NO MORE MR. NICE GUY?

اضيف الخبر في يوم الخميس ٠٨ - يوليو - ٢٠١٠ ١٢:٠٠ صباحاً.


NO MORE MR. NICE GUY? President Obama last week signed into law
new unilateral American sanctions on Iran that impose penalties on foreign entities that sell refined petroleum to Iran or assist Iran with its domestic refining capacity. The new law also requires that American and foreign businesses that seek contracts with the U.S. government certify that they do not engage in prohibited business with Iran. Foreign banks that deal with the Revolutionary Guard or other blacklisted Iranian institutions like Iranian banks involved in terrorism would be restricted or banned entirely from the American financial system. …

A New York Times analysis in March found that the federal government had awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran. That included $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.
More here
 
The Economist reports:
Money may be the weakest point for Iran’s nuclear ayatollahs. America’s Congress has just voted to force banks, insurers, energy firms and others to choose: trade with Iran and you will be barred from business with the United States. …

Even before the vote in Congress on June 24th, reputation-conscious banks accounting firms, insurers (crucial for freight) and others had been pulling out of Iran or scaling down their business. Now France’s Total has joined BP, India’s Reliance, Malaysia’s Petronas, Russia’s Lukoil and others in stopping gasoline sales to Iran (which imports 30-40% of its petrol). Spain’s Repsol is just the latest energy firm to junk contracts in Iran’s gas or oil fields. …

Some fear that Chinese and other firms will snap up the lost business. But America’s new legislation (if full use is made of it) would hit them too. Moreover, dwindling trade and the legal cover of UN sanctions have helped persuade even once-reluctant governments in Europe and Asia to stiffen their own trade restrictions. …

Iran has friends, not least fellow nuclear rule-breakers North Korea, Syria and Myanmar. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hobnobs with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. But there is little profit for Iran’s merchants in such places.
More here
 
FDD’s Mark Dubowitz calls Congress
wise to slam the door on the Iranian regime’s access to energy expertise. It’s now up to President Obama and European leaders to make sure that it stays shut.
More here.
 
In my Scripps column last week, I wrote on the rare outburst of bipartisanship that produced the Iran sanctions legislation -- along with increased missile defense spending and support for General David Petraeus’ new mission. I ask:
Will sanctions, applied seriously, cause the regime to change its behavior -- or cause Iranians to change the regime? No one knows. What we can say with certainty: This is the last peaceful means to that end, the only way left, short of military force, to do something about Iranian despots who are sorely oppressing their population at home, sponsoring terrorists abroad, facilitating the killing of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, building nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, threatening Israel with genocide, allying with America's enemies in Latin America, and vowing that a "world without America . . . is attainable." This is, without question, the most serious national-security threat of the 21st century. Passivity and appeasement should not be an option.
More here.
 
U.S. TO E.U.: Impose tough sanctions on Iran. More here
 
Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Ambassador (under President Clinton) to the E.U. writes:
The goal of sanctions against Iran is to make the cost of continuing its nuclear program higher than the benefits. Shutting down the financial sources the regime uses to support its nuclear program is the most effective way to change its behavior. …

Harmonized transatlantic sanctions led by the U.S. and EU with the support of their allies offers the last, best chance of avoiding two unpalatable alternatives: Bombing Iran's nuclear infrastructure, or conceding that Iran will become a nuclear weapons state.
More here
 
IRAN TO SYRIA: Sophisticated radar that could provide early-warning against a possible surprise Israeli air attack against Iran’s nuclear sites. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said:
"We don't believe that Iran’s designs for the region are in Syria’s best interest," Crowley told reporters.
More here
 
FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer advises that the U.S. government ought to be turning up the heat on Hezbollah -- not courting it, as some "experts" suggest. …
[T]he Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar has inadvertently exposed Palestinian businessman Yasser Kashlak, financier of the new flotilla to Gaza, as a Hezbollah supporter. The flotilla's other organizer, Samar al-Haj, is married to a Lebanese Internal Security Agency officer who was jailed for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, an assassination that UN investigators have reportedly found was carried out by Hezbollah.

