Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

The Preemptive Front Lash

Posted on by

Some time back, I recall that Juan Cole was popular with the cool kids of the chattering skull circuit. I don’t recall why or even the exact dates. I just recall that the more fashionable writers at the time felt it necessary to discuss Juan Cole. I want to say it was in the Bush years, but I could be mistaken. It does not matter anyway.

The other thing I recall about him is that I did not get why everyone was slobbering over him. That happens a lot with me. Even with those with whom I am sympathetic. The cool kids will be in love with some new chattering skull and I just don’t get it. In some cases, the new skull strikes me as derivative and stupid. All I remember about Juan Cole is that I did not find him interesting.

Anyway, this is floating around after the Paris attacks. People keep posting it, but no one says why or draws any conclusions from it. Maybe he is coming back in style again.

The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.

The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

Steve Sailer has been having fun with the backlash trope. Anytime non-Occidentals behave poorly, the Left rushes forth with warnings and concerns about the backlash. The fact that no one alive has ever seen a backlash, only the front lashes, is what Sailer is mocking.

I’m fond of saying that fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism. Disconfirmation is either ignored or jammed into the mythology in some way. The fear of the backlash is how the Left shifts the focus from the bad behavior onto their preferred enemies. “Let’s not talk about the shooting. Let’s talk about those beastly provincials who will surely use this to cause trouble.”

Cole’s is taking this to a whole new level by fashioning an imaginary conspiracy by Muslims to incite the normal people of France to do what, well, you know, what they secretly dream of doing. C’mon, don’t play dumb. If you’re a white guy you know you secretly dream of getting the trains running on time again to the camps. You know!

It is a bizarre inversion of reality from these guys. Good behavior by the core population is proof of a secret longing to murder the fringe population. On the other hand, the fringe population actually murdering the core population is proof of nothing at all. It is just an isolated incident.

I must say, I am impressed by the mental gymnastics here. It would be easy to dismiss it as mendacity on stilts, but we’re dealing with true believers. Unlike the Muslims shooting up the city, Western fanatics are convinced they are Turing machines, processing the data of reality with flawless logic. It’s why the Muslims fear them so much. They know a dangerous fanatic when they see one.

True Believers at War

Posted on by

Razib Khan has a post up responding to something Ezra Klein posted regarding the Paris incident. First here’s the Ezra Klein piece. This is the bit that got Razib exorcised:

These murders can’t be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn’t be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.

This is a tragedy. It is a crime. It is not a statement, or a controversy.

Razib first wonders if Klein had some sort of aneurism while writing that bit. Maybe he is unfamiliar with Klein’s work, but that piece was probably one of the better ones from the Vox project. I have no idea what sort of traffic the site gets, but no one ever mentions it, unless it is to mock Ezra Klein. Even the mockery has faded, for the most part. Anyway, Razib goes on to make an excellent point:

This co-mingling of religious and communal identity is not an aberration, but the human norm over most of history. In much of the world it still is the norm. Dishonoring the gods of barbarians and unbelievers has long been a matter of course. Churches were built over temples and mosques over churches for a reason. To show the power of one communal identity and the eclipse of another. Gods and people were interchangeable in the psyche. When the Assyrians sacked Babylon they dragged away the statue of the god Marduk in chains. But individuals dishonoring the gods of their own people was always a matter of serious concern, violating public order, and potentially undermining social harmony (often, innovation in religious practice prefigured rebellion). It doesn’t take much to imagine that there might be functional reason for societies to establish taboos of what is inviolate and sacred, and sanction those who trespass.

It is incorrectly assumed that religions must have an invisible man in the sky component. Dividing theology from ideology by the presence or absence of the super natural is convenient, but leads to the false assumption that ideologies are devoid of magical thinking. That’s not the case.

The most obvious example is PETA, the cult that claims to be the guardians of non-human mammal rights. The adherents of that cult imagine all sorts of things about animals that are laughably untrue. They also proselytize about the killing of animals, while running abattoirs all over the country.

Ezra Klein is a conventional liberal and of middling intelligence. He is not a blockhead, but he has a narrow mindedness that suggests a lack of curiosity about the world. He’s also overstocked with religiosity. It’s why his posts often sound like the journal entries of a rabbinical student or the private musings of a novice monk. He is forever wrestling with his faith.

Luckily for him, the prevailing religion of modern America is cultural Marxism so he has found a comfortable place to cast himself as a post-modern Tertullian. He has organized his life around proselytizing over the Internet. As a novice he worked his way up to a major media organ, but that was not enough. He went off to build his own Mosque called Vox where he can pray and train others to believe like him. It’s not a coincidence that cultural Marxism has many of the same structures as Islam.

