If, following the US withdrawal, Iraq becomes a bridge linking Iran to Syria, the Iranian forces could cross Iraq and arrive in Syria, in order to participate in a direct war on the Golan front. In that case, Israel would not be fighting Hizbullah alone. It would be fighting Hizbullah, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This is the so-called "Shiite Crescent" that they fear. Since Iran dominates this [axis], the Arab countries refer to it as the "Shiite Crescent."FP: As Elder of Ziyon comments: To some people, this is just more proof that Israel has to work harder and offer more in order to bring peace. (Or, that always fun alternative - that peace should be imposed by the US.) Either way, clearly Israel must do more to make the Arab world happy! BTW, Hizb’allah is not a terror organization because it has lawyer members.
If Hizbullah has 5,000 missiles and can destroy some targets in Israel, the equation will completely change when Syria and Iran join the war. You will have the strategic superiority and a force large enough to pulverize Israel, even if this war costs you hundreds of thousands of martyrs – not just 1,000 or 2,000. You will enter this war with a population mass exceeding 100 million.
…
But if Syria is victorious as a confrontation country, Israel will come to an end. There are military balances. Hizbullah can defeat Israel, but it cannot abolish it. If Syria enters a war with Israel, it may be able to regain the Golan, but it will not be able to liberate Haifa and Tel Aviv.
However, Hizbullah, Syria, Iraq, and Iran will constitute a force that is militarily superior to Israel and will destroy it. They will wage a war and might even suffer hundreds of thousands of martyrs – because Israel might use the nuclear weapon in order to survive – but nevertheless, this war will put an end to Israel.
JOSHUAPUNDIT:
Anthony Shadid and David Kirkpatrick report in the New York Times, In Tumult, New Hope for Palestinian Cause.
An appropriate question about this assertion is: Is it possible that Arab leaders who held power without regard to the will of the people on anything else, respected the will of their citizenry on the issue of the Palestinians?
The example from Tunisia is instructive. Banning normalization with Israel, is not primarily motivated by support of the Palestinians, but by hatred of Israel and Jews. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been part of every Arab nation. The problem is that this is one facet of the older governments that the reformers refuse to change. (If the reformers advocated closer ties with Israel and fought antisemitism, it would be a surer sign that they were agitating for freedom and not just a new boss not much different from the old boss.) In Egypt the support for Gaza is based on a common ideology between the ascendent Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in Gaza.
Shadid and Kirkpatrick carefully construct their narrative, but they ignore too much. This is agenda driven journalism rather than straight reporting. It's pretty clear that they are trying to create a new bromide: that a Palestinian state is essential to assuring that the "Arab spring" achieves true freedom and that this is a priority of the protesters.
FP: I’ve long argued that the claim that Arab dictators exploited the Palestinian issue to distract from their domestic failures and corruption begged the question. Implicit in the claim was, and is, that the tyrants pushed support of the Palestinian issue on the masses—who otherwise did not care that much about the Palestinians—in order to generate some legitimacy which their regimes otherwise lacked. But if the tyrants lacked legitimacy and the masses did not really care about the Palestinians, why would the tyrants push yet another unpopular issue on them? That’s no way to get legitimacy.An appropriate question about this assertion is: Is it possible that Arab leaders who held power without regard to the will of the people on anything else, respected the will of their citizenry on the issue of the Palestinians?
The example from Tunisia is instructive. Banning normalization with Israel, is not primarily motivated by support of the Palestinians, but by hatred of Israel and Jews. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been part of every Arab nation. The problem is that this is one facet of the older governments that the reformers refuse to change. (If the reformers advocated closer ties with Israel and fought antisemitism, it would be a surer sign that they were agitating for freedom and not just a new boss not much different from the old boss.) In Egypt the support for Gaza is based on a common ideology between the ascendent Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in Gaza.
Shadid and Kirkpatrick carefully construct their narrative, but they ignore too much. This is agenda driven journalism rather than straight reporting. It's pretty clear that they are trying to create a new bromide: that a Palestinian state is essential to assuring that the "Arab spring" achieves true freedom and that this is a priority of the protesters.
The reality has always been, of course, that neither the tyrants nor the masses care about the Palestinians. What the Arabs do care about is the destruction of Israel and hating Jews, with the Palestinians just a means for that—that’s precisely why they’ve been held seething in poor conditions in the refugee camp as a weapon against Israel. The tyrants did not push the issue, they exploited its huge popularity.
William Kristol: Fear the Fed (h/t POWERLINE)
It is impossible to overstate the danger posed to the long-term stability of our country by current Fed policy, which has reached what one can only hope is the apogee of misplaced confidence in their ability to fine-tune the world. Fed policy, consisting of ZIRP (zero percent interest rates, which are now promised to be maintained for at least the next two years) and gigantic purchases of medium and long-term bonds (so-called QE, or quantitative easing), is unprecedented in monetary history.
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These policies (ZIRP and QE) cheat savers out of a fair return on their capital, and virtually promise an explosion of price inflation at some unpredictable point in the future. It is devilishly hard to preserve the value of paper money even when authorities are determined to protect it. The Bernanke Fed, in contrast, is willing to risk everything on its utterly unproven conviction that inflation is not and will not be a problem, and that its supereasy policies will not debase the value of money and cause a run on the dollar against one or more of the following: gold, other currencies, or commodities. Or a massive fall in long-term bond prices. Or a ferocious rise in consumer prices.
