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Sent to me in response to my last memo entitled: Obama- "Chamberlain Without The Umbrella and/or Nero Without The Violin!"
The writer makes a compelling point. (See 1 below.)
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Our government is out to kill us one way or the other? But always with good intentions. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Have the Brit's opted out using Stuxnet and why not visit it upon N Korea? (See 3below.)
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As I noted in a previous memo, The IAF is capable of doing the job in Iran but not on a sustained basis as could the U.S. Now it is reported the IDF has also been moving forward and improving its ability to defeat its various enemies.
However, in a world of PC midgets being strong and capable of defending yourself and even destroying those who would attack or seek to destroy you carries dangerous implications and often rejection.
Peace through weakness is the new motto of the likes of Obama.
David Freund seems to be reading my own mind. However, having the ability and refusing to use it, in my opinion, will make Obama even weaker in the eyes of the world if that is possible. So what we have is a lame duck president eating turkey today.
Meanwhile,Israel continues to believe in David!(See 4, 4a and 4b below.)
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Turkey the emerging Islamic power. (See 5 below.)
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If it can dawn on the likes of this NYT's op ed writer that passivity invites risk perhaps one day reality will also dawn on the dolts in our State Department. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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This writer believes GW lied to himself though he also believes GW sincerely wanted to protect our nation from harm and does not question GW's love of country. (See 7 below.)
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You may find this expose of Obama's background of interest. Then again you may not. You decide.
Go to PJTV.Com and then look up the PJTV Special: Barack Obama, Radical In Chief (Part 2)--Socialist in Training: Obama's Early Years
Richard Pollock continues his interview with Stanley Kurtz, author of "Radical In Chief." Hear about Obama's mentors and his link to socialist scholars and socialist community organizers.
The more you learn about Obama's background, education and methods the more, perhaps, you will begin to understand why the change he seeks is anathema to our country's well being and is in contradiction to our nation's history.
But if you believe wealth creation is bad and over concentrated, if you believe people are entitled to everything they want and government is the agency best suited to transfer the earned wealth and creative production of others then you should feel comfortable with Obama. Obama's policies and the direction he seeks, if allowed to continue unabated, should actually make you downright giddy.
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Hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with family!
Dick
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1)Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do!!!
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
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2)Dr. Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit
By Dr. Russell Blaylock
Dr. Russell Blaylock is a nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, health practitioner, author, lecturer, and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report.
The growing outrage over the Transportation Security Administration�s new policy of backscatter scanning of airline passengers and �enhanced pat-downs� brings to mind these wise words from President Ronald Reagan: �The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: �I�m from the government and I�m here to help you.��
So, what is all the concern really about � will these radiation scanners increase your risk of cancer or other diseases? A group of scientists and professors from the University of California at San Francisco voiced their concern to Obama�s science and technology adviser John Holdren in a well-stated letter back in April.
The group included experts in radiation biology, biophysics, and imaging, who expressed �serious concerns� about the �dangerously high� dose of radiation to the skin.
Radiation increases cancer risk by damaging the DNA and various components within the cells. Much of the damage is caused by high concentrations of free radicals generated by the radiation. Most scientists think that the most damaging radiation types are those that have high penetration, such as gamma-rays, but in fact, some of the most damaging radiation barely penetrates the skin.
One of the main concerns is that most of the energy from the airport scanners is concentrated on the surface of the skin and a few millimeters into the skin. Some very radiation-sensitive tissues are close to the skin � such as the testes, eyes, and circulating blood cells in the skin.
This is why defenders using such analogies as the dose being �1,000-times less than a chest X-ray� and �far less than what passengers are exposed to in-flight� are deceptive. Radiation damage depends on the volume of tissue exposed. Chest X-rays and gamma-radiation from outer space is diffused over the entire body so that the dose to the skin is extremely small. Of note, outer space radiation does increase cancer rates in passengers, pilots, and flight attendants.
We also know that certain groups of people are at a much higher risk than others. These include babies, small children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with impaired immunity (those with HIV infection, cancer patients, people with immune deficiency diseases, and people with abnormal DNA repair mechanism, just to name a few).
As we grow older, our DNA accumulates a considerable amount of unrepaired damage, and under such circumstances even low doses of radiation can trigger the development of skin cancers, including the deadly melanoma. I would also be concerned about exposing the eyes, since this could increase one�s risk of developing cataracts.
About 5 percent of the population have undiagnosed abnormal DNA repair mechanism. When exposed to radiation, this can put them at a cancer risk hundreds of times greater than normal people.
It also has been determined that when skin is next to certain metals, such as gold, the radiation dose is magnified 100-fold higher. What if you have a mole next to your gold jewelry? Will the radiation convert it to a melanoma? Deficiencies in certain vitamins can dramatically increase your sensitivity to radiation carcinogenesis, as can certain prescription medications.
As for the assurances we have been given by such organization as the American College of Radiology, we must keep in mind that they assured us that the CT scans were safe and that the radiation was equal to one chest X-ray. Forty years later we learn that the dose is extremely high, it is thought to have caused cancer in a significant number of people, and the dose is actually equal to 1,000 chest X-rays.