Of course, Ezra really does not believe the things he preaches in the sense that he knows them to be true. I know two plus two is four for all known values of two. There’s no need for me to argue it or prove it. The reason for proselytizing is to convince yourself by convincing others. Misery loves company and so do the believers. Vox in explanatory journalism in the same sense that Shia is explanatory Islam.

One fascinating thing about the Paris attack is watching how the Left reacts to it. At some level, it seems they get that they are at war with a complimentary religion. As Razib points out, every religion has its taboos. Much of what modern liberalism preaches is taboo in Islam. What is sacred in Islam is considered barbaric by liberals.

The trouble is the Left can’t bring itself to condemn Islam. That’s simply against the core of their faith. Islam does not suffer from such a defect. They get that they are a religion at war with another religion. Hilariously, even when Islam makes that point, liberals are forced to call them liars and inauthentic Muslims.

Added to the crazy stew is the fact that western liberals have a technological edge and are killing Muslims wholesale. Muslims have to settle for retail killing, like the Paris attack. The simple solution is to expel all Muslims for Western lands, but again, they bump into their own dogma prohibiting such things. The result is a surge in Muslim immigrants, hell bent on killing the decadent West.

This will not end well.

Greece

Posted on by

For the longest time, the smart people looked at the situation in Greece, fainted and then, having been resuscitated, declared it impossible for Greece to leave Europe. Something had to be worked out to address their financial problems. Greece was, in a way, a test for the idea of Europe, but also an excuse to move from an economic cooperative to a political union. In Greece and Italy, leaders were replaced with ones more pleasing to Brussels and willing to sign off on austerity measures.

After a short interlude, the Greeks are back in the news. This time they are threatening to throw off their Euro-approved leaders in favor of a neo-fascist outfit called Syriza. I know, I know, the Left can never be called fascist, even if they look just Mussolini’s old party. Whatever you want to call them, Syriza is not interested in sticking with the austerity program or even with Europe. What they want is unclear, but all of the beautiful people are now convinced that their elevation will lead to a crisis.

The tone this time seems different. At least that’s my read on stories like this one. No longer are the money-men convinced that a Greek exit will collapse the Euro. I suspect the reason for that is the realization that it was always nonsense. Greece is a small country with little impact on Europe. Even the worst case scenario said they would not drag the continent into depression. They are simply too small. Now, everyone has insulated themselves to their problems so the risk is simply not there.

As the article indicates, there’s also a strange belief that Syriza is not what is claims. Once they gain power, they will like being in power. That means cutting a deal with Germany and remaining in Europe. The alternative would mean a depression and with that political turmoil. The conventional wisdom is that turmoil is bad for those in charge, even though Syriza is a different breed of cat. The thought of a party of the hard left using a crisis to seize total power seems to have been forgotten by everyone.

The Germans are now talking tough, in that post-modern German way. Merkel has no choice, given what’s happening to her coalition. On the one hand she has to acknowledge the growing frustration of many Germans over the bailing out of profligate Greeks. On the other hand, she has to remind the trouble makers that their heresy will not be tolerated. In other words, she can notice their noticing, but she can’t let it slide. It sounds like madness, but that’s all she and the globalists have at this point.

France is taking a somewhat different tack. The French elite are nowhere near as unified as the German elite over Europe. Frustration with the loss of “Frenchness” is not just a phenomenon of the lower classes. Gaullism still resonates with the French elite. The stunning success of Eric Zenmour’s book Le suicide français as well as the slow legitimization of Marie Le Pen suggests the French elite are not prepared to go all in with their German partners. That Weekly Standard piece is well worth reading, by the way.

People can convince themselves of anything. The globalization project, of which Europe is a major force, is predicated on the belief that the people will never notice what’s happening to them. The average German will not notice that his town is being over run by Muslim migrants living on the welfare system. The typical Frenchman will not notice his standard of living collapsing.

It’s also dependent on religion. Much like how religion was used by the Foundation in the Asimov novels, the religion of cultural Marxism is a narcotic that turns the addict into a defender of the faith. If you dissent from the bulldozing of traditional culture, you are branded a racist, which is just the new term for heretic. If you dissent from globalism and free trade uber alles, then you are an isolationist trying to turn back the clock. Again, this is just another way to brand you as a heretic.

