By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s amusing to see all the passionate and incorrigible haters of Cheney to have a jab at him even “posthumously” Out of Office. Emily Bazelon on Slate Magazine speaks for all these haters but the context with ‘revenge’ belies what she says about Cheney. The latter did not say at anytime that the documents on torture should be ‘declassified,’ but once they were, they should not have been declassified selectively without also revealing the positive aspects of the harsh interrogations.

The Bush-Cheney administration prudently–knowing thy enemy–unlike the imprudent Obama who apparently lacks rudimentary knowledge of the kind of enemy America is fighting, were unwilling to disclose to their Islamist enemies some of the methods by which the key holy warriors held as enemy combatants were “spilling the beans.”

Halliburton says

Since the memos thus far released were all part of FoIA filings, it was not up to the administration to release them. Based on the Obama administration’s own FoIA policies, the memos had to be released. I might point out that Cheney’s own FoIA request is selective, listing only two documents, and then only some of the pages from those documents.

The “disclosing of interrogation methods” meme is claptrap. All of the methods the Bush administration sought to use are centuries old; SERE-derived methods are duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War. There’s nothing new to disclose.

Kotzabasis says

Certainly you are right that the memos according to President Obama’s FoIA policies had to be released since in January 21, 2009 he loosened Bush’s Executive order of November 2001 pursuant to national interests by repealing some provisions of the order. Cheney’s selectivity is consistent in this respect with the political acumen of the previous administration in being determined not to reveal to the enemy—even out of office– unlike Obama in office, its secret procedures in this matter.

As for the “disclosing of interrogation methods,” the sting of the “claptrap” is in you. To say, as you do, that these “methods…are centuries old…duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans,” says more about the fertility of your imagination than of the complexity of the situation. Is it conceivable to you that Pentagon and CIA Intelligence confronting a unique enemy such as suicidal fanatical warriors would be using the same techniques and methods of the past without innovating new ones? But I suppose your intellectually barren answer would be “there is nothing new to disclose.”

Halliburton says

It’s certain that Cheney wants to keep portions of the reports he wants released secret, but I don’t have your faith in his judgment. After all, we are talking about the man who helped create the 1976 “Team B” report on the capabilities of the USSR, which was wrong on every detail, notably the nuclear-powered laser beam weapons the Soviets were supposedly building. Cheney also thought it a good idea to undercut Gorbachev in 1989, and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker squelched him. I’d be more likely to believe that Cheney doesn’t want portions of those reports released because they might undercut his assertions.

My “infertile imagination” seeks exceptional proof in the case of exceptional claims. Nothing about Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers is unique in history. Your claim that the CIA has some “new” methods of torture – “enhanced interrogation” if you wish – is an exceptional one, and would require exceptional proof. Only disclosure would provide that. It’s far more likely, however, that your imagination is overheated.

Kotzabasis says

I don’t want to go back to the past, mistakes can be made and only the Pope is infallible. And just as someone can be ‘serially’ correct in the past he is not bound to be correct all the time in the future. The same logic applies in inverse to Cheney.

But your belief is misplaced as already the portions of the reports released have “undercut” The Bush administration’s “assertions.” Cheney therefore is more concerned to prove that the “enhanced interrogation” did work in preventing the jihadists launching further attacks and releasing those memos that provide this evidence while ‘clinically’ isolating them from the overall intelligence that would be invaluable to the jihadists.

All the professionals in matters of war in contrast to laypersons consider al Qaeda to be a UNIQUE enemy. Of course there have been fanatics and their “fellow travelers” in all ages. But just give one example from ‘your own’ history where the mortal foes of a nation were operating within it clad in civilian clothes and in the carapace of cutting-edge technology and armed with the most modern deadly weapons, including potentially with nuclear ones, and crashing airbuses into the sky scrapers of a metropolis. If you cannot provide such an example of an enemy then you too must logically come to the conclusion that the holy warriors of Islam are verily unique foes.

In view of this incontrovertible fact do you consider an “exceptional claim” that needs “exceptional proof” that the intelligence services of a superpower such as America confronting such a ‘supernally’ dangerous enemy in times of asymmetrical warfare would not have developed new interrogation methods that would be appropriate in extracting vital information from their captives   saving thousands of lives? It would take lukewarm imagination to have come to this deduction.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is a question that I was to put to Clemons from another thread but at the time I was under the surgeon’s knife. Since my question, however, is not completely unrelated to the present thread, I’m posing it here.