…
Poor policy and incompetent policymakers created these problems (financial crash, recession, and persistent high unemployment and sluggish growth), and better leaders can solve this. A crucial platform element in the next elections must be sound money, and our leaders and potential leaders should be determined to remove “employment” from the mandate of the Fed (it is obviously hard enough for them to focus on even one goal—the protection of the value of money). And our leaders should say, loudly and clearly, that among the things they will do when they achieve the power to actually do such things is to fire Bernanke, normalize interest rates, stop the QE policy, and pursue pro-growth fiscal, tax, and regulatory policies.
FP: The reason the same failing policies are repeated is because the political consequences of effective policies would resemble the current ones in Britain—social dislocation, conflict and violence—and the political system does not have the guts to go for it. An economic system in which sociopathic speculators earn billions from bringing down the economic system, corporations rob the taxpayers blind and citizens are chronically unemployed does not yield a sustainable social system. That’s the condition the US has put itself in and why the US will continue to decline unstoppably to demise.…
These policies (ZIRP and QE) cheat savers out of a fair return on their capital, and virtually promise an explosion of price inflation at some unpredictable point in the future. It is devilishly hard to preserve the value of paper money even when authorities are determined to protect it. The Bernanke Fed, in contrast, is willing to risk everything on its utterly unproven conviction that inflation is not and will not be a problem, and that its supereasy policies will not debase the value of money and cause a run on the dollar against one or more of the following: gold, other currencies, or commodities. Or a massive fall in long-term bond prices. Or a ferocious rise in consumer prices.
…
Poor policy and incompetent policymakers created these problems (financial crash, recession, and persistent high unemployment and sluggish growth), and better leaders can solve this. A crucial platform element in the next elections must be sound money, and our leaders and potential leaders should be determined to remove “employment” from the mandate of the Fed (it is obviously hard enough for them to focus on even one goal—the protection of the value of money). And our leaders should say, loudly and clearly, that among the things they will do when they achieve the power to actually do such things is to fire Bernanke, normalize interest rates, stop the QE policy, and pursue pro-growth fiscal, tax, and regulatory policies.
Bret Stephens: Is Obama Smart?
Of course, it's tempting to be immodest when your admirers are so immodest about you. How many times have we heard it said that Mr. Obama is the smartest president ever? Even when he's criticized, his failures are usually chalked up to his supposed brilliance. Liberals say he's too cerebral for the Beltway rough-and-tumble; conservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are all part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.
I don't buy it. I just think the president isn't very bright.
…
Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.
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Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent.
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But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.
FP: Ideology and stupidity are not mutually exclusive, but reinforcing each other. BTW, Obama faithfully represents the American public as it pertains to knowledge and ability to reason. I don't buy it. I just think the president isn't very bright.
…
Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.
…
Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent.
…
But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.
Egypt's Rulers Stoke Xenophobia
After a lull, Egypt's new military rulers are increasingly using the same tactic: portraying pro-democracy activists as spies and saboteurs, blaming the country's economic crisis and sectarian strife on foreign infiltrators, and blasting the U.S. for funding agents of change.
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The military-inspired xenophobia campaign has been amplified by resurgent Islamists, who are traditionally hostile to any infidel influence in the country, and jingoistic reports in parts of the Egyptian media.
"Any relation with the foreigners is dangerous now," says Hafez Abu Saada, chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. "First they've started spreading incitement against foreigners, making people fear them. Now, the conspiracy theories have moved onto anyone in Egypt working with international organizations. This is a strategy to control civil society."
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Even the more liberal parties vying for power are joining the anti-Western chorus. "America does not want for Egypt to become the largest democratic country in the region," says Al-Sayed al-Badawy, chairman of the secular and liberal Wafd party. "The aim of American funding for Egyptian NGOs is to create chaos and to overthrow Egyptian values and traditions."
FP: Egypt expresses its natural Arab state. Plus ca change……
The military-inspired xenophobia campaign has been amplified by resurgent Islamists, who are traditionally hostile to any infidel influence in the country, and jingoistic reports in parts of the Egyptian media.
"Any relation with the foreigners is dangerous now," says Hafez Abu Saada, chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. "First they've started spreading incitement against foreigners, making people fear them. Now, the conspiracy theories have moved onto anyone in Egypt working with international organizations. This is a strategy to control civil society."
…
Even the more liberal parties vying for power are joining the anti-Western chorus. "America does not want for Egypt to become the largest democratic country in the region," says Al-Sayed al-Badawy, chairman of the secular and liberal Wafd party. "The aim of American funding for Egyptian NGOs is to create chaos and to overthrow Egyptian values and traditions."
Elder of Ziyon: Ramadan in Europe (quoting Soeren Kern at Hudson-NY)
Following are excerpts from a statement by London Islamist Abu Waleed, which was aired on the internet.
Abu Waleed: "What is the nightmare on Downing Street? The nightmare on Downing Street, my dear brothers, is when the door of 10 Downing Street is kicked down by one monotheist, and the Caliph walks in and establishes the shari'a....The nightmare on Downing Street, my dear brothers, is when one monotheist pulls a rope, and raises the banner of 'There is no god but Allah' above the Big Ben. The nightmare on Downing Street is when one monotheist flies a helicopter all the way to the top of the Big Ben. He removes those numbers, and replaces them with Arabic numbers. That is the nightmare of Downing Street, my dear brothers.FP: Good luck with that, Europe.
"As you all understand, we, as Muslims, are not those types of coconut-chocolate moderate Muslims – the ones who bow their heads down to the government. Rather, we are the ones who want to work for the sake of Allah, to establish the manifestation of Islam, and make sure that David Cameron comes on his hands and knees, and give us the jizya – yeah, that's right – and cover up all the women and put a niqab on their faces, including Queen Elizabeth and Kate Middleton, the whore, the fornicator."
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