iHOP, Anyone?

If there is one lesson that most of us learned in youth, it is that justice, to be effective must be swift and certain.

Unfortunately, our court system and our foreign policy, both, are in gridlock and have been for years. Church bells rang today in Damascus and the Syrian government claimed victory.

The signal we have sent not just the Syrians but the rest of the world, is uncertainty. Dithering is not a foreign policy!

The president could have obtained authority a month ago, or a year ago, for a strike IF he had been serious. It might have even dissuaded Assad from using chemical weapons in the first place.

My position is that if we are to be involved, it should have been a quick and decisive strike.We now have an undefined, mercurial policy. I understood the Monroe Doctrine, even the Bush Doctrine. The current “doctrine” is “If you use Weapons of Mass Destruction, (which we have not defined) we might, under certain circumstances — one of which is how many times and how many are killed (which is further undefined) — we will do something, yet undefined, IF we can get a majority of Congress to approve.”

What this process is, is a Chinese fire-drill, writ internationally. Waffling is NOT a successful policy in anything — except at iHop.

This is the result of having a lawyer, “Community Organizer” as president.

Just a Live-Ammunition Demonstration in Syria

The president  has decided to strike Syria, which is both a response to his having made a stupid “Red Line” comment (we hope he learned a lesson), and hardly necessary. Not only is it not necessary on “national security” — it is probably counter-productive because at least Assad has control of his weapons and we don’t know who will inherit them.

Killing children is a terrible thing, but we killed tens of thousands of children on March 9, 1945 by dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on a city whose homes were built by wood and rice-paper. Children die in war. Lots of children.  Women, too, and old-folks. Lots of women and old-folks.

That is why there should not be war.

But there is, so, unless you want to just roll over and surrender, whoever is involved on either side of war is going to both lose children, women and old-folks, and they are going to kill children, women and old-folks.

While this may even seem like common knowledge, apparently it is not understood by our president. In fact, we, as a nation apparently we want to do everything possible not to kill anyone — we have given the Syrians enough warning that every potential target in the entire country of Syria has been moved, and there is enough time for the entire population to have taken refuge in Iran.

This is not an attack. This is a live-ammunition demonstration. Whoopee!

This is Syria as the San Clemente firing range. Lots of dirt stirred with little damage.

All of the destroyed “Triple C” (Command, Control and Communications) will be replaced by Iran and Russia with much newer and more capable equipment in six months. This is urban renewal done effectively by the US, at no Syrian cost. If anyone dies it will be from over-excitement in watching the fireworks show.

I am. Sorry, but reacting to a few hundred children killed by poisoned gas is like reacting to a few hundred children killed by  machete in the Congo/Rwanda’s daily toll.

We have to be selective about what we do, and reacting only to the death of a few hundred children in Syria because of poisoned gas, is dumb. (As if dying from poisoned gas is different from dying from bombs, or machetes, or fire bombs is different.) If we are going to effectively destroy Syria’s Air Force and military forces then it might be worth doing something, but this is doing nothing at a great risk, in a tinderbox.

This may prove to be a heavy price to pay because the president made a promise that he makes his military fulfills.

Beats me!

The Syrian problem is not easy.

Both the interventionists and the non-interventionists have great arguments. It is a question of the lesser of two evils, and there are many moving parts to the puzzle.

If we strike, will Iran react? Beats me.

Will Russia react? Beats me.

Will it help Al-Queda take over Syria? Beats me.

No one can predict how mercurial governments will react to ANYTHING, or how they will react to failing to act.

In the end, neither Russia nor Iran can do much to dent the US, but there are more moving parts than just Iran and Russia. There are the populations of Britain, and Germany — already seriously questioning of US hegemony.

In the end there are two questions: Should the US be a policeman, and, how many human rights disasters can we stomach without reacting?

Beats me,

What doesn’t beat me is that the US Constitution gives the vote to Congress. I am sick and tired of Congress avoiding their responsibility. If Congress can meet to declare war on the Japanese, it can meet to authorize Obama, and take some of the responsibility for US action, or lack of action.

536 minds are better than one, even one who has a Nobel Peace Prize.

ESPECIALLY one who has a Nobel Peace Prize.

Why I Generally Ignore The Middle East

I try to avoid doing a lot of analysis of the Middle East for a very good reason: It is impossible. I actually stopped writing columns about the Israeli/Palestinian kerfuffle when the local Rabbi demanded my presence in his home one day concerning a column I wrote, I was subsequently denounced from the pulpit the next Sunday (NOT by the Rabbi, but by a Parishioner), and I happily debated my friends in the Anti-Defamation League for HOURS, I LOVE to debate, and although the debate was emotional, it was not hostile.

