Back Towards The Locus

A glorious follow-up to this…

How unutterably vile…

Racist thugs armed with bricks and bottles forced more than 100 Romanian Gypsies from their Belfast homes in a wave of attacks that sent them fleeing to the safety of a nearby church.

…

The 20 Romanian families, including one with a 5-day-old baby, first fled to a Belfast church Tuesday after gangs hurling bricks and bottles attacked their homes in a working class neighborhood…

Good commentary from Splintered Sunrise and Garibaldy.

This is a guest-post by Robert Barden of the Phoenix Association  for the Research of Order, Defense and International Executive Security. It was originally written for the Journal of International Security Affairs.

We stand, as ever, at a pivotal moment in American history. Despite idealistic promises of “change”, our enemies only grow in strength, and threats to our nation remain numerous. The Middle East that President Bush so correctly identified[1] remains a fractious, broiling danger, and we face a resurgent Russia, a bellicose China and a Latin America that’s teeming with despots.

Security in the next new age depends upon a unifying strategy that confronts these elements, as well as any others that might arise. It must be bold, prudent and striking; encompassing three primary objectives…

• Stamping our authority.
• Promoting our ideals.
• Gaining a geopolitical vantage.

I propose a defense structure that’s imposing enough to ensure our security, and sufficiently prominent to broadcast our values. It must be built to withstand the new tactics of terrorism, but also altitudinous, and therefore granting us aerial dominance.

Central to our efforts must be Iraq – a nascent democracy that would benefit from investment, global recognition and the employment the construction would necessitate. Cynics may charge us with hegemonical interests, but that overlooks the fact that the structure’s alpine nature will ensure that it covers minimal landmass.

This formation is beneficial to our interests, as well as those of the civilized world. With it, we will adopt an ascendant vantage, and become a towering influence in and beyond the region. Then, truly, we can “make a name for ourselves“[2].

1. Speech by George W. Bush to the OECD (http://tinyurl.com/melz6p)
2. The Journal Of Universal Security And Creation vol. 11

I believe that what we are seeing on the streets of Iran now is a vindication of… neoconservative ideas.

- Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

It’s about time the Obama administration dropped this ludicrous policy of “engagement” with Tehran, and started focusing on halting the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran, as well as building up America’s defences in the face of a highly dangerous rogue regime. That includes moving forward with a global missile defence system as well as actually increasing defence spending instead of cutting it.

- Nile Gardiner, the Heritage Foundation

History repeated itself Tuesday in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg as Russia endorsed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the victor in the disputed Iranian elections…

Russia’s tie to the Iranians exists at a deep, subliminal level. It is rooted in faith that a cowed or misled population can always be manipulated. This faith does not convince Russians that a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands is no danger. But it reassures them that it will inevitably be aimed at the West.

- David Satter, Hudson Institute

President Obama’s unwillingness to offer full-throated support to the people of Iran against their theocratic masters wins kudos from (what must surely be) an unwelcome source: Chas Freeman…

- Max Boot, Council On Foreign Relations

Is it possible that the Iraqi election experience had something to do with Iranian expectations of an election? If critics of the war can for just a moment move beyond their own deeply held opinions about the invasion of Iraq — that this was a war of choice fought on false premises to lower gas prices or whatever — and examine the effect of that war on the region as a whole, they might see a connection to the current turmoil in Iran.

- Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard

Much of Iran wants what they see going on in Iraq.

- Victor David Hanson, Pajamas Media (assumedly gifted with telepathy…)

It has been obvious for some time that the American Left has given up on democracy and human rights as fundamental tenets of American foreign policy. But never before has it been so clear just how ruthless and indifferent they are to the aspirations of those who would be crushed by the boot of despotic regimes.

- Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media

In 1934, Winston Churchill had been warning the world of the dangers of Nazism for two long years. England was still sleeping…England slept, and now it is America that is snoring. Churchill believed that, if contained by the world powers before his military forces grew too large, Hitler could have been defeated without the enormous loss of life that characterized the Second World War.

- Clarendon, Pajamas Media

Is Obama surrending America’s leadership of the free world?