Does this portend still more clashes between Islamists and Israeli commandos on the high seas? Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah certainly made sure to "salute" the members of the May 31 flotilla from Turkey for their courage after they incited a needless battle that led to nine deaths.

Yet, while Hezbollah leaves bloody fingerprints all over the globe, some Washington insiders are calling for America to reach out to the terrorist group. … Hezbollah is an avowed enemy of the United States and its allies. It refuses to disarm. To the contrary, with Iranian and Syrian assistance, it continues to amass a deadly arsenal.
More here.
 
CNN’S MOURNING SHOW: Hezbollah’s Hussein Fadlallah dies -- and Octavia Nasr, CNN’s Senior Editor of Middle Eastern Affairs, mourns. More here.
 
THEY REPORT, THEY DISTORT: Iran's PressTV continues to distort The Long War Journal's data on the U.S. air campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan to claim that the policy kills many more civilians than it actually does.
 
More here.
 
THE TIES THAT BIND: FDD’s Tom Joscelyn writes:
The terrorists who plotted to blow up New York City subways last year may have met with a top al Qaeda operative who has been wanted by the US since 2003 …
More here
 
AFGHANISTAN: In The New Republic, FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht reports that among the reasons for hope in Afghanistan is the fact that
the anti-Taliban Pashtun community is still vastly larger in numbers than those who want to see a return of Mullah Omar and his kind. …

Afghan patriotism -- even after its religious radicalization in the 1970s and the awful, sanguinary years since -- isn’t particularly xenophobic, except among those Pashtuns who’ve drunk deeply of the radical Islamism that the Arab jihadists carried with them during the Soviet-Afghan war (1979–1989) and that Pakistani madrassas incubated so effectively.

Foreigners who like to depict the Taliban as an increasingly popular liberation movement seriously miscast the dynamics at work. ...

Some folks want to hope that the new Taliban won’t have the pro–Al Qaeda philosophy of the old Taliban, that they will have learned their lesson that the global jihad brings foreign invasion and Predator drones. But the opposite seems vastly more likely: The Taliban will have driven the United States out of Afghanistan. Victory against the Soviets will have been followed by victory against the Americans. Mullah Omar’s decision to sacrifice his regime on the altar of global jihad will have in the end brought ultimate victory. Bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri will come out of the mountains ...

Without American boots on the ground in Afghanistan and (covertly) in Pakistan, operations against Al Qaeda and its allied subcontinent brothers will effectively cease. There is no such thing as an “over-the-horizon” intelligence and counterterrorist operation.
More here
 
Mona Charen asks:
What distinguishes President Obama’s hopes for Afghanistan from President Bush’s much-despised aspirations for Iraq? At his press conference following the G-20 summit, President Obama sounded like a neoconservative:
I reject the notion that the Afghan people don’t want some of the basic things that everybody wants -- basic rule of law, a voice in governance, economic opportunity, basic physical security, electricity, roads, an ability to get a harvest to market and get a fair price for it without having to pay too many bribes in between. And I think we can make a difference, and the coalition can make a difference, in them meeting those aspirations
More here.
 
KRISTOL VS. STEELE: Weekly Standard editor (and FDD advisor) Bill Kristol calls on RNC Chairman Michael Steele to resign. At an RNC event, Steele said that Afghanistan is “a war of Obama's choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."
 
Also: "[If Obama] is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?"
 
Kristol responded:
Needless to say, the war in Afghanistan was not "a war of Obama’s choosing." It has been prosecuted by the United States under Presidents Bush and Obama. …

At a time when Gen. Petraeus has just taken over command, when Republicans in Congress are pushing for a clean war funding resolution, when Republicans around the country are doing their best to rally their fellow citizens behind the mission, your comment is more than an embarrassment. It’s an affront, both to the honor of the Republican party and to the commitment of the soldiers fighting to accomplish the mission they’ve been asked to take on by our elected leaders.

