Friday Afternoon Roundup - Rumors of Ceasefires

From The People's Cube

ABOUT THAT WAR II

Here's what I wrote in last week's roundup about the war that wasn't a war.

3. This is still not a war. What will most likely happen is that Israel will carry out some more air strikes and possibly even a limited ground operation. Some Hamas terrorists will die along with some Israeli civilians.

5. Phone calls from Washington and London will warn Netanyahu to wind down the operation. Turkey or Egypt will offer to negotiate a truce. Israel will pull out. Hamas will celebrate the usual victory of insurgencies, that of surviving the war they began.

None of these were predictions. Not if you count predicting that the sun will go up tomorrow as a prediction. This is what happens every time.

This would be a tragic farce if nothing changed, but with every engagement the terrorists gained more of what they want. They do more damage, they demonstrate that Israel can't (won't) defeat them and encourage another war. An actual war.

While Hamas gets better weapons, Israel invests in defensive pain management tools like Iron Dome.

"The moment of truth has arrived," Netanyahu said, on resigning from the Sharon government. "At the moment of truth, a man - especially a leader - must ask himself: 'What are you doing, what do you stand for, what are you fighting for?'"

That's what I wrote on Saturday Night in "A Moment of Truth for Israel". It's still the question to ask. 



THE GAME PLAN

The trouble with being on the defensive is that you are react to the plans of others, rather than putting your own planes in motion.

Whose plan was this war? Here's one possibility.

A day after the ceasefire, Morsi assumed near-dictatorial powers in Egypt. The timing of that is not likely to be a coincidence.

Either Morsi had cleared the assumption of such powers beforehand with Obama or assumed that he had demonstrated his importance to such an extent that Obama would not dare protest this action. It’s likely to be one or the other. And that raises one more troubling question.

Did Morsi give Hamas the go-ahead to launch a conflict with Israel in order to be able to broker a ceasefire and then use that as leverage for seizing domestic power?

Good luck finding out if Morsi and Obama traded tyranny in Egypt for a ceasefire in Gaza. We'll get the answer to that right after we get the situation room report from Benghazigate.




IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT'S HOW YOU SAY IT

Congressman Jim Clyburn went even further. “The entire English language was created by slaveowners as a means of oppression. You can’t just say that one word is a racist code word or another. The whole language, every single word, letter and apostrophe in it is racist. It’s a fact. If you speak English, you’re a racist.”

Democrats rushed to conduct conference calls over this new development worried about the consequences of continuing to use the racist English language. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was reportedly taking Spanish lessons from Mayor Bloomberg in preparation for the Democratic Party’s  shift to conducting all business in broken Spanish.

Hope was however restored when Congressman Clyburn was lured out of his mansion with an offer of a 3 million dollar grant to a museum of basket weaving in his name, and was persuaded to clarify his remarks.

“All Republicans is racist,” Congressman Clyburn said, “therefore whenever they use English, they are using it to hiddenly express racist ideas. Whenever they speak, they are speaking entirely in racist code words. But when Democrats like us speak English, we’re using tolerance code words.”

And so it was settled. Anything a Republican says in English is racist. Any racial slur used by a Democrat is however a hidden tolerance code word.

A number of leading establishment Republicans however have suggested that this represents an opportunity for their party to embrace the future by switching to Spanish.

Congressional Black Caucus Discovers Entire English Language is a Racist Code Word




DISTURBING THE PEACE

In the language of diplomacy, ceasefire does not mean that the rockets will stop falling and peace does not mean an end to the violence. They mean only that Israel is not allowed to fight back when the rockets fall and the bombs go off. Peace does not mean an absence of killing; what it means is that the terrorists are the only ones allowed to kill.

Middle Eastern diplomacy is the pro leagues of international diplomacy. There are almost as many diplomats in the region as there are camels and both of them do nothing all day except waddle around consuming large quantities of water and spitting at everyone they don’t like. To be appointed a special mediator or titled peacemaker of some kind is the ultimate dove feather in the cap of every diplomat, professional or amateur, who then flies off on a first class ticket to find a way to convince the Israelis to stop shooting back when they are shot at. And the diplomats usually get their way.

When Jewish farmers are stabbed and rural families shot to death in their sleep, when rockets rain down on Sderot, then there is peace. But when Israeli planes take out a Hamas commander, then the great behemoth of the international community bestirs itself from the deep and demands to know who is disturbing the peace.

from... There Is No Ceasefire





EITHER RICE IS INCOMPETENT OR A LIAR

That's the bottom line here. Rice's defenders can claim that she's a brilliant liar who knew that a terrorist attack had happened and lied about it. Or they can claim she's a naive incompetent
who couldn't go beyond heavily edited talking points.

