Category Archives: U.S. Politics

Britain, Iran, Israel, Middle East Nuclear, Mossad, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Short Western Memories: Khomeini, the Chemical West, and the Bomb………………

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“The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story. In fact, we don’t know that Iran really is building a nuclear weapon. And after Iraq, it’s amazing that the old weapons of mass destruction details are popping with the same frequency as all the poppycock about Saddam’s titanic arsenal. Not to mention the date problem. When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because “the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs” and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator’s wish. Siemens – not Russia – built the Bushehr nuclear facility. And when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was “the work of the Devil“. Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it………………”

Even within the short span of the past year we have heard and read several different conflicting assessments of the Iranian nuclear program:

  • It is military. No, it is civilian. No, it is both.
  • They are zeroing on the nuclear bomb. They have not decided yet.
  • They already have everything the need for a bomb.
  • They will have a bomb this year. They will not have a bomb until at least next year.
  • They won’t be able to before 2014, or is it 2015.
  • The IAEA says they have suspicions, but no proof, that it is possible that the Iranians may be thinking of perhaps maybe looking into the possibility of  staring to think of the probability of the degree of feasibity and applicability of the likely scenario of …………..
  • Dagan of Mossad says they have not started the bomb yet.
  • Netanyahu says they will have a bomb soon and that Ahmadienjad is worse than Hitler, will continue to be worse than Hitler even after his term expires and he leaves office in 2013.
  • Ehud Barak says war is closer unless the Iranians relent. Ehud Barak says war is months away. When asked about it, Ehud Barak responded “what war?”
  • They want to be able to build a bomb whenever they want.
  • But Ahmadinejad said they don’t want a nuclear bomb.
  • The Saudi princes, who never ever lie, are convinced they are building a bomb. So are their Salafi muftis.
  • The shaikh (sorry, king) al-Khalifa of Bahrain is certain they are building a bomb. Foreign minister al-Khalifa of Bahrain (aka Bon Vivant) is taunting us, saying “are you going to take that from the mullahs?” WTF that be. Several other al-Khalifa potantates seem to concur with the two already mentioned.
  • Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid of Dubai says he does not believe the Iranians are building a bomb. He thinks they have no reason to. Besides, he says “Even if they did, who gives a fuck”?
  • The al-Nahayan brothers of Abu Dhabi who own the UAE want the United States to attack the Iranian, and be quick about it.
  • The ayatollah has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
  • Obama, since he is only secretly a Muslim, can’t openly abide by the Khamenei fatwa.
  • Newt Gingrich says their goal is to attack the United States.
  • Rick Santorum insists he had a vision that their aim is to establish a Persian Caliphate in all the Blue States, before sweeping through Georgia.
  • Ron Paul thinks everybody this side of the Atlantic (and some on the other side) are out of their minds. He is most likely right.

Cheers
mhg


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Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(4) Ron Paul in the Middle East………..

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If Ron Paul ever makes it to the White House, he’ll probably be assassinated quickly (unless he gets an infarct first, not that I wish him any ill, he is the most decent of the two GOP candidates who have some decency). There are just too many private interests and little public empires that he endangers. The list of enemies starts with the defense industry, the neocon foreign policy establishment, the foreign services and security contractors, wild evangelicals, Rapture freaks, and his own putative vice president (wtf that be). Ron Paul doesn’t do any Muslim-baiting. He is the only GOP candidate who does not pander to anyone, American or foreign. He is also the only one not waiting in line to kiss Netanyahu’s a… er,…….. ring.

Paul is an isolationist in the old Republican tradition. His idea of drastically cutting the bases in Europe and Asia is a sensible one (Germany and Japan do not need them, nor does the cash-strapped USA). The United States does not need hundreds of bases in Europe and East Asia. The United States can do with a limited number of bases in friendly Middle East and Gulf countries and with the Fifth and Sixth Fleets to cover the Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. More important, Paul believes that the United States does not need to be dragged into an unnecessary destructive war in the Middle East, pushed by the Likud and its allies in Israel and by some potentates and the Salafis on the Gulf.
I have deliberately not mentioned Ron Paul’s domestic economic and regulatory policies with most of which I strongly disagree.
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(3) Mitt Romney and the Middle East……….

