Monthly Archives: November 2007

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Monday Morning Surfing

November 26, 2007 8:00 am / Leave a Comment / John Little

Newsweek
Thousands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war. Although they’re scarcely a fraction of the roughly 2.2 million who have fled into exile since 2003, they represent a big shift: for the first time since the war began, more Iraqis seem to be re-entering the country than leaving. At the desert outpost of Al Waleed, the main crossing on the Syrian frontier, border police reported 43,799 Iraqis coming home in October—more than five times the number heading out, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Other statistics remain patchy at best, but the signs point toward home. “I can tell you this,” says Abdul Samid Rahman Sultan, Iraq’s minister of Displacement and Migration (the job title alone tells how bad the problem has been). “Flights from Syria are always full. Flights out are not.”

EdDriscoll.com
Longtime readers will know that I’m not a huge fan of Pat Buchanan for reasons that we explored in this post, amongst others, but in his new book, Buchanan really goes beyond the pale with this particular recommendation: A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

The Washington Times
Fort Huachuca, the nation’s largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Military.com
“Diyala is a very different province now then when we assumed control in November of last year,” he said at a news conference, pointing to the rampant violence, lack of essential services and corruption issues that were dominant. “Today there is hope in Diyala.”

The Captain’s Journal
The insurgency and foreign fighters (Chechens, Africans, Western Chinese and others) had congregated in Fallujah in the spring of 2007. They were not only in complete control of Fallujah, but were using it to launch terrorist operations into Baghdad. The previous command had declared Fallujah “unwinnable.” Into this debacle came 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, initiating heavy kinetic operations from the outset to find and capture or kill the insurgents. Later, gated communities, biometrics, and concerned citizens neighborhood watch programs were implemented to restrict the access of the insurgents to the population. Governance was accomplished via a return to a concept implemented during the Saddam era: the Muktars, or area leaders/representatives. Tribal sheikhs were all but irrelevant in the most recent Fallujah operations. The Anbar narrative is complex and varied, and includes much more than a tribal leader “flipping.”

The Associated Press
Recently, even as the evidence of Iranian involvement has firmed, the number of EFP attacks has sharply declined. U.S. Maj. Gen. James Simmons said on Nov. 15 that Iran’s promises to Iraq’s government that it would stem the flow of weapons “appear to be holding up.” Why would Iran suddenly stop funding attacks? There are many theories and no certainty: Perhaps Iran felt it had made the point it could be dangerous. Maybe it wanted to stay on the Iraqi government’s good side. Perhaps it felt rival Sunni Muslims were so beaten down, it no longer needed to help fellow Shiites. Or perhaps Iran worried the U.S. might retaliate unless it eased off.

Say Anything
The outcome of the Annapolis Conference, which begins Tuesday and will last for three days, is pre-ordained: it will accomplish nothing, and will prove to be a complete waste of everyone’s time. The Conference is intended to bring the Arabs, Palestinians, the UN Security Council member states and Israel together to resolve issues on the way to the creation of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians do not want peace, however, their Arab allies do not want peace, and the Palestinians are in the midst of a civil war such that any nascent achievements from Annapolis will quickly be undone.

Michelle Malkin
If things don’t go their way in Annapolis tomorrow at the Mideast Capitulation Summit, a Palestinian shopkeeper recommends that customers smash his souvenir mugs to bits – Demand “peace.” Threaten property destruction. If only mugs were the sole targets of their rage…

Posted in: Need to Know

The 2007 Annapolis Mideast Peace Conference

November 25, 2007 9:18 pm / Leave a Comment / John Little

Getting Syria to the table was a bit of a coup but it’s nearly impossible to believe that we’ll see see any substantive results from this event. If there is consensus it’s only on that very point – nothing much will come of this. Peace will come when Arab leaders and anti-Zionist forces worldwide (mostly on the far-left) no longer view the Palestinians as mere canon fodder. Arab leaders have spent decades manufacturing this crisis. They’re not walking away from it any time soon. Doing so would bring all of the ugly truths about their own societies, and their leadership, into focus. True peace will only be possible after the Arab world is transformed.