The question is related to Clemons ‘sweet’ emotional rapprochement to the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, in the face of the ‘bitter’ realities of the Middle East. Is the West including that outpost of Western civilization, Israel, and especially the U.S., currently engaged in a mortal fight with a hard core fanatical Islam which includes its terrorist satrapies Hamas and Hezbollah or not? If the answer to the question by the “hybrid” realist Clemons, to use his term, is in the affirmative, then the latter is the grand appeaser toward fanatical militant Islam. If he answers it in the negative, with all the expected equivocations that he is capable of, then he is afflicted by an incurable virus of political necrophilia.

But in my humble opinion, Clemons will go down in the chronicles of American history, if he ever makes its footnotes, as the mini American Chamberlain in contrast to Churchillian mettle and sagacity. Appease! Appease! Is the shout of Clemons and the prophets.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

I don’t know if Tamils were the first suicide bombers prior to the Palestinians—perhaps some other commentator in this thread could disabuse my ignorance– but my comparison was between Christians and Muslims so your point is completely pointless.

As for American pilots being suicide-bombers in the Battle of Midway, one must really overstretched one’s imagination. You totally disregard the elementary fact that America had never had a self immolating or suicidal cult in its culture, as there is definitively a suicidal cult among Muslim fanatics. So your riposte is intellectually “post less” as it cannot find the address of reason.

Certainly, stating the obvious, Muslims are human, and even the fanatics among them. But the latter, like all fanatics of whatever religion or ideology, are unreasoning humans and therefore are unapproachable by the dictates of reason. So your appeal to them will be a complete futile and barren exercise by you. And lastly, Thomas Hardy’s poem by which you thought would strengthen your argument is totally misplaced as it applies to reasoning combatants.

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

Israel is Crossing the Line

By Steve Clemons

Washington Note,

Clemons is behaving like a woman who has lost her virginity (In his case political virginity.) at an old age. The reasonable requests (As presented by Clemons in four points.) of Israel, in regard to a dialogue with Iran, that is besieged by fanatical terrorists and is threatened by the stated objective of a rogue state with annihilation, are to Clemons “red lines and instructions (M.E) of Israel to the U.S. .”

While Israel makes it quite clear that it does not oppose a dialogue between the U.S. and Iran it recommends to its American ally, (a) it should be preceded with foreshadowing harsher sanctions against Iran, (b) the formulation of harsher action by Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain if the talks fail, (c) a time limit must be set for the talks to prevent buying time to complete its nuclear development, and (d) timing is critical and the U.S. should consider whether it makes sense to begin talks before Iran’s presidential election in June. Needless to say all of the four points are close to the heart of the U.S. State Department and to all the diplomatic Chancelleries of Europe.   

It would be interesting to know if Clemons happened to be a head of a state in the same circumstances that Israel is in, and who had lost his political virginity long ago, in what other points other than the above he would present his case to Secretary Clinton as conditions of a dialogue with Iran.

Moreover, he is blatantly inconsistent with his own position when he was vehemently criticizing the Bush administration for not listening to its allies in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. Now with the Obama administration in place and apparently ready to implement Clemons policy of listening to America’s allies, only one nation must lose the right of being listened too by the U.S., Israel; as the latter’s reasonable concerns about an impending dialogue with Iran are presented by Clemons as an “instruction manual” and therefore should be out rightly rejected by the U.S..

What kind of political buffoonery is this when Clemons says that the U.S. “should listen to Israel’s views” but only for the purpose of out rightly rejecting them and before evaluating them by weighing them on the scales of reason?

It’s fascinating to view all the political stallions of The Washington Note, including of course the politically sinewy mare amongst them, Clemons,  that they cannot see, due to their inveterate bias against Israel, that all the four points are tangential not only to US interests and goals but also to European ones as both of them are aiming to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And the Israeli four points, as presented by Clemons in his post, embody exactly these aims of the Western world. If a Martian visited perchance The Washington Note and glanced at the volcanic wrath of its posters against Israel’s recommendations that are multilaterally accepted by Western powers he would not understand what all the fuss was about.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 4:58AM – Link

Nadine, you are wasting your valuable time retorting to the political banalities of Norheim and his kindred spirits inundating The Washington Note.