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Mitt Romney hasn’t expressed any solid core position on foreign policy regarding the Middle East. Nothing that diverts much from the usual republican positions. That can be good or it can be bad. He has many former GOP ‘experts’ on his advisory staff but only one of them is from an Arab (non-Muslim) background. He has expressed the usual mandatory love and admiration and adoration for Benjamin Netanyahu. But that is now a necessary thing for all GOP candidates, actually for all Democrat politicians as well. Kissing Netanyahu’s ring has become bigger than kissing the ring of the German veteran who sits in Rome, in the Fisherman’s shoes. He has, however promised that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon as long as he is president. That is the closest thing to a definite policy he has expressed. (Oh, and he has refused to promise to re-invade Iraq, which means McCain and Lieberman will have to do it solo).
Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(2) Rick Santorum & the Middle East: “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”………

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“Santorum believes “it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, ‘I support Israel.'” He has attacked Obama for putting “Israel’s very existence in more peril” and says Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations is a sign that the Palestinians “feel weakness — they feel it, they see it, they know it — and they’re going to exploit it.“………”

Like I said earlier: (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).

Oh well, Santorum was a one-term senator. He is a rust-belt gun-slinging (shoot the duck, shoot the duck) Catholic who talks the evangelical omni-phobic Bible-belt talk, and walks the unique Bible-belt walk. He too is betting the Middle East farm on the Rapture and mass conversion when the “moment is right”.
He’s got the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and his own wild fascist ideas. I’d offer him a copy of the Quran as well, in English, except he might charge me with harassment or of being some kind of Islamo-terrorist Jihadist Salafi motha.
He hasn’t yet published “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”. I doubt that he ever will: remember earlier this week I posted here quoting someone who likened his campaign to a person who is dead but he doesn’t know it, although everybody else does.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, Islamophobia, Israel, Middle East, Muslims, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(1) Newt Gingrich and the Middle East: Calculated Muslim-Baiting…….

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“Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee…… Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move. Adelson is an ardent Zionist. Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, Adelson is such a hard-line Zionist that he even stopped supporting AIPAC when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award. Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics………..”

Newt Gingrich has promised to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. That is a standard promise for most presidential candidates in the United States, and reneging on the promise afterwards is also standard procedure. The idea of where the embassy is located has no strategic implications, and I suspect that most Arab regimes will just do some posturing and then accept it. Unless it is moved to East Jerusalem.

Gingrich does not seem to believe that the Palestinians deserve their own state(-let) on the West Bank (and Gaza?). This may seem like a strongly pro-Israeli policy, but it is not necessarily so in the long-term. It means he prefers Israel to annex territory covering anywhere between 2 to 3 million more Palestinian Arabs (in addition to Arab Israelis who are less than 24% of the population). Yet what would they do with all these Arabs? Citizenship and voting rights mean a huge, nay a seismic, political shift. An apartheid-type policy is not an option in this day and age (even the Bahrain regime on the Gulf is having trouble keeping its apartheid policy intact). Besides, it would truly upset and turn off most Jewish-Americans who would not condone such policy (in comparison Jewish-Russians probably wouldn’t give a fig about it, nor would the “Christian” right).
Gingrich has also done some of the usual Republican Muslim-baiting. He made some appropriate (to the right wingers) noises about the dangers the Shri’a law presents to the United States. He knows there is no such danger because it won’t happen. He also was slated to share the speaking stage with Dutch Neo-Nazi politician and rabble-rouser Geert Wilders at an anti-Muslim rally a couple of years ago in New York, but he was smart enough to go AWOL on that day. His Muslim-baiting is calculated, unlike that of some other republicans: that only means he is smarter than his colleagues in the Party.

I have not posted anything recently about my earlier suggestion that Newt Gingrich take a hike, literally, on the Iraq-Iran border. That was meant to shore up his foreign policy credentials.  But that hike may be impossible now, given that overt American military presence in Iraq is limited to John McCain and Joe Lieberman camping in Falluja. (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

SOTU: Obama as a Middle East Hostage………..