The Democrats should be free to choose which defense they use to prove Rice is unfit for her post.

Washington Post Lie #7

What’s even stranger is the singling out of Ms. Rice, a Rhodes scholar and seasoned policymaker who, whatever her failings, is no one’s fool.

Apparently questioning the competence of a top administration official who spent days lying to the American people is “strange”.

But do you know what’s even stranger?

Insisting that Rice was misled by a set of talking points into lying to the American people for days… and then claiming that she’s no one’s fool.

Come on Washington Post editorial board. At least try to keep your lies consistent in one paragraph. Either Rice is no one’s fool or she’s a naive lady who was misled by CIA talking points that didn’t come from the CIA. One or the other. It can’t be both.

Either Rice is incompetent or a liar. You choose.

WHY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD OWNS OBAMA

A stronger administration would not have allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to wrap it around its fingers, but Obama brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power and is now dependent on the genie of Islamist democracy that he released from its iron bottle. Obama’s foreign policy rests on the success of the Muslim Brotherhood and that means the Muslim Brotherhood owns his foreign policy, and he has no choice but to do its bidding.

from Obama's Gaza War




MORE GOOD NEWS FROM BENGHAZI

I'll summarize the AP's Benghazi reporting as follows.

1. There is no Libyan investigation into the Benghazi attack

2. The perps freely roam Benghazi

Farag al-Fazani, a young commander of a Libyan security force commissioned to protect the U.S. post at the time of the Sept. 11 attack, says he sees militants he recognizes from that chaotic night.

They recognize him too.

“I get death threats by phone (saying) you are an infidel and spilling your blood is permitted,” said al-Fazani. “No one can protect me. I see them and they know me.”

But don't worry. Team Big Bird is on the case. They'll catch "those folks". Honest jihadi.




OBAMA OR HAMAS; IT'S A DIFFICULT CHOICE

The Hamas-led government in Gaza was the first experiment in Islamist rule in the region and sparked a revolutionary surge in Islamist rule, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday.

The Hamas-led government elected in 2006 was “the first model which led to the breakout of a sweeping Arab revolution in the Islamic region,” Haniyeh said at a festival to honor ministers.

So who gets the credit for the Arab Spring? Obama or Hamas?





THE MEDIA'S BARK IS WORSE THAN ITS BITE

 Like Pavlov’s dogs, reporters reflexively reduce the Middle East to a conflict between Israel and the Arabs, Jews and Muslims, the people that they hate and the people that they like. Asking them to cover anything more complicated than that is also asking them to do too much.

 from... the Middle East is Burning



CLIPS AND SNIPS

GOP would have lost election even with Hispanic vote.

Some promises are meant to be kept

“I swear by Allah, won’t do such a thing again” (Allah kasam dubara aisi galti nahi karunga), were the last words uttered by Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving terrorist, proved guilty in 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai. Kasab was hanged till death and buried immediately inside Yerwada jail on Wednesday morning.

Who's up for a combo platter of Muslims and Green Energy?

There are about a thousand things that Obama hates. Like guns, bibles, coal, movies about Mohammed and cameras that don’t capture his good side. But there are only two things he really loves. Green energy and Muslims. And finally he’s found a way to put both together at the same time. And it will only cost us 6 billion dollars.

Obama is funneling money to Muslim countries so that they’ll buy Green Energy tech from his eco-crony capitalist donors. The shell game is that these companies are on the brink of bankruptcy and Obama is trying to use foreign aid to bail them out.

Twinkies aren't the only fattening things around

The Bakers’ Union (BCTGM) has 58 employees. 29 of them make more than $100,000 a year. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union has 8 Vice Presidents. (One is an Executive Vice-President). BCTGM also has 12 representatives who make between $100,000 and $150,000. Its highest paid organizer makes $148,851.

And finally... the only way for Israel to win is by giving up

The media specialize in two things, reporting on sex scandals and promoting irrational memes. “War never solves anything” is an article of faith on the left and it is invariably applied to anything and everything, except for some mysterious reason, WW2, where war apparently did solve some things.

At The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg bemoans Israel’s lack of strategic thinking. “There is no way out of this militarily,” Goldberg insists, with the peculiar fixed notion on the left that military solutions only work for terrorists, not the people fighting them. 