- Editorial, The Washington Times

Oh dear, how inconvenient for the White House…Obama now looks worse than ridiculous…here can be no doubt, incidentally, that the liberation of Iraq and the whole global ferment about democracy in the Islamic world has helped galvanise this slow-moving and uncertain process….in all this ferment, Obama stands exposed. Everywhere his strategy of abasement to tyranny is going belly-up…there is one area where Obama is not being even-handed. It is only towards Israel, the prospective victim of Iranian genocidal and potentially nuclear aggression, that Obama is playing the heavy and making demands that he is making of no other country…Obama seems resolutely blind…Obama is struck dumb…

- Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

…the Obama administration ought to be doing everything possible to delegitimize and destabilize the current Iranian regime.

- Stephen Hayes, The Weekly Standard

…this is what “realism” is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China’s leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats — though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest.

- Robert Kagan, Washington Post

…what stuns me about the commentary over the last couple of days is the perception that the regime has done something shocking with this election. The regime isn’t any different today than it was the day before the election, the days before it gave logistical assistance to the 9/11 suicide hijacking teams, the day before it took al-Qaeda in for harboring after the 9/11 attacks, the day before Khobar Towers, or every day of combat in Iraq…If we were finally going to do what we should long ago have done, and make regime change our policy, I’d be ecstatic.

Andrew “the Iraqis remain ingrates” McCarthy, National Review

It is not at all foolish, however, to suppose that President Bush’s belief that Arabs, like other peoples [UPDATE: e.g., non-Arab Muslims like the Iranians], deserve to be free and his policy of promoting democracy where possible, most notably in next-door Iraq, had a great deal to do with Iranians’ conviction that they, too, can hope to be free.

- John Hinderaker, Powerline

The CIA should be in Iran, helping the dissidents and reformers, and strategizing the removal of the country’s nukes.

- Pam “Kerblam!” Geller, The American Thinker

[On a brighter note, do read Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Larison at the American Conservative.]

I’ve had my A Level exams this week, and haven’t kept up with events inside Iran. What little I’ve caught has been — disorientating. It seems highly likely that the vote was rigged, but I can’t, of course, be certain. I hope that there’s no outside interference, but there’s no way to be sure. I’m stirred by the courage and defiance of the protestors, but I’m fighting the itch to lumber them with weighty meanings and motives of my own.

This is because, like so many others, I regularly adopt the role of a packhorse for my own ego. It’s an insatiable bastard and needs dissection; for now, though, I’m stuck with it.

In lieu of any insight, or particular comprehension, I can only restate my respect for demonstrators. They have various motives and no established chance for reform, but their extraordinary courage in the face (or should that be boot?) of repression displays a will towards a better nation for themselves and their people.

A Telegraph editorial displays silky agility in evading obstacles on the way to presenting the Iraq inquiry as…good…

The Prime Minister’s announcement that Sir John Chilcot will lead an independent review of events from July 2001 to the present should…be welcomed by all who believe that lessons must be learned from this costly foreign policy intervention.

Except, of course, that the inquiry has been established precisely so as to be ineffective.

Mr Brown was surely right to say that the primary purpose of the inquiry must not be to “apportion blame”. The public hunger for identifying those who got us into the mess has faded…

Even if it has — so? When did justice become predicated on public opinion (let alone bare assertions of public opinion)?

…if Lord Butler’s devastating findings failed to shame any politicians or intelligence officials into resignation, it is unlikely that Sir John’s verdict will do so…

If the Butler Review was “devastating” then a piece of lettuce is a “taste sensation“. As Chris Ames puts it: they were “wrong (at best)“.

Perhaps the Telegraph is relieved to find that it can avoid answering questions any serious inquiry would ask. How, for example, did it obtain secret service propaganda? “Exclusively”, no less.

There is no mainstream opposition to Obama. None. Nada. Not a dissenting sausage.

Certainly, there are people who present themselves as opposition. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity squeal away like wounded pigs, but they don’t focus anger on anything significant – just throw up a lot of futile, and somewhat gaseous, wind. The supposedly intellectual Right, too, remains bankrupt. Charles Krauthammer, for example, has been touted as “Obama’s biggest critic“, and yet his strictures only run to the President being too harsh on Israel and exaggerating the crimes of his country. As any rational mind could tell you, these accusations aren’t merely false, they are the antithesis of truth.

