Trump's Big CON: I'll Get Tough With Iran, CONt. (NOT)

"The administration has decided for the second time since January to certify Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement that President Trump has called a 'disastrous' deal, according to U.S. and foreign officials. . .

As a candidate and president, Trump said he would reexamine and possibly kill the Iran nuclear deal signed under President Barack Obama. The historic agreement shut down Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, in some cases for decades, in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.

The administration first certified Iranian compliance in April."

Read the Washington Post, Trump administration plans to certify Iranian compliance with nuclear agreement.

Read also Trump's Big CON: I'll Get Tough With Iran.

Trump's Big CON: Make Saudi Arabia (Which Supports Terrorism) Great Again

Read the Washington Post, How Saudi Arabia played Donald Trump, which stated in part:
 

"For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19?9/11 terrorists. . .

[I]n recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been 'providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.' Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group of foreign fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam. . . .

[And] Saudi money is now transforming European Islam. . .

In Kosovo, the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall describes the process by which a 500-year-old tradition of moderate Islam is being destroyed. . .

Trump’s speech on Islam was nuanced and showed empathy for the Muslim victims of jihadist terrorism (who make up as much as 95 percent of the total, by one estimate). He seemed to zero in on the problem when he said, 'No discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists .?.?. safe harbor, financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment.'

But Trump was talking not of his host, Saudi Arabia, but rather of Iran. Now, to be clear, Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East and supports some very bad actors. But it is wildly inaccurate to describe it as the source of jihadist terror. According to an analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by Leif Wenar of King’s College London, more than 94 percent of deaths caused by Islamic terrorism since 2001 were perpetrated by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists. Iran is fighting those groups, not fueling them. Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.

Trump has adopted the Saudi line on terrorism, which deflects any blame from the kingdom and redirects it toward Iran. The Saudis showered Trump’s inexperienced negotiators with attention, arms deals and donations to a World Bank fund that Ivanka Trump is championing. (Candidate Trump wrote in a Facebook post in 2016, 'Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!') In short, the Saudis played Trump."

Trump's Big CON: He is the Hypocrite-in-Chief (or Coward-in-Chief)

UPDATE VI:  The Republi-CON party itself is hyper-partisan in support or opposition to war/the use of military force.

"In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 22 percent of Republicans supported the U.S. launching missile strikes against Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians.

A new Post-ABC poll finds that 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Syria for the same reason. Only 11 percent are opposed. . .

For context, 37 percent of Democrats back Trump’s missile strikes. In 2013, 38 percent of Democrats supported Obama’s plan. That is well within the margin of error."

Read the Washington Post, Reflexive partisanship drives polling lurch on Syria strikes.

UPDATE V:  Trump isn't the only Republi-CON hypocrite.

"The Republican leaders of the House and the Senate this past week were quick to praise President Trump’s strike on Syria after an apparent chemical weapons attack. But in 2013, when President Barack Obama was weighing a strike, they were opposed."

Read the Washington Post, Ryan and McConnell flip-flop on use of force in Syria to deter chemical weapons.

Read also the Washington Post, Obama aides push back against criticism of inaction on Syria, which noted that Obama "proposed similar airstrikes in Syria to the ones President Donald Trump ordered this week, but were stymied by a Republican-controlled Congress reluctant to go along with the Democratic president’s plan."

UPDATE IV:  It's a different world when you are the one in charge.

"President Trump — who ran a presidential campaign excoriating interventionism, ridiculed the idea of action in Syria, voiced confidence we could leave Bashar al-Assad in place and reintroduced the noxious 1930s “America First” rhetoric — when confronted with the real world threw away all that refuse and launched a retaliatory missile strike on the airfield from which planes carrying sarin gas took off earlier in the week. . .

And that really is the rub: What comes next, and what is our strategy for Syria? It surely seems that contrary to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s remarks just a few days ago, we are not willing to stand aside with the false presumption the Syrian people can decide (in the fog of Sarin gas) the fate of Assad. Eliot Cohen, an ardent critic of the president, was pleased to see some action, but remarked to me that Trump’s missile strike was “Better than nothing. How much better than nothing is not clear, until you know what damage is done.” He added: “For this kind of thing to be effective, it really has to hurt the Syrian regime — and one cannot be sure whether or not it has.”"

Read the Washington Post, Trump launches cruise missile strike, eradicates 'America First'.

Trump should have targeted Assad, but at least he did something.

UPDATE III:  "Trump is now commander in chief. He must decide whether to continue our passive approach and watch continued genocide unfold or whether we chart a new course. Frequent Trump critic Eliot Cohen tweeted, 'Whining is cowardly & counterproductive.'"

Read the Washington Post, The Syrian genocide is now Trump’s problem. 

UPDATE II:  "Assad has continued to dress smart and kill with abandon. His security forces maintain jails where torture is common. His army drops “barrel bombs” on civilians. The extent of the killing, the torture, the attack on doctors and the bombing of hospitals are hard to envision and impossible to accept. Yet this week, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a man of few words and no policies, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said it was no longer U.S. policy to rid Syria of Assad. A day or so later, Assad apparently used nerve gas. . .

No one can say with any certainty that Assad acted after the Trump administration shrugged indifference to his remaining in office. But it is not illogical to think so. The words of a U.S. president matter and are obsessively examined by foreign governments. They assume that these words mean something. They base policy on them. They sometimes kill on account of them. Vagueness is sometimes useful; it can also be deadly.

Read the Washington Post, Trump finally realizes the truth about Syria’s Assad. Now what?

UPDATE:  "As the Western world processed stomach-churning images of dead children, apparently murdered by chemical weapons, the president couldn’t help but take a potshot at his predecessor. 'These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,' Trump said in a statement yesterday afternoon. . .

As he ripped Obama, Trump mentioned neither Russia nor Iran. Both countries are actively propping up Assad’s regime.

