Obama’s Angelic Doctrine Disarms America’s Enemies

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen

global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

 

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a ‘neighing’ argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos–with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes…have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine…finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for  a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery. 

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, the intellectual coup d’état by the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptively is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well that columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.  

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away …we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.  

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

Will There Be An “Obama Effect” in Iran??

By Steve Clemons http://thewashingtonnote.com/

June 11, 2009

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve’s two question marks promptly save him from falling and drowning into the politics of wishful thinking. The hate of the Islamic Republic against America is deeply rooted and no “mesmerizing” speech by Obama will ever change that. Even if a change from Ahmadinejad to Moussavi does occur, which in my opinion is most unlikely, as I believe the silent majority of Iran will deliver victory to Ahmadinejad, the geopolitical power lunge by Iran to become the hegemon of the region and of Islam, hence clashing with the geopolitical interests of the United States, will not be derailed, and therefore its policies will not be modified by one iota. This is why Iran will continue with its nuclear program and its consummation into a nuclear bomb.

And all those wishful thinkers who believe that Obama’s Cairo speech will have an impact will be gaping with an open mouth at a mirage.

What to Do to Defeat the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to: The Limits of Replicating the “Anbar Awakening”

Published on the Washington Note, June 04, 2009

There is a great possibility of replicating the strategy of the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s Awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords.

Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break” in Afghanistan, as some liberals in America place their hope for the ending of the conflict on the casting of the dice.

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008. The link below will take you to it.

http://kotzas12.xanga.com

 

Iran: Know thy Enemy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama with his latest commitment to the war in Afghanistan seems to be harking to the realists of his political and diplomatic advisors, such as Richard Holbrooke, and is readying himself to debunk the bunk of his leftist supporters of ending America’s military involvement in the hot spots of the world and adopting and continuing the bellicose policy of the former Bush administration against the terrorist extremists. In his announcement of his ‘new’ policy in Afghanistan he very closely repeated Bush’s words that as President he would not allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorists that the latter would use once again to attack the American homeland. Hence he clearly coupled the war in Afghanistan with America’s security and therefore made it very difficult for the anti-war movement to continue influencing the silent majority, as it did against the Bush administration, toward a pacifist position since such a position would be senseless and stupid to anyone whose life was under a direct threat. Obama therefore placed himself in a politically strong position that even an increase of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan could not erode since this is the price that America will have to pay for its security. One therefore can say “hats off to Obama,” to quote Robert Kagan from his piece in the Washington Post, for his new strategy in Afghanistan.

What is most worrying however is in verity the president’s new policy in regard to Iran. In his keen propensity to detach himself from the ‘fisticuffs’ policy of his predecessor which he considered to be wrong and politically infertile, Obama, as he had promised during the presidential campaign, is opening the door of diplomacy to the ‘Mullahcratic’ regime hoping that the latter will be susceptible to the diplomatic blandishments and calls of reason that the U.S.A. and Iran could ‘live and let live’ with each other if they had the will and wisdom to change the belligerent attitudes of the past toward each other. This is a laudable aim but the question is whether it will resonate with the Theocratic regime in Tehran. President Obama in his direct address to the Iranian people, in their new year’s day, went out of his way to praise the Islamic Republic and the cultural achievements of its people. But what is in a name when one could praise in the same terms the united republics of the USSR, the republic of Mao’s China, the republic of Cambodia under Pol Pot, and a sundry of ‘genocidal’ republics in Africa with the only difference being that the scale of atrocities are not as high in Iran as they have been with the above blood-lusted republics. But who knows, with a future nuclear armed Iran the latter could surpass them all on the scale of wickedness.

It’s this great danger that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Western nations and to the U.S. that the latter as the supreme power in the world must prevent. And the ambition of Tehran to acquire a nuclear armoury is un-ambiguous and unyielding. Only few days ago President Ahmadinejad in his address to the Iranian people proudly proclaimed that Iran would not cease its nuclear programme as its achievement is the deserved status of a great nation. It’s obvious that Ahmadinejad took his lines directly from the speech of Obama who praised so exuberantly the Islamic Republic and its cultural achievements. But in the hope of the President that by paying homage and offering peace to the Tehran regime it would de-couple the latter from its religious fanatic nucleus and its great hate toward America, Obama shows himself to be irretrievably naive and abysmally ignorant of the duplicitous enemy he is facing.

