Can you imagine the scorn that would have been directed at GW had airport pat downs and body scans occurred on his watch? Do you remember the calumny that was heaped upon him for invading our privacy? The press and media went wild.
Terrorists aim to wreck our economy and they will be ably assisted by government bureaucrats who are busy doing body searches while most cargo go unsearched, trains are open targets as well as buses.
All of this airport searching is getting us ready for the implementation of 'Obamascare!'
Yes, we need security but when people lose all sense of proportion and blindly accept whatever government bureaucrats impose on them it is this unquestionable attitude which is also very dangerous.
Meanwhile, N Korea attacks S Korea, N Korea will soon be in a position of selling nuclear material to the highest bidder and Iran moves forward with its nuclear program and what do Sec. Clinton and Obama do about all of this - they arrange more visits and make more empty speeches.
This is what happens when you elect a person unqualified to be president, a person who is so out of his element that it is conceivable we will not recover from the economic, social and diplomatic disasters this administration is unloading on our nation.
I do not understand why the markets reacted to N Korea's unwarranted and unprovoked attack because Obama is not going to do anything to prevent N Korea from pulling on our chain and jerking us around. Obama believes in passivity.
If truth be told, Obama and Clinton are clueless and gutless.(See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and
1d below.)
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Japan's P.M. seeks to wake up Obama? Good luck! (See 2 below.)
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Moshe Arens is Israel's equivalent of America's John Bolton. Neither are in government when they are most needed.
Arens spoke for me many years ago at a Washington Forum conference and he has not veered off course over the years. (See 3 below.)
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DUH! (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Airport "Security"?
By Thomas Sowell
No country has better airport security than Israel-- and no country needs it more, since Israel is the most hated target of Islamic extremist terrorists. Yet, somehow, Israeli airport security people don't have to strip passengers naked electronically or have strangers feeling their private parts.
Does anyone seriously believe that we have better airport security than Israel? Is our security record better than theirs?
"Security" may be the excuse being offered for the outrageous things being done to American air travelers, but the heavy-handed arrogance and contempt for ordinary people that is the hallmark of this administration in other areas is all too painfully apparent in these new and invasive airport procedures.
Can you remember a time when a Cabinet member in a free America boasted of having his "foot on the neck" of some business or when the President of the United States threatened on television to put his foot on another part of some citizens' anatomy?
Yet this and more has happened in the current administration, which is not yet two years old. One Cabinet member warned that there would be "zero tolerance" for "misinformation" when an insurance company said the obvious, that the mandates of ObamaCare would raise costs and therefore raise premiums. Zero tolerance for exercising the First Amendment right of free speech?
More than two centuries ago, Edmund Burke warned about the dangers of new people with new power. This administration, only halfway through its term, has demonstrated that in many ways.
What other administration has had an Attorney General call the American People "cowards"? And refuse to call terrorists Islamic? What other administration has had a Secretary of Homeland Security warn law enforcement officials across the country of security threats from people who are anti-abortion, for federalism or are returning military veterans?
If anything good comes out of the airport "security" outrages, it may be in opening the eyes of more people to the utter contempt that this administration has for the American people.
Those who made excuses for all of candidate Barack Obama's long years of alliances with people who expressed their contempt for this country, and when as president he appointed people with a record of antipathy to American interests and values, may finally get it when they feel some stranger's hand in their crotch.
As for the excuse of "security," this is one of the least security-minded administrations we have had. When hundreds of illegal immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring countries were captured crossing the border from Mexico-- and then released on their own recognizance within the United States, that tells you all you need to know about this administration's concern for security.
When captured terrorists who are not covered by either the Geneva Convention or the Constitution of the United States are nevertheless put on trial in American civilian courts by the Obama Justice Department, that too tells you all you need to know about how concerned they are about national security.
The rules of criminal justice in American courts were not designed for trying terrorists. For one thing, revealing the evidence against them can reveal how our intelligence services got wind of them in the first place, and thereby endanger the lives of people who helped us nab them.
Not a lot of people in other countries, or perhaps even in this country, are going to help us stop terrorists if their role is revealed and their families are exposed to revenge by the terrorists' bloodthirsty comrades.
What do the Israeli airport security people do that American airport security do not do? They profile. They question some individuals for more than half an hour, open up all their luggage and spread the contents on the counter-- and they let others go through with scarcely a word. And it works.
Meanwhile, this administration is so hung up on political correctness that they have turned "profiling" into a bugaboo. They would rather have electronic scanners look under the clothes of nuns than to detain a Jihadist imam for some questioning.
Will America be undermined from within by an administration obsessed with political correctness and intoxicated with the adolescent thrill of exercising its new-found powers? Stay tuned.