Based on these assurances, tens of thousands of children have been exposed to radiation doses from CT scanners, which will ruin the children's lives. I have two friends who were high-ranking Environmental Protection Agency scientists, and they assure me that in government safety agencies, politics most often override the scientists� real concerns about such issues.
This government shares House Speaker Nancy Pelosi�s view when she urged passage of the Obamacare bill sight unseen � �Let�s just pass the bill, and we will find out what is in it later.�
When the real effects of these scanners on health become known, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the rest of the gang who insist the scanners are safe will be long gone.
2a)Dependency and the Destruction of American Virtues
By Daniel Fitzgerald
My oldest son, Keith (not his real name), is an adult. He lives with our family at home, and he probably will for the rest of his life.
As a child, Keith was extraordinary. He was extremely verbal at an early age, immensely creative, and astonishingly literate.
Keith's senior year in high school was remarkable for the range of activities in which he was engaged and the energy that he invested in them. He was an active member of our church youth group, showed promising acting talent as he participated in a drama club, earned a brown belt in karate, and completed his third Easter week mission trip with our church. He was working steadily, paying for his car, gas, cell phone service, and auto insurance. My son received the "employee of the month" award the first month at his job. He excelled in Latin and linguistics, the latter being a hobby that he pursued vigorously. He had many friends who loved him. Other than a few rough spots that we chalked up to normal teen rebellion, my son's future seemed bright.
Keith naturally scored high on his SAT, and college offers started pouring in. He chose a small Christian liberal arts college close to home from which he received a generous scholarship. The school was forming a classics program, and the department head saw our son as a cornerstone of the newly developing major. Four years ago, we tearfully sent him off to the campus dorms, anticipating good things ahead.
And then the nightmare began.
We later learned that major life changes, even positive ones, could trigger the onset of a psychological breakdown in people predisposed to mental illnesses. We also learned that such disorders often have a genetic component. On my side of the family was depression, going back at least to my grandmother. On my wife's side, bipolar disorder was suspected in her grandfather and an aunt.
This is not a story about my son, but rather about how our society responds to affliction, so I'll keep this brief. It took almost a year to get the correct diagnosis, but finally, after going to mental health professionals who did more harm than good, a psychiatrist determined that Keith had bipolar disorder, complicated by extreme chronic anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. By the time our son received his diagnosis, his college career was destroyed, he had lost his job, and he was penniless and in legal trouble.
Keith now takes medication to control his hallucinations, two drugs to keep him from slipping into catatonic depression, another to keep the destructive mania at bay, and occasionally a fifth that is supposed to help his anxiety. However, despite the symptoms being more or less under control, our son is still not able to function. He hasn't worked for years and has flunked out of the local city college.
What has been interesting is people's response to our problem. Before he was properly diagnosed, the first psychologist Keith saw immediately wanted to help our son obtain government disability payments. Without even giving Keith a correct diagnosis, the doctor almost reflexively thought that the solution to my son's problems was to go on the government dole. After three sessions, we stopped seeing him.
My wife and I attended some educational support groups, sponsored by a mental health advocacy organization, in hopes of finding some answers. People there were amazed that we hadn't applied for Social Security or disability payments for our son. When we responded that we thought we would be able to handle things financially, they shook their heads and told us that we'd change our minds eventually, and they actually implied that we were being negligent in not seeking such aid.
Keith was dropped from our health insurance when he left school, so we embarked on what some told us was an impossible mission: finding insurance for a young man with a preexisting mental condition. It was difficult. But thanks to the free-market system, we were grateful to discover an HMO that accepted Keith and has provided him with excellent psychiatric care. The premiums are affordable for now; I can't imagine what will happen if and when ObamaCare kicks in.
It occurred to me in the midst of this painful journey that people today automatically default to the government for answers. My wife and I are not wealthy, but for the time being, we have the means to provide for our son. We are his parents. Now that we know he can't handle adult responsibilities, we firmly believe that it is incumbent upon us, not other taxpayers, to support him. We are well aware that without us, he would be homeless, wandering the streets and obeying the dictates of his diseased mind. But it is our responsibility, not that of our neighbors, to see to it that he has a home, support, and supervision of his medical needs.
At the support group, I found it disturbing that everyone there seemed to believe that demanding more housing, food stamps, and mental health and medical services from the government was the answer to the problems of their ill relatives. I don't mean to pass judgment on these people; perhaps they had tried everything else and had no other recourse. However, there is something terribly wrong in our culture when we begin to view the incompetent and substandard services provided by government agencies as the only reasonable solution.
This is just one example of the massive shift in thinking that has plagued our society for many years. It started with the New Deal and has been accelerating since the 1960s. Instead of a nation of people reliant upon our own resources, our families, and our local communities, we look to Big Brother to meet our needs. Instead of taking care of our own, we depend on a cold, unfeeling, and bureaucratic government to provide us or our dependents with food, money, housing, medical care, jobs, and any number of other services.