The president also offered no path forward, except to say that the savagery, which observers on the ground say killed at least 72 people, “cannot be ignored.” . .

This White House is stuck in permanent campaign mode. . .

This has been a pattern during Trump’s first 75 days in office. When it suits him, the president takes credit for his predecessor’s successes. More often, he points the finger. Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that Obama 'wiretapped' his office is the most memorable illustration, but there are many others. After the botched raid in Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL, for instance, the White House claimed that the operation was authorized by the Obama team."

Read the Washington Post, Trump keeps blaming Obama. Fresh polls show voters don’t buy it., which includes 6 other 2013 tweets that warned Obama not to attack Syria.

In August 2013, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons that killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.

After Obama threatened action, Republi-cons, including The Donald, warned Obama not to attack Syria.

On August 29, 2013, Trumps tweeted "What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval."

On September 5, Trump tweeted "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!"

And on September 7, Trump tweeted"President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day!"

Now Assad is using chemical weapons again.

And Trump's response, blame Obama.

Read the Washington Post, A chemical weapons attack in Syria exposes Trump’s Assad problem.

Of course this should be no surprise, Trump is the 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President.

Trump's Big CON: I'll Get Tough With Iran

"Since former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn warned Iran that it was “on notice” for an illegal missile test and the administration issued exceptionally narrow sanctions, we have heard little — if anything — from the administration about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iranian aggression in the region, Iran’s human rights atrocities or much of anything else concerning the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. (The White House spokesman did issue one of the sort of empty platitudes — that it is “unwavering” in its determination to bring home American Robert Levinson, believed to be held in Iran for 10 years — that conservatives ridiculed during the Obama administration.)

Obviously unconcerned about being on 'notice,' Iran this week yet again conducted a ballistic missile test."

Read the Washington Post, Trump misses an opportunity to defang Iran.

Yesterday's 'Freedom Fighters', Today's Terrorists

UPDATE:  "ISIS has metastasized into something many predicted, but most prayed would never happen: a nihilistic group of militants that has both a safe haven in an anarchic land and cells in Europe able to attack civilian targets.

France, Russia and the coalition of Western countries now sound more bellicose than ever and have begun to act militarily.

But how simple is it to fashion a longer-term military plan?

Here are five inconvenient facts for those who believe there is a simple military solution to Syria.

1. There are very few 'good guys' to back . . .

2. The Kurds? They aren't the solution to everything . . .

3. Turkey is part of the problem, even though it's in NATO . . .

4. Obama's strategy sounds tired and compromised -- but it may be the best option . . .

5. There needs to be a local solution for what is a regional proxy war . . ."

Read CNN, The inconvenient truth: There's no easy military answer to war on ISIS.  

"History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

Gore Vidal famously referred to the USA as the United States of Amnesia. The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put it a little more delicately, quipping, “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”

In order to understand the rise of militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida; in order to wrap our minds around their heinous, abominable attacks on civilians in the U.S., France, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan and many, many more countries, we must rekindle this historical memory.

Where did violent Islamic extremism come from? In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks on Friday, November the 13, this is the question no one is asking — yet it is the most important one of all. If one doesn’t know why a problem emerged, if one cannot find its root, one will never be able to solve and uproot it.

Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be — but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other."

Read Salon, We created Islamic extremism: Those blaming Islam for ISIS would have supported Osama bin Laden in the ’80s, which includes this photo of "President Reagan meeting with the Afghan Mujahideen in the Oval Office in 1983":

Are You An Easy-To-Scare-&-Manipulate ISIS-Bedwetter?

UPDATE IV:  Don't be an ISIS support, don't "feed the terror-panic".

UPDATE III:  "If we want to defeat ISIS, we are going to have to accept some outcomes we don’t like."

Read Slate, Iraq’s Least Worst Options.

UPDATE II:  "When Americans engage in high-profile, attention-seeking acts of blasphemy, they are not joining U.S. military and intelligence forces at the front line; they are complicating and undermining their work. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State thrive on the narrative of the West vs. Islam. The United States and our Muslim allies benefit from the narrative of civilization vs. barbarism. . . The isolation rather than elevation of radical Islamism is essential to the successful conduct of the war against terrorism.

Modern technology has made the job of ideological containment much harder by creating a forum for endless provocation and offense taking, not to mention radicalization and recruitment. The alternative, however, is not to demand that religious people become less religious — a hopeless task when much of the world will become less secular in the 21st century.

What is needed is 'theological work,' according to the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks. Speaking at a recent conference of the Faith Angle Forum, Sacks argued that religion remains 'the most powerful creator of groups, stronger than ideology, race, nationalism.' When monotheism is tied to dualism — the belief that history is a cosmic conflict between the children of light and the children of darkness — it becomes 'the most dangerous doctrine ever invented,' allowing people to 'commit evil with a clean conscience.'

Both Judaism and Christianity have made progress over the centuries in weeding out dualism — reinterpreting their violent scriptural texts and finding resources of 'respect for the other.' For Christianity, this transition wasn’t easy, involving the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. But this bloody, chaotic process eventually produced a flowering of powerful ideas in the 17th century: the social contract, human rights and liberty of conscience.

Islam is a younger faith, going through a similar internal struggle. Sacks believes that serious, sympathetic dialogue among the Abrahamic faiths can 'speak to our better angels' and challenge the violent narrative of sibling rivalry. He may prove naive, but it is certainly a better strategy than mockery. "

Read the Washington Post, The violent narrative of religious rivalry.

UPDATE:  "Republicans who suggest [that ISIS is a grave threat to the U.S.] have forgotten Christianity and Judaism’s own history of violence."

Read Slate, ISIS Isn’t the New Soviet Threat.

Some people never miss an "opportunity to feed the terror-panic."

Read Slate, The ISIS-Bedwetter Watch Continues.