In America, this brand of religion works exceptionally well. Calling someone a racist is about the worst thing imaginable. No one, of course, thinks isolationism is good so that means you have to be for free trade, open borders and globalism. Then there’s the job of being the world’s cop, which is America’s God given responsibility! Anti-racism, global capitalism and policing the world are wrapped in the flag of patriotism to keep the American public fully supportive of the ruling class.

In Europe, anti-racism is not the magic fairy dust it is in America. No one seriously thinks the Europeans can keep the peace. In fact, their inability to keep the peace is one of the justifications for Europe. Instead of racism, nationalism is the bogeyman used to scare the faithful and bully the heretics. That’s what makes the Eurozone crisis so thorny. You can’t help but notice that the problems all stem from the places where everyone has black hair, brown eyes and olive skin. It’s a big reason the European elites have been desperate to keep Greece from leaving the fold. Anti-nationalism is supposed to solve these problems, not exacerbate them.

The Greeks remaining in the Euro seems untenable. The Greek people will not tolerate the conditions placed on them and the Germans cannot make exceptions for the Greeks. They have to go. The details of that will slowly be worked out as both sides come to accept reality. The Germans, however, need Greece to suffer. Their exit from Europe has to be so terrible that Italy, Spain and Portugal are scared straight. That means the coming Greek crisis will be at a time and place of Merkel’s choosing.

The Germans and French may try to bolster their own standing by tightening immigration ever so slightly and dumping the Greeks from Europe. That would take some wind out of the sails of the anti-Euro parties. Daily images of Greeks rioting or waiting in line for money will drive home the point, at least for a little while. In the long run, Greece is not going to dissolve. If they find a rich uncle to help them through it, they could end up being what Euro elites have feared – a bad example for the trouble makers.

Επανάσταση !

Posted on by

I know it is terrible of me, but I tend to root for anarchy. Let’s face it. Anarchy is great to watch on TV. Specifically, other people’s anarchy is fun to watch on TV. The Ferguson riots were entertaining, in part, because I don’t live anywhere near Missouri. Similarly, seeing Greece once again descend into anarchy promises to deliver some good entertainment.

Within minutes of the Athens parliament failing to elect a president, Alexis Tsipras, the man most likely to become Greece’s next prime minister, said the country had experienced “a historic day”.

For the first time since the foundation of the modern Greek state nearly 200 years ago, radical leftists – marginalised, tortured and tormented for the best part of the 20th century – were on course to assume power. “Greeks,” he said, “should rejoice.” The government that had put the country through an assault course of austerity would soon be over.

The onerous terms of the deeply unpopular “memoranda”, agreed with foreign lenders to keep insolvent Greece afloat, would be overturned.

“The future has already begun,” he told reporters as the nation braced for early elections, a constitutional diktat when presidential polls fail. “You should be optimistic and happy.”

I love how the lunatics at the Guardian always carry on like their ideas have never been tried. You see the same stuff in US papers. Greece may not have allowed hair-on-fire crazies like Tsipras to run the government, but Greece has been a social-democracy since World War 2. That’s why they have been a basket case economically for fifty years. That and they are full of Greeks.

But the prospect of renewed political turmoil in the country where the eurozone crisis began will bring anything but a smile to the faces of decision makers in Brussels and Berlin. Greece, ineluctably, is being drawn into a new dance of uncertainty, a rollercoaster ride of high-pressure politics.

After six years of recession, the nation is only now beginning to show the first signs of recovery, posting a primary surplus – before interest payments on its mountain of debt – and returning to the capital markets that cut off funding at the start of the crisis.

But the country cannot survive alone. And market reaction to Monday’s news was instantly pessimistic, with the Athens Stock exchange plummeting by more than 10 percent.With bailout funds guaranteed to the end of February but far from assured after that, the spectre of Greece defaulting on its loans, and possibly crashing out of the eurozone, have been revived.

The reason Tsipras will be the next PM is the people have figured out that they can do just fine alone. If Greece leaves the Euro, the country will not sink into the ocean. They can default, print their own money and start over. They will have a year of turmoil, but then things will settle down and get back to normal. Greek bankers will be screwed, but they deserve it. Therefore, the threats from Germany about expulsion carry no force. The Greeks have nothing to fear from the Eurocrats.

On the other hand, the Euro lives on the belief that walking away from it is the end of the world. If Greece leaves the Euro and survives, the stronger nations like Spain, Italy and Portugal will get crazy ideas in their heads. If Greece thrives, then Europe is doomed, at least as currently constructed. The fact the Russia will be right there to help the Greeks should not be missed either.

