by Richard Fernandez of PJ
Media and The Belmont Club blog
Washington is drifting like the Flying
Dutchman. The year 2014 threatens to be a disastrous one for the
administration and it cannot make port. Its woes will get worse not only
domestically, as it become evident that taxes — and premiums — must be raised
to support Obamacare – remember that? They are everywhere on the
defense. Democrat Mary Landrieu is campaigning on
reforming Obamacare. The Washington Post predicts it will be a year
of ”shrunken ambitions” on both sides of the aisle.
But is is overseas, as the consequences of failures in Afghanistan
and the Middle East begin to directly affect the first world, where the
headline grabbers lurk. Already the tide of trouble is lapping at Euroean
shores. The Italian Navy plucked 1,000 refugees from the
sea in a single day as swarms of people fled from the benefits of the Arab
Spring and Geneva 2, many to drown in the Mediterranean sea.
ROME — The Italian navy rescued more than 1,000 migrants in the 24
hours to Friday from boats trying to reach Europe, authorities said, as an
immigration crisis that killed hundreds in the last year showed no signs of
easing.
Navy helicopters spotted four overcrowded boats struggling to stay
afloat south of Sicily on Thursday and ships were sent to save them, the navy
said in a statement.
The 823 men, women and children aboard the four vessels were from
countries including Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and Tunisia.
The navy rescued 233 migrants from Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia,
Zambia, Mali and Pakistan in a separate operation and took them to a port near
Syracuse on Sicily’s eastern coast.
Just some months ago, “deep sea divers
‘unpacked a wall of people’ [mostly Africans] from the hull of a smuggler’s
trawler on the sea floor near this Italian island on Monday, gingerly
untangling the dead would-be migrants in the latest and most painstaking phase
of a recovery operation following their ship’s fiery capsizing.”
Things are likely to get worse. Knowing this the administration is
planning to lean against the ropes and blame the Republicans. Salena Zeto writes that the class warfare which has worked
wonders in the past for Obama is being redeployed again in 2014 as the
cornerstone of his strategy.
As we head into the 2014 midterm elections, one thing is certain:
Class warfare will be the campaign stage again — it is the only way this
president knows how to win, by dividing and conquering — with the tea party,
Main Street and businesses large and small cast as the villains.
Democrats and the media have done an effective job of demonizing
the “tea party” brand and detaching its followers from their original
aspirations.
The logic of class warfare is simple. It relies on convincing the
public that even if the the administration has screwed up, the “teabaggers”
will do worse. If the administration can demonize their rivals
sufficiently, voters will stay home and desist from kicking them out. Here’s
how it worked in the past.
The lifelong Democrat, who runs a five-man machine shop, regrets
not voting for president in 2012.
He admits President Barack Obama’s assault on Mitt Romney’s
character cast just enough doubt in his mind that he believed the Republican
nominee would favor Wall Street over Main Street, put Washington into political
deadlock and keep the economy stubbornly at a standstill.
He also believed he could keep his health-care plan — the one he
liked — under Obama.
“For me, the class-warfare slogans were just enough to keep me at
home,” he explained, adding that he’ll never do that again.
Bob Schieffer on Meet the Press has
noticed the shift to class warfare. Speaking to Peggy Noonan, he asked why that
was.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, the President is talking about income
inequality. I mean we– we get word from Hawaii that that’s what he’s coming
back to Washington to talk about. What does that mean to you, Peggy?
PEGGY NOONAN (Wall Street Journal): What it means to me is
that he does not want to talk about Obamacare. It is widely assumed that in
2014 the bad news of Obamacare, the dislocations, the lost coverage, the price
hikes, the premium hikes, et cetera, et cetera. That all of this will continue.
It’s not the website. The website is the old story. It is the program. It will unveil
over the next two years and it’s going to be problematic. The President does
not want to talk about it. The Democrats do not want to talk about it.
Therefore, income inequality, minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera. They need to
change the subject.
But while the administration plans to go on an offensive against
the Republicans what is driving its actions is fear. Fear of what they have
unleashed.