Read also, The New York Times, Struggling to Gauge ISIS Threat, Even as U.S. Prepares to Act, which notes that "[s]ome officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians . . . 'with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus on mass transit systems — all on the basis of no corroborated information.'"

Without fear, anger and hatred, where would the Republi-cons be.

Doing the Devil's Work and Supporting Middle East Dictators

UPDATE V:  "A new book detailing the brutal torture and murder meted out by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad serves as a harrowing reminder of the true nature of the man Russia is now fighting for and wants the West to prop up."

Read the Daily Mail, 'People had deep cuts, some had their eyes gouged out, their teeth broken': New book reveals the grotesque torture and murder meted out by Syrian dictator Assad – the man Russia's Putin is helping to keep in power.  

WARNING; The article includes graphic photos.

UPDATE IV: I heard our resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators supporting Middle East dictators again. I wonder how he can call himself a Christian but defend "hundreds of killings, arrests and torture cases by the government of President Bashar al-Assad."

Read The New York Times, Syrian Official in Hama Resigns to Protest Bloodshed.

I guess it is all part of his religious mythology.

UPDATE III: When you hear our resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators and other so-called Christians bemoan the threat to Israel from the unrest in Syria, ask them if they know the story of 15-year-old Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, who refused "interrogators demand . . . [to] proclaim strongman Bashar Assad as his 'beloved' president." Instead al-Sharei "chanted an often-heard slogan from anti-regime street protests calling for 'freedom and the love of God and our country.'" His reward:

"Inside a filthy detention center in Damascus, eight or nine interrogators repeatedly bludgeoned a skinny teenager whose hands were bound and who bore a bullet wound on the left side of his chest. They struck his head, back, feet and genitals until he was left on the floor of a cell, bleeding from his ears and crying out for his mother and father to help him."

Read the Washington Post, Witness saw teen severely beaten in Syrian jail for failing to praise president.

Support of evil, brutal dictators is no long-term solution for peace in the Middle East.


UPDATE II: When you hear our resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators and other so-called Christians bemoan the threat to Israel from the unrest in Syria, ask them if they know the story of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb.

"He was the 13-year-old Syrian boy who tagged along at an antigovernment protest in the town of Saida on April 29. He was arrested that day, and the police returned his mutilated body to his family a month later. While in custody, he had apparently been burned, beaten, lacerated and given electroshocks. His jaw and kneecaps were shattered. He was shot in both arms. When his father saw the state of Hamza’s body, he passed out."

To learn more, read The New York Times, The Depravity Factor, which notes that Middle East peace "cannot be found without acknowledging and wrestling with a government’s moral character."

Support of evil, brutal dictators is no long-term solution.


UPDATE: More fact-free fantasies! Is there any need to respond to his statement today, which a guest of his made on a past show, that the Earth's rotation creates oil deposits?

Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) is at it again, preaching fear anger and hatred with fact-free fantasies, but don't be duped.

Yesterday he was bragging that he is always right and challenged callers to cite otherwise. A few of his usual sycophants to flatter him and agree with him. I called to prove he is a fraud and he refused to take the call.

Of course, he denied the missile nonsense, and never discussed his prior claims that God talks through an oil well.

It is impossible to discuss his birther delusions. (It is clear that he hasn't even read the Congressional Research Service that would agree that Obama is a "natural born citizen," (the Congressional Research Service is a part of the Library of Congress, providing professional, objective and non-partisan public policy research to members of Congress and their staffers. The writer of the memorandum is a qualified constitutional attorney who has summarized the historical and legal material with references, showing, by contrast, how shoddy the birther arguments are) (this memorandum explains why even Republi-CON Congressmen/women refuse to join the Birthers), and he hasn't talked to Barbara Nelson, who "specifically remembers his birth" because she spoke with the obstetrician who delivered [Obama] shortly after his birth.)

And he continues his slander by innuendo, one example -- Michelle Obama did not surrender her license to practice law, another example -- denying the theory of evolution.

But lately he has been weaving a myth to link Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood. (During his first effort he couldn't even pronounce Mubarak's name correctly.)

His support of Middle East dictators and summary police executions for the benefit of his religious myths is the clearest indication that the devil resides in his heart and works his magical tongue to mislead you regarding the real reason for the Egyptian uprising: Khaled Said, 28, who was beaten to death by Egyptian police in June 2010:

"Police officers at an Internet cafe below his apartment were exchanging a video that showed officers divvying up seized narcotics and cash. Relatives think the clip was delivered via Bluetooth to Said's computer by accident. The young man shared it with friends, who forwarded it to others.

Two of the detectives implicated in the video approached Said outside his building, in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria, about noon June 6. One grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him inside the Internet cafe.

The officers smashed Said's head against a marble table repeatedly, until the owner of the shop asked them to take it outside. They then dragged Said inside a nearby building where the two kicked him and smashed his head against stone steps, witnesses later told relatives.

The next day, Said's mother was notified that her son was at the morgue. The cause of death, she was told, was severe cardiovascular asphyxiation caused by a high level of drugs in his system. The initial police report received by the family said Said had apparently died after he swallowed a bag that contained marijuana.

Finding that account suspicious, relatives bribed a guard at the morgue to take a photo of the corpse. It showed Said's skull had been cracked and his face disfigured.

After local prosecutors expressed little interest in pursuing the case, Kassem, who was a father figure to Said, began holding news conferences. Said's cousins created a page on Facebook to expose what they called police brutality. "

"Since last June, the Khaled Said Facebook page has attracted more than 473,000 members and has become a tool not only for organizing the protests but also for providing regular updates about other cases of police abuse. "

Their efforts to expose police brutality took hold after the Tunisian uprising, which "started when a young merchant, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire after the police confiscated his produce cart Dec. 14, 2010. Following that, demonstrations, riots and strikes constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia for the past three decades."