Dmitry Medvedev’s “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable,” is the noose that the clever chess playing Russians are putting around the naive neck of the draught playing Obama. The operative words are “in some cases,” which the Russians alone will define and no one else. The political toddlers a la Norheim, enchanted under their inspirational wishful thinking, believe that the Russians will define these words positively in favour of sanctions, and like the stunted toddlers that they will always be they will be looking forward to Santa Klaus, Putin, on New Year’s Day to deliver to them their wishful ‘playful’ present.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 24 2009, 5:33AM – Link

You`re distorting my words, Kotz.

I don`t “believe” anything on these matters yet. There are too many if`s and if-not`s here. If it goes to the Security Council and Russia votes for sanctions in the Security Council, I`ll “believe” so.

China delivered some critical statements on their part just hours ago. Time will tell.

My initial point was an attempt to formulate how Obama seemed to see the missile shield issue, the relationship to Russia, the Iran issue, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a connected and complex whole, and that this way of thinking contained a lot of unpredictable factors, probably too many if he has built a strategy on this. Perhaps my guesses are wrong, perhaps they are correct. But I see no particular reason for optimism on Iran and Israel-Palestine in the coming months and years. Is that clear?

If you want to twist and bend this in any direction, go on.

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 6:38AM – Link

Are you now repudiating all of your posts above your last one? “Russian Leader Opens Door to Tougher Iran Sanctions” and then you paste THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in all its positives on the issue with which you obviously agree. Then you follow this in your penultimate post with, “it now looks more like America is getting, than that it’s not getting something.” And only belatedly, after my own post, and after letting your guard down, you place your “if’s and if-not’s.”

 Paul Norheim says

For ad hominem “thinkers” and strategy geniuses like Kotz, this is an exercise beyond their capabilities, and just another opportunity to bash his opponents for their lack of strength and amour propre in their cul de sac.

But now that WigWag, whom Kotz sympathize with, actually agrees that possible sanctions were behind Obama`s decisions on the missile shield, and also seems to think that the likelihood of Russia getting on board on this might have increased a bit after Medvedev`s statement yesterday, I expect that Kotz will keep silent on this issue.

 WigWag says

There is an irony in all of this. Conservatives like Kotzabasis and Nadine are far more suspicious of the Russians than the Israeli Government is. They can speak for themselves about whether my surmise is right or not; but whether it’s a carryover from the Cold War days or something else, conservatives are suspicious any time the United States fails to “stand up” to Russia.

This is no longer true in Israel. Israel sees Russia as an increasingly important partner. A large portion of the Israeli population is Russian and has cultural ties to the “old country.” Russia and Israel have ever increasing commercial relations, especially in military equipment. Israel appreciates the fact that they never have to worry about criticism from the Russians on the human rights front (Russian behavior in Chechnya makes the War in Gaza look like a Girl Scout picnic). And Israel sees good relations with Russia (and China and India) as a counter balance to their overdependence on the United States. Israel also appreciates the fact that Russians don’t care about Palestinian aspirations.

This is actually one of the few examples where people who have the views of Nadine and Kotzabasis disagree with Israel. Israel wants better relations between Russia and the United States for many reasons, not the least of which is that it increases the likelihood that harsh sanctions on Iran will be enacted.

It’s conservatives who get nervous every time they see increased cooperation between Russia and the United States not Israelis.

 Kotzabasis says

Norheim

Of course Obama’s naive decision “on the missile shield” was to entice the Russians to come “on board” on sanctions. I predicted he would do this four months ago. But WigWag is not inflicted by the illusion, like you are that the Russians will come alone on sanctions. And as he correctly states, they will not do so unless they are offered much more such as “NATO expansion, support for Georgia and Ukraine, Kosovo and Bosnia/Republica Srpska.” Hence they will be putting a bigger noose around the neck of Obama’s diplomacy and will be pulling it so hard that there will be no flesh left on his neck, i.e., American power and prestige, other than the protruding bones of an anorexic superpower that would force America’s close allies to have second thoughts about the latter’s reliability and resolution under President Obama. And the question then arises whether the Obama administration would go the whole hog, i.e., sacrifice all its allies on the altar of getting the by now out of the equation Russians, according to WigWag’s logic, since he believes that “harsh sanctions by the United States and Europe would still sting” without the Russians being on board.