I believe that this change in the American character is fundamental. It is what prompted people to vote for Obama, the man who has brought an aggressive projection of government intrusion into our lives that is both tyrannical and subversive. This degradation of character has made crybabies out of college students, who protest tuition hikes at taxpayer-funded universities because they feel they are owed an education. It has eroded self-reliance so much that union members demand job guarantees, as well as unreasonable and unsustainable benefits which lead to the destruction of businesses and local economies. It has corrupted people to the point that they feel entitled to any number of things that were once their own responsibility to provide. Instead of being a shameful last resort, the government is, for huge numbers of people, the first place they look to when they have a need.
We have paid dearly for this, and we will suffer for it greatly in the future. This kind of dependence enervates a nation, leading to passivity and to spiritual and economic bankruptcy.
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3)Brits declare war on Stuxnet. Americans say: Use it on North Korea
The Stuxnet virus which has crippled Iran's nuclear program has suddenly become the object of a British MI6 Secret Service campaign to convince the British and American public that it is the enemy of the West and sold on the black market to terrorists, intelligence sources report. Thursday morning, Nov. 25, Sky TV news led with a story claiming Stuxnet could attack any physical target dependent on computers. An unnamed Information Technology expert was quoted as saying enigmatically: "We have hard evidence that the virus is in the hands of bad guys – we can't say any more than that but these people are highly motivated and highly skilled with a lot of money behind them."
No one in the broadcast identified the "bad guys," disclosed where they operated or when they sold the virus to terrorists. Neither were their targets specified, even by a row of computer and cyber-terrorism experts who appeared later on British television, all emphasizing how dangerous the virus was.
Intelligence sources note none of the British reporters and experts found it necessary to mention that wherever Stuxnet was discovered outside Iran, such as India, China and Indonesia, it was dormant. Computer experts in those countries recommended leaving it in place as it was harmless for computer programs and did not interfere with their operations. The fact is that the only place Stuxnet is alive and harmful is Iran – a fact ignored in the British reports.
Indeed, for the first time in the six months since Stuxnet partially disabled Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr, Iran has found its first Western sympathizer, one who is willing to help defeat the malignant virus.
The British campaign against Stuxnet was launched two days after Yukiya Amano, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, reported that Iran had briefly shut down its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, apparently because of a Stuxnet assault on thousands of centrifuges. According to Iranian sources, the plant had to be closed for six days, from November 16-22.
Sources also reported the virus raided Iranian military computer systems, forcing the cancellation of parts of its large-scale air defense drill in the second week of November. Some of the systems used in the exercise started emitting wildly inaccurate data.
The Hate Stuxnet campaign London launched Thursday carried three messages to Tehran:
1. We were not complicit in the malworm's invasion of your systems.
2. We share your view that Stuxnet is very dangerous and must be fought and are prepared to cooperate in a joint program to destroy it.
3. Britain will not line up behind the United States' position in the nuclear talks to be resumed on Dec. 5 between Iran and the Six Powers (the five Permanent UN Security Council members + Germany). It will take a different position.
In the United States, meanwhile, debkafile's Washington sources report that Stuxnet's reappearance against Iran's nuclear program is hailed. A number of American IT experts and journals specializing in cyber war have maintained of late that if the malworm is so successful against Iran, why not use it to disable North Korea's nuclear program, especially the 2,000 centrifuges revealed on Nov. 20 to be operating at a new enrichment facility?
The popular American publication WIRED carried a headline on Monday, November 22, asking, "Could Stuxnet Mess With North Korea's New Uranium Plant?" The article noted that some of the equipment North Korea was using for uranium enrichment was identical to Iranian apparatus and therefore perfect targets for the use of Stuxnet by American cyber experts.
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4)Balance of Power: IDF stronger than ever
By Guy Bechor
Alexander the Great, the man who conquered the ancient world, said that those who develop new combat methods or who possess new arms will be triumphant. Indeed, at this time Israel is creating strategic military advantage that is unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A series of innovations at sea, in the air and on the ground that the enemy does not possess – and will not possess – is completely changing the balance of power in the Middle East. With these innovations, the IDF is turning into an unquestionably powerful and deterring army.
This year and next year, we’ll be receiving two more German-made Dolphin submarines, which together with the Israeli technological developments installed in them are no doubt among the world’s most advanced subs. This will bring the number of advanced submarines possessed by the Navy to five; according to foreign reports, these subs can fire ballistic (and potentially nuclear) missiles.
According to foreign reports, this is the most effective nuclear deterrent power we have vis-à-vis Iran.
Only five other states possess ballistic submarines with nuclear potential: The United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain. Upon the arrival of the two new subs in Israel, we’ll be the world’s third-strongest power on this front, ahead of China, France, and Britain.
The submarines are mobile and elusive, they cannot be eliminated easily, and they can get very close to their target. For those reasons, France decided to completely annul its ground-based nuclear missile arsenal and make do with nuclear power in the air and at sea. The territorial element, which was always problematic in Israel, is resolved through the subs.
Germany took part in funding all the Dolphin submarines thus far: It bore all the production costs of the first and second subs, half of the third’s, and one-third of the fourth and fifth ones, according to German media reports.
Israel’s tank revolution
Meanwhile, President Obama promised Israel another 20 stealth F-35 aircraft in connection with the freeze. In any case, Israel will receive the first 20 such planes, paid for with US military aid funds. The advantage of these aircraft, which cost $2.7 billion, is that they cannot be detected by enemy radar and can land and take off vertically. The planes will only arrive in four years, yet at that time the Air Force would be able to fly through the Middle East undetected.
