Foreign Affairs

Benghazi

Mark Noonan55 Comments

They say its not the crime, but the cover up – but with Benghazi, it might be the crime and the cover up:

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”…

Good to keep in mind that Nixon was brought down because Dean managed to sucker him in to giving post-facto approval to Dean’s attempted cover up of Watergate – and no one died in Watergate.  Here we’ve got dead people and possible obstruction of justice…and potentially attempted cover ups of both events.

Now, will this topple Obama?  Not a chance.  As long as at least 34 Senators are Democrat, then there is absolutely nothing Obama can do which would result in his conviction by the Senate.  We might do pretty well in the 2014 mid-terms, but we’re not going to win a net of 22 seats.  So, Obama will get the stay on – but it is important that the truth come out for two reasons:

1.  Simple justice.  The dead deserve to have the truth told regarding what happened.  Also, in future Administrations, wise people will take to heart what happened and work against a repeat.

2.  Benghazi doesn’t just mean Obama, it means Hillary – she is, in my view, one of the lowest people we have engaged in politics today, and that is in world where Obama is President and her husband was President.  Keeping her out of the White House would be a patriotic service to our nation – and the truth about Benghazi will be devastating to Hillary as well as Obama (and, in fact, perhaps more devastating to Hillary).

The bottom line of what happened in Benghazi – regardless of criminal folly – is that a President, a world-view, was put to the test and found wanting.  The Islamists enemies hate us, all the time and every where and nothing we can do short of dying or surrendering will change them. To ignore the Islamist threat is plain and simple idiotic – to try and explain it away as the result of Israeli or American action is simply to ignore the fact that Islamists, acting as Islamists, have been around for many centuries…not just since before Israel became a nation, but before we became a nation.  One example – in a book written long before our current troubles – really struck home for me.  America existed at the time, but we weren’t in any way involved – in this case, the Great Mutiny in British India in the 1850’s.  A group of Muslim soldiers were being whipped up by an Imam – urged to fight and die for Islam – and at the end of the fiery sermon, the Imam shouted “and now I, too, will die for Islam” and went down in to the fight, where he was promptly killed.  These are the kind of people we fight today – they won’t quit and whether we are soft or hard, they will keep fighting us – because they believe that God commands them to do so and will reward them magnificently for fighting.  Unless our government keeps this fact firmly fixed in mind, we’ll never get anywhere – we have to decide to either fight them to the death or surrender entirely.  Pick one, because our enemies will allow no other choice.

Obama and his Administration believed that words of sweet reason would change things – and our ambassador in Libya (perhaps very voluntarily) was sacrificed to this absurd ideal.  It is to be hoped that once Obama leaves office, his successors will have a more realistic view of things.

What’s Next for Syria?

Mark Noonan19 Comments

There have been many reports recently that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels – and this action supposedly crossed Obama’s “red line”, which should have triggered a US response.  But, no response.  Why?  This article in the New York Times gives a pretty solid reason:

As Islamists increasingly fill the ranks of Syrian rebels, President Bashar al-Assad is waging an energized campaign to persuade the United States that it is on the wrong side of the civil war. Some government supporters and officials believe they are already coaxing — or at least frightening — the West into holding back stronger support for the opposition.

Confident they can sell their message, government officials have eased their reluctance to allow foreign reporters into Syria, paraded prisoners they described as extremist fighters and relied unofficially on a Syrian-American businessman to help tap into American fears of groups like Al Qaeda.

“We are partners in fighting terrorism,” Syria’s prime minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, said.

Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, said: “It’s a war for civilization, identity and culture. Syria, if you want, is the last real secular state in the Arab world.”…

Which statement is pretty close to the truth – but doesn’t change the fact that Assad’s regime has been an unrelieved series of rat-bastard actions since the days when his dad was in charge.  While I doubt recent claims of chemical weapons use, it is pretty sure that the Syrian regime has used poison gas in the past against rebels.  Additionally, while the Assad regime is officially secular it has been long allied with Islamist Iran and has provided vital support to Islamist Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Even as an allegedly secular State, Syria has been helping our Islamist enemies – in addition to being implacably opposed to the existence of the State of Israel.  There is, in short, not much for us to love there.  Of course, the rebels do appear dominated by Islamists, so if they do manage to topple the Assad regime, it also won’t work to our advantage.

