander the Prophet of
Islam by claiming to be Islamic when they ain't.
And
while we are on the subject of Democrat Party theologians and Middle East
culture, how many remember that after Suha Arafat accused Israel of using
poison gas, Hillary Clinton gave her a warm embrace and big kiss? Years later
during a campaign swing she responded to criticism before a Jewish audience
by appealing to her greater understanding of the Middle East: ''Some of
you may or may have not been to the Middle East,'' Mrs. Clinton said, ''but a kiss
is a handshake.”
To
her husband oral sex isn’t sex and to Hillary a kiss to a person who just
uttered a blood libel against Israel is just a handshake, and doubtless the
same audience believed them both. Progressives are funny that way.
In
contrast, when he appeared this week at a Conference of Middle Eastern
Christians sponsored by top Clinton donor Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert
Chagoury (to bring attention to their persecution at the hands of Moslems)
Senator Ted Cruz was booed for defending Israel. Without a teleprompter or
notes he argued “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews then I will not
stand with you,” and walked off the stage.
He
didn’t stick around to kiss any of the other speakers (it’s just like a
handshake in the Middle East, remember). Speakers like Maronite Patriarch
Cardinal Bechara Raï, “who has defended Hezbollah’s right to attack Israel and
has called for a meeting with the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s leader
Hassan Nasrallah.” or “Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius
Aphrem II, who boasted on his official Facebook page last week about his Sept.
5 meeting with a “high level delegation from Hezbollah.” or “Antioch
Church patriarch Gregory III Laham, who has blamed terrorist attacks against
Iraqi Christians on a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam” aimed at making
Muslims look bad. It is actually a conspiracy planned by Zionism and some
Christians with Zionist orientations, and it aims at undermining and giving a
bad image of Islam,” Laham said in 2010, according to the Daily Star.”
I’d
like to think Cruz will be remembered for his courage and honesty: “Those who hate Israel
hate America. Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room
will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish
people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same
people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians,
who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith,
for the same reason.”
But
I wouldn’t be surprised if the New York Times will someday have to issue
a correction along these lines: “We erred when we said Ted Cruz kissed Suha Arafat
after she accused Israel of using poison gas. It was the wife of some other
American political figure.”
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