According to reports this month, the IDF is also starting to receive the new anti-missile defense system for its advanced tanks. For the time being, the advanced Merkava 4 tanks had been reinforced with the system, and the intention is to gradually equip all IDF tanks with it. This innovative system, which is made by Israel’s armament authority Rafael and was developed in Israel, is the only one of its kind in the world. Its quality is attested to by the fact that the US wants to purchase it for its troops in Afghanistan.
So why is it a strategic revolution and not just another weapons system? Because it may eliminate the superiority of states like Syria and groups like Hezbollah in respect to anti-tank missiles. Hezbollah premised its entire combat doctrine following the Second Lebanon War on thousands of anti-tank missiles. It did not bother acquiring any tanks because of this missile tactic. Yet should these missiles be neutralized, Hezbollah shall remain vulnerable in the face of the advancing Israeli armored corps. The same is true for Syria and its outdated tanks.
And so, the strategic balance in the region is completely changing, and the enemy clearly understands the implications of a new regional war.
4a)Bombing Iran Would Save Obama's Presidency
By Michael Freund
These are tough times for Barack Obama. Barely three weeks have passed since his party received a "shellacking," as he put it, in the midterm elections, denying him unfettered control over Congress and putting his domestic agenda in doubt.
Obama's approval ratings have been sinking faster than Paris Hilton's acting career, and the president is even finding himself to be the object of mockery on late-night television.
As Jay Leno recently noted on The Tonight Show: "In an upcoming interview with Barbara Walters, Sarah Palin says she believes she can beat Obama in 2012. The way things are going right now, [her daughter] Bristol Palin could beat Obama in 2012."
Naturally enough, the newly-weakened president has turned his attention overseas, seeking to squeeze out something - anything! - that might resemble a victory and burnish his image. But even that isn't going all too well. Weakness invites antagonism, and America's foes - and even many of its allies - have wasted little time "dissing" the leader of the free world.
Consider the following: At the recent G-20 summit in South Korea, Obama tried to get America's European partners to press China to change its monetary policy. What should have been an easy sell quickly backfired when leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel turned around and instead berated the president because of the slumping US dollar. Pundits and politicians alike labeled it an astonishing rebuke.
Then, while still in Seoul, Obama was rebuffed by the South Korean government, which refused to sign a much-anticipated free-trade agreement with the US, marking yet another humiliating turn of events.
Other ostensible American pals have also joined in the fun, feeling free to lecture Washington at will. Take, for example, Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Despite owing his job and personal safety to the 100,000 American troops in his country, he felt no compunction about confronting the president and denouncing US policy at the NATO summit in Lisbon last week.
The wily Karzai knows a thing or two about political maneuvering, and saw an easy opportunity to score some points back home at a hapless Obama's expense.
Back in the Middle East, the Obama administration took it on the chin as well, when PA President Mahmoud Abbas rejected an American proposal to restart peace talks with Israel. Egypt, too, got into the act by slapping down the American administration. Cairo rebuffed pleas from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and even Obama himself to allow international monitors into the country to certify that the upcoming parliamentary balloting is free and fair.
Needless to say, this has not gone unnoticed by America's enemies, who are having a field day at Obama's expense.
Just last week, in a provocative and highly unusual move, North Korea allowed an American scientist to tour one of its top-secret nuclear facilities, taunting the US as it continues to expand its atomic weapons program with impunity. It was as if the North Korean regime was sending a message directly to Washington: You don't scare us.
It seems no one on the international stage is really taking Obama all that seriously anymore. All the shine and glitter have worn off.
As tempting as it may be to rejoice in Obama's difficulties - and it is quite inviting - this is no reason to celebrate.
If you believe, as I do, that America is a force for good in the world, a country that upholds the highest values of freedom, democracy and human rights, then any decline in American influence and power is hardly a welcome development.
If anything, it does not bode well for global stability, and opens the door to all kinds of mischief by the bad guys out there.
But it is not too late for Washington to turn things around. There is one dramatic step that Obama can take that would have a transformative effect, not only on his standing in public opinion but on the world itself: Take aggressive action to stop Iran's nuclear program.
The greatest threat to global peace and security today is the possibility of the ayatollahs going atomic. The thought of the would-be Hitler of Persia getting his hands on a nuclear weapon is one that should send shivers down the spine of every Israeli and every Westerner. It would be a game-changer in every sense of the term, upsetting the strategic balance in the Middle East and giving Iran the unprecedented ability to intimidate and coerce its neighbors.
Instead of investing so much energy and resources in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Obama would do himself and the world an enormous favor if he would turn his sights toward Teheran. Imposing punishing sanctions and using military force if necessary to stop the Iranian nuclear program would rally the American public behind his administration and underscore the fact that US deterrence is alive and well. In one fell swoop, Obama could restore America to its rightful place on the world stage, while striking an important blow against nuclear proliferation.
Sure, there would be a price to pay, as Muslims around the world would react with fury. But the fundamental truth of international affairs is that it is better to be respected than liked. And right now, America is neither.