And so I’ve always said we should stay out – no matter who wins in Syria, we lose.  But what we should have been doing is using Syria’s civil war as a means to pry Hezbollah out of Lebanon.  Right now, no one in Syria has much time or resources to be supporting Hezbollah – a concerted effort against Hezbollah will now ultimately bear fruit because all actions against them will weaken their power, which cannot be easily rebuilt without active Syrian support.  Partnering with Israel and those elements in Lebanon (which are substantial) which would prefer to see an end to the quasi-State run by Hezbollah in Lebanon, we could have secured genuine Lebanese independence – so that no matter who wins the Syrian civil war, Syria’s position in Lebanon is permanently destroyed.

But, we did nothing of the kind –  because Obama doesn’t see enemies over in the Muslim world, just alienated friends (alienated by us, of course).  Obama – and all his foreign policy team – probably never even thought about how to exploit the Syrian civil war to our strategic advantage.  We’ve dithered and blustered and threatened and half-armed the rebels – and we may yet be dragged in to direct participation in the war and the subsequent cost of pacification and rebuilding.  But we won’t secure a pro -US regime in Syria and we may well end up midwifing a new, virulently anti-US regime which also controls Lebanon.

Its a miserable situation and because our leaders are ignorant of the realities of the Middle East, it will likely just get worse.

Regarding Asia’s Mini Me.

Leo Pusateri6 Comments
Image
The linked article below from Stratfor.com gives an interesting perspective as to the history of the relationship between Beijing and North Korea-One possibility missing in this article is that of North Korea being a puppet and proxy government under Beijing’s control, via which Beijing can assert plausible deniability for actions it takes via its North Korean sock puppet.In an effort to ‘diffuse’ tensions, John Kerry sojourned to Beijing the other day, and offered, in exchange for China’s willingness to call off its ‘attack dog,’ concessions on U.S. missile defense in Asia.Could it be that Beijing is rattling North Korea’s saber, just to see how the West reacts and/or cowers? We arguably have the least cogent, most feckless foreign policy since the dawn of Jimmy Carter. It would appear plausible that China is exploiting the Obama Administration’s/Washington’s newfound affinity for “global test” pacifism and Chamberlain-esque knee-jerk appeasement, and will try to obtain more and more concessions while the gettin’s good.My guess is that China will continue to play the West via North Korea like a fiddle, as long as the current feckless leadership remains in Washington, and that Beijing will seize every opportunity to effect the West’s strategic weakening and further a lack of resolve.

Read further here:

Avoiding a “Morally Vacuous and Historically Ignorant” Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan45 Comments

Ran across a useful and interesting argument between the generally conservative and generally libertarian views of our foreign policy – especially as it relates to war and the use of force in general.  Here is Noah Rothman arguing against the essentially libertarian idea of non-intervention (using Syria as an example of why we should, at times, intervene), and here is the retort by Nick Gillespie forcefully arguing the libertarian viewpoint.  Both articles repay reading – but my view is that both of them got it wrong, to a certain extent.

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A New GOP Foreign Policy: How to Get it Wrong

Mark Noonan90 Comments

David Goldman over at Pajamas Media writes an article about how the GOP is about to get it wrong on foreign policy:

…We Republicans now find ourselves painted into a corner. The public doesn’t trust us with guns. That’s why Rand Paul has gotten his fifteen minutes of fame (and if it turns out to be more than fifteen minutes, we are in trouble). It’s satisfying at one level to watch Rand Paul beat up Obama’s nominee for CIA director, but he represents a nasty brand of isolationism.