Athens faces debt repayments of up to €20bn (£15.6bn) in 2015. On Monday the Greek finance minister, Gikas Hardouvelis, said local banks had enough funds to survive until March but unless further financial assistance was agreed they would enter into the uncharted waters of non-liquidity after that. This makes an effectively rudderless Athens in the run-up to elections on 25 January more daunting for the “troika” of creditors at the EU, ECB and IMF.

“What we are looking at is a Greece in crisis,” said Dimitris Keridis, professor of political science at Panteion University. “The first party will be Syriza but the elections may well be inconclusive. And then, once a government is formed, it will have a few weeks to elect a new president and negotiate with the troika.”

The radical leftists wasted no time, announcing that Tsipras would hold his first pre-election speech in central Athens on Monday night. The result of the presidential poll indicated the thirst, at least on a political level, for new beginnings. Opinion polls at the weekend confirmed Syriza’s popularity among a population exhausted by austerity.

An Alco poll published in Proto Thema on Sunday showed the neo-Marxists leading by 3.3%.

Many supporters are neither leftist, nor admirers of Syriza’s anti-capitalist rhetoric, but Greeks appalled by the catastrophic effects of policies that have left 1.5 million unemployed, 3 million facing poverty and the vast majority unable to pay their bills.

The party has pledged to fight such ills – referred to as Greece’s silent humanitarian crisis – by renegotiating the bailout accords that have propped up the economy to the tune of €240bn.

“Solution to Greece’s problems lies within the European context but the first thing we will say is that the programme has failed because it was badly planned and didn’t see the pitfalls that were coming,” said Euclid Tsakalotos, Syriza’s shadow finance minister. “Then we will address the priorities of austerity and debt.”

It will be interesting to watch this unfold. The Russians have already made friends with Tsipras and his people. They would love to use Greece to make trouble for Europe. Tsipras may be a lunatic, but he appears to be a clever lunatic. He will surely try to play the Germans and Russians against one another. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Tsakalotos is clearly signalling their intention to end the existing deal and arrangements first and talk about new agreements. That will make for some good times in 2015.

 

The Foolishness of Tyler Cowen

Posted on by

Tyler Cowen has a post up arguing that Cuba could be the next Singapore. I used to be a regular at his site, but then I made Alex Tabarrok cry and he asked me not to post there anymore. My pointing out that he has arranged his life in such a way that he avoid all contact with minorities was a bridge too far. I still read the site once a week, looking for material, but that’s it. Libertarian economics are a bit silly for an adult my age.

I’m not one of those who thinks Cuba is the next Singapore or even the next Puerto Rico.  Why not?

I’m willing to assume that the end of the American embargo will mean some kind of economic liberalization over the next ten years.  But how much good will that bring?

We could start by looking for relevant comparisons.  We could ask how well have non-British-ruled, non-Dutch-ruled, non-American-ruled Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands done?  There is a fairly clear example of such a country with some ethnic, cultural, historic, and linguistic similarities to Cuba, namely the Dominican Republic.  For non-PPP-adjusted gdp per capita, the D.R. clocks in at about $5800 per year.  And that is about where I think Cuba will end up, after a good bit of turmoil.

He goes on to list a bunch of things that probably have nothing to do with what comes next for Cuba. I like how he skirts around the biological aspects and simply makes a rosy comparison to nearby Dominican Republic. The reason a guy like Steve Sailer is not allowed out in public is he would simply say Cuba is not going to do well because it is full of Cubans.

I’ll go further and and say it is full of the worst Cubans. The best Cubans got the hell out of Cuba when Castro took power. Those who hung around hoping the terror would pass found a raft eventually and took their chances with the sharks, on their way to Miami. All the smart, industrious Cubans are in Miami now, living the middle-class American dream. The same thing happened in Lebanon, which is why that country never got off the mat.
That’s the central defect of liberals and libertarians. They never bother to stop and wonder why things are the way they are now. They just seem to assume the facts of life were placed around so they can change them. In this case, Cuba has been a totalitarian police state for fifty years for no particular reason. The fact that there are no riots in the streets or populist protests against the status quo does not turn on any lights for these folks. Nope, Cuba is now a blank slate on which they can draw their utopian future.
Cuba is the way it is because the Cubans living there prefer it that way. Not all Cubans everywhere, but a majority of the ones living in Cuba. Most of the dissenters now live abroad. Those remaining are small in number and are easily suppressed. The idea that they will create a Singapore is so laughably ridiculous you have to wonder if Tyler is not sniffing glue in his office.
That’s another thing libertarians have in common with liberals. No, not glue sniffing, although that is a problem. No, both cults look at people as things, in the same way a socio-path looks at people. People are just bits of machinery to be arranged in whatever way suits the ruler. Culture and biology are looked upon as obstacles that can be yanked from the garden like weeds. Of course, if that means yanking out a few people along the way, so be it.
I think if Cuba joins the rest of the world they will probably continue to be Cubans. That means a country somewhere between Haiti and Puerto Rico. The things that will change are the cars. American collectors will swoop in and buy the old relics on the Cuban roads and sell them our old jalopies. Global tourism will snap up the prime real estate for the global ruling class. Otherwise, Cuba will continue to be Cuba.