Sounds like a pipe dream? Probably. The president has thus far pursued a policy of "engagement" with the Iranians, hoping to avoid a showdown. But this has produced little in the way of results.
So if Obama wants to save his presidency, his reputation and the Western world, his road to salvation may just lie in aiming the crosshairs at a belligerent Teheran.
Containing Iran, and bombing it if necessary, would have a dramatic impact not only on America's strategic standing, but on his own place in history.
4b)President Obama looks like a lame duck on the world stage as US global leadership goes AWOL
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: November 24th, 2010
President Bush may not have not have won the Nobel Peace Prize and was hugely unpopular at the dictator-friendly United Nations, but he was mightily feared by America’s enemies. Many a tyrant shuddered after US tanks rolled into Baghdad and removed one of the most odious psychopaths on the face of the earth from power. Even the supposedly unbeatable al-Qaeda wilted in the face of the surge in Iraq, suffering huge losses and humiliation at the hands of US forces.
George W. Bush believed in American exceptionalism and wasn’t afraid to show it. He also believed that human rights and the spread of liberty and freedom across the world really mattered, and would be an integral part of American foreign policy.
It is frankly hard to decipher what the current US administration believes in with regard to its foreign policy, except the language of appeasement and a belief in American decline as a global power. With the exception of Afghanistan, where the brilliant General Petraeus has recently been wiping the floor with the Taliban, the Obama administration is floundering in a sea of confusion on the world stage. And even in Afghanistan, military successes on the battlefield are being undermined by a destructive, artificial exit strategy set in path by the White House, which hands the long-term advantage to the enemy.
The latest provocation by North Korea, with artillery fired at the South and the killing of two South Korean marines, comes at a time when American leadership has gone AWOL on the world stage, and the White House looks weaker than it has been in decades. It is hardly surprising that America’s enemies look increasingly bullish in the face of a president who makes Jimmy Carter look like General Patton.
And things look hardly better on the Iranian front, where the brutal and barbaric Islamist regime inches closer towards becoming a nuclear-armed state, which threatens the security of Israel and the future of the Middle East. In the meantime, the White House is expending a great deal of energy on signing a monumentally flawed new START Treaty with Moscow which actively undermines US interests, increases the strategic power of Russia, and significantly undercuts Washington’s ability to deploy a global missile defence system.
In an increasingly dangerous world, Barack Obama has adopted a meek, deer in the headlights approach. While America’s foes grow stronger, the United States appears weaker and more vulnerable. At the same time, US alliances with Great Britain, Israel, Japan, and Central and Eastern Europe have all taken a hit from a White House that has been more concerned with apologising to US adversaries than strengthening friendships with key allies.
Barack Obama looks increasingly like a lame duck president, not only at home but also abroad, as his administration faces an array of complex and highly threatening challenges. The United States remains the world’s only superpower, but its status is being dramatically undercut by a striking lack of leadership in Washington. The Obama administration’s “smart power” approach has been anything but, and the latest aggression emanating from Pyongyang is a stark reminder that America cannot afford to be letting its guard down, and needs to stand up to its enemies rather than appease them.
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5)Why Turkey will emerge as leader of the Muslim world
By SONER CAGAPTAY
The AKP is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s global compass.
Turkey is not thought of as the Muslim country par excellence, but it is perhaps the most Muslim nation in the world. Due to its unique birth during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as a state forged exclusively by and for Muslims through blood and war, Turkey is a Muslim nation by origin – a feature shared perhaps only with partitioncreated Pakistan.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secularization in the 1920s veneered the country’s core identity with a Kemalist, nationalistic overlay. However, a recent perfect storm has undone Ataturk’s legacy: Whereas the events of September 11 have, unfortunately, oriented Muslim-Western relations toward perpetual conflict, the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara has helped reexpose the country’s core identity. When the AKP came to power in 2002, many expected that the party’s promise to de-Kemalize Turkey by blending Islam and politics would not only create a stronger Turkey, but would prove Islam’s compatibility with the West. The result, however, has been the reverse.
The AKP has eschewed Ataturk’s vision of Turkey as part of the West, preferring a Manichean “us [Muslims] vs them” worldview. Hence, in the post- September 11 world, stripped of its Kemalist identity, Turkey’s self-appointed role is that of “leader of the Muslim world.” The country is, in fact, well-suited for this position: It has the largest economy and most powerful military of any Muslim nation. After years of successful de-Kemalization, the only obstacle that remains is convincing its Muslim brethren to anoint it as their sultan.
Turkey was created as an exclusive Muslim homeland through war, blood and tears. Unbeknownst to many outsiders, modern Turkey emerged not as a state of ethnic Turks, but of Ottoman Muslims who faced expulsion and extermination in Russia and the Balkan states. Almost half of Turkey’s 73 million citizens descend from such survivors of religious persecution. During the Ottoman Empire’s long territorial decline, millions of Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims living in Europe, Russia and the Caucasus fled persecution and sought refuge in modern-day Turkey.