Those who support Middle East dictators and summary police executions do the devil's work.

America's Addicition to Oil, and Support of Middle East Dictators

UPDATE II:  Now would be a good time to increase the federal gas tax by $1/gallon, so that we don't become complacent about the real cost of oil.

"We are witnessing a historic fall in the price of oil, down more than 50 percent in less than a year. When a similar drop happened in the 1980s, the Soviet Union collapsed. What will it mean now? . .

Many American experts and commentators have hoped for low oil prices as a way to deprive unsavory regimes around the globe of easy money. Now it’s happening, but at a speed that might produce enormous turmoil and uncertainty in an already anxious world."

Read the Washington Post, From Russia to Iran, the consequences of the global oil bust.  

UPDATE: Why not increase the federal gas tax by $1/gallon?

"The beauty of the tax — as a substitute for a high world price — is that the incentive for fuel efficiency remains, but the extra money collected at the pump goes right back into the U.S. economy (and to the citizenry through the revenue-neutral FICA rebate) instead of being shipped overseas to Russia, Venezuela, Iran and other unsavories.

Which is a geopolitical coup. Cheap oil is the most effective and efficient instrument known to man for weakening these oil-dependent miscreants.

And finally, lower consumption reduces pollution and greenhouse gases. The reduction of traditional pollutants, though relatively minor, is an undeniable gain. And even for global warming skeptics, there’s no reason not to welcome a benign measure that induces prudential reductions in CO2 emissions.

The unexpected and unpredicted collapse of oil prices gives us a unique opportunity to maintain our good luck through a simple, revenue-neutral measure to help prevent the perennial price spikes that follow the fool’s paradise of ultra-cheap oil.

We’ve blown this chance at least three times since the 1980s. As former French foreign minister Jean François-Poncet said a quarter-century ago, 'It’s hard to take seriously that a nation has deep problems if they can be fixed with a 50-cent-a-gallon' — 90 cents in today’s money — 'gasoline tax.' Let’s not blow it again."

Read the Washington Post, Raise the gas tax. A lot.

Would you support a $4/gallon gas tax?

Read the Washington Post, Can Americans handle the truth about gas prices?

Haters Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate Any Deal

UPDATE:  "'There are three groups of people in the world who are against the deal: War-mongering Republicans in the U.S., Netanyahu and hard-liners in Iran.'

[But g]ive Bibi some credit: It’s hard to imagine many politicians who could suffer a historic defeat on their signature political issue, be blamed for bringing it about, and still somehow benefit."

Read Slate, Bibi Netanyahu Was the Iran Deal’s Most Effective Salesman."

"Conservative opposition to Obama’s expected deal with Iran is based on a critique of Obama’s peculiar failings. He is naive in the face of evil, desperate for agreement, more willing to help his enemies than his friends. The problem is that conservatives have made this same diagnosis of every American president for 70 years. They do not merely oppose this deal, they oppose all of them, because they believe evil regimes cannot be negotiated with. Their analysis of the Iran negotiations is not an analysis at all, but an impulse.

None of this is to say that the Obama administration has handled Iran the correct way. Even if it has, the agreement is unsatisfactory for the same basic reasons that every treaty with a brutal regime is unsatisfactory. The truth neither Obama nor his critics will acknowledge is that there probably isn’t any potential deal that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. On the other hand, bombing Iran is also unlikely to work, as is maintaining effective international sanctions for years on end. The least bad option will probably be, in the end, having to rely on deterrence to stop Iran. . .

But the conservative response to Obama’s negotiations is the expression of a pathological inability to grapple with the limits of military power at all."

Read New York Magazine, Conservatives Hate the Iran Deal Because They Hate All Deals.

Read also, Vox, The Iran deal began with George W. Bush, which notes that " the deal, so partisan today, follows a set of principles that even George W. Bush embraced."

Moreover, after the Republ-con's treason, no better deal was possible.

Republi-cons always prefer war for their selfish political reasons

47 Traitorous Republi-CONs Just Gave Iran the Nuclear Bomb

UPDATE VI:  Read Slate, Why Is the U.S. Backing a War That’s Helping al-Qaida.

What a mess!

UPDATE V:  "If you study Republican behavior over the past quarter-century, you’ll find that the image of conservative lawmakers standing resolutely for American strength and unity is a myth. Republicans support wars launched by Republican presidents. When Democratic presidents undertake wars or negotiations, Republicans generally attempt to sabotage them. In fact, Republicans often side with our enemies. . .

If a political party wanted to tear America apart, weaken its position in the world, reduce our capacity to influence events, and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what the Republican Party has done under Democratic presidents. "

Read Slate,  Foreign Saboteurs.

UPDATE IV:  "More sanctions are unlikely to produce a better nuclear agreement."

Read The Atlantic, What's the Alternative to Obama's Iran Deal.  

UPDATE III:  "Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?

In 2002, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in Afghanistan (the Taliban regime). In 2003, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in the Arab world (Saddam Hussein).  But because we failed to erect a self-sustaining pluralistic order, which could have been a durable counterbalance to Iran, we created a vacuum in both Iraq and the wider Sunni Arab world. That is why Tehran’s proxies now indirectly dominate four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Sana and Baghdad."

Read The New York Times, Go Ahead, Ruin My Day.

Read also, Was It Worth It?

UPDATE II:  Of course, there is always war, which the chickenhawks and warmongers want.

Beware though, "[i]f the United States attempts to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity by air, the mission would not be like Israel’s 1981 single-day strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. A U.S. attack would have to target multiple complexes, and planners would need to prepare the battlefield by destroying air defense radars, interceptors and much of Iran’s air force. Such an operation could require hundreds of sorties over several days.

Iran would probably respond by threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially touching off a global oil crisis. The U.S. Navy would be forced to patrol the Persian Gulf and possibly undertake a lengthy operation to destroy Iran’s navy and its arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles.

