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The Method to the Obama Administration’s Mad Foreign Policy
The Method to the Obama Administration’s Mad Foreign Policy
By Josh First
May 16, 2011
Keeping one’s powder dry for over a month, while Obama’s approval ratings dropped lower and lower with a distinct “Cha-Ching” chime each Friday, and then watching the Obama Administration dance and spin with its friendly mainstream media pals, well…it was tough to stay tight-lipped, and now yours truly feels truly compelled to write. We don’t get this kind of analysis too many other places, just in blogs and small, independent news services, and certainly not in the mainstream media, which appear to be owned by the Obama Administration and who are doing their utmost to officially protect and promote the administration.
So, let’s evaluate the administration’s recent foreign policy by summing up its Attaboys and Awshuckses over the past couple of months, shall we?
Attaboys to the Obama Administration for (1) bombing Libya, and (2) for successfully closing out President Bush’s effort to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice, one way or another. That’s a total of two Attaboys.
But….Awshucks #1 for having pledged to bring Gaddafi to justice without force but with much sweet talk and then scolding, then by using actual force, and then saying the US was out of the Libya effort just as the military force was having an effect, and then saying that, actually, America was back in the military force effort and that the mission was open-ended in time and scope. This three-week-long flip-flop-flip is not good foreign policy. It looks care free and careless, an elliptical byproduct of a pacifist confronted with reality. Or, like a liberal who keeps getting mugged, these several recent times by Islamic countries like Libya. Or, like a liberal who has the silent approval of his array of political allies in Congress and political activists, who otherwise never saw a war, military adventure, or foreign invasion conducted by a Republican that they could support, but who now are whistling while casually looking up at the sky and admiring the nice spring weather.
Awshucks #2 for having held Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak to one quickly developed standard, and then to another standard that was quickly developed by the citizens of Tunisia and Yemen, and then holding him to yet one more: Instead of moving on with his life, Mubarak must stand trial. OK, we get it, President Obama, you are trying to demonstrate that you are committed to the rule of law and freedom. The problem is, your inconsistent messaging has sent confusing signals to both allies and enemies, which is not good foreign policy, and those mixed signals have consequences….
Awshucks #3 is the administration’s continued inconsistency on Bashar Assad of Syria, where as soon as the citizens Syria took to the streets, demanding their own freedom and representative government like their counterparts had in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt, all of whom had Obama’s support, the Obama Administration went silent, like he did two years ago when Iran’s citizens took to their streets. Syria is the latest missed opportunity for this administration.
Some have speculated that Obama is such an absolute statist that he identifies only with those who hold dictatorial power, and that, therefore, he is disinclined to criticize or undermine dictators, a la Ahmadinejad then and Syria’s thug-in-chief Bashar Assad, now. Some others have simply stated that the Obama administration lacks a cohesive doctrine or position on the Middle East as a whole, a common, convenient fall-back position for political watchers with degrees in political science.
However, based on the totality of Obama’s actions and statements, it is most likely that Obama is unwilling to make the same demands of Assad, or to hold him to the same high standard to which Mubarak, Gaddafi, et al were held, because without Assad (and Iran and Pakistan) pressuring Israel, Obama cannot accomplish his most likely and consistent goal: Undermining Israel and forcing Israel to make suicidal concessions to its homicidal neighbors.
Obama waited to comment while freedom-loving Iranians were being mowed down, tortured, and disappeared and he ultimately did not really criticize Iran’s Ahmadinejad, nor has he stated the obvious about Pakistan: Osama Bin Laden was hiding in plain view in a Pakistani military garrison town, with one AK 47 in his possession, because the Pakistani military was obviously protecting him. Pakistan has nuclear bombs that can be handed off to Iran or Hezbollah or any other enemy of Israel, and therefore, in the unique logic guiding Obama’s mind, it serves a role of pressuring Israel. Egypt went from moderate under Mubarak to now headed toward war with Israel under its current leadership and their likely political heirs, the Muslim Brotherhood (whom Obama has praised). Removing Mubarak served Obama’s larger goal, which is pressuring Israel.
Obama knows of no other way to work with Israel than to pressure it, to force it, to get Israel to make unsustainable concessions. Any nation or actor that has the potential to directly pressure Israel either gets a pass from Obama, like Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistan, or an actual nod, like the new Fatah-Hamas unity government that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist but which is Obama’s choice for peace partner. By allowing Syria to muddle along under Assad, Israel’s arch-enemy Hezbollah keeps its next door ally and stays strong, and actual peace remains elusive. So, what looks like an Awshucks to normal Americans is actually a purposeful decision by Obama.