With the empire’s collapse at the end of World War I, Ottoman Muslims joined ethnic Turks to defend their home against Allied, Armenian and Greek occupations. They succeeded, making Turkey a purely Muslim nation that had been born out of conflict with Christians. Religion’s saliency as ethnicity lasted into the post- Ottoman period: When modern Greece and Turkey exchanged their minority populations in 1924, Turkish- speaking Orthodox Christians from Anatolia were exchanged with Greek-speaking Muslims from Crete.
All Muslims became Turks.
Although Ataturk emphasized the unifying power of Turkish nationalism over religious identity, Turkishness never replaced Islam; rather, both identities overlapped. Ataturk managed to overlay the country’s deep Muslim identity with secular nationalism, but Turkey retained its Muslim core.
Turning to the post-September 11 world, states created on exclusively national-religious grounds are vulnerable to a Huntingtonian, bifurcated “us [Muslims] versus them” worldview.
Until the AKP, Turkey was successfully driven by large pro-Western and secular elites, and there was not much to worry about in this regard.
However, the AKP has replaced these elites with those sympathetic to the us versus them eschatology.
AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his government, believe in Huntington’s clash of civilizations – only they choose to oppose the West. The AKP’s vision is shaped by Turkey’s philosopher- king, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who summarizes this position in his opus Strategic Depth, in which he writes that “Turkey’s traditionally good ties with the West... are a form of alienation” and that the AKP will correct the course of history, which has disenfranchised Muslims since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Undoubtedly, the AKP’s us versus them vision would not have had the same powerful resonance had the group come to power before September 11. Because those attacks defined a politically-charged “Muslim world,” the AKP’s worldview has found fertile ground and has changed not only Turkey itself, but also the nation’s role in foreign policy.
To this end, the AKP took advantage of Turkish anger with the US war in Iraq, casting it as an attack on all Muslims, Turks included. This reinforced its bipolar vision. Recently, while visiting Pakistan (of all places), Erdogan claimed that “the United States backs common enemies of Turkey and Pakistan, and that the time has come to unmask them and act together.” He later denied making these comments, which were reported in Pakistan’s prominent English-language dailies.
The AKP’s foreign-policy vision is not simply dualistic, but rather premised on Islam’s à la carte morals and selective outrage, and therein lies the real danger. One case in point is to compare the AKP’s differing stances toward Emir Kusturica and Omar al- Bashir. The former, a Bosnian film director who stood with the Yugoslav National Army as it slaughtered Bosnians in the 1990s, was recently driven out of Turkey by AKP-led protests, resulting in threats against his life – a victory for the victims of genocide in Bosnia. The latter, the Sudanese president indicted for genocide in the International Court of Justice, was gracefully hosted by the AKP in Turkey. Erdogan has said, “I know Bashir; he cannot commit genocide because Muslims do not commit genocide.”
This is the gist of the AKP’s à la carte foreign-policy vision: that Muslims are superior to others, their crimes can be ignored and anyone who stands against Muslim causes deserves to be punished.
The reason this vision will transform Turkey is because the country changes in tandem with its elites. Ever since the modernizing days of the Ottoman sultans, political makeover has been induced from above, and today the AKP is poised to continue this trend, as it is replete with pro-AKP and Islamist billionaires, media, think tanks, universities, TV networks, pundits and scholars – a full-fledged Islamist elite. Furthermore, individuals financially and ideologically associated with the AKP now hold prominent posts in the high courts since the September 12 referendum, which empowered the party to appoint a majority of the top judges without a confirmation process. In other words, the AKP now not only governs, but also controls Turkey.
Like their close neighbors, the Russians, Turks have moved in lockstep with the powerful political, social and foreign-policy choices that their dominant elites have ushered in. Beginning with the sultans’ efforts to westernize the Ottoman Empire in the 1770s, and continuing with Ataturk’s reforms and the multiparty democracy experiment that started in 1946, Turkish elites have cast their lot with the West. Unsurprisingly, the Turks adopted a pro-Western foreign policy, embraced secular democracy at home and marched steadily toward European Union membership.
Now, with the AKP introducing new currents throughout Turkish society, this is changing. In foreign policy, the dominant wind is solidarity with Islamist and anti-Western countries and movements. After eight years of AKP rule – an unusually long period in Turkish terms: if the AKP wins the June 2011 elections, it will have become the longest-ruling party in Turkey’s multiparty democratic history – the Turks are acquiescing to the AKP and its us versus them mind-set.
According to a recent poll by TESEV, an Istanbul-based NGO, the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim increased by 10 percent between 2002 and 2007, and almost half of them described themselves as Islamist. In effect, the AKP’s steady mobilization of Turkish Muslim identity along with its close financial and ideological affinity with the nation’s new Islamist elites is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s international compass.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and coauthor (with Scott Carpenter) of Nuanced Gestures: Regenerating the US-Turkey Partnership (2010).
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6)North Korea Will Never Play Nice
By B. R. MYERS
WHILE it is cowardly and foolish not to resist an act of aggression, the best way to deal with a provocation is to ignore it — or so we are taught. By refusing to be provoked, one frustrates and therefore “beats” the provoker; generations of bullied children have been consoled with this logic. And so it is that the South Korean and American governments usually refer to North Korea’s acts of aggression as “provocations.”