The foremost intelligence apparatus in the Middle East the Israeli one had its chief Major General Amos Yadlin saying early this month, …”Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, saying that “the jihadists interpret compromise as weakness.”(M.E.) He cited the withdrawal from Gaza four years ago which many had thought at the time it would debilitate the conflict, instead it encouraged it. And this is exactly how the Iranian leadership sees Obama’s ‘open door’ diplomacy, as a screeching sound of American weakness, as in its eyes the relative isolation of the U.S. among its allies, Russia and China and its inability to persuade the latter to take harder sanctions against them limpidly demonstrates this weakness. And this enfeeblement of the U.S. is further exemplified in Iran’s view by the North Korean defiance in its rocket launching, which, only few months ago in the last days of the Bush administration, was participating in direct talks with U.S envoys in regard to its nuclear programme–that that stalwart and hawk-eyed in foreign affairs John Bolton had predicted with characteristic insight that the talks would come to nothing. If miniscule N. Korea could so brazenly defy the U.S., in spite of the commitments it made during the negotiations, what the great Islamic Republic of Iran would do in future negotiations with the Americans?

President Obama and his close advisers are incapable of realising that an enemy who sees the United States as being politically compelled to negotiate from a weak position cannot be forced by diplomatic means to accept the demand of the Americans and their allies that Iran must cease the development of its nuclear programme. Hence Obama’s administration is setting up its tent of diplomacy in a barren desert where the Iranian diplomatic camels will come empty of any reciprocal ‘gifts’ to the peaceful and morally generous gestures of the Obama administration. It’s inconceivable to imagine, that if not Obama, that some of his close and more astute consigliori are unable to anticipate the futility and dangers of diplomacy with a foe who considers himself to be negotiating from a position of strength. The only result that can come out from such negotiations with the Iranians is for the Americans to come out as losers from this parley or walk out of the talks with the tail in-between their legs in a scornfully embarrassed state.

This will be the fate of President Obama’s diplomatic overture with the Iranian theocratic regime as an outcome of his total inability to “know thy enemy,” a prerequisite, according to the great Chinese strategist and sage Sun Zi, in defeating one’s mortal enemy. But the final judgment on President Obama–the constitutional lawyer and former community organizer, a rookie in the art of statecraft and who in his Prague address beyond proclaiming, with humility soaked in weakness, America’s decline, indulged himself also to make some trite ‘brandy(ed)’ derisive comments about the two great statesmen Churchill and Roosevelt who defeated the Axis powers–who as a result of the pathological hate—which neutralized even the ingrained racism that many Americans have toward blacks–that a great part of the electorate had toward Bush-Cheney and by association the Republicans, was swept by this bitter wind into the Oval Office, will be rendered by a Shakespearean Sovereign, King Lear: “Nothing comes out of nothing.”

American who Considers that Obama will be a Strong Leader

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Sweetness, you bring up many points and allow me to deal with some of them. First, let us assume you are right that on the issue of Obama saying ‘present’ at Congress sessions was strategy not indecision. But what about his savvy political decision to have Hillary as deputy that was vetoed by Michelle who hated her and Obama caving before his wife’s decision? You will say this is rumour. But let us see if this rumour can be verified by some facts. The worse mummy’s boy is the one without a mother. Obama was abandoned by both his parents when he was a little boy and was brought up by his grandparents. All his life he was searching for his lost father whom he finally found in his pastor Jeremiah, and more importantly, for his runaway mother whom he found when he married strong Michelle. (And that is probably the reason why he never abandoned her, like so many other African-Americans do with their wives.) It is Michelle that is wearing both pair of pants: Her own and her husband’s.