There are, of course, those who think we should pull out of Afghanistan, and they’re certainly entitled to make their case. But one of them shouldn't be the chairman of the Republican party.
Kristol’s letter is here
 
KNOW THINE ENEMY: Syndicated columnist (and FDD advisor) Charles Krauthammer writes:
President Obama’s National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy -- how else do you define those seeking your destruction? -- “a loose network of violent extremists.” But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize, and kill.

Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don’t, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences. …

Islamist fundamentalism is … the common denominator linking all the great terror attacks of this century -- from 9/11 to Mumbai, from Fort Hood to Times Square, from London to Madrid to Bali. The attackers were of various national origin, occupation, age, social class, native tongue, and race. The one thing that united them was the jihadist vision in whose name they acted.
More here
 
My recent Scripps Howard column on what’s wrong with the National Security Strategy -- exactly what Krauthammer has identified above -- is here.
 
IS SAUDI INFLUENCE ANY BETTER THAN IRANIAN INFLUENCE? Did King Abdullah say he wants to wipe both Israel and Iran off the map? More here
 
FDD’s Khairi Abaza argues that
counterterrorism requires a comprehensive strategy, including greater liberties for repressed populations. The lack of freedom in the Arab world -- including Saudi Arabia -- remains a significant driver of radicalization. No reform; no durable de-radicalization. …
More here:
 
“INSPIRE” -- A JOURNAL OF JIHAD: Osama bin Laden is apparently bullish on the magazine business. More here.
 
WHAT DOES INSPIRE TERRORISTS? Joel Mowbray writes:
[T]he Jihadist narrative places Muslims as victims and the West (or specifically America/Israel) as the aggressor. In the 1990s, for example, the United Nations-approved sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the Jihadists' cause du jour …

Our enemies need no extra fodder for recruitment and motivation. Their propaganda is no doubt bolstered by having real wars in Muslim lands to cite, but they've proven how little they actually need. Embassies were burned and people murdered over cartoons. …
More here.
 
CURSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY MAKE WAR: Emanuele Ottolenghi writes that
paradoxically, the more Admiral Mullen and his military peers say that an attack against Iran would be a bad thing, the more likely it is there is going to be an attack on Iran.
More here.
 
Ottolenghi on Turkey here.
 
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT? Iran convicted Kurdish-Iranian activist Zeinab Jalalian of moharebeh: “waging war against God” -- a crime that carries the death penalty. More here.
 
NO JEWS, NO NEWS: That’s the rule, apparently. Noah Pollack explains here.
 
FREE AT LAST: Judge agrees to grant asylum to ex-Hamas prince and ex-Israeli spy Mosab Hassan Yousef. More here.
 
Just before the judge’s decision, National Review Online editorialized:
Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas founder, and was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. At the age of 18, he purchased some machine guns and planned to join the terrorist organization’s militant wing. But he was arrested with the guns, and during a stint in Israeli prison, he had a change of heart -- and joined Hamas as an undercover agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet after his release from prison in 1997.

In that capacity, he prevented dozens of terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings and assassinations. … The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says he was the country’s “most valuable source in the militant organization’s leadership,” and credits him with the arrest of Fatah head Marwan Barghouti and Hamas members Abdullah Barghouti and Ibrahim Hamid.

In 2007, he came to the U.S. and applied for asylum. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service denied his application in 2009, on the grounds that he provided material support to a terrorist organization. This is madness.
More here.
 
My column on Mosab Hassan Yousef is here. Claudia Rosett’s column is here.
 