We nonetheless have to state the obvious: The only way to prevent Syria’s living hell from spreading to Iraq and Lebanon is to neutralize the main source of instability: Iran. Republicans should rally behind Gen. James Mattis, whom Obama fired as head of Central Command. Gen. Mattis told a Senate committee March 6 that sanctions aren’t working, and that Tehran ”enriching uranium beyond any plausible peaceful purpose.” The United States should not only remove Iran’s nuclear program, but also destroy Revolutionary Guards bases and other conventional capability that the Tehran regime employs to destabilize its neighbors. And the U.S. should throw its full weight behind regime change. With Iran out of the picture, the local conflicts–horrific as they are–will remain local. I do not believe that either Egypt or Syria can be stabilized, but it is possible to limit the spread of their instability. The prospect of a prolonged Sunni-Shi’ite war in the region will be horrific past the imagining of most Americans. Secondary conflicts will erupt around it, including long-frustrated minorities like the Kurds, who have created a functioning de facto state in northern Iraq.

We Republicans have to cure ourselves of the illusion that we can engineer the happiness of other cultures with an inherent antipathy to Western-style democracy. Where the Muslim world is concerned, optimism is cowardice. And we have to persuade the American people that selective, limited military action against Iran will not draw the United States into a new land war…

Goldman gets it right in that he identifies Iran as the central problem.  He also gets it right in declaring that we have to give up all illusions and no longer seek make the Muslim world in to a pluralist, democratic civilization.  But he gets it flat wrong when he condemns Paul’s “isolationism”, and the reason he gets it wrong is in, “we have to persuade the American people that selective, limited military action against Iran will not draw the United States into a new land war…”.  In other words, we should engage in another round of limited war.  My friends, that is poison.  One thing that I’ve learned – and most especially since 9/11 – is that the one type of war Americans can’t win is a limited war.  We’re just not built for that sort of thing.  In war, Americans are an all or nothing people:  we either go all the way in, or we should stay all the way out.

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Hugo Chavez Dies, Left Has a Sad

Mark Noonan59 Comments

So, Chavez is dead and his VP is blaming us for giving him cancer – but we know that is a lie because only Republicans give people cancer (though, perhaps Bush gave it to him before he left office?).  As we could expect, the useful idiots of the left wasted little time in mourning the loss of another Dear Leader:

Hugo Chavez was a leader that understood the needs of the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless. R.I.P. Mr. President. – Rep Jose Serrano (D)

He was known for his grand overtures and bold attacks. – Bianca Jagger (she still alive?)

A good man and a friend of the USA has passed on.. Vaya Con Dios, Hugo. I hope they wear tight red dress shirts in heaven. – Colin Quinn

Hugo #Chavez has died. Commiserations to his family & the people of #Venezuela .Tragedy for Latin America & Caribbean. – Diane Abbott, MP, Shadow Public Health Minister, Great Britain

Farewell Comandante Hugo Chavez champion of the poor the oppressed everywhere. Modern day Spartacus. Rest in Peace – George Galloway

The working class people of Venezuala, Latin America and the world have today lost a fine socialist champion. RIP Hugo Chavez – Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party

Of course, not everyone is distressed…

In honor of Chavez, burrito warmers at Citgo rolling at half-speed – Iowahawk

Paul Asks Kerry the Important Question

Mark Noonan55 Comments

From Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Excellent, and not just the Libya stuff. Stick with it for Paul’s questions about how smart it is to be arming the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt when Morsi is already wheezing about Jews controlling the media in official diplomatic sessions with the U.S. If you’re wondering why it fell to Paul to ask this question instead of any of the more senior senators who preceded him, it’s because the Senate was perfectly happy to have Obama act unilaterally on Libya. The Iraq war authorization came back to haunt many of them; no one knew at the time how messy Libya might get. O did them a favor, left and right, by freeing them from a tough vote. But Kerry can’t say that so instead he squirms through a few minutes of how the two bombing campaigns are different because they just are. Frankly, Paul let him off easy. You could, if you chose, defend U.S. actions in Cambodia as a cross-border extension of the war already being fought in Vietnam. No such defense for Libya; if anything, the Libya war cut against the AUMF against Al Qaeda that was passed after 9/11 because, as we’ve recently learned, eliminating Qadaffi was actually a boon to jihadist groups like AQ…