Secondly, on the war, his decision to oppose the war was not based on wisdom but on ignorance. Ignorant of the content of the briefings as a junior Senator that other Democrat Senators more senior became aware of and for that reason supported the impending war. On the issue of the Surge and Woodward’s assessment, the Surge was part of a new strategy under General Petraeus linked to the ‘groundbreaking new covert techniques…’ that were primary in defeating the insurgency, according to Woodward. And the Surge may have facilitated these new techniques to achieve their goal. Further Obama only six months ago had pledged to the American people that he would withdraw the troops from Iraq. And he would do this while the bravery and professionalism of the US army were winning the war in Iraq. Thus depriving the soldiers their glorious victory and, most dangerous of all, conceding to their enemies that the U.S. was defeated in the war in Iraq, as that would be the logical conclusion of Obama’s withdrawal. Surely, as a reasonable person, you would not consider these decisions of Obama arising from his strength of character.

Thirdly, what I meant to say was that Obama by ‘cutting his sails to the winds of populism’ went along with the uninformed masses who had made their decision on the issue of the war not by the power of their brain but by the beats of their heart, and it was on those “beats” that Obama also positioned himself on the same issue. Unlike McCain who supported the Surge at the peak of the unpopularity of the war. This shows clearly which of the two leaders is endowed with a strong character. 

No Half Measures: Plan to win the war in Afghanistan

By Con George-Kotzabasis

 

Unlike the evolution of species from an imperfect state to a more advanced one, the evolution of war, as a result of the huge increase in the fire-power of armaments and lethal military techniques, in reverse is a development for the worst. Throughout history the lessons of military confrontations have pellucidly shown that when a state decides to don the panoply of war against irreconcilable and implacable enemies it’s by the worst means and methods that one can defeat such foes. The military forces and the armaments that a state has at its disposal have to be used disproportionately and relentlessly against the “strength” of its enemy and defeat the latter by nipping him in-the-bud and hence preventing him from becoming stronger. In the few instances when force was not used disproportionally against a “budding” foe–an exemplary late demonstration of this was the Vietnam War when U.S. strategists instead of using a force de frappe against the Vietcong and destroying them while they were still weak they used the fallacious strategy of escalation to their doom—the war, if it was won, was waged at an astronomical cost in military personnel and materiel as well as at an enormous number of civilian casualties and refugees.

 

It’s for this reason that a compellingly victorious strategy against the Taliban dictates that the US and its NATO allies deployed in Afghanistan must use their powerful armaments up to the hilt as well as all the techniques of covert and clandestine operations of their Special Forces. The only powerful armaments they should keep in reserve are tactical nuclear weapons, which would only be used as a last resort, if conventional weapons are found to be wanting in destroying a fanatical unyielding enemy who considers himself of implementing the agenda of God.

 

Moreover, since the contour of the  war against the Taliban is not separated by Maginot lines and is by its nature a borderless war which the enemy by crossing the border of a neighbourly country uses it as a safe haven and replenishment ground for its forces, it would be doltishly foolish and strategically illogical and contradictory for the US forces and its allies to stop the chase of the Taliban at the border, in our case,  of Pakistan, all in the name of respecting the national sovereignty of the latter when the Taliban already flagrantly and brazenly violated.  In such war it would be the ultimate inanity and an abiding tragedy for one party in a deadly conflict to “piously” abide to international conventions and treaties while the opposing party “sacrilegiously” violates. It would be like Don Quixote fighting Genghis Khan.  And an abiding tragedy as an outcome of an unnecessarily prolonged war which so voraciously feeds itself on civilian casualties from the fact that the Taliban and al-Qaeda uses civilians, and indeed, relatives and their own families, as human shields. When the war could potentially have been shortened and the tragic circumstances of its people involved as bystanders in an unwanted war could have ended, if the US military combined with its Pakistani counterpart could attack and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their safe havens and replenishing and recruiting grounds.