1a)TSA, 2 ; America, 0
By Richard Kantro
There are still some to whom it seems alarmist to assert that the execrable Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is in a purposeful confrontation with the American people. A blue-uniformed, official, we-always-win confrontation. No, they're just trying to do the right thing and keep the skies safe.
So what if the TSA's attitude seems quickly to have come up to speed with and fallen in behind that of a rather famous frequent flier whom nobody pats, and who has advised, "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother"?
And who cares if no less an authority than the former director of TSA security operations, Mo McGowan, said last Tuesday that "[n]obody likes havin' their fourth amendment violated goin' through a security line, but the truth of the matter is, we're goin' to have to do it." 'Course, he could have been just kiddin'.
So if you're one of those who still needs proof, look no further than the example -- piteous and infuriating -- of what they did to Thomas Sawyer, 61 ("TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine") (Baskas, Harriet, datelined 11/20/2010 7:16:18 PM ET).
Mr. Sawyer's urostomy bag seal was ruptured by the ministrations of TSA sensitivity-training-dropout goons, who used their hands if not quite like doctors, then not quite unlike gorillas, and who afterward pretended not to recognize the consequences to Mr. Sawyer: mortifying hours of walking and sitting in enforced wretchedness, drenched in his own waste. Sue 'em, Tom!
The article referenced the "enhanced pat-down by TSA officers." This was a frisk the way a loan shark's beating is a "tune-up." Come off the euphemistic palliatives, Ms. Baskas. Or at least make sure you use "so-called" to characterize the "pat-down." Pat-downs are quick external sweeps that look for things like ankle-holstered guns, shivs, and knucks. And box-cutters and nail files. Making a non-threatening, middle-aged, non-suspect, post-op, disfigured cancer survivor take off his clothes and then roughing him up and rupturing his medical device is kidnapping, assault, and battery. Not to mention the intentional infliction of considerable mental anguish.
No, it appears from the wanton and callous behavior of these TSA cretins that they have carte blanche discretion to mess you up before they send you on your way, no consequences, and no foul. Like a sharpster who deftly trips you on a crowded street, catches you before you hit the ground, and then pretends it was an accident, taking your wallet as he steadies you back up. His mock-solicitous "Are you OK?" equates to the TSA's "You're cleared, have a nice day." Somehow you feel that something bad's just happened to you.
But this is the real nature of the warped game at which the TSA is playing for keeps: there's no way for the law-abiding citizen to win.
Here's what I mean. The traveler has a perfectly ordinary Hobson's choice: be irradiated and seen naked by strangers or be palped by one of those strangers with who-knows-whose effluvia on those powder-blue gloves. That's it. If you don't like it, don't fly. And adding injury to insult, the TSA now threatens to fine you $11,000if you get the willies and try to chuck it in and just go home after making the mistake of first getting on line and then rejecting both the ionizing ogle ray and the blue glove. No, sir, no. You're not going anywhere.
(And by the way, how often do they change those gloves? At the deli where I get my bagel, the counterman uses a new disposable glove for every customer. But then again, the TSA "pat-down" area doesn't have a jar for tips.)
Many private and public persons -- Jesse Ventura being one of the recent latter -- have opted for the status of non-flier. He's admitted it may end his career. By making this choice, however, you lose, too. You've got some place you've gotta go: business, pleasure, funeral, whatever. How are you free -- and how free are you -- if government policy is so odious that you feel forced to turn on your heel, cancel your trip, and go home?
So: you get x-rayed (and uploaded someday -- see you online!) or you get felt up. You're scanned-or-crammed-if-you-do-and-banned-if-you-don't. Or else you pay up big time to get out. Three choices that add up to zero.
Here's how they keep score, brother. Submit to your choice of x-ray or grope and be humiliated: that's plus-one for the TSA, minus-one for the victim. TSA's two up. Or forgo the humiliation, relinquish your freedom of movement, and head home: one point to Big Brother, deduct one from new homebody victim. TSA's up two again. TSA and Big Brother are on the same team. And they want a populace that's uncomfortable, cowed, ill-at-ease, puzzled, trepidatious, immobilized, inconvenienced, huddled, shrunken, and anxious. Sound familiar?
Where does that leave Team America? Right now, it leaves us under the heavy thumb of the appalling Janet Napolitano, the Doyenne of Dumbistan, as torpid as she is imperious. And she dances to the tune of oberst Obama. But this is just what happens when an anticonstitutional president -- and one of a provenance he will not or cannot substantiate -- uses extraconstitutional means to emplace unconstitutional measures. He's bringing meaningful change to Washington, all right.