THE TROUBLE WITH MITT

Back when the establishment turned Romney into its choice, I said that they should have their shot, but that they should pay a political price for their failure if it blows up in their face. Ann Coulter isn't willing to pay that price. Instead she's gone back to her old routine. And Coulter's routine is a simple one.

1. Take a shot at an easy liberal target

2. Say something shocking about the left or minorities

3. Push liberal Republican apologetics

Items 1 and 2 establish Coulter's street cred for item 3 which is the real agenda. Using that same 1, 2 and 3 routine, Coulter has been able to sell anything, including RomneyCare as a conservative principle.

Now after taking a shot at Maxine Waters, a hard target if there ever was one, Coulter goes straight to selling Romney as more conservative than Reagan. Or more libertarian which is at least an easier sell.

But first Coulter throws out one of her specialties. Misleading facts.

The only Republican to defeat a sitting president in the last century was Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he beat Jimmy Carter, the second-worst president in U.S. history

Now this looks impressive. It makes it seem as if many Republicans tried to unseat Democratic presidents and failed.

One problem. Clinton was the only two-term Democratic president since FDR and his presidency unto death. The modern Republican Party, since its transformation into a conservative populist party, had only tried to unseat two Democratic presidents. It got one and utterly blew its attempt to unseat the other by running Bob Dole.

Now Obama was not an easy target, but neither is there some sort of track record of it being impossible for a Republican candidate to unseat a Democrat in the White House. But it helps to be a populist candidate, which Reagan was and Romney wasn't.

Reagan picked a pro-choice, anti-supply side Republican as his running mate. He lavishly praised FDR in his acceptance speech at the national convention, leading The New York Times to title an editorial about him “Franklin Delano Reagan.”

Meanwhile, Romney promised to institute major reforms to Medicare, repeal Obamacare and impose a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. He said he’d issue a 50-state waiver to Obamacare on his first day in office. He chose a pro-life, fiscal conservative as his running mate and never praised FDR.

The only way Coulter can make Romney seem ultra-conservative is to tear down Reagan. But attempting to judge Reagan by 2012 standards doesn't work.

But let's look at why Reagan had to run the way he did and Romney had to run the way he did.

Reagan could run more liberal than he was, because he had established credibility on conservative ideas. No one doubted his bona fides after all these years. He could make compromises while people would still believe that he had the right agenda at heart.

Romney had to run more conservative than he was because he had no such credibility. And this is a major problem for politicians in general. It's how we ended up with our own version of John Kerry.

A Republican candidate may need to be able to run to the center in a national election while having right of center policies. Just the way that Obama runs a little to the right while holding a far left wing agenda. But candidates with no ideological cred cannot do this. People assume that they're selling out, rather than utilizing a strategy, and they're generally right.

The good news for masochists is that you can look forward to Ann Coulter doing this same full-court press for Chris Christie in a year or two as Mr. Conservative.

"The idea that Romney failed to present a clear contrast with Obama or was too “nice” is also nonsense." 

 Now Coulter almost has a point here. That is if you don't count foreign policy, where Romney spent an entire debate agreeing with Obama, or social policy which he avoided talking about.

But on business, Romney established a clear line of difference with Obama. It was so effective that many Democratic businessmen became the Romney Democrats. Unfortunately Romney failed to extend this difference into any other area and all his Romney Democrats were mostly small and big businessmen. The Reagan Democrats either stayed home or voted for Obama.

The problem wasn't that Romney was too nice. The problem was that Romney did not know anything outside his narrow sphere of business. He failed to challenge Obama on Benghazi because he really did not understand the issues. That was why he also favored a more aggressive policy in Syria. Or why he couldn't set himself apart from Obama on foreign policy.

The same went for any issue outside business and the economy. And that seems palatable enough because the economy was the big issue. But that just highlights the differences between Reagan and Romney.

Reagan could extend conservative philosophy across a range of areas. Romney could only champion free enterprise and it wasn't enough.

Conservatives love Reagan less because of policy than because of the way he was able to advocate conservative ideas as mainstream ones. Romney had trouble doing this.

To the extent Republicans have a problem with their candidates, it’s not that they’re not conservative enough. Where are today’s Nelson Rockefellers, Arlen Specters or George H.W. Bushes? Happily, they have gone the way of leprosy.

Having vanquished liberal Republicans, the party’s problem now runs more along the lines of moron showoffs, trying to impress tea partiers

Really? Liberal Republicans no longer exist?

Has Jeb Bush gone the way of leprosy? Has Lindsey Graham? Have Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John McCain all vanished?