 

US strategists are of course aware that to allow “Cambodian Sanctuaries” on the soil of Pakistan for al-Qaeda and the Taliban would be militarily the penultimate foolishness. And the ultimate foolishness would be not to destroy these sanctuaries either by overt or covert operations. Fortunately we have already seen that the Americans are desisting from making the strategic mistakes of Vietnam and a shift in their strategy as pilotless drones and Special Forces units are bombing, and making incursions into, Pakistan in search and destroy operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. 

 

Inevitably, this has engendered nationalistic anger and ire among sections of the Pakistan government and many of its people against the incursion of US forces in their country which they consider to be a violation of the sovereignty of their nation. One however can argue that this “violation” on the part of the US would not have occurred if the primary violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty had not already being perpetrated by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Further, the inability of Pakistan, either due to a political unwillingness or military incapacity, to stop these initial violators of its sovereignty made it perforce a task for its allies against terror, i.e., the Americans to perform. The leadership in Islamabad must be reminded of these facts and their inevitable flow into a “strategic dam’ that first, will stem the current of the Taliban into Pakistan in violation of its borders, and secondly, will lead to the defeat of its enemies by depriving the latter their sanctuaries, thus achieving the goal of the Pakistan-American alliance against terror. Further allies in a war cannot logically violate each other’s sovereignty as their mutual aim is to destroy their enemy wherever the latter deploys his forces. And this is exactly what the Americans are doing by chasing the Taliban across the border of Afghanistan.  

 

Once the Taliban and al-Qaeda are deprived of their sanctuary in Pakistan and the Americans and their allies block this strategically deadly exit-and-entry of their enemy from and into the soil of Afghanistan that will ease the defeat of the Taliban and their sundry jihadists. And the beheading of the latter will be executed mainly by the Afghans themselves if the American strategists and their allies adopt the following strategy that is to be formulated below.

 

To Clausewitz, the master in matters of war the following was axiomatic: That the success of a war depends on the unison of the natural resources of a nation with the existence of its people. It’s this coupling that engenders the determination of a people to protect this vital natural wealth of a country from being appropriated by their enemies. In Afghanistan opium is the primary natural resource of the country. Ninety-three percent of opiates on the world market originate in Afghanistan at a value of $4 billion. It’s well known that the drug industry has major linkages with local administration as well as high levels of the national government. Also, the Taliban controls substantial parts of its production with which it funds its war against the Karzai government and its American, Australian and European allies.

 

It’s imperative therefore that the Afghanistan government turns off the faucet of opium and dry up the thirst of the Taliban to continue the war. More importantly, to use opium as a strategic weapon that will deal the Taliban a coup d’eclat from which it will never recover. To accomplish the complete defeat of the Taliban the Karzai government should as soon as it’s possible nationalize the production of opium and promptly make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan equity holders of the national consortium of opium production. As the tribal chiefs have been for aeons the shepherds of their people the profits that will be allocated to them will spread among their tribes. Hence every Afghan will have a vested interest to protect this economic benefit from being stolen by the Taliban bandits or any foreigners. Further it will enhance the status of the tribal chiefs among their people and solidify their political and social power which has been for years their goal.

 

Hence with this stratagem the central government in Kabul will mobilize all Afghans through their tribal elders in a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda that will lead to the total defeat of the latter. And it will build the foundations of a federal democratic structure in Afghanistan without impinging on the historically proud status of the tribal leaders’ independence that has been for hundreds of years the apple of discord and has fomented internecine warfare between the tribes. It’s for the Americans and their allies to persuade the Karzai government to nationalize the production of opium and turn it into the utmost political and military weapon that will decisively decimate the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

 

Hic Rhodus hic Salta   

 

Attack on Iran: Two Strategic Strikes One Waiting in the Wings

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

By John Pilger

On Line opinion, August 14, 2008

The historical fact is, which Pilger deliberately brushes over so he can make his intellectually disingenuous and moral argument, that the fear at the time was that the Germans might get the bomb first not that “Russia was our enemy,” quoting misleadingly General Groves, who was in charge of the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt had an amicable relationship with Stalin and believed their two countries after the war could reach a modus vivendi and indeed, cooperation. Moreover, the head of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer, and some of its other scientists, was a financial supporter, if not a clandestine member, like his brother, of the Communist Party of the USA, and hardly would have taken the directorship of the project if the bomb was to be used “to browbeat the Russians,” as Pilger claims. 