Thus, even though the Obama Administration gets three negatives to two positives and loses the pitching count, there is actually a method to Obama’s madness; there is careful reasoning behind his apparent indecision in the Middle East. His actual goal is to force and pound and pressure Israel into indefensible submission, and he needs certain countries and regimes around in order to achieve that. And we all know the old Muslim adage that Obama is now living by: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right now, Obama’s best friends in the Middle East are the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Pakistan, and Iran.
Fish, Shmish, You Call That Fishing?
February 14, 2011
Dr. Louis Daniel, Director
North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries
3441 Arendell Street
Morehead City, NC 28557
Dear Dr. Daniel,
By now you know well that many people are justifiably upset by the wasteful netting practices of the North Carolina commercial bass fishermen, and you can count me among them. The videos and photos are proof that North Carolina is not managing its share of our commonly held striped bass stocks in a professional way. This is bad fishing and bad species management. It is not sustainable, and it damages the sustainable tourism and recreational fisheries up and down the entire coast. Those coastal tourism and recreational fisheries are worth far more annually than the short-term catches by the commercial industry.
To make the situation worse, many people are disturbed by the image of a NC MFC board member (Mikey Daniels) voting to extend his own commercial season. This is bad government, plain and simple. It is hard to understand how in this day and age we have an industry regulating itself, as your commercial fishing industry does. Your current arrangement creates an obvious conflict of interest between the regulators and the beneficiaries of regulation, and it should end.
Additionally, striped bass depend to a great extent on bunker (menhaden), and after viewing the recent ASMFC graph on that species, it is clear that Omega Protein is unsustainably harvesting more than that species can withstand, as well. That too impacts the striped bass population.
I respectfully request that:
a) North Carolina change the way its striped bass are commercially harvested, going from net to hand-held hook and line and requiring gentle catch and release practices for fish under 28 inches, with a set number of fish over 28 inches and no culling allowed;
b) North Carolina reduce the commercial harvest amounts for both striped bass and bunker;
c) North Carolina change its fisheries management, and put self-interested parties like Mikey Daniels on an advisory board, with only impartial scientists making the final decision about seasons and limits, based on what is scientifically sustainable.
Thank you for considering my comments. I can be reached at (717) 232-8335, if someone from your staff would like to speak to me further.
Sincerely,
Josh First
cc: John Arway; Curt Schroder; ASMFC;
Gene Kray; CCA
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February 24, 2011
Hon. Joe Martens, Acting Commissioner
New York State DEC
625 Broadway
Albany, NY 12233-1011
Dear Commissioner Martens,
This letter’s purpose is to express my strong opposition to recent proposals that would allow any trawl fishery at all for striped bass in New York, and also to express my concern about the declining populations of striped bass and menhaden, upon which so many other fish depend, including striped bass.
Several reasons account for my opposition to netting striped bass: 1) The size of the bass population is declining, 2) the menhaden (bunker) population is staggeringly low due to Omega Protein’s rapacious over-fishing, 3) recent striped bass breeding success has been low, meaning that fewer young fish are “in the pipeline” for both recreational and commercial fishing, and 4) commercial netting results in culling and a tremendous waste of striped bass and “bycatch.” These are all conditions similar to the 1980s, when the striped bass population crashed. Additionally, by all appearances striped bass are not being managed sustainably by any state, and North Carolina’s enormous bass-kills in early 2011 support concerns that present commercial quotas are impacting far more fish than previously believed.
Given these conditions, this should be a time when responsible resource managers take a step back, and consider ways to increase the bass population. Ways to stabilize or increase the population include increasing recreational and commercial size limits (presently 28 inches) even just an inch or two, eliminating or dramatically decreasing commercial harvest amounts and seasons, and switching commercial harvesting to a hand-held hook and line operation only, with no culling allowed. Implementing all or some of these methods will benefit a species that generates much more economic development as a recreational fish than it does as an over-harvested commercial fish.
Treated responsibly, striped bass generate sustainable, renewable economic development year after year. Treated irresponsibly, with only short-term commercial quotas getting serious consideration, the bass will be exterminated, and many coastal communities will see their otherwise-stable tourist revenues diminish substantially. And the commercial fishermen, who have behaved in egregiously greedy and wasteful ways, will also be out of luck. They, too, need your help; they need to be saved from themselves.
