Posts Tagged → Syria
Comeuppance 101
If you run for US president on a platform of blaming the incumbent for everything, you just might find yourself in the same position some years later, with far less to show than that “failure” before you had.
Obama’s failure to create even a small international coalition to surgically remove Bashar Assad’s weapons of mass destruction is a result of his mistreatment of America’s key allies (Britain, France, Israel, Poland), his confused messages (pacifism vs. ‘red lines’ etc.), willingness to toss old friends overboard for whatever end…(Mubarak in Egypt), and his arrogant personality.
None of America’s former allies know if they can really trust Obama, and all of America’s avowed enemies believe he is a paper tiger.
Ye reap what ye sow….and more children in Syria will be gassed by Assad as a result. If this is Hope and Change, so be it. Most people call it disaster. It’s an expensive form of Comeuppance 101.
Islam, you’ve got a problem
Watching videos from the Syrian civil war (Youtube has all you’ll ever need or want to see), it’s hard to conclude that either side is pure. Videos showing the most graphic torture of captured rebel fighters, summary executions of small children, and kangaroo courts pronouncing and then implementing the death penalty upon captured soldiers all point to a main problem: Islam.
Not one Islamic country is or has ever been peaceful. All have been violently expansionist and imperialistic. None have been kind to minorities.
Syria is a good example of what France, England, Holland, and many Scandinavian countries can expect once Moslem populations reach large enough sizes.
I’m saddened and work hard not to puke on my feet over what’s happening in Syria. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of pure men over there. Bashar Assad’s cruelty led to the uprising, and his willingness to destroy his own country rather than leave it is, well, it’s destroying his country in a way no other kind of conflict can achieve. But his opponents know not much more about treating fellow people kindly.
Let’s pledge to make sure this dynamic doesn’t come to America.
One-Minute World-Wide Racism Round-Up
One-Minute World-Wide Racism Round-Up
July 12, 2012
By Josh First
www.joshfirst.com
Racism is a significant fault. Judging an individual or groups of individuals, or ascribing to them inherent flaws or evil character because of their skin color, ethnicity, or religion, is a most primitive human trait. It has no place in the civilized world. Well, let’s be accurate: According to the Left’s political correctness, judgmentalism, racism and discrimination are acceptable if the person doing them is a purported victim, or a member of certain classes of purported victims. Arch-racists Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright are two good examples of this double standard; they oppress people because of skin color, but get a free pass. However, in general, to accuse someone of racism is the highest form of criticism in free societies, because free societies are supposed to hold all citizens to an equal standard and equal treatment under the law. To be racist is to stand against everything that makes free societies great.
America is supposedly a terribly racist place, according to the Left. Certainly it was, 150 years ago, and even 50 years ago. Now? No. The greatness of America is that the ability to change, evolve, and improve is built into its political system. Reverse racism is the main source of racism today in America. For purposes of comparison, let’s do a quick trip around the world and sample some of the racism on display, and see how America stacks up.
Let’s start in the lovely, free, butterflies-and-bunny rabbits Iran, where freedom protestors were gunned down en masse in the streets just two years ago, allegedly gay men are slowly hung to death in public (go online and watch the videos), and famous women’s rights advocates are personally tortured to death over weeks by high-ranking political leaders. I was being sarcastic before. Iran is not a great place; Iran is a swamp of sadistic racists. But because it is a Muslim nation, and therefore a member of one of the purported victim classes, the Left hardly lifts a finger against them. This week, Iran’s annual “International Wall Street Downfall Cartoon Festival,” an officially-run cartoon competition, resulted in first prize being awarded to brutally anti-Jewish cartoon. That ranks a 10 on any racism index you care to use. Muslims who convert to Christianity are put on trial and killed. That ranks a 10 on any racism index you care to use. Iran: Racist place.
A few hundred miles to the West, the minority Muslim Alawite community, which controls Syria, is on a serial killer’s dream rampage across Syria, hacking, hanging, burning, drilling, kicking, sawing, beating, bombing, and shooting the population into submission. Again, go on YouTube and watch the videos. It is pure savagery. Syria is officially, by law, run by the Alawite Muslim population. But, Muslims can’t be racists, so…well, by now you know the Left’s story on dealing with Islamic discrimination. In any case, no one on the Left really says anything about it. But it is a racist place. Incidentally, all of Syria’s Jews were dispossessed and kicked out, despite living there far longer than anyone identified as Arab or Muslim. Syria: Racist place.