How to fix? Simple to see, really, for you and me. Or for a president who actually meant the oath he bobbled. Do what the Israelis do. Train intuitive, intelligent, perceptive tough guys to visually check everyone; leave the grannies and three-year-olds mostly alone; stare down the ones that feel "wrong," and get to work on them. Do lots and lots of racial profiling of the right kind of people. Seen many Jewish and Christian bombers in the news lately? Me neither.
But all that would require that the president do two things that are against his religion and his training at the Church of Wright: (1) acknowledge that jihadist Muslims are the problem; and (2) admit that the Israelis know how to handle it.
Don't look for either of those to happen too soon. Methinks we'll be at odds with the TSA for a while longer yet.
1b)Smile, You're on Candid Scanner
The public no longer blindly submits to authority—and that's progress..Article Comments (45) more in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
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close Yahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditFacebookLinkedInFarkViadeoOrkut Text By PETER FUNT
I've never worked for the TSA. But once I spent a day putting airline passengers through what they believed was a full-body scanner, and I learned a few things about the American psyche. I also got sued, but we'll get to that later.
It was 2001, just a few months before 9/11. We were doing a sequence at the airport in Bullhead City, Ariz., for "Candid Camera" that was designed to parody the passenger screening process.
Pre-9/11 airport "security," you may recall, was far different than it is today. Indeed, the very lapses that prompted me to do such a satire were undoubtedly clear to Osama bin Laden as well.
With the help and encouragement of airport officials, I posed as a security guard. As passengers entered the boarding area, I examined them and their carry-on bags. I claimed that the metal detector wasn't working properly, and instructed passengers to lie down on the conveyor belt so they could ride through the X-ray machine along with their bags.
Regardless of your position regarding airport security, it was a hilarious sight. The "X-ray machine" was a flimsy prop made from a large wooden box with holes cut in each end, placed over a rented conveyor belt. We attached a few blinking lights to the box, along with our version of the classic airport sign: "Everything Said Will be Taken Seriously."
There were no actual X-rays involved. In fact, the airport's real X-ray screening device was in another room several hundred feet away.
We put 15 passengers through the wooden box that day—too few to be scientific, but instructive nonetheless. All but one passenger, a middle-aged man, willingly laid on the conveyor belt, belly down, and was transported through the box without protest.
Of course, we were aiming for comedy, so I peppered my instructions with cracks like, "Looks like you ate a pretty big breakfast. What is that, a glazed doughnut?" And, "I don't see any weapons, but you might want to have your gallbladder checked."
In reviewing the footage the other day, I realized that these jokes are the very ones showing up in editorial cartoons and on the Internet since full-body scanners were recently introduced at many U.S. airports.
What seems clear to me is that pre-9/11 passengers were generally tolerant of inconvenience and obeyed authority far more than they do today. Part of the impact of 9/11 is that Americans are more concerned than ever about safety. Yet they are increasingly suspicious of the ways government goes about providing it.
One of the recurrent themes on "Candid Camera" has involved examining many people's mindless obedience in the face of unreasonable demands by "authority." It's important that we trust and obey police and other agents working to protect us. It's certainly not reasonable to obey, without question, a uniformed guard who says the state of Delaware is "closed for the day," or a cop who tells pedestrians they've entered a "walk backwards zone." Yet I've got a library of footage showing that the public willingly accepts such instruction, time and again.
About that lawsuit: One man bruised his leg getting off the conveyor and took us to court. The case, which he won, then settled after we appealed, turned out to be less about the mishap than about his claim that his privacy had been violated.
That was then—and in recent days an increasingly frustrated public is being asked to submit to possibly risky scans and highly intrusive pat-downs, which many travelers believe violate their privacy.
I'm tempted to say that nine years later life is imitating art in many ways, but I don't have the audacity to call what I did for a living art. I do believe, however, it's helpful in understanding where we've been and where we seem to be heading.
I'm glad to see that many travelers are no longer simply submitting blindly to airport scanners, and are questioning invasive pat-downs. That's actually something worth smiling about.
Mr. Funt is a writer and the long-time host of "Candid Camera."
1c)Nuclear blinders
North Korea's newly revealed nuclear facility should surprise no one, and Washington must no longer be played for a fool. The U.S. should work with China on reunifying the Korean peninsula.
By John R. Bolton
"Stunning" was how Siegfried Hecker, former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, described North Korea's new uranium-enrichment facility. While more sophisticated and extensive than previously believed, this plant is entirely consistent with 15 years of sustained effort by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to perfect its nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, just a week before Hecker's announcement, North Korea confirmed it was building a larger nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang's prior effort (in Syria) to replace its existing but aged reactor was frustrated when Israel bombed it in September 2007.