The intelligent errors of the CIA and all of its European counterparts in their estimates that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, Pilger cleverly transforms them into lies, appealing to the conventional wisdom of the hoi polloi, so he can do his own disinformation in regards to Iran’s covert planning to acquire nuclear weapons, by dubbing it also as a lie, manufactured by the “discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition, the MEK”, according to him, so he can give credibility to his own lies.

For what strategic reason would the US and its ally Israel attack Iran, whilst the former is involved at the moment in two long wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, other than the great threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to the region and to the strategic interests of the one and to the existence of the other? Whom the US would have “to browbeat” by letting loose from their silos their nuclear missiles against Iran, other than the latter?

In my opinion, if Iran is going to be attacked either by the US or Israel or both the strategic planning of the attack would be made up with two strikes. The first one would be to attack Iran with a devastating “rain” of conventional weapons that would target not only its nuclear plants but also its civilian, military, and religious leadership with the aim of decimating them. If however, its triangular leadership miraculously escapes its destruction and retaliates either against the naval and land forces of the US or Israel or any of the other Gulf States, then such retaliatory action by Iran would call a second strike executed either by Israel or the US with nuclear weapons. And it’s in this dual strike, if it becomes evident to the Iranian leadership of American or Israeli determination and resolve to use their powerful armaments against Iran, that a real possibility exists of a palace revolt among its leadership that would oust the radicals and replace them with moderates who would be prone to accept the international community’s demand that Iran ceases the enrichment of uranium. 

Over to you

Discussion with a Norwegian Writer what Kind of Society Could ‘Bring On’ an Apocalypse?

Kotzabasis says…

Krauthammer in his latest article on The Washington Post hit the nail on its head on the issue of the November 4 election. Indeed, and I’m paraphrasing, the crucial issue for Americans on November 4 will be to identify the lion-hearted and the lamb-hearted. If lacking the will or cognitive ability to make this identification and vote– out of irrational hate for Bush-Cheney and the Republicans as a result of their lack of understanding of the immeasurably intricate strategic situation that the Bush administration was placed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ‘razor-edge’ difficult decisions it had to take to protect America from the deadliest of foes- for the “lamb” Obama, then America like sheep will be taken to the ‘slaughterhouse’.  And there will be no shortage of intellectual shepherds—one of them will be Steve Clemons holding almost the longest staff in his hand—to lead it to the abattoir. And ironically their arch enemy fanatical Islam will be licking its chops.

Posted by Paul Norheim

“some folks would like to move forward again…”

Kotzabasi apparently wants to move backward straight into the
apocalypses.

Posted by kotzabasis Oct 25, 10:43PM – Link

Paul Norheim

Since you appear to be a ‘Nostradamus’ on apocalypses you should be able also to pose the right question about them. What kind of society has a greater potential to ‘bring on’ an apocalypse, a civilized one, such as America and Scandinavia are, of which you are one of its offshoots, or one that is versed and mired in religious fanaticism?

Posted by Paul Norheim Oct 26, 1:09AM – Link

OK Kotzabasis, I`ll try to answer this in a less polemical
manner,
because you actually raise a very interesting question.

What about one of those most “civilized” ones, like for example
Germany 70 years ago?

Cambodia 30 years ago?

Rwanda less than 15 years ago?

As you notice, I mentioned actual apocalypses in modern time,
not “potential” ones; some confined to a national scale, one of
them on a more or less global scale.
All of them had strong elements of ideological fanaticism -
which perhaps may be interpreted as a surrogate for religious
fanaticism. In the top leadership of the Rwandan genocide, it`s
said that religious hysteria (of a Christian type) played a certain
role as well, but I don`t think it was crucial.

