Useful Idiots

Peace and love is here to stay and
Now I can wake up and face the day 
 --Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment, 
The Ramones

So, c'mon you Moslems and you Jews
We got big news for all of yous
You better change your point of views today
'Cause the Inquistion's here and it's here to stay 
--The Inquisition,
Mel Brooks

 (T)he main emphasis of the KGB is ideological subversion,
or psychological warfare.
What it basically means is: to change the perception
of reality of every American that despite
of the abundance of information
no one is able to come to sensible conclusions
in the interest of defending
themselves, their families, their community, and their country
--Yuri Bezmenov
__________________

I wonder how the mainstream media continues to peddle its lies. Are people just naive, gullible, uninformed, lazy, prejudiced? Maybe the whole lot.

In the 3.18.15 New York Times, token Jewish liberal shill Op-Ed columnist Thomas ("Friedman Unit") Friedman's post links Israel, Iran and ISIS as being all entities that offer the United States "only bad choices":

OP-ED COLUMNIST Go Ahead, Ruin My Day By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN In looking at Israel, Iran and ISIS, why does it seem as though we have only bad choices, and nothing ever works?

Why do few Democrats wish to recognizes Israel as the U.S.'s only solid Western ally in the sump that is the Middle East? If they are a problem, it is only to the radicalized Palestinians who continue to have no honest broker but not to us.

Today, the same paper suggests that President Obama may be unable to deal with Israel's newly-elected Prime Minister Netanyahu and may have to carry out an future communications via a mediator, as though P.M. Netanyahu is incapable of talking to a Western leader. The reason for the acrimony is not mentioned: the fact that our President refused to meet this leader of a sovereign nation on two separate visits to our country -- unheard of behavior.

Yet the U.S. routinely deals with the leaders of our "friends" like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., dictators who routinely oppress and murder their own Western-leaning dissidents. (In the same 3.18 paper was a piece on a policeman who is being tried in Egypt for the murder of an outspoken female poet  -- Egypt to Charge Officer in Killing of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh.)

For that matter, the U.S. had cordial relations with both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, late leaders of Iraq and Libya, respectively. Friendly, that is, until they were no longer useful. All U.S. Presidents have glad-handed those we later called "monsters" and tossed to the dogs.

The Shiites are killing Sunnis in mass numbers now that the lid is off the pressure cooker, and we don't seem too bothered by this; at least, not bothered enough to cease communication with the "elected" leaders of these countries.

As though it were a news flash, Slate reports "a new report from Human Rights Watch details serious abuses by the U.S.-supported, pro-government Iraqi Shiite militias fighting ISIS" (Are America’s Allies Committing Ethnic Cleansing in the Fight Against ISIS?). Shocked, in a very Captain Renault sort of way.

KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov saw a parallel to the USSR in the way our leaders, educational institutions and the media were shaping our nation's mindset. We behaved like Bezmenov's useful idiots when we swaggered into Iraq, deposing the strongman needed to hold these roiling entities together. Then the inhabitants came after each other and us, and we act surprised.

We continue to be idiots when always for the underdog and not for our obvious ally. Idiots when we are always for change in the M.E., imagining that these newly-sprung people will yearn for a Western lifestyle like that enjoyed in the U.S. or Israel. We refuse to see the facts because we have an inculcated guilt to overcome.

In this case, we think if we favor the Palestinians over the Israelis, they will not turn their aggression upon us, but where is the logic? Why favor an unknown quantity over a known one? Nations have interests -- not friends -- and it is in the U.S.'s interest to maintain an alliance with any reliable partner in the M.E, for there are not many.

Friedman's piece goes so far as to suggest that the U.S. arm ISIS. While he agrees they're pretty repugnant, he argues that it is in our best interests. A sad coda to the misbegotten group-think many in the U.S. shared regarding M.E. violence as ushering in some sort of "Arab Spring".

Moreover, why do we care to continue hitting our heads against the wall? How does this focus help us along?

It's Sociology 101: You help the underdog, he's not going to lick your feet because you've uncovered the fact that he is an underdog (via the need for your assistance.) The only way to save face is to attack back. It's not very appreciative, but there it is.

When the U.S. was dealing in slavery and liquidation of its Native American population, other sovereigns did not withhold negotiating with the U.S. We found our way. Israel is less than 70 years old, and it is trying to find a path to existence against a sworn enemy within in its borders which has as its stated mission the non-recognition and extermination of said country. It is not a hard row to hoe; it is a row that refuses to be hoed.

Why don't people see this hypocrisy? Maybe we just want something easy around which to glom on with our fellows, or distract us, or to Tweet about.