The Business of America

Posted on by

Obama is normalizing relations with Cuba and Conservative Inc is pretending to be flipping out about it. The usual suspects on the Right are focusing on the fact Obama is an Socialist, sympathetic to unrepentant radicals like the Castro brothers. The line of attack is about Obama’s anti-American impulses, which are real, but not really what’s at work here. Many on the Right are anti-citizen, which makes them anti-American, by definition, so their yelping now is a bit hollow.

In reality, Obama is just doing the bidding of American business. The tourism rackets, gambling rackets and, of course, the bankers see big profits in Cuba. This news story from the spring lays out the case for normalizing relations so big business can cash in on Cuba. It is easy to forget that Cuba was a food exporter before Castro. They can also be a source of cheap labor for American business. Our rulers will also enjoy vacationing there as well.

This NYTimes story from 2010 reports on the machinations behind the long running drive to open up Cuba to American business. There are 11 million Cubans ready to buy Big Macs, Coke and whatever other crap we can sell them. How they will pay for it is a mystery, but presumably Cuba will quickly become a slightly better version of Puerto Rico. Cubans are better educated than Puerto Ricans so they should adapt quickly to American tourism.

Of course, the Democrats are reading the polls and seeing a shift in Cuban-American politics. Young Cubans don’t care about Castro. They care about getting on the victimization train. They look around at the free stuff other Hispanics are getting and they want in on the scam too. You can’t blame them for it. In a balkanized, post-national society, group rights count for everything. It will be a tribal spoils system so why not join the winning team?

I doubt Obama and the Democrats have thought it through on that end. This is just a money grab at this stage. 2016 is looking like a toss-up, with The Stupid Party probably nominating Jeb Bush. The Democrats don’t have to concede the election so giving the Chamber of Commerce a big fat gift will pay off down the road.

Never Play Chess With A Russian

Posted on by

Back in the Bush years, it was fairly obvious our ruling class had no idea how Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks thought about the world. America went into Afghanistan thinking Pakistan was an ally and that the locals would treat the invaders different than all the other invaders since Alexander the Great. The Bush people sort of understood that nation building in Afghanistan was a waste of time, but they thought they could be the baddest street gang on the block.

Then the parade of idiots known as the Obama Administration came along and tried to win friends and influence bronze age people, wasting lives and treasure for no earthly reason. Of course, this may be giving the Bush people too much credit. They went blundering into Iraq fully convinced they could turn Iraq into a democratic, multicultural democratic paradise. Instead they unleashed decades of ethnic hatred, resulting in a blood bath and a massive failed state.

It is one thing to have nutty ideas about backward people on the periphery. That’s somewhat understandable, if not defensible, but it appears our rulers have no idea how anything works anymore. The problems in Ukraine are an obvious example. The Russians have always had a sense of space that drives their national identity. Any threat to it, particularly from the West, is going to get a response.

The problem is that our ruling class is very insular. There’s no longer a bubbling up of talent based on merit. Instead we have a credentialed elite that likes to pretend they are at the top of a meritocracy, but in reality they just ticked off the right boxes in the secular exam system. Everywhere you look you see Ivy League grads who rode the coattails of other Ivy League grads. The American foreign policy establishment is looking more like a priesthood than collection of seasoned realists.

Stories like this are a good example of the sloppy work that is the result of this insularity.

A Russian loan to France’s National Front. Invitations to Moscow for leaders of Austria’s Freedom Party. Praise for Vladimir Putin from the head of Britain’s anti-European Union party.

As the diplomatic chill over Ukraine deepens, the Kremlin seems keener than ever to enlist Europe’s far-right parties in its campaign for influence in the West, seeking new relationships based largely on shared concern over the growing clout of the EU.

Russia fears that the EU and NATO could spread to countries it considers part of its sphere of influence. And it has repeatedly served notice that it will not tolerate that scenario, most recently with its Ukraine campaign.