Seoul's minister of defense is so concerned, he has suggested deploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea for the first time in two decades. The size and scope of the North's just-revealed facilities will not, however, surprise anyone except those still entranced by the myth that North Korea will voluntarily negotiate away its nuclear weapons. Though our intelligence is imperfect, Pyongang almost certainly embarked on illicit uranium enrichment even before the ink dried on the Clinton administration's prized 1994 Agreed Framework. That deal was one of several North Korean pledges to denuclearize, in exchange for tangible benefits from the outside world — every one of which Pyongyang has violated.
The North may once again be testing America's strategic patience. We must avoid repeating our recent errors. After U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously concluded in mid-2002 that Pyongyang was preparing an industrial-scope enrichment program, the Bush administration decided to confront the North. At a key meeting in October 2002, the North defiantly admitted it was engaged in enrichment. Unfortunately, the U.S. response was to launch the hapless negotiations known as the six-party talks, providing cover for the North's continued progress on nuclear weapons.
Worse, in President George W. Bush's second term, an assertive group of deniers in the State Department and the intelligence community claimed or implied that North Korea did not have a substantial or ongoing uranium-enrichment program. They denied that the North Koreans had conceded as much in 2002 and that there was sufficient evidence of a continuing program. The intelligence community downgraded its confidence level in its earlier conclusion, not because of contradictory information but because it had not subsequently acquired significant new data. State Department negotiators scorned the idea that the North had a serious enrichment capability.
All of this was done to support a passion for negotiation, hoping Pyongyang would yet again pledge to denuclearize. But denying and minimizing the threat of enrichment for most of the last decade was well wide of reality. When the North announced after its second nuclear detonation in May 2009 that it was "beginning" an enrichment program, Pyongyang was simply bringing into the open activity almost certainly begun 15 years before. The North had once again successfully played Washington for a fool.
We must avoid these grievous errors going forward, not only regarding North Korea but also Iran, whose involvement with Pyongang on ballistic missiles and probably nuclear weapons is long-standing. There is substantial reason for concern that Tehran's capabilities and its penchant for cooperating with the North exceed U.S. intelligence estimates. Moreover, the spinning of North Korea-related intelligence in recent years bears an uneasy similarity to the famously distorted 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Such politicization of intelligence provides a clear basis for high-priority investigations by the incoming Congress.
Moreover, North Korea's newly evident capabilities should give the Senate pause before it succumbs to President Obama's pressure to ratify the New START arms control treaty this year. New START is myopic in focusing only on parity with Russia, because Washington has far broader global responsibilities for friends and allies under our nuclear umbrella that Moscow does. Equally dangerous are China's growing strategic nuclear capabilities. Add to that list the inevitable Middle East proliferation if Iran gets nuclear weapons and outliers like Venezuela and Myanmar potentially embarking on nuclear weapons programs. This is hardly the time to limit the U.S. nuclear arsenal, let alone in a binding treaty like New START.
The last thing Washington should do now is resurrect the failed six-party talks or start bilateral negotiations with the North. Instead, serious efforts need to be made with China on reunifying the Korean peninsula, a goal made ever more urgent by the clear transition of power now underway in Pyongyang as Kim Jong Il faces the actuarial tables. North Korea's threat will only end when it does, and that day cannot come soon enough.
John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations."
1d)Has U.S. Foreign Policy Ever Been This Screwed Up?
By Michael Filozof
American foreign policy is in a state of total disarray. I don't think that our foreign policy has been in straits this dire since the early 1960s, when we rushed headlong from the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis straight into Vietnam. At least then our foreign policy was consistent in its anti-communism. Today's is incoherent, counterproductive, and sometimes downright idiotic (e.g., when Hillary Clinton went to Russia to push the "reset button"). The Obama administration is either doing nothing to preempt the coming disasters or actually making them worse. It's time for a full-blown, radical reevaluation of our foreign policy.
Let's look around the world at several case studies to see just how much trouble we could be in for:
Afghanistan: The Russians must be laughing their tails off watching the U.S. get stuck in Afghanistan, just as they did in 1979. But the deaths of American service personnel in a pointless war to prop up a corrupt and incompetent government aren't very funny. Invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do in 2001 when we went after Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network, but we should have been out of there by 2004, when the war seemed like a total success.
Here is the situation: al-Qaeda fled from Afghanistan long ago to nuclear-armed Pakistan, where we can't go after them. The Taliban has now been defined as the enemy -- but the Taliban never plotted or carried out any terrorist attacks against the U.S.