WigWag

I’m surprised that you seem to see the conservative ‘brand’ of politics only in its old form of rigidity and not see the ‘new brand’ whose strength lies in its fluidity. It’s far from being the rather very simplistic case of failing to “stand up” to Russia. Analytically that is a very hacked and shallow conclusion. And you extrapolate an avalanche of wrong deductions from a possible American agreement with Russia on sanctions, which I think is a will-o’-the-wisp, while you irretrievably contradict your own argument. Russia is not in the game of strengthening America but of weakening it. And they see in Obama in his elemental personal debility and idealistic respect all diplomacy, a perfect opportunity to achieve their great goal. It’s this that is of great concern to ‘fluid’ conservative realists and not because they carry some incurable virus from the “Cold War days.” It’s seen the Russian ‘Emperor’ with glee on his face dragging America’s benign power into the amphitheatre to be tangled in the net of the gladiator and slaughtered to the applause of the ignorant and ignoble crowd of anti-Americanism., that is the modern equivalent of panem et circenses.

And aren’t you contradicting your own argument when you say that “Russian acquiescence to harsh sanctions will be a real plus” (but at what a price) when you earlier stated that sanctions imposed by the US and Europe “will turn out to be more politically devastating” and at the same time taking the Russians out of the equation and hence making their “acquiescence” totally obsolete and thus saving the US from a politically and diplomatically ‘spending spree’ in ‘Russian malls’? In view of this why even the stolid administration of Obama would not prioritize the interest of its strong allies in Eastern and Southern Europe next to an obsolete Russian “acquiescence?”

You also totally disregard Iran’s libido dominandi for the region and for the Islamic world that can be achieved more effectively in the carapace of nuclear weapons. To say as you do, “but for the peace process, [Between Palestinians and Israelis] sanctions or military action against Iran would be far less likely,” is to be blind before the real aims of the theocratic regime and to assume that Western leadership will continue to be languidly supine before such a great threat. 

Lastly, it goes without saying that the smart Israelis would of course welcome a Russian agreement on sanctions even with the high probability that they will ultimately fail. But would they be happy to see this at the expense of a weakened America, especially against Iran as a staunch supporter of its terrorist ‘satrapies’ of Hamas and Hezbollah? And only one who has ‘rolling stones’ in his head would not see the great reasoning that lies in Israel’s good relationship with Russia. And how a brownie bird like you could have come to the conclusion that either Nadine or me disagree with Israel on this issue? I guess this could have only risen up from an errant nocturnal lucubration of yours.

Obama is like someone who has inherited great wealth (read political power) only to squander it in senseless profligate excesses. He appeased the Russians, as I predicted he would, with the withdrawal of the missiles installation from Czechoslovakia and Poland at the expense of close allies; he tried to browbeat Israel with his no settlement pronunciamento to no avail, as he and his close advisers, including Clinton, astonishingly misread the position of the majority of Israelis on the issue and paying the high price of increasing Palestinian expectations and inadvertently making it a condition for its leadership, that never existed before, for direct talks with Israel; he tried in his Cairo speech to reach a rapprochement with Muslims by praising with intellectual blindness the great achievements of Islam prior to the Renaissance while sweeping under the carpet the great failure of Islam with unprecedented wealth in its hands in our era, without receiving any conciliatory gestures from those who were so gloriously exalted; and presently he is opening negotiations with the illegitimate government of Iran with no explicit and clear restrictions on its nuclear program at the expense of the democratic forces of the country with their great potential to oust the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime, if the Obama administration had taken the prudent stand of not accepting its legitimacy and isolating it from the international community.

In short, Obama, the tyro in foreign affairs and the weakling that I said he was a year ago, is squandering America’s power and prestige in his doltish idiotic diplomacy and he is transforming, slowly but surely, the strength of America into weakness at a time when only the power of the U.S. wisely expended can protect Western civilization from the suicidal and deadly sallies of irreconcilable implacable enemies. Who was it in the Bush administration who said that “weakness is provocative?” Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short response to: Afghanistan Exposing Huge Limits on American Power

By Steve Clemons Washington Note September 09, 2009

Clemons, from his political labyrinth as the modern Theseus but without his Ariadne with any hope of escape, sends desperate signals about America’s “limits” in Afghanistan and the dire repercussions these will have on American power and prestige. From the boundless darkness of his labyrinthine domicile he is bound to be pessimistic of any prospect that the US could defeat the Taliban. It’s the same kind of pessimism that he also had for years about the war in Iraq, which he had also pontificated as being unwinnable–and he has as yet to acknowledge that the US under General Petraeus had defeated the insurgency in Iraq.