Anyway, there is an official site for those who are interested. Wikipedia has more information including a pretty comprehensive rundown on the participants.

National security advisor Steve Hadley recently laid out some goals, if you can call them that, for the event:

…the focus of these discussions are the Israelis and the Palestinians launching a negotiating process, supporting them in their efforts to implement the road map, which we still think is the critical path for achieving peace, and, in parallel, building Palestinian institutions and making sure there’s international support for that. That’s what really this meeting is all about and that’s what we hope will come out of it.

In other words, they’re not hoping for much. Or as Rick Richman puts it:

So the conference will “launch negotiations” — since the last few months of actual negotiations over a “document” have failed. Since failure is not an option, this will be called a success.

Frank Viviano is bit more optimistic:

The atmosphere is marked by weakness, uncertainty and pessimism. Yet that may prove to be the Annapolis conference’s greatest strength, an unexpected prelude to breakthrough on the 60-year road to an Arab-Israeli-settlement. It is between the lines of bleak editorials, op-ed columns and analyses in the press of the Middle East itself that this hope, however slim, can be read. From Riyadh and Beirut to Cairo and Jerusalem, pre-conference media coverage has been a strange mosaic of dark foreboding and unusual glimmers of light. No less unusual is the fact that Annapolis will bring together all of the governments and mainstream players in this unending conflict for the first time – precisely because because all of them are reeling in crisis. In a sense, there could be no more potent chemistry for success at the negotiating table. The closest equivalent is the “Nixon shock” of 35 years ago, when a fiercely anti-Communist U.S. president, faced with riots in the American streets and a war about to be lost in Southeast Asia, suddenly found common ground with a marxist China gravely enfeebled by cultural revolution.

John Bolton is cranky, pessimistic, and right (as usual):

“If there is a conference and it fails, we are not simply in the status quo that we had before,” Bolton said during a Web-based question-and-answer session. “We are in a worse position, because it will show a decline in American influence, a failure in a very visible way. I wish we weren’t doing this at all.”

And The Washington Post falls somewhere in the middle:

If there are causes for optimism, they lie in the hopeful public rhetoric of Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas — and the fears that lie behind it. Mr. Olmert has publicly pledged several times that Israel will negotiate seriously, and he said last week that he believed there was a chance to complete a peace deal by the end of next year. His government, like many in the Middle East, is deeply worried by Iran’s attempt to expand its influence throughout the region and believes a failure of the talks would play into Tehran’s hands. That prospect may be enough to produce some progress at the Annapolis meeting and in the months to come. But the breakthrough that Ms. Rice thought was possible still looks remote.

While, Henry Siegman hits all of the Arab talking points on the way to this ridiculously one-sided conclusion:

If the international community has been largely indifferent to—or impotent to do anything about—what some have tried to portray as a quarrel between Israel and Palestinians over where to draw the border between the two, it is far less likely to remain indifferent to an Israel intent on permanently denying its majority Arab population the rights and privileges it accords to its minority of Jewish citizens. It would be an apartheid regime that, one hopes, a majority of Israelis would themselves not abide.

Posted in: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Politics, Russia, Syria

Where the Magic Happens

November 25, 2007 6:58 pm / Leave a Comment / John Little

I don’t usually require anything other than my main Ubuntu workstation and it’s four or more virtual desktops. I may pull out the laptops if there’s a major crisis and I’m live blogging for extended periods. They’re running, from right to left, openSUSE 10.3, Ubuntu 7.10, and Xandros.

Posted in: Sci/Tech

Fringe Candidate Roundup: Discussing Kucinich & Paul

November 25, 2007 12:53 pm / 1 Comment / John Little

American Power
The extremist element of the Paul phenomen is the elephant in the room. Just broaching the subject sets people off, if my many drive-by attacks from the Ronulans are any indication.