You may also think of WW1, where a certain stupidity and lack
of fantasy among the European political and military leaders
may have played a role (most of the even thought that the
calamities would be over in a matter of weeks…)

In the nuclear age, I have no trouble seeing some of the bigger
powers, or even the biggest of them all, “bringing on” an
apocalypse, perhaps aided by a smaller state with a ruthless
leadership or leaders lacking judgment regarding dangers on a
geopolitical level. In a different political climate, the crisis in
Georgia may have escalated.
I could easily imagine several scenarios, some including states
where religious fanaticism certainly plays an important role,
some where religion plays no crucial role, or no role at all.

And one of those scenarios is the Global War on Terror – this
could bring on an apocalypse on a huge scale, due to lack of
sound judgement, BOTH from the “civilized” society and
societies “mired in religious fanaticism”. And as you may well
know, there are both moderate religious worshippers and
fanatics both in a country like, say Iran, and in a country like,
say USA – although this kind of fanaticism obviously may play a
more dangerous role in a theocracy. My point is: the division
between those mired in religious fanaticism and more sober
worshippers, does not respect national borders.

During the Cold War, the world was close to such a scenario at
least once (Kennedy/Khrushchev), and this had little to do with
religious fanaticism. I would say that ideological fanaticism of
various kinds presents a danger equal to religious fanaticism in
modernized societies.

One of the important questions during conflicts in the nuclear
age: what role do the mainstream media play? The role of
propaganda from both sides? And more important: how does
the leadership of a nation interpret the situation? How does it
balance threats with diplomacy? How does it interpret
intelligence and rumours?

And in cases of asymmetrical warfare, terrorism or failed states:
how does it avoid overreacting, or using a certain situation as
an excuse to legitimize other agendas?

My impression is that you, kotzabasis, have a rather simplistic
view on these matters. That you divide the world into two
forces: the civilized (”good”) world against the dangerous
societies “mired in religious fanaticism” (read: Islam). (Correct
me if I`m wrong in my assumptions).

In our contemporary world, I believe that the issues are much
more complicated than that. This is not to say that religious
fanaticism does not present a potential danger. Kashmir is just
one example of a hot spot where a fusion of nationalism and
religious fanaticism may be a crucial factor if it all blew up.

Iran may become very dangerous if it feels seriously threatened.
But so may Israel (and not due to “religious fanaticism”). Or
North Korea, in a state of paranoia, enforced by propaganda,
and lacking credible intelligence.

Even America may become dangerous if it should go in decline
- and if some hardliners in politics or in the army became
desperate to regain its hegemonic position. And if the GOP wins
this election and McCain`s VP candidate Sarah Palin should end
up as the woman in charge of the world’s only superpower, that
could be another example of an apocalyptical scenario where
religious fanaticism may play a role.
Potentially.

In fact, the potential apocalyptic scenarios are legio. However, I
doubt that Norway or Australia will play a crucial role in any of
those scenarios in the near future.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Posted by kotzabasis Oct 26, 6:59AM – Link

Paul, you have a very weak definition of “polemical” to consider my gentle ‘strokes’ upon you as being polemical. You would have been rejected as a weak ‘general’ under Gustavus the Great. You also have a very weird definition of a civilized society if you include as such Cambodia and Rwanda. As you well know a civilized society includes not only cultural factors but also political and juridical ones such as democracy and habeas corpus. Neither Cambodia nor Rwanda was in that category. Both of them were inflicted by apocalyptic “religious hysteria,” Cambodia’s rising from the Althusserian school of apocalyptic Marxism whose students included some of the future leaders of Cambodia such as Pol Pot and Kiem Sampan, and Rwanda’s partly from a primitive understanding of Christianity and tribal hatred which is the bane of Africa. Your examples by the way by an intellectual acrobatic lapse support the core of my argument, i.e., apocalypses are incubated and arise from religio-politico fanatical ideologies.

I also notice that your cognitive tools of analysis are rather blunt, refraining myself from the temptation to be polemical. You seem to be unaware that apocalypses have a greater potential to come from the deliberate action of religious and ideological beliefs than from the accidents of war due to the “stupidity and lack of fantasy among…political and military leaders.” No Western leader ever had an apocalyptic agenda nor was he imbued with ideological fanaticism, with the exception of Hitler and Stalin, but Ahmadinejad of Iran has such an agenda. This is the fundamental difference which you miss. But it’s obvious that you are not strong on fundamentals.