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF EUROPE? Scholar Walter Laqueur observes:
Most of our knowledge on the mood and the political orientation of Muslim communities all over the world rests on public opinion polls, most prominently those carried out by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. How reliable, though, are these polls? To give an example: a figure of 13 per cent is usually given for those in Britain sympathising with al-Qaeda. But can it be taken for granted that those asked will reveal to strangers (who, for all they know, may be agents of the security forces) the secrets of their hearts and minds? The answer seems obvious. …

[Eurabia] is a Muslim, or rather specifically Arab, concept. Among Middle Eastern public figures and writers, the idea that Muslims would be a majority in Europe goes back a long time. …

The second and third generations of immigrants tend to be more radical than their parents. This radicalism by no means stems from deep, fundamentalist religiosity: the most radical are not the most pious believers who pray five times daily and scrupulously fulfill the other religious commandments. This is a generation of resentment, because unlike other groups they did not make it. ...

A German minister recently stated that a Muslim prime minister was no longer unthinkable, and a Dutch minister has expressed the belief that sharia may become the law of the land. But what kind of prime minister and what version of sharia? European banking systems have adjusted their financial procedures to conform with sharia principles. But it is doubtful that even the most liberal archbishop will justify honour killings, genital mutilation and similar practices in the foreseeable future. …
More here.
 
WAR GAMES: FDD recently took part in a day-long, role-playing exercise
at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Teams played China, the European Union, India, Iran, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, various parts of the U.S. government, and of course al Qaeda.
Just between you and me: FDD staff played the parts of Iran and al-Qaeda.
 
More here.
 
SHIELD: John Miller notes:
The Missile Defense Agency has announced another successful test intercept: The Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Army soldiers of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, successfully conducted an intercept test for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense element of the nation’s Ballistic Missile Defense System today. A target missile was launched at approximately 9:32 p.m. Hawaii time, June 28 (3:32 a.m. EDT, June 29), and about five minutes later a THAAD interceptor missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) off the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Preliminary indications are that planned flight test objectives were achieved.
More here.
 
DON’T BANK ON THE WEST BANK? The Carnegie’s Endowment’s Nathan Brown argues that
The international community’s understandable admiration for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his efforts to rebuild the West Bank obscures a dangerous regression in democracy and human rights.
More here.
 
IT’S ABOUT OIL, STUPID: Robert Zubrin writes:
The technology exists to make cars that are fully flex-fueled, able to run equally well on gasoline, ethanol or methanol, in any combination. If installed at the time of manufacture, the inclusion of this feature adds only about $100 to the cost of a typical car. The benefits of making such a childhood immunization against oil addiction a standard requirement for all new autos sold in the U.S. would be profound. ...

While ethanol can make a significant contribution - it has replaced 7 percent of the gasoline used in the U.S. and more than 50 percent in Brazil - the real key here is compatibility with methanol, which can be made in limitless quantities from anything that either is or once was a plant, including coal, natural gas, recycled urban trash or any kind of biomass, without exception. Its current price on the international market is $1 per gallon, equivalent in energy terms to gasoline at $1.90 per gallon - without any subsidy. If we cure our cars so they can drink this fuel, we will protect ourselves from extortion by the oil cartel, forever.

A bill has been introduced in Congress to do exactly that. Known as the Open Fuel Standards (OFS) Act, it has truly bipartisan support … Under the bill's provision, by 2012, 50 percent of all new cars sold in the U.S. will need to be fully flex-fueled, with the number rising to 80 percent by 2015.

With a stroke of a pen, Congress can break the power of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to tax the world. The OFS bill will not cost the Treasury a dime, and it will protect the nation from hundreds of billions of dollars of potential losses because of future petroleum price increases.
More here.
 
--Cliff May
 
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
"In the Middle East, power is a zero-sum game, domination by a benevolent hegemon creates order, and the regional balance of power is the foundation of peace. It’s the pax Americana, and while it may be stressful to uphold it, the alternative is more stressful still."
(07/01/2010) Scholar Martin Kramer
 
"We have common enemies … the Yankee empire, the genocidal state of Israel."
(06/27/2010) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Syrian President Bashar Assad
 
"Our nation is at war. We face a very tough fight in Afghanistan. But Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks. We persist and we persevere."
(06/23/2010) President Barack Obama
 
IN THE MEDIA
How Should The World Deal with Terrorism?
07/6/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Pragati
Nine years after the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new era in global conflict, lack of clarity reigns supreme. Leaving aside the fact that there is still no generally accepted name for this conflict, top-level planners cannot even agree about what constitutes "the enemy." Under such circumstances, it should come as no surprise that it is difficult to conceive of, let alone speak about, attaining victory.
 