Rutland Herald
DeWalt said he has seen a lot to like in Kucinich’s latest campaign for the White House. “He’s the only one talking about impeachment in the campaign,” DeWalt said. “But just because he is a little short, squeaky and admits to once seeing a UFO, he apparently has been eliminated from being a serious presidential contender.”

National Ledger
Paul seems fairly satisfied with his angry white male support. He recently said in an interview that was impressed with their anger and hopes they keep it up. That’s really a hopeless way to run a campaign, especially for a fringe candidate. For Paul and his ideas to be heard, he needs to move beyond the anger and create ideas that get him noticed outside of the Paul circle of support.

The Capital Times
Dennis Kucinich stands as the one candidate whose bred-in-the-bone beliefs about war and peace, the rights of working people, environmental integrity, and the sanctity of the Bill of Rights embody the convictions of what may be fairly called mainstream Democrats — political heirs of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the best of the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Too Sense
If Ron Paul’s “freedom message” is the “direct descendant” of Barry Goldwater’s “once dominant” (dominant only in the sense of “I like segregation”), then given the election results in 1964, the folks at reason can only hope Paul’s appeal isn’t as limited as his predecessor. My guess is it is. Loudmouthed, but limited.

Chuck For…
When you watch those seven Democrats on stage it is easy to forget that Dennis Kucinich may easily be the smartest person on the stage. I did not say most accomplished politician, I said smartest. He is an 11 year veteran of the US House from Ohio’s 10th which is primarily Cleveland, not much known as a bastion of left wing politics. He wins. Dennis Kucinich has a lot of practice advancing and defending his ideas. Oddly enough, while in this period he seems hopelessly left fringe not all that long ago his thinking would have been mainstream left, just out of the theoretical middle. Maybe Dennis is a man out of his time, or maybe this time is just out of joint. One thing is certain, the media’s treatment of a man as accomplished and intelligent as Dennis is nothing short of disgraceful.

Daily Paul
If you are still with family from Thanksgiving, don’t forget to share this with your family and other Ron Paul videos. Believe me, they will come around as they see your energy. My family doesn’t even try to defend the Iraq war anymore—-I thought they would never see the light. They are still confused about “the war on terror” (as am I) but they understand now that the doctrine of preemption is a bad thing.

Outside the Beltway
Our future government be more “libertarian” on some issues, such as homosexuality, immigration, and drug use as the demographics change and the social consensus evolves. At the same time, we’ll almost certainly be less “libertarian” on other issues, notably health care. I use scare quotes around “libertarian” because, regardless of the direction, the change will be based on political compromise and the interests of the dominant coalition rather than ideological revolution.

OpEdNews.com
Mr. Kucinich, it’s time to change tactics and make a real run at the Presidency, one that America can get behind and know that you have a real chance of winning the election. If you do anything less Sir, I believe that your bid at the Presidency is doomed, as well as our democracy and freedoms(s). In desperate times, people take desperate measures to insure their success, and the “times” couldn’t be more desperate than they are today, so if you’re truly going to have a chance at winning, changing your bid to an Independent is the only way I can imagine that you will be successful – even if it means teaming-up with Ron Paul or “Rocky” Anderson.

The Truth Will Set You Free
Ron Paul opposes any recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and his excuses are even sillier than his excuses for voting against the impeachment of Cheney. Paul has never voted to support Armenians, as can be seen from his record here.

Station Charon
Honestly I don’t know what the meatheads, pollsters, party moguls and rank political whores don’t understand about the appeal of GOP (in name only) dark horse candidate Ron Paul. He is for the Constitution and against the wars and rather than the normal business as usual horse trading, backstabbing, triangulating and dicking around that keeps continually inept dipshit Democratic party beltway elitist consultants like Bob Schrum employed despite their epic history of incompetence perhaps it’s time for someone in the jackass party to get a fucking clue before the 2008 election goes up in their hand like the same flaming bag of dogshit that their overpaid clown strategists keep handing to them in a perverse reenactment of Groundhog Day.