Iran would be unlikely to capitulate even with its air force and navy out of commission. It would probably turn to terrorism to strike at U.S. targets around the globe. If such attacks were successful, they would generate enormous public pressure to escalate the conflict, perhaps including demands for regime change in Tehran. That, in turn, could mean yet another U.S. ground war in the Middle East, this time against a nation of more than 80 million. As we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, the costs of such a conflict could be measured in decades, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties and trillions of dollars. Such escalation is not a certainty, but it is a real possibility."

Read the Washington Post, Don’t sugarcoat the costs of war with Iran.

UPDATE:  What the Senator Cotton did defied "the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act [see the Logan Act] . . . [It was a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, [Cotton] should know better. . . I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed. . . The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran."

So say retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, "now a senior advisor with National Security Network, a Washington, DC-based foreign policy think tank."

Read the Washington Post, Tom Cotton picked apart by Army general over ‘mutinous’ Iran letter.

Republ-cons sent a letter of support to their brother Iranian hardliners "in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority’s capacity to govern." 

It weakened the U.S. and will undermine sanctions.

Read the Washington Post, The true scandal of the GOP senators’ letter to Iran. 

Read also Slate, An Open Letter to 47 Republican Senators of the United States of America from Iran’s Hard-Liners, stating they "look forward to working with [the Republ-cons] in the future on other matters of common interest, such as prayer, capital punishment, and troops in Iraq."

Is Palestinian Terrorism 'Justified'?

UPDATE II:  "Six months ago, after Vladimir Putin annexed part of Ukraine, President Obama authorized sanctions against Russia. 'The basic principles that govern relations between nations in Europe and around the world must be upheld in the 21st century,' said Obama. 'That includes respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity—the notion that nations do not simply redraw borders or make decisions at the expense of their neighbors simply because they are larger or more powerful.'

The United States has defended that principle in Ukraine and Iraq: You can’t use force to grab territory or change borders. But Israel, a U.S. ally, continues to violate the rule. This weekend, Israel claimed yet more Palestinian territory: nearly 1,000 acres, its biggest land grab in 30 years.

The land isn’t in Gaza, where Hamas has been firing rockets and digging tunnels. It’s in the West Bank, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been preaching nonviolence and trying to negotiate a peace agreement. Israel controls more than 40 percent of the West Bank, using its army to facilitate the occupation of this land by Jewish settlers. This is land never granted to Israel under any agreement. It’s theft. . .

This isn’t a Putin-style invasion or an ISIS-level bloodbath. But it’s offensive for many reasons. It’s a slap at the United States, which stood with Israel in its latest war in Gaza, and at European countries that cut Israel lots of slack during the lopsided conflict. It’s a thumb in the eye of Secretary of State John Kerry, who keeps trying to restart peace talks. And it discredits Abbas, sending every Palestinian a message that negotiation is for suckers."

Read Slate, Why Israel Is No Better Than Russia.  

UPDATE:  "The Middle East has been trapped for decades between repressive dictatorships and illiberal opposition groups — between Hosni Mubarak and al-Qaeda — leaving little space in between. The dictators try to shut down all opposition movements, and the ones that survive are vengeful, religious and violent. . .

In the Palestinian territories, Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is indeed a moderate. But notice that the Israeli government and the West have happily postponed elections in the West Bank year after year — because they know full well who would win. Moderates don’t do well in an atmosphere of despair and war.

Perhaps the biggest stretch of all is the idea that the moderates could win in Syria. It is one thing to believe that moderates can organize well, make their case and get to the polls. But the Bashar al-Assad regime turned its guns on the opposition from the start. In that circumstance, the groups that are going to gain power are those that will fight back with ferocity. . .

And who are those people? After the Syrian struggle began, the Associated Press reported that the opposition to the Assad regime could be characterized as 'poor, pious and rural.' Describing these people in Aleppo, it said, 'They frame the fight in a religious context and speak of martyrdom as something they wish for.' University of Oklahoma scholar Joshua Landis points out that of the four largest and most effective rebel forces in Syria, not one espouses democracy. . .

Asserting that the moderates in Syria could win is not tough foreign policy talk, it is a naive fantasy with dangerous consequences."

Read the Washington Post, The fantasy of Middle Eastern moderates. 

In answering the question, does it matter that Zionist paramilitary groups used terrorism "to drive Britain from the region in the 1940s."

Read The New York Times, Israeli Columnist Is Fired for Writing That Palestinian Terrorism Is 'Justified', which quotes "Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, who during a 1998 TV interview was asked what he would do if he were born a Palestinian. His response, immediately controversial, was: 'If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups.'"

The Mess That is the Middle East

UPDATE IV:  Of course maybe "[t]he conflict raging in Gaza is different this time. . .

'This is unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict,' says CNN's Ali Younes, an analyst who has covered the region for decades. 'Most Arab states are actively supporting Israel against the Palestinians -- and not even shy about it or doing it discreetly.'

It's a 'joint Arab-Israeli war consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia against other Arabs -- the Palestinians as represented by Hamas.'"

Read CNN, This time, Gaza fighting is 'proxy war' for entire Mideast.  

UPDATE III:  Two years later, Israel loses again because:

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Read also Slate, Israel’s Deadly Gambits, which notes that "[t]he Israeli government seems to have forgotten how to think strategically; at the very least, they have a self-destructive tendency to overplay their hands. . .

[T]he Iron Dome anti-missile shield, whose production [Obama] greatly accelerated, has shot down the few dozen—out of several hundred—Hamas rockets that would have exploded in Israeli cities.

As a result, Hamas’ rockets—most of which have landed in the middle of nowhere—have killed just one Israeli, while Israeli air strikes have killed more than 200 Palestinians and wounded another 1,500-plus, most of them civilians, many of them children, including the four children whose deaths while playing on the beach were captured by photographers on the scene.