Europe’s right-wing and populist parties, meanwhile, see a robust EU as contrary to their vision of Europe as a loose union of strong national states. And some regard the EU as a toady to America.

The fact that many of Moscow’s allies are right to far-right reflects the Kremlin’s full turn. Under communism, xenophobic nationalist parties were shunned.

Now they are embraced as partners who can help further Russia’s interests and who share key views — advocacy of traditional family values, belief in authoritarian leadership, a distrust of the U.S. and support for strong law-and-order measures.

Statements by leading critics of the EU, or euroskeptics, reflect their admiration of the Kremlin.

This is obviously a planted story. The idea is to discredit the dissenters in Europe and America, by connecting them to Hitler 3.0 or whatever we’re up to now on the Hitler chain of existence. Of course, Hitler Putin financing these dissenters is justification for continuing the cold war on Russia. That’s all fair game, but this is so ham-fisted and stupid it makes me wonder if it is not some sort of bad joke. Later in the story they claim Gerhard Schroeder and Italy’s former Premier Silvio Berlusconi were Putin clients.

That’s the insularity part. The true believers running American foreign policy seem to lack any sense of self-awareness. This makes it impossible for them to see the world through the eyes of their competitors. It also has led to foolish fights with Putin over Ukraine, an utterly worthless slab of land on the fringe of Europe. Their need for a bogeyman to explain any resistance to their weird secular religion has created enemies where none needed to exist.

Rambling About Israel

Posted on by

One of the thorniest problems in modern public debate is how to talk about Israel, without talking about Jews. If you have something bad to say about Israel, you will be called an anti-Semite by the usual suspects. On the other hand, anti-Semites cloak their Jew-hating in criticism of Israel. Of course, if you have anything to say about Jews, from an HBD perspective, you can be sure to have Israel held up as a counter, as if there’s no difference between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews.

There’s so much chaff in the air it is hard to get a bead on any of it. Ron Unz continues to publish this guy, despite the radioactive weirdo vibe. He hangs out with conspiracy buffs and has an obsession with Israel. Put his name in the google machine and you get nothing but Israel stuff, with some 9/11 conspiracy stuff tossed in the mix. Looking at his Wiki page, nothing jumps out and Wiki is edited by raging lefties so maybe I’m off-base, but it is just so hard to know.

Similarly, I saw this on Maggie’s Farm the other day. I admit I never heard of Max Blumenthal, at least not the Max Blumenthal in question. I once played racquetball with a Max Blumenthal, but he was not this one. His father is Sydney Blumenthal, a loathsome scumbag that worked for Clinton in the 1990’s. Still, I have no idea if Max Blumenthal is a self-hating Jew, a crank or just a guy with opinions about Israel that are unpopular. That’s the thing about all of this, it is impossible to tell the players even with a scorecard.

One of the things that no one is allowed to mention is the fact many Jews in American and Europe hate the very idea of Israeli. Well, they are fine with Israel as an abstract construction, but not as a real place with real people. They look at Israel in the same way Americans look at people from West Virginia or New Jersey. The crazy crackers from the mountains and the guidos from the Jersey are a reminder of a past a lot of people would just as soon forget. The hairy Jews haggling over a spot at the Wailing Wall are something most American Jews would just as soon forget too.

Then you have the other problem. Ashkenazi Jews are a remarkable group of people. A small group of people bound together by what most think was an imported religion, managed to survive and prosper, despite being surrounded by people hostile to their religion. They have not just survived; Ashkenazi Jews have dominated the cultural life of Europe and America. As Steve Sailer is fond of pointing out, Ashkenazi Jews are 1% of the US population and 30% of the richest Americans.

People tend to notice this remarkable success and that’s not a good thing for a distinct minority. If Israel was a country that existed in the 1930’s, odds are the Nazis would have gone for mass deportation of the Jews, rather than other options. There’s no way to know that, but it would have been the easiest path and people tend to seek the path of least resistance. Given the attitudes of early 20th century Europe, it probably would have been the policy of every country in Europe.

That’s the problem Israel presents Jews everywhere. If Israel is the Jewish homeland, why are Jews living in Denmark, Paris, Bangor Maine and Bozeman Montana? It offers up a handy excuse for majority populations to round up their Jews. Given recent history, you can’t blame Jews for being more than a little worried about it. In America, anti-Semitism has never been popular, but in Europe it has never been unpopular. Most Jews in America had close relatives that either fled Hitler or survived Hitler.