The North’s artillery attack on a populated South Korean island is now getting the same treatment, with the South’s president, Lee Myung-bak, vowing that Pyongyang will be “held responsible” and that “additional provocative acts” will be punished “several times over.”
There is no reason that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-il, should take those words seriously. Mr. Lee made similar noises in March, when the North was accused of killing 46 South Korean sailors by torpedoing a naval vessel, the Cheonan, and what was the result? A pacifist South Korean electorate punished Mr. Lee’s party in regional elections, and the attack faded from the headlines.
The North’s attack on Yeonpyeong Island has been more shocking to South Koreans, but not much more. At my local train station the morning after the attack, a grinning crowd watched coverage of the Asian Games in China on a giant TV screen. The same ethno-nationalism that makes South Koreans such avid followers of international sports also dilutes their indignation at their Northern brethren. South Korea’s left-wing press, which tends to shape young opinion, is describing the shelling of the island as the inevitable product of “misunderstandings” resulting from a lack of dialogue.
Sadly, South Korea’s subdued response to such incidents makes them more likely to happen again. This poses a serious problem for the United States; we have already been drawn into one war on the peninsula because our ally seemed unlikely to defend itself.
Unfortunately, Washington shares to a certain degree the South Korean tendency to play down North Korean “provocations.” In our usage, the word reflects the America-centric perception that everything Kim Jong-il does is aimed at eliciting a reaction from Washington. His actions are trivialized accordingly, to the extent that our top policymakers have publicly compared him to a squalling, attention-hungry child.
Not surprisingly, then, the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong is seen by many Americans as an effort to force us to make concessions, to reopen negotiations, and so on. Thus we can pretend that simply by leaving sanctions in place, we are really hanging tough, even pursuing a “hard-line” policy.
The provocation view of North Korea’s actions also prevents us from seeing them in context. Since a first naval skirmish in the Yellow Sea near Yeonpyeong in 1999, there has been a steady escalation in North Korea’s efforts to destabilize the peninsula. In 2002, another naval skirmish killed at least four South Korean sailors; in 2006 the North conducted an underground nuclear test; in 2009 it launched missiles over the Sea of Japan, had another nuclear test and declared the Korean War armistice invalid; and in March the Cheonan was sunk.
This behavior is fully in keeping with the ultramilitaristic ideology of a regime that remains publicly committed to uniting the peninsula by force: “Reunification is at the ends of our bayonets,” as the omnipresent slogan in the North goes.
North Korea cannot hope to win an all-out war, but it may well believe that by incrementally escalating its aggression it can bully the South into giving up — or at least sharing power in a confederation.
The provocation view of North Korean behavior also distorts our understanding of the domestic situation. Analysts tend to focus too much on the succession issue; they interpret the attack on the island as an effort to bolster the reputation of Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s son and anointed successor. Their conclusion is that North Korea will play nice once the young man is firmly in power.
In fact, as both its adversaries and supporters should realize, the North can never play nice. Just as our own economy-first governments must ensure growth to stay in power, a military-first regime must deliver a steady stream of victories or lose all reason to exist.
There is no easy solution to the North Korea problem, but to begin to solve it, we must realize that its behavior is aggressive, not provocative, and that its aggression is ideologically built in. Pyongyang is thus virtually predestined to push Seoul and Washington too far, thereby bringing about its own ruin.
The Chinese should take note of this, since their rationalization for continuing to support North Korea derives from the vain hope that they can prop it up indefinitely. The military-first state is going to collapse at some stage; let’s do what we can to make that happen sooner rather than later.
B. R. Myers, the director of the international studies department at Dongseo University, is the author of “The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves — and Why It Matters.”
6a).Why We're Always Fooled by North Korea
The analysts who predicted North Korea's latest nuclear breakthrough were denigrated and ignored..
By MICHAEL J. GREEN AND WILLIAM TOBEY
According to Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, North Korea is working on two new nuclear facilities, a light water power reactor in early stages of construction, and a "modern, clean centrifuge plant" for uranium enrichment. Mr. Hecker visited the facility over the weekend and says it appears nearly complete.
The centrifuge plant is particularly significant because it could produce more than enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon every year—and it may not be the North's only such facility. North Korea's artillery bombardment of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Tuesday makes it doubly clear that Pyongyang intends to leverage its new nuclear breakthrough for maximum concessions from the international community.
This nuclear revelation is not an intelligence failure. Over the past decade, intelligence analysts have consistently predicted North Korea's path to nuclear weapons and noted the increasing evidence of its missile and nuclear proliferation. The failure has been that of policy makers and pundits who denigrated the analysis, ignored it, or clung to the fallacy that North Korea would abide by a denuclearization deal.
In 1994, Clinton administration negotiators acknowledged that North Korea might be experimenting with uranium enrichment, but they chose to focus on an agreement called the Agreed Framework freezing the North's plutonium production at the Yongbyon facility. Intelligence agencies followed the uranium trail, but policy makers ignored it. As North Korea's most senior defector, Hwang Jang Yop, told us in 2004, the regime negotiated the Agreed Framework with every intention of "confronting the U.S. with a nuclear deterrent" before the reactors were complete and inspections became necessary.