Only Clemons, in his strategic myopia, could make the statement, “One really can’t tell what our overall goal is at this point.” Really, the Taliban which was a host to al-Qaeda and which would continue to be so in the event it took over once again Afghanistan, and moreover threaten the Talibanization of Pakistan, as a result of the US abandoning its strategic goal of defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in one stroke and hence inflicting a devastating blow of global dimensions to the holy warriors of Islam. Nor can he envisage that any withdrawal from Afghanistan would be perceived as a defeat of America by Islamists and would embolden their threats against, in their eyes, a weak America. And the consummation of these threats would be of a greater magnitude of destruction than that of 9/11. Afghanistan therefore is pivotal to America’s strategy to defeat borderless Islamist fanaticism on a world scale.

The United States is not in a ‘labyrinthine’ situation wasting and reaching the limits of its military power in Afghanistan from which it needs to escape. Its task is, like in Iraq, to persevere in the defeat of the Taliban and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary and a training ground for the recruits of al-Qaeda from which it could launch its ‘apocalyptic’ attacks against the Great Satan America and on the infidels of the West. In this task a combination of American intelligence, military professionalism and might, and strategic nous and determination, has a better than an even chance in defeating ‘blindfolded’ fanaticism.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons in the dizziness of “cocktail sotting diplomacy,” to quote him, forgets that diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means, to paraphrase Clausewitz. Like war, one deploys one’s ‘intellectual armaments’ in the field of diplomacy on the condition that there is a high probability that one will come out a winner from the diplomatic contest. And the timing of the opening of this contest depends on the strengths and weaknesses of one’s enemy. Engineering “strategic shifts” and achieving “strategic priorities,” to quote Clemons, depend on the condition that one’s enemy negotiates from a position of weakness.

I would also like to remind Steve that although it’s certainly true that one has to accept the world as it is and perforce negotiate with one’s foes on this realist principle, as he stated at the New American Foundation conference, one accepts the world as it is only for the purpose of changing it. To merely accept it without the ability to change it, because one’s actions are based on wrong calculations, is a barren futile exercise.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A spectre is haunting the White House the spectre of Black Magic. America’s long winter of discontent–as an outcome of the so called lying, malevolent, warmongering, and unjust to the poor Bush-Cheney administration–alienation of the civilized world from the Texan presidency of quick-gun-drawing, and the hatred of America’s fanatical and deadly enemies, are going to be ‘fixed’ by a voodoo concoction of policies brewed by the modern African-American ‘medicine man’ dressed in Ivy League ‘leaves’ resident in the White House. The sole superpower whose strength has been and is pivotal to the security and economic development of many countries and which carries like Atlas the stability of the world on its strong shoulders with all the uncertainties, risks, and errors of judgment that such a heavy and multiple burden entails, is in the hands of a sorcerer’s apprentice who is cooking up a saucy condiment of magical nostrums that on the one hand will politically and socially change the United States, and on the other, will derail all the implacable Islamist fanatics from their course of hating the Great Satan. And reform them from their bad ways by demolishing the Guantanamo Walls and rendering to them not the justice that applies to hostis humani generis, to enemies of the human race, but the justice that applies to war prisoners under the Geneva Convention. This is inimitable wishful thinking that rises from the vapours of black magic.

But already President Obama’s hors d’ oeuvres policies both on the domestic and international fronts are ‘poisoning’ the stomachs of many Americans and even some of the strong stomachs of his initial supporters, as one would expect inevitably and unsurprisingly to happen from policies that spring from voodoo magic. Within six months the 61% percent support of Obama among Americans who believed he would bring real change has dropped to 51%, and presently 37% percent strongly disapprove of his presidency, a 22% percent point rise from January, and 31% percent strongly approve of it, a 14% percent point drop from January. (Rasmussen Reports.) And worse still on his health care reform a poll found that 42% percent say that the president’s plan is a bad idea–a 10% percent point jump from a month ago–and only 36% percent say it is a good idea. Moreover, 90% percent of Americans are satisfied with their present health care. These polls have put a hellish scare among his top advisers forcing them, and Obama himself, to have a special meeting to discuss this topic of his steep fall from his initial high peak within such a short time.