Of course, maybe that’s the point. If it is impossible to separate honest criticism from bigotry, decent people will avoid criticism. Americans are strangely polite in their public discourse. The last thing a chattering skull wants is to be called is rude or mean. If you can’t win a debate, shutting it down is the next best result. I’m not sure that’s the case here, but it is certainly true that any discussion of Jews is off-limits and discussions of Israel better be glowing. Otherwise, you risk being called a bigot.

More Failure

Posted on by

I fully admit to initially supporting the second war with Iraq. I was not enthusiastic about it, but it did appear we could maybe do some good by installing a rational government in Iraq as a counter to Iran and Syria. I never had any illusions about self-government succeeding there. These people are incapable of managing liberal democracy, but they could handle a mild authoritarian state that was friendly to the West.

I assumed the Bush people were going to find a guy with a thick mustache who was happy to do business with us. I also thought they were just trolling thge Letf with all the talk about democracy. They would find a tough guy who would play ball, which has been the American since Monroe. Instead they went for liberal democracy and that was a total failure. Disaster is the right word for it.

Amazingly, it appears the Obama administration has managed to make it worse. This story from the British press suggests Iraq is about to fall, in a fashion similar to what we saw in South Vietnam a million years ago.

America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

Today, only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government hands. Joel Wing, in his study –”Iraq’s Security

Forces Collapse as The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province” – concludes: “This was a huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad”.

The battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some 5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the province’s 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad, starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the centre of the capital.

The Iraqi government and its foreign allies are drawing comfort, there having been some advances against Isis in the centre and north of the country. But north and north-east of Baghdad the successes have not been won by the Iraqi army but by highly sectarian Shia militias which do not distinguish between Isis and the rest of the Sunni population. They speak openly of getting rid of Sunni in mixed provinces such as Diyala where they have advanced. The result is that Sunni in Iraq have no alternative but to stick with Isis or flee, if they want to survive. The same is true north-west of Mosul on the border with Syria, where Iraqi Kurdish forces, aided by US air attacks, have retaken the important border crossing of Rabia, but only one Sunni Arab remained in the town. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing has become the norm in the war in both Iraq and Syria.

At some point, Iran gets involved directly. They have no choice. How exactly that works is a mystery, but they are not going to let their Shia brothers get over run by the Sunnis. This is a part of the world with many ancient rivalries, but they have plenty of new ones too. The Saudis and GCC worry much more about Iran than the worry about the lunatics running ISIS. These far flung religious wars are good for business anyway. The Saudis can send their lunatics off to fight and die in Syria or Afghanistan, rather than have them cause trouble in Riyadh.

Iran getting directly involved in Iraq is a bigger concern because it moves them to the head of the class and that puts the Saudi relationship with Washington in jeopardy. It also upsets the Israelis for similar reasons. In a weird way, the success of ISIS is putting everyone on the same side for vastly different reasons, but the Obama administration seems paralyzed right now. Either they don’t know what to do or Obama is too afraid to do anything. It could be both.

As Obama heads into lame duck status, he finds his popularity at home dipping into the 30’s and his party running from him like he is Patient Zero. Usually presidents spend their final two years legacy building with various foreign policy projects. Obama has never had much interest in foreign policy and has proven to be incompetent at it. The world is going to get much worse over the next two years. Maybe untenably worse

Foreign Policy Shopping

Posted on by

I have never had a foreign policy or a world view on foreign policy. I’m very interested in the world and all of its weirdness, but I’ve never been all that interested in how our rulers interact with it. They are going to do whatever they want to do, regardless of what I have say about it. I try to keep up and read some trusted sources on the issues of the day, but I find most of it boring. The history of the Khorasani Arabs seems interesting, but I have no interest in why we may or may not be bombing them.

This column by Kevin Williamson brought that home to me as I read the comments section. I have opinions about our foreign adventures. I have some assumptions about what we should and should not do. I have some opinions on the people and nations of the world. But, I have no philosophy of foreign policy. I’m not even sure if I fall into any of the convenient buckets. Some of the comments in that NRO column strike me as insane. Others seem sort of reasonable. The last bit of his post is what strikes me as the most sensible starting place for my post.

If I thought that the United States could be Switzerland, I’d be tempted to import that foreign policy: Trade with everybody, get rich, and be armed to the teeth in case you have to keep the global riff-raff at bay. But the United States is not a tiny, landlocked, Alpine country noted for its excellence in banking and watch-making. But I am in the market for some creative thinking about how to use our economic weapons — from trade to our newly abundant energy supply to the fact that the elites of every country, including our bitterest rivals, want to send their children to college here — to supplement what we’re all calling “boots on the ground” now. I would not object to dispatching some serious green-eyeshade types to the Pentagon to figure out how it has come to pass that we’re still spending far too much money on defense while seemingly cutting all the wrong spending.