Do go to the link and check out the video of the questions.  Allahpundit is exactly right that Congress was perfectly happy to let Obama go off on his own in Libya – because it prevented any of them from having to take a vote which, at election time, may have been a burden to carry.  The atrophy of the legislative power of the United States was starkly displayed in the Libya mess, as it is now being put on display in Mali.  This is not actually Obama’s fault – at least in the sense that he didn’t make it all happen by himself.  All Presidents since World War Two have routinely encroached on legislative powers, with the only time Congress acting in a Congressional manner during the Nixon years, and even that wasn’t on principal but merely because Democrats wanted to get Nixon (why?  Because Nixon – establishment Republican that he was – was also a stout anti-communist in the 50’s and was actually more effective, in certain ways, in exposing liberal fellow-traveling with communists than McCarthy ever was; they hated Nixon because he exposed the truth about liberals).   Rand Paul, being a strict constitutionalist, is actually behaving like a Senator who has oversight powers over the Executive branch…and Paul should watch out:  the more he exposes the truth, the more the left is going to hate him.

 

Rubio and Paul Question Clinton

Mark Noonan47 Comments

So, Hillary had continual conversations with the Libyan government about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi…and, then…

Paul notes that Hillary didn’t read the cables from Benghazi which called attention to the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi…

Essentially, Hillary’s contention is that she was on it, but then didn’t bother to read the most important information provided:  that of her ambassador on the ground, whom she has said elsewhere she selected for the job and thus must be presumed to be someone Hillary had trust in.  Paul points out that its not a matter of expecting the Secretary of State to read all cables – that would be both impossible and pointless.  But Libya was clearly a hot spot – we had engaged in military actions to help remove the previous Libyan government and we were making strenuous efforts to forge a viable, pro-western government in Libya…certainly something which should command the interest of our chief foreign policy officer.  Basic competence would require that Hillary read every bit of data coming out of Libya at that time – it strains credulity well past the breaking point to believe that she didn’t read all the cables.  But, she says she didn’t – which might, in a legalistic mind like Hillary’s, get her off the hook but which, in reality, just makes it worse:  it was her job to know.  It is what we paid her to do – and she didn’t do it.

As I expected, Hillary’s testimony as nothing but a patchwork of lies and blame shifting.  Of course, Hillary’s main purpose here was to protect the Clinton brand.  She is thinking of running for President in 2016 and right now she’s very popular in the polls…but Benghazi is the symbol of the utter failure of Obama’s foreign policy as executed by Secretary of State Clinton.  When she does run in 2016, not only will Republicans keep asking about this, but her competitors in the Democrat primary will, too (though Joe Biden will be reticent about it).  Hillary wants this to go away – but between Rubio and Paul (both of whom will probably run in 2016), her utter failure is exposed.

Hillary probably expects her answers to be the final word – more than likely, she won’t ever take any future questions on the matter except in the most friendly venues.  Is pressed, she’ll refer all to her Senate testimony and claim that its old news and there’s nothing more to be said.  But the people of the United States know – with certainty – that by her own words, Hillary failed as an executive officer of our government.

Why I Support Israel and the Jews

Mark Noonan27 Comments

With the nomination of Chuck Hagel to Defense Secretary, the issue of Israel and America’s relationship with her is squarely on the table and so I think it an appropriate time to re-state my views.

As for Hagel, himself, I don’t have much of a concern, one way or the other.  He’s clearly not qualified to be Secretary of Defense but, then again, we can say that about pretty much all of Obama’s nominees (the only two who had a shred of credibility in their posts were former CIA Director Petraeus and outgoing SecDef Panetta).  Hagel also has clearly stupid views about Iran and what our policy towards the Muslim powers should be but, once again, that is common for Obama Administration officials.  In Hagel we’ll get a man who doesn’t know how to do his assigned job and who will bring to his job a set of beliefs which are divorced from reality:  the Obama Administration in a nutshell.  But there is something disturbing in Hagel’s apparent views about the Jews and Israel.