And you are not wrong in your “assumptions.” Once one identifies by the scrupulous method of historical knowledge and examples one’s irreconcilable, implacable, and malicious enemies one is compelled “knowing thy enemy” to make a clear and unequivocal stand between good and evil. The question is which is more “simplistic” to continue the ‘fine tuning’ of one’s intellectual deliberations, which obviously is your inclination, at a time when it’s simply evident who your real enemy is. “Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.” (Thucydides)
In your penultimate paragraph you fantasize when you depict the politically femme fatale Sarah Palin could potentially unravel an American “apocalyptical scenario.”

I enjoyed this civilized discussion sans name calling and sarcastic vitriol. But your apocalyptical equilibrium between fanatical Islam and the ‘pockets’ of religious and ideological fanaticism that exist in the West is dead wrong and has no historical legitimacy.

Adieu my friend

P.S. If you can spare the time click on my name and go to my site and tell me what you think of my proposal how to win the war in Afghanistan.

Posted by alan Oct 26, 9:12AM – Link

One curse that every President has had to bear is an **sh**e relative. It’s almost a given.

Posted by Paul Norheim Oct 26, 1:41PM – Link

Just a short reply now – I`m preparing for a trip to Berlin
tomorrow.

Re: the misunderstandings…

What I meant to say was that I decided to answer in a less
polemical manner than I originally planned (it did not refer to
your post).

Secondly I did not intend to imply Cambodia or Rwanda under
your concept of “civilized” societies – only the one I explicitly
called civilized: Germany.

Thirdly: I mentioned that ideological fanaticism “may be
interpreted as a surrogate for religious fanaticism, and “that
ideological fanaticism of various kinds presents a danger equal
to religious fanaticism in modernized societies.”

You seem to agree. Fine.

And then you said: “You seem to be unaware that apocalypses
have a greater potential to come from the deliberate action of
religious and ideological beliefs than from the accidents of
war due to…”

I am well aware of the dangers of deliberate actions of religious
and ideological beliefs. This is the reason why I consider
Pakistan the potentially most dangerous country in the world at
the moment: a collapsing economy, a weak state control, strong
fundamentalist elements in the population, the military, the
intelligence and in various organizations (like al Qaeda and
Taliban) — if you add to that the risk that these elements
could obtain control over the nuclear arsenal, and the question
of Kashmir, there is a huge risk for an apocalyptical scenario.

The main point of my post above was to show that in the
nuclear age there are countless of other potential risks as well -
NOT involving religious fanaticism. And on that point, I guess
we disagree.

And then to the last misunderstanding: “You would have been
rejected as a weak ‘general’ under Gustavus the Great. (…)
“Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one
was totally unfitted for action.” (Thucydides)

You seem to have misunderstood my role: I am not a man of
action involved in a war, I am a writer. A writer who, unlike you,
is not involved in a manichaean struggle of global proportions
“against one’s irreconcilable, implacable, and malicious
enemies”.

Life seems boring and trivial in Australia, as well as in Norway,
doesn`t it? You seem to have chosen Don Quijote`s strategy,
fighting a “war”, acting as if you were surrounded by enemies.
Must be entertaining for you.

In my next post, I`ll paste from an article in the New York
Times. Some food for thought, and somehow more directly
linked to Clemons’ original post.

Posted by Paul Norheim Oct 26, 1:48PM – Link

This one is for Kotzabasis, a column by Nicholas Kristof from NYT today, titled “The
Endorsement From Hell”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26kristof.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

 

Kotzabasis says

If you are a writer two things follow. First, you should have been able to pick another’s position from his writings. I did not pick my position out of trivial boredom in Australia nor as an escape to “entertainment” but after thinking many hours about it. And if you think that my position is a “Manichaean struggle” or a Quixotean attack on windmills after the dire transformative events of 9/11, then all I can say to you is that you are trivially shallow and intellectually flippant in your considerations. Secondly, if you are merely a writer avoiding action like a plague, then you should not be so judgemental about issues of war and pontificating on the latter ex cathedra.