A few miles more to the west, the Palestine Authority has once again officially rejected the notion of any Jews ever living in a state of Palestine, even Jews whose families and communities have lived in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years. Adolf Hitler also said that there was no place for Jews in his country. Is Israel, or any other nation for that matter, allowed to say that no Muslims will ever live within its political boundaries? No. But then again, the Palestine Authority is mostly Muslim, and despite a nearly two-to-one Jewish refugee to Arab refugee disparity, Jews are considered the bad guys and Arab Muslims are the purported victims there. Thus, arch-racist PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is given a pass by the Left (Abbas wrote his PhD thesis on the ‘falseness’ of the European Holocaust, even as the Arab ethnic cleansing of nearly a million Jews from across the Middle East was in full swing. Talk about a double standard…), and racist ethnic cleansing is now official policy of the Palestine Authority. That ranks right up there with Exceptional Levels of Racism. By contrast, even appearing to ‘Redline’ a home in America can get a bank, an appraiser, and a realtor in hot water. Palestine Authority: Really racist place.
Over a thousand miles to the west, Bosnia’s constitution explicitly institutionalizes racism. Remember Bosnia, the place where Europeans were once again joyously killing each other in droves just 20 years ago? Well, the Bosnian constitution only allows “constituent peoples,” which are Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats, and Serbs, to serve in elected posts. Jews, Gypsies (“Roma”), and other minorities are classified as “others” in that constitution, and they may not serve in Parliament. Recall that these were the same Bosnians who were subjugated by the Serbs in the 1990s, and who, in a sane world, might have learned a thing or two about the evils of racism from their own recent experience. But recall that they are….Muslims, and therefore above criticism and way off the Left’s radar screen. On our radar screen here, constitutions that officially prevent minorities from serving in government ring the bell on “Most Racist Places,” and thus Bosnia ties Iran, Syria, and the Palestine Authority on its racism index. Bosnia: Racist place.
A few thousand miles more to the west, presidential candidate Mitt Romney is booed several times at the annual NAACP conference. Romney made the pledge to repeal “ObamaCare,” and immediately reaped the heaped scorn of most of the thousands of blacks in the audience. Now, if a mostly white audience booed a black speaker, would that be racist? Well, it would surely be represented by the Left to be racism. If that’s the case, then why isn’t it racist for the NAACP attendees to boo a white speaker?
Even more to the point, NAACP leader Charlotte Stoker-Manning (chair of Women in NAACP ) was quoted this week in BuzzFeed and The Daily Caller with the following golden nuggets: “I believe [Romney’s] vested interests are in white Americans”; and, “You cannot possibly talk about jobs for black people at the level [Romney is] coming from. He’s talking about entrepreneurship, savings accounts — black people can barely find a way to get back and forth from work.”
Charlotte doesn’t appreciate how racist she sounds. Ascribing racist intentions to Romney because of the color of his skin is…racist, pure and simple. Second, why does Charlotte have so little faith in the black community? In the years following Emancipation, blacks thrived. Some of America’s great inventors from the 1870s through the early 1900s were black. During that period, whites elected blacks to higher office across the country; blacks proved themselves to be the intellectual and entrepreneurial equals of their European neighbors. Today, Prince George’s County in Maryland is loaded with middle-income blacks. Entire communities there are black, safe, and thriving, populated by people who have entrepreneurial small businesses and savings accounts. They are breaking with Charlotte’s racist portrait of blacks as incapable dependents.
So, in our one-minute world-wide tour of racism, we see that there are whole nations whose constitutions give sole political power to select ethnic or religious groups. There are groups who abused, robbed, and ethnically cleansed religious minorities from their midst and yet now complain that that same minority found another place to live near them. But despite all this, according to the Left, America has a racism problem. I might agree, because the racism here in America may not be from the usual sources, but it’s racism nonetheless.
Do I think the self-appointed guardians of anti-discrimination are onto it?
Nope.
Neither do you.
Up Next: Why Conservatives Love African Americans…
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.