Mind you, the denunciation started with the words, “many of you know Allen, and we all know that Allen is not anti-Semantic, but on this issue he is clearly wrong…” My trust attorney, an Episcopalian, was singing in the choir at the Synagogue that Sunday, (which they always did on High Holy Days) called me and said, “Damn, Hemphill, I can’t even escape you in the Synagogue!”

My sin? I had written: “I love Israel, and I love my children as well but I don’t want to support either of them once they are 20 years old, and Israel is now more than 20 years old. It’s time to wean them from foreign aid.”

The reaction convinced me that a promise I had made myself years earlier not to comment on the Israeli/Palestinian situation I should have extended to the entire Middle East. It is just too hard for a rational person to understand irrationality.

Crazy is just too hard.

You may have heard the old tale about the scorpion who approaches a frog on the banks of the Nile and asks for a ride across, but the frog says, “No way! If you sting me, I’ll die!

“Nonsense,” replies the scorpion. “If I sting you, we will both die.”

The frog thought that was rational, so he relented and across they went, only to have the scorpion sting the frog, and as they both died, the frog croaked, ” You fool. You killed us both,” to which the scorpion answered, “Well, this is the Middle East.”

Exactly. That is a joke the Middle Easterners tell on themselves, but it is certainly representative of the region.

Which brings me to Egypt.

It is certainly true that the US Middle East foreign policy is a goat-(exploitive deleted), but I am not certain that there is a good Democrat or Republican solution — certainly what I have heard from Senators Graham and McCain is not a viable policy. What opportunity we had in Syria has passed by, and a president always looking for an opportunity to do nothing, has his opportunity to do nothing in Egypt as well.

The Al-Queda resurgence in Iraq is right on schedule. Iraq falls further under the Iranian umbrella, joining Syria and only the coup stopped Egypt from joining.

Temporarily.

The entire area is a Laughing Academy with an Annex for Shrieks. The Western mind cannot comprehend it any more than it can understand Detroit. I know that being reluctant to comment on either Detroit or the Middle East will not contribute to solving the problem(s), but then nothing will.

Some things, like volcanoes, must simply be endured because they can neither be understood or fixed.

Loser League Adds Another Team

The European is angered, at least in public, that we are spying on them. In fact we are spying on the world, except for US citizens who do not have terrorist ties, looking for nascent terrorists. (We know the major ones, and when we can get them with technological means without MAJOR loss of civilian life, we do.

But, I suggest that we simply end all cooperation with European Union on the subject of terrorism, a subject where they get a lot more benefit than do we.

On the subject of the EU, the liberal LA Times appears to be getting fed up as well. Look at this comment on the EU as it considers Croatia’s entry into the  EU:

“The nation of 4.5 million people with hundreds of miles of stunning Adriatic Sea coastline and islands joins a club that has lost much of its luster in recent years as its members struggle through recession, debt, record unemployment and flagging confidence in the euro common currency used by 17 EU states.

Croatia joins the alliance in as bad, if not worse, economic condition. The EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, calculated Croatian joblessness at 18.1% in June and — as in Greece and Spain — more than half of workers under age 25  have failed to find employment. The EU jobless rate has notched record highs month after month for nearly a year, reaching 12.2% in the latest Eurostat survey.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-week-ahead-0701-20130628,0,6441946.story

Sounds to me like the Loser League is considering adding a new team!

Too Many Coincidences

Let me describe the problem as I see it: Some liberals, and some libertarians have supported the release of classified material by a self -described conscientious objector in the global fight against terrorism — but what to do when the STUXNET information is leaked to the NY Times by  the once second highest military officer who was, according to Bob Woodward, “Obama’s favorite General.”

 Is one good and one bad? Are both good? Are both bad! (I vote for the latter.)

Now, about President Obama. President Obama has both been RELENTLESS in tracking leakers, and dismissive of a strong pushing for Snowden, saying, “But let me — one last thing because you asked the final question. No, I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”

It will be especially interesting to see if the Justice Department presses charges against Obama’s favorite General, even as they have at least filed and said they intend to press charges against Edward Snorden.

And liberals must be meeting in coffee houses around America, to determine how they will treat “Leakers” in general, and Cartwright and Snowden in particular.

Just a brief note on Snowden, Ecuador has ended their treaty on flowers and agricultural products with the US, so that ( they say) they cannot be blackmailed by the US.

This is, of course, a face-saving device since the possibility of the US Congress approving that treaty by Monday, was slim and none. Ecuador is trying to make a virtue out of what is a necessity. There may well be a back channel deal being worked out whereby Ecuador refuses sanctuary, and then some time down the line Ecuador gets the treaty restored — which is a win-win.