Reverse English

There isn't a more profitable undertaking for any country
than to declare war on the United States and to be defeated 
--The Mouse that Roared (1959)

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist
--Indira Gandhi
__________________

President Obama recently traveled to Israel and met with President, Benjamin Netanyahu (after rebuffing him on his two previous trips to the United States.)  The visit was a set piece allowing Mr. Obama to co-opt some of his erstwhile mentor Wright's hortatory when he bade Israelis to reach out in peace to their mortal nemesis, Hamas (Obama will not meet with Hamas himself.)

Americans enjoy the feeling of newness and the appeal to youth-as-salvation, but Obama in Israel is not President Kennedy forming the Peace Corps. We err in many ways when we envision the Arab-Israeli peace process (NOT) as one of overcoming terrorism via application of our own template. 

Of course, that is not exactly what Obama did when he exhorted the young Israelis reach out with the olive branch to sworn enemy Hamas. The U.S. template of elective warfare is anything but nurturing and peace-loving. (One of the best political cartoon takes on the meeting was a two-panel, showing Obama in his pulpit apparently excoriating Netanyahu and government for being aggressive and building fences as no way to surmount problems and achieve peace, while the next panel has the president saying, "But enough about Washington ...")

The Israelis face an existential threat from terrorists who are chartered to destroy their nation. In fact, Hamas has organized beyond garden variety terrorism into low-intensity conflict, military in nature.  Israel is not the United States -- their Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is largely that, a defense force incapable of long-term, mass-casualty theatre operations. However, they maintain their military aura as they are a key ally of the U.S. in the area and we like to envision them as a maneuver force of the U.S. military machine.

While exhorting the Israelis to embrace peace, love and beauty with their avowed enemies, Obama failed to mention that he had just befriended the new Egyptian government with 200 new battle tanks. Did Obama feel this gift would increase or decrease the chance of peace in the region?  We peddle the fiction that whoever leads Egypt will protect the peace with Israel, but Anwar al-Sadat was a one-off in the Arab world, and his assassination was a shot across the bow from any of his fellows: do not deal with Israel unless you, too, want to be dead.

Did Obama gift the Israelis with 200 tanks? Did he de-fang the Egyptian support of Hamas? A country may not arm everyone and expect peace to flow from that; that is how the World Wars started.  Yet the U.S. president has the chutzpah to exhort Israeli leaders and public to subscribe to Flower Power, a posture that will get Israeli knocked down quicker than Robert Blake off of his Electra Glide in Blue.

Our president had no qualms about spreading his fairy dust within Israel, but he did not repeat his performance to Hamas or in any of the States supporting the elements that are hostile towards Israel. He did not address Egypt's anti-Semetic President Morsi or that nation's Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological father of al-Qaeda elements which are the U.S. enemy of choice in its Phony War on Terror (PWOT © ).

And at the same time Obama was calling for peace with the Palestinians and gifting the Eyptians with war tanks, he was discussing the possibility of Israeli, or U.S., or U.S. - Israeli military action against Iran. The Iranians are always a convenient whipping boy and distraction. So why must Israel strike a peaceful posture versus Hamas, but a military one versus Iran?

After two disastrous long-term wars, the U.S. has left the region anything but peaceful. We disingenuously tell the Israelis to be peaceful while remaining militarily engaged in Yemen, Somalia and the Horn of Africa -- while Africom uses the African continent as their playground.  We call it "defense" when we employ our forces worldwide, while telling Israel to bite the bullet in their own terrain.

The U.S. left Iraq behind with no insured peace and it will be the same in Afghanistan.  We have forgotten the principles of war and cannot remember the foundations of peace and prosperity. While we hunt and kill terrorists worldwide, President Obama has the Chutzpah to tell Israeli youth to embrace Hamas in a warm, fuzzy bear hug.  It is the scorpion and the frog, and Obama is either a callow 2nd term president or his fiendish machinations know no shame.

Speeches are not reality and effective policy must be based in fact, not feel-good tripe. Ranger's view is that of a detached observer.

If Obama were an honest broker, he would tell the Palestinian's Hamas that they will never have a place at the table of civilized nations until they accept the right of their neighbors to exist -- not until they demonstrate they can build in addition to destroying. That is a position from which the Palestinians could operate with credibility.

Anything short of that is nihilism, and that is not the posture of an advancing Western civilization.  Nihilists welcome death, hardly a dealer's card.