The Wall Street Journal writes that the fear is
great strong enough to force a reconsideration of its previous policy of
abandoning Iraq. “The rise of the Islamist forces in Iraq is particularly
worrisome to the Obama administration. In response, U.S. officials said Sunday
they were seeking to boost military support—though they emphasized no
troops—for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to help in his campaign to push
back al Qaeda. U.S. officials are also considering new military aid for
Lebanon, which is plagued by rising sectarian violence.”
But it was also occasioned by the rude failure of its diplomatic
“outreach policy” in the region. Having abandoned the Syrian rebels who relied
upon it, the administration tried to complete the hat trick with a double-cross, only to find the
Islamists contemptuous of them.
Earlier this month, the president decided to approach the Islamists
at the center of the Syrian revolution. …
Had the meeting actually occurred, the White House had prepared
three specific talking points for the U.S. representative to deliver to the
Islamic Front. First, she was to encourage the Islamists to attend what’s known
as the Geneva 2 conference in January, an effort to bring the U.S., Russia, the
Syrian regime, and the opposition together to negotiate a transition to a new
government in Syria. …
Secondly, the U.S. representative was to request that the Islamic
Front return control of warehouses containing a range of equipment, some
U.S.-supplied, that they seized from the Free Syrian Army earlier this month
near the Turkish border….
Third, the U.S. representative was instructed to communicate
America’s “red line”—that America could not have a working relationship with
the Islamic Front if they continued to work directly with rebel groups that the
U.S. government has deemed as “terrorists,” namely the Al-Nusra Front and the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
But it was too little and too late. The Islamists stood the
administration up. It was then — or it may have been then — when it occurred to
them that “leading from behind” was not all it was cracked up to be.
The rise of the Islamists is at least partially due to a failed
U.S. policy over the last three years that avoided supporting groups that were
more Western and democratic-leaning, said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The problem is that our hands-off approach to arming the
moderates meant that while they were well-stocked with non-lethal assistance,
groups on the right end of the spectrum got arms from the gulf to fight the war
against Assad,” he said.
The extent to which Obama’s policy has failed was underscored by Iran’s offer to help Maliki retake Anbar from the
al-Qaeda.
Iran’s deputy chief of staff General Mohammad Hejazi today said
the Islamic republic was prepared to provide military equipment and advice to
Iraq to help it battle Al-Qaeda.
“If the Iraqis ask, we will supply them with equipment and advice,
but they have no need of manpower,” Hejazi was cited by the official IRNA news
agency as saying.
And Teheran’s ascendance was further emphasized by the State
Department’s openness to including Iran in negotiations over
Syria, as “the United States raised the prospect of Assad’s sponsor Iran, the
Shi’ite power long at odds with Washington and its Sunni Arab allies, playing
some role in this month’s Syrian peace talks.” With Iran now Washington’s
“partner for peace” how will they stop Teheran’s bomb?
Cozying up to the Iran did not go over well with the Sunni backed
rebels, who now threaten to boycott Kerry’s talks.
Beirut (AFP) – Syria’s main opposition National Coalition
re-elected Ahmad Jarba as its leader during a general assembly meeting in
Istanbul on Sunday, the coalition said in a statement….His re-election comes at
a sensitive time, less than three weeks away from slated peace talks in
Switzerland that would bring rebels and regime representatives to the table.
The Coalition is set to discuss on Monday whether to take part in
the peace talks, though a key bloc — the Syrian National Council — has already
announced it will boycott the so-called Geneva 2 process.
That has raised fears the Coalition may end up rejecting the talks
altogether. According to council member and veteran dissident Samir Nashar,
“Ahmad Jarba does not want to go to Geneva.
Remember that dinner for three? Make it dinner for two.
In short 2014 opens on a dramatic scene. Barack Obama appears to
have lost his shirt in the casino of history. Every bet he confidently made in
last 5 years has turned out to be a dud and the other players are waiting on
the turnover of his chips. The beads of sweat stand out on his face as he
regards the smug countenances of the saturnine Russians, the poker faced
Persians and the wheedling Afghans. They are the big winners of 2013. President Obama not so
much.
And to defend itself from the humiliation of exiting the casino of
history without even its shoes, the administration is readying the squirrel of
class warfare as a distraction. Why not? It’s worked before. And, as the threat
board lights up like a Christmas tree the president’s spin doctors are obsessed
with one thought. Who can we blame?
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