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Under Mr. Obama, American Middle East policy has become practically a political hostage of the Likud coalition and a resurgent pro-Israeli lobby. Not necessarily a Jewish lobby that is in fact divided, but more a Rapture lobby of Christians eager for new converts ‘when the moment is right’. That is not all: the administration has several high-ranking strongly pro-Israeli advocates, like Susan Rice who naturally aspires to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department.
Arabs often complained that U.S. policy was strongly influenced by Israeli interests. That is not exactly the case anymore: U.S. Middle East policy is now truly shaped by ‘perceptions’ of Israeli interests in an unprecedented way. That perception is not necessarily in the interests of Israel in the longer term. Look for Republicans to continue applying pressure on Obama between now and November, pushing him to leave the West Bank alone for now, pushing him to ensure Israeli supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean.
SOTU: all that pressure was reflected in the Iran part of the State of the Union speech, when Obama repeated the mantra that “all options” are on the table. “All options” means a possible unprovoked war in the Persian-American Gulf.

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Libya, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

The Late Qaddafi and the GOP: Arab Referendums and Plebiscites, American Primaries……..

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“Plebiscites are a fraud against democracy. Those who vote “yes” or “no” do not, in fact, express their free will but, rather, are silenced by the modern conception of democracy as they are not allowed to say more than “yes” or “no”. Such a system is oppressive and tyrannical. Those who vote “no” should express their reasons and why they did not say “yes”, and those who say “yes” should verify such agreement and why they did not vote “no”. Both should state their wishes and be able to justify their “yes” or “no” vote…………”

“Not allowed to say more than “yes” or “no”…“ I guess he suggests a resounding “maybe” as a third option.
More seriously, the late Colonel Qaddafi here aims directly at the heart of the Arab phony election system. From North Africa through Egypt to Syria and Ba’athist Iraq and Yemen, they all forced the people to vote in referendums, plebiscites, rather than elections. One candidate only: and a voter was supposed to vote “yes or no”. Suppose a majority voted no? Would they have to start a new vote with a new single candidate?
 
Qaddafi never allowed referendums on his rule (as far as I know), which might somehow make him more honest than his fellow Arab leaders. He was as honest as the Saudi princes, who never pretend that they have elections or freedom or a civil society. Unlike the late Qaddafi, the princes never agonized over it in a Green Book either, which might make them slightly more honest than the colonel.

(I wonder what Qaddafi would have thought of these Republican caucuses and primaries. They are not real elections: they never ‘elect’ anyone for any position or office. Mr. Obama, being a sitting president will not contest elections to be renominated: he will be renominated in a referendum. That is something Colonel Qaddafi would have never condoned).
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The War that Bush Rejected but Obama may Wage: Mrs. Clinton and GOP War Evaders………..

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“President George W. Bush’s administration concluded that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be a bad idea — and would only make it harder to prevent Iran from going nuclear in the future, former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) chief Gen. Michael Hayden said Thursday. “When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret,” Hayden told a small group of experts and reporters at an event hosted by the Center for the National Interest. Hayden served as director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and then served as CIA director from 2006 until February 2009. He also had a 39-year career at the Air Force, which he ended as a four-star general. Without an actual occupation of Iran, which nobody wants to contemplate…………….”

It is all about the goal and the exit plan. See? Even I, who is no military expert or strategist(yet) or eve newspaper columnist, know that.
As for an actual invasion of Iran, with ground troops: oh boy. Iran is at least three times the size of Iraq with more than three times the population with many huge cities and is very rugged territory. It stretches from the Persian-American Gulf deep into Central Asia, from the Arabian Sea-Indian Ocean to the Russian border. There is no flat easy terrain to Tehran or Isfahan or Mashhad or Qum. The Revolutionary Guard IRCG is not likely to run away and hide like the Iraqi Ba’athist army in 2003. Think of it as invading Russia but on a smaller scale, and we all know what happens when Russia gets invaded.
Of course, I can be wrong and the whole Iranian regime could collapse within days. But I doubt it: no doubt they have prepared for such a scenario.
Still, before November, Mr. Obama, prodded by an easily ‘disturbed’ Mrs. Clinton and a taunting Republican mob of draft dodgers and war evaders, may opt for a war that he will not be able to control.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Libya, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Colonel Qaddafi on Free Speech and Insanity: Green Book and the U.S. Supreme Court………