Bad Dogs

--Arend van Dam 

what have we to do
but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards
In an age which advances progressively backwards? 
--The Rock, T.S. Eliot

As I feel the world watching I try not to care. 
My deepest emotions are best left unsaid. 
Let others show grief like a garment they wear, 
but the loss that I feel will not leave my head. 
--Guard of Honour, Paul Hansford

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind 
--The Circle Game, Joni Mitchell

______________________

Do we lack the good sense that even a small puppy possesses?

Witness the behavior of the United States vis-a-vis its Middle East fellow democracy, Israel, and her new missile defense system dubbed Iron Dome.  This system, paid for in large part by U.S. tax dollars, is reminiscent of President Reagan's proposed Star Wars defensive strategy except it will shoot down tactical rockets and missiles.  It appears to be a theatre-oriented customization of the Patriot missile system.

The first interesting aspect of the system is the asymmetry of the outlay.  Israel recently spent $25-35 million to shoot down 1,500 cheap and unsophisticated rockets fired upon them from Gaza.  When does such a defense outlay become infeasible for a small nation?

Second, since the rockets are fired from the Gaza strip it is a good bet they were smuggled in from Egypt, another friend of the U.S., with the full support of the new Egyptian government. The same Egyptian government that receives $1.5 Billion in U.S. foreign aid each year -- the government which will soon receive 200 U.S. M1 tanks, the most advanced main battle tank in the world.  Like Israel, Egypt is a country armed and equipped by the U.S.

So here is the deadly do-si-do the U.S. brokers:

• We equip the Egyptians

• The Egyptians equip Hamas in Gaza

• Hamas fires their Egyptian-obtained rockets at Israel (as Hamas & Egypt share a brotherhood of hatred towards Israel)

• The U.S. funds Israeli missile systems so that Israel may counter the Hamas missile threat

How long can our leaders facilitate this absurd spectacle and have us believe it is a logical foreign policy?  What does the U.S. achieve by implementing such a Kafaka-esque foreign policy?  How do the U.S. citizens benefit by our government playing both sides against the middle?

When will we ever learn?

Tourist Season

The world is full of obvious things 

which nobody by any chance ever observes 

--The Hound of the Baskervilles,

 Arthur Conan Doyle

Looking for water

But I lost God in a New York minute 

--Looking for Water, David Bowie

Oh, precious is the flow 

That makes me white as snow 

--Nothing But the Blood,

Jars of Clay and The Blind Boys of Alabama

______________________

If there's anything weird going on, Florida would like to be a part of it; we may lack for finesse, but we have weird down to a science.  While on the road we read of the revelation that some politcos had gotten wild last summer at the Sea of Gallilee, and we just knew one of the home boys had to be a part.  And so it was.

The Panhandle's own Rep. Steve Southerland (R) was among the group of merry makers overcome with enthusiasm on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee, where one Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder (R) stripped off his skivvies and annointed himself in the holy waters. [Southerland did not shuck his clothes for the swim, though he does end his automated calls to his constituents with a "God Bless You."]

Yoder's given reason for naughtily plunging into the place where Jesus is said to have walked on water? "Part of the reason I made that decision at that moment was there was really nobody in the vicinity who could see me" (Yoder Apologizes for Skinny Dipping). And what better reason for a politician to do anything, really?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/20/2959927/kansas-rep-yoder-apologizes-for.html#storylink=cpy

Ranger does not actually care if these guys got drunk and naked in the Sea of Gallilee or a fountain in Las Vegas, provided they could help him resolve his ongoing 4 1/2 year issue with Social Security.  Alas, the two assistants at Rep. Southerland's office from whom Ranger has sought help have not returned the bacon, and $10,000+ of Ranger's money is still withheld and in play (see "Rodeo Clown" and "Effin' Wrong").

This faux pas (for which Yoder will not be punished) is reminiscent of that of another congressman, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).  After an errant Tweet of his manliness, Rep. Weiner was ultimately forced to resign his position.  Both behaviors were inappropriate and salacious, but for Yoder, it was spun as a bit of spirited effusiveness; for Weiner, it was a career-ender. 

The Algemeiner interviewed an Israeli policeman regarding the incident who said Yoder would have been arrested for his nude swim had any officers been in the vicinity. There is a perverse aspect to this story: The U.S. is supposedly fighting to win Islamist hearts and minds, while the wars' most vehement supporters defile a site deemed holy to their own religion.  This perversion negates the deaths of our soldiers, who are to uphold a standard to which their leaders do not hew, and makes a mockery of our ostensible respect for religion.

All of the congressmen who took part in this behavior should be censured; Yoder should resign, according to everything he holds holy.

Indian Giver

___________________

Talk amongst yourselves . . .

[cross-posted @ milpub]