Please stop the unsustainable commercial race for the last dregs of a dwindling migratory species, and help keep it as a recreational and economic mainstay along our coast. Incidentally, I fish extensively around New York City as well as New Jersey, and I have similarly urged Pennsylvania’s representatives to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to eliminate or greatly reduce commercial harvests of striped bass, or at the very least eliminate all netting and try different ways of allowing a hand-held hook and line commercial fishery, which when combined with lower daily limits could then convert recreational fishermen into a more sustainable commercial function. Thank you for considering my comments.
Yours Truly,
Josh First
Libya: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, Maybe
Libya: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, Maybe
Are we Americans now entering Round Two of the Great Recession?
Just when money had begun to slowly change hands again and the jointly-held shares of economic success were looking a bit brighter, the Middle East suddenly gets religion. In the vernacular, that is, Democracy being the religion of western, secular Republics and democracies.
While it’s never too late nor too soon to become a democratic polity, and we all applaud Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen et. al. for their nascent freedom fights, the timing is a wee bit of a challenge.
Underlining how volatile energy supplies affect American jobs and family bank accounts, world oil prices have erupted since Libya entered a period of civil war 26 days ago.
That popular uprising could sweep iconic dictator Moamar Gaddafi (Qaddafi, Kaddafi, The Flake, etc.) out of power. Yet, he is kept in place by his air power, which has managed to turn things around in the day since this column was begun.
He, Kadaffy, Mr. “Friend of Louis Farrakhan,” could have reasonably been brought under control within the past seven days, which is when American mobile air power anchored off of the Libyan coast. Establishing a no-fly zone over Libya gives America and its supporters, such as Britain and France, the ability to shoot down all Libyan jets and many helicopters, depriving Gaddafi of his only military advantage over the rebels.
Setting aside whether or not Barack Hussein Obama, president of the USA, believes in the kind of America that made America great and created our quality of life, and assuming that a Libya without Qadaffi is better than one with him, every day that president Obama does not intercede militarily in Libya is another day that Americans pay an extra hundreds of millions of dollars in artificially high gasoline prices.
At an estimated average of 21 million barrels of oil being consumed daily in America, the 30-dollar-per-barrel increase since Libyan troubles began has put an albatross with an anchor around America’s economic neck to the tune of $900 million per day. That’s nearly a billion dollars more in increased cost every single day. Most of that increased cost is borne by gas consumers, who are mostly car owners, which is to say, Middle-Class Americans.
These are the same middle-class taxpayers who are struggling to keep their homes and investments in the face of a protracted economic malaise known as the “Recession of the Century.” We thought that Round One of the Great Recession was slowly but perceptibly ending. Now….?
Libyan rebels, whoever they are, are at least anti-Gaddafi. Gaddafi is a friend of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and both are ferociously anti-American. Chavez has actually been able to damage American interests in material ways. Knocking the Libyan air force around will at least make the country more stable, less prone to a see-saw of military violence, and less of a threat to its neighbors. It will also cause oil prices to decline dramatically, possibly back to pre-uprising prices. If that decrease happens, then America stops hemorrhaging that additional billion dollars per day more than we were spending a month ago.
Many say that America should stay out of Libya and other foreign entanglements. But if we do not intervene, then what happens next? Is Round Two the knock-out punch, that will leave “America’s cities burning,” as one academic said today in a meeting?
Re: Thanksgiving, George Washington Said It Best in 1789
George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
Thanksgiving Proclamation
New York, 3 October 1789
By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be– That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best. Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington
Time For the TSA To Go
The TSA: J. Edgar Would Be Proud
By Josh First, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
November 14, 2010
Microsoft has an outstanding, humorous advertisement for its new phone, about deeply distracted people being bonked, run-over, run down, wedded to, and finally swatted by their significant others (including a hot wife in black lingerie), all of whom incredulously ask “Really?” as they fail to compete for attention with the now-ubiquitous smart phone.
Watching the Transportation Security Administration staff sink daily ever deeper into increasingly petty and personally invasive tests of authority with their fellow citizens, one can’t help but ask incredulously, “Really”?
Reminiscent of cartoonish Cold War hysteria, its goofy duck-and-cover culture, and the subsequent tweedy 1970s classroom studies of how otherwise ordinary Germans cheerily saw their fellow citizens off to the Nazi gas chambers, TSA flight screening procedures are now so invasive, so wacky, and carried out with such zeal by many who seem otherwise unemployable and dull louts, that we must come to one sane conclusion: Time has arrived to terminate the TSA.