President Obama -- who is "uncomfortable" using the term "victory" in Afghanistan -- said that we would withdraw troops in 2011. That was a lie. Now he says we'll be out by 2014. That's simply crazy. The U.S. defense budget last year was $660 billion. If we cannot defeat illiterate tribesmen who lack tanks, aircraft, or uniforms after nine years of fighting with a half-trillion-dollar defense budget, something is very wrong. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former field commander in Afghanistan, once said, "We can't kill our way out of this." If a top commander admits that we cannot win a war by killing the enemy, why are we still there -- and why are we committing our forces for another four years?
Iraq: Iraq had been a festering sore in the Middle East for two decades when we invaded in 2003, rightly fearing that Saddam still possessed the chemical and biological weapons we knew he had -- and used - in the 1980s. Left-wing critics of George W. Bush immediately politicized the war and accused Bush of shedding "blood for oil." Too bad that wasn't true. After spending four thousand American lives and billions of dollars deposing a ruthless dictator, the very least we should have gotten out of the deal was a tanker a day full of Iraqi oil and ninety-nine-cent gasoline. But we didn't get even that. George W. took a Wilsonian turn and decided that the war was all about establishing Iraqi democracy. Bad idea. Iraq somehow turned out a European-style parliamentary democracy (why not an American presidential system?) that has severe difficulty forming governments. Instead of a pro-American regional ally and a guaranteed oil supply, we get P.C. blather from our government about green jobs, electric cars, and Iraqi democracy.
Iran: The theocratic dictatorship of Iran was created in 1979, when Islamic radicals overthrew the Shah, seized the U.S. Embassy, and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days. Night after night, the blindfolded hostages were paraded before screaming mobs chanting "death to the Great Satan" and burning the American flag in the streets of Tehran. The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Iran for thirty years and has named Iran to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
Today, Iran is enriching uranium in violation of International Atomic Energy Agency (an arm of the U.N.) protocols, ostensibly to build an innocent nuclear power plant. According to the IAEA, every nation on earth has the right to a nuclear power plant. We would gladly give Iran enriched uranium for a "power plant" because the level of enrichment for that application cannot possibly be used for a nuclear bomb. By maintaining an indigenous enrichment capability, Iran will be able to enrich to the 80%-90% weapons-grade level. Iran is unquestionably working on the bomb.
What could the Iranians do with the bomb? At the very least, they could threaten to nuke any ship passing out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, thereby obtaining immediate control over oil from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The global economy would be paralyzed overnight. At worst, the Iranians could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group, who could detonate it in one of the "Great Satan's" cities. Nuclear terrorists would not leave the telltale radar signature of an intercontinental ballistic missile to divulge the origin of the bomb; the Iraqis would shrug and say, "We have no idea how that happened!" If such an event actually transpired, does anyone seriously believe President Obama would order a nuclear counterstrike on the mere suspicion that the Iranians might have been responsible?
On the other hand, if we preemptively strike Iran to destroy its enrichment program, the Iranians will surely try to close the Strait of Hormuz and cripple the world economy anyway. It's a no-win situation. Don't worry, though -- Obama's policy toward the Iranians is to apologize for the CIA's involvement in overthrowing socialist weirdo Mohammed Mossadegh - all the way back in 1953. (Yeah, Barry, that'll stop 'em from getting nuclear weapons for sure.)
NATO: Almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks were committed by Muslim terrorists and after nine years of combat in two Muslim countries, President Obama insists that "we are not at war with Islam." But we are, apparently, still fighting the Cold War. As the leading member of NATO, we have troops in Europe nearly twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed. Why?
Perhaps the name of NATO should be changed to EROUS -- for "Europeans Ripping Off Uncle Sam." We have trade deficits with all our major NATO partners (except for the Netherlands), meaning we give them our money and pay for their defense. The U.S. defense budget is $660 billion, or 4.7% of GDP; Great Britain, our most important NATO ally, spends $69 billion, or 2.5% of GDP. Germany's defense budget is $48 billion, a piddling 1.3% of GDP. NATO "ally" Iceland has no army at all. Media reports that refer to "NATO forces" in Afghanistan are a joke. Britain and Canada have fought valiantly in Afghanistan, but for the rest of our "allies," the Afghan mission is more like a Boy Scout camp-out on Uncle Sam's dime.