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The Late Mua’mmar Qaddafi: “An individual has the right to express himself or herself even if he or she behaves irrationally to demonstrate his or her insanity. Corporate bodies too have the right to express their corporate identity. The former represent only themselves and the latter represent those who share their corporate identity………”

Mitt Romney: “Corporations are people too, my friend.”(Romney being warm and fuzzy in a way on a Republican politician knows how).

I was intrigued by Qaddafi’s assertion about a ‘corporation’ having the right to express itself. The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court must have read the Colonel’s Green Book before they ruled the very same thing exactly two years ago. The Supremes referred to the First Amendment to hand the 2010 U.S. midterm elections to corporate money and to the Tea Party wing of the GOP.
As for the part about ‘freedom to express’ one’s insanity: that also makes me wonder if most of these Republican presidential candidates have read Qaddafi’s Green Book on this very topic. I mean some of them talk during their debates as if they are no saner than Colonel Qaddafi was. Yet the colonel was much more amusing than, say Gingrich or Romney. Perhaps not as amusing as Rick Santorum, but close, whose name may be misinterpreted by the ignorant to mean that he is too sane for his own good..

Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Hormuz and Oahu: Dreaming of a Persian Gulf Pearl Harbor…….

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“The simmering standoff between Iran and the United States has some parallels with the origins of the Pacific war in 1941. To persuade Japan to withdraw its marauding army from China, the United States and other countries imposed ever-tightening sanctions, culminating with an oil embargo that put Japan’s back to the wall…….. Similarly, it’s politically untenable for President Barack Obama to fire the first shot at Iran. But Iranian military action that, say, closes the Strait of Hormuz for a time could result in the world’s begging for U.S. military action. Few doubt that Japan’s policymakers blundered badly when they opted for war against the United States. Yet these leaders also thought it was impossible to abandon their China policy. Iranian leaders are caught between demands for full International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of its nuclear program and the U.S. 5th Fleet. Iran may have a card or two left to play, but it would be illogical for shooting to be on…………….”

 

“Will Israel attack? Is Obama, coerced by domestic politics in an election year, being dragged into war by the Israel lobby? Will he lunch the bombers? Is the strategy to force Iran into a corner, methodically demolishing its economy by embargoes and sanctions so that in the end a desperate Iran strikes back. As with sanctions and covert military onslaughts on Iraq in the run up to 2003, the first point to underline is that the US is waging war on Iran. But well aware of the US public’s aversion to yet another war in the Middle East, the onslaught is an undeclared one. The analogy here is the run up to Pearl Harbor. Let me quote from a useful timeline. On October 7, 1940, a US Navy IQ analyst Arthur McCollum wrote an 8 point memo on how to force Japan into war with US…………”

Two Democrat presidents were elected on ‘peace’ (and bread & butter) platforms but ended up leading the United States into the two greatest wars of history. The merits of WWI were doubtful, but not WW II. In a way Pearl Harbor was a good thing, otherwise the Nazis may have consolidated their hold on Europe in spite of their greatest folly, attacking the Soviet Union.
Now, another Democrat president who came to power on promises of peace may end up waging an unprovoked war against a country half-way around the world. As for closing the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians are no retro-Japanese, they are not suicidal types. Contrary to what some GOP politicians and media types may think, they do not worship their clerics the same way the Japanese worshiped the emperor. They do not worship their clerics the same way most members of the U.S. Congress, especially but not only Republicans, worship Benjamin Natanyahu. Or Ronald Reagan. And their clerics are not suicidal either.
Yet there is still a silver lining, some hope, for the war camp in the West: there is always a point when anyone who is cornered will strike back. Now that is not any ‘change’ you can believe in.
Cheers
mhg


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