In 2002, the Bush administration received compelling intelligence about active North Korean efforts to procure the equipment and materials necessary for a highly enriched uranium (HEU) facility. The experts had put together multiple-source information like a Rosetta Stone in an amazing piece of sleuthing. The exact state of the program was still unclear, but estimates were that it could be up and running within the decade. This was right on target, as we now know.
The North's clandestine HEU program was a blatant violation of the Agreed Framework, and in response the Bush administration suspended shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea. Critics immediately accused President Bush—not Kim Jong Il—of destroying the nuclear deal, even though the evidence demonstrated that the North had been assembling the HEU program since at least the 1990s.
By 2007, North Korea tested a nuclear device and the six-party talks were bogged down. U.S. negotiators were keen to shoehorn the talks back into the original Agreed Framework, with its focus on freezing the Yongbyon reactor, but the intelligence on the HEU program stood in the way. Negotiators set the issue aside, publicly and privately questioning the original assessment.
The New York Times and others aided this effort by reporting that the top U.S. intelligence expert on North Korea had "downgraded" his assessment on the North's HEU program in testimony to Congress in February 2007. In fact, he was simply reporting that the U.S. knew less about it—not surprising given that Pyongyang was alerted to our insights and could better hide its efforts.
Meanwhile, North Korean negotiators warned our delegation in Beijing in March 2003 that unless the U.S. ended its "hostile policy," Pyongyang was prepared to "demonstrate its deterrent," "expand its deterrent" and "transfer its deterrent." True to its word, Pyongyang did all three.
When stories leaked that the two of us were sent in February 2005 to inform Japan, Korea and China that uranium hexafluoride likely originating in North Korea had shown up in Libya, we were accused by outside experts and sources in the State Department of exaggerating the intelligence. After the CIA publicly noted North Korean complicity in a Syrian reactor construction project that Israel bombed in September 2007, the U.S. negotiating team successfully argued within the U.S. government to set aside the proliferation issue in order to focus on obtaining North Korean agreement on "verification protocols" to account for the plutonium at Yongbyon.
As a result, U.S. sanctions were lifted and North Korean illicit funds that had been frozen in a bank in Macao were returned, but no protocols were signed. Instead, North Korea conducted a second nuclear test. Meantime, evidence mounted that Myanmar was next in line seeking nuclear capabilities from Pyongyang.
It should be obvious by now that Pyongyang seeks acknowledgment as a nuclear state and intends to continue leveraging its proliferation threat to enjoy perpetual concessions from the U.S. North Korean officials have told outsiders that if America is concerned about proliferation, we should negotiate an "arms control agreement" with the North as mutual nuclear weapons states.
This would validate Pyongyang's weapons status and leave the door open for repeated escalation of the North's own weapons programs or proliferation, as U.S. credibility and deterrence steadily eroded. The existence of a highly enriched uranium facility makes this dynamic even more dangerous.
The Obama administration has said that the bombardment of Yeonpyeong is not a crisis, which is probably wise if the aim is to avoid granting the North even more leverage. On the other hand, it would be a colossal mistake to return to negotiations as if provocations are merely the price of doing business with Pyongyang. The focus right now should be on containment, interdiction and pressure. The inability to do so on a sustained basis until now was a failure of policy, not intelligence.
Mr. Green served as a senior official on the National Security Council Staff from 2001-05 and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Tobey served from 2006-09 as a deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and is now a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
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7)Bush Lied - To Himself
By Matt and Pat Archbold
I just watched Matt Lauer interview George W. Bush on NBC promoting his new book on his Presidency.
By way of a minor preamble, let me state that the interview did little to change my overall impression of the man, but it did change it some. I have for a time believed that he is generally a good man who cares deeply about his country. He did what he thought was best but he made some bad decisions. But I have always thought that even his bad decisions were made for, what he thought, were good reasons.
His decisions on war and peace, spending, and bailouts are all legitimate matters for disagreement. I agreed with some and disagreed with others but I have always thought he came by his decisions, even the bad ones, honestly.
With all that said, I was struck by what I can only classify as a moment of dishonesty. I don’t think that President Bush lied to Matt Lauer or the American people, I think he lied to himself.
The topic, it should come as no surprise, is the water-boarding of three suspected terrorists at Gitmo. I do not intend to debate the morality of water-boarding here, my point lies elsewhere.
When asked whether water-boarding was torture President Bush answered “My lawyers said no. The lawyers said it was legal.”
The lawyers? It was legal?
I believe that George W. Bush wanted nothing more than to protect this country, but I believe he lied to himself to do it. President Bush knows full well that there are plenty of things that are legal in this country that are intrinsically immoral. Abortion comes to mind.
President Bush knows full well that the legality of such an act is not the right question when trying to determine the “right thing” to do. President Bush denied that he pressured the lawyers to get the answer he wanted and I think I believe him. But it doesn’t matter. He pressured himself to accept an answer which he probably knew was wrong.
Why do I say he probably knew it was wrong, because in the next sentence he made a point that they only water-boarded three people. You don’t say that unless you know its wrong. If you think a legal opinion gives you moral carte blanche, then why not water-board them all?
I think that George W. Bush so much wanted to “protect” this country from another attack that he lied to do it. But he didn’t lie to us, he lied to himself.
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