Today, NATO is an alliance without a purpose. NATO is a collective-defense alliance, meaning that American troops are committed to die for the defense of other members --like Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. After the collapse of the USSR, we -- incredibly-- expanded, not disbanded, the alliance. Today, NATO even includes Albania. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
The Rest of the World: Sixty-five years after World War II ended, we still have troops in Japan. The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy are the de facto defense forces of Japan, the third-richest nation in the world. Why? China's $100-billion defense budget is now the second-largest in the world. The Chinese are developing anti-aircraft-carrier missile technology that could end American hegemony of the seas. Where do they get the money? From us -- our trade deficit is about $250 billion per annum, and the Chinese now hold $2.4 trillion of our $13.5-trillion national debt. American troops have been in Korea continuously for sixty years; today, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and its reclusive dictator Kim Jong-il could be mentally ill. Pakistan is a seething cauldron of fanatics. It already has nuclear weapons and is probably harboring Osama bin Laden. Terrorists assassinated presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto and attacked the Red Mosque and the headquarters of the Pakistani military. Ten per cent of Mexico's population has emigrated illegally to the U.S., but we have failed to seal the border. Mexico is descending into third-world gangland anarchy right on our doorstep, but Washington chose to sue Arizona for asking suspected illegals for I.D.
An honest appraisal of the situation is downright depressing. In a few years, everything might come unglued. Hopefully that won't happen, but the current trajectory of things doesn't look very good, and our political leadership seems absolutely clueless about how to advance American interests in an increasingly dangerous world.
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2)Tokyo presses for military response to North Korean attack
Prime Minister Naoto Kan called President Barak Obama urgently in the wake of the North Korean artillery attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near the Yellow Sea border early Tuesday, Nov. 23 and demanded a US-South Korean-Japanese military reprisal. Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 injured in the attack.
He also demanded that the UN Security Council be convened immediately on the crisis. He put the same demands to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in another call. Naoto Kan then ordered his ministers to prepare for "unexpected events."
Washington said it is watching the situation but is not militarily involved after strongly condemning the attack and calling for an end to belligerence.
debkafile's military sources report that the Korean clash has prompted a special alert in the US Seventh Fleet headquarters at Yokosuka in Japan, together with the naval forces stationed there including the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. They are covering South Korea's massive annual military exercises involving some 70,000 troops scheduled to last from Monday through Nov. 30.
Pyongyang has called past exercises a direct military threat on the North.
The Japanese prime minister said that North Korea cannot be permitted to carry out two armed attacks on the South in the space of eight months without facing any military counteraction. On March 26, North Korean torpedoes sunk the South Korean Cheonan cruiser. At least 46 seamen were lost.
Obama's refusal to respond to the Japanese call, despite the presence of 28,000 US troops on the Korean armistice border – even with limited military action - would devalue the US defensive umbrella pledged South Korea and Japan against North Korean aggression. It would also place in doubt American resolve for firm action against Iran. Washington's avoidance of military action against Pyongyang will resonate loudly across the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
The clash of the Koreas erupted the day after the disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility in North Korea prompted suspicions that Pyongyang was about to renew its production of nuclear weapons.
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3)Yes, Israel is a banana republic
There were times when Israel asserted its independence, even though it was considerably weaker economically than it is today.
By Moshe Arens
In December 1981, in response to Washington's criticism of Israeli policies, Prime Minister Menachem Begin summoned the U.S. ambassador and told him that Israel was not a "banana republic." As for the American demand that Israel repeal the Golan Heights Law, Begin said to the American ambassador that "there is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission."
Surprisingly enough, U.S.-Israeli ties improved following Begin's determined stand in defense of Israel's interests. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State, Alexander Hague, learned to respect Begin for his steadfastness and honesty. Yitzhak Shamir, as well, who was not prepared to give an inch when it came to Israel's interests, earned the respect and even admirations of U.S. Secretary or State George Shultz.
Those were times when Israel asserted its independence and was really not a banana republic, even though it was considerably weaker economically than it is today.
But now, every time our prime minister visits Washington or receives a message from there, he backtracks on principles he has sworn to defend. His promises that brought him victory in the last elections are gone with the wind.
When under American pressure, he agreed to a 10-month freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria, he announced that this was a one-time move and that construction would resume after 10-months. It took no more than another trip to the U.S., American pressure and some financial inducements for him to change his mind. Israel really does not need the F-35's that have been offered, and wouldn't even get them for another five years.
It seems that everything is for sale; principles and promises have no real value anymore. We have, indeed, become a banana republic. If the prime minister believes that this unprincipled behavior will earn him the respect and friendship of the administration in Washington, he is gravely mistaken. He should learn from his predecessors, Begin and Shamir.
What is all this backtracking for? To bring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table. Abbas does not believe in negotiating without preconditions. He has preconditions, and it is not clear that even if they are met he will come to the table. He prefers Washington to squeeze concessions out of Israel over facing Netanyahu across the table.
And after being provided with sufficient inducements, can negotiation with him bring an end to the long drawn-out Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The irony of it all is that these negotiations, that Abbas is so hesitant to begin, are nothing but a sham.