Being American
07/2/2010, Claudia Rosett, Forbes.com
This weekend, on July 4, Americans celebrate the 234th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Over the burgers and sweet corn, that's always a good day to think about what, exactly, it means to be American. One of the best summaries I've heard lately came during a press teleconference Wednesday with someone who is not yet an American citizen.
 
A Bipartisan Moment
07/1/2010, Clifford D. May, Scripps Howard News Service
In the film version of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the rich and sexy political activist Joanne Herring asks the eponymous representative from Texas: “Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?” Wilson deadpans: “Well, tradition mostly.”
 
Don't Let Hezbollah Off The Hook
07/1/2010, Jonathan Schanzer, The New York Post
The Israelis have vowed to intercept the latest "peace flotilla" now en route to Gaza from Lebanon, as they have other would-be blockade-busters -- and they have every right to, since new evidence shows that some of the money and planning behind it came from the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
 
Al Qaeda Sleeper Agent Tied to 2009 NYC Subway Plot
07/1/2010, Thomas Joscelyn, The Long War Journal
The terrorists who plotted to blow up New York City subways last year may have met with a top al Qaeda operative who has been wanted by the US since 2003, according to multiple press accounts.
 
Why Europe Loathes Israel
07/1/2010, Benjamin Weinthal, The Weekly Standard
The widespread condemnation Europeans have expressed toward Israel after its commandos boarded the so-called peace flotilla on May 31 -- and used force only when threatened with death - signals a desire to turn every Israeli action of self-defense into absolution for the crimes of the Holocaust.
 
When Saudi King Visits White House, It's Business as Usual
07/1/2010, Khairi Abaza, The Daily Caller
For all of President Barack Obama’s talk of hope and change, apparently it stops at the water’s edge: Obama’s policies toward civil liberties in the Arab world are decidedly business as usual. Wednesday morning, Obama welcomed Saudi King Abdullah at the White House -- on the last day of the second business quarter of the year, in case the relationship didn’t already appear transactional enough.
 
Turkey's Two Faces
06/29/2010, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, Standpoint Magazine (U.K.)
There is a non-Arab Middle Eastern country that has occupied foreign territory by force for more than three decades -- and nobody else recognises that occupation. That same country has denied its national minorities such basic rights as cultural autonomy and has prevented them from using their own languages.
 
A Guide to Avoiding Disaster in Afghanistan
06/29/2010, Reuel Marc Gerecht, The New Republic: Entanglements
For those of us who can remember how lonely it was to be in favor of the Iraq war and the hoped-for surge in 2006, reflecting on America’s current travails in Afghanistan -- a “fool’s errand” (George F. Will) administered by “well-meaning infidels” (Andrew J. Bacevich) -- isn’t nearly so depressing.
 
A Syria in Minor Key
06/29/2010, Tony Badran, NOW Lebanon
The strategic vacuum the United States is leaving in the Middle East is creating a dangerously unstable situation, arguably similar to the one immediately preceding the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. This is characterized by a void in regional leadership and a disengaged Washington incapable of dictating regional dynamics.
 
Beyond Gasoline: Congress Targets Iran’s Access to Critical Energy Know-How
06/29/2010, Mark Dubowitz, Forbes
This past week, 507 members of the United States Congress passed the toughest Iran sanctions legislation in history, with only eight members opposing. The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign this week is likely to create serious heartburn for Iranian leaders.

 
اجمالي القراءات 1884
أضف تعليق
لا بد من تسجيل الدخول اولا قبل التعليق