Further, you would not pass a test in logic, and Plato would never allow you into his Academy. If you accept that 9/11 was an action of fanaticism in pursuit of the seventy-two virgins, how can you doubt that America’s and the West’s enemies are “irreconcilable, implacable, and malicious?”

I did not mention Germany as it was a special case, since you yourself made only a passing comment on it and concentrated your argument on Cambodia and Rwanda. The First World War had put an arrow into the pride heart of Germans, and the Great Depression had emptied their pockets. Thus civilized Germans at the time were susceptible to the slogan of “stab-in-the-back”, and to the beer hall seductions of Hitler’s unsurpassable oratorical skills. Not that such a special case cannot happen again. If American populist stadium politics in the presence of a current ‘Depression’ have their say and vote for Obama and his ‘changing’ and ‘transformative’ policies diminished America’s global power and weakened its stand against its enemies, then Obama could unwittingly become during his administration the sire of a future American Bonaparte. And America will in turn have on its calendar the Eighteenth of Brumaire all by courtesy of Obama.

Nicholas Kristof’s article in the New York Times is unworthy of a reply. It regurgitates and pays court to the politically and strategically bankrupt conventional wisdom of the chattering classes about the war on the extremists and continues, by implication, the mantra that the best strategy against militant fanatic Islam is to go to it with an olive branch in hand. As to the issue of jihadists recruits the answer is given by events in Iraq. Why al Qaeda and other jihadists groups are in dearth of recruits presently and use women and children as a substitute in their suicidal missions? The simple answer is that they have been defeated on the field of battle. This is the way to dry their well of recruits. 

 Your opininion… 

 

 

 

Will America Rise from its “Comatose” State?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to a very clever American Open Salon

The Global Credit Crunch and the Crisis of Legitimacy

By RCMoya612

 RCMoya, after your excellent and resplendent analysis I feel, if I captiously quibble about few points, like a bat squeaking in the dark. First, inequality might have “continued its forward march” but I would argue that it did so on a higher level of general economic prosperity in America following the up till now unassailable historical paradigm of capitalism and free markets that has made the poor ‘richer’ in relative terms, as Amartya Sen has contended.

Secondly, America’s “hectoring and ignoring” has its counterpart in Europe and in other continents whose countries were strong allies of the US during the Cold War but with the collapse of the Soviet Union have reappropriated their independence both geopolitically and culturally and expressing this in their own hectoring and ignoring against America, thus continuing the irreversible law of the political and cultural competition of nation-states.

Thirdly, I would argue that as long as America continues to be the centripetal force attracting the “best and the brightest” to its shores and not stifling the Schumpeterian spirit of entrepreneurship and “creative destruction”, it will be able to rise again even from the ashes of a ‘comatose’ state and will continue to be  in the foreseeable future the paramount power in world affairs.

And fourthly, the rejection by Congress of the funding plan that would have a better chance than none to prevent the economy from collapsing was inevitable in the present political climate where reason cannot compete with populist emotionalism and when a swirl of weak politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, and, indeed, Barak Obama, are its ‘slaves’.  Only by cleaning out these wimpish politicians from positions of power will the political narrative reassert its legitimacy.   

Will Hate for the Republicans Ravish Reason?

A short reply to Professor Paul Krugman and columnist of the NYT

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Well, well professor Krugman, if you take the personalities of Obama and McCain out of the equation what are you replacing them with other than hate? The hate Democrats have toward Bush-Cheney and the Republicans and by association McCain? So, if this is “a race between a Democrat and a Republican and a race that the Democrats will easily win,” to quote you, it will indeed be a sublime race, a contest between hate and reason.

Reason being on the side of those who believe that politically and strategically it would the ultimate inanity to elect a mercurial flashy populist who has his head in the clouds and is a leadership pretender to boot as president of the United States, the paramount protector of the achievements of Western civilization, when America is encountering deadly implacable enemies.

Over to you