They cannot possibly bring about an end to the conflict, for the simple reason that Abbas does not represent the Palestinians. Not only does he not speak for the Palestinians in Gaza, but his standing in Judea and Samaria is worse than precarious.
A Palestinian journalist recently stated that he is corrupt, discredited, weak and does not have much power. If Israel were to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, his administration would probably collapse and Hamas would take over.
The only thing that keeps him in his present position is the massive infusion of American money. The administration in Washington believes that they can engage in Palestinian "nation building" by using American money and having an American general build an army for Abbas.
It won't be the first time that the Americans will have misunderstood Middle Eastern realities. Those who claim that Israel can bring about an end to the conflict by negotiations with Abbas are living in a fantasy.
Whereas in the past, negotiations with Egypt and Jordan were truly direct, now the U.S. administration is not serving as the honest broker but rather as Abbas' sponsor and supporter.
The American plans are transparent. In the additional three-month moratorium on construction in Judea and Samaria that they insist that Israel agree to, they want negotiations to lead to an Israeli agreement to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines.
We can expect further American pressure and payoffs to get Israel to agree to that. And once that is settled, additional construction in Judea and Samaria will depend on Arab agreement. Don't hold your breath waiting for Abbas' approval of such construction.
What is it they say about the slippery slope? Netanyahu has stepped on it and he is sliding down very fast.
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4)Democrats Try to Crack Mystery of the Missing Voters
By GERALD F. SEIB
A popular theory of this year's midterm election holds that Democrats took a shellacking in part because big chunks of the party's core liberal base, discouraged at the path of the Obama administration, stayed home rather than show up to vote as they did in 2008.
It's an interesting narrative. It also doesn't appear to be entirely accurate.
While it's correct that some key parts of the Democratic coalition—young voters and African-Americans among them—didn't perform as they did in 2008, evidence emerging as the dust settles from this month's election suggests the bigger hole in the side of the Democratic ship came from moderates in the political center who didn't show up. (Those absences were in addition to the wave of independent swing voters also from the center who, exit polls showed, turned out but switched their votes to the Republicans.)
The case of the missing voters is important because how it is resolved will go a long way toward determining how Democrats respond to their midterm woes. If they conclude, as some argue, that the problem was an undermotivated liberal base, then the logical reaction would be a turn to the left and a staunch resistance to compromises with the Republicans who now control the House and hold expanded power in the Senate.
If, on the other hand, the conclusion is that the voters lost were moderates who got aboard the Barack Obama Express in 2008 but missed the train at the station this time, then that would argue for a political and policy strategy designed to appeal to the center of the electorate. And that might suggest more willingness to seek compromises in the middle.
Let's look at some evidence. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll sifted out a group of voters who said they cast ballots in 2008 but didn't vote this year. They do tend to be a bit younger than the overall average of voters. And as a group they like Mr. Obama noticeably more than do voters as a whole, and they tend to identify themselves as Democrats, which suggests that, as suspected, many would have been Democratic voters had they shown up.
But they also were more likely to identify themselves as "not very strong Democrats" rather than "strong Democrats." And the largest share identified their ideology as moderate rather than liberal.
A more direct study of these 2010 no-shows was undertaken by Third Way, a think tank for moderate Democrats, and Lincoln Park Strategies, a Democratic polling firm. They surveyed 1,000 Obama voters who abandoned Democrats in 2010. Half of them were "switchers" who moved their votes to the Republicans this time, while the other half were "droppers" who simply dropped out of the voting this year.
That survey found that, while the droppers were a bit more liberal than 2010 voters as a whole, they were split in almost precise thirds into liberals, moderates and conservatives. Moreover, just 42% identified themselves as Democrats, while 40% were independents and 8% were Republicans. Almost a quarter of them voted for Republican George W. Bush in 2004.
Nor were the droppers largely minority voters, as the popular stereotype might suggest. Eight in 10 were white, while just 7% were African-American and 5% Latino.
The views of political moderates who didn't vote in the midterm election will help shape Democrats' response to their woes.
In other words, those who stayed home don't, as a whole, fit the profile of a disgruntled liberal base. Instead, they lean toward a profile of a group of centrist voters who weren't motivated this time. Indeed, as that would suggest, the droppers were pretty much split down the middle on whether their concern was that Mr. Obama and the Democrats didn't try to have government do more (45%), or whether they tried to have government do too much (39%).
"The Obama voters who stayed home in 2010 encompass more than the Democratic base," concludes the study of these voters. "And disappointment that Obama didn't go farther was not a major factor in their reasons for staying home."