Domestic Front: Obama’s Changing America Yes We Can

On the domestic front two of his crucial policies for changing America, i.e., health care and climate change, emanating from his black magic policies, that is, that both of them will pay for themselves at no expense to the tax payer, are rapidly losing their magical appeal. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Senate Finance Committee Bill for his health care reform would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years. And that Obama’s Independent Medicare Advisory Council would trim Medicare costs by perhaps 0.2, a miniscule amount, according to CBO. Further in contrast to Obama’s assertion that the costs of Medicare in the second decade of its implementation would move downward, the CBO found that the “costs would significantly move upward.” It’s obvious that with these dire estimates of the CBO, President Obama will have to settle for mere “health care insurance reform and not in transforming the system of Medicare,” which was his initial goal, to quote Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post. Obama says that any bill he signs on health care will be “revenue-neutral.” But that is the road to insolvency that he himself declares to be unsustainable, as his original argument was that medical costs are destroying the economy. So how can he prevent this destruction if the only bill he will sign will be one that is revenue-neutral?

The political chicanery of the lawyer from Harvard is astounding, but politically necessary for him, to reassure the deep concerns of the electorate that his health care plan will not raise taxes to the stratosphere. It’s by such disingenuousness that President Obama attempts to deceive and dupe the public that he will not sneak his hand into the pockets of Americans to finance his health care package that will benefit mainly a minority of Americans. And even among Democrats there is an awareness of the high costs of his scheme that is metastasizing into opposition. Fifty-two “Blue Dog Democrats” not only are barking at it but might even start biting it. And the Town Halls of America are becoming a groundswell of rebellion against his health scheme whose ferocity and clamour, if it will not be appeased by the amendments that Obama will be forced to make to his legislation will seriously threaten his re-election for a second term. Obama in his desperation to save his plan brought the mantra of “prevention” that presumably would substantially reduce medical treatment costs. In the New Hampshire town hall meeting on August 11, he shouted triumphantly to his audience that prevention “saves lives. It also saves money.” But the truth is that overall preventive care increases medical costs. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote that “added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.” Nonetheless, the Harvard professor desperately resorts to the practices of black magic to salvage his Obamacare.

On climate change his special envoy Todd Stern has indicated that the US was ready to act without India or China saying that “in our view you can become an economic winner by acting,” alluding to the vast investments American entrepreneurs were readying to make in alternative sources of energy and the prodigious benefits issuing from such investment to the US economy, especially in the area of employment. Hence, the multilateralist Obama in foreign affairs will be a unilateralist in climate change. His administration will lead the way in the fight against climate change irrespective what other nations are prepared to do, such as China, India, and the other developed and developing countries. But it’s more probable than not that his cap-and-trade system will be a boondoggle scheme constructed at an enormous cost to the American economy. Cutting carbon emissions to 17% percent by 2020 and to 83% percent by 2050 would be highly costly. A 15% percent reduction of CO2 would increase the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. And what are the benefits issuing from the cap and trade scheme? It would lower global CO2 by 4% percent whose impact upon global warming would be virtually infinitesimal.

Moreover, the new sources of energy are still to be identified by the scrutiny and the rigor of science. Will they be a compound of solar energy, wind, and nuclear power, and with the exception of the latter, will they work? It’s obvious that President Obama’s cap-and-trade system is adorned with all the uncertainties of fortune. Obama is entering a Las Vegas casino to try his luck by playing a profligate crap game with other peoples’ money. But there are some Democrats, fearful of the lashing they could get at the coming election that are not willing to participate in this throwing of the dice. “Ten Democrats from states that produce coal…said they could not support a bill that did not protect American industries from exports from countries that did not impose similar restraints on emissions.” (New York Times, August 10, 2009.) And the President’s aids facing this opposition not only from their own Democratic ranks but also from a majority of the public are trying to find an easy sell talking about “energy security” and “green jobs” abandoning their earlier position of being prepared to push for tough measures needed to cap emissions. So Obama’s unrealistic and ‘fantasmagoric’ claim to lead on climate change will be no more than a hissing balloon that he will be taking to the Copenhagen meeting in December.

On race relations President Obama imprudently interceded in favour of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, and lambasted the white policeman, James Crowley, who arrested the professor for ‘burglary’ by saying that “the police had acted stupidly” thus making the matter worse by inflaming the race issue as it was a white policeman who arrested the black professor. Immediately after his faux pas he admitted that he was not aware of all the facts and tried to apologise both to sergeant Crowley and to the police union that promptly supported the latter. To ‘fix’ his blunder Obama invited both the professor and the policeman to the White House for a beer to cool the racial tensions that the President’s own comments had incited. The media jocularly dubbed it as the “Beer Summit Diplomacy” between the President and the two disputants, and made fun of Obama in his failed diplomacy to reconcile the two parties, and one might add while he was confident that with his new diplomacy he would reconcile the imams of Tehran, as the “two gentlemen agree to disagree,” to quote sergeant Crowley. It does not augur well for President Obama as his stupid slip will awake the race issue at the next election that had been dormant in the last one, making it electorally completely unpalatable to Obama, as on this issue alone he could lose the election and as the hate that trumped the race issue at the last election against the Republicans is fizzling out.

