re: "The Iraq Fiasco"

Hugh Hewitt at HughHewitt.Com conveyed a sense of frustration.

Money quote(s):

"The outlines of the Iraq fiasco are becoming clear this morning even to the MSM"

I'm still not seeing that, but individual mileage may vary.

"So much good was accomplished for the people of Iraq but at such a terrible price that this sudden retreat is stunning to the people like the veterans who called yesterday and Kagan who, with a few others, helped craft the successful surge strategy which President Bush adopted.

What must Generals Petraeus and Odierno think, and with them the vast majority of the men and women who served in this long war?

Imagine if the U.S. and Great Britain had simply left Berlin three years after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. How long could the city have withstood Soviet pressure, and what chance would there have been of 1989 ever arriving?"

CAA can think of historical examples where even the myth of domestic political betrayal of military sacrifice has lead to no good result. As Dr. Pournelle often puts it: "Beware the fury of the legions."

10/22

re: "Gingrich’s Fresh Hope"

Caroline Glick at Big Peace stuck up for former-Speaker Gingrich in the Jerusalem Post.

Money quote(s):

"(F)ormer speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, “who are in fact Arabs.”

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the “Palestinian people” was artificially carved out of the Arab population of “Greater Syria.” “Greater Syria” included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term “Palestinian people” only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic “Palestinian” identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism."

So the latest date is 1977, which would (in Western demographic terms) a generation ago, but in Middle Eastern terms is more like two generations. Long enough for the myth of national consciousness to become a reality.

(Which doesn't make Gingrich a liar.)

"In their view, Gingrich is an irresponsible flamethrower because he is turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus. That consensus is based on ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are an artificial people whose identity sprang not from any shared historical experience, but from opposition to Jewish nationalism.

The policy goal of the consensus is to establish an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that will live at peace with Israel.

This policy was obsessively advanced throughout the 1990s until it failed completely in 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s and then US president Bill Clinton’s offer of Palestinian statehood and began the Palestinian terror war against Israel.

BUT RATHER than acknowledge that the policy – and the embrace of Palestinian national identity at its heart – had failed, and consider other options, the US policy establishment in Washington clung to it for dear life. Republicans like Rubin’s mentor, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, went on to support enthusiastically Israel’s surrender of Gaza in 2005, and to push for Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections. That withdrawal and those elections catapulted the jihadist terror group to power.

The consensus that Gingrich rejected by telling the truth about the artificial nature of Palestinian nationalism was based on an attempt to square popular support for Israel with the elite’s penchant for appeasement. On the one hand, due to overwhelming public support for a strong US alliance with Israel, most US policy-makers have not dared to abandon Israel as a US ally.

On the other hand, American policy-makers have been historically uncomfortable having to champion Israel to their anti-Israel European colleagues and to their Arab interlocutors who share the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist."

Being uncomfortable sometimes is just something that goes with the job. As fond as I am of Europeans, I don't expect that I'll always agree with them.

"Throughout the Arab world, Islamist forces are on the rise.

Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.

The US is no longer seen as a credible regional power as it pulls its forces out of Iraq without victory, hamstrings its forces in Afghanistan, dooming them to attrition and defeat, and abandons its allies in country after country."

This too shall pass.

"Both Rubin and Abrams, as well as Romney, justified their attacks on Gingrich and their defense of the failed consensus by noting that no Israeli leaders are saying what Gingrich said. Rubin went so far as to allege that Gingrich’s words of truth about the Palestinians hurt Israel.

This is of course absurd. What many Americans fail to recognize is that Israeli leaders are not as free to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict as American leaders are. Rather than look to Israel for leadership on this issue, American leaders would do well to view Israel as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War. With half of Berlin occupied by the Red Army and West Berlin serving as the tripwire for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, West German leaders were not as free to tell the truth about the Soviet Union as American leaders were."

Interesting parallel that appeals to my inner Cold Warrior.

"When Romney criticized Gingrich’s statement as unhelpful to Israel, Gingrich replied, “I feel quite confident that an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of, and the casualties they are taking and the people around them who say, ‘They do not have a right to exist and we want to destroy them.’”

And he is absolutely right. It was more than nice. It was heartening."

Said (actually written) by an Israeli, writing for the Jerusalem Post. So I'm inclined to accept the sentiment as genuine.

12/12

re: "Greece's Dangerous Gamble"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") looked at the Greek financial crisis.

Money quote(s):

"As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out profligate Greece, the Greeks resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more."

Likewise for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Iceland. To name a few.

"European integration has been achieved through stealth and technocratic maneuvering on the part of elites, quite frequently bypassing the clear preferences of the ostensibly democratic populations in various countries. The passing of so much authority to the European Central Bank and to appointed officials in Brussels has been inexorable, with little input from the European publics and often against the expressed wishes demonstrated via referenda."

This is not a bug in the European experiment: it's a feature.

11/1

re: "Ambassador Philip Murphy: "I'm a big boy ....the buck stops with me..." "

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe") shares an example of a leader taking responsibility.

It's very refreshing.

This is the sort of thing that causes FSOs to take jobs in really awful places, just for that chance to work for a great boss.

JO - Empire and enigmas

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Empire and enigmas

HEART TO HEART

With Betty Ann Blaine

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Dear Reader,

The story of Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular, has a recurrent theme. It is a story of old wounds and present realities - a story of empire and enigmas. It is as much a story of the evils of the British Empire as it is a story of a modern-day despot. Zimbabwe's current crisis cannot be fully understood without an examination of the past. Like all of colonised Africa, many of the country's problems have their roots in slavery and colonialism, and the attendant socio-economic and political dynamics of ethnicity and inequality.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The carving up of Africa, commonly referred to as the "partition" or the "scramble", was much more than the sharing up of the continent among European powers for profit and for power. The indiscriminate butchering of the land cut into and across age-old cultural and linguistic boundaries in a manner that left with it deep and long-lasting consequences on almost every country in Africa, including Zimbabwe.

On November 15, 1884, an international conference was convened in Berlin. Present was every nation of Europe, save Switzerland and the United States of America, 14 in all."

Personally, I object to America being classified as a European nation, either today or in 1884.