To add to this tidal wave of squandered noise, writers who opposed the Bush regime are wasting paper. They don’t have much to say about Obama and, indeed, are more concerned with his opponents. In his Saturday column, Frank Rich warned of a “spillover of…poison into the conservative political establishment“. This came hot on the heels of a Paul Krugman article, in which he too observed “right-wing extremism…systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment“.

Granted, there’s a hell of a lot of nuttiness, but how dangerous is that? There was a fair bit of aggro towards the last incumbent – including often justified, accusations of fascism – but we didn’t, as far as I remember, see any rioting or assassinations. Both columnists cite the recent killings and, yes, Roeder may have been influenced by anti-abortion rhetoric. Von Brunn, however, was singularly crazy. His bigoted mind teemed with fractious, contradictory notions and he had a history of unhinged violence. Rich tries to get around this “lone gunman nutjob” thesis by quoting Beck’s apparent admission that “the pot in America is boiling“, but this misses something: Glenn Beck’s a complete idiot, and the fact that he asserts something doesn’t make it so.

The “rhetoric of purgation and annihilation” isn’t so ubiquitous that people can’t misrepresent their opponents. Rich, for example, castigates “Republican leaders” for their failure to condemn the eliminationists within their movement…

Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

Let’s give that quote in full, shall we?

…let’s give thanks to all the great people like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, William Bennett, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Dennis Miller, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, John Kasich, Michael Steele, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, Shelby Steele, Charles Krauthammer, Michelle Malkin, Fred Barnes and so many others. Let’s give thanks to them for not giving up and staying the course, to bring an end to this false prophet Obama.

So, is Voight imploring Ginrich or Sowell to gun down the President? No – he’s an idiot and thinks that they represent effective political opposition. This is what’s most dangerous: the acres of steaming, sickly waffle that one has to trek through to find any cogent, necessary critique.

Well, Gordon Brown has announced an “independent inquiry” into the Iraq war. Unfortunately, it’s a sick joke, for these reasons among others…

• The inquiry is much too late. Last December the government was claiming that it couldn’t be held while troops remained in Iraq, but it wouldn’t have been released for a year and so they’d have long-since returned. As it is, the Committee will report in the summer of 2010, conveniently after the general election.

• Brown states that the Committee “will not set out to apportion blame or consider issues of civil or criminal liability“. Well, why the hell not!? Even if international law is beyond them, no half (quarter, eighth) decent inquiry could ignore the copious lies, fabrications and deceits.

• The inquiry will be held entirely in private. Hands up everyone who trusts them…

…

(Suspected as much.)

• Among the privy councillors on Brown’s “Committee of Inquiry” is Sir Lawrence Freedman. Now, Freedman may be a wonderful, erm, inquirer, but he also advised Blair on Iraq, as well as contributing to his Chicago speech on foreign policy. That, surely, represents a conflict of interest.

This “enquiry” is an insult to all who’ve suffered over the past six years. I wouldn’t trust it to investigate a wedgie.

From the Committee to Protect Journalists…

Ibrahim Jassam held for more than nine months:

Jassam, a freelance photographer working for Reuters, was detained on September 2, 2008 by U.S. and Iraqi forces during a raid at his home in Mahmoodiya, south of Baghdad. On November 30, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled there was no evidence to hold Jassam and ordered the U.S. military to release him from Camp Cropper near Baghdad, Reuters reported.

U.S. military authorities rejected the court order saying that Jassam “continued to pose a serious threat to the security and stability of Iraq.” In correspondence dated February 9 of this year, Chief of Public Affairs Maj. Neal Fisher told CPJ that Jassam and about 15,000 other detainees would be released in accordance with a “ranking based on their assessed threat” level. Fisher could not provide more detail as to when that would take place.

This is part of an inglorious tradition that’s continued throughout the war…

Over the last five years, dozens of journalists–mostly Iraqis–have been detained by U.S.troops without charge, according to CPJ research. In at least 12 cases in Iraq , journalists were held for prolonged periods. No charges were substantiated in any of the cases.

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I love this series, Vanitas, by the Spanish artist Fernando Vicente.

[Found via Neurophilosophy]