 Foreign Policy: Obama’s Big Test

President Obama’s big test, however, will be with the implacable deadly enemies of America. In the domain of foreign affairs will be shown whether he is a president riding his horse to victory or whether he will be a president crying like King Richard III, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (W. Shakespeare.) And the first omens do not augur well. In his ‘great’ speeches both in Prague and in Cairo, wrapped up in an embellished rhetoric delivered by his indispensable  ventriloquist, the  teleprompter, Obama made a confession of mea culpas of past American actions as if by such confession and expiation America’s  irreconcilable and hateful enemies would forgive the ‘sins’ of the ‘Great Satan’. His overture to a new diplomacy laden with olive branches and empty of sticks hoping that by replacing the so called ‘belligerent’ policies of the former Bush-Cheney administration that to its critics, including Obama, increased and made more menacing the enemies of the US, that this will decrease hostility toward America and entice its inveterate foes to bring and resolve their grievances on the table of negotiations, is a dangerous wishful thinking  that will seriously discredit and erode America’s prestige as a superpower, and its consequence will be to enfeeble its ability to play a decisive pivotal role in the security and stability of the world.

For a statesman of a great power which is the “un-wobbly pivot” around whose axis the political and economic stability of the world turns, it’s axiomatic that one must identify and be aware of one’s potentially deadly enemies at their ‘budding’ stage and deal with them decisively and promptly before they become stronger. This axiom applies especially when a great leader makes the judgment that this burgeoning enemy is fanatically irreconcilable and cannot be appeased by any reasonable offers. History is full of tragedies that have issued from the inability of political leaders to foresee the dangers that would arise from unappeasable enemies determined to achieve their goals. A recent example of lack of foresight and imagination by European leaders was the occupation of Rhineland by the Nazis. In March 1936, Hitler sent few battalions on motor cycles and occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland and tore the Locarno Pact to pieces. Neither the French nor the British governments reacted to Germany’s aggression which if they had done so, according to some eminent historians, like the German Golo Mann, would have forced Hitler to withdraw his battalions with the possibility of even ousting him as Chancellor. Winston Churchill alone advocated military action against the Rhineland occupation through cooperation by the British and the French. But the acquiescence of the last two countries to the violation of the Locarno Pact whetted Hitler’s appetite for more egregious territorial encroachments. After this initial success of Hitler we all know the great tragedy that befell on mankind.

President Obama belongs to this ilk of political leaders that are comfortable sitting in the armchairs of the ‘Chamberlain Appeasing Club’. He believes like ‘“peace in our times” Chamberlain’, that America’s mortal enemies can turn out to be good fellows if one treats them with dignity, respect, and comity and eschews the use of the instruments of force against them. He is also of the opinion that the UN, that ‘Tower of Babel’ of dissent and disunity on so many political and military crises that afflict the globe, is an effective vehicle that can bring peace and security in nations that are ravaged by the military brutality of despotic regimes, and indeed, can be the fulcrum with the right leadership in its ranks to place the political stability of the world on a solid foundation.

Susan Rice, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, outlined Obama’s diplomatic priorities in her talk at New York University on August 13, 2009, in these terms. The US views the UN as essential to tackle global security threats. “There is no substitute for the legitimacy of the UN can impart on its potential to mobilize the widest possible coalitions…the world body is essential to our efforts to galvanize concerted actions that make Americans safer and more secure.” In this peroration of praise for the UN, Ambassador Rice did not mention one word about the great threat emanating from extremist militant fanatical Islam, and by what methods the UN would “galvanize concerted actions” against this great menace that threatens Western civilization. Moreover, what is amusing and at the same time of great concern due to the seriousness of the matter is that Ambassador Rice had the intellectual chutzpah before an intelligent audience to replace the real documented weakness of the UN in a multiple number of crises over a long period of time with the mythical strength of the UN. And still of greater concern is that according to the “diplomatic priorities” of President Obama the latter might have a propensity and would be willing to ‘outsource’ the security of the United States, the sole superpower, to the United Nations.