Not surprisingly, the same study found that 2008 Obama voters who showed up this year but switched their votes to the Republicans were much more likely to say that they thought Democrats and the president tried to have government do too much. They were, in short, more conservative, and tended as a group to lean more Republican to begin with, than did those who simply stayed home.
The question for Democrats and Mr. Obama, of course, is whether they can get both groups, the switchers and droppers, moving back in their direction now.
The droppers should be easier to retrieve—though the process of doing so would have to begin with figuring out why they checked out in the first place.
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8)Free Palestine! Can Palestinians abide a single free-thinking blogger in their midst?
By Bret Stephens
Should the United States offer—and Israel accept—diplomatic guarantees, plus $2 billion worth of fighter jets, for the sake of a 90-day settlement freeze? Er, no. Israel can afford the planes, or at least it can afford them better than the perception that it's getting a free ride from U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. should not put a price on things it ought not to do anyway, like recognizing a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. And bribery is generally a bad idea, particularly between friends.
Then again, bad ideas are what you get when you're operating from bad premises. Premises such as: There is a deal to be had between Israelis and Palestinians, or that the settlements are the core of the problem.
So what is the core of the problem? Consider the predicament faced by a Palestinian named Walid Husayin from the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Mr. Husayin, 26, is suspected of being the blogger known as Waleed al-Husseini and author of an essay, posted on the Proud Atheist Web site (proud-a.blogspot.com), titled "Why I Left Islam."
The pseudonymous Husseini makes no bones about his opposition to religions generally, which he says "compete with each other in terms of stupidity." But nothing seems to exercise his indignation more than the religion he used to call his own. Islam, he writes, is "an authoritarian religion that does not respect the individual's freedom of choice, which is easily noticeable from its barbaric verdicts such as stoning the adulterous, pushing homosexuals off a cliff and killing the apostates for daring to express a different viewpoint."
And that's just Husseini getting started. The essay proceeds by way of a series of questions, such as "Is Islam a religion of tolerance?" Answer: "The sacred texts of Islam also encourage blatant war and conquest of new territories." What about equality? "Islam has legitimized slavery, reinforced the gap between social classes and allowed stealing from the infidels." Women's rights? "I have a mother, a sister and a lover and I cannot stand for them to be humiliated and stigmatized in this bone-chilling way." The prophet? "A sex maniac" who "was no different than barbaric thugs who slaughtered, robbed and raped women." And so on.
This being the Arab world, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Husayin has spent the past 24 days in detention, that he has been forbidden from receiving visitors or speaking to a lawyer, that he faces a potential life sentence, and that people in Qalqilya have called for him to be burned alive.
The systematic violation of Palestinian rights by Palestinian officials is an old story, as is the increasingly Islamist tilt of what was once supposed to be a relatively secular, progressive society. Whatever might be said in favor of freedom for Palestine, there has been to date precious little freedom in Palestine, whether in the Hamas-controlled statelet of Gaza or in the parts of the West Bank under Fatah's dominion.
That's a problem. It's also a problem that when the Associated Press covered Mr. Husayin's ordeal, reporter Diaa Hadid offered that "the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region," and that "Husayin's high public profile and prickly style . . . left authorities no choice but to take action."
How nice to see AP reporters sticking up for free expression. Indeed, the consistent willingness of Western news organizations to downplay stories about Palestinian illiberalism and thuggery goes far to explain why so much of the world misdiagnoses the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Settlements are a convenient alibi: They foster the illusion that the conflict can be resolved by Israeli territorial concessions alone. But if that were true, Gaza would have turned peaceful the moment settlements were withdrawn five years ago. The opposite happened.
Why did Gaza become more violent, internally as well as toward Israel and Egypt, the moment it was rid of Israelis? That's the central question, and one too few observers seem willing to address for fear of where the answer might lead. Yet it ought to be self-evident. The culture of Palestinian illiberalism gave rise to the discontents that brought about civil war and then Hamas's swift rise to power. Hamas is theologically committed to Israel's destruction. That commitment is politically popular: It shapes, and limits, what even the most progressive Palestinian leaders might be willing to concede to Israel in any deal. The result is what we now have: Negotiations that are going nowhere, at an increasingly heavy price for all parties, including the United States.
Like George W. Bush before him, President Obama has observed that the U.S. can't want peace more than Israelis or Palestinians themselves do. But America can, uniquely, stand for freedom like no other country. Mr. Husayin—assuming he's the author of those blog posts—surely knew how much he risked by speaking his mind, and it's tempting to conclude he had it coming.
But if Palestinians cannot abide a single free-thinker in their midst, they cannot be free in any meaningful sense of the word. And if the U.S. can't speak up on his behalf, then neither, in the long run, can we.
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