This is going to be interesting. General Cartwright is being represented by the former General Counsel of the White House, Greg Craig – which would lead to the question: Did President Obama ask that the STUXNET worm story be leaked by his favorite General to his favorite newspaper for political reasons – to show he was tough on Iran, before his election to a second term? And now President Obama’s lawyer defends the General?

I am not big on conspiracy, but this is just too many coincidences.

Another Blogger Nails It!

I don’t usually comment on another blog entry, but a Michael Collins, commenting in the Wall Street Journal defines the problem in the Middle East so well, that I thought I would  share his comment:

“The fires of theocracy are going to burn the middle east to the ground. Notice how when the US stays out of it that the Sunni and Shiite begin killing each other?

Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq–these aren’t nations. It is time to stop to pretending that these are anything more than tribes with flags. It’s not their fault. Their national boundaries were drawn after WW I without regard to ethnic and religious affiliations. Sykes and Picot got it wrong. Badly wrong.

These countries should be divided among ethnic and religious lines. Sunni with Sunni, Shiite with Shiite. This is the only way there can be peace amongst a people that prefer theocracy over democracy.”

That just about sums up the Middle East. While we may intervene, here and there, now and again, any thought that we can provide a “solution” is misguided.

The Middle East is such a quagmire that we should simply avoid it altogether.We are nearly self-sufficient in energy just in this hemisphere.

Some things Need to Remain Secret

It turns out that the AP is being investigated to discover the source of how the AP found out that the US had “in their control” the bomb made in Yemen?

The answer is, a double agent. That we know. What I did not know until tonight is that the double agent was British.

I find that interesting, because of the previous blog entries I made about the famous WWII double agents, “Garbo” and “ZigZag”

Richard Engle of NBC News is all over the AP case. It is obvious that leaking that information about the Yemen bomb obviously endangered the life of the double agent.

What we do know is that a drone strike killed the maker of the bomb just days after the bomb fell into British hands, and was transferred to a CIA bomb facility in Virginia.

Obviously, getting a double agent into Al-Queda is REALLY tricky business, and being found out would be not instant death, but a slow and lingering death.

I do not know the fate of the British double agent. The NY Times says the double agent was a Saudi spy and he and his family are safe in Saudi Arabia, but the bad news is that even if he escaped he is no longer “operable.”

Pity!

Many WWII British double agents were not unmasked for more than 50 years after they were safe, much as the “Ghost Army” was protected for equally that long after the war was over.

The war against terror may never be over in anyone’s lifetime now alive, so we may not know what actually went on.

We do not have a need to know EVERYTHING.

Guess Whose Ox Was Just Gored?

The Obama administration just stepped on their crank.

You can mislead the American public on Benghazi because the press will limit the damage to the administration.

You can attack Tea Party using the IRS, and the press will try to mitigate the damage

But if you attack the press, as the administration just did in seizing several months of the records of the Associated Press, then not only will the compliant press strongly react but they are just likely to look deeper into Benghazi, and the IRS, and the Justice Department, they just might look at other things like Fast and Furious.

There are even more that they’re press knows about that their editors are soft-peddling that just might come to light.

The AP story is interesting in that the target is not the AP but the government official(s) who leaked the story of a Yemeni terror plan that included the fact that a CIA mole was in the terrorist system, or the Stuxnet “virus” program.  It is not illegal to receive these “leaks” but it is to give such information, and it may well not be in the nations best interest to give foreign nations, like Iran, such information.

There has always been an on-going debate among news outlets as to whom they owe allegiance. Some years ago there was an ongoing debate as CNN declared itself an international as opposed to an American corporation, and reporters debated if they would have published the date, time and place of the Normandy Invasion.

In effect, many reporters believe they owe allegiance to the news, and not to America.

The New York Times is known for publishing government secrets.

The question remains how to staunch the secret flow, whether it can be done at both ends of the conversation or only on the government end. The AP contends that this is a case of government overreaching.

That is an argument the press would not have previously recognized, until its ox was gored.

Get a Rope!

I have spent some time sending links to friends about Richard Falk, professor emeritus of Princeton and a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, who wrote in a foreign affairs magazine that the Boston bombing was the result of US search for world domination.

This particular idiot has previously compared Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians with the Nazi Holocaust, and blamed 9/11 on George Bush.

Falk also is a professor at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Falk’s latest outburst has earned him a rebuke from the US, Canadian, British and Israeli Missions to the UN and the UN Secretary General.

Still, Falk is a lion in the liberal community as a writer for the left-wing Nation magazine.

Whether this most recent outrage will finally be enough to retire this national embarrassment, is questionable. Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN has called for Falk’s dismissal from the UN Commission, but it is an independent organization of 47 nations that appoints its own members.

However, President Bush refused to belong to the Commission, and President Obama joined the group again after his election.

Wrong move. One among many.