Obama of course is neither a proponent of individual or collective suicide or euthanasia, and there are no “death panels” in his health care scheme, as some of his critics like Sarah Palin have claimed, although the latter to her credit subsequently has watered down this accusation against Obama. But the vaguely seen outline of a skeleton that has all the characteristics of a ‘death panel’ is rising in his foreign policy. His willingness to outsource the security and the vital interests of the US to the collective weakness and fecklessness of the UN and to a disarmed diplomacy will have no other consequence other than the geopolitical suicide or euthanasia of America as a superpower. Moreover, Obama’s foreign policy stands in blatant contradiction to his policy of climate change. While his stand to the hypothetical danger that human emissions are endangering the planet is unilateral i.e. he is prepared to act alone irrespective what other countries are doing, to the real danger emanating from fanatical Islam against America, his stand is multilateral, i.e., he is unwilling to act alone in defence of the security and vital interests of the United States. This contradiction in itself exposes Obama as being not a politician of principles leading from the front and dragging the masses behind him but a populist homespun opportunist following the volatile whims of a confused public and hence leading from behind. Aware that most Americans, because of their confusion, are more willing to fight the hypothetical danger of climate pollution paid mainly at the expense and sacrifices of future generations and being unwilling to fight the real danger of Islamist terror at their own expense by the present sacrifices they will have to make in a defensive war, President Obama has no political qualms in adopting this confused position of Americans about the two dangers and  build on it his strategy in regard to these dangers.

President Obama’s strategy therefore on both issues is a strategy of confusion and hence its fate will be a strategy of dismal failure. On climate change whose solution depends on the collective efforts of both developed and developing countries, assuming the danger CO2 is real, Obama is prepared to act alone. On Islamist terror, which without any doubt threatens the immediate vital interests and security of the United States, Obama is prone to shift the responsibility of protecting the security of the US to the mythical competence of the United Nations to rally a strong coalition of nations that would protect and secure the safety of America. In the annals of human history this is unprecedented. No great power ever abdicated its historical responsibility to protect its vital interests and security and shifted this responsibility to a potpourri of feckless allies. In confronting great dangers a pre-eminent power rallies its allies and takes the lead against its enemies and never loses or passes the initiative to others in its own defence.

Furthermore, his present foreign policy and the advent of his new diplomacy are afflicted with a ‘split personality’. While he is unshakably committed to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and prevent the latter, as he has stated many times, from becoming a safe haven for global jihadists who would attack the United States, this commitment strangely collapses when it comes to other countries, such as Somalia and Sudan, from becoming safe havens for terrorists that would pose the same threat to America. And is unwilling to deploy US forces and destroy these fledgling beehives of terror before they become stronger, on the dogmatic principle that the US is not willing to act alone, and, presumably, this principle applies even in the case when the security of the US in verity is threatened.

Obama’s new diplomacy too, by which he hopes to bring rogue states like Iran and its terrorist proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah into the fold of reason, is inconsistent and incongruous with his stand on Afghanistan. While the critics of the Bush administration, including Obama, had argued that the war in Iraq had rallied into the ranks of terror a greater number of recruits and had made it stronger and provoked the ire of many Muslims against America for slaughtering their brothers and thus prevented the US from exercising its diplomacy with its potential to reach some accommodation with its foes, somehow, the same argument does not bear in Afghanistan where America and the infidels of the West are also ‘slaughtering’ Muslims. How in the case of Iraq US diplomacy became impotent and in the case of Afghanistan is finding its potency, is a conundrum that only practitioners of black magic are qualified of finding the answer.

It’s by such cure-all panaceas of black magic that President Obama will be changing America and the geopolitical orbit of the world. But already Obama’s nostrums are foundering on the rocks of reality. His ‘dignified’ diplomacy, with which he hoped to appease America’s foes, after the illegitimate election of Ahmadinejad and the rebellion of Iranians against it, is in a state of a long ‘vacation’, if not in tatters. In the wine flask of his health care scheme he will be pouring so much water that will become tasteless to most Americans. As we have said nine months ago Obama does not have the political acumen and mettle to lead a great nation such as America. He will go down in history as the ‘freshman’ president whose green horns failed to bring the ‘greening’ of America and least of all the diplomatic ‘olive branching’ of the enemies of America. And I dare say that he will be a one term president if he survives, as the mounting resentment of an increasing number of Americans against his policies could tragically sire and give birth to a second ugly Oswald.

 August 13, 2009, Melbourne