Fatality ratios mean little up to a point, but a 200-to-1 ratio seems awfully disproportionate. Israeli bombs have struck 1,500 targets in Gaza so far—another remarkable fact: Who knew there were 1,500 militarily legitimate targets in that tiny, impoverished strip of land?"

UPDATE II:  As I first stated more than three years ago, "[t]he reasonable solution has always been obvious: to draw a borderline somewhere between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea that both sides, however grudgingly, could live with. Yet the conflict casts a shadow over world peace, and continues to fester."

Read The New York Times, The Elephant in the Map Room, which notes that"we need to look at the conflict with fresh eyes. For Jewish Israelis, the Biblical relation with the land of their forefathers is crucial to why they're there. But in his controversial book 'The Invention of the Jewish People,' Shlomo Sand argues that Judaism used to be a proselytizing religion like Christianity or Islam, and that consequently many of today's Jewish Israelis are descendants of converts, without an ancestral link to Eretz-Israel. Inversely, many of the Palestinians may just be the descendants of the large Jewish community who remained to toil the land, even after the destruction of the Temple and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in the first and second centuries, respectively - and who gradually converted to Islam in the centuries after the Arab conquest."

UPDATE: A new foreign policy for the Middle East:

Some, no make that many, took issue with my frank discussion of the options in the Middle East. As I see it, kill them all (one side or the other, right-wing radical propose killing all the Muslims and letting Allah sort it out, but not very Christian if you ask me), relocating one party to someplace outside the Middle East, such as South Florida (again either party makes no difference for the discussion cause it ain't gonna happen), or relocation within the current borders of Israel, I suggest Palestinians to the north.

Of course the discussion wasn't well received. But I think most people fail to understand the situation in the Middle East. As luck would have it, Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist sums it up well in his article today, Don’t Try This at Home:

"Where to begin? Palestinians are now divided between the West Bank and Gaza, with a secular Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank and a fundamentalist Hamas government based in Gaza. But Hamas is further divided between a military and political wing, and the political wing is further divided between a Gaza-based leadership and a Damascus-based leadership, with the latter taking orders from both Syria and Iran.

Are you still with me?

Best I can tell, the Palestinians from Gaza are simultaneously negotiating a cease-fire with Israel in Cairo, pursuing war-crimes charges against Israel in Europe, digging new tunnels in the Sinai to smuggle more rockets into Gaza to hit Tel Aviv and trying to raise money for reconstruction from Iran. Meanwhile, the West Bank Palestinian leaders are busy publicly collecting food and blankets to help all those Palestinian civilians brutalized by the Israeli incursion into Gaza, while privately demanding to know from senior Israeli officials why they wimped out and didn’t wipe Hamas in Gaza off the face of earth — casualties be damned.

Israel, meanwhile, has a government in which the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister each has a different peace plan, war strategy and cease-fire conditions for Gaza, and the foreign minister and defense minster are running against each other in Israel’s election on Tuesday. Speaking of that election, a whole new party, Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, which has been accused of having “fascist,” viciously anti-Arab leanings, appears headed to make the biggest gains and possibly become the kingmaker of Israel’s next government. The other day, the Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, was quoted in the newspaper Haaretz as criticizing Lieberman as a lamb in hawk’s clothing, asking: “When has he ever shot anyone?”

How did this conflict get so fragmented? For starters, it’s gone on way too long. The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel’s crazy settlements from Palestinian villages that a Palestinian could fly from Jerusalem to Paris quicker than he or she could drive from Jenin, here in the northern West Bank, to Hebron in the south.

Another reason is that every idea has been tried and has failed. For the Palestinians, Pan-Arabism, Communism, Islamism have all come and gone, with none having delivered statehood or prosperity. As a result, more and more Palestinians have fallen back on family, clan, town and tribal loyalties. In Israel, Peace Now’s two-state solution was blown up with the crash of the Oslo peace accords, the rising Palestinian birthrate made any plans to annex the West Bank a mortal threat to Israel’s Jewish character, and the rockets that followed Israel’s withdrawals from both Lebanon and Gaza made a mockery of those who said unilateral pullouts were the solution.

All of this has led to a resurgence of religiosity. According to Haaretz, the following questions were posed by a well-known rabbi in one of the pamphlets distributed by the Israeli Army’s Office of Chief Rabbi before the latest Gaza fighting: “Is it possible to compare today’s Palestinians to the Philistines of the past? And if so, is it possible to apply lessons today from the military tactics of Samson and David? A comparison is possible because the Philistines of the past were not natives and had invaded from a foreign land.”

Who in the world would want to try to repair this? I’d rather herd cats, or become John Thain’s image adviser, or have a colonoscopy, or become chairman of the “bad bank” that President Obama might create to hold all the toxic mortgages. Surely, any of those would be more fun. If Mitchell is still up for it, well, then God bless him. My next column will look at some ways we might just start over. "

Here is my suggestion, rearrange the current borders as such:

In short, New Palestine to the north, New Israel to the south, exact borders TBD, BIG wall in between.

Better hurry, before the next war starts.

Invasion and Occupation or Ignoring and Hoping Are Not the Only U.S. Middle East Options

UPDATE V:  Republi-cons incoherent Syria policy: 'we don't want to take out the guy who gasses children because someone bad might take over.  "So, just to recap, Rand Paul says no diplomacy, but we can’t do nothing, but no to the president’s plan and no to regime change."  Watch the Colbert Report, America's Got Serious Reservations About This - Syria - Rand Paul.    

UPDATE IV:  "I keep reading about how Iraq was the bad war and Libya was the good war and Afghanistan was the necessary war and Bosnia was the moral war and Syria is now another necessary war. Guess what! They are all the same war.