There seems to be a gigantic shift in views about Israel and the Jews going on.  I won’t call it so much a throwback to the old anti-Semitism but, rather, just a resurfacing of anti-Semitism which never died out.  Think about it – Hagel, himself, has complained about the “Jewish lobby” and its influence on American policy, and that is nothing more than a re-phrasing of a thousand statements by Hitler and his minions about the baleful influence of the Jews and how Germany must be protected against the machinations of the Jews.  For some reason, hating Jews and being worried about their alleged influence is a hardy perennial among people – and for those who try to ascribe it to some particularly Christian ideal, I point that ancient pagans felt the same sort of hostility and, of course, modern pagans called communists, fascists and Nazis have been hostile to Jews to one degree or another.  The bottom line is that anti-Semitism is back, in force, and is steadily gaining in social respectability.

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War With China?

Mark Noonan8 Comments

It has been bubbling around out there, but if you haven’t been paying close attention, you might have missed the issue:

THIS is how wars usually start: with a steadily escalating stand-off over something intrinsically worthless. So don’t be too surprised if the US and Japan go to war with China next year over the uninhabited rocks that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu islands. And don’t assume the war would be contained and short.

Of course we should all hope that common sense prevails.

It seems almost laughably unthinkable that the world’s three richest countries – two of them nuclear-armed – would go to war over something so trivial. But that is to confuse what starts a war with what causes it. The Greek historian Thucydides first explained the difference almost 2500 years ago. He wrote that the catastrophic Peloponnesian War started from a spat between Athens and one of Sparta’s allies over a relatively insignificant dispute. But what caused the war was something much graver: the growing wealth and power of Athens, and the fear this caused in Sparta…

China is feeling its oats and, also, with grave economic, political and demographic problems, striking out in a foreign adventure might appeal to a Chinese ruling class which has no legitimate basis for its continued rule but which has so far proven unwilling to set in motion steps to create a legitimate government in China.  Japan, on the other hand, is rich and happy and not wanting to fight, but also fears that if they let China get her way on this then China will forever push Japan around.  The United States, on the other other hand, cannot afford to let China push Japan around because that would undercut our entire position not just in Asia, but the entire western Pacific…no one would rely on us if we left Japan in the lurch and everyone would scramble to make the best deal with could with China.  Certainly, there are the ingredients for war.

But there won’t be one.  At least, not right now.

China is in much the same position as imperial Germany was early in the 20th century – feeling stronger and frustrated that their growing strength has not led to their dominance of the globe.  Back then, Germany felt that Britain – governing one quarter of the earth’s surface but viewed by Germans as increasingly flabby – was the block in the road.  And, so, Germany wanted to challenge Britain – but couldn’t because the German army couldn’t get at Britain while the German navy wasn’t sufficient to beat the British navy (then, by far, the largest navy in the world).  China might want to make some nationalist hay over the Senkakus but when push comes to shove, they are islands and the Chinese navy is simply entirely inferior to the United States navy (and probably couldn’t even beat the Japanese navy, either).  A Sino-American war right now would only have one very swift result – the destruction of China’s navy and a return to the status quo ante (there is zero chance that any American government would sanction sending an American army to mainland China).  Unless the rulers of China are the most monumentally stupid people in the world, they know this and so as long as the US and Japan remain firm (but polite and willing to provide a face-saving solution) then the Chinese will ultimately back down.

This time.

China is, of course, aware of her naval weakness – and so has built one aircraft carrier and looks to build more, while also steadily upgrading their other surface and submarine forces.  As absolutely no one threatens China’s sea communications the only possible use China can have for a first class navy is to challenge the United States.  And as a matter of fact, all of China’s military build up indicates only one thing: at some future point, the government of China envisions war with the United States.  Not a war to the death like the World Wars, but a war to kick America out of east Asia and the western Pacific (China has asserted that their sphere of influence includes the Marianas Islands – a commonwealth of the United States, but also including the US territory of Guam).  We’ll have to see how that comes out and US diplomacy should be geared towards solidifying our alliances in the area while military preparations should work on destroying the Chinese navy and blockading the Chinese coast.  But, meanwhile, not much to worry about.  For the moment.