In CoulterWorld, the Republican Party's elected officials are now all conservatives and the only problem is that obnoxious Tea Party morons insist on asking them to be conservatives, even though they totally are. Like Mitt Romney and Chris Christie.




THE BOLD AND UGLY MIDGET

 Hamas, the midget, can with impunity and global approval hurl rocks and rockets at the giant, Israel. This is because Hamas knows that the whole world hates Israel because it is a giant, a stubborn, recalcitrant one that refuses to go away and leave the midget to his day in the sun over piles of Jewish bodies. So, Hamas and the Palestinians get a pass. It takes a global village to hate one tiny country that simply won’t roll over and play dead for the greater good.

Peace could be secured if Israel would just agree to withdraw to its pre-World War II borders and stop persecuting its marauding persecutors. Then no one need worry about a nuclear bomb-armed Iran. Israel is to blame because Iran cannot tolerate its existence and wants to wipe it out.

....from Cline's War, Peace and Wishful Thinking




PEACE HAS NO FUTURE

According to a survey conducted by the Palpress Arabic-language website, the Palestinians are itching for another fight with Israel, less than a day after the Jewish state agreed to prematurely halt its campaign to eliminate the Gaza missile threat.

The Palpress survey, which was actually an Internet referendum, showed that 64 percent of Palestinian Arabs oppose a long-term ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

 Peace has no future in Gaza.




AND OTHER THINGS

My friend Lisa Graas speaks out on Gaza

 The video here shows Hamas’ rockets practically raining in from Gaza, deep into Israel, and the Israeli “Iron Dome” knocking them out of the sky. Still, about 10% of them get through. If Israel were America, I should hope that our president would do something about 10% of a rainfall of rockets hitting our cities. It appears to me that Israel has little choice but to do exactly what they are doing.

As does Zilla

and finally from American Digest, the final word in such things: a memo

Should you choose "act out," even once, we, the People of Israel, hereby notify you that we are prepared to and shall, without any further notice, over-react towards all Palestinian people and interests within our sphere of influence.

Bear in mind that we have not in recent memory over-reacted against your unremitting efforts to exterminate us. We have been patient and measured in our responses, cognizant of a watching world and not wanting to seem, even for a moment, to be as savage and violent as those who have been waging a coward's war against us for decades. We have, at all points, been as honorable in war as possible -- even when the wars in which we were engaged were not fought by honorable adversaries but by cowards and murderers.

As you know, our military power, both conventional and nuclear, is immense. We won't detail here the helicopters, missiles, tanks, aircraft, and troops which we can mobilize and move to the west as far as the shores of the ocean if we wish.

Mere mention of these items has not gotten your attention.

The restrained use of these items has not gotten your attention.

Because we are weary of having our streets used as your martyr's mausoleums, because we are extremely angered when we must place the shredded bodies of our children into body bags, because we would feel a lot better getting up in the morning if we knew we'd be coming home at night, we have decided we must, regretfully, engage in methods which will, finally, either get your attention or leave you without the capacity for attention in the first place.

This then is your single choice:



Doug Ross has some horror stories of mentally ill patients being used and exploited as Obama voters. Remember this is one more reason why the left wants to unionize such facilities.

One of those stories is a personal anecdote from David Horowitz over Thanksgiving




 BRIEF TALES OF MORAL RECTITUDE

Here, for example, is the British moral philosopher Ted Honderich, in all his moral rectitude, defending Palestinian terrorism:

“I myself have no serious doubt – that the Palestinians have exercised a moral right in their terrorism against the Israelis. They have had a moral right to terrorism as certain as was the moral right, say, of the African people of South Africa against their white captors and the apartheid state. Those Palestinians who have resorted to necessary killing have been right to try to free their people.” (Ted Honderich, After the Terror)

This is fascinating stuff. Blowing up women and children on a bus in Tel Aviv is morally necessary killing! I think only a western moral philosopher could say such a thing, particularly one sitting in the bourgeois comfort and safety of England – although he was lucky not to have been on the London

Underground on the 7^th July 2005 when anti-Israeli Islamic terrorists did some “necessary killing”.

Of course, this Western Leftist sympathy for Hamas does not, in the long run, help the Palestinians. Whatever the historical facts may be about the founding and subsequent history of the Israeli state – and no doubt there are bloody hands on both sides – the facts of Israel today dictate that a pragmatic solution, one that unconditionally guarantees Israel’s security, is the only sane response for any Palestinian.

from Why Israel can't win this propaganda war