They are all the story of what happens when multisectarian societies, most of them Muslim or Arab, are held together for decades by dictators ruling vertically, from the top down, with iron fists and then have their dictators toppled, either by internal or external forces. And they are all the story of how the people in these countries respond to the fact that with the dictator gone they can only be governed horizontally — by the constituent communities themselves writing their own social contracts for how to live together as equal citizens, without an iron fist from above. . .

In short, the problem now across the Arab East is not just poison gas, but poisoned hearts. Each tribe or sect believes it is in a rule-or-die struggle against the next, and when everyone believes this, it becomes self-fulfilling. . .

But, please do spare me the lecture that America’s credibility is at stake here. Really? Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting since the 7th century over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad’s spiritual and political leadership, and our credibility is on the line? Really? Their civilization has missed every big modern global trend — the religious Reformation, democratization, feminism and entrepreneurial and innovative capitalism — and our credibility is on the line? I don’t think so.

We’ve struggled for a long time, and still are, learning to tolerate 'the other.' That struggle has to happen in the Arab/Muslim world, otherwise nothing we do matters."

Read The New York Times, Same War, Different Country. 

UPDATE III:  "President Obama’s anticipated strikes against Syria have some on the Christian right proclaiming Biblical prophecy and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Easy there, writes scholar Candida Moss, we’ve been here before."

Read The Daily Beast, Sorry, Evangelicals, Syria Will Not Spur the Second Coming, which explains "some problems with the theory" and notes that "[t]he conquest of Damascus already happened. At least seven times," and "Christians have been predicting the Second Coming and end of the world since the Apostle Paul."

UPDATE II:  And don't forget to study up on those end time delusions.

Read Mother Jones, Oh Magog! Why End-Times Buffs Are Freaking Out About Syria.  

UPDATE:  Forget 'shock and awe.  "The right strategy is 'arm and shame.'"

Read The New York Times, Arm and Shame.

"Iraq was unquestionably costly and painful to the United States — in dollars, in political comity and, above all, in lives, both of Iraqis and Americans. It hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped. Yet in the absence of U.S. intervention, Syria is looking like it could produce a much worse humanitarian disaster and a far more serious strategic reverse for the United States. . .

The tragedy of the post-Iraq logic embraced by President Obama is that it has ruled out not just George W. Bush-style invasions but also the more modest intervention used by the Clinton administration to prevent humanitarian catastrophes and protect U.S. interests in the 1990s. As in the Balkans — or Libya — the limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda. It could still save the larger region from ruin.

The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons. It is that opponents of that war, starting with Obama, have learned the wrong ones."

Read the Washington Post, What the Iraq war taught me about Syria. 

An Iraq What-Might-Have-Been

UPDATE: An article sure to get the Bushies riled.

"Who would have predicted it? Barack Obama has turned out to be so much more adept at implementing George W. Bush’s foreign policy than Bush was, but he is less adept at implementing his own. The reasons, though, are obvious.

In his own way, President Obama has brought the country to the right strategy for Bush’s “war on terrorism.” It is a serious, focused combination of global intelligence coordination, targeted killing of known terrorists and limited interventions — like Libya — that leverage popular forces on the ground and allies, as well as a judicious use of U.S. power, so that we keep the costs and risks down.

Read The New York Times, Barack Kissinger Obama, which notes:

"No doubt George Bush and Dick Cheney thought that both Iraq and Afghanistan would be precisely such focused, limited operations. Instead, they each turned out to be like a bad subprime mortgage — a small down payment with a huge balloon five years down the road. They thought they would be able to “flip” the house before the balloon came due. But partly because of their incompetence and lack of planning, it took much longer to flip the house to new owners and the price America paid was huge. Iraq may still have a decent outcome — I hope so, and it would be important — but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.

So let’s be clear: Up to now, as a commander in chief in the war on terrorism, Obama and his national security team have been so much smarter, tougher and cost-efficient in keeping the country safe than the “adults” they replaced. It isn’t even close, which is why the G.O.P.’s elders have such a hard time admitting it."

The remainder of the article is worth reading.

A sad day for our resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators.

"The death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is the latest victory for a new American approach to war: few if any troops on the ground, the heavy use of air power, including drones, and, at least in the case of Libya, a reliance on allies." Read The New York Times, Another Victory for a New Approach to War.

It is also interesting to compare the efforts in Libya to Iraq.

Again, it reaffirms my support for an openly debated and conducted assassination policy for rogue dictators.

May You Live in Interesting Times

"HOLD onto your hats and your wallets. Since the end of the cold war, the global system has been held together to a large degree by four critical ruling bargains. Today all four are coming unstuck at once and will need to be rebuilt. Whether and how that rebuilding happens — beginning in the U.S. — will determine a lot about what’s in your wallet and whether your hat flies off.

Now let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once — when the world has never been more interconnected — is mind-boggling. We are again 'present at the creation' — but of what?"

Read The New York Times, All Together Now.

What Next in Libya?

UPDATE X: "Libya, in the wake of this damage, was a risk for President Obama. There were many reasons for not intervening — a third war in a Muslim country was not what America needed and the homegrown quality of the Arab Spring has been central to its moral force. But to allow Muammar el-Qaddafi to commit a massacre foretold in Benghazi would have been unforgivable.

The intervention has been done right — with the legality of strong United Nations backing, full support from America’s European allies, and quiet arming of the rebels. The Libyan people have been freed from a crazed tyranny. Unlike in Iraq, burdens were shared: America flew the intelligence missions and did the refueling while the French, British, Dutch and others did most of the bombing."

Read The New York Times, Score One for Interventionism.


UPDATE IX: "It’s remarkable how reluctant Obama’s opponents are to acknowledge that despite all the predictions that his policy of limited engagement could never work, it actually did." Read the Washington Post, Obama can't win for winning in Libya.