If you are going to ask for evidence to support this stark premise, then either you haven’t flown recently, you don’t know someone who has flown recently, or you haven’t been following the daily news in bold print at the top of the page. Or maybe you are like most, and you just want a recount of the juicy, amazingly invasive, confrontational, un-American experiences that American travelers are having at the hands of TSA’s official gropers and voyeurs.
News reports of crazy, inexplicable conflicts between TSA staff and milquetoast passengers are epidemic. The nature of these conflicts show a bunker mentality at the TSA institution level, and a personal “Screw with me will ya?” power-tripping attitude at the TSA personal staff level. Maybe this combination works well in Saudi Arabia, or in that (faux) bastion of openness, Indonesia. I got it in Jordan once, until I flashed my USA Diplomatic and Official Business passport; then I got rose petals and an armed escort ride. In America, the “I-Am-An-Important-Bureaucrat” approach to service works….not so well.
Americans reject petty bureaucrat arrogance; it’s what sparked our founding revolution. The new Super-Collider X-Ray machines at airports expose every micron of your genitalia and breasts for everyone around to see, for perverted TSA staff to save to file and watch at home over mac-n-cheese after work, and for you to feel very small about, indeed. The hands-on pat downs of children’s genitals, men’s crotches, and hot babes’ voluptuous breasts are, to borrow a crutch word once again, simply crazy. Bad enough to be touched in the No-No Area by a stranger you haven’t yet had a drink with, it’s worse when that stranger is of the opposite sex and appears openly to be enjoying both your discomfort and also how your body parts feel in their hands. And it’s even worse when it’s your little girl getting groped by a burly guy with the sensitivity of Attila the Hun or, in the alternative, the weird intentions of a Hannibal Lecter. But if you ask them to stop, out you go.
Bottom line: It’s all just plainly uncomfortable for the travelers, and evidently great sport for the TSA staff.
If you “opt out” of the tell-all X-Ray that’s so powerful it keeps you glowing in the dark for the rest of the year, then your choice is auctioned off by the nearest TSA agent who bellows “OPT OUT,” an invitation to being surrounded by security guards. They sense that you are potentially hiding something, and also that you are fresh meat for one of their public displays of unlimited personal power.
Challengers to groping (pat-downs are a thing of the 1700s past, when the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of naughty searches was first envisioned) have been immediately handcuffed, yelled at, held indefinitely or at least until their flight is missed, and ejected from the airport without cause or pretense of an explanation. Flight tickets have been ripped up in the face of travelers by vindictive TSA staff whose greatest joy is now not in protecting you, but in humiliating you and causing you to miss your flight. Simply because she can. Holy crap!
The TSA has been an evil and now obviously failed experiment, greatly enjoyed by al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists everywhere. It has inflicted great unhappiness and divisiveness upon the American people, with very little to nothing beneficial to show for itself, except that those tweedy sociologists will be studying it for the next fifty years, like they studied German Nazi culture by artificially pitting blue-eyed students against brown-eyed students. As its staff became emboldened first by necessity, then by official policy from the Obama administration’s ever-present reliance on Big Government with its Big Groping Hands and Super Big X-Ray Machines, it became a public laughingstock of out of control government.
New but already a relic, the TSA’s insularity and bizarre personnel culture is already elevating it to mythical status. By the time this beast is put out of its misery, it will be recalled fondly and with an involuntary shudder like J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was once recalled by those who had to live through that other un-American period.
Please, God, help us defeat al-Qaeda. Please disband the TSA.
First Slams Obama on Immigration Sell-Out
U.S. president Barack Hussein Obama spoke today about “immigration reform,” pitching a sell-out of America. Obama has suspended the rule of law, refusing to protect our borders while actually using the U.S. Justice Department to sue Arizona. Obama hopes to force the issue by weakening America, forcing those who love America to make concessions in order to save it in the short-term.
Arizona’s new immigration law has filled the breach of the federal government’s failure. The federal government has purposefully failed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants over the southern border, trying to force “reform” that grants amnesty to about fifteen million illegal aliens. Granting amnesty will add more liberal Democrat votes and bolster Democrat holds on certain states.
If there was ever a demonstrated need for checks and balances, a balance of power in government, this is it. With Congress and the presidency controlled by one party, and an unqualified far-left Liberal (Elena Kagan) proposed by the Obama administration for the Supreme Court, our great nation hangs by a thread. Subject to radical, history-altering decisions forced on an unwilling populace by Obama and his allies, I urge my supporters to vote Republican and support Republican candidates this election and make a difference. Congressman Tim Holden must go.