And while I sympathize with Jonah Goldberg’s view that “National Honor Matters,” I am very open to the prospect of simply buying off those who can be bought. While the prospect may rankle, if doing so means lower expenditures in treasure and blood both, consider Sun Tzu’s advice to those in his time who resisted the use of spies, considering the proposition either too expensive or dishonorable: Failing to make use of available advantages, “simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.”

What I am most in the market for is a foreign policy that marries a humane and prudent vision of our national interest to the operational competence necessary to ensure that we do not spend decade after decade scrambling to react to the mistakes of the immediate past. So far, I’m not buying what anybody’s selling.

It seems to me that before you can start shopping for a foreign policy, you might want to start thinking about the reality of the world, that foreign world for which we need a policy. “Humane and prudent vision of our national interest” sounds great, but you have to figure out what it means to have a humane policy while you’re figuring out the national interest. I think I could sum up my criticism of the ruling class approach to the world as ignorant, naïve and devoid of a sense of self. In other words, the reason the rulers have failed is their understanding of the world is wrong and their understanding of themselves is delusional.

So, where to start?

Celebrate Diversity: For a very long time now the Left has been chirping about the glories of diversity. It seems to be waning now, but that’s not because the world has suddenly become homogenous. The world is a big diverse place with all sorts of local weirdness. Most people are not like us. They don’t live like us and they don’t think like us. As much as it hurts modern America feelings, big chunks of the world don’t like us. Their reasons may be justified or just plain crazy, but there’s not much we can do about it. In all probability, trying to do something about is why they hate us.

Recognizing it is half the battle. The other half is the why. Despite what the Left has been preaching, science and observation tells us the people of the world are not all the same after all. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. It’s full of Africans because the humans there evolved in that place for 50,000 years. As crazy as this may sound, Africans are built for Africa, not Iceland. That means they are good at being Africans, but not very good at being an Icelander or a Texan. The same is true of China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, etc.

What we consider weird, these people consider normal. It is what they know. A thousand generations of Bantus have been nothing but Bantus. Thinking they will suddenly become Minnesotans just because we showed up is a good way to make enemies. Respecting people for what they are is not “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s the reality of the world. It is also the foundation for a “humane and prudent” understanding of the world.

We have a past: Anytime I participate in a debate over foreign policy, I get the sense that my fellow citizens have amnesia. I mentioned in that thread on NRO that we have been bombing the Fertile Crescent for two decades and people seem surprised by it. Desert Storm was launched in 1991. We actually started flying combat missions in 1990. That’s a long time to have been dropping ordinance on people. We try hard to only kill the bad people, but we have killed a lot of people who did not think they were all that bad. Maybe they were, maybe not.

It really does not matter if we think they got what they deserved. The people of the world have judged us on out deeds, good and bad. Our system of government means we get a change in leadership every eight years and that means we have reneged on a lot of deals, in addition to killing a lot of people. The Kurds know we are an unreliable partner, just as we know the French are duplicitous backstabbers. The point is we have a history and we have a reputation. Our national interest is served best when we can see ourselves through the eyes of the people on whom we doing the foreign policy.

Most of us just want to have normal lives: Back in the Bush years, the neoconservatives used to go on at length about national greatness and the new nationalism. The stripped down version is that a nation must act like we expect a good citizen to act in his community. It is a mix of moral obligation and self-regard. Tromping around the world doing good works will invigorate the populace to do even greater things at home and abroad. Foreign policy is not just another public policy. It is the basis for a moral philosophy that will define the nation and the citizens.

The trouble with this, in addition to be completely wrong, is that almost all people just want to live their lives. They don’t look to their rulers for a sense of identity. Americans, still mostly Anglo-Saxon, prefer it if their rulers leave them alone. Even the more hive minded around the world tend not to care very much for greatness, unless it puts money in their pocket. Since the national interest of any nation is those things that benefit the people of that nation, going around the world inviting trouble can never be part of a prudent and humane foreign policy.

I don’t know how you build a unified foreign policy off these three pillars, but I think it is a good place to start. Maybe there are other or better principles. I don’t know. The point is you can’t shop for a foreign policy unless you have some idea why one is better than the other. You have to have a starting point in order to make the necessary comparisons.