UPDATE VIII: "The fall of Tripoli is a foreign policy triumph for which President Barack Obama won’t hold a ticker-tape parade: no flight suit, no chest-thumping, no 'Mission Accomplished' banner.

But the low-profile, inexpensive ouster of Col. Muammar Qadhafi marks an important milestone for the administration, foreign policy analysts say — perhaps the most concrete evidence that the more modest American foreign policy approach that has become Obama’s hallmark and perhaps his biggest area of contrast with his more interventionist predecessor might actually work."

Read Politico, Libya a victory for 'leading from behind'?


UPDATE VII: And how was it done? Read The New York Times, Surveillance and Coordination [and Training] With NATO Aided Rebels.


UPDATE VI: Mission accomplished in Libya? Read The New York Times, Mystery of Qaddafi’s Whereabouts Looms Large in Conflict’s Endgame.

I guess the Republi-cons will be for the war again, after they were against it, after they were for it.

It is also interesting to compare the efforts in Libya to Iraq.

And it reaffirms my support for an openly debated and conducted assassination policy for rogue dictators.


UPDATE V: "Despite a fumbled communication strategy, President Obama is actually taking a prudent course in trying to undermine Qaddafi." Read The New York Times, The Defection Track., which suggests:

"There are three plausible ways he might go, which inside the administration are sometimes known as the Three Ds. They are, in ascending order of likelihood: Defeat — the ragtag rebel army vanquishes his army on the battlefield; Departure — Qaddafi is persuaded to flee the country and move to a villa somewhere; and Defection — the people around Qaddafi decide there is no future hitching their wagon to his, and, as a result, the regime falls apart or is overthrown.

The result is a strategy you might call Squeeze and See."

UPDATE IV: "Libya is just the first of many hard choices we’re going to face in the 'new' Middle East." Read The New York Times, Looking for Luck in Libya, which included this observation:

"There is an old saying in the Middle East that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. That thought came to my mind as I listened to President Obama trying to explain the intervention of America and its allies in Libya — and I don’t say that as criticism. I say it with empathy. This is really hard stuff, and it’s just the beginning."

UPDATE III: Why are Republi-cons undermining U.S. military and foreign policy objectives, after year of incessant moral blackmail regarding Iraq?

The U.S. has the power to do something constructive, and Gaddafi is good reason to try it.

He reaffirms my support for an openly debated and conducted assassination policy for rogue dictators.


UPDATE II: Damned when he didn't, and damned when he did, from the Washington Post:




UPDATE: "President Obama's bombing of Libya without congressional authorization or debate puts us on a dangerous path. A minimum standard for transparency in government is that the House and the Senate go on the record for or against a new war." Read the Christian Science Monitor, If Obama can bomb Libya, a President Palin can bomb Iran without Congress's OK.

"In the West’s preferred chain of events, airstrikes enable a democratic revolution. One expert expects the opposite." Read The New York Times, Hopes for a Qaddafi Exit, and Worries of What Comes Next.

Why? "[B]ecause there are two kinds of states in the Middle East: 'real countries' with long histories in their territory and strong national identities (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran); and those that might be called 'tribes with flags,' or more artificial states with boundaries drawn in sharp straight lines by pens of colonial powers that have trapped inside their borders myriad tribes and sects who not only never volunteered to live together but have never fully melded into a unified family of citizens. They are Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The tribes and sects that make up these more artificial states have long been held together by the iron fist of colonial powers, kings or military dictators. They have no real 'citizens' in the modern sense. Democratic rotations in power are impossible because each tribe lives by the motto 'rule or die' — either my tribe or sect is in power or we’re dead." Read The New York Times, Tribes With Flag.

Israel Should Make Peace With the Palestinians ASAP

UPDATE II: "Welcome to the Arab Spring, Arab-Israeli chapter. Commentators sometimes talked as if the Facebook revolutionaries had forgotten about the Palestinian issue. Not so: The 'dignity revolution' is connecting, as in last week’s frightening riot at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, with the ever-flowing font of Arab shame and rage toward the Jewish state. Bidding for regional leadership is Erdogan, who thundered Monday, 'Israel cannot play with our dignity.' . .

When you strip away the posturing on all sides, what’s happening is that Israel now lives in an Arab neighborhood where public opinion matters. For decades, Israelis have dismissed the 'Arab street,' as if presidents and kings were the only decisive voices. That approach worked so long as dictators could suppress popular opinion, but no more. . .

[The] bottom line on the collision of the new Arab Spring and the old animosities: Israelis may ultimately be more secure in a world of Arab democracies. But it will be a world where compromise is part of survival."

Read the Washington Post, Israel’s new problem with the Arab Street.


UPDATE: "If you think Congress is obstructionist on the debt ceiling, look at the Middle East. But there’s hope." Read The New York Times, Seeking Balance on the Mideast.

"The struggle today across the Arab world is between the 'I will make you afraid' leadership and the 'We are not afraid anymore' citizens." Read The New York Times, The New Hama Rules.

The God of Republi-CONism Flip-Flops

Republi-cons were for the war in Libya, before they were against it, just ask Rusty. Read The Atlantic, For the War Before He Was Against It.

Shame on Our Resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators

Today, our resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators and his so-called Christian Church will host a professional purveyor of hate.

This evil man makes a fine living (as part of the Fear, Anger, Hatred Industry) traveling around the country to speak to naive church groups, making false, biased, ridiculous, and laughable claims, and playing on Holocaust guilty to encourage a "one-sided foreign policy in favor of Israel and continued wars with Muslim countries."

Although his claim to be running for the Israeli Knesset is not false, he is considered a fringe candidate with no chance of election, like our local Rick Outzen for President.

Shame on Our Resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators for hosting this man.

The Middle East Mess and the Hope for Democracy

"Egypt is messy, and Islamists are gaining ground. But keep your seat. Young democracies are always chaotic." Read The New York Times, Democracy Is Mess.